Games Like Flotsam Front

Design every warship. Fuel an industrial war machine. Put to sea and take the archipelago. Flotsam Front is a real-time naval strategy game set in a procedurally generated cold-war archipelago. You take one nation and build it into a naval power. That means engineering your own warships, digging iron, oil and rare strategic metals out of islands other people also want, and sending fleets out to back up your claims. There's no scripted campaign and no victory screen waiting at the end. Every match starts on a new map with a new balance of powers, and the story comes out of what you and your rivals actually do.

Design every ship you sail

You don't pick from a stock ship list. You build the fleet yourself. Open the ship designer, lay out a hull, and fit it with the guns, missiles, torpedoes, armor, sensors and countermeasures you want, then name the class and send it down the slipway. Carriers and their air wings work the same way. When better technology comes in, you can pull an old class back into the yard and refit it instead of starting over.

Run a war economy

Every island sits on deposits: iron, nickel, cobalt and crude oil, plus the scarce strategic metals. Platinum, gold and uranium are the ones you'll fight over, and they cluster toward the middle of the map, right where it's most dangerous to operate. Survey them, mine them, refine the ore and crude into ingots, uranium rods and fuel, and keep power stations running so your factories, refineries and labs stay supplied. Money is Denarii, and it comes in from your cities and trade tankers. When you're short on something or sitting on a surplus, there's a live commodities Exchange where you can trade with everyone else in the game.

Fight in real time, above and below the waterline

Combat happens live, on a map that reads like a naval chart. Put point-defense and SAMs up to screen the fleet, fire cruise missiles over the horizon, and send submarines out to stalk enemy shipping. Launch strikes off your carriers, or send bombers in to flatten an island's defenses before you commit. Incoming missiles can be spoofed by flares, aircraft fight it out with guided air-to-air missiles, and a coast defended by fortresses, anti-ballistic-missile sites and gun batteries is genuinely hard to land on. Once you've broken it, put brigades ashore and take the ground.

Build a nation, not just a navy

There's a whole state behind the fleet, and you build that too. Start by putting a nation together from a people and a government, both of which change how your economy, military and politics actually behave. From there you push a branching research tree through several tiers to unlock new hulls, weapons and doctrine, and you run the census, ministries and national profile as the country grows.

Diplomacy, the Senate, and the road to Imperium

You can court the other powers or crush them. Sign pacts and ententes, build alliances, or manufacture a reason for war and declare it on your own terms, with every conflict written into a public war ledger for everyone to see. There's also a Global Senate, where nations pledge, petition and vote by the weight of their populations. Whip the vote, work your way from directorate to sole director, and if you can hold the assembly, push for outright Imperium over it.

Run your own spies, and hunt everyone else's

Plenty happens off the board. Build up spy and counter-intelligence networks, recruit named agents, and send them on jobs that carry real difficulty and heat. Steal a rival's technology, rig a Senate vote, or sabotage their shipyards, all while your own counter-intelligence people are trying to catch theirs doing exactly the same to you.

A living, contested world

You're never the only one playing. The AI nations run their own economies, design their own fleets, form their own opinions of you, and go to war when they've got a reason for it. Marauder bands hole up in the coves and prey on passing shipping. Random world events shake things up partway through a match. And there's always a loaded merchant convoy crossing open water somewhere. Raid one and it'll pay off, but you'll pick up a piracy record and a fresh enemy along with the cargo.

Play solo or with up to 12

Play a skirmish against the AI on your own, or take the whole thing online with up to twelve players in one match. The same systems are there either way. If your connection drops, your seat is held so you can reconnect without losing your nation, and you can save a campaign and pick it up later.