You will always be able to impact other arms dealers, at least indirectly. You can also engage with and persuade customers to only deal with you, which can cripple the competition. If you have enough cash reserves it might be a viable strategy to try and choke out a difficult opponent by taking a loss on a bunch of trades and thereby cut him out of the region. You could take a more direct action although risky, perhaps hiring a group of mercenaries to pose as pirates and hit their ships. I say it's riskier because if you are caught your reputation and bank balance will take a big hit, but most importantly, your HEAT rating will rise and that's the only way to lost the game. When your HEAT hits 100, it's game over. It goes down on it's own a little over time and there are more active measures you can take, but it's easier to have it go up than down. The important thing is that you will always know how close you are to losing or winning(if enabled).
Progress report: We just finished the "Game Box Art" despite being digital only
, which is needed for places like IndieDB, Desura and GoG.com.
I have been working on data entry for the last three days and will continue for the next 4 days entering detailed information on countries, weapons, shipping behaviors and trade balances to made the global economy function with and without the player's interaction.
My programmer, Zeke(South Dakota), made an APP so I can plug in the relevant data on each country as well as upload the flags and placing ports manually myself and setting starting conditions and relationships between countries. Those relationships and starting stats will be randomized in the sandbox mode.
My art director, Jorge Porta(Mexico/Canada) has stopped work on menu redesign while we hammer out some details on reshaping the travel planner and the buy/sell menus to reduce the number of actions a player takes. Since he is freed up, he has begun work on the story panels, which are full screen digital paintings(around 6) that will tell the story, both in the campaign/tutorial and a few in the trailer.
My freelance artist is producing blueprints for 75 weapons every 8 days. I hope to have 300 weapons and 80 vehicles and one of a kind items for nearly 400 items to buy and sell at the launch of the game, more to come for free post launch. This might actually be the only possible delay for release as everything else is on schedule.
Sound design is being handled by Grammy Award winner, Billy Shaw(Vermont). Expect some cool but natural and non-jarring sound effects. He will also remaster a couple of the tracks laid down by my composer, Eoin Forker(Scotland)
My webmaster and potential lead programmer for the next title, Chad Mason(Florida), is wrapping up work on the game site and the company(Case in Point Studios) website.
That seems to be everything. I have a couple of interviews lined up and I haven't decided if I will do Greenlight on Steam or if I will wait until after I launch on the other sites and push it on Steam directly. Would you guys help me with Greenlight if I went that route or do you have a moral stand against it?