Universal Information Superhighway Connectivity Simulator 2014 puts you in the hot seat as the chief network engineer for a fledging new telecoms expert in the era of the space race.
Establish connectivity on planets before joining them up with juicy high-capacity back-haul to become the Ultimate Telecoms Giant.
Improve your infrastructure by upgrading exchanges, but keep an eye on your Network Rating - keep it above 1000 by maintaining a ratio of 16:4:1 exchanges and having enough capacity for all your customers.
I really enjoyed this game. I found it much easier to play in a small browser window (in a maximized window the buttons were too far from the game play area). The animations on the planets as you interacted were great and helped me keep my focus where I needed to.
Fun game, first try I was expanding on all planets at the same time. Much easier just to max out the infrastructure and marketing on a single planet first by which time you have enough money to just build back hauls on all the other planets without worrying about customers to win the game.
Really cool concept. I ended up failing but I'm not sure why. Sometimes it was hard to figure out how each of my actions affected the different numbers.
Overall I enjoyed playing through the game, but balancing the stats is a bit arduous as the rating value is rather arbitrary for a few reasons:
- Why 16:4:1 ratio? Why wouldn't everyone just want to use the tier 3 exchange? - Who is keeping track of this rating value. Is there a Universal Telecom Council who terminate companies that hit the bottom. Wouldn't threatening with termination be a more effective option. After all it's going to be real big hassle to deal with all the infrastructure and workforce left over from the termination. -Why is there only one company in control of the Superhighway project. If this was the case there would be a project deadline rather than an arbitrary rating.
So keeping these things in mind here are a few suggestions.
The rating value should be indicative of how well the populace perceives your corporation and how willing they are to stick with your services.
Otherwise they'll change to a competitors service, driven by AI opponents.
The rating is based on: - Connectivity (how many planets/people are connected) - Speed (the less congestion the better) - Price (you can set it to whatever you want!)
Upgrading hardware only increases the speed but has no other effect on the rating. Choosing between copper and fiber isn't really a question for most people.
Comments12
- Why 16:4:1 ratio? Why wouldn't everyone just want to use the tier 3 exchange?
- Who is keeping track of this rating value. Is there a Universal Telecom Council who terminate companies that hit the bottom. Wouldn't threatening with termination be a more effective option. After all it's going to be real big hassle to deal with all the infrastructure and workforce left over from the termination.
-Why is there only one company in control of the Superhighway project. If this was the case there would be a project deadline rather than an arbitrary rating.
So keeping these things in mind here are a few suggestions.
The rating value should be indicative of how well the populace perceives your corporation and how willing they are to stick with your services.
Otherwise they'll change to a competitors service, driven by AI opponents.
The rating is based on:
- Connectivity (how many planets/people are connected)
- Speed (the less congestion the better)
- Price (you can set it to whatever you want!)
Upgrading hardware only increases the speed but has no other effect on the rating. Choosing between copper and fiber isn't really a question for most people.