Final Legacy

The programmers either didn't play or test their own game (at least not anywhere close to thoroughly), or they were mentally damaged. Basically the game is impossible to complete on any level above 3. And even on 3, I would estimate the odds of victory even with perfect playing at around 50%. I would further guess that those who hype and give this game a high score are doing so "blindly" based on first or early impressions, and likely have never even played a campaign all the way through (at least not on any difficulty other than the easiest). It's actually a shame because the game premise and broad design is sound enough to be a great game, but the play tuning and balance is completely out the window (particularly with the endless waves of missiles toward your cities halfway through a campaign). This game and its sales coasted on initial/shallow impressions.

I interviewed Steve Englehart back in 2009 and he doesn't remember much about the game, either the Atari 8-bit or ST versions.
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/steve_englehart/interview_steve_englehart.html

According to programmer Dan Oliver, the "E" for the E-Beam weapon stood for "Electric" (it's not mentioned in the manual). Also not mentioned in the manual is why your battleship fires torpedos. According to Dan, he wanted it to be a ship but designer Chris Horseman wanted it to be a submarine. From Dan, "The ship view was the second view I did (the map was first). Chris was talking about and or wanting subs, so my graphic looks like what I thought the bow of a sub would look like on the surface, maybe to make Chris Horseman happy."