Tag: offworld trading company

[OTC] Opening tactic of temporary chems investment: a good idea poorly executed

In this clip from an Offworld Trading Company tournament, player adorfield recognizes that the neutral colony’s modules are consuming chemicals, gradually increasing the market price. Adorfield bought 60 chemicals early, knowing that he could sit on them for a period and then sell them at a profit.

This is, on its own, a sound plan. However, the plan should have been aimed at selling the chems as soon as the profits were enough to let him buy the HQ level 2 upgrade for additional tile claims. Instead, adorfield did not sell his stockpile, locking up thousands of dollars that needed to be used to jump start in the critical moments of the opening. The plan actually delayed his development rather than accelerating it.

Meanwhile, an opponent with unstifled development was able to use their faster HQ level 2 claims to snatch away the high aluminum tile adjacent to adorfield’s base. In this moment we can see how the error snowballed against adorfiel and seriously hampered his opening. Yes, the price of those chems will continue to rise, which does provide some benefit, but waiting for the price to rise further came with an enormous opportunity cost of upgrading later than his opponents.

[OTC] Splitting tiles for defensibility

In Offworld Trading Company, resource-producing buildings gain significant bonuses to production for each neighboring building of the same type. A great contiguous field of the same type of building has the greatest possible production power. However, high level players usually avoid this sort of base layout. Commentator Zultar explains that top players recognize the diminishing returns on adjacency bonuses, and also know that a single field of tiles is a juicy target for black market sabotage (as happens to one player in the clip). By defensively splitting tiles, you sacrifice some of one type of value (production from extra adjacency bonuses) in order to reduce the value for opponents in attacking you.

[OTC] Relative value: Getting more out of a silicon stockpile

Here we have an example of relative value in tournament Offworld Trading Company FFA game. Player RainbowIdeology has had an elemental quarry mining silicon, and now has a modest stockpile built up. He could sell the silicon to the market for cash, but doing so would lower its market price. Opponent Rhahi’s two glass kilns, each of which consumes oxygen and silicon to produce glass. Since her kilns are using more silicon than she collects, she is forced to buy silicon off the market to run them. If RainbowIdeology were to depress the market price of silicon, Rhahi’s profit margins on glass production would grow. Instead of selling to the market, RainbowIdeology constructs three solar panels, each of which costs 100 silicon and 20 aluminum. The panels will (at least for now) be very profitable with the current high power price of $198. Rainbow got more value out of his silicon stockpile by building solar panels than he would have by selling it.