Anyone had a look at this?
http://www.offworldgame.com/game
Described as an Economics RTS.
Offworld Trading Company is a real-time strategy game in which money, not firepower, is the player's weapon. Players found a company on Mars and compete against other companies looking to become the economic power on the planet.
Loosely inspired by such classics as M.U.L.E., Offworld Trading Company forces players to make tough choices on what resources to acquire, what goods to build and sell, how to interact with the planet's thriving underworld, and when and what stocks to acquire.
Players compete against up to seven other AI- or player-controlled companies. The game is won when one player ultimately acquires all the shares of their competitors, thereby wresting control of the entire planets economy for the winner.
Gameplay
Money is the heart of Offworld Trading Company. Players gain cash by selling excess resources like carbon, fuel, and silicon on the open market, and spend it buying the resources theyre short on. Prices fluctuate in real time; dump a bunch of iron on the market and its price will crater, making it cheap for other players to buy up (and making their stockpiles worth much less in the near term).
Resources are extracted from the planet from concentrations visible on the map, or created by a players industrial buildings like a hydrolysis station turning water into fuel and oxygen. However, each building extractors, processors, or special facilities like patent offices requires a claim to be spent acquiring the land to build it on.
Claims are acquired by leveling up your colony (at a hefty resource cost), or for cash at the black market (at an escalating and significant cash price). Getting a new claim in Offworld Trading Company is a lot like claiming an expansion site in a traditional RTS.
Finally, the black market allows for more direct interactions than manipulating the price of silicon. Drop a wad of cash to hire pirates to harass your opponents supply chains, smuggle a crippling EMP device into their factories, or send a power surge through their facilities but dont be surprised when your corporation finds itself on the receiving end of some of these effects.
While fueling their rapid expansion by exploiting resource prices and turning the black market to their advantage, players must keep their facilities stocked with air, food, fuel. Your employees wont die if you run short, but theyll be forced to buy the necessities on the market and your stock price will suffer.
Letting the basics slide to focus on making more money by extracting and processing more resources may sound tempting, but any stock price drop is a short path to failure in Offworld Trading Company. Buying out your rivals is the key to victory, so driving up your stock price while depressing theirs is critical.
A basic strategy in Offworld Trading Company might look something like this:
Drive up the price of water by buying up the worlds supplies and hoarding them in your stockpile.
Hit your opponent with an EMP that temporarily takes out his limited production capabilities, sending his stock price plummeting as he cant fulfill his companys needs.
Meanwhile, water has become much more expensive on the open market thanks to the reduction in supply giving you the perfect opportunity to dump your stockpiles and buy up a big chunk of his stock before he can recover.
Offworld Trading Company is a unique game that rewards thinking on your feet and adapting your strategy to constantly changing game conditions, not memorizing build orders and deploying hard counters. Every stratagem has a counter literally, thanks to the real-time market pricing that is the games core foundation if you can see what your opponents are trying to do in time to react to it.
Prototype, Beta and Release Schedule
In order to ensure that the final game is of the highest quality, we are inviting gamers who have longed to have a strategy game that focused on business and economic savvy to join us during the development cycle to offer feedback, playtest, and interact with the developers.
We expect to launch the first prototype version of Offworld Trading Company to our Elite Founders this fall. The beta/Early Access edition will follow, with the final release date coming when the game is done.
As seems to be the trend now - you can pay for Alpha/Beta access.
http://www.offworldgame.com/game
Described as an Economics RTS.
Quote:
Offworld Trading Company is a real-time strategy game in which money, not firepower, is the player's weapon. Players found a company on Mars and compete against other companies looking to become the economic power on the planet.
Loosely inspired by such classics as M.U.L.E., Offworld Trading Company forces players to make tough choices on what resources to acquire, what goods to build and sell, how to interact with the planet's thriving underworld, and when and what stocks to acquire.
Players compete against up to seven other AI- or player-controlled companies. The game is won when one player ultimately acquires all the shares of their competitors, thereby wresting control of the entire planets economy for the winner.
Gameplay
Money is the heart of Offworld Trading Company. Players gain cash by selling excess resources like carbon, fuel, and silicon on the open market, and spend it buying the resources theyre short on. Prices fluctuate in real time; dump a bunch of iron on the market and its price will crater, making it cheap for other players to buy up (and making their stockpiles worth much less in the near term).
Resources are extracted from the planet from concentrations visible on the map, or created by a players industrial buildings like a hydrolysis station turning water into fuel and oxygen. However, each building extractors, processors, or special facilities like patent offices requires a claim to be spent acquiring the land to build it on.
Claims are acquired by leveling up your colony (at a hefty resource cost), or for cash at the black market (at an escalating and significant cash price). Getting a new claim in Offworld Trading Company is a lot like claiming an expansion site in a traditional RTS.
Finally, the black market allows for more direct interactions than manipulating the price of silicon. Drop a wad of cash to hire pirates to harass your opponents supply chains, smuggle a crippling EMP device into their factories, or send a power surge through their facilities but dont be surprised when your corporation finds itself on the receiving end of some of these effects.
While fueling their rapid expansion by exploiting resource prices and turning the black market to their advantage, players must keep their facilities stocked with air, food, fuel. Your employees wont die if you run short, but theyll be forced to buy the necessities on the market and your stock price will suffer.
Letting the basics slide to focus on making more money by extracting and processing more resources may sound tempting, but any stock price drop is a short path to failure in Offworld Trading Company. Buying out your rivals is the key to victory, so driving up your stock price while depressing theirs is critical.
A basic strategy in Offworld Trading Company might look something like this:
Drive up the price of water by buying up the worlds supplies and hoarding them in your stockpile.
Hit your opponent with an EMP that temporarily takes out his limited production capabilities, sending his stock price plummeting as he cant fulfill his companys needs.
Meanwhile, water has become much more expensive on the open market thanks to the reduction in supply giving you the perfect opportunity to dump your stockpiles and buy up a big chunk of his stock before he can recover.
Offworld Trading Company is a unique game that rewards thinking on your feet and adapting your strategy to constantly changing game conditions, not memorizing build orders and deploying hard counters. Every stratagem has a counter literally, thanks to the real-time market pricing that is the games core foundation if you can see what your opponents are trying to do in time to react to it.
Prototype, Beta and Release Schedule
In order to ensure that the final game is of the highest quality, we are inviting gamers who have longed to have a strategy game that focused on business and economic savvy to join us during the development cycle to offer feedback, playtest, and interact with the developers.
We expect to launch the first prototype version of Offworld Trading Company to our Elite Founders this fall. The beta/Early Access edition will follow, with the final release date coming when the game is done.