Evochron Mercenary is a freeform mercenary space-sim that focuses on 'lone-wolf' survival gameplay. As you pilot your spacecraft through a vast seamless universe, you can perform many activities including buying, trading, negotiating, bribing, spying, racing, escorting, transporting, mining, exploring, cleaning equipment, clearing paths through asteroid fields, recruiting, protecting, hiring crew members, fuel harvesting, building stations, and designing/selling ships. Evochron Mercenary is a technical simulation, not a story or character based simulator, so you are not limited by plot requirements or pre-selected character roles. Your decisions and actions define your role in the game and establish your reputations, wealth, progress, and ranking. The emphasis is on real-time tactical gameplay strategy for both combat and non-combat objectives. You are in control of your ship virtually all of the time in open space, including player controlled combat and planetary descents. Your ability to successfully survive dangerous scenarios in space, develop trade strategies, evade detection, harvest resources, efficiently explore for hidden benefits, and transport people/items can be just as important as your skill in combat. The game also rewards players who devise their own gameplay strategies and 'think outside the box'. Set in a vast explorable universe, Evochron Mercenary offers an amazing level of freeform gameplay with many diverse objectives and paths to choose from.
- True freeform gameplay without plot restrictions, conditions, or limitations. No character attribute/skill limitations to hold you back. Experience ultimate gameplay freedom and play the game the way you want to. Your decisions and abilities define your role in the game and establish your reputations, wealth, progress, and ranking.
- Diverse gameplay choices and activities including racing, spying, mining, trading, commodity shipping, escorting, combat (both in civilian space and military war zones), exploring, asteroid clearing, equipment cleaning, crew management, station building, and ship designing. There are many ways to make money and advance in the game.
- New starting role selection system. When you create a profile, you can now select which initial role you want your ship to be optimized for. The role you select also establishes your starting location, what ship you get, and how many credits you're initially given.New 'quest' system that features multiple objectives spanning many solar systems throughout the game's universe. The quest can further train you for the game, teach you details on the history of the Evochron quadrant, and guide you through systems useful for upgrading your ship. Completing quest objectives also provides information on secret locations and hidden benefits in the game.
- New clan territory control system. Clans can take partial control of solar systems through cooperative contracts and clan-vs-clan battles in multiplayer. The server tracks events involving completed contracts and clan wars, then awards percentage points to victorious groups, giving them a partial ownership interest in the system. When clan control is above 80% in a system, they are paid a percentage of earnings from that system.
- Double the number of available ship frames, including both civilian and military. New ranges, capacities, and capabilities expand the ship designs available to you. A new frame storage space resource management system lets you customize any civilian frame for different crew, countermeasure, equipment, and secondary weapon hardpoint capacities. You can now adjust the frame's default design in these areas for the role you want to play.
- New graphics engine supporting higher resolutions, greater detail, and new effects/technology. Broad compatibility includes support for most 3D video cards with at least shader 2.0 capability.
- A vast seamless universe that lets you fly anywhere without in-game loading screens. The Evochron universe is not boxed in by 'walls' or 'rooms' that require a jumpgate 'door' to access, there are no required gates or trade lanes to restrict your travel and hold you back. You can travel virtually anywhere you want. Descend into planet atmospheres to land at city trade stations, mine valuable materials, or explore for hidden items. You can escape to nebula clouds for sensor cover or hide in a massive asteroid cave for protection. Fly from planet to planet, star to star, and solar system to solar system.
- Expanded interactive training mode with selectable stages to provide the necessary basics for flying your ship, managing its systems, docking/landing, and surviving in combat.
- Unified gameplay architecture and profiles let you keep the ship, upgrades, equipment, money, weapons, crew, and commodities you acquire in the game for use in both single player and multiplayer.
- New Multiplayer system with much higher performance for improved precision and gameplay. Integrated voice chat lets you talk with other players using your PC's mic.
- Clan ID linking system lets you establish your indicated threat levels with other players in multiplayer. Players sharing a common ID in their callsigns are linked together as friendly contacts while different ID's are indicated as hostile. You can also link together in-game with another clan to form a larger group for better odds of success.
- Cooperative multiplayer objectives that pay all linked players. Join forces with other players to complete more challenging activities that can offer much better pay. More advanced players can link with new players to give them access to higher paying contracts that they would not otherwise have access to early in the game. Being part of the same team lets you combine reputations and contract pay for improved results.
- New gun turret binding mode in multiplayer allows players to link their ships together. One player controls a 360-degree gun turret attached to the player's ship they've linked to.
- New fleet command system. Send single player commands to AI ships and multiplayer commands to other players. You can order your fleet ships to form up, attack hostiles, defend you specifically, mine asteroids, or order them to reload and refuel which parks them in a local station until ordered to do something else. In multiplayer, the new command system broadcasts the order in a message, so clans can use the same command system to issue orders to their human wingmen.
- New planetary engine offers a much higher level of detail along with new effects including far more realistic clouds, water, and terrain. Other planet effects include weather such as rain, snow, and turbulence. Explore planets for hidden benefits, trade at city stations, mine their surfaces for valuable materials, recover cells from plants for valuable biological material, or hide in their atmospheres. New gas giant planets feature moving cloud layers and powerful winds.
- Ship-to-ship trading and cargo system. Ship and trade weapons, upgrades, fuel, credits, and equipment in addition to commodities. You can even load items from your cargo bay onto your ship, letting you carry more weapons, upgrades, and equipment beyond what you can install on your ship. Challenge other players to multiplayer ship-vs-ship races with the trade console and place the race course where you want in space.
- The new deploy system lets you place temporary energy stations, repair stations, refueling stations, sensor stations, shield arrays, and mining probes. They can offer important benefits for deep space exploration, resource harvesting, and hidden item hunting. In combat, they can also provide significant advantages from tactical information on the battlefield to front line support.
- The new build system lets you construct space stations, dynamically expanding the game's universe with new trade routes, docking points, and economies. The online multiplayer universe system supports this station placement, letting you or any other player construct stations at new locations in the game's universe while you are playing online. Player built stations are stored with the server so other players can have access to the new stations and trade routes you create.
- Dynamic economies with realistic variable item availability and specialized industries. Larger inventory pools now offer a wider variety of items. New scrollable inventory list lets you easily browse through more items at every station and planet docking point.
- Three weapon classes - beam weapons, particle cannons, and secondary missiles/equipment. New equipment technology includes an anti-missile system, shield array recharger, cannon heatsink, afterburner drive, constructors, and automatic counter-measure launcher.
- 5 mining and tractor beam types (4 new specialized models). The 'classic' general purpose device, one optimized for metal ore, one for diamonds, one for platinum, and one for gold. Specialized devices are designed and built exclusively in systems with the right technological economy.
- New and improved contract objectives including escape pod rescue missions in war zones, ship specific bounty hunting, and satellite orbit placement and recovery. New mining contracts provide additional payment options for recovering and successfully delivering desired materials to local stations. Includes both asteroid and planetary mining options.
- New shipwrecks scattered throughout the game's universe that often provide valuable items trapped in their wreckage.
- Capital ships engaged in battle now have powerful flak cannons for fighter suppression and anti-shield torpedoes to knock out the shield arrays of an opposing capital ship.
- Carriers now have their own dedicated inventory systems and also frequently stock secondary weapons you currently have mounted on your ship (allowing you to reload after a combat mission in a war zone).
- Use your wealth to design and build a new ship, buy better weapons, hire crew members, recruit other ships, install upgrades, load commodities, and more.
- Constructor stations can fabricate new items from raw materials. In more technologically advanced economies, they can now also build weapons from metal ore and electronics.
- Shipyards let you design and customize your ship for the role you want to play. Optimize your ship for defense, exploration, combat, racing, or transporting... the choice is yours. You can also position and scale each component to give your ship a unique appearance. Save your designs with the template system to rebuild it later. Store ships and cargo in hangars you can rent at trade stations.
- Improved physics system allowing for far greater speeds with velocity adjusted acceleration curves and accuracy for mass, thrust, and vector calculations. Realistic zero gravity inertia based 'Newtonian' style flight model including complete 3-way rotation and 3-way direction control with optional variable input. An advanced inertial dampening system helps keep flight control simple in space, atmospheres, and gravity fields.
- Realistic environment interaction far beyond the genre's typical 'background wallpaper'. Nebula clouds, asteroid fields, planet atmospheres, moons, and more all provide unique options for shelter and strategy. Such environment elements include changes in gravity, fuel consumption, physics, sensor range, and visibility.
- Quick one-key access to jump drive navigation and inventory management. You control all system travel and inventory decisions right from the cockpit.
- New dynamic music system (with music by Rich Douglas). Music changes with the level of hostility around you from soft ambient to high intensity action.
- Supports keyboard, mouse, gamepad, and joystick flight control. Use the control device you prefer to play the game. Force feedback control is also supported.
- Supports Natural Point's TrackIR 3D head control system for managing the viewpoint from the cockpit with all six degrees of movement.
