Among the first of its kind, Nicely Crafted's Time of Defiance is a realtime strategy game that plays out in a kind of "massively multiplayer" persistent game world. As in many realtime strategy games, play revolves around the mutually dependant activities of expansion and occupation. The larger the amount of territory a faction claims, the more resources it can use for development. Yet in such a competitive world, larger territories require larger, more powerful, resourcedependant forces to defend them.
Time of Defiance is set on a shattered planet called Nespanona, which broke into pieces long ago. The fractured landscape left chunks of terrain, which are held relatively stable by ancient gravitycontrol devices. Players move about in spaceships, seeking uninhabited "islands" of this suspended land to colonize and claim as their own. The large (16,000,000 virtual square mile) game world offers plenty of space for fledgling factions, where they can begin to build bases and establish an economy. Games can last up to four weeks (actual time).
So how can players accommodate the constant demands of running their empires in real time if campaigns can take a full month to play out? Time of Defiance offers a complex, detailed set of anticipatory management options, more powerful and sophisticated than those of conventional RTS games. While it might take planning to realize the potential of this scripting, practiced managers learn give their units the detailed instructions necessary to see that they perform the correct actions in any specific situation, whether defending an island, exploring a new area, or just harvesting and distributing resources.
Of course, all is fair in (love and) war, and some players may actually coordinate their attacks at a time they know their friends and rivals will be away from their computers. Yet even moving from one part of the game world to another can take several days, and conquering an established empire can take weeks. Large fleet movements won't go unnoticed for too long, and the game can be set up to send email notifications if an attack is launched against the empire while the player is away. To provide an enjoyable challenge for all players, Time of Defiance offers separate servers for beginners, intermediate players, and experts. ~ T.J. Deci, All Game Guide