Starborne: Sovereign Space

Starborne: Sovereign Space is a free-to-play, grand-strategy 4X MMORTS where thousands of players compete in real-time to build galactic empires, form alliances, and dominate the galaxy over a single game session that typically lasts several months. 

Key Features and Gameplay

• Real-time Grand Strategy (4X): The game is a Massively Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy (MMORTS) with 4X elements (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate). Actions, such as building structures or moving fleets, take real-world time to complete, and the game progresses continuously even when players are offline.

• Alliance-Based Victory: Winning is a team effort. Players must join alliances to capture and hold a majority of the map's victory points for a set duration (e.g., 72 hours) to secure a win for their entire alliance. Diplomacy, trade, and coordinated military action are crucial.

• Empire Management: Players start with a single space station and gradually expand their domain by gathering resources, constructing specialized buildings (e.g., research centers, military compounds, industrial complexes), and building fleets of various ship types (scouts, corvettes, capital ships).

• Player Specialization: The game supports multiple playstyles. Players can specialize as industrial moguls, military commanders, spymasters using sabotage, or explorers, each contributing to their alliance's success in unique ways.

• Deep Customization: Hundreds of collectible "cards" are used to enhance stations, outposts, and fleets, providing unique bonuses and allowing for significant strategic depth and experimentation.

• Massive Scale: Matches take place on a large, seamless galaxy map designed to support thousands of concurrent players, leading to large-scale, player-driven political and military landscapes.

• Game Phases: Each game is a single, long-term event that can run for weeks or months, culminating in a decisive endgame. 

Summary

Starborne: Sovereign Space focuses heavily on social interaction, long-term strategy, and player-driven diplomacy, blending the slow, methodical pace of a grand strategy game with the massive scale and persistent world of an MMO. Success is achieved through cooperation, careful planning, and a flexible approach to the game's various paths to victory. 

Game was originally available on PC.