7 Offworld Trading Company Tips for Beginners

The Offworld Trading Company tips in this game guide might help you win more one-on-one and four-player skirmish matches. Are you new to Offworld Trading Company and getting beaten a bit too often? If yes, check out some of the tips for that game below.

7 Offworld Trading Company Tips for Beginners

Offworld Trading Company is a multiplayer RTS (real-time strategy) game that’s all about economic, not military, warfare. This is a multiplayer game in which players battle it out to buy out their opponents’ trading companies to emerge victoriously. It’s a game based on supply and demand economics in which players must raise capital by amassing and selling resources on Mars. Here are some Offworld Trading Company tips for one vs. one and four-player skirmish matches.

Press the X and Z hotkeys

X and Z are useful hotkeys in Offworld Trading Company. Holding the X key downs reveals how profitable all players’ buildings are on the map as in the screenshot directly below. That’s an especially useful key for identifying the best building targets to attack with Black Market abilities. Attack one of your opponent’s most profitable buildings highlighted with the X key.

Buildings' profitability totals

Buildings’ profitability totals

Holding the Z key shows what resources, and the amount of them, are underneath buildings. That’s handy for selecting targets with the Underground Nuke, which reduces resources for a targeted tile. The Z hotkey also highlights dry ice, water & salt ice, and oxide ice on planets.

Build Geothermal Plants

Try to build at least one Geothermal Plant for your HQ. Geothermal Plants are the best and most reliable power source in Offworld Trading Company. They provide massive power boosts and substantial profits from surplus energy. You’ll need to build them on geothermal vents, which there aren’t usually many of on maps. So, make sure you build a Geothermal Plant pretty sharpish when there are still vents available.

Given how much energy Geothermal Plants provide, it’s not uncommon for players to attack them with Black Market abilities like Dynamite and Mutiny. Losing a Geothermal Plant to such an attack can have a big impact on your cash flow. So, considering protecting Geothermal Plants with Goon Squads.

A Geothermal Plant

A Geothermal Plant

Claim resource tiles without building on them

You don’t need to build buildings to claim resource tiles on maps. Instead, press and hold the C key. Then click a resource tile to claim it. Your claim pool will be reduced by one as usual, but you can build a building on the tile’s resource later in the game.

Claiming tiles in such a way is a good way to grab a resource that is scarce on the map. For example, geothermal vents are usually quite rare. Instead of having to save up for and purchase a Geothermal Plant to claim a vent tile, you can simply press and hold the C key to take it. Then you can build a plant on the tile a little later when you can afford to do so.

Expand Electronics production in the mid to late game

Electronics is a very high-value resource in Offworld Trading Company. When the electronics market is hot, it’s very, very hot! Electronics prices can sometimes soar as high as $800-$900 range in the best of games.

Electronic Factories

Electronic Factories

So, you can often amass big bucks by building some adjacent Electronics Factories in the mid-to-late game. You’ll also need to be mining some silicon, carbon, and aluminum for Electronics Factories to process. Although there are quite a few resources required for its factories, electronics can often be a very big cash cow in the late game.

Build an Optimization Center

The Optimization Center is an invaluable advanced building in Offworld Trading. It enables you to upgrade the production of all resources by up to 100 percent with chemicals. Therefore, you can utilize an Optimization Center to greatly increase the production of your most lucrative resources, which will make you hard to beat when combined with other strategies.

Press the Ctrl + Shift + Down hotkey

Pressing the Ctrl + Shift + Down arrow keys at the same time will sell all your resources. It enables you to sell all your resources without lowering their prices as you would by repeatedly clicking the (sell) button for each resource. That hotkey comes in handy whenever you need to quickly amass lots of cash for the sake of purchasing stock or even buying out a competitor.

Start with two adjacent claims of a primary construction resource

To get your headquarters upgraded to level two as quickly as possible, start by claiming two primary construction resources. Two steel and one iron resource claim is a decent starting strategy for Robotic, Expansive, Scientific, and Elite HQs. Build two, preferably adjacent, carbon or silicon mines for Scavenger and Nomadic HQs that don’t need steel. By doing so, your HQ will produce the primary resources needed for upgrading more quickly from the outset.

Adjacent Steel Mills

Adjacent Steel Mills

You can upgrade your headquarters to level two even more quickly if you place it over higher-priced map resources when matches start. Then you can sell the extra resources you gain by placing HQs over them to amass cash for upgrading. If you can gain a good amount of extra resources priced at $40 or higher, you might even be able to upgrade your HQ immediately.

The Offworld Trading Company tips above can help against both CPU and human opponents in skirmish matches. You can also check out more playing guides at the Offworld Trading Company Wiki. That wiki includes links to a range of interesting video tutorials for the game.

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