The Empire Update touches on every aspect of empires within X4 - the balance of ships and their loadouts, how commands may be issued, how resources are distributed in sectors, the effectiveness of pilots, and the possibilities for trade, production, and station building throughout the universe.

This update brings the biggest rebalance in X4's history: hundreds of weapons, shields, and ships have been reworked to address under-performers and to vastly improve the diversity of viable loadout options. Changes to ship hardpoints have improved this diversity further by enabling a much wider range of modules to be equipped across ships. Numerous AI improvements have pilots behaving more intelligently and in line with their roles in the fleet.

The new Priority Orders system gives you immediate, RTS-style control over ships from the map, giving you more responsive command of fleets in this dynamic and challenging combat landscape. This new feature is accompanied by numerous UI improvements across the board.

Meanwhile, a complete rework of the resource system has streamlined resource acquisition efforts while making galactic geography more dynamic as resources within sectors move once depleted.

Alongside this, Kha'ak ships can now be scrapped for a new resource that, when combined with Nividium, creates a versatile ware which can replace any other ware during production. This creates an additional economic layer that can ease production bottlenecks while providing new opportunities for scrapping operations and traders.

There's also a new station module: the Ship Showroom. Players can put their favourite ships on display with these modules, and prolific collectors can even build a dedicated showroom complex to admire their sizeable collections.

The Empire Update is a comprehensive update, and there are plenty more changes to look forward to.

We'd like to thank everyone for playing X4: Foundations, and especially those who participated in the beta and gave us feedback. We hope you enjoy all the improvements in the 9.00 update, releasing next week.