aluminium supply/demand and offworld trading in 5player+ matches

Thanks for the feedback! 

The Offworld Markets are pretty decisive at this point and if you're the first to get one up and running you'll probably win. The game was balanced earlier (or our tiny office meta was tweaked so) people were getting bought out before players got to Offworld Markets. Now it's a bit heavier the other way. I think we'll want to have a balance where every game is not decided by the Offworld Markets. (But this is all Soren's call. I just nag at him about things I don't like.)

-Scott-

Yeah I tried my first quick game on a huge map with 7 A.I.'s.

Things were going fine with the top stock prices for a few of us around 20.  Next thing you know someone's stock was soaring to around 50 and he started purchasing stock like crazy. I looked and noticed he was the only one with a OW trade launcher.

I had already bought 5 of my stocks early to try and protect myself a bit. But before I really had time to react, my last two un-bought stocks were purchased and less than 1 min later I got bought out.

Goon squades on off worlds compleatly counters black market anyhow and is the first thing i set up at that point. I think however having an end game unit is fine and the whole game is designed around this "off world trading" so I think it is suiting for the game to in many cases end with trading back to the home world.  Also if we look at this from a math perspective - I dont know how long the off world timer is but let us say 60 seconds as an example for 40-70k of money that is around 1 k or slight above or under this per second. Compare that with producing 10 units a second and selling them for 200 that is 2k per turns. Ofcourse late game is also charachterized by crashing down prices due to sheer volumes of stuff, so until players learn to play defensively and drive up prices again off world company will be most powerfull in most games. I think we can still try and get our heads around this and try to find a counter before we look at ways to make the end game AS off world more interesting. What I love about this game is I feel it actually is trying to make me smarter, we are litterally pitting market theories up against each other in real time. 

Now if they just fix the mp bugs and late game lag this game is going to be one of my favorite casual games ever. So great job Soren from Eystein the wise from Civ4. 

From my experience, the off world market solves a problem. The problem of a match going on too long because everyone is making pennies on a saturated market. When multiple players can produce goods faster than what the market can consume them, the prices will drop. I've played maps where the prices dropped to the single digits (and could easily stay there because everyone had so much). It was in no one's best interest in letting the prices grow because someone else could capitalize on the patience and foresight of someone else. For the record, these were campaign maps where no one had off world markets.

Because the off world market doesn't have their prices change, it offers a way out of this problem. Several hundred $$$ per unit of good is much better than single digits of money. Hell, I've seen some goods go for over $700 per unit, which doesn't normally happen for most goods (someone tends to start catering to that market before it gets there).

  no one says anything about removing it

 its simply too easy to acquire for what it does

Maybe each launch should require the player to build a rocket/spacecraft out of materials, maybe like 50 aluminum, 20 carbon, 10 each electronics, chemicals, and glass along with fuel or you have to pay a shipping company a set amount determined by supply and demand.

I would go as so far as to say each rocket should take 200 steel, 100 electronics, 100 fuel, and 50 oxygen to launch.

That way it's only beneficial in a completely saturated market and you don't get the massive return you get right now after the initial investment.

I think there should be an alternative where the OWT is not in the game and the game is decided at the end of a certain amount of time like 30 minutes. You would add the value of the stock market, the value of the resources, money in hand and subtract the debt, and then whoever has the most money wins.

The OWT feels like a sledgehammer way to end the game. Soren should talk with Bruce Shelley who is an excellent game developer for some better ways to end the game. (I have no relation to Bruce other than being a huge fan).

Here's some possibilities for the end game

1) Have to build rockets with materials or buy a rocket (call it a smuggler) off the black market.

2) Game ends at a set time, winner is player with highest net worth.

3) Game ends when one player fulfills a contract for delivering a massive amount of resources to the colony. For example the first player to deliver 5000 or 10000 chemicals. 

4) A combination of 2 and 3 so players have 20-30 minutes to deliver 5-10k of electronics for example.

I disagree with many things in this thread.

*More victory conditions means more victory conditions to balance the game around, making overall balance more difficult. KISS.

*Offworld trading is fine. It represents the end-game. If a player manages to get to that point, they deserve to have a strong chance at winning.

The goon squad hard counter isnt much fun to play against, but then again, people havent been buying it much in the games I play, so its cheap. If the squad were to cost ~40k by the time the first offworld came up, that would change things up in a big way. 

I believe that much of the reason for people easily teching up to 5 is due to a severely underused black market. Part of the reason is because the game is new. Part of the reason is because its kinda awkward to use, because players usually dont have 3k floating around.

An Auto-Liquidate option would be interesting - it would basically sell off your most valuable, positive production, resources in order to purchase the black market item (a little tooltip display above would inform you of what was being sold)

The goon squad covering three tiles for production buildings, rather than one would be an interesting change. It would still only cover one square if you chose to use it on an offworld, patent offices, and other special buildings. The increased utility would mean it would be bought more often, thereby driving up the price by the time offworld rolls round.

I think part of the underuse of the black market is because you don't get enough feedback from actually using it. You mutiny or dynamite or whatever, but you immediately move on to something else that occupies your attention. There's nothing that actually shows you the effect of using it. Something like Ms Balanced lost 50 chemicals would be helpful.

thats how a offworld trading game looks like

started building it at the 30' mark, selling excessive resources afterwards, starting the first rocket at 36'

i would have won through other means aswell, but that graph shows how ridiculous it is

PS: whats up with that stupid 3 posts per day limit :x?

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I think there should be an alternative where the OWT is not in the game and the game is decided at the end of a certain amount of time like 30 minutes. You would add the value of the stock market, the value of the resources, money in hand and subtract the debt, and then whoever has the most money wins.

The OWT feels like a sledgehammer way to end the game. Soren should talk with Bruce Shelley who is an excellent game developer for some better ways to end the game. (I have no relation to Bruce other than being a huge fan).

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+1, I think a fixed time (30min) where total company value is computer would be a good way to end the game. 

Gives it more of a board game feel.

+1 to an option for time limited games ending with highest networth. 

I think off world should still be the end game. The problem is there is no short or mid game timing options to beat off world. Which means everyone rushes for off world and a very fast buyout finish. It's not really satisfying after a few games.

Maybe if offworld prices were effected by the onworld market you could have some mid game positioning around resource ownership and monopoly making it more interesting.

Then again perhaps i have not played enough games, and I have played most on manager. Having played a few games on VP and CEO I can see that short term and mid game buyouts become more accessible. But this might just be because the meta game has not adjusted to those difficulty levels. 

I've played about 10 matches and Offworld trading solves the problem of saturated markets.  I think once people catch on, the end game will revolve around "how early do i get offworld" which i find to be an interesting mechanic. If you don't like getting beaten by it, then get it first.  Eventually people will get it to 2 early and each game will have is own balance point at which time it is optimal to obtain. 

Considering that this whole game is based on timing the balance points of varying resources and buildings, it seems fitting that the end game be characterized by the same thing. 

I say, make aluminum equivalent to Crystite in MULE.  Use whatever you want for the back story, maybe even change aluminum to a more valuable sounding resource, like copper (makes more sense for electronics anyway).  Its value fluctuates on a random scale that is difficult or impossible to crash for Mars, simulating an offworld market that you can access without the rocket.  It doesn't obsolete the offworld market, which is a fixed market, but it does help aluminum's value, and put a little wildcard in the mix to make things interesting.

Also, the offworld issue described above is helped a lot by lowering the resource settings when creating the game.  most of the games i see dominated by offworld is with settings like 5 people on a huge map with double minimum resources and medium resource availability.  At that point, of course everybody is going to be stuck fighting for an offworld market or 5.