Yeah I tried my first quick game on a huge map with 7 A.I.'s.

Things were going fine with the top stock prices for a few of us around 20.  Next thing you know someone's stock was soaring to around 50 and he started purchasing stock like crazy. I looked and noticed he was the only one with a OW trade launcher.

I had already bought 5 of my stocks early to try and protect myself a bit. But before I really had time to react, my last two un-bought stocks were purchased and less than 1 min later I got bought out.

From my experience, the off world market solves a problem. The problem of a match going on too long because everyone is making pennies on a saturated market. When multiple players can produce goods faster than what the market can consume them, the prices will drop. I've played maps where the prices dropped to the single digits (and could easily stay there because everyone had so much). It was in no one's best interest in letting the prices grow because someone else could capitalize on the patience and foresight of someone else. For the record, these were campaign maps where no one had off world markets.

Because the off world market doesn't have their prices change, it offers a way out of this problem. Several hundred $$$ per unit of good is much better than single digits of money. Hell, I've seen some goods go for over $700 per unit, which doesn't normally happen for most goods (someone tends to start catering to that market before it gets there).

Maybe each launch should require the player to build a rocket/spacecraft out of materials, maybe like 50 aluminum, 20 carbon, 10 each electronics, chemicals, and glass along with fuel or you have to pay a shipping company a set amount determined by supply and demand.

I think there should be an alternative where the OWT is not in the game and the game is decided at the end of a certain amount of time like 30 minutes. You would add the value of the stock market, the value of the resources, money in hand and subtract the debt, and then whoever has the most money wins.

The OWT feels like a sledgehammer way to end the game. Soren should talk with Bruce Shelley who is an excellent game developer for some better ways to end the game. (I have no relation to Bruce other than being a huge fan).

I disagree with many things in this thread.

*More victory conditions means more victory conditions to balance the game around, making overall balance more difficult. KISS.

*Offworld trading is fine. It represents the end-game. If a player manages to get to that point, they deserve to have a strong chance at winning.

The goon squad hard counter isnt much fun to play against, but then again, people havent been buying it much in the games I play, so its cheap. If the squad were to cost ~40k by the time the first offworld came up, that would change things up in a big way. 

I believe that much of the reason for people easily teching up to 5 is due to a severely underused black market. Part of the reason is because the game is new. Part of the reason is because its kinda awkward to use, because players usually dont have 3k floating around.

An Auto-Liquidate option would be interesting - it would basically sell off your most valuable, positive production, resources in order to purchase the black market item (a little tooltip display above would inform you of what was being sold)

The goon squad covering three tiles for production buildings, rather than one would be an interesting change. It would still only cover one square if you chose to use it on an offworld, patent offices, and other special buildings. The increased utility would mean it would be bought more often, thereby driving up the price by the time offworld rolls round.

thats how a offworld trading game looks like

started building it at the 30' mark, selling excessive resources afterwards, starting the first rocket at 36'

i would have won through other means aswell, but that graph shows how ridiculous it is

PS: whats up with that stupid 3 posts per day limit ?

+1 to an option for time limited games ending with highest networth. 

I've played about 10 matches and Offworld trading solves the problem of saturated markets.  I think once people catch on, the end game will revolve around "how early do i get offworld" which i find to be an interesting mechanic. If you don't like getting beaten by it, then get it first.  Eventually people will get it to 2 early and each game will have is own balance point at which time it is optimal to obtain. 

Considering that this whole game is based on timing the balance points of varying resources and buildings, it seems fitting that the end game be characterized by the same thing. 

Also, the offworld issue described above is helped a lot by lowering the resource settings when creating the game.  most of the games i see dominated by offworld is with settings like 5 people on a huge map with double minimum resources and medium resource availability.  At that point, of course everybody is going to be stuck fighting for an offworld market or 5.