Design space. This is something that could potentially mean a lot of things. Here I define design space in the same way it would be defined in card games: The idea that there's only so much you’re allowed to put into a game, to do with it, before it conflicts with something already in the game fundamentally breaking it. For example, creating a card that is so powerful when combined with something else that it wins you the game immediately. At that point, the game is no longer fun, or balanced. Indeed, balance is always at the forefront when discussing design space. I am worried that with some of the design decisions the design space for this game is too small, the potential too low, to prevent issues that will crop up in the future.
I am going to say this, and a lot of people are probably going to think I’m a jerk for saying it, but offworld trading company is not a hard game. The skill ceiling for this game is low, it’s just that most people in the community haven’t hit that point yet, indeed perhaps none of us have yet. But it’s up there, and we’re closing in on it, perhaps not for larger games, but certainly for 1vs1. Why does this exist? Many factors. For starters, randomness affects this game heavily. Whilst this isn’t a bad thing, it’s arguable that it’s too much. The found is everything, a bad found and you lose. As we as a community get better, the difference between a good found and a mediocre one will get more and more noticeable. What’s worse is that said found is often the result of the scanning phase, something that can cause a lot of grief. As many of us saw in my first match against pbhead today, a mediocre found just cannot beat a good one provided both players are beyond a certain level of skill. If there exists a situation where adding more skill does not change the outcome of the match, then for that particular match you have hit the skill ceiling.
This idea of the found-trumps-all exists for another insidious reason, the lack of counter play. Counter play is the idea of understanding your opponents strategy, and countering it, either before the strategy occurs (such as stealing water away from a scientific) or afterwards. It’s interactive; it allows 2 players to match their brains against each other. Without it, you might as well be playing solitaire. The current counter play options are not sufficient. A player on the worse found has only 3 real ways to make a comeback. The first and most obvious one is to outplay your opponent, be faster than your opponent to the profitable markets and make the correct choices. This is skilful play, which we can ignore when assuming 2 people are skilled enough that it doesn’t matter. The second, randomness once again. A random shortage or surplus can make or break the game. It is required to make the game dynamic, but it is a possibility that you can have the resource you produce short constantly whilst your opponent cannot do so. Finally, the black market. This is I assume what everyone thinks of when they think about comeback mechanics in this game. The idea that the black market becomes more effective the more tiles a player is using all next to each other allows for some strong comeback potential, however it is a double edged sword. The black market costs more for the player behind than it does for the player ahead in terms of time, because the person ahead is generating more money per second. It is still difficult to say whether or not the black market helps the loser more than the winner onworld , but it is a strong balancing mechanic for preventing offworld snowballing.
This leads to my true complaint, the meat of it all: these comeback mechanics have no design space. This is because the scavenger HQ’s and the scientific HQ’s interact with the black market directly, and scavenger interacts with the shortage system. A scientific player can almost completely ignore a black market because of their bonuses, and a scavenger player gets to use so much more of it that it no longer becomes a comeback mechanic for them, but a mechanic designed to lock their opponent out of the game and keep getting ahead. Ontop of that, the scavenger can see shortages and surpluses in advance, heavily reducing the effectiveness of these against a scavenger player. They will always profit from a shortage, provided they are sufficiently skilled, no matter what that shortage is. This lessens the comeback potential of anyone not a scavenger. These 2 HQ’s are balanced around the comeback mechanics themselves. They prevent comebacks, and that’s why they are so popular in the current meta, and why the comeback mechanics have restricted design space. If you decide there needs to be a new black market effect, a new way of coming back into the game, you buff them because they are highly resistant to these effects. All you do is provide these 2 HQ’s with yet more comeback mechanics to use against an expansive or robotic player. We are so limited in what we can change to improve the game because of that. Therefore we cannot have truly effective comeback mechanics. Our design space is limited.
The solution I propose for this is not a pretty one, but I believe it to be necessary. In beta patch 3 scientific currently reign supreme as they have been heavily buffed due to price changes. Unwrap those from the comeback mechanics. Prevent them from limiting the design space. Remove their black market resistance. You must also do the same with scavenger. Perhaps their shortage/surplus bonus can stay for the time being whilst they undergo rebalance, but the final objective should be to remove both their black market bonus as well as shortage bonus. Once these 2 HQ’s are no longer immune to comeback mechanics, the game skill ceiling will rise. How so? Well, by adding more ways in which the player can get back into the game, more variables a player has to account and plan for. Currently, a scientific player doesn’t have to plan around anything except for the dreaded mutiny/dynamite, and the mutiny option is going away in beta patch 3. A scavenger player likewise can lock his opponent up with the black market, preventing him from moving into to it to disrupt the scavenger. And if they do? Well, a scavenger can hit that person back twice as hard, with 2 effects, before he can be hit again. They will thus always win a black market fight, so the only winning move is to not use it on them, unless you’re scientific.
Not only that, but scientific have a resistance to black market, thus all black market effects need to be things scientific can be resistant to. Again, limiting design space. Here are some black market effects that could be introduced, that could not if you had to balance them around scientific being resistant:
Bulldoze – Removes all resource deposits in unclaimed tiles in a hex around the selected spot. This would be the equivalent of spending your own claims to prevent your opponent form using those good tiles that you just know he’s going to claim as soon as he upgrades. A strong counter play that can be done from both ahead and behind.
Reactor overload – An effect somewhat similar to a power surge, except it prevents the buildings from turning off and auto-supply is turned on. You know your opponent has over-produced on some resources and the market will soon crash? Keep him locked into his decision. Burn his money with his own buildings.
Inefficient circuits – Taken from the same vein as reactor overload, this doubles a buildings power consumption for a longer period of time than power surge would disable it, and prevent scrapping. This can improve power plays of your own and increase your opponent debt. Similarly, your opponent can decide to turn off the buildings and not take that debt, but then he has tiles doing nothing, effectively making it stronger than a power surge.
Weak engines – An EMP style radius that causes all blimps coming from a building to have half the speed they normally would. They burn more fuel because they’re up there longer, and they delay the opponent’s resource gathering. He can turn off the building if he wants, or he can ride through it, the duration won’t be too long because like an EMP it only works for a short amount of time. Still, that can further delay and punish a person who just transitioned into something far from his base.
Black hat – Surpluses and shorts a random resource. It changes up the market, making your opponents transitions potentially unviable, and most probably not the best option. Has a good chance of working against you, as the natural counter play is to just be in more resources, but it helps work against a situation where you just know your opponent has better tiles than you because they have food production and it’s the only thing on the market that’s worth making right now.
These are just some suggestions, but they could not be implemented with how limited the current design space is. Before any mechanics such as these can be added, everyone has to be set to an equal playing field. Comeback mechanics should be something that exists, a real possibility that needs to be accounted for, and not something that can be ignored in nearly every match played.
