In a way, the speed that a game can suddenly end keeps you on your feed. I can understand the concern about the problem about opponents being able to buy you out with little notice, but my response to that has been to try to be a little quicker and buy them out. Try to make sure that I can go in for the kill whenever I need to. I'm still trying to figure that part out though.

You can get some insight as to what kind of money your opponents have by hovering your mouse over their name in the list of companies. You can get a bunch of details like current money, debt, resources, and other assets. Between that and seeing what your opponent has on the map, it should be possible to figure out who is the major threat on the map. You could even figure out which goods to reduce the prices of so that the enemy can't dump a load of resources and suddenly have the cash to rapidly buy you out.

That said, if a player had to pay dividends to other players because they owned stocks, it would give another reason to keep debt low. High debt reduces the values of your stocks so that they become easier to buy. It will therefore make it easier for other players to get their hands on your pie.

Yes it's a huge production advantage when an opponent takes over another corporation. You just can't compete when they have twice the stuff.  This comes back to there being the one victory condition.  Just thinking out loud, but maybe if there was a resource population (that grows with food/life support/electronics and you can get additional claims as your pop grows to compete through vertical supremacy by organically growing a super power as an alternative to hostile takeover of buying out others.

Further, I was thinking that the offworld component could be done on a 'contract' basis.  So you agree to sell +2 electronics offworld fex.  If for whatever reason you can't meet the quota you go into debt to purchase the resources required to fulfill it, whether they be primary resources required to manufacture your goods, or secondary resources.  That way competitor could sabotage your production to get back into the game/force the leader to manage the end game as opposed to the way it is now.

Also the debt component needs some work if you ask me.  Interest should be a bigger component of the game and should fluctuate in terms of interest rate.  If global debt goes up, maybe the interest rate should fluctuate?  Further it could be a victory/losing condition in itself.  As opposed to getting bought out, if your debts scale too high (fex over your income/corporate value) you become insolvent and your claims sold off/forced to sell shares to pay off debt/foreclosed in a monopolyesque type game system.

As it stands you can pay off $50k debt and your stock price goes up 30c.  I don't think it's relevant enough, bearing in mind I haven't tried CEO yet. 

Also. if someone buys you out that leads to snowball and one corporation gets access to all the claims wheras if you owned shares in the company that is bought out and you missed the buyout you only get a bit of cash.  Whoever just clicks buyout gets too much benefit as they have more claims than anyone else, which is the point that the end is frustrating.  If there was a foreclose end as opposed to just a buyout, maybe those claims go back to paying off the debt as opposed to the buyout corp getting full value.  What happened to all the debt?  Who repaid that?  I get that someone has to win at some point, but the end game just doesn't feel quite right at the moment.

On one of the streams it was noticed that when you buy someone out your stock price fell slighty.  This was seen as being a bug but given how the end game works I would not be so quick to throw that effect out.  If your stock price fell after you buy someone out it makes buying someone out a more interesting proposition, and in some situations might turn into a mexican stand-off of sorts between the top two (three) players: who dares to make the first move?  This would be good for the game because it gives the underdogs a tiny bit more time to do something rash that might, just might see them through okay; whereas under today's conditions the underdog is pretty much a walking dead man.

I do like the exponential effect that debt has on valuation.  I played a game on manager where the second player had all his power production tied to a single geothermal plant.  Power was roughly 150 and with night coming i knew it would reach 200 easy (one geothermal spot on whole map).  I saved resources all day instead of going to level 5. As soon as night hit, i used dynamite to destroy his power plant.  He must've already had significant debt because in 5 hours of game time his value was cut to one quarter of what it was.  I swooped in for the easy buyout. 

That is why I squirm a little when people talk about valuation manipulation being too difficult... I went from the bottom to the top by doing just that.  Make it easier and too many people will do it. 

About the screen: It's an early access game, the team still got a lot of work to do. About the information, just hover your mouse over the playernames on the righthand side of the screen. It will show then.

If their stock is purchased the price goes up higher, that is "sort of" a protection, if you were to receive money, then the other player would only be able to buy out 50% of your shares as you could buy back the other 50%, or 4/10 rather. It'd be too hard to buy someone out.

I had issues with the sudden buy-out in the solo game and even in the multiplayer ones too.

But I found as some have mentioned, by keeping dept down to as low as possible or best zero'd, tends make you survive longer, and I also found if you can get controlling shares in your own company seems to slow others from buying you out.

By doing this Ive won game against companies that have brought out +50% of the rest of the companies.

The other things I found useful was to bulk sell high prices items and force the market down fast before anyone else can take advantage of the high sell prices.

example: Steel and Glass tend to be in the high priced items, so I sell them in bulk to get the prices back down into the double or single didits, and the money from these sales I buy up cheap iron and other resources needed to make what was high priced one. normally by this stage you should have a good production line going, so you make more glass and steel in no time.

But as some have said you have to keep an eye on the other companies, as once you stop doing so you've more or less lost the game.

Yes ... it always just depends, you can actually win as the underdog by employing such tactics, but it would be very hard to generalize. It depends on a lot of factors and every game is different.

In general though it's not wise to buy out a third player that the person who is threatening to buy you out has shares in.

It's also usually not wise to buy other players out of your company if the game has progressed pretty far, but I can't generalize that, there are always exceptions to the rule, for example if the player you are buying out is about to bought out himself. I very often have a solid lead in the game due to a strong economy (always depends on the game and the map, as I said you can't generalize it) - When I am actually struggling I try to buy someone out, When I am clearly leading, I buy out my own shares and then I buy distributed shares among everyone, to make sure noone can "catch up".

It is not always wise to buy out everyone, you dont know the other person's economy by heart, and the numbers don't tell you everything. I have managed to win several games where someone in the lead went on a buyout frenzy, and after he had bought out his 4th person with 6 offworlds launching goods into space, he still managed to get bought out by me with only 2 offworlds running. Those games are rare but they do happen, buyouts are a risk and if someone is threatening to buy you out, you have to think twice where you put your money.

You ALWAYS have to prioritize your buyouts, there are only 2 reasons to buyout another player:

1) Buyout an opponent that is economically strong and threatening to buy you out.

2) To get ahead of the game and get an economical advantage. 

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ALWAYS prioritize (1) over (2) no matter what you may think. Even if that person that's threatening to buy you out costs 50% more (600k compared to 400k).
You will never make back those 400k that you spend on the cheaper player in time to save yourself.

Please do keep in mind that I'm trying to hint at some tactics here, it really depends on the game and how it's going. Very often if you are in an offworld race against someone, and there are only 2 of you that are viable winners, it can help to sacrifice your own economical advance to snatch 3 of his shares (without crippling yourself too much of course) - Whichever player has the most shares in the other player's company ends up winning the game - that's usually how it goes.

But then again - you need to know that this only works if his shares are of the same or less value than your own, and that he doesnt have a lot more resources than you do.

What I see so often happening is that when I start to buy someone out with their stock value being at 10 and mine at 15, they start buying 5 of my shares, instead of buying their own shares and then they get bought out. Unless you have enough money to complete a full buyout against a player of a higher stock value, invest the money in your own shares to save yourself, as every share you buy in your own company is worth twice as much (in terms of survivability).