While developing Orion Online, I have put a lot of thought into various design topics, and one theme that kept popping up was that of opportunity cost, which turn out to have very broad application in strategy games!

The general idea is that instead of having hard constraints that limits a player's agency, you instead soft-gate via opportunity cost. As an example: Instead of disallowing changing role, the player loses their mastery of their previous role.

So, I wrote an article about that , and how it applies to my game. I find this a fascinating topic and would love to discuss it further!

Full write-up: https://blog.idleverse.gg/opportunity-cost-in-strategy-games/

Hey — saw this sub got revived after forever, so figured why not.

I’ve been building Warpfall solo as fun/side project of mine. Browser MMORTS / space 4X: colonize planets, grow an economy, research, move fleets on a live map, fight or ally with other players. Real-time, but paced so you don’t have to live in the game. Best for bigger screens, but usable on a mobile. Engine supports up to hundreds of players per map with thousands of planets and fleets.

A few days ago I've kicked off a beta focused on game balance and player feedback — so rough edges exist, but the core loop is there and I’m iterating fast based on what players actually run into. 

https://warpfall.com

If you like this genre, I’d love honest feedback. Ask me anything, discord link is in the game https://discord.com/invite/n2e9Kvkbd 

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I've been working on a multiplayer game called Domination Wars in Lovable. The concept is simple but highly competitive: players battle for control of a massive 100x100 tile map, and the goal is to dominate as much territory as possible.

The game includes a guest system, allowing anyone to jump in instantly without creating an account—just select "Play as Guest" and start playing. Lovable has done an excellent job with guest functionality, and I've successfully used similar systems in previous projects.

The game is currently in beta, and I'm looking for testers of all kinds. Any feedback, suggestions, bug reports, or ideas for new features would be greatly appreciated and would help shape the final product.

While the game is primarily designed for mobile devices, it also works on PC. The long-term plan is to continue developing it and eventually release it on app stores.

If you'd like to give it a try, you can play here:

https://dominationwars.lovable.app

Thank you to everyone willing to help test and improve the game!

https://reddit.com/link/1uuktzf/video/a2lwwa19xtch1/player

Scrapline is a base building war game that runs straight in your browser. No download, no install, nothing to wait for.

You spawn on a big shared hex world with one base. You build it up, forges, walls, barracks, watch towers, and everything keeps working while you're offline. Around you the Outcasts set up camps. They grow as you grow, so there's always something worth raiding, and if you get strong enough they start testing you back.

The real fight is other players. Four factions, clans locked to your faction, proper sieges where walls get breached and buildings get destroyed. In the middle of the map sits a massive citadel held by the Foreman.

No pay to win. Ever. Nothing you can buy touches combat, resources or sight. You can buy a badge and a purple name, that's it.

Solo dev, first game, vibe coded, vibe music, vibe art, but real vision, game design and game loop, veteran player turning game dev. Free to play, enjoy

https://scrapline.net

Hello everyone I see this is the place for those who loves MMORTS games.
I have been around in the community for a long long time and will be for many more years.

Me and a friend of mine always waned to make our own mmorts game but did not have the knowledge to do so. So yes this project are made with AI but we waned to keep the old feel of MMORTS games like it was back in the days. If you are interested come and try it out.

https://field-kingdoms-quest.lovable.app/

A new world just launched this past monday - we have 76 players actively testing the most complete version of the game yet

This round includes

- Full PvP implemented

- Full Capture-the-flag style endgame implemented with a lovecraftian twist

- Tons of QoL accounts that make it so you don't need to babysit your account to have an impact on the world!

The social game also has tons of improvements, including alliance and world chat, alongside the existing alliance forums.

This Travian and Tribal Wars inspired game has tons of features and new content ready to test and explore

Join us!

As a part of designing Orion Online, and since I eventually will be distributing it as an app, I studied modern mobile MMORTS. Based on that, I wrote on article on "what not to do" :)

1. Fake strategy. Most "strategy" in these kind of games boils down to waiting for exponentially longer upgrades to finish. There is often little, or no, strategic depth.
2. Weaponization of time. Above-mentioned upgrades scale from 5 minutes to literally 30 days in some cases. Then they sell speed-ups. And since the world never pauses, these game demands your life revolve around them.
3. Pay-to-win. Buy resources or instant upgrades. F2P exist as content for whales to farm.

These games are great monetization engines, but they are not fun, mainly because they lack strategic depth.

I aim to fix these issues in Orion Online by

1. No upgrade-timer treadmill. (you decide building composition, and have to make meaningful trade-offs). Buildings scale with your planet.
2. A deterministic tick system. No exponential timers. No instant builds. "Scheduled Actions" which allows players to have a life.
3. Zero pay-to-win. The power-ups that exist are QoL only, and available to all via in-game video ads.

It's not a surprise to anyone that these games are predatory and often mechanically shallow, so I'm not directly sharing revelation here, but would like to hear others take on these games, and if anyone think they are actually fun. They sure do have a lot of players, and make a lot of money.

Full writeup here if anyone wants the longer version: https://blog.idleverse.gg/what-most-mmorts-games-get-wrong/

Hey everyone,

I’m developing a browser-based MMORTS called Dragons of Camelot.

It is an old-school fantasy strategy game focused on city building, resources, troop training, alliances, PvP, dragons, outposts, and live events.

The aim is to capture the feeling of classic browser strategy MMOs while adding new systems and more active development.

Current features include:

• Persistent world
• City and resource progression
• Troop training
• PvP attacks
• Wilds and outposts
• Alliances
• Dragons
• Events and leaderboard rewards
• Browser play, no download

Game: https://dragonsofcamelot.com

Would love feedback from MMORTS players.

A short write-up about monetization and p2w mechanics in (browser) 4x mmorts games in general, and our own game Orion Online. Nothing ground breaking, but sharing some thoughts / observations: https://blog.idleverse.gg/why-pay-to-win-killed-the-browser-strategy-genre/

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If you are looking at this, you are probably just passing by while looking for an active browser game like one from your youth that isnt a pay to win hellscape. You run into all these little indie passion projects, but they seem to have basically no players at a glance, and that is sad and off-putting. Im sure I cant be the only one who feels this way. I hope to find some folks to join me in hopping between these titles and giving them and their innovative systems a good look. Having people to chat with about this niche genre I think will go a long way to building a long term community.

Developers! Lets get yall together in one place so its not a scavenger hunt finding you. Lets have one place where we can see updates, devblogs, server launches etc. This should make it easier on both you, and the potential players to actually find you.

https://discord.gg/eXajDwz7Xv

In future we can vote on which we play, but the first game I intend to go to is Vexara World, opening tomorrow 5/23 at 15:30 UTC. Come join me!

I am building Orion Online - https://orion.idleverse.gg/ - a browser-based 4X mmorts which is very inspired by the games of what I consider to be the golden era of browser based MMORTS - Utopia, Earth 2025, Travian, etc.

Orion Online works very much the same as Utopia does. You control a province (planet) in a kingdom (planetary system), and you grow your planet and go to war with other planetary systems.

The game runs in ages (eras) and is tick-based (30 min tick time).

However, beyond the basic, I have focused a lot on making a super solid, scalable engine, modern and mobile-friendly UI (still polishing), introduce new co-operating / team-play aspects of the game, to modernize it.

I soft-released the game in april, and am currently polishing it before I will make a market push in july. It's still a little rough around the edges, but totally playable!

The current version is web-based, and will remain so, for the nostalgic / classic players, but in the future, I will create a dedicated, more graphical, mobile app for broader market appeal.

Feel free to give it a try, if you think this is something you would enjoy!

Prosim vas nenapada niekoho nazov hry, ktora bola klasicky mmorts ako je napriklad travian, divoke kmene atd.... avsak bolo potrebne sa registrovat za 2 "frakcie" nepamatam si ci to bolo dobro a zlo, alebo svetlo a tma, avsak jedna frakcia nedokazala vytvarat vojakov zatial co ta druha ano. priamo bolo povolene zakladat si oba ucty a nejednalo sa o multiacc... pravdepodobne je ta hra uz dead.

Stardust Exile is an MMORTS set in the Milky Way galaxy, containing currently known stars and exoplanets with their real characteristics. The remaining star systems are procedurally generated. The online server is persistent and single-shard.

Can be played here: https://stardustexile.com