Tobold's Blog
Sunday, April 24, 2022
 
Prosperous Universe

After quite a while of staying away from MMOs, I just started playing one again. The game is called Prosperous Universe, first alpha release in 2017, now reset and available in Early Access on Steam. It is basically EVE Online, just without the combat and all the pretty parts. :) In other words, a spreadsheet simulator. A game that is all about producing things in a fictional galaxy, and then shipping and trading these things. It is one of the slowest games I know, with everything you do taking hours or even days in real time. It is an extremely niche game, and I love it!

I can see how to some gamers Prosperous Universe doesn't even look like a game at all. There is very little in the way of graphics, and absolutely no action. You're not mashing buttons on a controller to achieve your goals; instead you carefully plan for your goals days ahead, and very slowly put things into motion. You start out with a company that is given some starting assets, and as far as I can see now, it will take me about a month just to double the value of the assets from that starting point. On the other hand, the amount of hours that I would need to be online in the game during that one month is limited. Yeah, I have that habit of letting slow games like this run in the background all day, but after the initial planning is done I could probably log into the game just once or twice per day for a few minutes and be fine.

For me, the lack of need for reaction-based skills is an advantage. But I guess that everybody enjoys the kind of game that he has a talent for. I didn't get the full enjoyment out of Elden Ring, because I don't have a talent for pressing the right buttons on a controller within a time window measured in milliseconds. I do have a talent for careful long-term planning, and planning an action that takes a day in real time, where getting it wrong means you have to wait another day or two for a redo, doesn't scare me. I can see myself playing this game for many months to come, because simply playing Prosperous Universe just for a few days wouldn't even make sense. You can do most things in the game for free, but I did pay 7 Euro per month for 3 months ahead for a "PRO license" which gives me access to local markets.

While you can develop your company to do anything you like, there are different starting packages available in Prosperous Universe. I took a very basic one, the Victualler, specialized in growing and processing food. So my starting base consists of two pioneer habitations to house my workers, a rig to extract water from the planet, a farmstead to use the water to grow crops, and a food processor to transform for example these crops into basic rations. Pioneers are just the bottom class out of 5 classes of workers. Every class of worker needs different goods, which affects their satisfaction and thus efficiency. For pioneers, two of those goods are basic rations and drinking water, both of which I can make myself with my setup. That makes the Victualler a good choice for starters, as you are unlikely to run out of these very basic goods you need, and there is always a steady market for them from others. The game also tells you whether there is currently low, average, or high demand for this starting class, and there weren't any classes in higher demand.

However, I made some other choices at the start that aren't what the tutorial videos and other help documentation recommends. There are planets that are suitable for farming which are in the immediate vicinity of a station with a commodity exchange, allowing you to get your goods to market with something like a 2-hour flight of one of your space ships. I figured that the recommended planet would be full of people following that advice, and prices at that commodity exchange would be low. So I chose a planet that is much farther away from the next station, with no farming planets very near to that station. Ergo, better prices for the basic rations I produce. But at the slowest possible speed (which is the most fuel efficient) it takes me a day and a half to fly to that station. That takes more careful planning of my shopping trips. There are over four thousand planets in the game and they all have different conditions and resources for different industries. So the possibilities are nearly endless. And everything you can make is used by yourself for further processing, or can be sold to another player in a huge player-driven economy. To me, that is a lot of fun.

I also like the completely editable user interface. You can create a series of screens, and on each of these screens you can place a number of tiles of varying sizes. Then you can fill each tile with the command that gives you the information you are looking for. At the start you have one screen for your base and one for your financials, but you can easily create a whole series for different functions, from different chat windows to an overview of local market contracts. It takes a bit of work to set up, but in the end you get exactly the user interface you want.

I don't expect many of my readers to be enticed by this sort of very slow game being played over the course of months. But if you do play Prosperous Universe, you can use the "USR Tobold" command in game to find me, with the option to chat with me.

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Comments:
I read editable as edible and had a split second thought of "that's cool, how the heck did they pull that off, and wouldn't it be counter productive to the players?"

Is there a benefit for being far out where you are? I fear players will just group up near each other giving you no buyers for your goods at any price.
 
At the moment I can sell my basic rations for 50% more than at the location which is recommended for farmers.

Prosperous Universe has more players than you would think, because “players online” is such a misleading number for a game which you can play at a “10 minutes per day” pace. I was even able to sell rations on the local market of my own planet, because there are players on it with other industries, like gathering water or oxygen.
 
This actually does sound right up my alley, I already make spreadsheets for games that others would never dream of doing so for. How viable is it to get going without paying the subscription? I would probably want to test drive it for a while for free first.
 
There are only two advantages for subscribing: The use of local markets, where you can buy and sell to other players directly on your planet without flying to the commodity exchange; and setting recurring production orders, so you don’t need to set new orders every day or two. The effect is minimal. And if you subscribe at least for 1 month, you keep access to local markets even if you stop subscribing.
 
P.S. I’m in the NEO Charter Exploration space, around the Moria station, on the planet Verdant. Don’t hesitate to contact me in game if you have questions.
 
This actually sounds intriguing. Two questions:
A) How good is the trading/market interface? In a game where resource trading is this central that seems vitally important, and a potential source for a lot of frustration.
B) How do the mechanics support player interaction and cooperation? Is is just an open market or are there underpinnings for more involved interactions? Could something like an ongoing delivery contract, a futures trade or similar things be realized in game mechanics, or would that have to be built purely on unenforceable contracts (i.e. trust) between players?
 
@negentropic The trading/market interface is quite good. You get a very professional candlestick chart to show price evolution. The only real mechanic supporting player interaction is joining a corporation and setting up the cooperation in guild chat or Discord with them.
 
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