Offworld Trading Company (Stardock)

Baked.noodle

http://www.offworldtrading.com/

Stardock announces Offworld Trading Company, an economics-based real-time strategy game set on Mars, where "the marketplace is the battlefield," and "the free market reigns, money is everything, and even the air you breathe is for sale".

From the designer of Civilization IV comes a new kind of real-time strategy game

Offworld Trading Company is a real-time strategy game in which money, not firepower, is the player's weapon. Players found a company on Mars and compete against other companies looking to become the economic power on the planet.
Loosely inspired by such classics as M.U.L.E., Offworld Trading Company forces players to make tough choices on what resources to acquire, what goods to build and sell, how to interact with the planet's thriving underworld, and when and what stocks to acquire.
Players compete against up to seven other AI- or player-controlled companies. The game is won when one player ultimately acquires all the shares of their competitors, thereby wresting control of the entire planet’s economy for the winner.
Gameplay

Money is the heart of Offworld Trading Company. Players gain cash by selling excess resources like carbon, fuel, and silicon on the open market, and spend it buying the resources they’re short on. Prices fluctuate in real time; dump a bunch of iron on the market and its price will crater, making it cheap for other players to buy up (and making their stockpiles worth much less in the near term).

Resources are extracted from the planet from concentrations visible on the map, or created by a player’s industrial buildings like a hydrolysis station turning water into fuel and oxygen. However, each building – extractors, processors, or special facilities like patent offices – requires a claim to be spent acquiring the land to build it on.

Claims are acquired by leveling up your colony (at a hefty resource cost), or for cash at the black market (at an escalating and significant cash price). Getting a new claim in Offworld Trading Company is a lot like claiming an expansion site in a traditional RTS.

Finally, the black market allows for more direct interactions than manipulating the price of silicon. Drop a wad of cash to hire pirates to harass your opponents’ supply chains, smuggle a crippling EMP device into their factories, or send a power surge through their facilities – but don’t be surprised when your corporation finds itself on the receiving end of some of these effects.

While fueling their rapid expansion by exploiting resource prices and turning the black market to their advantage, players must keep their facilities stocked with air, food, fuel. Your employees won’t die if you run short, but they’ll be forced to buy the necessities on the market – and your stock price will suffer.

Letting the basics slide to focus on making more money by extracting and processing more resources may sound tempting, but any stock price drop is a short path to failure in Offworld Trading Company. Buying out your rivals is the key to victory, so driving up your stock price while depressing theirs is critical.

A basic strategy in Offworld Trading Company might look something like this:

1. Drive up the price of water by buying up the world’s supplies and hoarding them in your stockpile.
2. Hit your opponent with an EMP that temporarily takes out his limited production capabilities, sending his stock price plummeting as he can’t fulfill his company’s needs.
3. Meanwhile, water has become much more expensive on the open market thanks to the reduction in supply – giving you the perfect opportunity to dump your stockpiles and buy up a big chunk of his stock before he can recover.

Offworld Trading Company is a unique game that rewards thinking on your feet and adapting your strategy to constantly changing game conditions, not memorizing build orders and deploying hard counters. Every stratagem has a counter – literally, thanks to the real-time market pricing that is the game’s core foundation – if you can see what your opponents are trying to do in time to react to it.

Prototype, Beta and Release Schedule

In order to ensure that the final game is of the highest quality, we are inviting gamers who have longed to have a strategy game that focused on business and economic savvy to join us during the development cycle to offer feedback, playtest, and interact with the developers.
We expect to launch the first prototype version of Offworld Trading Company to our Elite Founders this fall. The beta/Early Access edition will follow, with the final release date coming when the game is done.

FAQ

nesf

That looks like it could be interesting.

Baked.noodle

http://www.mohawkgames.com/2014/07/21/play-the-prototype/

Play the Prototype!
July 21, 2014GeneralSoren Johnson

When we announced our pre-order program back in May, we promised that purchasers of our Elite Edition (and their friends) would be “the first to play our prototype this Fall.” We would like to announce that Fall has arrived early this year, apparently in mid-July! In fact, members of the Elite group have already been playing the game for a couple weeks and discussing it on our private forums. As everything seems to be working well (or rather, well enough for a playable prototype), we are announcing publicly that the Elite Edition now gives buyers immediate access to the prototype. (Some disclaimers: prototype access requires an electronic NDA, and the Steam keys are distributed manually once per week.)

We have been inspired and encouraged by all those who have pre-ordered Offworld without any screenshots, videos, or evidence of a working game. Now, at last, we can offer the game. Would love to hear your thoughts on our private forum!

http://offworldgame.com/

Founder's Edition
$34.99

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The regular $39.99 price
Early Access

Download and play when Steam Early Access becomes available
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Founder's Vault

Exclusive assets from Offworld's development: concept art, design docs, and more

Founder's Elite Edition
$79.99

Play The Prototype

Play the prototype in single- and multiplayer now! (NDA required)
Private Forum Access

Give Mohawk your feedback via special forums
Forum Badge

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Soundtrack & Game Almanac

Digital soundtrack, strategy guide, designer notes, and concept art when final game launches
Extra Game Key

Enjoy multiplayer by giving a friend a full copy of the game
Bring More Friends

Purchase additional game keys at $20 a piece for more competition
Founder's Vault

Exclusive assets from Offworld's development: concept art, design docs, and more

Sephiroth_dude

Anyone get this? Was released for early access last friday on steam.

Baked.noodle

Haven't played it but I was watching some guy play it on you tube and I think it looks really promising. I got the impression they have taken an idea that at first glance would work as turn based game and fashioned it into an RTS. The economic strategizing looks complex and interesting and may breath fresh air into the RTS genre. It must be difficult to program the single player AI for a game like this, as usually the AI is a series of set pieces with triggers whilst this looks more emergent. It looks promising to me.