Game Modes

O-R-B Offworld Resource Base comes with several built in game modes which later became staple standards in many genre's of games. While it did not invent these per se, as a game whose development started in 1999, it was one of the first group of games to feature such content.

Singleplayer
Under singleplayer mode, players will be offered three different modes right off the bat. The first mode is the tutorial missions which use special scripting not used elsewhere in the game. It follows the story of a Malus tactician recruit learning the basics about commanding an armada. Progress cannot be saved in the tutorial while playing a mission but when the mission is completed it remains available for replay at a later time.

Second comes the standard campaign. The True Campaign is divided into two segments, one told from the Malus point of view in the years leading up to the cosmic war between the Malus and Alyssian civilizations. Events in the Malus campaign include a civil war which spans multiple missions and several covert missions in the main civil war. Most main battles mentioned in the game's lore are not featured as missions.

The second stage of the campaign is told by the Alyssian survivors of the cosmic war, events including re-establishing their civilization and new colonies in a new planetary system well outside the Aldus Solar System. It introduces new antagonists such as the Kyulek and Elathen which require a different stratagem to fight than the typical fighter vs fighter combat.

The third game mode is the Skirmish mode which works a bit like Instant Action but instead of replaying campaign missions these are stand alone missions. Some missions may be linked to the in-game storyline and lore, some may be massive recreations of these missions without the narrative and others are just cosmic battlegrounds for fun with no relation to the story whatsoever. There are 30 skirmish missions available, each mission classed by the type of starting base (Carrier, starbase, portal, or structured) and are again classed by player #. While not a fool-proof indicator, generally the more players = larger battlefield size.

The Story behind the story requires Scenario editor to access the in-game hidden campaign files. These files are in an unfinished state but detail specific key events in the lore's storyline including the Malus defense against the Kyulek's initial invasion of Aldus, or the aftermath of the destruction of the Elathen. These are again divided between Malus and Alyssian narrations. As they are highly unstable it is impossible to truly play through these levels. They can be found in the game's directory in the campaign folder as CSV files.

Multiplayer
Multiplayer mode is straight up and simple. It gives you access to ONLY the skirmish missions, there is no campaign coop, and limits players to 4, though it is still possible to play the 8 player maps in 4 player mode. Multiplayer supports custom logo's though only original O-R-B 1.00 users will be able to make those logo's and it also has full mod support, designating which lobbies are modded and which are vanilla. In addition, it also allows hosting multiplayer games on completely custom maps.

It should be noted that in a multiplayer lobby there is always lag, and it has nothing to do with your computer. When entering a command the game puts you on a 1 second delay. Your units will still be moving and executing their last command on everyone's machine including yours, then when that 1 second comes and goes, the new command gets executed, requiring players to anticipate and counter ahead of time during battle. All autonomous functions still happen as normal without lag, only player induced commands have the 1 second delay.

It must also be noted that it is no longer possible to game online using Gamespy as the servers were shutdown when Gamespy was bought out in 2014. Players can still do old fashioned hosting and direct connect with O-R-B's built in direct connect feature which requires you to know the IP address of the server you wish to connect to. Once a connection has been established, multiplayer will proceed as normal.

O-R-B also supports LAN multiplayer.