What have I been playing lately?

Utopians, Renegades and Bugs fight for complete domination across the Universe of Orion's Belt. You start with an account but you can have players in all 3 races, enhancing the game play even further. As you can see you'll not be alone in the universe:
Hundreds of players will join you in battle as you try to conquer more planets and discover the ends of the universe.
The universe view allows for a better notion of were the hell your ships and planets are in clear contrast with other games.
In terms of "economy" management, you have a private zone with 5 planets, which is the only place were you can build ships, and up to 8 planets in the hot zone.
So unlike other games you can conquer other players planets (hot zone) and really put them in arms away, why? Simple! You have two types of resources, intrinsic and rare, the intrinsic can be made in your private zone whereas the rare in your hot zone, so if you lose your planets no more rare resources for you.

"Ya economy looks nice, but so does every other game!", ok I can relate to this, but where Orion's Belt really shines is in battles! In other games battles are simulated, here battles are fought in a "chessy" way, it does what Total Series did for RTS games, deliveres true skill to battles. Here you can see the board:
This the image of a regicide battle (kill the flag aka king), the player used his light ships to win when he was clearly out gunned. You also have Total Annihilation mode.












So battles really shine in this game. You also have alliances, ultimate weapons and units, an auction house, universe markets, universe wormholes, arenas, academies, pirate bays... Which brings me to the professions, a player has a profession status that is changed accourdingly to his actions in game, so if you spend most of your time raiding people your clearly a PIRATE! =)

Another point is that time is relatively continuous, it works in "ticks" of 10 minutes, which allows you some free time so you don't become a NOLIFER aka wow/ogame player (just can't keep away from the wow slang). Now, more eye candy:
The game has a manual and an active community, it's pretty easy to get in touch with the devs, this makes your opinions and statements matter. Another great point is that this game has tournaments! Yest this means you'll be entering real competition in terms of battles and you can also have 2 vs 2 battles, as I said before battles really shine in this game. If you like browser games give it a try, I can help if you have any doubts. Now some links: