Make buyouts less anti-climatic

from Stardock Forums

When you own all our own shares, being bought out is really anti-climatic. No advance warning is received and you do not know how close the other players are to buying you out. The game just ends abruptly.

In the real world, buy outs are announced to the board of directors ahead of time and a grace period is often implemented to allow the government to evaluate the impact of the company merger. The CEO is not fired at the moment a buyout bid is announced.

Often the bid are announced in the market to allow other companies to bid as well and the bids may be raised multiple times before being accepted.

Suggestion:
When a buyout bid is entered by another player, there is an announcement of the bid to all players and a grace period is started. During this period, the bought out company will be given the option to pay off debt, sell resources, manipulate the market etc. to raise their stock price. The player placing the bid would then have to increase the bid or the buyout is cancelled.

To make it more interactive for everyone, there could be a auction to allow all players to bid on the company when the grace period ends.

The lack of information for the bought out player is also contributing to the anti-climating effect. This could perhaps be resolved by revealing the cash holdings, resource stocks and resource income of the player making the bid.

 

17,583 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Offworld Forums Top

Thanks for your suggestions!

I agree we have work to do to make buyouts more exciting, I'm not sure how to do that without making the game more complex. I like your idea of having counter-bids and so forth, but when you're the one buying someone out, you sort of just want to have it over with rather than having someone you're trying to buy out wriggle out from under the buyout. And then, after the buyout attempt, someone else can try to buy them out again and the game could just stall.

This is something we're thinking a lot about and we don't have perfect answers to yet.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks for you reply and feedback.

My impression after playing this game for a few days is that the endgame is all about buying out the other players.

In many games, the endgames are often an important and climatic event. In RTS games big armies clash together. In RPG games you have big boss fights.

Endgames are all about winning or lossing and I wouldn't mind some complexity in that regard.

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Reply #3 from Offworld Forums Top

Ditto what Tempus0 said. I'm playing skirmishes on "manager" and the computers always go for me first. I get bought out the moment that I get 2 advanced factories (glass, chemical, or electronics). I've played multiple strategies to prevent this and the only thing I can do is get lucky enough to have the funds to buy out my stock early, but even that doesn't work because the value of my stock at that point is so low (only $10-12k usually) that they can pay the full price to buy me out. 

Reply #4 from Offworld Forums Top

Talk about a necro.

 

Anyways. "Lucky" has very little to do with how much you have in funds, barring a bad surplus or dust storm. It is quite possible you're opening up weaknesses for yourself by not defending yourself before upgrading too far, or that you're simply not playing out the early game in an effective fashion. Most players on this forum will consistently destroy manager difficulty AI, but without knowing details of the match it's difficult to provide advice.

 

Reply #5 from Offworld Forums Top

mbe some youtube guides will help you *cough*

Reply #6 from Offworld Forums Top

Quoting Oakesky, reply 3

Ditto what Tempus0 said. I'm playing skirmishes on "manager" and the computers always go for me first. I get bought out the moment that I get 2 advanced factories (glass, chemical, or electronics). I've played multiple strategies to prevent this and the only thing I can do is get lucky enough to have the funds to buy out my stock early, but even that doesn't work because the value of my stock at that point is so low (only $10-12k usually) that they can pay the full price to buy me out. 
End of Oakesky's quote

 

Here is what you do. 

When you start a lobby change game rules to:

1. Reveal map on

2. advanced sabotage on

3. Stock Delay on

And go as Manager. (these are the standard Multiplayer Rules)

Practise 1 Faction at the time. I would suggest that you begin with Expansive > Robotic > Scientific > Scavenger.

 

Ingame you see a debt Timer that goes off from 150k to 0k. As a beginner you should found atleast <20k debt just to be safe. 

When you founded, you first want to have the rescource that are required for upgrades. ( you can see that in the bottom left corner if you hover over upgrade with the mouse)

 

You get 3 claims to start with:

Expansive: 1 iron((High)in a patch of Iron), 1 Aluminum(High), 1 steel mill.

Robotic: Same as Expansive

Scientific: 2 Steel mills on iron and 1 aluminum

Scavenger: 2 Carbon, 1 aluminum

 

Try to get the Rescources with the most quantity. 

Level 2:

Expansive: 1 Iron, 3 steel mills

Robo: 1 Iron, 2 steel Mills

Scientific: 1 steel mill, 1 water, 1 food  (Water and food connected)

Scavenger: 1 water(high!), 2 food

Level 3:   This level is to get Power running

Expansive: 1 water, 2 food(change 1 steel mill into food), 2 Geothermal plan (if non on the map go Solar connected to your base)

Robo: 1 water, 2 geothermal plants(or solar)

Scientific: 2 food (change water into food, total food 3), 2 geothermal plants(or solar)

Scavenger: 1 geo and 2 Wind turbines

The food you need to sell down and buy glass with.

And after that look which Rescource is making the most money. Buy into your own stock(atleast 5 stocks) if you want to play safe. Work yourself to an Offworld and gg.

Try out the patent lab/hacker array/Pleasure Dome/Enginering labs on level 4.