Hey Hellcat, welcome to the forums!
As Kenneth said, the other Empires don't expand simply because they can't - yet. This isn't a bug, it's simply that a game feature, albeit a particularly important one, isn't yet finished. The races require an Artificial Intelligence (AI) to control them. But Mike, the developer, has barely started working on the AI yet. We don't now how long it will take for Mike to finish the AI, but it will be the single most complex update that the game will require, and we're guesstimating that it will be around a year before it's ready for release.
Random game crashes are unfortunately inevitable whilst the game is still uner development. However, it might be helpful to us if you could help us find the cause. Whenever the game crashes for a reason it can identify, it will record this information in a file called "Error.txt" or "ServerError.txt". These files will be placed in your main Supremacy folder. The files will be automatically deleted the next time time you play the game though. If you could upload these files - if they are present - to a post, we will be able to look at the cause and might be able to trace it in future.
The shiplist is currently incomplete. A number of bugs are present in the game database. Unfortunately, the game editor is broken at the moment so the problems can't be fixed. Once the editor is working again, I will be personally fixing and updating the game database. Incidentally, the ships all have different build requirements. It's equally possible you didn't have a developed enough shipyard or not enough resources to build the ship.
Why can't you play the game after it performs an update? Does it crash or something when you try? If it does, download the game from scratch and put it into a new folder. Then download
This File and let it overwrite your existing HttpDownloader.dll file in your main Supremacy folder. Then, click on Start => Run and type "%temp%UAB" (Without the quote marks) in the box that appears and press enter. This will open a folder called UAB; if there are
any files or folders present in the UAB folder, delete them
all. Run the game and if it says an update is available, let the game download it. Then run the game again. If the game still crashes, please post about it in the Supremacy Bugs forum.
If you encounter problems with the game, i've also created a post with all the known game problems and fixes where available,
Here. The link won't work after I next update it though so if it doesn't work when you click it, the post is located right at the top of the Supremacy Bugs forum.
The game doesn't have a German translation, but a lot of people have asked for one. Most of us don't speak German, but the game does support hundreds of languages. So all we need is someone to do the actual translating...
I hope this answers your questions, if you have any more please feel free to ask.
_________________"Anyone without a sense of humour is truly at the mercy of the rest of us."