Which worked! For about half of the match, that is. By mid game I had figured out which one was you, but it didn’t make a meaningful difference.
I put my base in, quite possibly, the best spot on the map. I landed on 1 silicon and 4 iron. That left 4 silicon and 3 iron tiles bordering me. With scientific I was pumping steel and glass quite effectively. Aluminum was about 6 hexes away, water about the same. At the end game I was also pumping out electronics. Carbon sucked though.
My decision making from that point got consistently more questionable though. Base placement was probably the only thing that kept me afloat TBH. Oh well, was still fun.
More people would be great, because I think, absent AI players, it’d be interesting to see how it pans out. It’s amazing how reliant on pausing I am. With actual humans we can all be equally messed up!
A Qt3 game night for OTC should definitely be a thing. With some advanced warning I’d be a willing participant any time. Just gotta watch between 8:30-9, that’s bed and story time for my son. As fun as OTC is, storytime with Sam is still better ;)
shily pushes the door
Hello, you barely know me but I’d be very happy if we could play together.
I think you got me in your Steam friendlist already, Craig.
Sounds like I am about you guys’ level, though I generally tend to be awful at action games - let me put RTS amongst those ;)
Anyway, don’t hesitate to talk to me if I am online. Looking forward to losing to somebody other than AI opponents!
I started a Manager difficulty campaign over the weekend and whoa, that’s quite a different game eh? I went with one of the New Meridian scientists and decimated the opposition on the first level and came away with Slant Drilling as (I’m guessing) a permanent patent. That’s a huge boon. Would love to play some multiplayer with you folks but I rarely see anyone playing it when I’m online.
Ah, thanks Soren! Will take a look next time I login. Seems there are quite a few moving parts in the campaign that I’m still working out.
In my last game, I think for the first time since the tutorial, I managed to get the Slant Drilling patent and, despite knowing how it works, wondered why there isn’t some kind of visual cue to show that tiles adjacent to resources can now be pumped/quarried/refined/farmed etc., like a transparent wedge or something to show the effects of Slant Drilling.
Just picked this up, im not great at it but it’s very fun and intriguing. I’m never quite sure what type of strategy I should go for in the beginning regarding the late game materials. I generally go for steel and food since those have both seemed to be quite expensive throughout my games. I’m also terrible at looking around at other players and knowing what they have and what will happen.
Anyway Im up for any type of multiplayer match since it seems like it’d be fun to try against real opponents. My steam id is Kyle7000
I’m never quite sure what type of strategy I should go for in the beginning regarding the late game materials.
I’m no expert, but a couple of good rules of thumb are to look at the colony and see what resources it’s consuming, and to check the offworld market prices and see what’s most expensive. There are other factors, of course, such as resource scarcity, and what your opponents are doing, but it’s hard to go wrong with those.
Also, read the Almanac! It’s super useful, especially for founding strategies.
Just to be specific, it’s not the colony hub that’s consuming resources but rather the buildings around it. This page is a good read if you’re looking for a bit more detail. Planning around what the colony is likely to demand makes your mid-game go a bit more smoothly since you’ll be able to anticipate the minor shift in demand that colony growth brings.
I just fired this up and did a couple tutorials. I last played the game ages ago, sometime in the early access phase, and wow, has it evolved! The new tutorials are great: funny and informative. The new graphics are tremendous. I’ve been zooming in on every item as I build it, just enjoying the animations. Even the music is pleasant.
The game also has abundant hotkeys, which means I can use it with Voice Attack, which saves some wear and tear on my aging hands. I plan to play single-player almost exclusively, but I’m curious – would Soren object to the use of Voice Attack in multiplayer games? The only miniscule advantage I might enjoy is that I could make a VA command that would sell, say, 5 or 50 units of a resource with one command, instead of 1 or 10 or 100. (E.g., a single VA command to “sell 50” would essentially sell 10 items and repeat that command five times, perhaps separated by a 0.1 second pause.)
Also, I’m really glad to see all the new game modes. When I first tried it, I think skirmish was the only option. Lots to do now. Kudos!
So I’ve been playing some more of my campaign today and I’m really, really enjoying it. I’m not sure whether I’m in a minority here but I love it when a game limits the very things I’ve been leaning on (in this case, water pumps and offworld markets) and is robust enough to support alternative strategies. The campaign mode does this a lot and it’s chock full of things to consider and interesting decisions to make between weeks.
I just finished a week at a location that had strong winds so all ships moved slower and wind turbines generated twice as much power so I bought an engineer for that week to buff my output. Still, I deployed my HQ in a place that was far away from things like water and silicon so I totally screwed myself. I managed to secure a win by researching teleportation and slant drilling ASAP and buying one last habitat module the very moment before the week ended! 21-20. By A Nose! Also: Call of Booty - what a great achievement name.
I also love the way that different locations build up your relationships with different nations giving you longer term perks like scanning range increases or core sample black market abilities (I’ve learned to cherish these as the New Meridians). I’ve found I run an incredibly high debt though and I can’t seem to help myself. I win, but we’re talking $500K debt by the end of a week!
What keeps throwing me at the moment is the auctions. I keep bidding as if I’m gaining a structure but I’m only gaining an engineer! I also keep demolishing structures, most notably structures on water resources to build water pumps, then realising I don’t have engineers for water pumps.
And finally, I’ve simulated the AI games so at present my enemies are Reni and Joji with Maisie Song coming up from behind. I love this kind of rivalry, it gives me some targets to set my sights on.
Anyway, yeah, the campaign is a blast. Daily what now?
It is very replayable, I think a campaign last 8? weeks, so 8 games. The 1st couple weeks are a prelim thing, and then each week the bottom player gets eliminated (unless you won your game that week). Then the last week it is a battle between the players that are left, and whomever wins that game wins the campaign. The campaigns are different because, except for that last game, you are not trying to buyout and crush your opponents. In the games previous the final one, the way you win is by being the player to build the most infrastructure for the colony. So you are trying to generate money in order to purchase buildings for the colony. The campaign is also different because you only have access to certain building types based on what you’ve done between rounds.
I think I’m willing to go on record as saying the single-player campaign in Offworld Trading Company is among the top five single-player campaigns in any RTS. For various reasons that include replayability, it’s right up there with Rise of Nations, Warlords: Battlecry, and, uh…hmm. Thinking. Actually, I think I’m willing to go on record as saying the single-player campaign in Offworld Trading Company is among the top three single-player campaigns in any RTS.
