This cuts out the sometimes-tedious initial parts of RTS, because production time is vastly accelerated during this phase. Another feature that both helps and hinders the game is a 3 level playing field. Knowing and paying attention to all three of these field is important because they each have advantages and disadvantages to them, and you can't afford to give your opponent a free reign on any of them. The orbital layer is of course in space, and consists of geostationary asteroids to provide what little land there is up there. However, only flying units and hovercraft can travel freely in orbit.
Ground pounders require a teleport pad to reach an asteroid.
The ground layer is the standard RTS playing field, with all the units able to traverse it relatively easily. It is unfortunate that you can't make bombers intentionally bomb empty space in orbit to take full advantage of this. Combots, as each sides robots are called, are too big to wander around down here, and in order to access it you'll need drill trucks to burrow out tunnels and construct elevators. The lack of Combots also means that teeming masses of vehicles fight it out down here. The units of Metal Fatigue are unfortunately the game's highest and lowest points.