Feedback After a Few Games

Founders Elite Pack - That sounds important.  My, my, not just a founder, but an elite one at that.  I'm sure EVERYONE wants to know what I think.  Well, regardless, I was promised certain privileges, such as the right to spew my opinions in this highly exclusive forum.

First off, the Stardock 50% off sale is a great idea - especially having that sale apply to early access titles like this one.  I'm a little bit behind on my 3MA listening, and when I heard their recent review of Offworld Trading Company ("Soren Johnson's Mars-based econ RTS?  Is that out already?  I've been waiting for that since the first time the podcast intern mentioned it!"), I headed straight to the website to get any info I could about it.  Seeing $80 for immediate access deflated my sails a bit, but then finding the 50% off sale, coupled with realizing that I could make a friend happy by giving him the extra gift key...  well, it was a no-brainer at that point.

As it is, I feel like I've already gotten at least half my money's worth from an "incomplete game".  It's very nicely put together.  This is exactly the sort of game I want - like everything Arcen Games puts out, and much of what Stardock does - it's somewhat genre-defying.  It's not LIKE any other game.  Even if a game isn't fantastic, it gets points if it's not just another "3rd person shooter" (Seriously, am I the only one that's annoyed by moving the camera back 3 feet and calling it a different genre from an FPS?  Really?) or any other clone of a popular style.  This is unique.  And also interesting.  Even the supposedly "place-holder" graphics are not bad, though I can't quite figure out what's up with the pyramids.  Are those supposed to be something, or are they just weird representations of mountains?

First, tutorial.  Doesn't work for me.  I mean, it works, I think.  There's a spew of error messages that pop up, but they are partially behind the tutorial message and don't stay on screen long enough to copy them down.  If this isn't a known issue, I will try it again and get a screen cap of the error messages.  But even once it starts, I feel like I'm pressed for time immediately.  The visible map is expanding fairly quickly and a voice keeps shouting at me.  "High levels of Carbon found.  Low levels of Iron found."  Getting smacked in the face with this, the first time you load the game, and feeling like you need to take in all of that information as well as the scrolling text, and also get a semblance for what you're looking at on the map - it's overwhelming to say the least.  If you're not done designing the tutorial yet, then disregard, but I would suggest that you start the tutorial with the map fully revealed, and with the map legend explained somehow (either with a box that explains it, have the disembodied voice go over it, or, perhaps ideally, have little callouts that have a line drawn from, say,  a low carbon deposit to a small box that explains what it is.  And start paused, if possible.

So yeah, I just skipped the tutorial because I felt frazzled.  I set up a Snail-pace, Beginner-AI game.  I chose the Robotic Colony mostly because its small footprint fit in the space where I wanted to build my colony.  As it turns out, Robotic seems like a good beginner choice, as it has the most obvious advantages.  Being able to ignore several resources is pretty helpful for a first game.  Of course, I didn't actually realize that at the time and I built some water and food accumulators so that I could sell the food (it was at a pretty good price all game, so it didn't work out terribly).  But suggesting that players start with Robotic if they don't know what else to do might be a good idea...

Let me pause here to lodge one of my stupider complaints about the game.  The thing is - I hate that it's real-time.  Soren, could you please start over and make this turn-based?  No?  Okay, then...  Seriously, I do kind of wish it wasn't realtime.  After my initial play at Snail pace, I have been playing on Slow, because I really don't like twitchy games.  I need a chance to mouse over things, see what everything does, mull over my decisions.  After a couple plays, I see that you don't really have to click quickly, MOST of the time.  And there really is more than enough time to think in a Slow game, and with more experience probably on faster speeds as well.  But for a first game on Normal, it feels like the mouseover delay takes FOREVER, and you're being outproduced like crazy while you try to read what stuff does.

More reasonable complaint - the options screen doesn't save your last-used parameters.  I'm guessing that will be fixed by release.

Company stocks - I think these are pretty well-done, assuming that your goal is to make a simple system without too much cognitive weight that is primarily used for determining the winner.  If I had my way, I would probably make this bit more complex, but I think it comes down to how much rules weight you actually WANT in the stock market part of the game.  My biggest beef, if we wanted to go more for realism as opposed to a simple way to measure victory, is this: why do companies issue stock?  It's generally to gain capital for expansion and operating expenses.  I sell, say, 40% of my company, for a bunch of money that I use to expand and operate the company.  In return, my investors have some say in my operations and expect some financial return.  As such, I'm wondering why there is debt in this game as a separate entity from shares.  If I need money to operate, I should just issue more shares (diluting and devaluing the shares that are already out there).  That sounds simple, but then you have a bunch of other questions to look at - can a company avoid losing the game by never issuing shares (the way I see it, answer is NO, unless they want to starve or suffocate and still lose the game - but what if they produce plenty of water and food and power?  there needs to be a mechanism to avoid a stalemate, as there is in the current game); are dividends paid out, and when; if the company gets the capital from selling shares, then what happens when it buys its own stock?  There are several ways to answer these questions.  For dividends and capitalization questions, one way to handle it is to use Company Money and Personal Money as separate entities.  You might reference board games such as the 18xx series, or the recent game Panamax, for inspiration.  Or you might have a company unable to buy its own stock, or have the money go "away" if it buys its own stock.  You might have the company pay dividends to other companies but never to itself (its own dividends are simply a percentage of what it would normally have to pay that are protected earnings).  So, err... yeah.  You COULD add a lot of complexity to the stock system, and I think overall it would be good.  But then again, the simple system is pretty good, too, and doesn't involve a ton of extra dev work.

Commodities market - Again, pretty good in a simple, easily understandable way.  Another poster mentioned placing buy-orders and sell-orders, and that would be great.  I would love to say "sell chemicals at 100, buy chemicals at 10" and not have to watch the market to the exclusion of all other tasks during a Surplus or Shortage.  You could also have some fun stuff like Selling Short, or Options trading.  Those things would be great, but maybe they could wait for an expansion.  You're planning expansions, right?

Engineering Lab - everything requires Chemicals.  That seems weird to me.  I forgot if that's the same deal with Patents.  I would think that improving Steel production might include Iron, improving Fuel Production might include O2, improving Carbon production might require Carbon or Food or something...   Basically, Chemicals being required makes sense, but I would think it would be SOME chemicals and some of another appropriate resource, rather than just a lot of chemicals.

Black Market - I just really hate the Black Market.  I think it's probably fine for experienced players playing against each other, but starting off, it just feels so frustrating and unavoidable.  See... in a normal RTS, if you get attacked by an opponent, they have to send troops through your front lines to where they are going to do damage to you.  To stop them, you have your troops (either the ones that are already in the way, or troops diverted from other areas), your towers, and also your base layout where the building whose loss will cripple you is positioned so that it is hard for the enemy to get to.  Basically, the enemy has to pit its strength against your strength to do direct damage to your ability to compete.  But in OTC, the best you can do is hire a Goon Squad, and you certainly can't Goon Squad everything.  In general, the enemy spends a bunch of money to hurt you directly, and chooses any spot they want for the damage to occur in.  To the player being hit, it is a loss of control.  All of your Farms are frozen, and there's nothing you could have done about it and nothing you CAN do about it except buy food.  I played a few games without the Black Market, and other than the inability to buy claims and a couple of the colonies losing one of their abilities, I didn't miss it.  I guess that something LIKE the Black Market needs to be in the game, but I wish it was more true interaction than just feeling like a TAKE THAT card game.  Then again, adding military units to the game is probably a complexity that isn't needed or warranted.

That's all I've got for now.  (That's ALL???)