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Offworld Trading Company released on Early Access today. http://store.steampowered.com/app/271240/  It's an 'economic RTS' from Soren Johnson, the lead developer of Civilization 4. The premise is that the players are all the heads of corporations expanding onto Mars, and you have to control area, mine the resources therein, and then refine them and ship them offworld. The interesting bit is that the economy functions on a player-driven supply and demand model, which means that you have to pay attention to other player's needs to either sell them goods at a higher rate or to artificially create shortages and drive your opponents into the ground. Since it's all economic, there's no direct military conflict outside of the occasional black market deal.  I haven't gotten a chance to play it yet, but it seems to be almost entirely feature-complete, with the relatively long Early Access time (official date is early 2016) in order to get as much playtesting and polish in the game as possible. I heard about it from interviews with Soren on Three Moves Ahead, and it's interesting to see someone apply the RTS formula to an economic game. Price is $40 with a $5 discount until the 19th. 3MA discussion: https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/black-on-red Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ha_HgbRLwk StashAugustine fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Feb 13, 2015 |
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Feb 12, 2015 22:19
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I'm very curious how long an average game lasts, because in my head this sounds more Anno/Tropico than C&C/Starcraft and single scenarios in builder games like that can take foooooooreverrrrrrrrrrr.
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Feb 12, 2015 22:28
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How can this be different from a "military" RTS? It's about taking and holding the territory where the resources are. Whatever you call the mechanics that do that is the "military" part.
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Feb 12, 2015 22:32
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There's a gameplay video I skimmed over last night that put the gave at around 25 minutes of that helps anyone.
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Feb 12, 2015 22:58
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LegoPirateNinja posted:How can this be different from a "military" RTS? Until I watched the trailer I was going to say that's not necessarily true, assuming that the player never controlled any units or 'took over' any territory/factories outright but rather had to pay careful attention to the market and their diversification so they could undercut their competitors and eventually drive them out of business. However the trailer revealed that one can hire people to directly attack their competitors or pay a competitor's factory to mutiny and switch to the player's control, so it turns out you are exactly right. They've just dressed up the military component in economic clothes.
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Feb 13, 2015 00:20
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As someone who greatly enjoys both Starcraft and Settlers*, I'm very interested in this. Looking forward to a goon report!  * only with cities & knights though, vanilla settlers is boring as all get out
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Feb 13, 2015 00:29
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I've been watching the multiplayer games on Youtube that Soren streams, and the game does look pretty entertaining. The discussions he has with the team afterwards are worth listening to as well. Here's the first one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saf5e0cO0y0 and here's one where he just watches and commentates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBbL3Ss5Vg4 Yes, there's stuff you can do to sabotage the opposition. But it's almost always a temporary measure and it never feels like a military substitute.
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Feb 13, 2015 15:30
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I played it all day yesterday and the closest it gets to 'military' is guerrilla warfare and even that is fairly arbitrary.
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Feb 13, 2015 17:15
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popewiles posted:However the trailer revealed that one can hire people to directly attack their competitors or pay a competitor's factory to mutiny and switch to the player's control, so it turns out you are exactly right. They've just dressed up the military component in economic clothes. All of those effects are temporary, so you still have to pay attention to the markets to use them effectively. So in a game you use most of those "Black Market" effects to take advantage of already developing market tendencies. You have a shortage of Aluminum but it's very expensive to buy on the market? Time to steal from your opponents mine for 2 minutes. You are raping those high energy prices but your competition just build a solar generator? Blow it up so he has to rebuild and you can abuse the situation a little bit longer. But there aren't any lasting effects, no permanent stealing of tiles etc. I've played a few single player rounds today to get a feel for it and so far it's quite hard to get into even with medium-ish AI settings. Especially on maps with scarce resources you sometimes only feel the effect of your mistakes 15 minutes later. I like the combination of the usually slower paced economic games and classical RTS.
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Feb 13, 2015 18:55
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Bought it. This game is basically Sid Meier's
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Feb 13, 2015 18:59
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Definitely going to pick this up. Is there any mention of team-based multiplayer games anywhere?
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Feb 13, 2015 21:47
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Played a game with Paul.Power and Irregular Programming. This game gets mean fast. Well, I imagine it gets mean fast, we kinda futzed about for about half an hour blindly until I figured out how to make money and bought all of Irregular's stock. At which point Paul.Power and I started fighting for realsies.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:18
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Alkydere posted:Played a game with Paul.Power and Irregular Programming. This game gets mean fast. Well, I imagine it gets mean fast, we kinda futzed about for about half an hour blindly until I figured out how to make money and bought all of Irregular's stock. At which point Paul.Power and I started fighting for realsies. Economics!
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Feb 14, 2015 00:24
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Yeah, that was how I beat y'all in the first game. "Hey this resource is expensive as gently caress and costing me metric fuckloads to buy. I should probably build some production facilities to offset that." followed by "Holy poo poo, I have how much fuel/water/food and it costs how much right now? Sell! Sell! Sell!" Also, goddamned the AIs in this game are nasty.
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Feb 14, 2015 00:38
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Dogo posted:Definitely going to pick this up. Is there any mention of team-based multiplayer games anywhere? Yes, in that Soren has posted videos of exactly that. He commentates on two teams playing each other. Basically what I'm saying is watch their videos.
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Feb 15, 2015 13:27
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Bought the game. After playing for a bit, I like it. I don't know how much staying power it has, but it's definitely different. I have to say that I think the Science colony's ability to get steel and fuel almost immediately to be kind of broken. I just won a game against 7 cpus by focusing on steel, aluminum, and fuel. By the end of the game, fuel was well over 700K at the off-world market so I had 5 of those going at a time and just pummeled everyone's stocks.
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Feb 16, 2015 04:54
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But can't everyone do that? Plop an iron mine and a steel plant, or a water mine/ice melter and an oxydizer to make fuel/02? And yeah, it really does lack staying power for a single player game or against AI's. It really needs some charm. As a boardgame against players though it's an amazing rear end in a top hat simulator.
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Feb 16, 2015 05:01
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This game reminds me of M.U.L.E., even if the gameplay is different. Anyone remember that game?
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Feb 16, 2015 05:11
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Alkydere posted:But can't everyone do that? Plop an iron mine and a steel plant, or a water mine/ice melter and an oxydizer to make fuel/02? With the exception of the Expansive colony which has 4 claims, everyone has 3 claims before their first upgrade. This means that most of the AIs go after water, iron, or aluminum. Everyone else has to build iron mines, however Science colonies can build steel mills directly on the iron deposits. Since iron is only used for steel production, this saves Science colonies a lot of time. With 3 claims, a Science colony can build two steel mills (preferably next to each other) and an aluminum mine and start upgrading faster. I ignored glass production entirely since the constant building of the AIs caused steel to constantly raise in value. With 5 steel mills, I could periodically flood the market with steel to pay for things and get to lvl 5 faster. Then the massive steel reserves allowed me to start mass building markets. At that point, I had already bought two of the AIs an was in the process of building electronics factories on all my silica deposits. Even eating a bunch of EMPs, the ability for Science colonies to build production facilities without resource facilities allows them to start building capital quickly selling goods other players don't have access to yet. You can do the same thing to get to fuel production before anyone else. Science can turn water patches into a fuel/food industrial park since they don't have to build water collectors. I would love to try this against people. It's sort of like Settlers of Catan on speed. Stretch Marx fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Feb 16, 2015 |
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Feb 16, 2015 05:57
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How's the single player campaign? I've been on the fence about this game, it looks rad as hell but the price point is a little high for something I may only get a few hours out of.
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Feb 16, 2015 06:03
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Alkydere posted:And yeah, it really does lack staying power for a single player game or against AI's. It really needs some charm. For me, the charm comes from those hilarious so-bad-it's-good robotic voices.  Pirates. I hate those feelthybandits.
Paul.Power fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Feb 16, 2015 |
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Feb 16, 2015 09:37
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Alkydere posted:Played a game with Paul.Power and Irregular Programming. This game gets mean fast. Well, I imagine it gets mean fast, we kinda futzed about for about half an hour blindly until I figured out how to make money and bought all of Irregular's stock. At which point Paul.Power and I started fighting for realsies. Yeah, that game went awful for me, I ended up with resources worth absolutely nothing. It's a surprisingly fun game, I dunno if the "voice acting" adds to it though. edit <- Irregular everywhere else btw.
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Feb 16, 2015 09:49
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Feb 16, 2015 10:25
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Paul.Power posted:For me, the charm comes from those hilarious so-bad-it's-good robotic voices. Letme say a gan. Screw with us andwewill screw with you back.The only thing I wish was that colonies had an occupation range. It's really annoying to have the other players claiming the land directly around your base that you can't move.
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Feb 16, 2015 12:22
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I gotta say, after trying out a few of the tutorials, and then jumping straight into multiplayer, MP is much, much, much more fun than singleplayer. It might be slightly broken, take some time to get a game started and a bit laggy (don't play an 8 player game), but if you haven't yet, go play multiplayer.
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Feb 16, 2015 16:18
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HBNRW posted:The only thing I wish was that colonies had an occupation range. It's really annoying to have the other players claiming the land directly around your base that you can't move. I thought so too at first, but then I realized that it's an integral part of being an rear end in a top hat, which is what this game is all about. It's kind of weird though, because once you get down to it, I feel like distance doesn't really matter all that much in this game. You use more fuel, and you're slightly more vulnerable to pirate attacks, but that's about it, so I guess it's more of a psychological thing?
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Feb 16, 2015 16:37
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YeOldeButchere posted:I thought so too at first, but then I realized that it's an integral part of being an rear end in a top hat, which is what this game is all about. It's kind of weird though, because once you get down to it, I feel like distance doesn't really matter all that much in this game. You use more fuel, and you're slightly more vulnerable to pirate attacks, but that's about it, so I guess it's more of a psychological thing?
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Feb 16, 2015 16:40
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YeOldeButchere posted:I thought so too at first, but then I realized that it's an integral part of being an rear end in a top hat, which is what this game is all about. It's kind of weird though, because once you get down to it, I feel like distance doesn't really matter all that much in this game. You use more fuel, and you're slightly more vulnerable to pirate attacks, but that's about it, so I guess it's more of a psychological thing? Yeah the game is about being an rear end in a top hat so I don't think being able to lay down next to another players colony is an issue either, more fun that way to surprise people.
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Feb 16, 2015 18:00
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So i picked this up. The first few games i have had have been lousy. It seems like there is a bug with the ai buying me out. The last game i played i owned all my stock, with stock price 3x more than the ai. Everything was going normal and then bam i get bought out.. Game over. WTF. Like this poo poo happens multiple games. This is not fun. Is there some kind of hidden arbitrary time limit? Like how can you even be bought out if you own your stock, shouldnt they need 51%? 
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Feb 16, 2015 18:20
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Crash74 posted:So i picked this up. The first few games i have had have been lousy. It seems like there is a bug with the ai buying me out. The last game i played i owned all my stock, with stock price 3x more than the ai. Everything was going normal and then bam i get bought out.. Game over. WTF. Like this poo poo happens multiple games. This is not fun. Is there some kind of hidden arbitrary time limit? Like how can you even be bought out if you own your stock, shouldnt they need 51%? Once all the shares in a company have been bought, someone can buy all the shares that aren't theirs for twice the market value, thus buying out the company. The AI must have just raised a huge amount of cash somehow to buy up all your shares. You could have done the same to them, mind, and probably should have if your share price was three times theirs - it's how you win the game, after all. But yeah, there's quite a bit of FAQ diving with this game. . Paul.Power fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Feb 16, 2015 |
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Feb 16, 2015 18:33
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Yeah the game locks up if they allow you to buy up all of your own stock and then never be bought out.
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Feb 16, 2015 19:11
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Crash74 posted:So i picked this up. The first few games i have had have been lousy. It seems like there is a bug with the ai buying me out. The last game i played i owned all my stock, with stock price 3x more than the ai. Everything was going normal and then bam i get bought out.. Game over. WTF. Like this poo poo happens multiple games. This is not fun. Is there some kind of hidden arbitrary time limit? Like how can you even be bought out if you own your stock, shouldnt they need 51%? I've found it's generally best to aim at your next biggest competitor instead of attacking smaller opponents. The computer will routinely horde cash if they have profitable ventures going. If you see an AI with stock prices around yours but isn't buying weaker companies then it's saving to buy you instead. As someone mentioned earlier, the AI is mean at times. You have to do the same to them. Find out who has the next highest stock and slowly chip away at them. Owning parts of them improves your stock prices as well, making you harder to pick off.
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Feb 16, 2015 19:27
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I can't believe I forgot this thing was even a thing. I just had match against a bunch of AI where energy started spiking mid-game so a bunch of companies went all-in, solar panels and wind turbines all over the place, constantly hacking price spikes so it was close to $800 or higher all the drat time... It was a giant frantic clusterfuck of trying to protect your power plants and wreck everybody else's for god knows how long , until some jackass built a launch pad and saved enough to buy me out. Should've paid more attention to stocks. Offworld Trading Company: Space Business rear end in a top hat Simulator 2015. Clearly, Mars is where we deported all the ArcheAge pedos. 
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Feb 17, 2015 06:24
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I saw a video of this the other night by Zhatt (and his friend), I was intrigued: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb-3tVbsilo Edit: I do like the fact that humans are launching giant Soyuz rockets from the surface of mars to Earth(?) or some other colony drunkill fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Feb 17, 2015 |
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Feb 17, 2015 06:40
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drunkill posted:I saw a video of this the other night by Zhatt (and his friend), I was intrigued: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb-3tVbsilo Honestly, it'd make a good screen saver. Just watch rockets lifting off over and over again. Won my first game as Robot. I like how they can pour food into the offworld market to make a killing since they don't need it.
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Feb 17, 2015 21:10
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It's a good game with high potential but they need a handbook, wiki or something, anything to explain how things work. I got horribly beaten on the scavenger tutorial and only noticed on the second try that you could just buy extra claims from the black market. I was wondering how the hell the AI had all that stuff and then built 4 launch pads. Learning by doing is painful in an RTS, while I'm trying to find new items that may have been switched on and fiddling around to see how to get the best bonuses, the AI just cranks it out and stomps me. I'm sure they'll update the tutorial to actually teach players things before the real release. I saw there was a patch today, ongoing development releases is a good sign too.
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Feb 18, 2015 02:04
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Is this game worth $35 right now? I'm wary of Early Access games in general, but a $40 Early Access game seems kind of ridiculous.
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Feb 19, 2015 04:04
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God, I swore to myself that I"m done with Early Access and pre-orders in general, but when it's Soren Johnson the temptation is definitely there.
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Feb 19, 2015 05:21
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This is probably the first early access game I've bought that I didn't immediately regret. The multiplayer is really fun right now, partly because no one is quite sure what the best route is, if there is one. No idea if the SP campaign is any good.
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Feb 19, 2015 06:12
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Playing with people is more fun than the single player if only because people are less predictable than AI. The AI doesn't intentionally dick you over out of things like spite, though it is programmed to hold grudges if you gently caress with it. Otherwise the AI just do their own thing. People will actively gently caress with each other by doing things like intentionally claiming a hex next to another person's hq on the other side of the map just to prevent them from having that hex. I've managed to win my last couple games going through the same basic setup each time. I'm hoping they add more things to help gently caress whoever is in first because if you know what you're doing, its not hard to stay there.
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Feb 19, 2015 07:56
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