Inquisitive and dedicated, the Endless were able to make great advances in the fields of science, which culminated in them achieving virtualization, allowing them to upload their minds into machines and giving them eternal life.

This created a great schism in their society, splitting it into two opposing factions, the Virtuals, who embraced electronic immortality, and the Concretes, who viewed it as an abomination.

The player takes control of one of the 12 major factions, "each with their own asymmetrical gameplay, storyline, homeworlds, spaceships, heroes and technologies".

Finally, the player can construct improvements to a system's infrastructure, with several powerful variants that can only be built once in the entire game.

It unlocks new constructions, ship hulls, weapons, modules, upgrades, tactics, system infrastructure, abilities and other items to give the player an advantage.

There are four different categories of research trees: military, science and technology, business and trade, and empire development.

The game features a political system, which each faction has a certain affinity for, industrialists, scientists, militarists, pacifists, ecologists, and religious.

Players can engage in ship to ship battles against enemy fleets, with battles playing out automatically, fleets are pitted against each other with their relative effectiveness being determined by weapon and defense modules, the range of engagement being determined by the strategy card a player picks.

There are three classes of ship hulls: small, medium, and large, which are unlocked as the player climbs the appropriate research tree.

Larger hulls have more health, manpower capacity, and module slots, but require more resources and time to build, and take up more space in a fleet.

Beam weapons, on the other hand, have relatively low damage output but are unaffected by range, making them incredibly consistent.

It added the Vaulter civilization, pirate bases, and an Early Access version of multiplayer mode along with several new visual elements.