tberton

Offworld, an economic RTS from Soren Johnson

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Soren Johnson just posted the rules for his new game, Offworld. It seems really neat, especially in how influenced it is by Euro-style board games, as evidenced by him explaining the game like a board game rulebook. While I'm not a huge fan of some of the games he's taking inspiration from, I'm happy to see video game designers looking to board games for inspiration. I'll be pretty tempted to pick this game up once I get some time in the fall.

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I'm a little scared, my friend who would be most interested in this is an actual economist. Looking forward to it!

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Awesome! Can't wait to see the streams, to see what it plays like.

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I am intrigued. The part of EVE I always liked the best was the economoics part.

 

Edit: Hmm, Stardock. How's that going for you? I used to love their products, but ever since Impulse it feels like things have gone down hill a bit.

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It sounds really cool.

I have some questions:

-When stocks are purchased initially, does the company whose stock is sold get the money from the sale?

-Can stocks be resold at market-prices?

-Can patents be sold or leased?

If so, does the owner set a price or is it determined by the market?

-Can buildings be sold or leased?

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- The stock is already publicly available, so it doesn't go to the company. (However, when you buy someone out, the money you spend to buy other people's stock DOES go to them, which can be dangerous.)

 

- Stocks can't be sold. It could work, but it just sort of slows down the game without much upside.

 

- Patents can't be sold or leased. (You do acquire someone's patents when you buy them out...)

 

- Buildings can't be sold or leased. (You can mutiny them for a period of time to take them over...)

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I just skimmed over the rules and am now officially intrigued, but I've always been completely rubbish at balancing combat, base building and resource management in other RTS games. If this game requires some sort of minimum APM threshold to be competitive, that's definitely going to be an issue for me.

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Well, considering there's really no combat in this game, that might make things easier for you.

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Well, considering there's really no combat in this game, that might make things easier for you.

 

I hope so, but with thirteen different resource types and multiple interactive systems, and given that Soren claims that games can be played in less than an hour, it sounds like it might be a bit overwhelming for me. But I love the idea of a cutthroat tycoon-style game, so I'll keep tabs on it for sure.

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Hey Soren, I know that earlier in the year you were talking about streaming your plays of the game. Are there still plans for that? I would be really interested in that.

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Yeah, I'd be really interested in getting a sense for what this game even is and looks like.

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I'm afraid that we had to delay the idea of streams when we decided to delay showing any of the game publicly until next year. Still want to do streams, however!

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My friend bought it and was nice enough to give me a key. Haven't been playing it that much though, I usually tend to stay clear of early access and the like, but it already seems pretty solid and I'm certainly interested in what the future brings for the game. Only thing that is actually bothering me/freaking me out is those computer generated voices haha

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There is but it's pretty rudimentary I think? That's the impression I got from Bruce Geryk on the 3MA episode about the game anyway...

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Is there any single-player component in the game currently?

 

I've been working a lot on the (single-player) campaign recently. I think it's actually in pretty good shape now.

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I bit.

If anyone wants to buy a copy for $20, private message me. 

 

Edit:

10 minutes in and I can already tell you that Mr. Espionage is a big jerk-face. 

 

Edit2:
20 minutes in, I like it. Just watching the little shipments happen and the stocks get emptied and replenished is mesmerizing.

Then I saw that I was auto-selling power by default and I was like "$6 seems cheap for power, it's like we are giving it away!" So I hit the stop button on that. This made me see that I could auto-sell any of this shit I've been mining (in the tutorial) so I was like "$65 for aluminum? I have tons of that.", pressed auto-sell and the debt-calculation on the top (that I had kinda assumed would forever go up slowly) just went "Bloop, bloop blooop bloop blopp!" and I was debt free. 

I have no idea what I'm doing yet, but the construction of factories feels visually rewarding. Also, the "offworld" quality of the branding implies a narrative of scarcity. This creates a circumstance in which I immediately feel successful when I achieve any surplus in any of my goods (even though I don't know what I'm doing because I just started the tutorial).

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This game is very good.

 

When hearing about it, I thought I would be most interested in the black-market/sabatoge stuff. I mean... I haven't touched that stuff yet, but I thought that the rest of the game would be focused around getting to use the black-market. Nope. Turns out that having a dynamic economy that fluctates due to your buying and selling is fascinating in itself.

The pacing is interesting; the game encourages you to make drastic investment-decisions when you upgrade your colony. In the tutorial, you upgrade your colony 5 times. What this means is that there are five moments where all your major investment-decisions are made. This is not a bad thing, real-time strategy games stress me out. This is totally a real-time strategy game, but it doesn't stress me out because while I'm waiting for my materials to be produced for an upgrade, I have time to say to myself "Ok, when I upgrade, how am I going to use my claims?" which means "What do I think will be the best ways to invest?" And then when I upgrade, I'm like "BAM BAM BAM BAM" and I have a farming park because the price of food has gotten high and I'm going to exploit the shit out of that with my neighboring-tile multipliers. 

 

I have a lot of questions about how stuff works, but I think I should probably finish the tutorials before I start asking them. 

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Thanks, Clyde, glad to hear you're enjoying the game! We just did an update this morning, so I'd be curious to know what you think of the campaign when you get a chance.

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