The Outer Line is a tactical space RTS set in 2149.
You are a military commander on the Outer Line, a chain of Gravity Wells at the edge of explored territory where three human factions are competing for resources and strategic position. Nobody has declared war. Everyone is fighting one. Your faction sent you here with a Mobile Shipyard and a mandate to hold this stretch of frontier. How you do it is your problem.
The factions don't have enough ships to cover every front. They send their best officers instead, with enough autonomy to act before orders arrive from the core worlds. Communications have delays measured in hours. By the time headquarters knows what happened, you've already decided. You chose your faction. You fight under their colors, build with their ships, follow their doctrine. The Outer Line is where loyalty meets distance, and distance usually wins.
The game is built around a few core ideas.
*You command everything.* Your Mobile Shipyard is the center of your operation. It produces your ships, houses your modules, and defines how you fight. Lose it and you lose your ability to replace anything. Protect it and you have a war machine that evolves with every module you install. Other commanders bring their own Mobile Shipyard, too. Destroy all of theirs and you win. Lose all of yours and you're done.
*Small fleets where every ship counts.* You won't have hundreds of ships. Losing a destroyer isn't a statistic. It's a gap in your formation that the enemy will notice before you do.
*Gravity Wells as strategic zones.* The map is a network of Gravity Wells, areas of significant gravitational pull around celestial bodies. Each one contains asteroids, structures, resources, and space to fight over. Between them is Deep Space, empty and unclaimed. Your ships travel between Gravity Wells using the Jump Drive, a technology that folds the distance between two gravitational signatures. Every jump takes time to charge, and every arrival leaves your fleet blind and vulnerable for a few critical seconds.
*Tactical pause.* The game runs in real time, but you can pause at any moment to issue orders, assess the situation, and plan your next move. This isn't a game about clicking faster. It's a game about deciding better.
*Three factions, no villains.* The United Solar Federation sends disciplined fleets to extend the reach of central government.
The Orion Industrial League fields heavy, armored ships crewed by frontier workers who were here before anyone else.
The Nexus Energy Compact deploys shield technology that outperforms anything in known space, mounted on hulls that can't survive without it.
Each faction has a reason to be on the Outer Line. Each one thinks it's right. They all are, and that's the problem.
*Every battle shifts a bigger war.* Your victories aren't isolated. Every Gravity Well you take or lose changes the balance on a strategic map where the factions compete across entire sectors. In the Global War, every player's battles count. The front lines move based on everyone's results. The war moves whether you play or not. When you do play, you move it.
*About these posts.* Over the coming weeks, we'll be publishing short fiction set in the world of The Outer Line. These are stories, not dev diaries. Characters with names and jobs, doing what people do on the Outer Line: patrolling Gravity Wells, managing supply chains, repairing ships that shouldn't still be flying, making decisions that cost lives. Some of them are admirals running entire sectors. Some are engineers keeping a reactor online long enough to make the next jump.
Each story is self-contained. You can read them in any order.