X4 will allow you to fly all ships personally. From small scouts over a wide range of ship classes up to the biggest carrier, everything can be piloted from the cockpit or an external view. Additionally some drones and utility vehicles in X4 can be remotely controlled by the player.

A big focus in the development of X4 has been to achieve a seamless and immersive experience when moving between ships. You can leave a ship, climb down a ladder, walk over the dock of a large space station into another ship you may have parked there and replace the pilot that was working for you just by clicking on his chair.

Building space stations and factories has always been a foundation of the X games. After gaining enough money through fighting or trading, most players want to establish their own economy and start influencing the universe on a larger scale. In X4, it is now possible to be completely free and creative. Stations can be constructed from a variety of modules, be it production modules, living sections, docks or many other types of parts. The powerful new map system allows you to drag and connect modules using a connection system to design your own unique creations.

X4: Cradle of Humanity will bring the X series back to Earth, significantly increasing the size of the game's universe with new sectors, and welcoming two Terran factions to X4: Foundations, along with their economy, ships, weapons and stations. New game-starts will introduce the identity and political stance of the Terran factions, as well as giving an alternative perspective on existing story developments in X4: Foundations.

X4: Cradle of Humanity will also shed light on what has happened to Earth in the decades since the jump-gate shutdown. Furthermore, a certain pirate faction that is well known to fans of the series will be making a dramatic comeback!

X4: Cradle of Humanitywill be accompanied by the most extensive free update to X4: Foundations yet. The 4.00 update will be made available to all owners of the base game, and is set to further enhance X4: Foundations in a number of ways. Among the enhancements are major new gameplay features, such as terraforming, new ways to manage hostilities, and wide-ranging visual improvements including volumetric fog. A current v4.0 beta change log can be checked out on the official forum.

X4: Cradle of Humanity is scheduled for release on PC (Steam) on March 16, 2021. Alternatively, by purchasing the X4: Foundations Collector's Edition bundle, space adventurers can secure access to the expansion when it is released as well as benefitting from a discount over buying it separately.

Ships also offer a variety of upgrades. Engines, weapons and other equipment can be added in a graphical editor and actually seen on the ship.

X4 will be the first X game to allow our races and factions to freely build and expand their empires; the same flexibility the player enjoys in creatively designing space stations from modular building blocks is also available to them. Races expand their empire based on supply and demand, which leads to an extremely dynamic universe where every action the player makes can influence the course of the entire universe.

Once you have more ships and many NPCs working for you as pilots, crew or station managers, the map will be your preferred method of managing it all. Ships can be ordered with simple clicks and through drag-and-drop operations to set their future path and commands.

Graphically plan your trade routes, coordinate attacks with your entire fleet, manage the hierarchy or send ships on remote exploration missions.

One of the key selling points of X games has always been the real, simulated economy. Wares produced by hundreds of stations and transported by thousands of ships are actually traded by NPCs and prices develop based on this simulated economy. This is the foundation of our living and breathing universe. Now with X4, we have taken another, massive step. For the first time in any X game, all parts of the NPC economy are manufactured from resources. Ships, weapons, upgrades, ammo and even stations. You name it. Everything comes out of the simulated economy.

The seamless change from ship to ship and from NPCs controlling your empire for you continues on a higher level. Once you own a larger fleet, you will be very interested in researching a technology from your HQ: Teleportation. Once you've unlocked teleportation, you can jump from ship to ship a lot quicker and experience all the critical situations your NPCs encounter first hand. Every order you have given to a ship before turns into a mission objective when you pilot the ship yourself. The moment you leave again, your pilot takes the helm and continues with their previous orders.

In X4, you can start your journey from a number of different gamestarts and as a number of different characters, each with their own role, set of relations and different ships and technologies to start with. No matter how you start, you are always free to develop in any other direction. Focus on exploration, make money with illegal trading and theft, command large battle fleets or become the greatest entrepreneur ever. It's all up to you to decide.

Key Features

• Spaceflight sandbox: Acquire ships and upgrade their systems or create fleets of hundreds. From small scouts to massive capital ships.  Fly them all from cockpit or bridge and remote command with a powerful map.
• Research: Research new technologies like teleportation, blueprints for station and ship construction and much more
• Build: Full creativity with station construction.  Station and factory modules can be freely connected to form ever-growing economic or military installations.
• Explore: A massive universe awaits sheer endless opportunities for exploration. Find resources for mining and crafting, to acquire rare technologies. Explore ancient installations.
• Sandbox Gamestarts: Start into X4 from a variety of angles. Represent different factions, ships, and technologies. Every start offers a new view at the universe, but all allow you to unlock everything.
• Dynamic universe: Factions build and expand stations dynamically and react to the economy and military threats. Every game can take a new and unexpected turn for the entire universe.
• Complex Economy: Trade with a single ship or rise to become an empire manager competing with entire civilizations.  A fully simulated and dynamic economy reacts to changes on every level.

X4: Foundations is currently available for PC (Steam and egosoft.com).