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Keybounce
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« on: February 20, 2011, 05:23 » |
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So I just played two solo test rounds of 23.
First, two things that I noticed:
1. You only get one worker species, not two. So if you choose packer, you will NEVER get a food plot, ever. Bad move when solo. And if you have to steal food from food plots, then it means you'll be spending some of your time gaining time -- which seems like a loss. (How is this ability supposed to work?)
2. The high bidder is last to choose species, not first.
3. ALL auctions happen at the same time. All controls are keyboard, not mouse. All auctions have the same timer. You don't have enough time to do your auctions.
I don't like the idea that what you bid on your species/turn order is lost. I think it should count as an asset. Otherwise, the "winning" strategy is $975 on your species, and put down a food mule on turn 1. Then, you have almost no assets, and get the last place bonus.
Q: What happens if multiple people bid the same amount?
Q: Does the "High bidder does not get bad events" protect you the entire game? If so, that's way too powerful. Back in 20 or 21, I believe it said that you go first on turn one, choose your species first, but will not get a bad event on turn one. In 23, it doesn't clarify if that protection is only turn 1 or the entire game. Note that there is a worker immune to bad events for the game.
Auctions:
First, if you are going to have all the auctions at the same time, you must have more time. That's just a must.
Second, I like the idea behind "auction in the order you want". There have been plenty of times that I wanted to sell energy to get the money to buy food, and could not. There have been plenty of times that I wanted to sell crystite to buy smithore, and could not. So there is definitely a potential gain here.
But in order for that gain to be realized, there has to be the ability to negotiate with 4 different people in 4 different markets -- that means time is needed. That means that if someone wants to sell crystite, other people have to come over to crystite, negotiate and transact, and then go over to the other places.
What I'd like to see:
1. Currently, each person can only have one market active, and they can only move up/down in that market at a time. As long as that is the design, I want to see which market everyone has active.
This is actually critical. Lets say I have food/energy to sell to people. If they are in ore trying to raise money to buy my, ahem, *high quality* food and energy, then I want to wait for them. Heck, I might want to help them sell some of that spare ore.
This isn't so crazy. I value energy around 100 to 150 per unit, easily, without thinking twice. As in, I will happily pay that much. (Seems odd? Just consider 9 mineral plots versus 7 minerals and two energy. 9 minerals get +1 per plot (9 bonus), plus the two productions (another 4), for 13 extra minerals -- so buying 9 energy at 150 to get 13 minerals worth 120-230 is worth it.) So I may be in the situation of needing to sell ore to an energy producer, buy an energy, sell an ore, buy an energy, etc.
Right now, the only way that can work is if I sell to the store, because the energy producer doesn't *yet* have the money needed to buy my ore, then buy the energy, and now the energy producer can't afford to buy ore.
2. Alternatively, let me mouse to select a market and a price. That doesn't mean I'll jump to that price -- my avatar still has to walk -- but I don't have to have 100% of my focus on just one thing.
2b: Alternatively, let me click to select a market, and type in a price.
3. The price moves are faster now than in the original. This means that prices will jump faster. It actually was harder, even playing solo, to get a specific desired price. Just dealing with the store market to sell stuff and buy stuff wound up taking longer than the time, and that's without any player-player negotiation.
4. Absolutely need more time to trade.
5. I'd like to see more time BEFORE the auctions start, before people declare buying/selling, so people can chat, and try to negotiate prices before the timer starts running. Remember, in the original, people were in the same room, and could talk to each other. Even in the current PM, I'll toss prices out in chat, or ask, in chat, for hoarders to name a price while I'm trying to run for what they will sell.
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