| Andy | Wednesday, August 20, 2014 - 03:58 pm 
Moving funds between countries can be done with direct trading and works in most cases very fast and it is easy to do.
However, if you have many entities, it becomes slower and a performance drag as data of many countries must be moved around to create the list of the countries and their cash.
This could take minutes and caused the server to timeout with no results.
We have now limited the number of countries and enterprise that can be shown to 50.
We do not think that having more than 50 countries and enterprises is good for you nor for the game and it is sufficient for nearly everybody.
In the exceptional case, when not all your countries are showing up, you will be able to transfer funds to the 50 entities that show up.
Moving funds to countries that are not showing up is possible by use of the money transfer function in the empire, that allows you to move funds between countries in the empire. |
| Khome y Peng | Thursday, August 21, 2014 - 08:20 am
This makes things EXTREMELY difficult for me. THANKS ALLOT! Now you need to figure out something better because when I go to transfer funds under the empire tab, it directs me right back to direct trading. I swear to god this better not screw me up |
| Khome y Peng | Thursday, August 21, 2014 - 08:27 am
So how am I supposed to do this with no option to transfer under my country? |
| Khome y Peng | Thursday, August 21, 2014 - 08:32 am
. |
| Khome y Peng | Thursday, August 21, 2014 - 08:50 am
Oh yeah, and I can't trans funds into and out of some enterprises on different planets because they are not listed under the direct trade page anymore..oh and look you can't do that under empire either with the enterprise page. |
| Orbiter | Thursday, August 21, 2014 - 01:00 pm
nvm
|
| Khome y Peng | Thursday, August 21, 2014 - 01:13 pm
I now have two enterprises that have no means of transferring funds. |
| Andy | Thursday, August 21, 2014 - 03:30 pm
The empire is indeed no alternative.
We have increased the number to 100.
It will probably work but you may experience server time out. try again.
We advise everyone not to increase the number of entities above 100 as it will not be possible to transfer funds directly.
There are more reasons to limit the number of entities and in the past, we have put limits on several functions to impose a limit to the number of countries in an empire.
We would prefer to limit the total rather than to limit the number per world. |
| Khome y Peng | Thursday, August 21, 2014 - 03:48 pm
Why |
| Andy | Thursday, August 21, 2014 - 04:51 pm
As we explained before, some functions that use data from many servers at once, are taking very long to execute and cause time out of the servers, fail and can not be executed.
This is one place where the existence of 100+ countries is a major problem.
In general, in a game with no resets, a player with so many countries can seem to be in a position that is beyond reach for any new players.
Also, as we have seen in the past, very large empires are hard to maintain, represent a lot of work, and are unlikely to remain profitable in the long run. They are then abandoned. |
| Khome y Peng | Thursday, August 21, 2014 - 05:11 pm
That was my objective. I have maintained a very large empire close to two real years. I don't plan on going anywhere. I see this as a challenge I'm willing to take. If you look at the countries I had for a while they are sustainable and developed. Not all of them need assistance. They are slowly improving over time. You state that they represent allot of work. Good! Wouldn't you want dedicated long term players willing to do the work? In really enjoy it. Every one who has put in time and money into this all want to achieve their own specific goals with a greater sense of reward. Over time I wanted to see what my limits were. I didn't want limits set artificially.
You set the rules. Fine. But I take this as only making things harder for those who really want to do something different and enjoyable. Challenge accepted. Many other vets were chased of for whatever their reasons were. Don't just make this game about high turnover of paying newbie customers. Make it interesting for those if us still here. Let us have fun!
*cue inspirational music. Lol |
| Presidium | Saturday, August 23, 2014 - 12:25 am
AMEN! |
| Khome y Peng | Saturday, August 23, 2014 - 05:13 am
lol thank you! |
| Rage Fury | Sunday, August 24, 2014 - 12:42 am
You should be able to transfer money directly to and from any country you are logged into. It makes no sense that you cannot. |
| Khome y Peng | Monday, August 25, 2014 - 12:43 am
when I go to transfer the funds, it says that the function has been replaced by the direct trading page. Are you able to transfer money while logged into a country now? |
| Borg Queen | Monday, August 25, 2014 - 03:28 pm
Idea: Make Direct-Trade-Funds-Transfer only available for enterprises and the main-country on a world and reactivate the possibility to transfer money between countries directly.
This will solve both the Server-Load Probs as it would mean a max of 5 Main Countries+10 Enterprises = 15 Entries on the Direct Trade Page, while still keeping it possible to get money where it is needed.
And Andy, things like this would be nice to be discussed before implementation as it could be really game-braking for some.
Edit: On a side Note: If the game-docs are an indication on what the devs think should be at least possible, look at Game lvl 16 peacefull: (12 Countries + 2 Enterprises)*(5 Worlds)= 70 Entries on Direct Trade, so why was it 50 to start with? |
| SuperSoldierRCP | Monday, August 25, 2014 - 04:02 pm
I thought that to awhile back Borg Queen, Glad someone else noticed... GM seemed a little out of touch on their own rules. I think they are acting to stop the XON threat lol |
| Khome y Peng | Monday, August 25, 2014 - 05:49 pm
I like Borg's idea also. It will be a little inconvenient but its better than the limit on direct trade. Why would one country be disqualified from transferring funds over another, at random no less? |
| Andy | Monday, August 25, 2014 - 10:12 pm
I think it is great that you have a lot to say about this one empire problem.
However, spending a lot of development time to resolve this problem for a 300 countries empire will take too much time from other developments.
Also, having a 300 countries empire creates a lot of other problems for this player, the most urgent one is the inability to take care of all of them. There are also many other functions that become very slow. Obviously, for some functions, doing things 300 times takes much longer than doing them 1 time or ten.
We have never put a hard limit to the number of countries and have left it to the players to see for themselves that very large empires do not make sense.
Generally, the strategy worked.
I would like to prevent imposing a hard limit because of a very small number of players who do this and I am sure they will start reducing at some point. |
| Khome y Peng | Monday, August 25, 2014 - 11:01 pm
So far I have been slowly expanding, seeing how well I could manage each one. So far I think I have managed well, slowing over time. I'm still working on it. I prefer not to have that limit set on me, either way. that is for me to decide.
Besides, I think it's becoming clear that the limitations set on transferring funds is becoming a "soft way" of making things even harder for expanding empires.
If anything, the only thing making managing large empires are the arbitrary rules and changes imposed on us. Despite that, I have still worked even harder and harder on my own volition to make it work to see how well i can do. So far I'm very happy with my results and prefer not to have more unnecessary changes put on me.
Besides all that, we should be able to transfer funds between our countries without limitations anyway. Please fix it for fairness |
| Khome y Peng | Monday, August 25, 2014 - 11:07 pm
Please fix the transfer options. |
| Andy | Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - 10:03 am
The transfers between countries were limited to 100 countries because larger numbers, made the function time out.
As a result, it became impossible to transfer at all.
Now it became possible again.
As you may know, government cost (empire overhead) is mainly a function of the number of countries in the empire and increases in time, to very high levels. It also increases with the population.
as a result, very very large empires were never successful.
Government cost consumed an increasing percentage of the income and at the end, the empire failed.
we advise you to expand by making each country very successful. It is possible for countries to grow up to 300M in population and these countries can be extremely profitable.
empires of up to 30 very large countries is a better target than empires with 100+ countries.
When the current hardware upgrade is completed, we will measure again and check if a direct market limit of 150 countries is possible without a time out. |
| Khome y Peng | Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - 08:25 pm
We must have different values on how we define a successful country. Anyhow, increased to 150 is good for now. I'll hope for more. |
| Rage Fury | Thursday, August 28, 2014 - 08:27 am
No I cannot Khome. I was meaning it made no sense to me that you, I or anyone else cannot transfer directly. If you can click into an country from your main account and see your total GC, you should be able to transfer to and from that country while in it. The SC$ shouldn't be to hard to include given this. I mean the server(s) obviously know who you are and track what you got to some extent. If super large Empires have problems with the Direct Trade page then the solution is to enable at least SC$ transfer while in the country. Seems to me that would save some huge server hits vs trying to repeatedly Direct trade to multiple countries in the huge empire. |
| Khome y Peng | Thursday, August 28, 2014 - 02:21 pm
Well I agree. Transferring within the countries themselves may be more efficient |
| Andy | Saturday, August 30, 2014 - 12:49 pm
Transfering between countries was used in the past and is easy if you do it between two or three.
When you have many, you need to switch between the countries and you click for ever. We had complaints at the time about it. Also, it works within one world only.
The direct market is a better way when you have many countries, however, it requires a lot of checking and communicating before all the data is produced.
It is fast when you have 20 or 30 entities and becomes slower as the numbers grow.
When the current round of hardware and software upgrades is done, we will test to see if it is faster, or we may decide to use data which is not up to date for the last second and already available, and make the function run faster. |
| Rage Fury | Saturday, August 30, 2014 - 07:41 pm
Sounds good Andy. |
| Khome y Peng | Saturday, August 30, 2014 - 10:51 pm
"we may decide to use data which is not up to date for the last second and already available, and make the function run faster"
I don't understand this part.. |
| Andy | Sunday, August 31, 2014 - 05:12 pm
To do the exchange, the portal server asks the world servers for current data on the cash in each country.
an older copy, is already available on the portal.
If that older info is used, there is no need for the questions and answers between the servers. |
| Khome y Peng | Sunday, August 31, 2014 - 06:32 pm
the older info wouldn't reflect the current amount, but it will at least provide access to direct trade with each country? |
| Andy | Tuesday, September 2, 2014 - 05:30 pm
The problem is solved. You can transfer to any of your countries.
It is now much faster and works with any number of countries.
The data might not be 100% up to date, it is several hours old at most. Once you make the choice of the country you want to transfer to, the correct data is shown. |
| Khome y Peng | Thursday, September 4, 2014 - 07:50 am
Sounds good! |
| Andy | Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - 06:57 pm
the silence means that it is working.
I just tested, it is very fast, even with 300 countries. |
| Rage Fury | Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - 07:55 pm
Good job Andy. Worked fine for me, but then it has always worked fine for me. Mine is not a huge Empire. The inaccurate SC$ was a bit disconcerting at first, but perfectly acceptable since it is accurate in the transfer screens. A small price to pay so that others can continue to do their thing. |
