From someone who works in the Oil and Gas industry

[[+]Captain Crunch]

First off, I want to say that I am not a complete expert but I have about 25 years working in downhole, and production facilites in the petroleum industry. I'd like to congratulate the development team for a pretty good interpretation of how things really work in the oil and gas industry. Its the first petroleum referenced game that hasn't insulted the industy. To come home after work and play a game about work is a bit of a puzzle, but I've enjoyed it so far.
I do have a few things to add in the form or comparison. Its not intended to be a nit pick and insinuate that things should be changed... but here it goes.

Most small companies do not refine crude or sell it as a refined product. An option to sell raw crude, and refined product or pruducts would be cool once an expensive refinery is built. In that sence, the price of the refinery could be a lot more and more goals to work toward.

-The maintainance facilites usually don't have piping and production style buildings. And the drilling supervisor shack(usually atco trailers) or small office style buildings don't usually take up that much space. Most service companies that maintain, repair plants and well sites are contracted and are based off site. I could say the same about the safety buildings. But mentioning this could be my desire to have more room for production lol. I also think the name tags to such facilites in both maintainance and safety could be better in representation. (I dislike the roughneck reference being the highest, as it references the jr members of a well servicing/drilling team...I was one a long time ago so I can say it.

-Wells vary between natural gas and crude production, in many cases, a well can produce both oil and gas. Gaslift, gyro (submersible), and pumpjack are pretty good ways to define the way a well could be optimized. I was shocked to see these in the game because I am directly involved in those types of well optimizations. I could get crazy with all the different types of wells out there and how they extract crude and natural gas but for simplicity sake, well done! I'd like to see a natural gas addon to the game, but I'd also like to see a million bucks in my bank account too.
- 1 more thing about wells, in most cases wells dont share the same realestate as refineries, but again, for simplicity, it works. I just think in my head that the land and developement are only a representation of a larger field area with multiple primary secondary production stages.

-Offshore I would love to see the game developement into off shore prodution. Though a virgin company wouldn't have the funding or infrastructure to support an off shore drilling and production program, it could be a good way for a company to take it to the next level once youve made so much money they game gets stale.

So far, the development of this game is impressive.

I still feel really bad when I have a fatality.... the worst part of the game for me is when I get someone killed. I always yell, Oh no! I killed Kenny!

[DrWolfsherz]

These are some really fine ideas.

[Chris Firefox]

Thank you very much for following up on my request Captain Crunch, I had a hunch that your input would be valuable, and I'm glad for being right ;).

Let me get into your feedback a bit, if I may :)

First, the refinery: This wasn't as much a reality but a gameplay decision. We wanted to have some kind of meaningful production chain, where multiple buildings and their capacities limit the total production of oil. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, there are several benchmark oil prices, like "Brent crude", that have a specific composition and density. So, in terms of "gamification" of this rather complex concept, we decided that there are onsite "refineries" that transform the oil extracted to be of "benchmark quality" instead of explaining why one oilfield produces oil that is 4$ per Barrel when another one produces oil as 6$ per Barrel with identical market price. At least, that was the idea. Having actual, expensive refineries produce refined oil as a second step is quite a good idea and also a good escalation of our gaming concept. I can't promise that we will implement it, but I will certainly discuss it with Ronny!

On to maintenance and safety: This is also more of a "gamification" decision than one related to real life, insofar as we wanted those buildings to take up space on your oilfield (and specifically more so for the weaker buildings) in order to make you think how you "tetris" your buildings :). And of course, real life buildings like from a drilling foreman would look a lot more dull and boring (and small). But again, we wanted to make the buildings distinguishable (which we didn't quite get done at first glance, but we tried ;)), and you should be able to tell what it is good for by looking at it.
As for the naming, I'm sorry that we got that wrong. We thought that the progression tech->roustabout->roughneck was at least in the correct order, we tried to do research on wikipedia and some oil companies, but getting such information isn't that easy, and with you as an expert, it would be great if you could support us there! Names are supereasy to change (even for yourself, all the texts used in the game are contained in the gamefolder in plain text), and having better and realistic names for our "units" would be awesome!

As for the natural gas and offshore addons, I'm sure you would want to see that, and as for the million bucks, count me in on the waiting list ;). We've got quite some feedback by now that our game would be "too simple", but to be honest, we were actually aiming a bit for "easy to learn". Not only is a complex game harder to balance, it is also quite overwhelming for new players. Even our game got early feedback stating the tutorial and the ingame information would be totally confusing and completely insufficient to understand what is going on. We have that ironed out quite fine by now, swinging the pendulum into the "too simple" section :). My personal goal was to "get right what we have, and build from there". So if the gameplay now is smooth but too simple and/or easy, we can build on that foundation and add complexity.

I'm still working on the multiplayer mode, which should add not only interaction via the current possibilities (buying oilfields before the others do), but also via a stock exchange allowing for hostile takeovers and sabotage (and counter-espionage), allowing to disrupt opponent operation. Also, the "depleting oilfields" feature is still missing from the game, rocking your boat in midgame when you believe to have overcome all problems and "suddenly" (not so suddenly actually, you know about the reserve size in ballpark terms) your best oilfield runs dry and you need to shut down all the pumps and refineries, as they aren't needed any more. Or if you need to go into locust mode and grab all the oilfields while there is still oil to find there, suck them dry and move on. This is currently completely absent, allowing for operations with 20k Brl / day production without ever needing to care for them again.

Also, I want to add a "contract planer" feature, showing which contracts start and run when, how this affects your daily production and whether adding the current contract would put you at risk of not being able to deliver.

Well, and if all the above isn't complex enough for you, we have some hard scenarios still lying around here where you need to restructure almost-dead oilfields with bad buildings and bad building positioning choices to survive, which should be a challenge by itself.

As you see, I'm a little reluctant of adding more layers of complexity with a distinction between crude and refined oil, and doing the same for natural gas (whereas I don't think that there is such a thing as "crude gas", but you're the expert, please enligthen me ;)), because I feel I still need to strengthen the foundation before going the complexity road. This doesn't mean I don't want to add complexity at all. Not just right away, not before we got the IMO "killer feature" multiplayer either finished or put aside as too complex.

Thanks again for taking the time to give your input, and I sincerily hope for some more! You seem to enjoy the game already, and I'm sure with the stuff coming up we can build on that feeling :)

[[+]Captain Crunch]

Thanks for the reply to what I posted, I've never really took the time to offer more than "it’s a good game, or no it sucks"

After posting I had a double take and tried to put myself in the shoes of someone who isn't familiar with the industry, and the general learning curve about it. Wondering if not having any knowledge of the back room workings if I would consider playing or even as far as deciding if I wanted to buy it and realized... maybe not.
Even though I'd like to see it turn into a technological trainer or oilfield simulator (knowing that’s an unrealistic expectation lol), It’s a game and I think your explanation of how you implemented refineries is good. I guess when I think of refineries, I think of polymer and fuel processing facilities. But in reality there are many different stages of refining that the product goes through before it hits the pumps/shelves/energy grid, there is no need to "over-engineer" things for the purpose of gaming entertainment.

You are right about crude gas, it can be broken into a bunch of different marketable types, but unless your target gamer market is a few petroleum engineers who like me, take their work home with them, its not necessary lol. And likely going to end up in an unplayable game.

As for the progression names... I can suggest some alternatives in the order.
Safety: Safety watch / Field HSE Station (health Safety, environment) / Fire Brigade (that’s cool)
You could add an Airlift response team. Its essentially a helicopter medivac system that is dispatched to any real bad one Adding a helicopter system might be cool for those who like that element in games. OR at very least could reduce time of impact for incidents. but that’s an extra thought.

As far as maintenance (which is more my specialty) without getting crazy about specifics, there is such a difference in Drilling, completions for well sites, and processing facilities, it’s like two separate industries...and even in the same cooperate head office, a drilling engineer and a production Engineer often have very heated arguments. Then you get the downstream marketing teams in there and its a bar room brawl. LOL Anyway, I went off on a tangent.

As for progression names, Id say field operator (he’s the guy who checks on wells and plant facilities on a daily basis, fixes minor things and reports problems.., next I like the tech team thing, that’s awesome, for the corporate and general next step id say Engineering team.
Another simplified way to look at it
Operators, Technician/Specialist, Engineers would be good names for a simple 3 step progression in the oilfield. It would generalize it for both wellsite, and production facilities.

Again, I think its awesome so far. Its real cool to see something in a game that relects on some of the things I do in real life.

[Tobbi]

This is awesome! Great feedback Captain!
And well replied mr developer =) This game is gonna sort out your bankaccount if you keep this up, and as for the Captain, I think he needs to buy some shares to accomplish his dream :)
Great dialogue guys!

[Chris Firefox]

The Airlift response team sounds like a great HQ bonus building :). More later or tomorrow, gotta spend some family time ;)

[Chris Firefox]

Ok, I went over your reply again, and I'll definitely use your naming convention over ours (I just have a little trouble translating the "Field HSE Station" into german, but I'll find something :)), thank you for the suggestions!

As for the rest, I hope I didn't "talk you down" with my reply, you are very welcome to disagree with me, I just wanted to explain our train of thoughts behind the decisions we made so far - I somehow have the feeling I discouraged you from disagreeing... :(. Anyways, I'm off to finally get that MP mode alive and kicking, please continue to give us feedback on how you feel playing and please keep your suggestions coming (which of course applies to everybody!), any and all feedback is welcome, we are making this game for you, so you are the ones who need to enjoy it, not us ;).

[BHunterSEAL]

With HHub <$3/mmBtu and NC4 in single digits, I think it's safe to assume our Oil Enterprises are gonna be doin' a bit of flaring--the lack of APG isn't an oversight, it's mercy :)

Very interesting thread by the way, answers a couple of questions I had as well... glad to see there's at least one other player trying to make the game more like work!