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Rob Zacny

Episode 281: Black on Red

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The original panel gets together to talk about an original game made by our original intern, Soren Johnson (also known for designing Civilization IV). 

 

Rob, Julian, Bruce, and Troy "The Wolf of Nix Street" Goodfellow discuss buying, selling, and exploring in this early preview of Offworld Trading Company.

 


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For the first 15 minutes or so of listening to this I kept thinking "M.U.L.E.!  Mention M.U.L.E.!", but then Bruce brought it up.

 

I'd love to hear a podcast about M.U.L.E., by the way; that was a brilliant little game that was literally decades ahead of its time.

 

Offworld Trading Company sounds fascinating.  I think I'm going to hold off until release; I've already got my fingers in a lot of early access pies.  I imagine I'll own it the moment it shows up on Steam, GOG or Desura.

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I loved this episode. Your discussion increased my anticipation of buying Offworld Trading Company once it has developed single-player functionality.

I have some questions for y'all based on things said in the podcast. I haven't played the game, so some of these might be irrelevant or nonsensical:

1. Isn't the stock-buyout supposed to happen fast? There seemed to be concerns expressed in the podcast that the stock-buyout was fast and unstoppable, but I was under the impression that stock-buyouts are supposed to be all-or-nothing glory-runs that can win the game or lose it based off of the player's timing. Are all the cards on the table when a buy-out is attempted? Or are there ways that a player can suddenly inflate their worth or deflate the buyer's worth during the attempted buy-out?

2. I had a hard time understanding what it was about the information the game provides or doesn't provide that makes potential actions hidden from the player.

3. There were concerns expressed that late-game circumstances can nerf certain strategies and over-power others unpredictably. This sounds like a good thing. Can players build themselves up to be flexible, for instance investing in liquidity so that they can jump on any high-bid opportunities that they think might win them the game once they appear late-game?

4. There were concerns that player-interaction is minimal, but I also heard that you can guage other players' strategies by looking at their colonies. Would it be possible to do something like boost a weaker opponent by deflating an asset that they are likely to use to harass a stronger opponent?

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Sounds like a really fun game, but I can't see myself ever getting a chance/time to get into it given the multiplayer focus.  [which isn't to say I never play against people, as opposed to AI. Just that if I have a spare hour or so for a competitive game, I'm probably going to play Go online rather than this]. I don't really see how it would translate to a single player game either.

 

Although it would be neat to re-use some of the mechanics in a single player focused game with a 4x style score (of course, it would be centred on the economic aspects rather than the 4Xs, but no reason it couldn't work really well with the right story driving it along). 

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