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Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - 01:34 pm  1. Quality of products on the space market The quality of products offered on the space market is now showing on all the trading screens on the space market. This now allows players to clearly see which products are more attractive, not solely by price but also by quality. Products are now sorted by their price and then by the quality. If the price is equal, the better quality products will show higher on the offers lists. 2. The welfare Index The consumption quality index is now influencing the welfare index. The influence is very limited and can make a different of 1 point if quality is 250 and a 0.5 point decline if quality is down to 120. The influence of the quality of consumption products will increase in the coming weeks. 3. Beginners Conditions Support for beginners is tuned up and they will receive more cash when logging into the game. Current new players, who are receiving cash injections when they login, are also receiving larger amounts of game money. Beginner countries are also starting with an additional army unit that will make the first war easier. 4. Game Level Requirements Game level requirements have been updated. Requirements have been changed to create a more gradual increase of index levels in higher game levels. The requirements for the defensive and defense indexes have been increased slightly as announced before. This is a next step in phasing these indexes out as a measure for war experience. The defense indexes are in fact only a measure of the capability of the player to purchase weapons. Instead, we will increasingly use the war levels as a measure of the war experience of the player. More changes will be introduced to the game level requirements next week and in the following weeks. The trend will continue and the defense indexes will be phased out. Please check the game levels document for details. 5. Higher Game Awards Awards in Simcountry will increase, starting with the next upgrade on Nov. 8. Both game level awards, war level awards and monthly awards for top of the list players will increase. 6. Exchanging Cash into Gold Coins Exchanging game money into gold coins is now only possible if all the countries and enterprises in the account are cash positive. Available cash should be moved to countries with shortages before it is used to purchase gold coins. After moving cash into the countries, it can take up to 6 hours before all data is updated and the exchange of game money into gold coins will be enabled again. 7. CEOs and the Space Game The next upgrade of Simcountry on Nov. 8 will include all space features for CEO players. Enterprises will be able to set up space centers, produce and trade cargo shuttles and move products between the enterprise and space centers. 8. New Documents New documents are being added from time to time. The current upgrade includes a new document called ?Building the army?. It is placed in the War documentation menu. 9. Support functions and interventions The support system is part of simcountry for a long time but was never explained in details in a single document but rather bits of information were published on the game news and the forum. Recently a new part is added to the system, with interventions in countries that have unacceptable low levels of money. A new document is being prepared and is intended to explain all the details. The current upgrade of simcountry includes a better tuned support and intervention feature that is updated to current loan levels, acceptable cash shortages and current exchange rates and values of assets. Countries owned by beginners are supported in the first 90 days. Also players in game levels 1, 2 and 3 are supported in various ways. In addition, there are interventions in countries that are failing economically, including countries with very low cash levels. The simcountry support system can be turned off by both beginners and by other players in the first 3 levels and the interventions will stop. The forced interventions in countries that are nearly bankrupt cannot be stopped. These interventions will automatically stop when the unacceptable conditions cease to exist. The document will be added to the simcountry documentation on Nov. 8.
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| Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - 04:50 pm With regard to number 4, Andy - increase in Defence Index requirements for levelling. For levels 12 and above, the required 'alternative' War Level is War Level 8. However, as far as I am aware, the highest war level the game will currently allow us to reach is War Level 7. Thus those of us at level 12 and above therefore have no choice but to continue with Defence Index to maintain our levels. I don't know about anyone else, but I have dropped down a level (from 14 to 13) since the recent increase and am finding it very difficult to balance DI and FI to get back to where I was. Please would you introduce War Level 8 as a priority. We can't make the transition you want us to make and maintain our levels until you do. Hugs and respect Jo
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| Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - 05:26 pm You are right. requirements for the defense indexes for these levels did not change. they will change in the future, when more war levels are be added and war level 8 to 12 are available. The change took place today. If you dropped a level, this is certainly not because of any change in the requirements for defense index levels.
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| Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - 06:48 pm Andy With reguards to #2 For those of us who WANT to be self suffient or CM devoted. Can you look into either reducing the amount of goods a nation uses monthly or increase the production of corps. Service/construciton only make 25M units a year. A 100M pop uses around 20-25M monthly of both. Meaning that youd need 10(20 if u supply both) of each corp to supply yourself. a 140health index = 3.3M units of Medical Equipment monthly.(40M units a year) The corp makes only 15M units a year meaning id need 3-4 of this corp plus 2more Medical materials. Not to mention.(Quoted from the game) "Currently, transportation also includes the water purification systems as well. The cost may fluctuate with changing salaries and market conditions that change the cost of materials that are used in the maintenance. " currently i run a 150trans index for 100M people costs me 17B a month. If i bought 250Q goods it jump to 50B plus. Can the GM look into this not increases so much or maybe decreasing? I know that this upgrade isnt in fully effect but id like to see if we cant hammer out the bugs now. Becuase i see this update having GREAT potential. With the game moving toward self suffiency can we see about letting players goods to there CM at different prices aswell? that way i can sell the highest price to the world and maybe important things to myself and allies @ cost. This would make CM more effective
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| Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - 07:42 pm I'm sorry Andy, I'm not referring to the changes made today. There were changes made to Defence Index requirements on 26th October which were not announced in the game news at all. They were as follows: Level 12: was 270, became 300 Level 13: was 320, became 350 Level 14: was 400, became 420 Level 15: is 500 and did not change Level 16: is 600 and did not change Defensive Index levels also changed, although the requirement for level 15 (which changed to 500) has now been reset to its pre-26th October level of 300. I can list the others for you if you need me to, but they weren't as significant. As a result, I dropped from level 14 to 13 on White Giant on 26th October, where my average Defence Index was (and is) 408. I was working on level 15, now I am finding it very difficult to even get back to 14. I cannot use war levels to get back to level 14 because war level 8 does not currently exist. Please would you consider either dropping the Defence Index requirements for levels 12 - 14 inclusive back to their pre-26th October setting, or (better still) implementing war level 8 as soon as possible. For those of us who enjoy the levels game, the 26th October changes were rather demotivating  Hugs and respect Jo
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| Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - 08:05 pm Just found that my trade strategy had changed for my corps. Instead of the +75 -25 follow quality that I had set, I found a -10 -10 time based setup. I'm not sure if related to the current update but I noticed just after reading the game news. Has anyone else experienced this bug?
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| Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - 10:30 pm Supersoldier Self sufficiency has nothing to do with quality. you can set quality per product. you can buy these maintenance products at a lower quality. Jo I will look into it. levels 15 and 16 are not really relevant at this point. 12 - 14 should not increase at this time. if they did, I will put them back. Arccuk, you are in game level 1 and all automation features in your countries are on. if you do not want the game to intervene, turn them off. I do not see any bug.
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| Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - 10:56 pm Thank you Andy  If it helps, I posted about the level changes at the time: here Hugs and respect Jo
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| Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - 10:58 pm I had to change all m country qualities, but I think that was expected as everyone else had to as well. Only 3 out of 8 of my countries' corps trade strategies needed changing. I also could not see the list of corps when having to change them. I made sure the "Hide corps list" was not checked and it wasn't. Very strange. I am however, looking forwards to the full benefit of high quality consumable, for GPE. I'm running at 280 quality.
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| Thursday, November 3, 2011 - 01:47 am Andy: I am interested in War Level 8 and higher. Any idea when these may be available?
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| Thursday, November 3, 2011 - 06:16 am Thanks for the tip Andy, but I can't find the setting on the corporation setting page for trade strategy. Does the "Product sales" check box handle this? For new corps I have the "When the products are put on the market, use the market price plus" option set as I require. I had not noticed this automation feature before at game level 1-4 and have amended my trade strategy frequently, did this update implement it? Any help here would be appreciated.
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| Thursday, November 3, 2011 - 12:17 pm Its the first set of options. Says something like general and beginners economic help. There are a few auto systems there and my suggestion, if you have a rough idea of what you are doing, would be to turn them all off.
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| Thursday, November 3, 2011 - 03:23 pm Auto intervention to failing countries? Man, there will be no need to log in soon - the game will play iteslf.....
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| Thursday, November 3, 2011 - 07:43 pm Dont worry Stuart, they do more harm than good ;)
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| Thursday, November 3, 2011 - 10:08 pm War level 8 and higher will be implemented ASAP but we want the new maps before and we need to implement the auto attack for C3 countries at higher war levels and will introduce stealth bombers. (as announced before). Arccuk: It seems that others are already answering you. the automation is at game levels 1-3. At level 4, automation stops. there is only a small number of failing countries and we have seen that after three or four days, they become profitable. Crafty: do you really know what you are talking about? or are you just spreading some text? These functions make these countries profitable instead of losing a lot of money each game month by tuning a small number of parameters.
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| Thursday, November 3, 2011 - 10:37 pm Any update on the Defence Index requirements for levels 12 - 14, Andy? Hugs and respect Jo
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| Thursday, November 3, 2011 - 11:15 pm Thanks Andy for explaining this clearly. Can' t wait for the stealth bombers. On another note, I was thinking it would be neat to have navy bombers. They will be stationed on aircraft carriers like navy fighter planes. You are probably thinking "there is no navy bombers"...which is some what true..but during war world 2 the usa did modify bombers to be used on aircraft carriers to bomb Japan. Which worked very well,last I recalled, except the restrictions of how far they went....Just throwing that idea out there
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| Thursday, November 3, 2011 - 11:23 pm Andy, if you played the game thoroughly you would see that I am right. The idea behind them is good but the changes they implement are not very helpful. They change worker distribution badly, they order infrastructure with out the workers available, make poor corp choices for automatically building of corps, again with out checking worker availability, and several other UN-helpful things. They mean well and probably would save a country from absolute disaster, but good advice can do a lot better. I am not a person running my mouth to smear the game, I help all and everyone as much as I can. I even donate my own assets to new players I feel can use it. Honestly, I probably have a better understanding of how the game works from a players point of view than any of your team there at W3C. Please do not read my posts as anti GM or game, just accept them as a players point of view, and maybe read the odd one again as they might provide some insight into how tuning really effects the game. sincerely, Crafty.
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 12:28 am I agree with Crafty
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 12:51 am I also agree with Crafty; he does make a good point.
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 01:33 am I gotta agree with Crafty I feel Victim to this GM auto help. I took some loans after buying a large amount of military/non military goods. Going Several T into debt. I logged off and went AFK for a few days(Forgetting to move cash from my account to the nation i just spent a ton in). I return to find the GM auto built a TON of corps using the auto build boosters i had in few days i was AFK it auto built over 60CORPS!!! The issue was i have 8M LLW lowering my employment. It was a war slave so the low employment(due to LLW) told the game to make non stop corps even though i had no workers avaiable. Just made more n more corps. (prob would have kept going if i hadnt shut off econ protection). The prob with this update is not only did it build a TON of corps but it builds to your level my negitive cash level pulled me down. So now i have 60corps made that are all level 1 corps. Nothing level 2+. I agree that this was a great attempt to help but to come back and find tons of corps being made out of no where is shocking. (To see the country its called Waters Edge on White Giant)
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 02:06 am Andy, could you make the auto corp builder give the option of what kind of corps the game will build...It coud be as simple as a check box next to the type of corp the player would like.
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 02:25 am Crafty is right. WD would agree. He was one of the first to note the inferiority of the newbie automation features. In my honest opinion, you would have to be so terribly clueless in order to benefit from their use. It has been said, that these features will be monitored and improved upon over time. So I guess there is hope.
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 03:17 am Mep i love your idea. Since Q in goods will soon play an effect it would be helpful for news/older players alike to be able to pick the corps they would reqire. Being able to tell the PC that in the event i need corps i want food, government maintance corps and these mining would go a LONG way to helping everyone. I think that is a GREAT idea The way its done now is weird i got 4selenium, 7copper, 5glass. It only used like 8corps and made 4-6 of those.
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 03:29 am yes i almost imediatly turned off most of the features. it was building schools and hospitals just as fast as they were closing from lack of workers, and effing with my education priorities (not hitting anywere close to the right mix). im pretty close to fixing all the goof ups. i dont have enough people for the corps that it built so it is hard to judge wether ive hit the right numbers to add more pop in or if that would just throw me off more
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 04:51 am Yes, I also agree with Crafty. It build corps of extremely unprofitable products, making you lose billions each game month.
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 05:52 am Might I add, for premium members or members who have played for more than 6 months, I can add money to slaves when they need it, so i dont need the game adding corps, reducing salaries or not purchasing things my country needs. My countries should be allowed to run a debt providing I add cash when required. I've been playing this game for over 4 years and I dont need my empires to be treated as if I am a newer player.
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 06:25 am Thanks crafty and Andy. Turned off that option and my preferences stayed as I had set. Also agree with crafty regarding the auto options, they now seem to do more harm then good. However if these options did not exist when I first started playing I have no doubt that I would have lost billions due to the simple fact that I didn't have a clue how the game worked. The auto features in general do "what they say on the tin" and help new players concentrate on learning what options are available and allow plenty of room for player settings to improve on the automatic ones as they are learnt, but if there is one feature that needs to be amended for new players it is the auto build corps. I turned off this option very soon after starting playing when I realised the game did not check unemployment levels before building them. Surely this is an essential check for any business startup?
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 08:39 am If you know what you do, or you do not like what automation does, turn it off and do it yourself. if you are not sure, or you are a beginner, the automation will keep you out of trouble and make sure your economy is OK. not flying but OK. it fixes your education, builds corporations producing products that are in short supply, fixes taxes and salaries, sets quality levels and the country becomes profitable. mainly, make sure you are not short of cash because in that case, automation will be turned on and stay on and you cannot turn it off.
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 08:56 am we will correct the requirements for the defense indexes for the levels that require war level 8. once war level 8 is implemented, the defense index requirements will continue to increase.
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Friday, November 4, 2011 - 04:32 pm
Andy can you help me understand why this process is so difficult? If the game can instantly read that my country or corps have debt and prevent an exchange, why it cannot or does not honor the trade once I pay off the debt. I'm not sure if this was an intended improvement, because it is just like the old system that I assume was in place before that news came out. I had a significant amount of debt. I added all the cash to my countries on all worlds. I then paid off each and every loan in each country. I went to exchange the coins, but the game said I had debt in Countries on GR and in Countries on FB. So with all the loans paid off, I waited. I log on today to make an exchange, and now it says I have debt in some corps on FB, which I just now paid off. My problem is that this message about the debt in a few corps in my ceo was not in the prevention message a few hours ago. Why is that. 8 hours just turned into 16, and that is if the model doesn't have a surprise for me when I try again. Is there a way to allow the game to make good on all debt and pay it off directly from the exchange screen so this process can go through smoothly. Or is there something to prevent that from being implemented? If that cannot be done, can we use the same system that reads the loans and prevent an exchange work the same way in the opposite direction, so that 1. I will get the second problem message a bit faster than 8 hours, which prolongs the entire issue. or 2. When I go and pay off the debt, the same system then recognizes the paid off debt and allows the exchange instead. Is this possible to make so, or don't you agree?
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 04:56 pm Thanks Andy Hugs and respect Jo
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| Friday, November 4, 2011 - 05:11 pm I just tried it again, after paying off the Corp debts on FB and now it says this. "One or more countries on Little Upsilon are in debt." I don't have any countries in debt on LU. Angels Temple 1,462.34B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 531.09B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 1102 image new leader BodySnatcher 1,491.86B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 1222 image new leader Destinys Temple 1,284.89B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 1020 image new leader Doom Temple 839.61B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 301.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 1012 image new leader Far Trondelog 1,632.41B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 1253 image new leader * Inannas Temple 4,730.69B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 775.70B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 976 image Peace 1,778.33B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 23.07B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 896 image new leader Serenities 1,741.69B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 38.97B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 587 image new leader Trondelog Minor 1,091.63B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 1508 image new leader Union Temple 969.78B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 380.32B SC$ 0.00B SC$ 1213 image new leader
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| Saturday, November 5, 2011 - 12:47 am Success. It finally recognized the ordeal. I hope one of the suggestions above can be implemented to put this issue to rest completely.
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| Saturday, November 5, 2011 - 02:30 am My suggestions is as far cash and debt goes is this: If the account has a cash balance great enough to eliminate the debt in that account's countries and enterprises, then don't worry about it. Why all this nitpicky focus on debt like it is always this bad evil thing. It is natural and normal and to be expected from time to time.
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| Saturday, November 5, 2011 - 02:30 am That said, I am going to back to LU and count my trillions in negative cash.
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