Glloyd, I fully understand not wanting to play a tutorial or read a manual and I don't begrudge a person for that at all. It's just when they follow that pattern and then criticize the game for not revealing itself in their chosen nuanced way, customized for their own personal idiosyncrasies.
Anyway, good news, we have just about completed work on the abilities in the game, around 25ish. Also we are almost done with the SMUG vehicle auctions, just need to enable the AI to participate in a fair manner. Right now they cheat by knowing too much information and I insist on AI being at LEAST as blind as the average player. I don't like taking shortcuts when adjusting AI for difficulty settings either.
Instead of making the hard AI start with more money or have more knowledge or lower costs or more profitable deals by default, I simply make them perform more actions and calculations per minute. Just like a pro-starcraft player vs ....well, me.......the pro simply thinks and clicks much faster and therefore has an edge. Hopefully these subtle little details translate to you the player, at least subliminally. Otherwise, I have just made everything harder for myself. I'll know anyway, so I guess it's worth it.
By the way, I've lost the last three games I have played. Twice I was basically locked out of business by the final Agency, which prevented me from dealing with any of the suppliers except for the black market dealer, but by that point I didn't have a good relationship with him and I had blown most of my money trying to counter the AI as it was locking me out. I was unable to make profitable enough deals for the late game and just couldn't operate anymore. It felt like I earned my defeat though, so it was good. The final loss .......I gambled and lost. I was in the early to mid part of the game and had been cornered by an AI. I thought I could risk one last big shipment before they closed in on me but they were just too fast. They seized the shipment and I was broke and busted. The first 2 losses took about 2 hours each, maybe 2.5. The third took 32 minutes until I lost, so it was not a great tragedy to start over after that.