My problem with this game is that debt does not negatively effect a player. I have played many games 1v1 with players that are 300k in debt but still manage to win the game when I have a balanced economy and thriving company. The stats all go my way yet they win because all they did was focus on getting to age 5 as quickly as possible and buying my stock throwing caution to the wind. I suggest that your debt should much more reflect your stock price or if you are over a certain amount of debt you shouldn't be able to purchase stock in others or as your debt goes up others stock cost more for you to purchase. It is really frustrating that I am trying to get good and creating a thriving business and I get bought out by players with no clue.
All valid points but when can you ever pay your debt by establishing more debt? I think at a very minimum they should require you to pay the interest on debt with cash rather that just adding more debt. This will slow the expansion of someone not keeping their debt in check and make the game more fair in my opinion. Balance should be a part of any good economic based game.
More complexity is not a good solution. Even now, there are still basic concepts that top players don't understand, like colony modules, and Core Sample to a lesser extent. What would a new player think?
I am a new player and let's face it this game appeals to a very limited market. Make it the best you can for those of us that are into it.
Hi Mike! I think I remember you from a couple of months back, but it could be just my imagination. I am surprised that as a new player, who struggles with the whole debt management concept, you suggest to add even more complexity to the game that's already incredibly 'newbie' unfriendly. There are other mechanics that make little sense if any. You make cash out of thin air using hacker array; you pay debt with power but make cash with water; level 1 HQ can exist indefinitely without life support and so on and so forth. Ah, and don't let me start on colony type perks and patents! This game is not realistic in many ways. That being said, the way chess pieces move makes even less sense than that.
The debt traditionally has been the most 'sensitive' game mechanics and debt balance changes significantly with every new patch. Initial stock price, power consumption, new black market items, pleasure dome buffs/nerfs and many more - they all affected the way how players manage their debt. And many times (probably most of the time) the ability to take advantage of just the right amount of it is what this game is about. Because if you're doing it right, you trade your debt for cash. The recent tournament demonstrated this idea perfectly. Doesn't mean it makes a lot of sense, but it is what it is.
If you prefer the debt to be more punishing, you might want to try tighter debt mode. But if you just want people 'who have no clue' stop beating you (or shall I say start beating you less often), you'll need to adjust and learn to manage your resources (including debt) better.
the game could automatically sell your resources to pay the interest, starting with the highest priced resources.
I'm glad to see someone reputable in this game thinks it's a good idea!
This isn't a perfect solution. It would still require a separate "special debt" number, because a player could micromanage the interest by queueing up 6 Patent researches just to hide his resources from the interest tick.
Yep. That's why he always plays with tighter debt. Just like other 'reputable' players do. Oh wait...
Nah, companies, people, polities and everything in between all are carrying insane amounts of debt currently. Countries always get a bad rap for a couple of reasons. Free market fundamentalists like to point out how 'irresponsible' governments are (and therefore you should oppose all governmental programs) but aren't as interested in pointing out that people are fairly irresponsible by default anyway. The second reason though is that it's actually bad for you if your country has trouble with its debt, whereas if your neighbor can't really afford the BMW he bought, or if IBM goes bankrupt, there's no particular reason why you should even be moved to care very much at all...
I think what the OP is getting at is that the game ends before the debt actually becomes due. This is like maxing out all of your credit cards before you die. It's seems like an intuitively incorrect way to win. Note, I haven't played since the early beta, so I can't say I have too much experience with this aspect of the game...
cheers
One of the things that I really liked about Railroad Tycoon II was the 'market mania' element of the game where you'd get random margin calls on your debt - so using margin was always tied to a very specific risk of large sections of your enterprise being unwound against your wishes and sold to 'the market'.. This was a longer game than OTC though, in RRT2 it was conceivable that you could recover from this (usually it at least maimed you, if it was not fatal), with OTC, given the game length, it is unlikely that this type of event would not be game ending for you...
Tighter debt has problems from micromanagement, not because the inherent idea of disallowing debt is bad. If Cubit's idea of forcing the highest price resource to be sold was applied to tighter debt, then maybe tighter debt would be less ridiculous, and maybe some people might even try playing it.
This discussion blew up more than I expected to. I think this would be terrible for the game because it adds the possibility of getting stuck in the mud and unable to do anything. Avoiding that situation is the primary reason the debt mechanic was added.
I don't get why people feel the need for debt interest to be paid off with funds. The way your business, and indeed a lot of businesses in real life, pay for the itnerest is by stacking more ddebt. This means your borrowing money, to pay off the interest for money you borrowed. It owrks in real-life, it works in this game.
If your more interested in gameplay aspects thoguh then I would argue all being forced to pay off interest does is add an unfun mechanic to the game and makes the game have to be redesigned and balanced in terms of prices and stuff. This is a fundamental part of the game, changing it now would add weeks of extra work at least, and where's the beenfit? What's the good part about forcing people to pay debt? In theory they are punished by being easier to kill, debt is a really big deal in the late-game, but why does that punishment exist? Why do you take on debt in this game? Because you have to pay for fuel, power and life-support. Why should you be punished for not making a life-support resource? This game is about the free market, being adaptable, not set in stone. Suddenly having to make life support, power and upgrade materials goes agaisnt teh spirit of the game, which is to make money.Ontop fo that if you force payment of interest then games are going to take much longer to finish. Less money means slower upgrades meaning less money. Meanwhile that interest is not going into the debt pool, so they are extremely hard to kill. If, currently, you made interest have to be paid off with funds then 1 vs 1 games would last 5-10 minutes longer. That is not a good thing in my eyes.
There is only one way to keep the core concept alive but to add in having to pay debt, and that's by changing the values of everything so that a smaller amount of debt hurts your stock price more, and upgrades are cheaper so you can afford them even when in debt. Oh look, now power plays are over-powered so better balance those, oh look now this, oh look now that. Weeks, nay MONTHS of effort would be spent to change this and bring the game back up to the level it is now, all so that you can make players feel worse about the game because interest payments go from an indirect punishment to a direct punishment?
How about instead of changing the system, people learn to better live within it? You can found early, which forces the opponent to found early, meaning you have control of how much debt he's allowed to take on. If you both start with 70K of debt, he can't borrow nearly as much, he has to play more conservatively. Within the game itself, you can realise that he has a lot of debt and so instead of pushing that upgrade to 5 button, invest in a hacker array, then use the hacker array along with the funds you have on not upgrading to gain more funds, which causes him to be threatened by a potential buyout. Now he's forced to buy his own stock rather than continue to push for more money, slowing him down. With the funds you got form the hacker array, you can either upgrade yourself, menaing you've lost a lot of time but so has he (if he's in bad debt trading the equivelent of 200 seconds for you for 120 seconds of his is a good trade because time is on your side) or you can buy up shares of your own stock, and really dig in to forcing a long game.
In that case you'd just lose immediately and see the game over screen. No need to wait after getting stuck. That does mean that some well-timed price manipulation can win the game out of nowhere, but I don't think that's such a bad thing. Having an opponent surprise sell down all the markets you're in and then buy up all the food could be interesting, although it's hard to say without any actual experience.
And tighter debt is just an extra mode. I probably wouldn't play it as much as the normal game either, but at least it should be playable. Nobody can play it in its current state.
I'm all good with putting more consequences on getting into a lotta debt. Paying your interest in funds forces you to put more value on life support and power earlier. Paying your debt with funds is also how it works IRL usually.
I think you mean paying your interest with funds Cubit, debt seems just to be refinanced and the can kicked down the road IRL.
Also I agree with GS, lets not go down the messing with debt mechanics road. Besides the new Beta 8 seems to change the way players aproach debt and probably will make this conversation obsolete. And the OP was complaining about Beta 7, 1v1 - which is a different kind of win style to FFA, (if you build patent lab and chase 3 or 4 patents then your going to be at a big disadvantage whatever your opponents debt level).
Well, I think that the point of the discussion is that it only works in real life in the 'short term.' Eventually the debt is either repayed or is defaulted upon. Historically one of the ways that it is both repayed and defaulted upon at the same time is by paying it back with devalued currency (ie monitizing the debt), which is why the prices of everything were so much lower in the past than currently (ie houses were only $10,000-20,000 35 years ago, now they're all $200,000; a movie ticket used to be $0.05, now they're like $12.00; etc), this phenomenon leads to confusion as to whether debt is really repaid, or how sustainable it is. However, the sorts of debt that you're talking about have, historically never really been paid back with a return of commensurate purchasing power by the borrower. Very seldom does flat out economic growth outrun debt interest. Obviously, this all is quite a ways outside the scope of OTC..
Suffice to say that if you end up owning Mars, it probably doesn't matter what your company's debt metrics are since you own the whole system it doesn't really matter if the debt is ever paid back anyway... But generally, I tend to dislike game mechanics that consistently reward unsustainable behaviors..
In light of concerns I am with not completely revamping the game carelessly but what about just adding a mode that incorporates my outstanding debt idea that doesn't alow stock purchases or upgrades while interest is owed? Then let people play both ways. It would not be hard to create this change.
Every mode change requires Soren to add to his AI. He already has significant work to do with his AI.
I strongly disagree. From micromanagement point of view tighter debt is less complicated than current debt system where different costs subtracted from different deposits. Moreover, tighter debt encourages self efficiency, which is, as a concept, is much easier to grasp on for a new player. Ignoring life support because it's cheap and building diamonds of electronics when nobody uses them is not exactly intuitive. And yet, nobody plays this mode. For one reason only - it breaks the flow of the game. Makes everything slow and bumpy. And frustrating more often than not.
Like many others, I don't oppose to the idea of debt being more punishing. But frankly, as it's been mentioned multiple times already, debt handling changes with every new patch and will keep changing in the near future. On top of that, suggested alternatives are either adding more complexity or making the game slow and 'muddy'. New mode could be a good short-term solution if only the devs had not have much more pressing issues on their hands.
I strongly disagree. From micromanagement point of view tighter debt is less complicated than current debt system where different costs subtracted from different deposits. Moreover, tighter debt encourages self efficiency, which is, as a concept, is much easier to grasp on for a new player.
This response is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the optimal way to handle tighter debt, which is entirely micromanagement of resources rather than electing to build alternate buildings. It is a giant and imo should be altogether removed from the game.
What should be removed from the game altogether?
Zultar is referring to the "Tighter Debt dance". Hit by a NV on some buildings? No problem, just sink all your cash into electronics and now those buildings are off. Any time the game forces you to purchase stuff, it can be stopped by refusing to have cash on hand.
Which reminds me, if you only have 1 or 2 farms, not enough to cover your food costs, then disconnect them from your base if there are no pirates around. I haven't done this before, but it should work.
You guys missed the part where I said lowering the interest percentage. I don't just want to absolutely destroy people that neglect debt. I'm looking for balance; the cornerstone of any great game.
And once again I said a third category of "outstanding debt" which doesn't efffect all play but only the ability to purchase stock or expand.
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