Ethan Mollick uses Claude to build open-source hard sci-fi starship combat game

emollick · x · 2026-09-23

Ethan Mollick had Fable/Opus build Orbital Declaration, a hard science fiction starship combat game now open source and playable in the browser. Ships follow Newtonian motion and the rocket equation (delta-v never comes back); drives and mounts heat a sink only radiators can empty, throttling the drive to a quarter when full; every hull radiates and sensors see it — no stealth in space. The game features an eight-chapter story campaign across eleven locations around Jupiter in 2211, custom skirmishes, and a ship design yard, with physics following Project Rho's Atomic Rockets. Mollick also shared his AI research process.

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