OpenFront Guides Hub

OpenFront is a free browser RTS on the official site. About 200,000 people play every day and about a million play on the web each month. This Guides Hub is the map of every walkthrough on the wiki: first-match survival, the full combat loop, hotkeys, buildings, nukes, diplomacy, naval wars, and team roles. Steam Early Access date is 17 September 2026 for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Steam Deck, with offline play and cross-play; the browser game stays free.

Do not try to memorize the whole wiki before a lobby. Read the one guide that answers the death you keep repeating, then jump back here. The Getting Started walkthrough is the default first page. If you already know how to click a spawn and still lose the mid-game, skip ahead to How to Play or a specialist chapter.

Who each guide is for

First public lobby. Use Getting Started when you have never finished a match. It covers lobby choice, spawning on plains plus a coast, the community 42% troop-growth rule, annexing Bots before Nations, a first City then a first Port, and the habit of never emptying your army.

The full loop. How to Play is the rules page: attack slider, workers versus troops, plains/highlands/mountains, the ~80% non-fallout land win condition, Overtime after minute 30, and the lobby list (FFA, Duos/Trios/Quads, Ranked 2v2, Doomsday Clock, Human vs Nations, private lobbies, and single player versus bots).

Hands faster than the radial menu. Controls is the hotkey table: number row, mouse, x1/x5 batches, remapping, and the v33.5 exceptions that stay fixed. Read it after you understand what to build, not before.

Gold with no plan. Buildings tells you when a City, Port, Factory, Defense Post, Missile Silo, or SAM is the next purchase. It is also the page for the shared Port–Factory cost counter and train networks.

Nuclear threat. Nukes is for the first Silo, the 1.75 million gold Atom package, Hydrogen and MIRV budgets, SAM nets, and v33 warhead interception.

Timers, not friendships. Alliances covers the ~3000-tick (~5 minute) pact, the traitor defense cut, when to let a pact expire, the silo-on-border trick, and emotes.

Water maps. Naval is Ports, trade versus piracy, transports, island defense, warship target priority, and v33 veterancy.

Shared colors. Team Games is spawn-together, frontliner versus backliner, troop donations, and Ranked 2v2 notes (1 minute spawn immunity, Compact maps 50% of the time).

The clock is not a circle. Doomsday Clock is the v33 land-share test: 10-minute grace, rising FFA and team bars, troop and warship drain. Use it when a specials lobby enabled the mode, not as a substitute for the ordinary 80% win.

The 80% bar can fall. Overtime is the public-FFA closer after minute 30: the 80% line drops one point every 30 seconds. It is not Doomsday. Public FFA has defaulted it on since v0.33.13.

Rails are stations plus a loop. Trains is Factory range (~110 tiles), the shared Port cost, v0.33.12 spawn fixes, and when to skip a rail for cheap land.

Rated queues. Ranked splits Ranked 1v1 (individual Elo, compact maps ~20%) from Ranked 2v2 (clanmate pairing, one-minute spawn immunity, compact maps ~50%).

How to use this hub in a real lobby

If the last match ended because you spawned on a mountain with no coast, open Getting Started. If you spawned well and still bled the army on one Bot, open How to Play and reread the attack slider. If you had gold and froze, open Buildings. If an Atom deleted a City you never SAM-covered, open Nukes. If a “friend” broke a pact on your core, open Alliances. If trade ships vanished, open Naval. If your Duo partner spawned on the opposite continent, open Team Games. If the 80% bar started falling and you still painted vanity tiles, open Overtime. If trains never paid, open Trains. If Ranked 2v2 split you across a compact map, open Ranked.

v33 (31 July 2026) is the snapshot these pages assume: Doomsday Clock, Ranked 2v2, 22 maps (Sol, Russia, United States, France, Germany, China, Vietnam, Scandinavia, Las Vegas Strip, and more), impassable terrain, MIRV warheads as interceptable nukes, usernames, Google login, and the verified badge. Patch numbers move; the Updates Hub is the place to check what changed after you finish a guide.

What this wiki will not do for you

These pages will not pick a spawn for every map, and they will not rank every opening as S-tier. When you want a short “what is strong right now” read, use the Tier List Hub. When you want Discord, GitHub, or the Steam store entry, use the Links Hub. Developer OpenFront Inc (Evan Pellegrini) ships the game as open source under AGPL-3.0 on GitHub. Join the OpenFront Discord for live lobbies; come back here for numbers you can reread mid-queue.

Steam editions the developers have mentioned are OpenFront at $4.99 (a Warlord month plus cosmetics and a verified name) and OpenFront Masters at $9.99 (a Sovereign month). Neither is required to play the free browser client.

Pick one child page, play one match with a single new habit, then return. The next death tells you which chapter to open after that.

The fastest way to waste this hub is to skim every chapter and change nothing in the next lobby. Choose the guide that names the mistake you just made, keep that one rule on screen, and treat the rest of the wiki as a shelf you open only when that rule is already automatic.