The rush to upgrade and get offworlds

With beta 6, offworld launch times seem to have been pushed back up to 60 seconds (from 45). While I still think offworlds are the only real viable endgame tool for most 1v1 games due to prices staying so low, the added black market pressure and higher prices in FFAs may make other plays more viable, though that remains to be seen. Offworlds may still end up ultimately being necessary, but I think the rush will be less important. Anecdotally, there was one game we recently played where I was the first to an offworld and drew all the black market, which ultimately slowed me down enough that I couldn't get a buy before my debt caught up with me. 

As for engineering labs, well, they very much seem like complementary buildings to me and I rather like them in that role. While it was fun pumping out upgrades and having ridiculous production on beta 4, that was nerfed for very good reasons. For now, they work to make everything, including other special buildings, more powerful and I think they may even be somewhat underused (though probably not in 1v1) at this point.

Pleasure domes still just don't seem like a very interesting building. They can be valuable under the right conditions, but without an added layer of complexity in terms of inputs or something else, I'd rather not see them buffed. The brief period where boosted Virtual Reality pleasure domes were a dominant strategy was not particularly enjoyable for me.

I discussed this over a few 1v1 matches with blackmagic and am on the same page. The returns for rushing for an offworld are greater than the costs that may be incurred doing so, including interest payments. The strongest colonies are those that can can produce the required resources to build the offworld fastest.

Expansive, Scavenger specials.. (High triangle carbon/high alum close together), Robotic. Whichever has the quickest path to the offworld based on the map.

Part of the reason for the offworld necessity is that the returns are high. Typically, there is a resource that sells for ~600-700 offworld. This allows, when combined with adrenaline rush, to really increase your cash quickly. Adding slowdown strikes to be immune to goon squads will help... but only a little bit since both players will get their offworlds hit. Resource prices on world just don't compete with the returns from the off-world at the end of the game.

Holograms and goon squads. It is very easy to protect an offworld market from blackmarket effects. With a 60 second black market delay, and a 60 second "defended" period granted by the goon squad, the player with the offworld is ALWAYS protected, and the returns easily offset the measly 10-15k that the goonsquad will cost to replace since a launch will occur before that happens. You can't even pre-buy a BM effect to burn off the goonsquad to hit the offworld. Oh, and you get the sabotage right back at your own offworld. Even though holograms "don't work well" its still a free protection against someone not paying attention to their opponent.

Game duration. Even if you wanted to, the game is not long enough to support running up the black market prices to the point where it becomes a meaningful decision to protect the offworld or not. It's also difficult to raise the cash necessary to do so, provided the game could be extended. Artificially extending the game via slowdown strikes, EMP, and power surges isn't enough for this reason. A smart player won't leave themselves open to huge delays. a 1v1 game isn't long enough in duration to allow longer term investments such as patents or engineering bay to start to pay off. Level 5 and the offworld come too soon and can't really be delayed with good play.

Stock prices. In earlier versions, stock prices and resource prices enabled you to make a mid game push to buy the other player. It's not currently practical to do so as you can't raise the cash mid-game to make a meaningful attempt to buy out the other player. Once a player defends themselves, the combination of stock prices bonuses (shares purchased bonus, and bought share buyout multiplier) makes it not possible to complete the buyout. Whether the amount spent buying stock at that point is worth the investment is undetermined.

With the way things are right now, after around the mid game, the game feels like its just being played out to finish. The winner is determined as the leader can protect him/herself indefinitely, and has the cash/black market access to impede the player who is behind. It takes a combination of great play/bad play to overcome a deficit. I forgot who made the post a couple of months ago on this topic, but I definitely see it currently in 1v1. Undermining the leader is very difficult.

IMO, the fact the OW are so crucial is good in general. When nobody bothered with them in betas 3-4 it just felt wrong. Is it Offword trading company or what? But they've become kinda silly in 1v1 since lab and adjacency nerf. I'm growing tired of OW rushes as well and don't want to see the game that used to be very dynamic and versatile turn into something linear. The problem is, that FFA's are very different from 1v1 and you can't really balance around one type of games without somewhat breaking the other. Nerfing OW to enable better maneuvering in 1v1 means nobody will build them in FFA where they are less powerful already which takes us back to square one. Same with buffing other special buildings. Make them more competitive in 1v1, and they will become OP in FFA. Maybe 1v1 just needs a slightly different set of rules. Better adjacency, unique BM items, lower stock price (good point, Indczn) etc... Idk..

I would like to see a variety of ways to go about winning. I think tweaking the timers will help a bit as that will slow the pace of the endgame. It might just be a simple matter of slowing down the offworld launch rate to bring it into balance. I definitely don't want to go back to the point where the hacker array was the best too, or the engineering bay was the best. I don't think those 2 buildings are too far off, nor the patent lab with the time changes in beta 6.

I believe most things are scaled from 1v1 to larger games, so perhaps its just simply striking a balance on the 1v1 and the adjustment per player. The difference in game modes why I try to be specific with the game mode when providing feedback. Perhaps the offworld prices should scale (or the amount of goods launched) from 2 to 8 players as well. $690 for food is fine when you need $1.5Mil to buy out the last player, but in 1v1 where you only need about $300k. It only takes a couple launches to end it. I could just be used to the slower FFA endgame which takes a fair amount of time to accumulate the large sums of cash.

Yeah...that was awesome. The market regulated itself and clarke got dynamited into oblivion for being way ahead and having offworlds. Honestly that's they way it should be as long as you're playing with good enough players. I would expect the same if I was in the lead too and I've had it happen to me where I built an offworld first and got pummeled. Unfortunately depending on the skill level of the players that doesn't always happen.

I guess the offworld rush feedback is more relevant for 1v1 but it still applies to FFA just to a lesser extent. As indczn said maybe slowing down the launches in 1v1 would correct the problem so it isn't nearly as lucrative. $70k launches are a game ender especially with goonsquads and adrenaline boosts in the game and no slowdown strike to combat it.

PS-thanks for making the change to make slowdown strikes immune to goonsquads. I think that really helped to curb some of the offworld craziness. I used it last  night to great effect

I've won several games because the opponent had D rating and couldn't protect his otherwise successfull OW rush from my mutinies. I just pinged the old goonsquads as soon as an ow went underneath them and then when the defended status ended (well before they get a send off) proceeded to volunteer to pay for the difficult task of getting merchandise into martian orbit.

Maybe I haven't played enough lately but I'm comfortable with OMs in FFA (why do you guys call it OW? It's obviously OM!), maybe the balance between special buildings is not perfect but I think it's the most balanced build in terms of that as of yet. The PD I think is fine, last game I used it it made about 380K with VR and being exactly adjacent to the colony (but without any scavengers on the map). That's the equivalent of ~6-9 launches throughout the game, but then again, it takes extra time and effort to set up.

As for 1v1, one of the reasons why the returns are so high is that the prices can never get out of control (which is something I like) in which case simply diminishing the returns of OMs should be a solution. I quite like the idea of scaling prices based on the number of players. Which, I imagine, will turn 8-man games even more insane (at least comparatively) but who plays those anyway?

I think they are fine in FFA's since it takes so much more cash to buy out the last player. It's mostly the 1v1 I have an issue with since the cash recieved per launch vs the cash required to buy stock at that point of the game is so close.  I am somewhat on the fence about merely slowing the launch since in the 1v1's ive played, 1 launch is roughly 2-3 shares of stock at that point of the game. Mutinies (courtesy of a D bond rating as cubit notes) present a massive potential swing in end game stock purchases, since its only a couple of launches to accumulate the 300k-ish necessary to close out the game 1v1. Of course, I wouldn't expect an experienced player to make the mistake of a D rating more than once.

The balance between D rating and making it to the offworld 2nd is a thin line to balance your competitive 1v1s on. D ratings occur not too often but frequently enough in highly competitive QMs. Usually the person to get to OWs first even by just 5 seconds usually wins the game because the first infusion of >40k cash is huge. The only other ways in 1v1 to generate a lot of cash within a couple of game days are natural and artificial shortages. The hacker array as of late became a better option in QMs because offworlds got comparatively worse. As of now it seems like the only way to generate the amount of cash with which to buy your opponent is OWs and hacker arrays and personally I have seen (in 30 games so far) hacker arrays never enable a player to win.

I'm one of the players that's made the mistake of dipping into a D rating with offworlds on multiple occasions. Oftentimes (at least against Cubit), it feels like there's strong pressure to found at debt levels around 40k to avoid falling too far behind, then it's necessary to push back on auctions. One mistake on an auction, or getting your power shut down at a crucial time, will be enough to get you in a lot of trouble.

That said, there's no good excuse for all the times I've let Cubit mutiny my offworlds. At the point your protection runs out, scrapping them (especially in the one game I had Nanotech!) is clearly the right call. 

More on topic: I'd also support scaling the range of offworld prices to the number of players in the game. 

Thanks for posting Cubit. I haven't played as much Beta 6 as I'd like, however I don't believe the changes from 5 to 6 are enough to change my opinions much, but definitely want other players feedback too. Blues, I forgot about the reveal map debt on Beta 6, which makes getting a D rating more likely, so I can see that having an impact!

The hacker array has such a long delay 90 seconds for a shortage, iirc that its difficult to capitalize enough. They are useful, but nowhere near the return of the offworld, and its not very practical to sit on enough cash mid-game to make shorting worth it.

Complete speculation here but I believe a mid-game hacker array into an offworld is the way to go, if you can find the claims. Mess with prices mid-game to slow the opponent income & boost yourself. Once you get the offworld launching, you roll the cash boost into a well-timed short for increased gains.