Reclaim the Alpha Quadrant.

Travel between systems using the star map, explore and scan locations, transport to planets for missions, fight hostile ships, gain prestige with local governments, upgrade your ship at stations, recruit allies into your fleet, and slowly shift control of the quadrant through your actions.

Select a station and click dock or press E to automatically dock with the nearest station. Stations let you repair hull damage, recharge shields, restock torpedoes and fuel, and install upgrades and weapons. Different stations sell different equipment, so exploration is important if you want access to stronger systems. What items you can use are dependent on your local prestige in the system, so raising your prestige allows you to equip more advanced tech. There is no "money" in the game, everything is based on your prestige.

Press T to transport down to a planet. You can perform quick visits that randomly affect prestige, or perform longer missions with extended storylines. Missions may ask you to scan ancient relics, investigate ships, travel to other systems, transport passengers and cargo, destroy enemies, or uncover hidden secrets. The goal of missions is to raise your prestige so you can liberate systems and unlock available upgrades at their stations. Some longer story arc missions require a minimum experience level before it will be offered to you.

Enemy ships will attack hostiles on sight. You'll be attacked in systems where your prestige is 0% or your gov't is an enemy of their go'vt. If you start destroying ships, you will also be attacked. Fire weapons with Space, target ships with Tab, and use upgrades such as swapping better weapons, adding tech like cloaking, torpedo scramblers, tractor beams, and crew upgrades that let you recruit more ships, trick enemies, and more. Each ship has its own strengths and weapon upgradability. Some upgrades like specialty crew stay with you while swapping ships, others like weapons and hardware will remain with the ship you upgraded.

For occupied planets, your goal is to liberate them from Dominion occupation by reducing local Dominion control to 0%. Destroying Dominion ships lowers control within that system. When you gain more experience and prestige you can ask them to rise up, and start a war in that system. Liberated systems become safer and gain new stations. If you play as the Dominion, your objective is reversed: dominate every system by raising control to 100%. Liberated systems may even change governments and alliances.

As your prestige and experience grow, you can hail ships and ask them to join your fleet. Escorts can follow you between systems, while detached fleets will independently explore, perform missions to raise your prestige, regroup with allies, and fight battles throughout the quadrant and shape the game even while you are elsewhere. You can also disable ships and take them by force.

You can build defense platforms to help defend systems from attack. At some stations there will be plans you can add to your inventory that will allow you to construct new stations. How many stations you can build in a system depends on your local prestige.

As you accomplish goals, explore, and unlock more experience, you will earn badges showing your accomplishments.

WASD / Arrow Keys move, Space fire weapons, M open star map, E dock, Q scan, T transport, H hail, J warp jump, B tractor beam, C cloak, Tab target nearest ship. All function have buttons that also appear on screen that can be clicked when available.

The system will store up to 6 saved games for you, so you can play multiple government games at once. Games auto-save when you warp to a different system. The saved game will be referenced by your chosen ship name, gov't allegiance, and your current ship class.

Early in the game, hostile ships usually will not attack unless provoked. Focus first on exploration, scanning systems, docking at stations, and completing missions to build experience and prestige. If your prestige falls too low in a system, local ships may become hostile toward you.