Offworld Trading Company Review - Mission to Mars
- Thread starter Encaen
- Start date
Glad to hear that the game is good! I tend to like what Stardock puts out, but I've become so skeptical of new releases on principle. I loved Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, despite the limited single-player content, but the one thing I really wanted to see from the game was a more detailed look at planetary development. This sounds like exactly what I wanted.
Saw Totalbiscuit's review of it
This looks like an amazing mix of sort-of 4X and simcity. It plays very similar to something like Settlers or similar RTS games.
You have to balance the very limited number of land claims you can make, with ressource collection and advanced production.
A typical 'chain' would be something like Water well (for water) -> Eletrolysis factory (makes fuel) -> chemical lab (makes chemicals) and then you either sell the chems for mad profits or use the chemicals for science.
the ways that you opponents can mess with you are myriad and quite varied - from setting up pirates that snipe your flying transport-ships to steal goods, to fermenting a revolt at one of your factories to temporarily take control of it (they can't tell its you who did it), to blowing up an ore vein under an opponent's mine to reduce how much it produces, or sending a virus over to disable things, or make stuff go into overdrive -
all to drive your opponents into financial ruin
Its quite fun - and the campaign mode lets you build up your company with 'buffs' that you buy over the 'weeks' of events that transpire.
Also the competitive angle in the game is quite unique: usually with citybuilders and x4 games you can spend a lot of time just building things up - but here you're up against someone who will buy out your company if you don't buy them out first.
In campaign mode you either have to be the one who blows the most money and ressources building up a colony, or buying out your opponent - and in skirmish mode its just pure buyout or be bought.
When it comes to making money there are so many ways to do it. Do you build pleasure domes around the colony, or a lot of powerplants and auto-sell surplus power, to earn a steady income? or do you build a lot of water wells, greenhouses, and hacker arrays - and then hack the food market prices to inflate them, so you earn a shitload of dosh?
Do you go the science route, get a patent office, get the 'perk' that nets you 25% of your opponents dept payments - then use black market attacks to drive your opponents into astronomic debt.
Oh yes, debt - you can play this game for hours and never have a positive balance. In most games like Simcity, going into the red means that you can't do anything at all... but in this game you can still keep on trucking, since all your buildings don't cost money if you simply have the resources needed
...but you do ultimately need cash to buy opponent shares, to buy them out - but since you earn money via ressources, then you can usually bounce back from dept unless you've wasted your land claims on useless stuff without getting a good production chain set up.
Oh and if you don't build a powerplant or two, then your power bill ultimately drive you into spiraling debt - oh and your 'credit rating' will go from good to worse as your acrue debt, increasing your interest rate from 2% to 30% at its worst. Remember that perk about getting 25% of your opponeents debt payments? 30% of 500K debt is a lot of money.
This looks like an amazing mix of sort-of 4X and simcity. It plays very similar to something like Settlers or similar RTS games.
You have to balance the very limited number of land claims you can make, with ressource collection and advanced production.
A typical 'chain' would be something like Water well (for water) -> Eletrolysis factory (makes fuel) -> chemical lab (makes chemicals) and then you either sell the chems for mad profits or use the chemicals for science.
the ways that you opponents can mess with you are myriad and quite varied - from setting up pirates that snipe your flying transport-ships to steal goods, to fermenting a revolt at one of your factories to temporarily take control of it (they can't tell its you who did it), to blowing up an ore vein under an opponent's mine to reduce how much it produces, or sending a virus over to disable things, or make stuff go into overdrive -
all to drive your opponents into financial ruin
Its quite fun - and the campaign mode lets you build up your company with 'buffs' that you buy over the 'weeks' of events that transpire.
Also the competitive angle in the game is quite unique: usually with citybuilders and x4 games you can spend a lot of time just building things up - but here you're up against someone who will buy out your company if you don't buy them out first.
In campaign mode you either have to be the one who blows the most money and ressources building up a colony, or buying out your opponent - and in skirmish mode its just pure buyout or be bought.
When it comes to making money there are so many ways to do it. Do you build pleasure domes around the colony, or a lot of powerplants and auto-sell surplus power, to earn a steady income? or do you build a lot of water wells, greenhouses, and hacker arrays - and then hack the food market prices to inflate them, so you earn a shitload of dosh?
Do you go the science route, get a patent office, get the 'perk' that nets you 25% of your opponents dept payments - then use black market attacks to drive your opponents into astronomic debt.
Oh yes, debt - you can play this game for hours and never have a positive balance. In most games like Simcity, going into the red means that you can't do anything at all... but in this game you can still keep on trucking, since all your buildings don't cost money if you simply have the resources needed
...but you do ultimately need cash to buy opponent shares, to buy them out - but since you earn money via ressources, then you can usually bounce back from dept unless you've wasted your land claims on useless stuff without getting a good production chain set up.
Oh and if you don't build a powerplant or two, then your power bill ultimately drive you into spiraling debt - oh and your 'credit rating' will go from good to worse as your acrue debt, increasing your interest rate from 2% to 30% at its worst. Remember that perk about getting 25% of your opponeents debt payments? 30% of 500K debt is a lot of money.