Run the company. Start with one battered ship and build a business in a galaxy already busy without you. Cargocracy: Space Warfare and Trade combines real-time space strategy, fleet management and idle automation. Choose the work, hire the captains, outfit your ships and decide which risks are worth taking. Your crews carry out the orders while you watch the action, plan your next expansion or get on with your day.
Make your living among the stars. Carry freight, mine asteroid belts, recover wrecks, hunt bounties or sell your guns to the highest bidder. Smuggle around customs gates, run blockades or demand another captain’s cargo. Careers overlap: a trading company needs protection, a mercenary fleet needs supplies, and someone has to salvage what the battle leaves behind.
Trade in an economy that moves. Freighters carry real goods between markets. Mines supply factories, factories supply shipyards, and fleets consume what industry produces. Rival companies compete for opportunities while wars, piracy and shortages change the value of a route. Supply a struggling colony, keep a navy fighting or turn a dangerous frontier port into the heart of your business. Your customers and allies remember how you treat them.+
Delegate the routine. Make the decisions that matter. Ready-made jobs and sensible standing orders get your ships working without writing code. When you want more control, build your own Directives with prioritized rules and a visual logic editor. Coordinate miners, haulers and escorts; set budgets, repair thresholds and retreat conditions; automate recruitment and replacement. Review what your ships are doing and why, then refine the operation as your company grows.
Build a fleet worth watching. Fit specialized ships, recruit officers with distinct personalities and develop their skills. Set formations, priorities and combat doctrine, then watch your captains fight automatic battles with moving battle lines, missile barrages and arriving reinforcements. Equipment, positioning, supply and the people in command shape the outcome. Battle reports and replays help you understand a victory—or prepare for the next attempt.
Grow from one hull to a flag of your own. Establish outposts, build stations and connect production chains. Develop colonies on compact tile-based surfaces, balancing industry, habitation, resources and defenses, with administrators carrying out your plans. Control gates, collect tolls and protect the traffic that keeps your territory alive. Become a sovereign faction, negotiate treaties and decide whom your society welcomes. A prosperous mining company, a pirate dominion and a galactic power are different ways to succeed.
Explore humanity’s unfinished history. Centuries after a collapsed wormhole cut the colonies off from Earth, humanity has divided into four lineages: Baseline, Adapted, Grafted and Synthetic. Venture beyond the jump lanes to discover derelicts, unusual resources and traces of the first settlers. Follow the mysteries surrounding the Keyhole while machine swarms threaten the frontier. What you discover can become an opportunity, a bargaining chip or the beginning of a much larger undertaking.
Let your fleet work while you do. Keep an eye on income, ships and alerts through a compact desktop companion, then return to a digest of profits, discoveries and events that need your attention. In single-player, pause freely, accelerate quiet stretches and choose how much offline progress to allow—including none. Standing orders, insurance and adjustable loss settings help you manage risk; the galaxy’s dangers continue whenever its simulation advances.
Choose what success looks like. Pursue victory through commerce, conquest, diplomacy, outlaw power or discoveries that change humanity’s future. Rival powers pursue their own ambitions, giving you reasons to cooperate, compete or intervene. Choose an endless galaxy to keep building beyond a finish line. Play primarily as a single-player sandbox, or host a shared galaxy for a small group of friends.