Initial Impressions (up through expansion tutorial)

from Offworld Forums

I got the game on Friday and have played several sessions throughout the weekend. As per the email I've avoided the rules page and just jumped into the tutorials. So far I've only beaten the expansion colony tutorial after like 6-8 tries (got my ass handed to me thoroughly in the robotic one so I plan to give it a go later). I wrote down some notes during my play sessions as this was my first time playing the game:

- I was expecting to be able to just right click on a hex to build the appropriate building. It took me a couple of minutes to find the pop over in the resources HUD to be able to build a building. it wasn't until a few games in I noticed the hammer icon at the bottom.

- I had zero clue wtf claims were and how they worked. Finally made the connection after 1 game that claims were consumed when I built on a tile. Took me several minutes to realize where the claims where coming from (upgrading the colony)

- Took about 5-7 minutes to figure out how to upgrade my colony due to not having steel anywhere for level 3. The previous levels it just luckily hit all the requirements and I did it (this was the upgrade tutorial) without really knowing what I was doing. After fiddling with prices and discovering I could sell/buy the stuff I was producing it eventually clicked I could buy steel off the market even if I wasn't producing it. Not entirely sure why I had the "can't buy anything I don't already produce" as a barrier.

- Would be nice to just click and hold on a +/- after 3 seconds to just rapidly sell chunks of 100 instead of clicking constantly. I had like 20k units of some resource and wanted to sell a lot of despite the low price.

- The debt mechanic wasn't clear to me and still isn't. I was a +4.4 pwr but I was still accruing debt. Is it tied to O2 and Fuel resources or something in addition to PWR?

-  It appeared to me early on in my experience the only path to victory is to build an offworld market so you can accumulate enough $$ to buy someone out quickly. The late game in the expansion tutorial was just me waiting for the cooldown to finish to buy more stock and ignoring everything else and hoping I did it faster than the AI. I've actually had a close call game I lost where it was down to the last stock purchase and I wasn't quick enough to click haha. Pretty intense!

Just as a random aside:

A lot of times when getting into a new strategy game I'll have wondering thoughts throughout the day or in dreams about possibly strategies or tactics to try out. With OTC I was wanting to play it, but my thoughts on how to approach OTC were jumbled and mostly nonsensical. Walking away and giving myself time to think what I just experienced didn't really give me any clear ideas on how to better approach playing the game. It felt somewhat random and that I was spinning a lot of plates but not entirely sure how I was accomplishing it. 

Granted, the above feeling/lasting impression I think is spawned from being completely utterly new to the game and is unlike anything I've ever played. So it may take me some more time to wrap my head around it.

Definitely want to give it more of a go as I noticed more mechanics were popping up in the robotics tutorial.

140 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Offworld Forums Top

FYI Shift click sells 100 and control click sells 1 unit.

Life support (oxygen, food, water) consume resources. If you don't have enough, they get bought automatically at the prevailing price.

Each tutorial adds more mechanics.

Reply #2 from Offworld Forums Top

Quoting indczn1, reply 1

FYI Shift click sells 100 and control click sells 1 unit.

Life support (oxygen, food, water) consume resources. If you don't have enough, they get bought automatically at the prevailing price.

Each tutorial adds more mechanics.
End of indczn1's quote

 

Ah ok. It didn't seem clear how much oxygen,food,water I was consuming (money wise) so my debt would just go up without any feedback from the game stating directly *why*. In slower paced 4x games you could usually hover over debt and it'd tell you how that number is being accrued. I think the confusion came from a tool tip stating that power was directly tied to debt. Thanks for the clarification!

As for the shift+click I was aware of that, but even then, at several thousands of resources I just wanted to hold shift and click and after a short delay just start selling chunks of 100 quickly. If I'm sitting on 5k units of glass for instance, it'd require me to click 25 times to sell 50% of it (at 100 chunks).

Maybe having another shortcut key that instead sells a percentage (like 25% or 50%) of your resources would help that scenario.

DeskScapes - Bring your desktop background to life.
Reply #3 from Offworld Forums Top

Thanks for the feedback - usually, it's pretty rare that you stockpile over 1000 of a specific resource and - if you do - selling it all has pretty significant diminishing returns.

Reply #4 from Offworld Forums Top

Quoting Soren_Johnson, reply 3

Thanks for the feedback - usually, it's pretty rare that you stockpile over 1000 of a specific resource and - if you do - selling it all has pretty significant diminishing returns.
End of Soren_Johnson's quote

Ah yes, after playing some more I'm getting a better feel for amounts for stockpiles, and over 1k is definitely feels like a stretch, or playing very sub-optimally. I still hit it occassionally, and realize there's usually a better resource to try to sell off.