Ethan Mollick built a hard sci-fi starship combat game with Fable/Opus

emollick · x · 2026-09-23

Ethan Mollick had Fable/Opus build Orbital Declaration, a hard science fiction starship combat game featuring orbital mechanics, delta-v, heat management, and realistic tactics — simplified to 2D space with the hard math handled by the game itself.

Set in the Jovian system in 2211, the game runs on Newtonian motion and the rocket equation, with heat that has to go somewhere and no stealth at all — every ship's drift is predictable. Mollick says it's quite fun to play, if you like that kind of thing.

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