- True freeform gameplay without plot restrictions, conditions, or limitations. No character attribute/skill limitations to hold you back. Experience ultimate gameplay freedom and play the game the way you want to. Your decisions and abilities define your role in the game and establish your reputations, wealth, progress, and ranking.
- Diverse gameplay choices and activities including racing, spying, mining, trading, commodity shipping, exploring, asteroid clearing, equipment cleaning, crew management, and ship designing. New options including passenger transport, capital ship escort, military war zone missions, multiple waypoint patrols, and planet atmosphere combat contracts. There are many ways to make money and advance in the game.
- A vast seamless universe that lets you fly anywhere without loading screens. Fly from planet to planet, star to star, solar system to solar system seamlessly.
- Interactive training mode with selectable stages to provide the necessary basics for flying your ship, managing its systems, docking/landing, and surviving in combat.
- Unified gameplay architecture and profiles lets you keep the ship, upgrades, equipment, money, weapons, crew, and commodities you acquire in the game for use in both single player and multiplayer.
- Multiplayer capacity increased (for both human players and AI controlled ships).
- Clan ID linking system lets you establish your indicated threat levels with other players in multiplayer. Players sharing a common ID in their callsigns are linked together as friendly contacts while different ID's are indicated as hostile. You can also link together in-game with another clan to form a larger group for better odds of success.
- Cooperative multiplayer objectives that pay all linked players. Join forces with other players to complete more challenging activities that can offer much better pay. More advanced players can link with new players to give them access to higher paying contracts that they would not otherwise have access to early in the game. Being part of the same team lets you combine reputations and contract pay for improved results.
- Challenge other players to multiplayer ship-vs-ship races and place the race course where you want in space. Players can have their own track to race the clock against each other or race other players on the same track.
- Seamless planet descents that can include weather effects such as rain, snow, and turbulence. Explore planets for hidden benefits, trade at city stations, mine their surfaces for valuable materials, recover cells from plants for valuable biological material, or hide in their atmospheres... they are an important part of the game's interactive universe... not just background scenery you can only look at.
- Ship-to-ship trading and cargo system. Ship and trade weapons, upgrades, and equipment in addition to commodities. You can even load items from your cargo bay onto your ship, letting you carry more weapons, upgrades, and equipment beyond what you can install on your ship.
- New energy pod generators and receivers, which players can use to set up 'capture the flag' scenarios and receive free fuel.
- New constructor stations that you can take raw materials to for constructing components and items.
- Optional customizable universe that lets you move objects in space, replace them, remove them, and change the local environment.
- Enhanced 3D game engine with new effects, objects, and textures.
- Dynamic economies with realistic variable item availability and specialized industries.
- Three weapon classes - beam weapons, particle cannons, and secondary missiles/equipment. New weapons and equipment include the Lynx, Rage and Cyclone missiles, proximity mines, probes, and new stealth technology.
- Explore for hidden commodity and weapon storage containers which offer free reloading, upgrades, and other valuable items.
- Use your wealth to design and build a new ship, buy better weapons, hire crew members, recruit other ships, install upgrades, load commodities, and more.
- New military combat ships you can own and fly ranging from light scouts to heavy interceptors. New capital ships include Cruisers, Battleships, Command Ships, and Destroyers which also join in war zone battles, plus Carriers you can dock with for military objectives and ships.
- Shipyards let you design and customize your ship for the role you want to play. Optimize your ship for defense, exploration, combat, racing, or transporting... the choice is yours. You can also position and scale each component to give your ship a unique appearance. Civilian ships can also be painted a variety of colors.
- No required trade lanes or warp gates to hold you back. The game's universe is yours to explore with an open space navigation system and built-in jump drives. Optional warp gates are available for faster long distance travel and you can also install new gates in desired locations with the game's customizable universe.
- Realistic zero gravity inertia based 'Newtonian' style flight model including complete 3-way rotation and 3-way direction control with optional variable input. An advanced inertial dampening system helps keep flight control simple in space, atmospheres, and gravity fields. The physics system has been enhanced for improved realism based on ship type and design, including thruster-to-weight and acceleration/deceleration agility. Heavier and lighter ships alike now handle more realistically for their mass and configurations. Even the cargo your ship carries is a factor.
- Realistic environment interaction far beyond the genre's typical 'background wallpaper'. Nebula clouds, asteroid fields, planet atmospheres, moons, and more all provide unique options for shelter and strategy. Such environment elements include changes in gravity, fuel consumption, physics, sensor range, and visibility.
- Quick one-key access to jump drive navigation and inventory management. You control all system travel and inventory decisions right from the cockpit.
- Explore the game's massive universe with several secret locations to discover and many unique objects/obstacles to encounter including black holes, asteroid caves, wormholes, and stars.
- Clue-based integrated story you can continue at virtually any time. Follow the beacons, solve the clues and voyage through many systems in a quest to discover the mystery of what happened at Arvoch and the device the Alliance found. Players who take on the challenge of the story quest and succeed will discover a very beneficial feature.
- Supports keyboard, mouse, gamepad, and joystick flight control. Use the control device you prefer to play the game. Force feedback control is also supported.
- Supports Natural Point's TrackIR 3D head control system for managing the viewpoint from the cockpit with all six degrees of movement.