UI and comprehension issues; AI, black market ramble, patents, claims
Offworld Forums
Build 12745
Just played tutorials and "optional" missions, so this is just a first impression.
Before I start nitpicking, it's an interesting game with a lot of potential.
If problems are partly due to localisation I'll switch language.
Completely missed that caught attacks can be reused (unintuitive?), communicate better in tutorial.
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As I understand it, commodities need cash. Credit is just used for indispensable HQ life support, energy and transporter fuel. But UI doesn't show cash needs for auto-supply!
There are 2 unexpected consequences:
#1 is to lose cash when I'm saving up. Remedy: I can't "trade" but must dump my wares fast and then spend the money immediately. Feels stupid.
#2 is buildings stay unsupplied even though auto-supply is on, but I don't see why, neither in the building nor in the goods/money area.
Some suggestions:
try color coding different expenses at wares (red and yellow maybe); or highlight shortfalls there, with more detail in tooltip.
(Add cash precondition to auto-supply tooltip)
display the cash consumption for commodities at the cash UI (tooltip if need be)
maybe even allow using credit for commodities above a certain credit rating.
The last point would need some testing about consequences. Would add use to "cooking the books"; tradeoff between defering investment in cheap raw mats for faster growth vs risking the close deposit claim.
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AI won auction for a 
resource claim, but never built on it.
some company AIs seem to choose one prefered target and then stick to it, no matter the target ranking. If its another NPC, easy game, no skill used. If this is the player, bad luck and a terrible game experience. When you're behind anyway, waiting for resources to upgrade, these attacks can completely shut you down for minutes.
Black market ramble:
The instand hit, blow-trading interaction reminds me of "The guild 1600", a terrible, now discontinued browser "trading" game. Looks like an easy way to add PvP action, but is actually turning off many of your core audience.
In an RTS with troops there are usually several mechanisms to increase defensive capability. Time needed to scout and approach the enemy.
Attacker troops at departure must be able to handle the enemy (and defense structures) at arrival.
Here, depending on Black Market options, defensive depth is missing. More money = cheap, instant attacks vastly increasing the gap.
If I know the mechanics I can reduce damage by building strategy, but that's it. That's no fun for a strategy game.
Missions 4+5 have 4 attacks and 1 defense: indefensible magnetic storm, indefensible slowdown, and 2/3 defensible attacks. Fatally, defense is auctioned by the same simple mechanic as attacks, via ALL players. As soon as the market opens, some defenses are bought, pushing up prices. A cought attack may trigger more than one defense, so players restock. Soon the next attack will cost 4,5k while the protective thugs cost 30k. At this point it becomes impossible to defend anything when you're poor, especially not an important patent application.
Some suggestions:
Revisit the auction mechanics. Depending on number of attacks, increase defense cost slower or calculate defensive cost raises per player.
Revisit NPC AI's target selection. Is there a strategic reason to single out one opponent?
Give BM actions an incubation time and warn the target (nothing like the good old "nuclear launch detected" from starcraft...).
There is surely more interesting stuff that can be done with the feature, and add depth to the interaction.
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Patents currently are like the initial civ's wonders of the world. Someone else finished it first when your final seconds tic? bad luck... and bad design.
Civ later announced who started building what, if I remember correctly. You could do that as well. Also it's a patent, so why not allow the other players to license it? Could be the same application cost, just that the owner then gets $$ for the use.
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Claims are static in higher difficulty levels, why? Especially for scientists it is a terrible restriction when you want to adjust your company later on. Option might be to bill for returning it, increasing cost with count of returns.
Also fighting for special claims might be interesting. If a claim is not built on for some time (e.g. because it was just reserved, auctioned or the building destroyed) other companies might find them appealing.
, and there is always the option for the more peaceful audience to switch off BM attacks.