Mars or Ceres multiplayer?

from Offworld Forums

After lots of drill, I've beaten the computer enough to fling myself into the multiplayer shark tank.  Imagine my surprise and disappointment to find myself on the unfamiliar ground of Ceres.  While I fully expected to lose my first game, this was a waste of my time, a waste of Somethinginfinite's time (which I regret), and a real wet blanket on what should have been a thrill.

 

If there's any way to restrict the engine to assigning players only to Martian or Cerean multiplayer games, I couldn't find it.  That option needs to be either installed or made a lot more visible.  Mastering the basics of vanilla OTC has been difficult enough; I'd like a chance to play that before being called upon to buy and master an expansion in order to join the community.  Because OTC is a great game--one with an intimidating learning curve that warrants making room for slower players and late arrivals.

6,684 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Offworld Forums Top

You aren't the only one that feels this way, but the official word from Soren is "No".

Reply #2 from Offworld Forums Top

I think Ceres maps only come up about 1 in every 4 games which isn't too often. The variety is good as it keeps you on your toes (which is one of the best things about this game).
The main thing to be aware of on Ceres is that onworld prices will get very high in the late game so Ceres favours having more onworld claims, getting optimisation labs earlier (ideally at least 2) and often avoiding getting an offworld market entirely

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Reply #3 from Offworld Forums Top

Quoting OffworldDermas, reply 2

The variety is good as it keeps you on your toes (which is one of the best things about this game). 

 

I would agree if I didn't absolutely hate ceres. Offworld trading company is built around planning and foresight, but prices on ceres are volatile and unpredictable. There's always some resource that ends up winning the game, but you never really know what that resource is until it happens. It's the same kind of random frustration that drove me away from Starcraft and into OTC in the first place.

Power is absolutely awful. Solar produces very little power, and nuclear plants cost cash/resources to pay debt which any high level player will tell you is one of the #1 things to avoid in this game. Not to mention this is on a map type where water is typically very valuable. Then there's uranium, a waste of a claim that serves no purpose EXCEPT to pay debt. The uranium effectively decreasing the value of a nuclear plant below wind turbines (while still costing $/resources to run) since you need to dedicate an extra tile to uranium on top of the power buildings themselves.

Then there's the salt flats which have the potential to be incredibly useful, necessary even, to keeping life support manageable, but has a skin that's basically impossible to discern which makes it virtually to do any sort of planning around during the debt ticker phase.

Then there's debt. Debt levels are balanced around the typical OTC game, but with life support and power being so difficult to manage your average debt is much MUCH higher on ceres. This wouldn't be as big a deal if the debt ratings on ceres were adjusted with the expectation of more debt, but it's not. The current debt levels simply don't work at all because debt accumulation is higher, and debt is payed down more slowly because of the awful power situation. 

Then, as adlake pointed out multiplayer FORCES you to play ceres games which you can't even fucking practice without paying for the DLC. Now this is either A) The absolute worst lapse of judgement in a video game I've ever seen by far. Frightening in that I was describing my frustration on ceres to someone who's never played the game and one of the first things out of there mouth was "How the hell are you supposed to practice if you don't own the DLC but are forced to play it on ranked!?" before I had even got to that part. or B) A deliberate attempt to force people to pay for the DLC which is absolutely disgusting behavior.

Honestly, They've been such a great customer oriented company, ceres aside, so far that I REALLY want to give them the benefit of the doubt on B, but it's just such an incredibly massive and obvious oversight...

It's just, literally everything about the DLC is just bad and fundamentally wrong from a gameplay perspective. Literally every single thing ceres does. I didn't complain when the DLC was announced because I thought I could just ignore it, but forcing it on us in the ladder... I wholeheartedly regret not ripping the DLC a new one when it was still in testing..