The first impression that ORB gives is that it's like Homeworld, but a little bit less polished in every way. But after playing for a while, you begin to appreciate just what it was that the developer was going for. The devs have crafted a different take on RTS, and while it's a bit rough around the edges, ORB is worth checking out for fans of sci-fi RTS and for people looking for something fresh in RTS.
Rather than just a list of pros and cons, I'll take a little tour through the more interesting elements of the game.
[b]Sensors View[/b]
Just like in Homeworld, you can hit the space bar to access a zoomed-out view of the battlefield. Unlike Homeworld, ORB's sensors view is locked to a top down camera, with only zoom and pan camera controls available. This is pretty clearly a downgrade over Homeworld's interface ... until you begin to use the zoom capabilities in the normal camera mode.
The standard zoom feature linked to the mouse wheel lets you go from close in on a fighter to so zoomed out that you can see the entire battlefield, and all the units are dots. ORB doesn't need its sensors view, the standard camera view is just better, the ability to see the battlefield at any scale you need without needing to toggle between normal/sensors mode is obviously a superior approach. Once you experience it, you'll wonder why a 'sensors view' was necessary to include in 3D-RTS games at all. (The answer is historical: Homeworld 1 worked by segmenting the world into separate bubbles for render performance reasons, with a separate scene again for the sensors mode. Clearly this approach is no longer needed. I would be perfectly happy if Homeworld 3 were to drop the sensors mode.)
[b]Unit Icons[/b]
Each of the unit types are easily distinguished up close, but at high zoom each unit is replaced by a simple coloured dot indicating its owner. The tab key toggles a unit icon overlay mode, which swaps the dot out for a simple icon for each type of unit. As an example, each of the four major families of fighter on each side get their own icon. At first glance, these icons are much busier and feel more difficult to read than the simple geometric shapes used in Homeworld 2's tactical overlay. But after playing with ORB for a time, I much prefer the more detailed icons and the greater information they provide at low zoom. In both games, you need to coordinate the production of units in one place, resource gathering in another, and groups of fighting units all over the battlefield, so you necessarily have to play much of the game zoomed out. Being able to tell at a glance whether that new contact is a group of light fighters or heavy bombers is extremely useful.
If anything, the icons could be more detailed. All of the Malus Interceptors get the same icon, but the standard superiority fighter Interceptor is a very different animal from the Interceptor T, a torpedo bomb equipped base/freighter killer (that is also a great superiority fighter!). In the same vein: the same icon is used for unarmed Carriers, and for the beastly powerful standard Carrier, which packs the firepower of a pair of destroyers.
Once again, ORB's approach only seems worse than Homeworld's at first glance. You learn to read its icons quickly, and now I will forever want the ability to tell what kind of fighter I'm dealing with in Homeworld when a bunch of triangle icons appear on sensors.
[b]Movement, Time and Distance[/b]
The ability to see the entire map at once gives the impression that the map is small, but the distances on the map are vast. Units seem to crawl across the battlefield, it takes several minutes for even the fastest fighters to cover short distances on the map. A group of fighting units will encounter an enemy, find themselves outgunned, and you will then discover that any attempt to reinforce them will take *forever*, and your ships are probably toast. It's all so slow!
At first this design choice feels like a slap in the face, but the player learns the lesson quickly: every decision you make about unit movement needs to be made very carefully, because if those units encounter something they can't handle (or, if they're needed somewhere else and aren't nearby) then you will have to live with your poor decision. You learn to not send out many small squadrons but instead to move out mainly in force, you learn which units can successfully run from which others if need be, you learn to scout the likely approach paths to your bases before ordering its garrison away, and you learn to balance controlling areas of the map vs forming a strong combined force. The weight and consequences to every single move makes every single decision interesting. You will goof it up and get valuable units blown up while the rest of your fleet is somewhere else, and you'll learn.
[b]Resource Gathering[/b]
The design choice to have long map distances and slow unit movement applies doubly to resource gathering. You build the titular Offworld Resource Base, a rather quick and tanky unit which travels to a resource asteroid and which then permanently transforms into a mining colony. Then it's up to freighter units to visit the colony, collect RUs, and return to your base. Freighters are also tanky, but agonisingly slow. Each carries 500 RUs, and the typical asteroid only starts with a few thousand RUs, meaning that every single resource load is precious. Resource asteroids are relatively few, there may only be six or eight on the map.
The result of all these choices is that the fate of every single resource base, every single freighter, is crucial. You will bite your nails as your fighters and their bombers race for your freighters. You will risk a large fleet move-out to destroy a resource base, even if it leaves you defenceless at home. You will count every single freighter coming in, and every single RU left to harvest in your mining bases, and plan out how every single RU will be spent. ORB is absolutely at its height when you and your opponent are both playing by these rules and playing from an evenly matched starting position. (The campaign features lots of enemies with asymmetric abilities and missions without base-building where you must shepherd a small fleet of units, these add some nice variety but aren't quite as strong.)
Later in the tech tree you gain ways to shorten the mining return trip: empty mining colonies can be upgraded into resource drop-off points, and the all-powerful carrier is a drop-off point, it can simply park itself next to a resource asteroid and cut the travel time to almost zero. Building a carrier to speed up resourcing is pretty much essential to unlocking the top tier of combat units, but that first carrier requires a lot of investment to get out the door, those RUs aren't going into combat units. Go for capital ships too early and your opponent may blow you out, go for them too late and their extremely powerful destroyers may simply eat all of your fighters.
I could go on, but Steam reviews have a character limit. The unit designs are a little boxy (but the cockpit glass reflects the stars). Scenarios often drag on way after you've won (the game has a useful time speedup function). Fighters are built one at a time, but automatically group themselves into squads when in a control group together (another feature Homeworld should obviously pick up!). The only viable counter to capital ships is other capital ships, fighters just get rinsed. Damaged fighters automatically dock, repair, and relaunch if a base/carrier is nearby. Ships often behave intelligently like this. But the AI's aggro behaviour is easily abused, you can lead their doom fleet on a merry chase all around the map. Some asteroids travel around the map in fixed orbits, meaning bases move around over time, but this adds no strategic depth. The campaign's writing is atrocious.
There are rough edges, but also brilliant features and decisions, ORB adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
