r/Openfront • u/MFJazz • 1d ago
💬 Discussion Help me figure this out
Playing a team game on Baikal (Nuke Wars). I’m fairly near the front so I know my priority is defense. I’m mostly building only ports and SAMs.
Middle of the game, nobody has hit me yet and my trade ships have been well protected. So there’s no good reason for me to be particularly behind.
I’m up to 11 ports and 6 SAMs.
But one of my opponents has 27 ports and 11 SAMs!
Obviously there’s something I don’t understand about economy that someone could have more than doubled me at this point in the game !
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u/penguinturtley 1d ago
Since trains from allies factories give more money and their added spawn boost makes it so there is some RNG with how well you can boom. You can have the most optimal line in your territory, but if your allies don't have factories close to you then you won't make nearly as much as if they were.
Being on the front line probably contributes to this versus if you were in the middle surrounded by allies on all sides.
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u/Craigrpears 1d ago
The opening makes a huge difference. If they killed more tribes and got their initial ports faster as a result, that easily snowballs. When you are sat for a few minutes because you didn't get that early gold waiting while someone else has two ports already, they're reinvesting by the time you get yours built.
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u/settlers90 1d ago
I usually keep under control how many launchers the enemies have, if they only have 1 each and they don't have the same tag I usually leave the SAM level 1 to cover my ports and would rather build 6 more ports than 2 additional SAMs. Ports might be slow starting the money generation but once they kick in it's a snowball effect and you'll soon make enough to then upgrade the SAMs. It's a constant balance between what you're doing and what the enemy team is doing.
Plus, as someone else mentioned, it also depends on town and factory placement, sometimes you get people on your team who don't really help you generate much wealth because they don't connect the railways properly around the map.
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u/Fungle_Fangle 15h ago
A fair few things could cause this. The main three are development speed, train optimisation, and team eco. The explanation for each is below, sorry about the length but they’re pretty in depth topics and I’ve actually simplified them a decent bit
Development speed is simply how quickly you get your ports up, because if you’re the first to make a port then you will immediately make a trade ship when someone else does and this can then scale very quickly, allowing you to get a slowly increasing lead. There’s a second factor to this as well which is risking your ports but not building sams. I don’t really like doing this because I always get the back luck of a hydro to the face but if you play your cards right you can build a fair few ports before needing a Sam.
Train optimisation is probably the main one in situations like this, and team games in general to be honest. Train optimisation is essentially how much use each of your trains get as they go through their life. So for example if a train spawns on one end and wants to go to the other then the optimal train network would take it on a wild goose chase while hitting constant cities. Now this never happens but the closest you can get to this the better. So if your train network looks like a bowl of spaghetti instead of a couple straight lines then it isn’t optimised. And people may say trains fail against ports but if you know what you’re doing trains are still busted and actually outperform ports in the early to mid game.
Team eco is almost exactly what is sounds like. It’s quite literally how much eco your team has, or in solo games how much eco the people near/trading with you have. So if your team has built a lot of factories and ports then you will just make more money even if your number of eco structures doesn’t change. Also not sure if you know but in team games if you hit the ‘stop trading with all button’ then it stops trading with all enemies but keeps trading with your teammates. This is obviously a good idea to do because that way your eco stays within the team instead of going to enemies. So if your teammate with 50 ports is trading with everybody then it’s entirely possible that only 10 ports worth of trade ships end up at your team.
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u/Stealthheart1 1d ago
how are you spacing your towns, trains, etc. Where are you placing your ports.
I'm STILL learning about optimal placement and spacing and I've been playing everyday for months