I've been waiting for Outpost for a looooooong time. Way back before it had a name, when it was just a blurby little ad in Interaction with the caption "build mankind's future in space," I wanted it. I was patient. I played the demo. I remained patient. When it was finally released I was ecstatic. Now I want to kill everybody associated with Sierra. Outpost is not finished. Not by a long shot. I don't know who made the decision to rush Outpost out the door long before it was ready, but if they know what's good for them they'll never go public with that information. It seems I'm more patient than Sierra.
Judging by the malicious mail floating around on the Internet, I'm not alone in my seething hatred. There's a lot of comments about Outpost out there, and none are positive. The word "suck" has been mentioned here and there. I actually found a message from one person who defended Outpost by saying that it was outsmarting the people who were playing it. Sorry, I've been there, and that just don't fly. When entire transport systems are on the disk but not included in the actual game I can't blame my own intellectual inadequacy. All I have to do is look at the layout of a rebel colony to be assured that I'm not being outsmarted. I wonder how much money there is to be made from taking bribes from game companies to post bogus e-mail.
Now, you may get the impression that I hate Outpost. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love Outpost. I hate Sierra for what they've done to it. Outpost is a terrific game, packed full of beautiful graphics, good strategic value, and more building than any sim game ever seen before. But it's not a completed project. I don't mean that there's a bug here and there, I mean that there's whole chunks of the game that have been hastily yanked with all the subtlety of Kano ripping the heart from your chest.
I sense that some of you out there don't really know first-hand what I'm talking about. Some of you haven't had that nauseating sinking feeling of watching a much-anticipated game unravel before your unbelieving eyes. Let's make a list, boys and girls, a list of the things that are wrong with Outpost. It may not be pleasant, it may not even be complete, but it'll be entertaining.
MAJOR SCREW-UP NUMBER ONE: To do anything you need resources. To get resources you extract them from mines. To make these ores usable you run them through the smelter. There are two ways to get stuff from the mines to the smelter: you can build roads and transport them via computerized trucks, or you can build a monorail system for faster transport. The monorail, although it is detailed in the so-called manual, and although it's graphic files are on the disk, does not appear in the game. Same with the roads. You can build trucks, but they won't do you much good without those roads. So how does transport happen? Good question! Nobody here could figure it out without calling Sierra. As it turns out, all transport is automatic. Does distance and terrain affect how long it takes to get stuff from your mines? No, all mines, no matter how near or far from your colony, have a flat five turn transport time. Stupid? Hell yes!
MAJOR SCREW-UP NUMBER TWO: Mines generally produce 15 resources per turn. You can dig your mines deeper to gain an additional 15 resources per level you dig. Problem: when the top layer is mined out, the whole mine becomes useless, even though the mine report says that it is still producing resources. (Even the tapped-out top level says it's still producing 15 per turn!) Since planets have a finite amount of resources, do you see this as a problem with large colonies? I do.
NOT CRUCIAL BUT STILL PRETTY DAMN STUPID: There's a rebel colony. You're supposed to be able to establish trade with it. Can you? Are you kidding? Also, if you keep your morale up the rebels defect to your colony and give you theirs as a love offering. Their colony is not built in a way that is possible. Buildings have to be connected by tubes to allow air and colonists to pass between them. The rebels can apparently walk around without an atmosphere. They can also build underground without ever building an elevator down. And they don't have to mine! Wow, I guess they're, like, some kind of superhuman species or sumpin'.
ARTIFICIAL UNINTELLIGENCE, or GEE, THAT WOULDA BEEN KEEN!: As you climb the research tree, you eventually discover artificial intelligence. You should then be able to assign AI to handle the more mundane aspects of colony management. Even cooler, you can assign AI to help scientists in the labs, increasing lab production. Sorry, we decided to scrap that idea, but you can read about how cool it would have been by buying the strategy book for an extra 20 bucks!
YOU CAN NEVER FIND A DECENT MECHANIC WHEN YOU NEED ONE: Robots need power. You build power cells to give them fresh batteries. Robots break down. You build spare parts to fix them. Problem: power cells and spare parts didn't make it. Robot runs out of power? Build a new one. Robot breaks down? Build a new one. This makes the rebel colony you inherit completely useless. You can only bulldoze the rebel colony (and collect resources) with their own robots, but their robots have run out of power and they never bothered to build new ones.
HEY, IS THIS A BUG? DON'T ASK ME, I ONLY PUBLISHED THE GAME!: I've heard rumors that around turn 166 or 167 your mines mysteriously stop delivering resources. Sure enough, I frequently started running out of resources at that point. It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens quite often. I called Sierra, described my situation, and they couldn't figure out why I was running out of stuff either. "Is this a bug by any chance?" I asked. Their response: "Um....I dunno."
Well, you get the idea by now. Outpost is the most glaring example of a new kind of software classification/disorder we here at IE have labeled "doorware." That's when somebody in authority (who has probably never played a computer game in his life) says, "This is really late. This is really over-budget. Get it out NOW!" "But it's not done yet," protests the designer, who only wants to make a good game. "I don't care. We're losing money. Get it out!" Short-sighted stiffs in brown suits killing games to make their spreadsheets look better. I hate them.
