| Tom Willard (Golden Rainbow) | Sunday, March 8, 2009 - 03:44 pm 
Many have asked for more details on expected changes.
Here goes.
We have come a long way in the effort to reduce numbers in the game. The days when prices where in billions and totals in multiple trillions are over.
Income and cost levels in countries with a population of 60 millions, is now at the level of 1.2T to 2.4T per game year. Production levels are at 3T to 4.8T.
Compares to the US, with 300+ millions where total production is about 10 T per year but salary levels are higher.
It means that numbers in simcountry are now back to about 200% to 300% the numbers in the real world.
We used to get many messages complaining about unrealistic cost of education and health, comparisons with the US etc. The numbers were far too high but so was income. There were also comments on unrealistic price of weapons and ammunition.
With current levels, it will become easier for people to relate to the numbers and they will be less surprised by the cost of weapons and ammunition.
Simcountry does not need to have the same numbers as in any real country. SIMCOUNTRY IS A GAME and numbers can be whatever we choose.
However, we have seen that people compare and although they know it is a game, they comment on figures as unrealistic. Mainly when the cost is high. Ending up at about "realistic" levels will help a lot.
We are not there yet however.
We would like to have the cost of weapons and ammunition decline to lower levels. Especially ammunition with permanent large shortages could cost less and the corporations could produce more, leaving their profitability in place while helping in reducing shortages that have persisted on the market. We will make another two or three steps in reducing these prices in the coming two or three weeks, then we will stop.
Reductions on a small scale in many other aspects of cost and income, including salaries will continue for some time although at a much slower pace.
We expect these changes to end before the end of April.
By that time, the game will also have a major face lift with many features that will allow players to configure their own home page in Simcountry. |
| FarmerBob | Sunday, March 8, 2009 - 09:23 pm
Willard, If you ever want to get serious about bringing the military aspects of the game and their economic foundations into the realms of the "realistic", I will happily provide you with the real world data, explain to you how to create divisional wedges to accurately reflect manpower requirements for military formations, and the roles of non-divisional troops which greatly expand the sizes and costs of modern military organizations.
The continuing complaint of many veteran players is that SC has repeatedly missed many opportunities to fulfill its potential. Game features were introduced that failed to complement a rather sound base model, but rather supplanted and made irrelevant already good and interesting systems.
Quality was a subsidized, nonsensical contrivance from its introduction. You further compounded the error by stacking the effects of upgrades and supply quality, increasing the subsidization of illusionary profits, and then adjusting your entire price/profit structure around these absurd levels. Not to mention, any ultility of contracts and common markets, which were a very interesting feature, was entirely lost except in pusuit of a few points towards score.
It is time to go back to the drawing board on some issues. Look at what you were doing right in years past. Some fixes, like requiring upgrades and supply quality to match for a produced product quality should be easy fixes. However, you really need to come up with some game mechanic which gives utility to quality to begin with. Many suggestions have been made on that topic and you should seriously consider them.
I sympathize with the demands of the war engine on your servers, but you are continuing to shoot yourself in the foot in that area. Attempting to
retain a "my tank shoots your jeep" system in a macro-model like this is unreasonable. By shifting the bulk of your computational requirements into the creation of units, combat need be little more than simple matrixing of combat power values between units with resulting casualty rates being determined for attacker and defender. Again, I can refer you you to source material that explains wargame systems in depth and detail.
This would permit you to devote more resources to terrain developement, which is utterly necessary to take the wargame to the next level.
Returning player control of pricing, allowing players to develope their own local economies vis-a vis contracting and common markets would be a welcome addition. Simply disabling such a feature for military corps would prevent the abuses of the past. Granted, players selling themselves military products for absurdly low prices to get around spending limits was imbalancing. However, where is the harm in players being permitted to set up their own supply chains for domestic consumption? Does my buying or selling sulfur to myself, above or below "market value", within a closed system, really harm the game? Or even if players are able to streamline their supply process to maximize efficiencies for the production of products on the world market, where is the harm? Susidizing one area to increase profitability in another area yeilds no net benefit other than the elimination of wasteful overspending.
These are examples of what has been done to dumb down the game. Unfortunately, we have lots of window dressing, but much less substance than when the game was "simpler".
And finally. Some utopia of realism will never be achievable as the SC model itself does not reflect anything that exists in the real world. We do not live in a centrally planned, world-wide economic system. Therefore, this pusuit of "realism" is ephemeral in many respects. It should have logical, clearly defined stopping points.
This game has always had tremendous potential, but many poorly conceived and executed processes have taken it down many wrong roads. Instead of increasing in depth and texture with more interesting complexity, it is becoming more simplistic and rigid. When kids are playing the game, mastering it in a few short weeks, and discovering its fundamental flaws almost immediately after, that should indicate to you that you need to rethink some fundamentals. |
| Petra Arkanian (Little Upsilon) | Sunday, March 8, 2009 - 09:43 pm
I must post in support of what bob has written.
That is the kind of dialectic that I hope you would engage in, Tom - a dialogue with players who are willing to understand better W3Cs aims, and offer suggestions that coincide with those as well as genuinely improve the game.
SC has a long history of changes that we can look at, and hopefully learn lessons from and draw from.
There is no need to immediately assume "newer = better" and I would not be opposed to exploring older systems or some kind of synthesis of old facets with the new models.
The long-running status of SC as a beta-stage game benefits us in this respect, as we should be able to step back and look at the total record of game changes and their effects.
Respectfully,
WildEyes |
| AFChairman David Walker (Golden Rainbow) | Monday, March 9, 2009 - 02:11 am
If W3 announce changes for debate in advance and then final details of changes at the end of the forum debate, we're all be part of it and all be accepting and have the chance to be fully aware of the changes.
In the debate, all issues can be raised at the same time as W3 testing them and then following them in game play by some W3 engineers. W3 need to test new features beforehand and afer introduction, along with playing in the worlds, trying many features, checking they work as should do.
They shoudl also try to work out many prices of sales and purchases as we try to, to see how difficult it is.
If you want to help new players, try removing the Budget section etc. to not confuse them and then they ask all the vets for information on how to use it! |
| Zentrino (Golden Rainbow) | Monday, March 9, 2009 - 02:50 pm
I agree with FarmerBob. I have said several times that it doesn't make sense that in a large empire, I have to buy everything I need on the open market when I could just make it myself. Sure, no country in RL produces everything it needs, but no country in RL buys everything it needs on a world market either. There needs to be some purpose to a CM other than some score points. |
