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Fundamental Critiques and Suggestions for the Game

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Fundamental Critiques and Suggestions for the Game

from Offworld Forums

Offworld Trading Company

Fundamental Critiques and Suggestions for the Game

 

Let me preface this by saying I was once an avid PC gamer in the 90’s and early 00’s. In the past 10 years I have played primarily console games; however, the lack of meaningful strategy games on console has made me return to PC in an effort to find a game that Offworld Trading Company’s description and promise fits perfectly. I have extensively played Civilization III and Civilization IV – both of which are excellent games attesting to the competence, capability, inspiration, and giftedness of Soren Johnson as a game designer, and his teams in bringing those designs to fruition. The below critiques and suggestions are meant purely to transform this game from what it currently is to what I would like to play and what I feel the designers and other developers at Mohawk Games and Stardock Games want and intend it to be.


Note: In the following discussions my use of the term 'auto-sell' means the auto-sell of all and/or specific incoming resources, not resources already in storage, unless specifically stated otherwise. (Important Note: you can still, at current market prices, manually buy and store more of a given resource and sell stored resources - the auto-sell of incoming resources does not eliminate this important facet of gameplay) Also, my use of 'auto-supply' or 'auto-buy' means the auto-buy of necessary resources only when the output is profitable at current market prices, again, unless specifically stated otherwise.


1.The benefits of allowing auto-sell and having it be the default state for all resource types.

Speculation (i.e., a transaction that has risk of losing all or most of the initial outlay in expectation of substantial gains) is currently the default mode of operation of the markets in Offworld Trading Company. Without auto-sell being the default option for all resource types, the inevitable outcome is inventory buildup (due to a player being unable to constantly sell their items while dealing with other items in the game) and the risk that the price of a good will drop enough to render the sale of the accumulated goods at a loss rather than a profit. The profits displayed in the game windows are calculated at current market rates. This is useless if the default option is inventory accumulation, for which a price drop could lead to a loss rather than the displayed profit. Furthermore, the auto-sale of incoming resources would allow for a less volatile market price and a much more stable and accurate reflection of current supply and demand, thus allowing for easier and more effective short-, mid-, and long-term economic planning.

As stated above, my belief is that auto-sell should be the default option for all items, thus preventing speculation from being the default state of the game; however, by also providing a toggle switch option to turn auto-sell off/on for specific resources, the speculation risk it entails becomes a possible beneficial strategy due to the potential gains from the sale of accumulated assets which have experienced a rise in price, and the potential market manipulation (see: surplus, and resulting decrease in price) made possible by flooding the market with a glut of accumulated goods.

Also, another important improvement would be for storage to be required to accumulate resources. The HQ could hold a limited amount of resources, and, like with power and the Energy Vault, a special storage structure should be required to store further amounts of any given resource (Note: the structure could hold a certain number of any resource type and any combination thereof. [i.e., There doesn’t need to be a specific structure for each resource type.]). Since each storage structure should hold only a limited amount of resources, more would have to be built to allow further accumulation, thus causing the player to need to manage the benefits of storage (and hence speculation) versus other uses of the tiles in question.

 

 In short: I don’t want my entire game time to be consumed by manually and constantly clicking ‘sell’ for potentially 20 different items just to avoid the risks of speculation, not to mention just to fulfill a basic game mechanic.


2. The benefits of auto-supply as the default state for processing structures - with the state being smart enough to not buy resources when the output is currently selling at a loss.

This prevents the annoying necessity of manually buying items for potentially dozens of different buildings just to avoid the frightening possibility of going bankrupt if left unchecked as the current game design proposes. As I further explain in my third point below, it reduces micromanagement in the game and allows the player to focus on what I believe the designers feel is the true purpose of the game.

Note 1: an important flaw of the current game design is that even when auto-supply is disabled, a processing structure could still produce a loss if a supply structure is producing the processing structure's input at a sufficient loss. There is currently nothing in place to prevent this from being assumed solely by looking at the processing structure, and the only way is to constantly check your supply chain. Having things automatically not be produced and the buildings shutting off if not profitable would eliminate this further micromanagement task. It follows that the building should turn back on automatically once the resource becomes profitable again.

Note 2: a combination of point one (i.e., auto-sell) and point two (i.e., modified auto-supply) being implemented would also result in the elimination of the problem that arises when buying a product from the market for use by a building for which input is not being produced by one's self - and then thinking it should be sold along with everything else (since no distinction is made from other resources) - when constantly manually selling things, thus causing a lack of input resources for the structure in question. This is a type of ‘circular’ problem.


3. Microeconomics (i.e., micromanaging) vs. Macroeconomics (i.e. strategy)

Implementing the above suggestions/features would change the game from being micromanagement focused to a macro-strategic economic competition focused game. The prime motivation for eliminating the micromanagement is to allow the player to focus on the effects of efficiency research, patents, specialty buildings, black market manipulation - and last but not least, the higher level (and in my opinion more fun) strategy of managing opportunity costs.


a) Opportunity Cost

Opportunity cost is defined as ’The cost of choosing to use resources for one purpose measured by the sacrifice of the next best alternative for using those resources.’ As a simple example, the production of water may be producing a reasonable profit, and it’s use as an input for a hydroponic farm is also returning a further substantial profit; however, if water’s use as an input for an electrolysis plant gives a higher profit than the hydroponic farm, it is only reasonable to destroy (assuming all claimable tiles are in use, thus creating scarcity of tiles) the hydroponic farm and replace it with an electrolysis plant. The opportunity cost of running a hydroponic farm in said situation is the sacrifice of the higher profit from the electrolysis plant. One can see how complex this can become when considering the number of possible input/output chains, including those with multiple inputs and outputs, combined with constantly fluctuating prices in the game. It is impossible to focus on the incredibly fun aspects of maximizing profits via optimizing for opportunity costs in this and other situations when micromanaging all the other elements described in my previous points, and to some extent, my upcoming points below.


4. User Interface and Information Display Suggestions

a) Have a more noticeable and perhaps quicker ping of green or red when the price of an item increases or decreases.


The game does correctly account for the effects of surpluses and shortages and does not have them reversed as I state below - my apologies.

b ) Surplus versus shortage

One of the things in the game that triggers a pet peeve of mine is when the game displays ‘surplus’ as portending a coming rise in prices, and a ‘shortage’ as a decline in prices. This is exactly opposite of what is taught in economics textbooks. A surplus occurs when the current market price is too high and thus creates too much supply and not enough demand. The correction is to decrease the price until supply matches demand; Conversely, a shortage occurs when the market price is too low and thus creates too much demand and not enough supply. The correction is to increase the price until demand matches supply.

In short: A surplus results in a decrease in price while a shortage results in an increase of prices. The game reverses these basic economic concepts (i.e., currently, in-game, a surplus causes a rise in market price while a shortage causes a decrease in market price).


c) Display of costs, profit, and loss in the screen that appears when hovering over a structure

Upon playing the game for the first time, I believed (perhaps quite naively) that as long as the +/- $‘x’ value listed in the lower right corner of the screen that appears when hovering over a structure was positive, I was making a profit off the item/structure in question. I assumed that the +/- $‘x’ took into consideration all the costs and revenues associated with the sale of the item at current market prices; however, upon my fourth play through it dawned on me that this number, while factoring the various costs of resource inputs, failed to include the cost of the power (and potentially fuel) required for the building to operate. Yes, the screen does show the cost of power and fuel, but it does not automatically factor these in when calculating the (what I believe is intended to be) current profit displayed in the bottom right corner of said screen. With the current setup, a player might believe their high iron mine is profitable even at a market price of $1 for a unit of iron when in fact highly fluctuating power and fuel costs will likely make it unprofitable at that price, in which case the building should display the actual associated loss rather than a perhaps misleading profit. The processing buildings include the market price of the resource inputs while factoring the profit of the building – power and transport fuel costs, being another input, should also be included in the calculation of profitability for every building. *This reduces micromanagement by eliminating the need for me to constantly do mental math to manually factor in the price of power/fuel inputs*

 

In short – include the costs of all input resources, including power and fuel, in the final calculation of net profit or loss for a building.


d) Further refinements to user interface for profit/loss determination

Note: This is closely related to point 4.c)

Previously in this post I spoke of opportunity cost and its management in-game. Currently the only way to evaluate opportunity cost is to hover over a particular building type, perform the necessary manual mental calculations to include power and fuel costs in the profitability of the item, and then compare this to the structure which represents the next best use of the input in question (again, manually doing power/fuel cost adjustments for that structure). To do this comparison, one must (again) hover over an already-existing structure of the type in question, or hover over its building construction icon which gives a summary of said information.

To alleviate this (further) micromanagement annoyance, there should be a quickly accessible screen that concisely summarizes the current profit and loss of all building types normalized to a certain standard. For instance, instead of listing the profit and loss of a default hydroponic farm based on 0.65 units of output, the P/L should be calculated for one unit of output since that is what the market price reflects and that is how it is sold. This should also be how the P/L for the screen which appears when hovering over a building is calculated.

If the hover-over screen displays power input cost, fuel input cost, and output price, it should also include a P/L term normalized to one unit, which, if further hovered over, gives one P/L amount adjusted for the actual output amount of the building and another P/L amount that is normalized to one unit – the sub-screen would then disappear once no longer hovered over.


e) Further quickly accessible screens to simplify micromanagement and tedious tasks

Another quickly accessible screen should list all your buildings by type, and if clicked, take you to the map location instantly. This would be useful on large/huge maps or to manage sprawling economic complexes. This would eliminate having to click the HQ, determine the color of said building, and trace it to its origin. Relating to the previous point [i.e., 4.d)], this screen could also display the P/L of each building.

I’m sure there are many other ‘summary’ screens that players might suggest.

 


In closing, this game is incredible as it stands. I have enjoyed every minute of the time I have spent playing it; however, I have not played it long enough to delve into its every intricacy. The above suggestions are based on what I consider a somewhat cursory (though I’ve played 5 hours so far) examination of the game. I hope to later provide even more detailed input about balancing variables, pacing, and gameplay mechanics; however, the above suggestions would serve to transform the game into an even more amazing product that is more readily accessible, more easily playable - without sacrificing depth of play, fun, and rewarding (and with a lesser emphasis on micromanagement! :) ).

 

Also, I apologize for my lack of brevity. I appreciate anyone who read this post in its entirety and did not simply post ‘wall-of-text’ as a response.


Thank you.

-TerranWarrior

118,858 views 36 replies
Reply #26 from Offworld Forums Top

Quoting Zultar327, reply 3

2) You're right that you almost never want to produce at a loss based on true market prices and, for that reason, auto-supply's current behavior can be seen as just a layer of tedious micromanagement. As you've mentioned, though, current market prices don't represent true values due to stockpiles, so there will be cases where producing at a loss makes sense. Producing at a loss when you have a monopoly (or near-monopoly) on a raw resource and a stockpile of it is the clearest example, as you'd want to keep the raw resource price high to prevent others from competing in those markets and you'd actually be making money from the manufacturing. Perhaps making auto-supply "smart" by default would be correct, with an extra button allowing you to tell buildings to continue to produce at a loss, though I do wonder if there might be technical drawbacks from this approach.
End of Zultar327's quote

Back again!

Another thought about the monopoly or near-monopoly mentioned in this quote and the other situations involving withholding resources from the market:

Unless someone can point out others, I believe the list of fundamental resources that don't require an input resource (other than initial cost of construction for the production building of course - and the opportunity cost) in-game is limited to these: power, water, iron, silicon, aluminum, and carbon. I can manufacture power, water, and carbon via constructing my own power plants and building ice/dry ice condensers or getting my carbon from the air. Your firm control of the limited number of resource deposits will possibly give you competitive advantage in these markets, but not a monopoly.

Regarding iron, silicon, and aluminum, let's assume there is a single high deposit of iron on the map. You control it and, as taught by socialists and according to the FTC, you have a monopoly with which you can drive up prices to seemingly limitless levels and keep your outrageous profit margins on the iron and steel markets. In-game, just as in real life, there are always alternatives to obtaining or replacing the monopolized resource. Once the map clears I can click 'Toggle' and compete in the race to claim the limited resource tile. Being slow, I probably wouldn't win. Using my time for other purposes I would, however, probably have enough money and time to perform - and win- the following race (any money spent or debt accrued would be evaluated against the benefits of my winning):

Build an Expansive HQ (thus reducing my need for your steel), spend $300 for steel to immediately upgrade my HQ to Level 2, Spend $3,400 on glass for a Patent Lab, spend $7,400 on chemicals and race for the slant drilling patent.

Unless you plan on using debt to somehow corner the markets for steel, glass, and chemicals immediately, I will create competition to the iron market via slant drilling, and use auto-selling consistently at the level that will bring me the maximum profit over time, not shortsighted unsustainable sums.

Also if you decided to glut the market with iron instead of using it in your steel mills and the resulting price reached $1, I would just buy it below my costs of producing it to give me a competitive advantage against you in the steel market.

If I were to lose the race and you took the slant drilling patent as well, I would simply have to use a hacker array to buy up the item at a reduced price, reducing demand for your item at your price in the process, or wait for a new resource discovery tile of iron to bid on, and overall just give you a very bad day to have to micromanage during all that time freed up by not clicking iron's sell button during its accumulation. I suppose I could also dynamite your iron mine if all else fails.

At the risk of getting kicked to the General Discussion Forum, I will mention this: As far as alternatives to resources in real-life, a nice example is when employers' labor costs get too high because the minimum wage jumped to $15/hour. At that point I would recommend reading about the rapid pace of advance being made toward inexpensive robotics and automation processes for insight as to a cheaper alternative, and how higher labor costs will only expedite the process. Also, setting prices above market level will create a surplus - in this case labor - with no way to correct by decreasing the price. Compare this to the trope that people earning more money will have more disposable income to spend, thus driving up demand and creating more jobs. The market reality only allows one correct answer.

I also haven't had time to thoroughly analyze this, but I believe, given my limited experience with playing the game on snail and pausing, that in general selling consistently to meet demand over a given time period, with profits you can keep track of with the aid of auto-selling, results in a more reliable and higher level of profits than hoarding the resource and attempting to sell at inflated prices. It would take control of variables over a relatively long period of time to determine this.

Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #28 from Offworld Forums Top

I think there's a disconnect here with the expectations of the monopoly. It is generally understood that there are alternatives for obtaining resources and prices eventually dropping, and the goal isn't necessarily to actually make extra money on the "monopolized" resource. However, much of the time forcing these alternative moves will allow you to gain an advantage in another area, as there is a greater cost associated with say setting up an advanced building to acquire a primary resource compared to simply placing a mine/quarry/pump. Let's say you do build a patent lab and get slant drilling immediately as you hit HQ level 2. That's at least 2 minutes of time and 1 claim of 4-5 available gone, as well as a VERY large investment of cash (which probably doesn't actually exist). Then you have to commit another claim to actually picking up the iron, so you have to hit HQ level 3 (buying a lot of steel), buy a claim from the BM (which you have no spare cash for after the PL play), or save a claim from HQ level 2, which means you're sacrificing a ridiculous amount of potential time producing another resource. Meanwhile, I'm hitting HQ 3 on the back of my steel/water/silicon, assaulting your patent lab if I care to to slow you down because you absolutely can't afford to defend it, and don't really care if you get into my iron market because I'm not trying to directly pull in cash from it, just force you into these alternate awkward play for the moment while I get into position to take more important resources around the map and establish a higher level HQ. The details of the scenario aren't particularly important, but much of the time when players artificially raise prices it is understood as a temporary measure to harm the opponent, not help yourself.

Reply #29 from Offworld Forums Top

Good rebuttal. Let’s examine another in-game situation that exists when a single player has sole control of in-game iron production and there are no in-game alternatives available (i.e., assuming they obtain the slant drilling patent, there are no other deposits, no new ‘iron discovery resource tile’ ever comes up for auction, and they defend their iron mine with a goon squad). If the player waits to sell the iron only once it has reached astronomical prices, how, and from whom, are the buyers purchasing and driving up the price of iron in the first place and during the mean time? The game produces a fundamental chicken and egg conundrum. Who receives the money these buyers are paying for the effectively non-existent iron supply? Not the producer, who has put none up for sale. I don’t believe the colony produces a +’x’ iron output value. I don’t believe there is a mythical rocket that routinely comes from Offworld to deliver supplies that are effectively not being produced (or not being produced whatsoever for that matter – how and from whom do you or the colony buy chemicals when no one has built a chemical lab?).

Assume that before the producer decides to sell their iron that somehow, using the mystical, effectively non-existent iron supply, the other players build all the elemental quarries they need, all other structures are built with no need to destroy and replace any of them, thus eliminating any further steel and iron demand.

When the seller decides to finally offload their iron (in particular all at once) to the local market, assuming it is for now more profitable than the Offworld Market, who at this point provides the seller with the enormous sum of money? Is it somehow the nonexistent entity that other players already paid and from whom they obtained their iron in the first place? Oh – I forgot – not only is there a mystical, non-existent, limitless supply of iron, there is now also a mystical, non-existent, and limitless demand for iron. (If the the non-Robotic seller is savy enough to build their own power plant and patent teleportation, there is still unlimited profit to be made at the astronomically low $1 mark for iron, again,  given that ethereal demand.)

How is this problem solved, and how are the myriad enigmatic situations that stem from it explained?

Oh wait, it’s a game, not the real world. I’m glad I didn’t bring the real world into it this time.

I’m pretty confident that this in-game problem being solved in-game would go a long way toward creating a properly functioning in-game marketplace.

Reply #30 from Offworld Forums Top

So, I can explain this. Thing is, I'm not sure you'd care about my explanations if you read this in the mood you was in when you posted this, because suspension of disbelief is a common thing found in pretty much every strategy game that exists. Your simple rebuttal to my explanations could be 'not good enough' and there the conversation ends. You seem to be looking for 'explanations' to problems that don't exist. If you look at everything in that way, your going to find problems. For example, how does a marine, a human being, cost 100 minerals and suddenly leaves a barracks when he never entered it in the first place? Answer: I don't care. Money goes in, unit comes out. I urge you to not go into this game with the mindset that it's an economic simulator, or even a game that has much bearing on reality at all. This isn't science fiction. A 'correct' ingame marketplace does not need to exist to make it a fun game.

 

That said, here's some potential explanations. If you've played the campaign, you know that the prices are determined by what happened in the previous missions. From that we can infer that there were other suppliers on mars/on asteriods that caused the prices to be what they are. When your buying resources initially, your buying from the colony which stockpiled resources from the global market in preperation for your landing. As you buy resources they start charging more for them, because their supply gets more and mroe limited. When altering the market prices your altering the local prices in the area, the more you mine the cheaper it gets from the intiial set price, your supposed 'job' afterall IS to lower the prices so that the colony can grow. This also helps answer the next question, who do you sell to? Why, the colony ofcourse. You could argue that that's stupid, the colony isn't going to have enough funds to pay for you. Well the truth is, they kinda do. They control your debt, they control your funds. They practically print money to give to you. But why oh why do they buy up your resources no matter the price? Well if it's cheap, they are happy to buy it up because they will be able to make a profit on teh global market at a later date. If it's expensive, one of 2 situations could exist: 1. they are getting desperate enough that they will readily buy from you anyways, becuase the oclony will fall apart without sufficient resources, the other is that they are obliged to buy anything you sell to them provided it's at the price they have set, because in the long run they are perfectly okay with a loss so long as the colony is functional. Tax payers money going down a sinkhole perhaps, but it's likely those were the terms as agreed before this mission began. The corporations profit because they make a profit, the governments profit because it was still cheaper than having them do it themselves.

 

Further notes:

Hacker arrays makes the colony think it has less than it actually has, stuff gets lost in storage all the time.

Teleportation cannot be used on the global market because it's only short-ranged teleportation.

Offworld markets travel to asteriods, not to other sectors of mars, so the prices can be radically different.

The prices always begin the same in multiplayer but not campaign because the assumption is that everyone in multiplayer is playing on the same timeline canonically, other games do this all the time, since there's more dead soldiers in call of duty than there are people on the planet at this point.

The colony has fusion reactors that allow them to turn on/off power as they meet the changing demand, but they'd much rather you make it and them buy it off you. Perhaps they genuinly are making a loss when they sell you power, but realise it's necissary for a functioning colony to initially sell at a loss

Random shortages and surpluses are due to events that happen causing the colony to expend their resources, lose resources in storage due to a databse error, or realise they have more than they thought due to a database error

Obviosly we've invented pocket dimensions at this point in order to keep storing all this stuff :P

Reply #31 from Offworld Forums Top
Quoting TerranWarrior, reply 29

Good rebuttal. Let’s examine another in-game situation that exists when a single player has sole control of in-game iron production and there are no in-game alternatives available (i.e., assuming they obtain the slant drilling patent, there are no other deposits, no new ‘iron discovery resource tile’ ever comes up for auction, and they defend their iron mine with a goon squad). If the player waits to sell the iron only once it has reached astronomical prices, how, and from whom, are the buyers purchasing and driving up the price of iron in the first place and during the mean time? The game produces a fundamental chicken and egg conundrum. Who receives the money these buyers are paying for the effectively non-existent iron supply? Not the producer, who has put none up for sale. I don’t believe the colony produces a +’x’ iron output value. I don’t believe there is a mythical rocket that routinely comes from Offworld to deliver supplies that are effectively not being produced (or not being produced whatsoever for that matter – how and from whom do you or the colony buy chemicals when no one has built a chemical lab?).

Assume that before the producer decides to sell their iron that somehow, using the mystical, effectively non-existent iron supply, the other players build all the elemental quarries they need, all other structures are built with no need to destroy and replace any of them, thus eliminating any further steel and iron demand.

When the seller decides to finally offload their iron (in particular all at once) to the local market, assuming it is for now more profitable than the Offworld Market, who at this point provides the seller with the enormous sum of money? Is it somehow the nonexistent entity that other players already paid and from whom they obtained their iron in the first place? Oh – I forgot – not only is there a mystical, non-existent, limitless supply of iron, there is now also a mystical, non-existent, and limitless demand for iron. (If the the non-Robotic seller is savy enough to build their own power plant and patent teleportation, there is still unlimited profit to be made at the astronomically low $1 mark for iron, again,  given that ethereal demand.)

How is this problem solved, and how are the myriad enigmatic situations that stem from it explained?

Oh wait, it’s a game, not the real world. I’m glad I didn’t bring the real world into it this time.

I’m pretty confident that this in-game problem being solved in-game would go a long way toward creating a properly functioning in-game marketplace.

End of TerranWarrior's quote

 

My understanding is that there is a effectively a neutral marketplace which determines all onworld resource values. It's important to note that players absolutely never buy or sell resources to each other, it is only ever through this neutral entity. If you would like an in game entity itself, the neutral colony can be looked at as the building that houses this market.

 

But as GS said, it's a game, I don't really care.

Reply #32 from Offworld Forums Top

Interesting. My initial thought with regard to a single neutral entity is that the entity would have effective monopoly power over their buy and sell prices.

 

All my previous smugness (I apologize) and the need for imaginative replies aside, I feel there might be a solution to the supply and demand problem without fundamentally disrupting the game. This would also eliminate the need for the creation of non-existent neutral parties. If the game were changed to determine the total aggregate demand  given the current input needs of all buildings presently existing in the game (construction projects and their inputs would have to averaged over time somehow), and aggregate supply (output) of every building presently existing within the game at each 'tick', an imbalance between the two would cause prices to either rise or fall at a reasonable rate (if you want that rate to be faster, crank up the speed. Allow us snail players to enjoy our slothful pace.) An increase in price would result from the shortage caused when aggregate demand exceeds aggregate supply. A decrease in price would result when aggregate supply exceeds aggregate demand. These changes in price would incentivize players to reconfigure their building arrangements in pursuit of the highest profit perfect balance would be nigh impossible.  Players could still hoard their resources, waiting for a rise in prices, however the sale price of any amount of hoarded good would be at the current market prices. You would run still run the risk of substantial reward with the accompanying enormous risk. The flooding would not affect the market price (This may be at odds with reality, but I analyzed the game recently, and when you pause the game, if the price reaches $500 and a player sells all at once, they get nearly the same amount as when I slowly sell the items 1 or 10 units at a time. If you want to start a riot, sell your goods to a group at $500 and have them hang around when the next group can buy the same amount of product at $1/unit.) Speculation would still be possible, and players would manually sell their resources at the market price. One might wonder what would happen if aggregate demand equaled aggregate supply. Would maximum profits have been reached, would prices ever change? Even without the effects of in-game random surpluses and shortages, hacker arrays, etc., a butterfly effect would occur with even the slightest action via the players. Black market actions could affect a change and imbalance of balance of the aggregates. As players race to exploit these new opportunities before their competition, further changes would occur, and just like differential equations shows and the sheer amount of information and misinformation in a market economy demonstrates, there will always be opportunities to adjust for and increase profit and the configuration and results of events would be unforeseen at many times. You could build extra farms to increase the aggregate "supply" of food, driving down prices, buy up as much as possible and then destroy the farms and claim the profits from resulting from the decrease in aggregate supply - I don't have time to elaborate, but there are risks inherent to this strategy, and it wouldn't be an exploit.

Evaluating profitability constantly would be needed, selling at current market prices would be the most risk free option, auto-selling as an option would ease the process, and the summary screens and addition of P/L terms and a summary screens as I mentioned previously would make all the readjustment needed given changes in prices.

I don't have time to further explain, but I think given my previous arguments one may see the benefit of this strategy.

 

The current system of price increasing by $2 when someone buys something and decreasing by $2 when someone sells something is far more shallow and doesn't represent a competitive market economy with supply and demand in my opinion. Supply and demand should be implemented as above.

(Sorry if this post is full of spelling errors, etc. -Really have to run. Have fun!)

Reply #33 from Offworld Forums Top

The question I would liek answered from you here is a simple one: Why? Why bother with all this extra stuff? Supply is defined as an amount of something supplied or available for use. The current game implementation reflects that, you sell resources, supply increases. The system you suggest involves a level of abstraction, speculation onn the part of other third-party entities. They see a lot of farms, so the price decreases even when theres no actual supply. That is not how a local economy works, but assumign it does that still leaves with yet another third party system put in place when you was all agaisnt magic numbers beforehand. This is also a complicated system for an already complex game, how do you explain that to people? Thirdly, what's the actual point of aggregate demand when there is actual demand that actually affects the prices put in place already? Nothing except rampant speculation is going to make demand seem a larger force than it is. Finally, I think you haven't quite thought through how this would affect gameplay. What currently happens is that the more profitable something is, the more people ove itno that market, the more supply the cheaper the godo then peopel mvoe out of it. By adding aggregate supply into this your simply speeding up that process, until it's a situation where no oen else can actually enter the profitable amrkets, because it wouldn't be profitale to do so because there is no time to make a return on investment. This leads to a stale game. Meanwhile, with aggregate demand jacking up the price on steel to insane levels people can't afford to transition or level up either, slowign down the game even furhter. The first into a market would have such an over-whelming advantage that it woudl not be fun. 'Well obviously there needs to be re-adjustments to how supply and demand affect the price should my implementation enter the game' you might say. Okay, fine, just understand that case that this game has been tweaked and altered and had formula's change for over a years worth of development. To radically alter the formula's now would be a nightmare to deal with, and even if it's implemented perfectly... so what? Why was this a good change? Why does a more complex system make a better system? The results would be: 'prices increase and decrease based on the players choices'. Currently it is: 'prices increase and decrease based on the players choices'. Even your example, the idea of making food but not selling it so you can buy it up and sell it later when it's more profitable, can be basically done in this game as it stands. You make food worthless, then when they get otu of food you buy it all up and there you go, they can't transition into it becasue the 'real' price makes it not worth transitioning into, but they are still buying food because tehy need to for lfie support, slowly raising the price of your stockpiled food. It's done all the time in high-level games. The only difference here would be that you woudl be giving the players mroe control over how the price changes, without actually supplying to the market itself.  That leads to exploitable mechanics, very exploitable mechanics.

 

With those thigns in mind, I ask again, why? Why do you feel the game needs new systems? For most people, the simple idea of 'prices go up when I buy and down when I sell' is already pretty difficult to comprehend in all it's entirety, and at the end fo the day, thsi game is NOT a simulation, it is a game; an economic RTS. There is no built-in need for it to mimic real-life, it only needs to mimic enough so that people can understand teh concepts. Call of duty has guns because peopel understand how shooting things works, but the game can jsut as easily have you shoot hearts out of your fingers and it still has the exact same gameplay. The gameplay is what is important here, first and foremost. Tehre is still arguements ongoing as to whetehr or not gameplay is more improtant than story and such, but realism has always taken a back-seat unless you want it to be a core feature, and this game of private industry on mars is not meant to be a highly realistic game :P

Reply #34 from Offworld Forums Top

I realize I went off on some tangents and brought in real-world examples that don't directly relate to the game. I have played more since Beta 10 came out and have come to terms with the game as it stands. I still wish there were toggle buttons for auto-selling and an intelligent auto-supply button, but I can live without them and still have fun with the game.

 

I was just trying to make the game better, at least from my perspective.

Reply #35 from Offworld Forums Top

Auto-Sell per resource is in next-version.

Reply #36 from Offworld Forums Top

Awesome Soren! Sorry if this was already announced and I missed it. I think players will find this very useful. I hope it is only for incoming resources, not those that you manually purchased to stockpile or that you let stockpile before turning auto-sell on - you should have to manually sell those. It should also make sure any buildings that require the resource as input are supplied before any excess is sold.

Thanks for listening to our feedback!

(And here's to an intelligent auto-supply option that won't bankrupt you! ;P   I feel this - coupled with the auto-sell option - would much improve the game's 'flow'. Also, is the default state for each still being debated?)