Naturally, the first and most important addition to Gratuitous Space Battles is that of The Order. The Order is a group of intensely religious aliens that finds everything that is not themselves to be heresy that must be purged. Their ship designs are vastly different from the others, as they are comprised of separated sections joined together with and tractor beams. When the ships are destroyed, the beams fizzle out and the ships float away. It's a really cool effect and it's nice to see the drastic different in design from the other factions. Their ships also focus more on power than speed, making them perfect as floating fortresses. The bevy of hardpoints reinforces this fact. As always, the high-resolution graphics are outright stunning, and the artwork is top-notch.

Alongside the new faction, players now have access to a number of new goodies to play with. The two main offensive unlocks are radiation guns and nuclear missiles, which do roughly the same thing but in different payloads. Each deals normal damage to shields and hulls of ships they hit, but they also lay on an effect that damages the systems of a ship over time. The result is a weapon that is less useful in the immediate, but more useful over time. The other two unlocks are the anti-fighter limpet mines, which slow down fighters so that capital weapons can be turned on them, and firefly engines, which provide big boosts of speed but don't do sustained thrust.

Finally, there's two extra scenarios included in the expansion. Each offers something a little different from the standard scenarios, which makes them nice to have. The first has an asteroid field in the center, which, while not serving any gameplay purpose, does make for some cool effects, such as ship wreckage floating around the hurtling rocks. The other scenario is a survival one where players compete to reach the top of leaderboards. They aren't much, but it does add some replayability!

Overall, The Order is like The Tribe. It's a mini-expansion that adds a few new things, but doesn't aim to revolutionize the game with any big changes. The new aliens are well-made, the new weapons are great, and the scenarios keep the game from getting stale. If you own Gratuitous Space Battles, there's no reason not to own The Order, especially since it's only $6. You can get the game from the developer's website or Steam. Note that you need the latest version of Gratuitous Space Battles in order to play. If you have the game on Steam or have enabled the in-game online component, you should be patched up completely.