About the Game
eXoSpace Combat Engineer combines the gridless spaceship building of Reassembly, the intense combat of Nova Drift, and the unpredictable hyperjump encounters of FTL.
Using a fully gridless, intuitive snap-and-rotate designer, you balance weapons, thrust, energy and armor, use advanced mechanical parts like pistons and hinges to build transforming warships, or install hangars to deploy swarms of custom-designed drones.
Take your custom vessel into Bounty Hunt mode, navigating asteroid storms, pirate ambushes, and random encounters as you evolve your ship from a basic drone into a true dreadnought to survive intense, bullet-hell boss fights.
Mission-based game loop: complete missions to increase in rank and build even bigger ships to hunt more dangerous targets.
Gridless spaceship designer that lets you easily snap parts together in any angle, allowing you to quickly try out new designs or upgrade your ship.
Design your own drones and deploy swarms of them from your hangars.
Intuitive engineering constraints: balance thrusters, weapons, energy and armor to create an effective warship.
Bullet-hell boss fights: each mission ends with an epic phased boss-fight. Find weak points while dodging projectiles.
A fully-featured sandbox allowing you to build any ship, create your own faction, and share it with a click on the Steam Workshop. You can even build your own boss!
The Galactic Arena: face design and piloting challenges ranging from 1 vs 1 drone skirmishes to cruiser battles.
More than 600 different ship designs to discover, including many community creations.
More than 200 parts to build your ship with, including powerful faction-specific weapons.
5 playable factions with their own tech tree, powerful unique parts, and crew.
And more is added in regular updates!
User Praise:
"Again, awesome work. Been a while since I've been this impressed with such a hidden gem."
“This game is ingenious, amazing and AWESOME! Something that fills the gap between Reassembly, Cosmoteer and Starsector.”
“I like how here, I can quickly design something and experiment. I can iterate quickly and comfortably."
eXoSpace is developed by Bas (@ Fantastimaker), a solo developer. No generative-AI was used to create this game.
Screenshots
17 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
On the site: Build 26155276
·
Latest on Steam: Build 26246990
Update available
Changes:
- The decorative light now has configurable color and can have blinking pattern set.
- Sandbox invasions now have their own pop-up, and allow setting faction, color, starting budget, escalation per wave, arrival angle and spawn doctrine.
- Improved Voidbringer Cartel Fortress design.
Bugfixes:
- Drones with reduced costs due to crew bonuses would be removed from hangars on load.
- Default keybindings were added back in addition to reconfigured bindings.
- Quest markers sometimes did not show up on the map.
- Hyperjump charging sound had a click.
- Voidbringer Cartel base names were inconsistent.
View on Steam
- The decorative light now has configurable color and can have blinking pattern set.
- Sandbox invasions now have their own pop-up, and allow setting faction, color, starting budget, escalation per wave, arrival angle and spawn doctrine.
- Improved Voidbringer Cartel Fortress design.
Bugfixes:
- Drones with reduced costs due to crew bonuses would be removed from hangars on load.
- Default keybindings were added back in addition to reconfigured bindings.
- Quest markers sometimes did not show up on the map.
- Hyperjump charging sound had a click.
- Voidbringer Cartel base names were inconsistent.
Changes:
- Update to many Deepspace Ferroform ships, and added 6 new ones, thanks for Kepler!
Bugfixes:
- Arena enemies did not always see you.
- Explosion damage on drones could trigger reputation loss.
View on Steam
- Update to many Deepspace Ferroform ships, and added 6 new ones, thanks for Kepler!
Bugfixes:
- Arena enemies did not always see you.
- Explosion damage on drones could trigger reputation loss.
Changes:
- Added a shape filter to the part selection to help find shapes that work well together.
- Added a "Find blueprint" button to the tech screen. This allows you to find all designs that use a specific part that you do not yet have unlocked.
- Updated blueprint icon to distinguish it better from other drops.
- Boss phases can now be reordered using dragging. Removed the "Phase X - " prefix from the phase titles.
- The camera now is fixed on the center of mass of the part of the ship that contains the core, instead of the center of the entire ship. This prevents the camera from jumping around in transforming ships.
- Design filters are now persisted over sessions for drone selection, design library and design import.
- Added some independent designs.
Bugfixes:
- Duplicate drops of the same part blueprint could happen.
- Certain ships could oscillate in attack range.
- Several minor ship design inconsistencies.
View on Steam
- Added a shape filter to the part selection to help find shapes that work well together.
- Added a "Find blueprint" button to the tech screen. This allows you to find all designs that use a specific part that you do not yet have unlocked.
- Updated blueprint icon to distinguish it better from other drops.
- Boss phases can now be reordered using dragging. Removed the "Phase X - " prefix from the phase titles.
- The camera now is fixed on the center of mass of the part of the ship that contains the core, instead of the center of the entire ship. This prevents the camera from jumping around in transforming ships.
- Design filters are now persisted over sessions for drone selection, design library and design import.
- Added some independent designs.
Bugfixes:
- Duplicate drops of the same part blueprint could happen.
- Certain ships could oscillate in attack range.
- Several minor ship design inconsistencies.
A nice round number 100 patch with some fixes while I work on bigger things that will be revealed in time :)
This patch fixes the targeting laser settings not persisting on save or jump and several AI fixes:
- Target movement was not compensated in AI distance calculations.
- Minelayers could mess up AI range calculations.
- AlwaysOn weapons were ignored in range calculations.
- Several issues caused aim to be off.
- Ships could initially be set to Ram AI based on uninitialized weapon range stats.
View on Steam
This patch fixes the targeting laser settings not persisting on save or jump and several AI fixes:
- Target movement was not compensated in AI distance calculations.
- Minelayers could mess up AI range calculations.
- AlwaysOn weapons were ignored in range calculations.
- Several issues caused aim to be off.
- Ships could initially be set to Ram AI based on uninitialized weapon range stats.
Some quality of life and AI improvements, and bugfixes.
Changes:
- Added 3 alternative selectable cursors: cross, circle, dot.
- The ship editor shows a warning icon on hangars when the drone design is not yet set.
- Sandbox ship list filters are now remembered over sessions.
- "Vary brightness" setting in ship editor is now remembered over sessions.
- Missing settings.json is written immediately with defaults on startup.
- Missile and ship steering AI improved.
- Broadside AI now goes full thrust even if no strafe thrust is available.
Bugfixes:
- Several torpedo weapons were not marked as "powered" when they should be. This made e.g. the cannoneer crew bonus affect torpedo weapons, while the torpedo specialist did not.
- Fast-forward did not work after framerate limiter changes.
- Dread Reaver boss shed its shell to early.
- New ship design default drop settings were incorrect.
- Encounter with attacking waves did not always see player ship.
- Startup crash on some Mesa Dozen AMD Vulkan drivers.
- Crash on load with missing (modded) parts.
View on Steam
Changes:
- Added 3 alternative selectable cursors: cross, circle, dot.
- The ship editor shows a warning icon on hangars when the drone design is not yet set.
- Sandbox ship list filters are now remembered over sessions.
- "Vary brightness" setting in ship editor is now remembered over sessions.
- Missing settings.json is written immediately with defaults on startup.
- Missile and ship steering AI improved.
- Broadside AI now goes full thrust even if no strafe thrust is available.
Bugfixes:
- Several torpedo weapons were not marked as "powered" when they should be. This made e.g. the cannoneer crew bonus affect torpedo weapons, while the torpedo specialist did not.
- Fast-forward did not work after framerate limiter changes.
- Dread Reaver boss shed its shell to early.
- New ship design default drop settings were incorrect.
- Encounter with attacking waves did not always see player ship.
- Startup crash on some Mesa Dozen AMD Vulkan drivers.
- Crash on load with missing (modded) parts.
This fixes two issues in the last update:
- The default UI scaling was off on high density screens.
- A controller could not activate buttons in combat screen in some cases.
View on Steam
- The default UI scaling was off on high density screens.
- A controller could not activate buttons in combat screen in some cases.
Another update fixing several bugs, adding two new parts and improving controller support.
Changes:
- Much improved controller support: duplicate mappings removed, and default mapping now works well both in editor and flight.
- Can now map multiple controls to a single action.
- Camera panning is by default now mapped to both WASD and arrows.
- Resetting to default can now be done separately for controllers and keyboard/mouse.
- Re-integrated Steam Input API with built-in support as fallback. This should allow me to support the max number of devices and controls.
- Slight improvement of loading times (ship preview images are only regenerated when needed).
- Added targeting lasers, that do no damage but have configurable range (decorative).
- The Emperor got targeting lasers for its artillery.
- Added physics stability help item.
Bugfixes:
- In the ship editor, larger parts would have a larger margin of error when detecting overlap with other parts. Editing is a bit more tight now.
- Forward/back and strafing thrust was applied as a discrete (full or off) value instead of analog. Both controller and AI movement is improved as a result of this fix.
- AI self-destruct timer would affect player-controlled ships.
- On-screen keyboard would not open on Steam Deck.
- Drop settings were not copied with design.
- "Extra" part blueprints could leak into faction unlock tree.
View on Steam
Changes:
- Much improved controller support: duplicate mappings removed, and default mapping now works well both in editor and flight.
- Can now map multiple controls to a single action.
- Camera panning is by default now mapped to both WASD and arrows.
- Resetting to default can now be done separately for controllers and keyboard/mouse.
- Re-integrated Steam Input API with built-in support as fallback. This should allow me to support the max number of devices and controls.
- Slight improvement of loading times (ship preview images are only regenerated when needed).
- Added targeting lasers, that do no damage but have configurable range (decorative).
- The Emperor got targeting lasers for its artillery.
- Added physics stability help item.
Bugfixes:
- In the ship editor, larger parts would have a larger margin of error when detecting overlap with other parts. Editing is a bit more tight now.
- Forward/back and strafing thrust was applied as a discrete (full or off) value instead of analog. Both controller and AI movement is improved as a result of this fix.
- AI self-destruct timer would affect player-controlled ships.
- On-screen keyboard would not open on Steam Deck.
- Drop settings were not copied with design.
- "Extra" part blueprints could leak into faction unlock tree.
Changes:
- Added vsync toggle in settings.
- The game now pauses and drops input when Steam Overlay is active.
- Added configurable zoom controls.
- Added configurable camera panning controls.
- Drag-selection os no longer active while in paint mode.
Bugfixes:
- The cursor could leave the screen.
- After rewind to arrival camera would not jump to new player position.
- The scrollbar in the mercenaries panel would not stick to the side.
- Pray & Spray, Mass Murder and Scientist achievements were not always granted correctly.
- Setting joint boss group did not set joint arm boss group.
- Tutorials were not marked as completed when loading pre-update saves.
- Mirror drag-selection did not split selection correctly when entire ship was selected.
- Dragging mirrored-selected parts would sometimes make them rotate unexpectedly.
- Resource inconsistency could occur when opening or closing editor.
- Destroyed drones could trigger "all ships destroyed" event, resulting in repeated rewards.
- Quest markers could sometimes be set in hostile territory, making them impossible to complete.
View on Steam
- Added vsync toggle in settings.
- The game now pauses and drops input when Steam Overlay is active.
- Added configurable zoom controls.
- Added configurable camera panning controls.
- Drag-selection os no longer active while in paint mode.
Bugfixes:
- The cursor could leave the screen.
- After rewind to arrival camera would not jump to new player position.
- The scrollbar in the mercenaries panel would not stick to the side.
- Pray & Spray, Mass Murder and Scientist achievements were not always granted correctly.
- Setting joint boss group did not set joint arm boss group.
- Tutorials were not marked as completed when loading pre-update saves.
- Mirror drag-selection did not split selection correctly when entire ship was selected.
- Dragging mirrored-selected parts would sometimes make them rotate unexpectedly.
- Resource inconsistency could occur when opening or closing editor.
- Destroyed drones could trigger "all ships destroyed" event, resulting in repeated rewards.
- Quest markers could sometimes be set in hostile territory, making them impossible to complete.
This one took longer than expected, because I wanted to properly fix Steam Deck support. This involved creating a native Linux build, replacing Steam Input by built-in controller support (also to enable controllers outside of Steam) and several other things. There are probably some rough edges, but it should work much better now. Let me know if you run into issues and I'll try to fix them quickly.
Some work on improving the onboarding of new players is also done: updated tutorials, added several familiar hotkeys, and a long-requested mirrored editing of multiple selected parts!
Changes:
- Replaced steam input with built-in controller support, fixing several issuea and allowing the game the run with controller support outside of steam.
- Complete overhaul of the tutorials. They now contain more steps with clearer explanations, and should help new players get up to speed more easily.
- Mirroring mode now works for selected parts. After working with it for some time I can say it's a huge quality of life improvement.
- Editor drag-select now also works when starting from part placement, AI and details modes.
- Added support for using CTRL+C and CTRL+V copy paste, in addition to ALT copy.
- Added a warning on start if available disk space is low or no write access was available.
- Added direct value entry to danger level selection.
- Reduced reputation impact of being out of fuel in a faction's territory.
- Increased drops lifetime to 1 hour.
- Game now auto pauses on controller disconnect.
- Steam virtual keyboard now opens on text entry on Steam Deck.
- Added a new independent dreadnaught.
Bugfixes:
- Modding encounter and mission texts made them end up in built-in texts instead of shipped with mod.
- Distress or conflict rewards lost on death.
- Trader blueprint changes after rewind.
- Energy warnings were missing for higher-energy consuming weapons on drones.
- Workshop uploader wiped all ship preview images.
- Editing hangar design costs did not take crew modifiers into account.
- Drone preview image was not always generated.
- Rhombus-4 thruster could attach parts to its hot end (fixing this may break some of your designs, sorry about that!).
- Control hints blocked clicks.
- Missing encounter (empty scene) did not spawn mercenaries.
- Out-of-fuel encounter did not return to the same encounter it started from.
- Ferroform staging area encounter would spam reinforcements and popups.
- Rewind to arrival sometimes sent player ship too far back from area border.
- Enemy reinforcements could spawn on top of the player.
- Part info for projectile hitpoints was incorrect.
- Quickly re-opening editor after accepting changes reverted the changes.
- Could open editor or star map while jumping, making cursor disappear.
- Several possible causes of crashes.
View on Steam
Some work on improving the onboarding of new players is also done: updated tutorials, added several familiar hotkeys, and a long-requested mirrored editing of multiple selected parts!
Changes:
- Replaced steam input with built-in controller support, fixing several issuea and allowing the game the run with controller support outside of steam.
- Complete overhaul of the tutorials. They now contain more steps with clearer explanations, and should help new players get up to speed more easily.
- Mirroring mode now works for selected parts. After working with it for some time I can say it's a huge quality of life improvement.
- Editor drag-select now also works when starting from part placement, AI and details modes.
- Added support for using CTRL+C and CTRL+V copy paste, in addition to ALT copy.
- Added a warning on start if available disk space is low or no write access was available.
- Added direct value entry to danger level selection.
- Reduced reputation impact of being out of fuel in a faction's territory.
- Increased drops lifetime to 1 hour.
- Game now auto pauses on controller disconnect.
- Steam virtual keyboard now opens on text entry on Steam Deck.
- Added a new independent dreadnaught.
Bugfixes:
- Modding encounter and mission texts made them end up in built-in texts instead of shipped with mod.
- Distress or conflict rewards lost on death.
- Trader blueprint changes after rewind.
- Energy warnings were missing for higher-energy consuming weapons on drones.
- Workshop uploader wiped all ship preview images.
- Editing hangar design costs did not take crew modifiers into account.
- Drone preview image was not always generated.
- Rhombus-4 thruster could attach parts to its hot end (fixing this may break some of your designs, sorry about that!).
- Control hints blocked clicks.
- Missing encounter (empty scene) did not spawn mercenaries.
- Out-of-fuel encounter did not return to the same encounter it started from.
- Ferroform staging area encounter would spam reinforcements and popups.
- Rewind to arrival sometimes sent player ship too far back from area border.
- Enemy reinforcements could spawn on top of the player.
- Part info for projectile hitpoints was incorrect.
- Quickly re-opening editor after accepting changes reverted the changes.
- Could open editor or star map while jumping, making cursor disappear.
- Several possible causes of crashes.
Changes:
- Added a save game backup systems. On load the save game directory is zipped and backed up. Up to 5 backups are stored. You can open the backup folder via a button in the save slot screen. This is only intended for calamities, there is no built-in restore function.
- The tech tree now has a "Respecialize" button that locks all parts and gives you all tech points back.
- Minibosses now again have a tech reward (via a dialog).
- Added Phoenix Union Territory Controller miniboss (which had a small update as well).
- Added fallback mission victory detection for when victory event did not fire properly.
- UI scaling is now set automatically on first run based on known display pixel density.
- Moved energy stats up in editor sidebar to always be visible in smaller screens.
Bugfixes:
- "Abandoned" stash encounter let almost infinite number of reinforcements spawn.
- A hangar part stored design was used even if it exceeded the hangar definition cost_limit, max_length, or max_width.
- Rewind to arrival made wormholes disappear.
- Rewind to arrival did not rewind several resources and unlocks properly.
View on Steam
- Added a save game backup systems. On load the save game directory is zipped and backed up. Up to 5 backups are stored. You can open the backup folder via a button in the save slot screen. This is only intended for calamities, there is no built-in restore function.
- The tech tree now has a "Respecialize" button that locks all parts and gives you all tech points back.
- Minibosses now again have a tech reward (via a dialog).
- Added Phoenix Union Territory Controller miniboss (which had a small update as well).
- Added fallback mission victory detection for when victory event did not fire properly.
- UI scaling is now set automatically on first run based on known display pixel density.
- Moved energy stats up in editor sidebar to always be visible in smaller screens.
Bugfixes:
- "Abandoned" stash encounter let almost infinite number of reinforcements spawn.
- A hangar part stored design was used even if it exceeded the hangar definition cost_limit, max_length, or max_width.
- Rewind to arrival made wormholes disappear.
- Rewind to arrival did not rewind several resources and unlocks properly.
Another day, another small patch.
Please note: the mercenaries panel was moved to a button in the top-right, since I kept getting reports of the panel being impossible to open.
Also, hangars got cheaper, to make them more cost-effective.
Changes:
- Reduced cost of hangars significantly.
- Mercenaries panel moved to a button in the top right. It lights up green when there are hireable mercenaries.
- When mercenaries cannot be hired, the hover info shows the reason why.
- The mercenaries that spawn tend to be a bit more affordable now.
- Non-hostile factions only lose reputation for friendly fire that exceeds 25% of the player's damage to their enemies.
- The tech tree now shows the part info when hovering over the part display in the sidebar.
- Allied traders now always sell a blueprint, friendly have a 50% chance and neutral a 10% chance.
- The sandbox now shows a maximum of 5 boss bars.
- Burst firing weapons now cancel their burst when energy runs out.
Bugfixes:
- Destroying a faction's wrecks cost reputation.
- Super pulse cannon collider shape was 1.5 too large, making it never fit well.
- Mirroring while dragging multiple parts in editor broke snapping.
- Rhombus 4 thruster name was incorrect.
- Rendering device lost due to driver bug caused hang instead of crash.
- The looping thruster sounds had small "clicks".
- Arena crash after copying a downloaded design.
- Possible crash in outdated AMD Dx21 driver on startup.
View on Steam
Please note: the mercenaries panel was moved to a button in the top-right, since I kept getting reports of the panel being impossible to open.
Also, hangars got cheaper, to make them more cost-effective.
Changes:
- Reduced cost of hangars significantly.
- Mercenaries panel moved to a button in the top right. It lights up green when there are hireable mercenaries.
- When mercenaries cannot be hired, the hover info shows the reason why.
- The mercenaries that spawn tend to be a bit more affordable now.
- Non-hostile factions only lose reputation for friendly fire that exceeds 25% of the player's damage to their enemies.
- The tech tree now shows the part info when hovering over the part display in the sidebar.
- Allied traders now always sell a blueprint, friendly have a 50% chance and neutral a 10% chance.
- The sandbox now shows a maximum of 5 boss bars.
- Burst firing weapons now cancel their burst when energy runs out.
Bugfixes:
- Destroying a faction's wrecks cost reputation.
- Super pulse cannon collider shape was 1.5 too large, making it never fit well.
- Mirroring while dragging multiple parts in editor broke snapping.
- Rhombus 4 thruster name was incorrect.
- Rendering device lost due to driver bug caused hang instead of crash.
- The looping thruster sounds had small "clicks".
- Arena crash after copying a downloaded design.
- Possible crash in outdated AMD Dx21 driver on startup.
This patch fixes a bunch of bugs that were reported after launch. For now I'm focusing on stability and bugfixing.
Changes:
- The log file(s) of the previous run are now preserved, to help in debugging.
Bugfixes:
- Could not open mercenaries panel while control hints were open.
- Updating drone design could cost resources when it should not.
- Switching cheap drone design for a more expensive one let you keep the same amount until they died.
- Railgun shots would pass through asteroids and friendly ships.
- The amount of XP granted from exploration was halved, resulting in reduced XP gain from mission completion.
- Distress calls were missing from the Wild Waste.
- Some edge condition could cause victory to fail when boss was defeated.
- Over-eager stall detection caused restart when rendering a frame took too long.
- Crash when loading corrupted or missing save.
- Crash on removing logfile when it is open elsewhere.
- Crash when switching to exclusive fullscreen when it is not supported in the display mode.
View on Steam
Changes:
- The log file(s) of the previous run are now preserved, to help in debugging.
Bugfixes:
- Could not open mercenaries panel while control hints were open.
- Updating drone design could cost resources when it should not.
- Switching cheap drone design for a more expensive one let you keep the same amount until they died.
- Railgun shots would pass through asteroids and friendly ships.
- The amount of XP granted from exploration was halved, resulting in reduced XP gain from mission completion.
- Distress calls were missing from the Wild Waste.
- Some edge condition could cause victory to fail when boss was defeated.
- Over-eager stall detection caused restart when rendering a frame took too long.
- Crash when loading corrupted or missing save.
- Crash on removing logfile when it is open elsewhere.
- Crash when switching to exclusive fullscreen when it is not supported in the display mode.
Current Release
Build 26155276
Uploaded Oct 25, 2026
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System Requirements
OS
Windows 10 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i3 or equivalent
RAM
2 GB RAM
GPU
Vulkan, DirectX 12 or OpenGL ES
How to Install
1
Download all files
2
Extract the .ZIP file to a folder (use WinRAR or 7-Zip)
3
Run exospace.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
Archive password
Needed when extracting (WinRAR / 7-Zip) — not a site login.
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Download eXoSpace Combat Engineer for PC with a direct link or via torrent. Get the full version of eXoSpace Combat Engineer for free. eXoSpace Combat Engineer is a Action released by Fantastimaker.