It's not an auto-lose situation going up against Offworld Markets (OM) when you don't have one, but it is much, /much/ harder to win.  Naturally, it works the other way as well: when you have OM and the others don't you're likely in for a very, /very/ easy ride.

I've already expressed my opinion about the snowballing that happens in the campaign (>here<), for a variety of reasons, but the OM is the major offender. 

The campaign widens the gap between the 'best' and the 'worst' when it shouldn't do.  RTS games throughout history have struggled to get to grips with the snowballing problem and it looks like OTC is going to have to fight a few rounds with that very same beast.

try buying AI shares before he makes an offworld market, also use mutinies to use his offworld market yourself. Very often AI has bought so many Goons early game that he doesn't have money to protect his own offworld market. Anyways, when your enemies hit level 5, you have to start paying attention if they are building offworld markets.

You're better off completely ignoring the colony and going about your usual exploitation because no-one else is going to care about the colony; if you take it upon yourself to save them then you're only handing a greater chance of victory (over you) to your opponents.  Yes, the colony may fail but much rather everyone loses than you losing to a rival Co.

I like the idea of having the colony there but the fail state that comes with it doesn't work all that well at present.  Instead of the colony being an entity of pure consumption that the Co.s must appease under pain of everyone losing, perhaps turn it into something that you can woo to give you a tiny edge in return.

Of course the water price was high.

But 2 problems:

1. What if there is just not enough water on the map? What is the sense of a game/match that no-one can win?

2. I did not even know (until now) that there is a colony and that the colony must survive and otherwise all loose! Which brings me to my 2nd post -> https://forums.offworldgame.com/462152/get;3527714

OM is OP. There isn't any other viable late game option. I've posted about resource converters and other ways to encourage arbitrage / multiple victory conditions. I'm not sure if any of the devs saw it, but I hope they're working on it. Does anyone know how long the beta is supposed to last? That would help us gauge the proper level of fear to maintain. i.e. It launches soon? Damn, this is gunna be one linear game. It launches in 6 months or later? There's enough time to fix up the strategies.

Having the lead designer from Civ 4, and Stardock having rocked lots of 4x style games makes me hold the faith!!  Right now, all you have to do is add up the amount of steel, glass, aluminum, and electronics to upgrade x4 + build OM. Produce that ASAP, then sell whatever shiz you're making on the OM. Buy a couple goon squads maybe, then gg. After hundreds of iterations this will become a clicking exercise without multiple paths to victory.

the thing with offworlds is that it is a finisher, once the black market prices have gone too high, resources prices onworld drop too low due to very efficient production, then OM finishes the game. However most games in multiplayer are decided before a single OM gets built, Very often, people who ignore everything else and go straight towards offworlds rack up so much debt that they get bought out right when they finish their OM, by a level 2-4 guy. These things happen, I've done it, I've seen others do it. Also, what indczn1 said, Hacker array can be in some situations as powerful or even more powerful than an offworld market, + it costs so much less. Ofcourse the latter requires certain conditions but still, and even that is not the only key, dominating markets mid-game, using black market to do so or hacker array if your really confidant, all of this is enough to buy out a guy who just rushes offworld.