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 Just launched - 25% off in Steam. 34% of the deluxe edition which includes an extra key for a friend  Official site Launch trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOjeepczC6g Corporate profile Offworld Trading Company is the latest offering from Soren Johnson, a name you might be familiar with - he was the lead designer for Civilization IV. So you might expect something good and this game is something excellent. I've only played a bit of the game in its current, launched version, but I played a fair bit in Early Access and it was showing a lot of promise, and that promise seems to have borne out. This game is graphically beautiful and the UI is very well refined, which is important because it's the kind of game where you need to react very quickly to fluctuations in the market, if you want to do well. A lot of people have been describing it as a financial RTS - you have to, in real-time, strategically manage your production chain to take advantage of constant fluctuations in the prices of commodities. So what does it compare to? Consensus from critics seems to be that it's incomparable. I'm tempted to call it a tycoon game (indeed it has reminded some people of Moon Tycoon), and the closest comparison I can think of is multiplayer Transport Tycoon, but it's really not comparable to that at all because the way you compete with opponents goes far beyond just snapping up land and transport links. For a tycoon game, there's a lot more interaction between players. This game seems to stand alone in its own genre (for now). The market environment Offworld Trading Company is set on a future Mars, with colonies being built and companies competing to mine resources and manufacture products to supply those colonies and the offworld markets. You have to prospect for resources, claim land (the game is tile-based), then build your mines, quarries and factories. Upgrading your HQ is a key performance indicator (I'm going to do this a lot) - it allows you to get more land claims, which allows you expand your operation and generate more money. The game gets complex with a number of ways to influence your own (and others') productivity. You can develop upgrades to certain industries (such as 25% extra water extraction, that kind of thing), fight for one-player-only patents (such as carbon scrubbing, which allows you to depend less on mining carbon or buying it from the market), and the notorious Black Market, which offers the players a selection of underhanded dirty tricks to target other players with, like various forms of sabotage and theft. You can also manipulate the market to arbitrarily force prices up or down by putting out misinformation about shortages or surpluses. Winning the game requires a little more thought than just being the first to reach X amount of money. Instead, you have to buyout your opponents, by purchasing the stock in their company. They can purchase their own stock, which makes it more difficult for you to buy. If you buyout a player, they become a subsidiary and a source of revenue, potentially accelerating the game to a conclusion. This mechanic is slightly complicated by the fact that the share price of each player fluctuates according to their management of their assets - if they fall too far in debt, their stock price plummets and they can be bought out much more easily. You have to pick and choose which player is best to buy stock in - the one who's the threat and might buy you out later, or the one who is cheap and ripe for exploitation? Employee handbook The game is mostly played out in the side-bar, full of numbers and somewhat daunting at first sight. All the commodities are listed, along with your current stock in them, the rate at which you are producing them (or buying them from the market), and - most importantly - the price. The prices constantly go up and down, so you have to keep an eagle-eye on them a good portion of the time.  The fluctuations in price aren't random: demand for any given commodity drives the price up, and supply brings it down. If someone is buying steel, then the price goes up, and selling steel at that nice high price becomes a good idea. If you're producing steel, you're probably buying iron, so the price for that goes up, and mining it becomes a good idea (doing both sets up a nice synergy). Conversely, selling stuff sends the price down. Right from the get-go there is demand in the form of the colony. Each game produces a slightly different colony, but all colonies will have habitats that constantly put demand out for water, oxygen and food, and as the colony expands that demand only goes up. So getting into the water market early on can be a quick win, especially as each player's HQs also put demand out for these resources, and water is needed for fuel which is needed for transport of materials around the map. The colony will also sometimes exert some demand for glass, electronics or chemicals, which can be big money-makers down the line. But if everyone gets in on drilling for water, then the market will be flooded (ha) and the price will collapse. Prices can routinely fluctuate between about $5 and $300 (especially for power), so you really can't afford to leave a facility lying around producing poo poo at a poo poo price when you have limited land to build on. Bulldozing facilities and replacing them with whatever the market wants is definitely a core competency, even if that means building a wind turbine on the only rich seam of aluminum around. There is a secondary market - the offworld market - where prices for commodities are sky-high. I'm not sure what controls the prices (it may be random) but they tend to go way beyond the onworld prices, so if you can rustle up enough cash or materials to build a launchpad, you can send your products into space for a fuckload of money. I find rushing to build one of these is a good way to get ahead, but you might have to eyeball the offworld prices first to see just how much of an advantage is waiting in the wings. A huge factor in the game is the idea of adjacency bonus: extra 50% production for a facility of the same type next to an existing one, 75% for two, etc. Three in a triangle formation will collectively produce 75% extra for each, which is like having more than 5 of that facility, not just 3. Given that claims are limited and you can't just go around building everywhere, having these little clusters is definitely best practice - but leaves you wide open to Black Market tactics which can often target a string of adjacent facilities. There's also advantages to building adjacent to your HQ. I only mention this because I can then use the term touching base. The competition Steam group for goons: GoonOffworld The game supports multiplayer, which I suspect might be the only good way to play the game. I say this because the AI is simply too good at analysing the figures and multi-tasking to make the best moves in single-player, especially at normal-pace game speed. I can't win on the AI's level (yet) and even at easier levels I find myself playing in Snail mode and pausing frequently to take stock (ha) of the situation. That said, I'm having a ton of fun in SP so don't let that thought turn you off. I'll expand on this when I've played more multiplayer. Induction seminar Arumba has a lot of good videos on the game, including a lot of pre-launch multiplayer. This video appears to cover the campaign for the launch version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHWb_IsM1HU A skirmish game by EnterElysium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99Mx1dZ9j40 Here's a multiplayer game between Zultar and Soren himself. He has been posting a few MP games on his channel recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XbCJBY0Ya0 Deathtacticus streams MP games on Twitch. Facility tour     (If you have any content for this OP, feel free to PM me) Microplastics fucked around with this message at 06:41 on May 5, 2016 |
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May 2, 2016 18:16
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Man, does anyone have ANY thoughts on strategy here? I'm still wrapping my head around what my early/mid game objectives should even be. Obviously I want to make a ton of money so I can buy out my opponent, and avoid debt enough that I have a high stock value myself to make it hard to be bought, but aside from that everything is just so FLUID that I don't really even have a good grasp on how to accomplish that. Like I guess I want to be making Steel early on (unless I am the scavengers) so I can upgrade my base without debt? But the game totally allows me to just buy Steel too! And how much does asctusl resource location matter? Transport costs are a bit more, but it's not intuitive to me how much that really adds up to. This game is just fundamentally different from ANYTHING I've played.
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May 2, 2016 21:48
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Hubis posted:This game is just fundamentally different from ANYTHING I've played. Indeed! That's what I like about it, and my first experiences were a lot of "I don't know what I'm doing" as well. (edit: I'm in the process of turning this into a Beginners' Strategy post) My top tip is: get comfortable with the idea of repurposing your property. It's easy, I think, for new players to plop a carbon quarry on a rich source of carbon and then think "well that's that sorted, I'll be mining carbon there for the rest of the game!" But it's a trap! If the carbon price tanks, you're wasting a perfectly good plot digging for pennies when you could be manufacturing top-space-dollar. Kill that mine off and replace it with a factory or a power plant that'll make money. Sure, you might need to ship resources to it (and the carbon is wasted), but it's about the profit. In my games I'm routinely alternating between mining whatever's there, and building factories. A key thing to remember is that all the extraction buildings (pumps, quarries, mines) are completely free - so bulldozing is not worth crying over. Newbie faction: Play with robotic first. You can somewhat ignore fuel, food, oxygen (and therefore water) early on, because you won't be auto-buying it. It makes things simpler to digest and you're less likely to accidentally end up in horrendous debt (auto-buying is funded by borrowing). First buildings: Everybody (except scavenger) is going to want steel and aluminum to do their early-game HQ upgrades, so get a mine on aluminum and iron and some steel mills. You'll want to hang on to what you need to upgrade but can sell the surplus. Power: Keep a close eye on the price of power - not only does it fluctuate a lot, but you can't not auto-buy it, and you borrow money to pay for it, so if the price goes up and you're consuming more than you're producing, your debt will spiral out of control. Not to mention other players will make a killing if they get in power and you don't. The pivot to water: can vary in timing but you'll want to at least plan where you'll stake your claim to get the most effective water sourcing (remember the adjacency bonus). If water is rare, you might want to get your claims down and build wells even while the price is low. A few good (I think) habits:
I'm by no means a good player at this game judging by my performance in skirmishes, so maybe someone else will have better insights. Microplastics fucked around with this message at 18:31 on May 6, 2016 |
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May 2, 2016 22:48
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Nice write up, I bought this during Early Access but only played a few online matches, are there lot of people playing it now? Might have to give it some more time
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May 2, 2016 23:03
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I've been really on the fence about buying this, but I think I'm going to do it once I have some time to sink a few hours in. I've been watching some streams and videos on youtube, and the multiplayer seems especially fun. Zultar has a good tutorial series and is running some community tournaments for the game, so maybe add him to the OP if you want. Also, this guy streams on Twitch and just steamrolls people in multiplayer. I watched him for about two hours last night and he seemed to be really good.
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May 3, 2016 01:33
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Just saw this described somewhere as basically "What if Settlers of Catan were StarCraft?"
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May 3, 2016 15:45
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Hubis posted:This game is just fundamentally different from ANYTHING I've played. Yeah its great. I also am stuck in "what do I even do?" mode. At least since the last time I played they added a bunch of tutorials and I finally managed to beat a skirmish against the AI. My only suggestion is sticking with one starting HQ and work on a starting build since each is a little bit unique.
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May 3, 2016 16:00
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This game just got the Penny-Arcade bump, so servers should be a bit more lively. I'm considering buying in, since it's on sale, but I am terrible at RTS's in general. Is this a little closer to micromanged simcity rather than StarCraft?
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May 3, 2016 16:50
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Everblight posted:This game just got the Penny-Arcade bump, so servers should be a bit more lively. I'm considering buying in, since it's on sale, but I am terrible at RTS's in general. Is this a little closer to micromanged simcity rather than StarCraft? No, it's more supply chain management. A better comparison might be made with Anno, but with fewer commodities and wildly fluctuating prices, and you don't build a city (disclaimer: I've not played Anno much) For what it's worth I suck at StarCraft. A combat RTS has a big focus on army positioning, fog of war, etc. This game has a different kind of focus which I think is easier to manage. Like any RTS though, microing is optional in single player, and essential in multiplayer if you don't want to be slaughtered. The nature of the microing though, is a world away from your usual RTS micro. (Will update OP later and turn my second post into a bit more of a startup strategy guide) Microplastics fucked around with this message at 18:13 on May 3, 2016 |
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May 3, 2016 18:08
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It seems like the initial build order is 1x Iron Mine 2x Steel Mills into upgraded main base and then (whatever you actually wanted to do). I watched a few replays and that was across the board the main opening gambit. Anyone have any commentary or insight? Like when is it worth it to pivot into an early Water Pump or whatever?
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May 3, 2016 18:30
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This game looks so intriguing. Shame there is just lots and lots of games coming out around now, RTSs even.
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May 3, 2016 20:14
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Is there much of a marketing push going on for this game? Steamspy suggests less of an uptake than I'd hoped for something so innovative.
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May 3, 2016 20:34
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What's the deal with the 'quantity' for electricity? All I've done is play the first tutorial, but it fluctuated constantly and I don't get how it's a dollar amount and not like a quantity of electrical generation or something.
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May 4, 2016 00:25
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attackmole posted:What's the deal with the 'quantity' for electricity? All I've done is play the first tutorial, but it fluctuated constantly and I don't get how it's a dollar amount and not like a quantity of electrical generation or something. Electricity doesn't stockpile- it's permanently on auto-sell. You just sell any excess you produce.
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May 4, 2016 00:38
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Panzeh posted:Electricity doesn't stockpile- it's permanently on auto-sell. You just sell any excess you produce.
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May 4, 2016 00:42
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jBrereton posted:I remember there being some research project to store it in the EA builds, has that changed at all? Yeah, it'll give you a stockpile, though it is limited.
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May 4, 2016 00:45
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Soren gave me thousands of hours of the best 4x I've ever played, so I owe the guy to say the least. But this game just looks so alien I have no idea if I'll enjoy it. I like the comparison to Transport Tycoon, but fiddling with finances sounds utterly dull to me.
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May 4, 2016 01:02
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I really wish there was a way to buy this without giving Stardock any money. The game seems like exactly what I'd like. If only they'd managed to get a decent publisher.
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May 4, 2016 01:04
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Once you realize the idea is not to maximize your income per se but to buy out all your opponents which generally involves loving with them, the strategy opens up. It's kinda weird because this kind of game is almost never set up to be competitive but this one is and it's kinda cool.
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May 4, 2016 01:05
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frest posted:It seems like the initial build order is 1x Iron Mine 2x Steel Mills into upgraded main base and then (whatever you actually wanted to do). Well, unless you are the Scavengers at least. I've been doing "Aluminum/Iron/Steel Mill" but I usually end up with too much aluminum before long, so yeah the better bet is probably just buying the aluminum you need from the market at the start. There's also a tremendous amount of thought involved with demolishing and then rezoning production structures that I have only barely begun to grasp. One move I do is putting things like Glass Kilns or Electronics on Silicon: generally raw silicon goes up in price later on in the game, so it begins to make economic sense to trade output for increased raw material supply.
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May 4, 2016 01:50
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Panzeh posted:Electricity doesn't stockpile- it's permanently on auto-sell. You just sell any excess you produce. Cool, thanks.
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May 4, 2016 02:05
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I really like this game a lot. Not that I am any good at it. I really like the style of game play that Offworld provides. I have barely scratched the surface of how to play the game, it just seems to have so much potential depth. I wasn't happy about giving Stardock either... but like has been mentioned.. Civ 4 was an amazing game for me, so I felt ok with it. As far as starting strategies go, I use the Robot HQ so I don't have to worry about providing food and water out the gate.
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May 4, 2016 22:06
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What's the beef with Stardock exactly? Mid 90s laywering shenanigans?
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May 4, 2016 22:17
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Phone posted:What's the beef with Stardock exactly? Mid 90s laywering shenanigans? The ceo is a garbage person iirc
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May 4, 2016 22:28
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I had his name already in my Wikipedia history... Oh! That type of garbage person.
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May 4, 2016 23:05
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Goons, we should all get together and play a big multiplayer game. It's a new genre that we're all really into and we're all admittedly terrible at it. How many chances like this are we going to get?
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May 4, 2016 23:57
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I just picked this up. Grabbed the bonus edition w/ extra maps + a gift key for $40 and split it with a buddy, so basically got the game for $20. No idea what to expect though. I've played a decent amount of sc2 and civ a long time ago so expecting some type of weird hybrid + a stock trading game?
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May 5, 2016 00:20
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Anyone out there want to split a $40 two-pack with me? Edit: Someone just contacted me. That was fast. Caedar fucked around with this message at 03:16 on May 5, 2016 |
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May 5, 2016 03:12
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I did a bad thing. I made a Steam Group. GoonOffworld, currently public.
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May 5, 2016 04:29
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I'm in it, I'm the first member. I'm so cool. Make sure you capitalize it like he wrote it though or it won't show up.
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May 5, 2016 04:41
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I bought this while it was early access a while back but never played it. I'd be down for giving it a go.
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May 5, 2016 05:07
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Just blind-bought a two-pack, so if you got  to burn letting your colonists die of thirst on Mars, PM me.
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May 5, 2016 05:07
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I'm down for playing some, I'm in the group too.
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May 5, 2016 05:10
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I just played a multiplayer game where everything seemed to be going great - I maxed out my hq, had 6 factories producing glass (with the price holding at a steady 400), totally optimized, and just finished researching teleportation when I looked up and saw my share price was half what all the other players' were at. I couldn't do anything but watch in terror as my ten bar stock buffer inched back at greedy-cheeto-finger-click pace as some unknown rear end in a top hat bought me out. 10/10 would get :bernget:ed again
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May 5, 2016 05:14
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Keystoned posted:I just picked this up. Grabbed the bonus edition w/ extra maps + a gift key for $40 and split it with a buddy, so basically got the game for $20. No idea what to expect though. I've played a decent amount of sc2 and civ a long time ago so expecting some type of weird hybrid + a stock trading game? I'm not sure where the comparison to StarCraft 2 is coming from, to be honest. It's set in space. Is there something else I'm missing? I've only played the demo for SC2 so I'm happy to be enlightened. It's certainly not comparable to Civ and I've played a fuckload of Civ. There is base-building, of sorts, but not city-building. I like to compare it to Transport Tycoon because you never directly build a city in that game, but your actions as a company fuel (and benefit from) the growth of the towns you connect. In this game, there's a colony, but your interaction with it doesn't go much further than "It wants stuff, sell it to them" dylguy90 posted:I just played a multiplayer game where everything seemed to be going great - I maxed out my hq, had 6 factories producing glass (with the price holding at a steady 400), totally optimized, and just finished researching teleportation when I looked up and saw my share price was half what all the other players' were at. I couldn't do anything but watch in terror as my ten bar stock buffer inched back at greedy-cheeto-finger-click pace as some unknown rear end in a top hat bought me out. I dread my first MP game, I'm going to get slaughtered  My guess is they were either shipping stuff offworld and just making more money, or your debt kept rising and tanked your share price. Post your replay! (Documents/My Games/Offworld/Replays)
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May 5, 2016 06:52
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It's actually really fun once you get a few games in.
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May 6, 2016 04:13
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It's a lot more straightforward than it was in the beta, what you're supposed to do. They sorta painted some lovely flavor on it but at heart this is a fast-paced boardgame; and the comparisons to Starcraft aren't inaccurate, you just need no APM skills. I think very high level strategies are going to eventually be developed for OWTC.
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May 6, 2016 23:43
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I've been watching some more streams and I enjoy watching Blues and King Morgan play. They are pretty good at talking and explaining their thought processes while playing the game, and at the moment they're the top 2 ranked players at 4 FFA. I'm winning most of my skirmish matches on Manager difficulty right now, but I don't really have a feel for all the corporations and I like using the pause button too much to play online right now, though I really want to get into it soon.
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May 6, 2016 23:44
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2v2 No Black Market for 20 mins GoGoGo Edit: That's kinda weird, weekends are FFA only and weekdays are 1v1 only, for ranked...hunh boar guy fucked around with this message at 00:09 on May 7, 2016 |
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May 6, 2016 23:51
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Efexeye posted:It's a lot more straightforward than it was in the beta, what you're supposed to do. They sorta painted some lovely flavor on it but at heart this is a fast-paced boardgame; and the comparisons to Starcraft aren't inaccurate, you just need no APM skills. I think very high level strategies are going to eventually be developed for OWTC. Yeah, I wish they added more flavor to the different factions, because there's just a superficial layer right now. I understand why all the buildings have to look the same, but they could have at least made the transport ships for each faction look different. And the campaign mode is completely different than what I expected. It's not bad, but it's not really appealing. It's really a multiplayer game with some extra singleplayer slapped on so people wouldn't complain about the price I guess. quote:Edit: That's kinda weird, weekends are FFA only and weekdays are 1v1 only, for ranked...hunh Zak2k12 fucked around with this message at 00:18 on May 7, 2016 |
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May 7, 2016 00:16
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