I just got done talking to Phil O'Connor, Producer of O.R.B. at Strategy First, about how the game is coming along.O.R.B is one of the few RTS games that I'm excited about. It's every bit as graphically spectacular as Homeworld — it's set in space just like Homeworld — but it has an added layer of complexity in that the game takes place in an asteroid belt that rotates. So that rich asteroid you're mining for resources will soon be behind enemy lines.

O'Connor said they're about three weeks away from going alpha and are aiming at an April/May release time frame. They just got done working out all the integration bugs and now have the the physics engine, editor, and combat engine all working together.

O'Connor explained a little bit about the two races in the game. There will be one campaign for each with a total of 24 missions. "The two races are the Malus and Alyssian," he said. "The Malus are larger, more powerful, more aggressive, and have a lot of raw materials to work with. They like to build ships with lots of armor. Their ships are slow but are d hard to kill. The Alyssian are reluctant fighters. They have better technology, faster ships, and good guns. O.R.B. essentially pits a tech race against a warrior culture.

"The first campaign leads into the second campaign. It's very story oriented. We also support multiplayer with up to 8 players in a game with a lot of emphasis on co-op team play, "O'Connor said. "There can be AI players for either side as well. Players can also customize the map by changing asteroid density and other variables. You can build gun platforms that will orbit individual asteroids, place mines, and more." What's interesting about this is that an asteroid you fortify in effect becomes a floating weapon that will rotate into your opponent's backyard, so to speak.

"In some ways the distances involved make it more time consuming to move," O'Connor said. "You're constantly off balance. You can't just hunker down behind a wall and build and build. There's no way you can camp resources in O.R.B."

Thanks Phil!