What he said. It won't be long before everyone uses this Hacker-Jacker trick, if they're not already. Aside from the obvious tell that there's two Hacker Arrays, by the time you start the process it's already too late for anyone else to do anything about it. Almost no risk at all. No amount of Eng Labs will rake in the kind of near-instant profit that Hacker-Jacking will.
[quote who="indczn1" reply="10" id="3529061"] I use upgrades since sometimes I'd rather just maximize output than worry about messing with the markets and risking buying/selling large quantities of resources to profit. [/quote] What risk? With two Hacker arrays and a fair lump sum to start off with you can pick a resource, almost any resource, kick off a few rounds of shortage on it and jack the price up on that resource to the point that no-one else can get
Never bother with the lab. Often by the time you've invested (heavily) in a thing it's no longer a thing by the time your investment should've started paying off, and you sometimes don't even get back the value of the chems you sank into it. Nah. Eng lab offers far too little, far too slowly when considered alongside the other special buildings. Eng lab can work for you in the long term but with things like the double Hacker-Jacker trick effecti
I like the idea behind having an NPC colony to influence play but the current implementation doesn't really work because it's not in your interests to pander to its needs, unless you're already in a runaway winning position. Twice now I've turned a losing position into a draw simply by forcing the colony to fail. The AIs seem not to care about it so you end up disadvantaging yourself by attempting to do so yourself, leaving every other corp to continue exploiting.&
[aside] OP mentioned Hawken. Shame that died. The alpha days were full of vim and promise. [/aside]
[quote who="Obscurous" reply="8" id="3528346"] Campaign: The concept of the campaign system is rock solid. I would like a little more clarity on difficulties between maps. Also seems the randomness of the starting things you can "buy/Hire" can be troublesome. Example. Scientific, you start with solar panels, but no quarries. which mean 10 minutes into most maps you are paying 100+ for power and no way to change that. you can't expand cause it will use more power, so you ca
[quote who="Tigershawk" reply="23" id="3528277"] Quoting node10, reply 22 Hacker array is the fault of a lot of this. Build two arrays, set them to chain-short the most expensive resource, sink 100k into that resource to push the price way up moments before the short effects kick in, then sell for enormous profit and
Hacker array is the fault of a lot of this. Build two arrays, set them to chain-short the most expensive resource, sink 100k into that resource to push the price way up moments before the short effects kick in, then sell for enormous profit and buy all of the things. Game won, more often than not; usually before having reached HQ level 5 (because you don't need level 5 to do this).
"skar vinchercoal any expended"
It would be nice to know the number of players that the game is balanced on. Is it 2, 4..? I agree that it might be best to adjust price movement based on the number of players in the game. 6-8p games are 'kind of fun' but the markets go bonkers and it feels more like an RNG crapshoot than anything more devious and cunning.
The price point is by far and away the biggest turn-off. If the high price point was deliberate to limit purchases then that has to be about the daftest thing I've read this week (and I've read an awful lot of daft things this week).
Just adding another comment on the side of the extra claim for founding late being a bit on the 'too good' side. Staggered awarding of the extra claim to all in reverse order of founding, in much the same way that the Black Market opens, sounds good in principle.
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 pres
I have trouble clicking on them as well since they were increased in size.
[duplicate post deleted]
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 re
Patent ON/OFF button. Yes please. :)
Yeah, the Goon Squad bitmap billboard is a bit funky.
/signed
I'd say that the map characteristics should have the greatest say over which power system is best. Presently almost every map has high ground so Solar tends to be the better option, but if high ground was more variable in its presence, or features like mountains came into play that offered higher yield wind locations, the choice of solar or wind might not be so easy. The lack of mixed power adjacency bonus also forces you to go balls deep on either wind or sola
In my view the campaign snowballs out of all control very quickly and takes almost all of the mystery out of who is likely to win. The good player will naturally find themselves near the top of the table through good play; they don't need to be further advantaged by rapidly accumulating buffs. (If anything I would argue that a good contest should seek to reduce the gap between 'best' and 'worst', not widen it as this campaign currently does.) Rollover buf
The text report is clickable but since the text size was increased it has become somewhat wonky.
The race to the [+] button could be solved by having an auction pop up as soon as a buyout click is registered, then all interested parties start a bidding war.
Cool. :)
Sparklines are tiny graphs that often show trend information. Here's what OTC might look like with sparklines for resources and stock prices:- Each sparkline could show trend information for the last rolling five minutes, with perhaps a sample taken every five seconds. Perhaps the sparkline could be colour coded indicating whether the last