Hey Seilore,

It was me who did that to you. Don't get discouraged... when the game is released, or if you play more now during prime-time hours (3pm-9pm east-coast usa, 5pm-1am europe), you will get more diversity of opponents. The match-making system will improve once the game is release and there are more live players to match skill levels better.

I was able to upgrade to HQ2 almost instantly only because I was playing the Robotic faction. This factions starts with more starting resources. They get more starting resources to offset the fact that they are not generally as strong economically as some of the others. So, strong players will sell their excess starting electronics (10) and use that money to upgrade almost instantly to HQ level 2. Don't let that scare you, because robots really suffer in the later stages of the game compared to other factions.

By the way, I highly recommend playing robotic when you are learning the game for your first 50 online matches. Their economy is easier to learn, allowing you to focus on other game mechanics. Also, kudos to you for taking advantage of this great community like you did by posting here. I know that there are many here like BlackMagic who have mentioned a willingness to offer some live training sessions to help newcomers improve! Maybe try sending him a message in Steam.

Also, please note that you can use the Replay Game feature to watch the last game you played if you want to see what your opponent is doing. You can use the number keys to switch the player perspective to see what exactly they are doing.

Good regular's always found as close as they can to their construction resources so they can upgrade ASAP and race to HQ3 and above as quickly as possible. Metall mines & steel mills or quarries should always be a player's first construction projects. Upgrading to the highest HQ levels first unlocks additional claims and gives you the ability to control and exploit the resource market at your whim. Being the first to produce the most profitable resource of the time allows you to profit from it until someone else starts producing it too. By having a stockpile of a resource, you can control its price and sell out of it when someone else gets into it.

When you found, you should always look for multiple founding locations and rate them by how good they are compared to the best founding location, and found early if the 2nd best spot is a lot worse than the best spot.

One common newbie mistake is upgrading for too high a price, after HQ3 upgrading ASAP is no longer automatically the best choice. Upgrading to HQ4 may leave you with too little wealth to defend yourself in case someone makes a run on your stock. Additionally some of the time you'll actually have enough cash to eliminate your opponent with through majority purchase (ie. buying 6 unowned stock). If upgrade resources are expensive, evaluate your other options first. Many of my opponent's I've seen upgrade when they were at 90% of the way to buying me by majority.

Offworld Trading Platform seems to be getting me every time, I can't seem to get there.  

Here are a few more points and I've said this from the beginning (early Alpha)

• Game ends too abruptly
• Once you see a player is able to take over or has finances to take you over it's too late.
• No way to realistically block a hostile take over or even delay for X period of time.
• One's building their way up than boom game over (very little warning).
• Rush tactic wins most of the time.
• In most strategy games, there are several tactics to win a game.  This game Just rush the best buildings (Steel/Chemicals/Glass) depending on what's hot jump as quickly to level 4/5 if needed build off world trading win.
• The player that slowly builds needed resources looses every time.  (power/water/oxygen/fuel)
• A well balanced company/player has 0% chance of winning.
• Find a way to slow down the rush.
• If a player is building a balanced company and is able to draw the game out, make that company have the advantage.
• Other strategies should be developed other than rush.
• Add additional black market options.
• Short term jump in stock price.  (This could be used to hold off hostile take over a little longer).
• Force other player to pay off debt prior to purchasing stock for X sec.
• If I own 50% of stock or more I should be able to have some say in hostile take over.
• Majority owner of company should cause buyout to increase at least 2X if not more.  (After all if I'm selling my company to a competitor I want to make a profit as long as I'm not going bankrupt.)
• The above point shouldn't apply if your debt to income ratio is not positive.  (Meaning I'm going red faster than I am black.)
• Why can't I borrow money?  This should be an option to borrow up to X% of my net value.  (After all I can go negative by bidding on everything.)

Assuming we're really talking about 1v1 quickmatch and basing conclusions off that, I'd tend to agree. In my experience, because 1v1 is so close to zero-sum, things can snowball a lot quicker and thus leave games lopsided and over fairly quickly. We've moved away from the need to rush offworld single-mindedly to win, but the 1v1 game still seems too short and prices too volatile to leverage tech effectively in most cases. As a result of rarely reaching the late-game, the experience feels rather flat, which is part of why I don't play much 1v1, even with the potentially deeper tactical space available (black market, price manipulation, other micro things).

I understand the rationale for wanting this, as it certainly feels bad to have to watch for an impending buyout and not have much you can do, but I feel like in most cases these sorts of delaying actions just drag out the game longer without really changing the outcome (or maybe be far too powerful if they do force a change in results). In larger games in particular, delays can create very large swings for one player relative to another, and that sort of potential for players about to be bought out to have large effects on the game's outcome should be minimized.

Other players already have to pay double your price for every stock you own (up to 3x if 5 stocks are bought by another player and you want to buy the last 5 shares in the player). As for the second point, I have a very hard time seeing it ever being relevant; anyone in a situation where they're gaining more debt than they're making money is likely already in a dire situation (and there would also be a question of how to account for discrete jumps in debt/income from interest/offworld launches, for example).

I'd imagine borrowing money directly would be a nightmare to balance properly, especially given how much more cash is currently worth than avoided debt. One could also argue that you could make a conscious effort to borrow money, though, by avoiding producing power/life support or by producing it in a way that allows you to sell it before it's automatically consumed (i.e. shipping it).

Okay what I mean by well balanced.

A well balanced company with a large enough reach makes or contracts out it's needs so It's not stuck paying a premium for goods it needs to run.  So in this game you need power, water, food, oxygen, and assuming your base is not all linked fuel.  So as a company I would want to look at cost/benefit to producing my own versus buying elsewhere.  So a balanced company would produce 3 of the 5 to be able to support it's basic needs.  (most of the time). 

Now I've played several games and I see the same tactic over and over again and can't beat it any way.  That's as follows Build base/build steal than branch out.  Why would anyone do anything else?  For one they are inexpensive to build and usually iron is cheap to begin with.  

So ultimately what I mean by well balanced is just that.  You may not agree with it but, that's the way I see it.

There isn't a huge benefit to being small, however, there should be other strategies to win, such as one may rush to win, however, if one does this and builds smart where they don't have to rely on the market for needs they may grow slower but, hold steady longer and potentially out pace the person who took the quick money and now has to slow way down because costs got too high.  Right now that doesn't really happen, you grow quick you have enough tiles you can keep yourself growing at a huge rate.  If you make a well rounded company that doesn't rely on the market you may be more solid but, they have out paced you so bad they just buy you out.  

Again you may think that isn't a viable option, however, if I don't depend on anything and market crashes guess who's still here.  In the game market doesn't crash or if it does it's too late to matter as you have off world trading options that your immune.

You also mention Gal Civ III, there are many strategies that can do you good there, all depending on the type of games you play Rush gets you only so far in that game.  

Final Thoughts

All in all ultimately I'm suggesting options to attempt to avoid the sudden death.  For those NFL fans it would be like the Packers from last weekend, holding your own, only to give it up with 1 quick blow and you feel left on the sideline watching the game end.

I would like to see a better way to try to protect yourself from the quick 1 shot blow (Player A just build offworld trading, sold 100k worth of goods just as I got to it boom they bought me out.)  I understand it's not designed to be a long drawn out game, however, on the other hand there should be a way to hold on and have a chance for a come back such as a hail mary option.

All in all my points were attempts at suggestions on potentially how to do this and, I welcome thoughts/ideas for or against it.  In PvP 1v1 right now it seems like which ever player pulls away at the beginning isn't being caught and, I have yet to find a strategy to offset the steel rush because you need it to upgrade.

At the moment I semi regularly use patents as Scientific. (Ie. I replace a steel mill at HQ3-4, get teleportation, nanotech and maybe slant drilling or carbon scrubbing and then recycle the patent lab.) I think one way to make patents more viable is to have colony lab modules reduce the price of patents (by no less than 10% per module) rather than the time to obtain them. As it is the extra time cost of building the patent lab away from your HQ cancels out the bonus somewhat. Time to obtain a patent is a relatively minor facet in my patent related subroutines, especially because lab adjacent tiles have little utility for anything except patent labs.

Naturally simply reducing the price of the patent lab and patents for 1v1s would increase their use,but that wouldn't be a particularly neat or clever way to do it.

I would re-work steel factories and have them require something other than just iron.  All other expensive items require at least 2 resources some even 3 see below...

(xx) = default pricing...

Iron (20) -> Steel -> (60) (Steel is high demand for all but, scavenger bases so this typically stays high and is a rush target and easy to build)

Carbon (20) + Fuel (40) -> Chemicals (80) (Chemicals will fluctuate but, to make it worth while early in game need to be scavenger and be able to produce Fuel.)

Silicon (20) + Oxygen (40) -> Glass (80) (Glass not really needed until mid to late game so if one focuses on this it drops rapidly plus have to produce Oxygen.)

Aluminum (20) + Silicon (20) + Carbon (20) -> Electronics (100) (Needed late game to upgrade, usually need to mine Silicon/Carbon as one of them is going to be expensive.)

Water (20) -> Fuel (40) or Oxygen (40) (Needed for normal operation plus Chemicals/Glass.)

Thoughts...

If you had Steel require something other than just Iron it would open up other possibilities for winning or if there were other uses for Aluminum/Silicon other than Electronics/Glass such as have different base types require different core elements similar to the scavenger base requiring Carbon instead of steel.  

So with that being said Steel means victory and with only two players especially if they are both non-scavenger this will stay high enough to get them to level 4/5.  I've tried playing Carbon based and Scavenger to offset it, simply meaning I don't need any steel and it does keep steel lower in cost but, not enough for it to be an alternative.

I would try focusing on Silicon -> Glass, however, no matter what base you have you don't really need too much Silicon until you level 4/5 therefore you have to get past the low levels where your spending too much on oxygen/power to make that viable.  Plus your then saturating a market with glass that doesn't need it and that cost falls to nothing.  Not to mention you still need Carbon or steel to upgrade and the little bit of glass you need doesn't offset what you're not producing.

All of this would help bring the game to later stages with the added bonus of offering alternatives to winning other than rushing steel.

Other Questions...

Why is it if your stock is all bought say 60/40 why is it that player B can still purchase player A's stock for the share price to make it 50/50 but, player A can not purchase their own stock for share value to make it 70/30?  Not to mention why is it when player B purchases said stock (which would be in player A's pocket) Player A doesn't get the cash value of the stock, after all they would if they sold it prior to player B purchasing it.  This may offer an additional way to attempt to stay alive by keep buying back your own stock.

Game Error?

Last night when playing 1vs1 pvp the other player was able to buy me out right after game start.  No one had really purchased much, however, game end received message that I was bought out.  Forgot to view replay to see how that happened.

Bug in Multiplayer...

If starting a game and your waiting for player to connect and for whatever reason that player doesn't connect there is no way to back up.  The game just sits on that screen and one has to force close the game to leave it.  The Esc button doesn't do anything. 

They used to have the mechanic where you can buy back all of your own stock but have gone away from it. I personally like the direction they're going where you can buy 1 stock at a time until the final 5 shares.

If you allow people to buy back their own stock it feels like that would make the game REALLY long. Just back and forth stock purchases forever. Not sure I'd be a fan of that.

If you have enough money you can Shift Buy. Essentially you hold the shift key and hit the buy stock button to buy available shares.

Yep. That happens right now when there's a failure to load. You have to kill the game in order to escape (alt + F4 will kill it). Happens enough right now in 1v1 that i have a couple of those a night.

Player B in that scenario doesn't buy your stock for the share price. Player B has to pay 2x the amount if the share is already owned by player A. So it is advantageous to buy up your own stock to make yourself less vulnerable/desirable to a buyout because they need twice as much cash to buy you out. It's essentially a defense mechanism to protect yourself and make it harder for people to buy you out more than a revenue generating strategy.

In terms of getting cash back when someone purchases a share you own they are currently experimenting with that in the next_version.

The game is simplified so that it can be an RTS wherein matches last about 15-30 min. I'd like a slow paced (ie. more complex and more realistic) version of OTC like you describe though.

We haven't talked about it much, but the game is very moddable. Not just the XML but the core game C# files. We haven't released documentation for it, but the files are available under C:\Users\[name]\Documents\my games\Offworld\mods\Hidden\Reference. You should be able to do some of these things (and a lot more) with a mod.