Why the game is not really about supply and demand

Published on Thursday, June 25, 2015 By d3bel In Offworld Feedback

I have come to an irritating conclusion about this game: It's actually not very important to pay attention to what the other players are producing. The main tactical expectation i have for this game is that it should be about reading the market and predicting the product demands.

It's a good thing that the price drops when people buy a lot of a material and vice versa. The problem is that every player quickly becomes selfsustaining. With the amount of claims that you get and the productivity of the buildings, you simply don't need to buy anything from anybody else. And if e.g. you get a lot of debt from electricity, you can pretty quickly get some wind mills up and running.

My point is: As the game is right now, it is nothing but a race about being the fastest to get a lot of electronics, glass, chemicals or best of all food, because those prices always increase. The market regulates itself. If the players controlled the market, all the prices would drop, because everybody is selfsustaining. Because of this, it is a minor tactical aspect to look after what the rest of the players are producing.

Maybe this could be solved by decreasing the amount of claims, forcing players to buy products from one another.