Offworld market prices prior to building

First of all, I think this game is excellent. The innovation in shifting competition away from combat and toward free trade using actual market forces is incredibly refreshing. It's also executed almost perfectly.

I say almost, because there's one small (potential) oversight that I noticed on my first full game. The offworld market is the obvious end game, but before building the market itself you can't view the prices of the goods you're going to sell. I personally think this is an oversight in that it either forces the player to maintain an even and diverse economy or gamble and select a resource type to focus on with the chance of it being near worthless in the offworld market. 

I'll admit, I've played all of the tutorial plus one full game (which I won), so I'm hardly an expert. However, I think the game would benefit from a deeper level of strategy if prices in the offworld market were either known or could become known earlier in the game. 

8,198 views 5 replies
Reply #1 Top

If you click on the rocket near the bottom of the screen, you can view the Offworld prices.

Reply #2 Top

Disregard then! Polish it up with art and sound and it will gleam like a diamond!

Reply #3 Top

Soren, I rememer the suggestion I made many months ago about a gently rising exponential price in market prices: https://forums.offworldgame.com/471254/page/1/#3587217 I noticed a couple betas back you seemed to have implemented something similar, but didnt tell us quite how it works.  If we want to glance at OW prices before founding and guestimate late game prices... it would be nice to know how they grow (linearly, exponentially, etc).  

Reply #4 Top

I'm not Soren, obviously, but having looked at the code a while back:

The offworld price for each resource has a set probability (ranging from 1/5 to 1/2) to rise by $10 at certain intervals (I believe every 15 seconds). I could probably put that information on the wiki, but I wonder how many people actually ever look at it...

Reply #5 Top

I do!  People get motivated to analyze things FAST after they lose to obnoxious roommates getting saved from their $500k+ power bill due to offworld cash infusions.

 

Not that I speak from experience or anything.