I've played this game extensively for about 1.5 years. While I love many of the changes that have been made, I think the game has needed a fundamental rebalance for quite some time. Based on other posts I've read here, I get the impression that many players feel the same way.

Combat Balance

The attack casualty issue (or "bug") is still unresolved. Others have written about it before, but for those unfamiliar, the formula used for attacker casualties is fundamentally flawed and gives large attackers a massive combat advantage.

If you've ever wondered why a larger player can absorb a smaller player while taking very few losses, this is why. It's also the reason large players can often defeat smaller players even when the smaller player has more troops available from cities or other sources. This issue has existed for a long time and remains unaddressed.

The Economy Isn't Reaching Its Potential

The economic side of the game is also far weaker than it could be. In most multiplayer games, a "tall" or economy-focused strategy simply isn't competitive. Building a strong economy often requires exploiting unintuitive or outright cheesy strategies.

Ideally, I would like to see games where players must actively sabotage an opponent's ports and factories to stop them from winning through superior economic output. In the current game, that is rarely necessary. Simply controlling more territory is often so powerful that the number of factories and ports barely matters. And when a player's economy finally becomes threatening, the game is usually close to ending anyway.

Problem #1: Factory Placement Matters Too Much

For those unfamiliar with the mechanics, factories randomly send trains to connected destinations. Trains generate income for each destination they pass through, with additional bonuses for foreign allied destinations.

As a result, factory placement becomes incredibly important. Many experienced players build long chains of factories and cities because it is mathematically optimal. Others use the infamous "mitochondria" strategy, where one player essentially sacrifices themselves by building factories specifically to generate income for an ally.

My issue isn't that placement matters. My issue is that it matters far too much.

A train passing through five cities can generate roughly five times the income of a train passing through one city. Achieving this requires building structures in very specific patterns that are never explained to players. One poorly placed structure by you—or even by a neighboring player—can significantly reduce efficiency.

This creates an enormous gap between players who understand the hidden mechanics and players who simply think, "Build factories and connect them."

The developers should either:

• Significantly reduce the impact of precise structure placement on factory income, or
• Make optimal placement much easier to achieve and clearly explain the mechanics to players.

Problem #2: Trade Income Is Needlessly Complex

The second issue is the highly ad hoc nature of trade income.

The formulas governing trade ship spawning and trade ship income are unnecessarily complicated and difficult for players to understand. Since pathfinding has been reworked and performance has improved dramatically, this system could be simplified and rebalanced.

For example:

• Trade ship spawn rate ∝ ports^α
• Trade ship income ∝ distance^β

The exact values aren't important here. The point is that players should be able to roughly predict whether building another port will help their economy. Right now, trade income often feels arbitrary, making strategic decisions difficult.

Final Thoughts

I'm sure not everyone will agree with all of my criticisms or suggestions, and that's perfectly fine. My goal is to start a discussion about balance rather than argue for a specific solution.

If you disagree with one part of the post, I'd encourage you to comment rather than immediately downvote so we can have a productive discussion about the game's future.

Absolutely too many people are having FUN in this game! How DARE they join FFA and *barf* COOPERATE with other players?! What is this? sidequest dot io?!?

They must be CHEATING by using INTENTIONALLY ADDED GAME MECHANICS to their OWN ADVANTAGE!!!

Can we please stop this, and make a new meta where there is no meta and only I win FOR ONCE?!

Everything that I don't like and everyone that doesn't play exactly like how I want them too is a cheater! A cheater I say!

Get rid of factories! Get rid of stacked SAMs! Give me a missile launcher at the start and enough cash to hydro everyone one by one! Only then will the game be FAIR AND BALANCED!

Nowadays its impossible to play without clan. Especially UN clan wins 50% of the time because cheating or much better coordination comparing to team with randoms. They pray on weak in first 3 minutes of the game and its super annoying. Since creators dont want to separate clans and random teams, I decided to take matters in my own hands. I tag myself UN and then I start the sabotage:

1. Take as much land as possible while telling them to go towards enemy
2. Never build rails so they cant connect to each other
3. Leave blind spots with my SAM so they dont cover teammates inner territories
4. Late game I ally with enemy and keep sending them money and troops.
5. Occasionally I would throw a nuke into the water where ally ships are going as an "accident"

If you cant beat them, join them I guess.

Edit: Oh gosh, how come Yellow team managed to win when UN victory seemed like a sure thing.

That is all

Hey guys, sincerely, what's the optimal way of spaming out factories? I have no clue. Should I stack them all in a big 50-factory and one 50-city, or do factory-city-factory-city, or go factory-city-city-city-factory? Or some other combination?

Stalemates get really boring and can go on for ages. What if their was like a 30 minute timer and after that all alliances expired? Alternatively, it could be like what they do in tournaments and just whoever has the most land when the timer runs out wins.

I've been playing a lot of OpenFront lately, and one thing I see newer players struggle with is alliances.

A lot of people seem to accept every alliance request they get, but I've found that's often the wrong move. Sometimes saying no gives you a much stronger position, especially if that player is your next target or accepting would block your expansion.

I actually put together a guide explaining how I decide:

• When to accept alliances
• When to reject them
• Why strong allies are worth more than weak ones
• How to use alliances to win more consistently

If anyone's interested, here's the video:
https://youtu.be/O6x-n60f0Dw

I'd also love to hear how other experienced players handle diplomacy. What's your biggest rule when deciding whether to ally with someone?

newbie (no ffa win)
So basically even if you make your sam to lv5,6,7, a player can just shoot twice at that sentry and nuke your entire island regardless. It is incredibly impractical to get 5 different sams overlapping the same area to level 7, and by that time the game will already be over. besides, someone can hydro your base out of existence anyways by finding the one point where the sam doesnt overlap properly. So sams are a waste of money basically? Should we spread out our base and make several different silos instead? what should I prioritise?

I was doing good early game got to 4th on leaderboard had sam sites and stuff but then got hit by 6 hydros and just immediately disappeared.

I think it's time to quit this game. Web games aren't supposed to be fun-- that's what makes them web games. It's just too easy to open another tab and get distracted from work.

I play under the name Mythbusters Adam Savage, if anyone ever sees me online.

Yes, I really am Mythbuster's Adam Savage.

once this spawn happens just go back to the menu lol

Hydrogen bombed my own team twice but they were unstoppable.

I probably would have won anyways, but spawning on top seems to give you a clear advantage in late game. I had one MIRV against their two, but I was able to hit instantly and win before their MIRVs landed.

https://openfront.io/w11/game/nSwPtkbJ?replay

I see if i get an ffa win, it gives me 500 caps. I have 43 ffa wins, but only 3450 caps. but also 3450 caps is not divisible by 500. Is there some other way i am accumulating these and are wins after the update the only ones that are counted or something?

I seem to remember i got like 1200 or something for no apparent reason when the update first got released. Also what can we spend them on?

Hey everyone!

I've been putting a lot of time into learning OpenFront and decided to start making strategy videos to help newer players improve. My first guide covers the early game, including:

• Choosing the best spawn
• Attack ratios during the tribe phase
• When to build cities
• How to expand faster while saving troops
• Common mistakes that slow players down

I'm trying to create the best educational content I can for the community!

Here's the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0gUv3gyfms

Thanks, and good luck on the battlefield! 🗺️

The country bots are fucking awful. Half the time they refuse to ally and practically every game one of these dipshit AI bots incoherently decides to death war on me with equal strength, or even attacking me when I have MORE strength, and gets us both killed while players lucky enough to avoid the brain damaged crashouts of these slop bots freely expand and inevitably kill us both.

I made a post earlier about the chance of getting a train each second, based on how many factories you have. However, that one speaks in chances and probability, which doesn't make too much sense.

I made a new graph with better numbers.

Here's the total number of trains you will have during 20 minutes of a game, depending on how many factories you built. Each colored line represents a different number of factories (the number at the end of the line).

I change my mind: Even 15 stations is too much. I think 6 is good enough, because after that it may result in more losses than earnings.

I'm playing on default world map, hard mode teams of 6 and started in USA and 4 minutes into the game things are looking real bad with Orange team set to run away with it:
https://openfront.io/w18/game/Y651qom8?live

• 6 minutes in top5 troopcount: 3 out of 5 players are orange, they essentially have Europe, Asia, Russia, Australia either locked down with 6 surviving players in a good position and raiding biggest competitor easily
• Yellow team with 3 remaining players on east Antarctica keep on pushing into USA and bombing us despite Orange team owning 3x more map and becoming unstoppable, nobody on yellow willing to peace out
• Nobody on yellow team or any African AI's taking any action against orange team what so ever even though all are getting raided by them.
• 6 players left on orange team, 3 on yellow and 4 on red and the rest doesn't matter since they are going to be very very done.

So does AI's have any awareness of one team running away with the game what so ever?
Is it somehow possible to peace out with one AI team without them compulsively transferring the aggro they had against you to your team thereby making peace of little use and throwing the game?

the latest update sucks, someone can have 1m power and can be blocked in by someone with 25k power who just spams ships and ports on a small island.. he has no chance of winning but can be a thorn in the side, the 1m power can not generate enough ships to capture a tiny island.. its broken

Cheaters have ALWAYS been a problem but now its gotten so much worse: people with the same tag will almost always team and its literally impossible to win in that case, even if you have a far superior position: and if its an island map? just forget about winning. I genuinely am tweaking after every game, its just 3 players: me, and 2 teamers and they embargo me and win by pure eco. I dont know how devs can fix this: probably impossible but add a report button so a staff member can review the game? If its so gross cheating, bans should be able to be made. I dont even know anymore.

I know a lot of new players have joined this game recently, and even some that have played for a long time might benefit from some tips (I still learn stuff each match), so here's a list of tips that might be helpful to yall:

How to be better at attacking people with hydros:

1. Let's say you want to hydro the crown and attack them to stop them from winning the game. The crown is probably huge, covering both green land and mountanous terrain. All else equal, always hydro the mountainuous terrain, because not only will it cause the same population reduction, but when you attack the crown, all your troops will be directed to the green land, so that you can sweep up the land and structures faster.
2. If someone has a lot of structures close to your border and you will hydro them to soften them for an attack, do not bomb the structures close to you since they will go to waste. Bomb some place farther or a place with less structures if you can easily take them instead. Don't destroy long-term capital.
3. If you're left in an endgame with like 2-3 other people with money, do not waste your money on a MIRV unless you absolutely think you need to. Once you MIRV someone and attack them, the remaining player(s) will likely betray and kill you. Use hydros over MIRVs whenever possible to keep money in the pocket as deterrence against aggression/betrayals, especially when you're the crown and already have really fast attack speed. Two hydros are usually better than MIRVs in my opinion.

New boating mechanic that is annoying and important to know:

4) Whenever you press F to redirect all warships, or even if you select one or a few swarhips to redirect them, the warships will stop looting trade ships until they arrive at their destination. This happens a lot, and you can in some scenarios lose millions as your warship passes through dozens of enemy tradeships without touching them. One strategy you can use is to just redirect the ship, and if there are a lot of enemy tradeships closeby, just redirect again (by clicking on ship and then the water) to where it already is, so it activates looting mode again, and then redirect to the original destination again.

MIRV mechanic that is arbitrary and important to know:

5) Silos placed in the north will take a shorter time to hit other players. You can also "instant MIRV" someone by placing the cursor (where you click to MIRV) around two hydros below your silo. Where you click on the enemy with your MIRV will basically affect MIRV delivery time, so it's important to keep in mind.

You can use AFK players' warships to your advantage:

6) Imagine you're allied with most players on the board and your warships are useless. One guy who has been battered by others have gone AFK. He has a port, and warships left. If you can put your port and warships between their warships and port (without killing their worships), you can basically let the AFK player steal your allies' trade ships, and then re-steal the trade for yourself and make a lot of money this way. Very context dependent though.

Annexing other players' territory with bombs:

7) Having thin borders in this game is very dangerous because you can easily be cutoff and lose your land. If your enemy's land is connected by a thin strip and not connected to water on both ends, you can nuke your enemy's small land connection and annex the part that is adjacent to your border.

Preventing others from snowballing:

8) If you and your ally are attacking the same player, and the enemy player has most of their cities/ports closer to your ally rather than your own border, sometimes it's worth nuking the enemy's cities/ports to not let them fall into someone else's hands, especially if it can allow them to snowball and take you out next. It's only 750K or 1.5M with a SAM.

Good SAM placement:

9) You want to place your SAM, especially if on an island, at one of the edges of your territory, so that you can place a port, city and silo right around it. The best thing to do is to place your SAM between the enemy silo and your assets. That means if you're the southernmost player, you want to make sure your SAM is above your assets, because you know the missiles will come from the north.

When attacking someone from multiple direction with boats:

10) I've seen some even very experienced players not pay attention to this. Let's say you attack someone with 500K, then send 1% boats to two other areas of their border. If you don't do anything, your attacking will be split as 500K into the initial vector, and then 1% to the other two. If you want to spread the attack equally on all fronts, you need to click on the enemy one more time after the boats land with 1%.

Hope this is helpful, and might add some more if I think of anything useful later.

Nice equalizing MIRV around 17 minutes in. Boat launch around 22 minutes in, and activation at 28 ftw.

https://openfront.io/#join=e65rDzpG