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RTS Offworld Trading Company - economic RTS from the designer of Civ 4
- Thread starter LESS T_T
- Start date
Looks like mobile trash. Please don't tell me this is supposed to go on tablets.
Watched the MP game ,it's looking very interesting.Nice after game talk too
LESS T_T
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2012
- Messages
- 13,582
Early Access is now available: http://store.steampowered.com/app/271240
Uh, it's longer than I thought.
Uh, it's longer than I thought.
OTC is a economic/strategy game without weapons. You play as a company on mars, competing against other companies for resources o the red planet. Your customers are colonists from Earth, whose number steadily increases as time goes on. Ultimately your goal is to supply the fledgling colonies around the globe with products at fair prices while eliminating your competitors.
You start out with a bunch of 'scans', that allow you to find an optimal starting place for your HQ. Unfortunately, your competition has the same idea and at the same time to boot, because this game is an RTS. If you don't act quick, your competition will grab the good spots from right under your nose.
Real Time is the name of the game, so I quickly grabbed some Iron Ore deposits and process them in the nearby smelter. You don't have to manage the Logistics in this game, Transports will automatically spawn and distribute your resources. However, Transports do cost fuel, which of course has to be produced on Mars as well. Therefore I build a factory for producing fuel from water, which is either pumped to the surface from the deeper layers of the martian crust or obtained from ice at the poles. Later on, research will allow me to directly burn water instead of fuel.
Building sites aren't infinite and tied to the level of your HQ. You can increase that number by either upgrading your HQ for a ton of money or buying additional claims on the black market for, well, a ton of money. The always present competition will of course do the same and try to snatch the remaining open claims.
Sometimes, auctions will interrupt the flow of the game. You have the chance to purchase exceptional building sites on these auctions, if you can outbid the competition. Sometimes you can even bid for pirates, who will unsurprisingly try to intercept your competition's transports.
After ramping up your initial economy, you want to engage in warfare against your competition. No, not by commanding an army on the field, but by being an annoying pest on the black market and liberally employing EMP, blackouts, detonations and other oh so very subtle weapons. To prevent instant bankruptcy of the target corporation by simply mass-EMPing it out of existance, the BM only allows one of these actions at a time on a cooldown. Consequently, the aggressive actions at the black market can only disturb your competition but not defeat them.S
So, how do you actually win in this game? It's simple: Hostile Takeover. Each martian company is on the index with a share value of about 10.000. At the beginning of the game, no company possesses any shares. Once we own 100% of the shares of another company, that company becomes ours, including all of their assets already on the map. If you buy shares of your own company, you prevent enemy buyouts by raising your company's value. As the game progresses and the companies grow, so does their shareholder value, and hostile takeover becomes increasingly difficult. If a company runs into debt however, their value goes into free fall and may be bought out for an apple and an egg after a couple of black market actions.
Finally, your customers, the colonists. They depend on your products. Conversely, you depend on the colony to staff your factories. The Colonists don't need a particular product, but they need fairly priced products. What that means is you are obligated to sell water, food and oxygen, to prevent price explosions. If it does happen and water becomes unaffordable, the colony will shrink and your factories will be deserted. The economic system in this game is very focused on supply & demand. If everyone floods the market with water(pun intended) its price will drop to $1 and become uneconomical. The price will slowly rise again and you can even hire a hacker to manipulate the market analysis. The cherry on top is building your own harbor for space ships and exporting your goods to earth at a giant profit margin.
OTC, like most RTS, is a fast game. It is blazeingly fast compared to your usual real time economy sim. There is no other economy sim that demand decision as quick as OTC does. This game isn't about planning your tropical island paradise to soothing Caribbean sounds. This game is about standing on the floor on Wallstreet and shouting your competition down. You need to be on top of your economic development at all times and there is a lot of detail optimization to consider at any given point in time. Oh and by the way, there are also 4 factions who require completely different strategies.
OTC is an RTS through and through. Quick pacing demands quick decision making and improvising on the fly. Reading your enemy is key as is having your strategy down. This is Starcraft 2 without lethal but economical force. If you're looking for an economy sim as you're used to, look elsewhere.
You start out with a bunch of 'scans', that allow you to find an optimal starting place for your HQ. Unfortunately, your competition has the same idea and at the same time to boot, because this game is an RTS. If you don't act quick, your competition will grab the good spots from right under your nose.
Real Time is the name of the game, so I quickly grabbed some Iron Ore deposits and process them in the nearby smelter. You don't have to manage the Logistics in this game, Transports will automatically spawn and distribute your resources. However, Transports do cost fuel, which of course has to be produced on Mars as well. Therefore I build a factory for producing fuel from water, which is either pumped to the surface from the deeper layers of the martian crust or obtained from ice at the poles. Later on, research will allow me to directly burn water instead of fuel.
Building sites aren't infinite and tied to the level of your HQ. You can increase that number by either upgrading your HQ for a ton of money or buying additional claims on the black market for, well, a ton of money. The always present competition will of course do the same and try to snatch the remaining open claims.
Sometimes, auctions will interrupt the flow of the game. You have the chance to purchase exceptional building sites on these auctions, if you can outbid the competition. Sometimes you can even bid for pirates, who will unsurprisingly try to intercept your competition's transports.
After ramping up your initial economy, you want to engage in warfare against your competition. No, not by commanding an army on the field, but by being an annoying pest on the black market and liberally employing EMP, blackouts, detonations and other oh so very subtle weapons. To prevent instant bankruptcy of the target corporation by simply mass-EMPing it out of existance, the BM only allows one of these actions at a time on a cooldown. Consequently, the aggressive actions at the black market can only disturb your competition but not defeat them.S
So, how do you actually win in this game? It's simple: Hostile Takeover. Each martian company is on the index with a share value of about 10.000. At the beginning of the game, no company possesses any shares. Once we own 100% of the shares of another company, that company becomes ours, including all of their assets already on the map. If you buy shares of your own company, you prevent enemy buyouts by raising your company's value. As the game progresses and the companies grow, so does their shareholder value, and hostile takeover becomes increasingly difficult. If a company runs into debt however, their value goes into free fall and may be bought out for an apple and an egg after a couple of black market actions.
Finally, your customers, the colonists. They depend on your products. Conversely, you depend on the colony to staff your factories. The Colonists don't need a particular product, but they need fairly priced products. What that means is you are obligated to sell water, food and oxygen, to prevent price explosions. If it does happen and water becomes unaffordable, the colony will shrink and your factories will be deserted. The economic system in this game is very focused on supply & demand. If everyone floods the market with water(pun intended) its price will drop to $1 and become uneconomical. The price will slowly rise again and you can even hire a hacker to manipulate the market analysis. The cherry on top is building your own harbor for space ships and exporting your goods to earth at a giant profit margin.
OTC, like most RTS, is a fast game. It is blazeingly fast compared to your usual real time economy sim. There is no other economy sim that demand decision as quick as OTC does. This game isn't about planning your tropical island paradise to soothing Caribbean sounds. This game is about standing on the floor on Wallstreet and shouting your competition down. You need to be on top of your economic development at all times and there is a lot of detail optimization to consider at any given point in time. Oh and by the way, there are also 4 factions who require completely different strategies.
OTC is an RTS through and through. Quick pacing demands quick decision making and improvising on the fly. Reading your enemy is key as is having your strategy down. This is Starcraft 2 without lethal but economical force. If you're looking for an economy sim as you're used to, look elsewhere.
Jigawatt
Arcane
Damn, was hoping to try this soon. If I can convince one of my mates to get it this might be what breaks my No Early Access policy
KoolNoodles
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2012
- Messages
- 3,545
This sounds hellah cool and fresh, but fuck Early Access straight to hell. It used to be called CLOSED BETA where they work on making their games not shit with a handful of dedicated losers who have tons of free time. Somebody gifted me KSP like a year ago and I haven't even installed it out of principle(or is it out yet? Who even knows).
Yes.
Hellraiser
Arcane
It has a metagame layer that reminds me a bit of Dawn of War Dark Crusade or Rise of Nations. You unlock factories or bonuses to factories between missions based on "income" during campaign turns. Also patents for factories get auctioned off during missions and are carried over to other missions. You get to pick between 2 or 3 missions each turn, each offers a new bonus like say 1 free black market sabotage of a specific type. There's a leaderboard with rival AI corps. First missions are 1v1, later ones are FFA with more and more players. You can lose and continue but eventually you lose the campaign.
AI is hard as balls. This isn't the standard economic sim/strategy. Traditional supply lines wood>boards>buildings can be irrelevant. Although it is a good idea to secure one or two of the resources you need for upgrading. Just no need to secure iron when it's 3$ a piece with steel at 30, better just get steel mills, buy iron off the market and process it into steel.
Also cockblocking resources by landing your colony on top of them and thus creating fake scarcity is a legit move. One need to remember that before he thinks "so much iron, no need to build mines" only to notice someone covered 90% of those deposits with his fat ass colony.
Market mechanics make it really different. Key to success seems to be understanding which type of colony to pick depending on what resources the RNG throws on the map. Specialize, monopolize and after that cripple enemy supply lines. However specialization leaves you vulnerable to sabotage.
Also I nearly won a 4 player FFA after a slow start but then it desynced. Overall mutliplayer is quite stable though, but needs ping indicators, ladders, matchmaking, the works.
Omniventures Inc. will rise again!
Last edited:
MasterSmithFandango
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2008
- Messages
- 7,269
This honestly sounds awesome. I'm normally not really into RTS games, but this seems fresh enough that it may sway me.
Sranchammer
Arcane
Wake me up when it's actually complete
Hellraiser
Arcane
TBH apart from multiplayer features, optimization and balancing I doubt it is that far from feature complete. Not from what the devs are saying and from what I am seeing. Oh and yes, it definitely has placeholder voiceovers, unless the use of (mostly) cheap computer voice synths (one of which reminds me of Steven Hawking's) is deliberate.
Campaign seems to be done, they may throw in a perk or two, add a new random rule to missions (for example there are missions with no black market, or with specific weather conditions) tweak the AI or something, but the core game and the core mechanics are done. This EA is mostly a beta rather than the usual early alpha. Whether it is worth the 130-ish potatomoney I paid is a different matter, though I personally am quite pleased since it is an economic strategy that requires more adaptation and on the fly thinking than the typical "one build order to rule them all".
If that is true, why does EA run well into 2016? Tbh, there is a lot to be done on the MP part of the game still.
Hellraiser
Arcane
Sranchammer
Arcane
Boooooo
MasterSmithFandango
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2008
- Messages
- 7,269
Please do.
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