The real reason is that the AI competes with itself. If reactors are good, all the AIs go into reactors together and then none of them make any money. It's the similarity of their thought processes, and the inability to look at anyone else's production, that causes AI problems in large games.
[quote who="showcasemike23" reply="42" id="3604660"] In light of concerns I am with not completely revamping the game carelessly but what about just adding a mode that incorporates my outstanding debt idea that doesn't alow stock purchases or upgrades while interest is owed? Then let people play both ways. It would not be hard to create this change. [/quote] Every mode change requires Soren to add to his AI. He already has significant work to do with his AI.
[quote who="Zultar327" reply="36" id="3604598"] Quoting Cubit32, reply 29 the game could automatically sell your resources to pay the interest, starting with the highest priced resources. This discussion blew up more than I expected to. I think this would be terrible for the
[quote who="InSyncOTC" reply="32" id="3604542"] Quoting showcasemike23, reply 30 I'm glad to see someone reputable in this game thinks it's a good idea! Yep. That's why he always plays with tighter debt. Just like other 'reputable' players do. Oh wait... [e digicons]:
[quote who="Cubit32" reply="29" id="3604444"] the game could automatically sell your resources to pay the interest, starting with the highest priced resources. [/quote] This isn't a perfect solution. It would still require a separate "special debt" number, because a player could micromanage the interest by queueing up 6 Patent researches just to hide his resources from the interest tick.
[quote who="Frogboy" reply="7" id="3604360"] When we get closer to release, I'd like to see us have a formal season 0 test run to see how the system works. [e digicons]:)[/e] [/quote] Where will the players come from? It's already in Early Access, will it be put in Beta?
More complexity is not a good solution. Even now, there are still basic concepts that top players don't understand, like colony modules, and Core Sample to a lesser extent. What would a new player think?
[quote who="Faressa" reply="20" id="3603898"] Quoting blackmagic1, reply 19 In a 4 player FFA that lasts longer you're shut down more often by the BM and the game is longer because you're fighting for resources vs multiple players. I wouldn't be opposed to mike's suggestion to make debt more
[quote who="duelking2000" reply="16" id="3603704"]The system of debt used here is not true debt, it is the governments lending you money, subsidising you in exchange for becoming self-sufficient with your help, and then you pay them back later. The more debt you have, the more debt they have so the harder it is for them to borrow money back on Earth, so the more interest they claim you owe the them and therefore the tax payer later on. This means the system is realistic, because it's a ne
Debt diving is not a normal thing that naturally arises in the real world, although it can be accomplished by shady executives and opaque accounting. It's probably in OTC for gameplay purposes. I agree that it is unintuitive to have resources/cash not to affect stock price as much as debt, but maybe it is time for the tutorial to shine here? [e digicons]:grin:[/e] (To get a 5x debt multiplier in the real world, it would have to be the case that investors are able to see a corpora
The reason for that is autosupply has lots of bugs, not because Chem Labs are funky. I've seen Chem Labs with 40/20 carbon stored up when I placed a carbon mine next to them to avoid autosupply bugs. In your case, that the electrolysis-chem lab distance is smaller than the base-chem lab distance, and that both are disconnected from the base, are causing the problem. If you were to afterwards connect the electrolysis reactors to your base, the chem labs would no longer have 60/40 fuel.
Well, you're still strong, you just have room for improvement.
[quote who="showcasemike23" reply="11" id="3603629"] Only people I've played that give me a fight are morgan and wino [/quote] Have you encountered some of the finalists from the recent tournaments? If you are doing well, I recommend looking for matches against gameslayer, cubit, pbhead, and blues. As a tip for finding matches, occasionally Zultar does streams, and Soren (Mohawk) does streams. You can join their matches, which are semi-regular.
If kingmorgan loses sometimes against a player who doesn't understand debt at all, I think that would be somewhat sad... In terms of realism, I don't think OTC is meant to be a "life like experience", but OTC's handling of debt is actually quite realistic in its simplicity. I don't consider my understanding of bonds to be deep, but few people in the world know much better than I do, and I do see why people misunderstand debt as cash.
[quote who="Pbhead" reply="14" id="3603275"] Thing that bugs me the post about the new stock situation is its non-symmetry. Why can I only force buy one persons stock at 2x price? Why cant i force buy back my own stock anymore? I do see a situation where you end up playing tug-of-war over a single piece of stock... not sure how to avoid that particular issue though putting shift-buy back in would probably help with that. [/quote] Tug of war
Oh, 25% of money, not 25% of revenue. That isn't weak. As Cubit notes, 58% of any moment's production is in your hands by the next day.
I think this is a holdover from when advanced buildings worked slowly. But they work at normal speed now.
Notice the 5.5 power consumption. The same thing happens for Hacker Arrays and Offworlds; I haven't tested Engineering Labs.
That's very reasonable. When everyone in an FFA is allowed to mess with everyone else equally, it's difficult to make the incentives cause interesting things. The most common system is Risk-like, where murder has gradual benefits instead of all-or-nothing, but it may not be the correct choice for OTC, and there are other choices as well. Having stock purchases steal tiles could make markets much more interesting, but it could also be complicated.
[quote who="indczn1" reply="3" id="3603094"] Killing the main threat is usually the thing to do, no matter what the stock mode is. The only time someone else was purchased happened was they lagged far behind and/or debt spiraled and were cheap. I don't think changing the function of stock is going to change this aspect very much. The cashflow from the subsidiaries will hopefully justify the "investment" into stock, instead of trying to snowball enough cash via resource man
There's too much dogpiling. What incentive does a player have to buy someone's stock? The subsidiary bonus is not amazing, so the main bonus is: kill the threat. The top player gets his stock bought out. It's a little painful to lose just because you are doing well. I don't have any problem with incremental buyouts, but there should at least be a second reason to buy someone out, rather than just "he's doing too well for my comfort". That is, the player who does th
For example, at https://youtu.be/mxTKq39PeiI?t=292, it pays 40k for a dual-low tile. Maybe a better evaluation of value would be Main Purpose + 0.2 * Secondary Purpose, or something like that. But at least, it should never pay more for a tile than for a claim.
Everyone has known for a long time, and Zultar talks about it occasionally, but notice how nobody ever uses it in FFAs. That's because they have the sportsmanship not to abuse it.
To reproduce: 1. Found in a game by yourself, with no AIs 2. build an iron mine 3. build a steel mill far away from your base. Then hover over it to see what is happening with its internal resources. Most of the time, the steel mill will have insufficient iron to produce any steel, but it will just fail silently without letting you know. In addition, the freighters will be carrying 13 iron, instead of 20 iron. That means you're paying more fuel, for no disc
It's usually obvious in Masquerade who the AI is anyway, but having the AI talk doesn't help matters.