| craigwilliamson79 | Friday, October 3, 2014 - 10:24 pm 
So, a bunch of my land units and two of my fleets seem to have been dismantled and deactivated. Anyone else having this issue? |
| Khome y Peng | Saturday, October 4, 2014 - 12:54 am
maybe they ran out of ammo. seems to be the recent passion for the game now |
| craigwilliamson79 | Saturday, October 4, 2014 - 05:29 am
Don't think so. But, even if, I don't think it would result in a unit being dismantled...it would just show a reduced number of weapons. And, I don't think they'd become deactivated. |
| Andy | Saturday, October 4, 2014 - 12:51 pm
Maybe you had negative numbers of ammo.
check and make sure you have enough ammo in the country, to supply all your units and prevent them from going negative.
This only happens when the country goes negative. |
| Perival Lovacore | Saturday, October 4, 2014 - 03:15 pm
My fleet dismantled I believe because it had low ammo.
Andy, is there any way we could get messages concerning this in the log. I freaked out for a while, thinking it had just disappeared? |
| cl108 | Saturday, October 4, 2014 - 10:59 pm
At least let the countries auto immediate order if ammo is low or out. Dismantling units should be a last resort. I dont like micromanaging ammo supplies and if the units have been upgraded, then expensive to replace weapons have been lost. |
| Rage Fury | Saturday, October 4, 2014 - 11:34 pm
I made the note that the auto-dismantling of units was wrong back before this change was made. I said it was wrong for people to lose their units and hard work as well. It makes no sense anyways.
Units do not immediately disband from lack of ammo in the real world. There is no logical reason to this. At most they should not be able to be mobilized/deployable or they should be kicked to the reserve or something like it. Proper units can still train with no ammo and remain cohesive. This solution where they disband and are replaced with a pittance of ammo is terrible.
There is no reason to risk losing paying customers for it and it needs to be fixed. |
| Andy | Saturday, October 4, 2014 - 11:47 pm
Not low ammunition.
A negative number of ammunition in the country!
I will make sure a message is shown on the newspaper.
We have now said many times here, that negative number of ammunition pieces will be corrected.
You cannot have a negative number of ammunition.
It is very wrong to have these negative numbers and assume your units exist. If numbers turn negative, the units in fact, do not exist at all.
if it happens, the situation must be corrected immediately by the exchange of a number of weapons into ammunition. This may happen repeatedly and if the shortages continue, or there are no weapons, military units may be dismantled to resolve the negative numbers.
Units can hardly fight when they have a negative number of ammo and the country cannot have such a situation.
If you do not want or cannot purchase the ammo that is needed, you should reduce the size of the army and spare yourself the money it costs.
if you choose to have the army, and the units, make sure you have the ammo.
ammunition is bought automatically in most cases. The procedure does not require anyone to stand guard.
We had a situation where during war, players relied on an army that was partially non existent.
Having units that will just not function during war seems undesirable.
As we said before, this can be resolved very easily.
Just get the ammo you need and prevent shortages. |
| Andy | Saturday, October 4, 2014 - 11:53 pm
Shortages of ammunition are now largely gone and most corrections already happened.
The exchanges did trigger many to purchase ammo.
It did not happen when we explained the feature. It happened after the exchanges began.
the number of times the procedure intervened is small.
sometimes it exchanged weapons from the country reserves, some of the times from the disabled weapons and a small number of times, when there was nothing available, a unit was disabled.
In such cases, it was clear that the units will not be operational because of very large shortages and zero availability of ammo. |
| Rage Fury | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 12:21 am
It is also undesirable to lose units because of ammo shortages. A unit, by any definition of the word, can exist and should be able to exist without ammo. During bad economic downturns you don't immediately disband units, you cut purchases first... Of course units should not be able to fight, but it should not be disbanded arbitrarily. Doing this means any player, so inclined and with access to the resources, can create artificial extended shortages causing units to disband across the board. Not hard to figure that one out. We should not be out the time, effort and cash to purchase, form and train our units.
To be blunt, this is wrong and should not be possible. You have access to the code, fix it so units cannot fight with no ammo. Checks before and after combat would suffice for this. Your negative ammo situation is correctable by something like so:
If ammo <= zero then
...do nothing and/or flag units unfit for combat
Else
...whatever
End If
If ammo <= zero then
...ammo = zero
....Buy x ammo
.....Maybe affect Quality of Unit by n percent?
End If
Seems pretty cut and dry. |
| drys0013 | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 12:29 am
Its not a feature. andy, thanks for deleting my post.
feature = something desired. |
| cl108 | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 01:34 am
Guess its time to go through every country and change order strategies. |
| cl108 | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 01:46 am
My worry is like rage said. What if there is a huge shortage of ammo? Can there be an immediate order point option in case ammo gets extremely low in a country? |
| craigwilliamson79 | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 07:36 am
It's possible I was short of ammo...but I do regularly check and immediate order if needed. |
| Andy | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 12:03 pm
The alternative to the dismantling of a unit was to reduce the quality of the units to what the real quality is. zero.
if a unit cannot fight, you can hardly claim it has any quality.
The solution for the problem is very simple.
Purchase the ammo, or reduce your army.
You cannot have both.
You cannot have high quality units that cannot fight at all.
If more ammo is purchased, the production will increase. Shortages are in most cases in only one type of ammo and it takes a single immediate order to solve the problem. |
| T Mac | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 01:38 pm
I had spoken out against this "fix" when it was mentioned particularly for harder to get items that aren't sold on WG. The other aspect that I thought was lame was that the units were undoubtedly upgraded beyond the regular purchase Q of the products. That expense is now lost.
Isn't there is a system for low supplies that automates purchases already, why doesn't it buy supplies? If it does buy supplies then the effect is only to require those who have a negative country balance to buy cash? |
| cl108 | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 02:29 pm
What if a player is busy and doesnt get online for some time and the market experiences shortages? Theres one in uranium on fb right now that requires immediate orders. Can there not be a low water mark where the country implements an immediate order on ammo verses just waiting and dismantling units? Say, maybe, when ammo reaches 0? If the order cannot be completed due to a lack of cash then sell weapons and/or dismantle units. theres no need to look at taking weapons first, especially since its not logged. |
| Andy | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 02:48 pm
We have added notifications to let you know about shortages. you can get an email.
if purchasing is set, the chance for this to happen is small. |
| cl108 | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 03:17 pm
Okay thank you. |
| Khome y Peng | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 04:02 pm
I think this is a really strange solution to what seems to be a relatively small problem. I mean so what if it's in the negative? Your not getting free ammo. Besides, just change the system so that there is no "negative" ammo amounts. Just assume that in real life that means zero ammo. Nobody really believes that there is negative ammo just like we don't believe there is negative furniture in a country. It just seems like an overly complex "fix" for a problem that none of us seemed to have a huge issue with. If we are out off ammo, let us fix our own problem. We buy our ammo, plain and simple. These reasons are... I don't know hot to say it without being confrontational. |
| Rage Fury | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 06:48 pm
You cannot have a high quality unit that runs out of supplies and awaits resupply? Um, Nonsense.
Units do not magically forget how to fight if they are short on ammo. Ask any Veteran... |
| Andy | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 06:55 pm
You are not confrontational and you do not have to agree with anything we do.
We love a good discussion and good arguments.
we do not like threats or game destruction statements that are baseless and come from someone who becomes angry behind her/his screen and is shouting abuse.
Most time, because he never read what we say or does not understand why things happen.
Many of the game features are based on things players suggested, many are the result of criticism.
In this case, it seems that we are very close. As you said:
"let us fix our own problem."
This is exactly what we are saying. Please fix it.
The problem is: many don't.
If you purchase your ammo, no one will ever mix in with your army. It has to go for a long time with no purchases of ammo before it gets to it.
We do have an issue with the negative numbers and this is why we ask you to fix it.
it can damage the armies beyond what you would wish for.
quality is expensive and if it goes to zero, you have a bigger problem and I don't think you would like it to happen. |
| Andy | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 06:57 pm
Shortages of other materials cause the supply index to fall. sometimes it falls very low.
This results in the decline of the welfare index and the entire economy suffers as production in corporations depends on the welfare index.
we see players fixing such shortages more quickly. |
| Rage Fury | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 07:03 pm
Kindly explain how you would handle extended artificial shortages? I have not seen where you have covered that anywhere. |
| Aries | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 07:21 pm
I am not sure I understand the problem. Part of the expense of maintaining weapons in countries has always been monthly ammo usage. The market for ammo relied on it and a consistent demand for ammo is needed to keep ammo corps in business. This seems to be the reason for the change. The arguments against this seem to be.
1. It's not realistic
Considering how much ammo is expended in the game, I can easily see some of expense for ammo being towards spare parts for repairs and other expenses to keep the weapons in operation. Consider that no weapons in this game are lost to anything other than combat damage. No weapon breaks down, gets stuck in the mud, or is simply retired because it is obsolete. This is still the case unless their upkeep is neglected.
2. No notice
This seems to be fixed by notifications.
Maybe a setting to choose immediate purchasing of ammo instead is needed and would cause less disruption. Cash would have to be available though, of course. An aggressive ordering strategy is already available though. |
| Rage Fury | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 07:41 pm
Notifications handles the no warning issue. I agree.
There are other issues.
There is not a decent "grace" period as I understand it. If a player wars and experiences a shortage while forgetting to check before logging out, they log back in and witness their units gone.
I am also told the system ignores units that actually have ammo and disbands them anyways, should the Country itself experience shortage. This is nonsensical imop.
Weapon Quality seems to be completely ignored.
The time and SC$ investment to get that unit quality is ignored. |
| Andy | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 08:07 pm
I think you miss the point here.
If you place an order strategy for ammo, it will hardly ever happen to you.
if you purchase stealth fighter, you must actively make sure there is ammo.
your UNITS are not dismantled.
max one unit, and only if the country does not have weapons, including the reserves and an alert that could be given when ammo is low.
In case a unit is dismantled,
quality is averaged with the country stock. Not much lost there.
This might be reviewed. The quality of a unit that cannot fight should be reduced to a very low level. it should depend on the situation of the unit in case it is dissolved.
In general, the quality of units is the average of the quality of the weapons and the ammunition.
if there is no ammo, what is the quality?
It's probably seen as zero (for the non existing ammo). I don't remember, will check, it was done some years ago. |
| Rage Fury | Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 08:32 pm
I know I should place ammo orders and keep my Stealth supplied and I do. I have two countries where this concerns me, taking care of their military. I even bumped my order strat and may do so again, because I don't want to experience this nonsense, not even by accident.
I don't want is folks to be penalized like a couple other decent players were, because they forgot to check before logging out for the day. Grace periods. There is no reason there cannot be one.
Units were dismantled andy. craig lost two fleets. He likely retained a majority of the weapons in his stock, but the units did disappear from the map.
If there is no ammo you lock the unit from fighting because they have nothing to use with their still existing weapons. Unit Quality should be calculated just like always and the unit should remain intact. If Unit quality is reduced to zero, but the weapon quality remains, I am fine with that. |
| Andy | Monday, October 6, 2014 - 09:22 pm
Yes.
units were dismantled.
I wonder if they had the notification on low ammo in place so they would get a warning.
You can turn them on and get a mail message or other message.
Not many are doing this but it would help preventing it.
There is also no need to check before you go for the day.
these shortages do not come overnight.
there is a lot of time between shortages and any problem with a unit.
Some have systematically neglected ordering ammo.
you really must turn off automation to get as far as some did.
It was also used to eliminate cost of ammunition because the negative numbers do not go very deep and in fact, no ammo was used at all.
The problem was quite large and it is now improving considerably. |
| Rage Fury | Monday, October 6, 2014 - 10:45 pm
So what you are saying Andy, is you can war and you don't need to check your ammo before you log out and can return the next day with your units intact?
Why is it when craig did this, his units were not left intact? Am I missing something? |
| Rage Fury | Monday, October 6, 2014 - 10:55 pm
Please, can you explain what your hangup is with a grace period?
And can you explain what is you are going to do when an extended artificial shortage happens?
Are you just going to allow people's defenses to crumble without a shot fired? |
| gmm54 | Tuesday, October 7, 2014 - 10:15 pm
Im missing my fleet. I checked the deactivated stock and well they are not there.I have tons of ammunition. and alse the fleet was a strat fleet. Even my nuclear subs and missiles are missing. Where did they go ??? thats almost 900B gone and i play in KB |
| craigwilliamson79 | Thursday, October 9, 2014 - 05:33 am
That's the same that happened to two of mine. They seemed to have all the supplies they needed, but just finished a war. |
| Andy | Thursday, October 9, 2014 - 05:25 pm
Please read the game news.
also activate the notifications warning you of ammunition shortages.
it seems that this point is not taken very seriously but ammunition shortages are disastrous for your army. |
| craigwilliamson79 | Friday, October 10, 2014 - 07:21 am
Andy, is it possible that Navy units could be dismantled in the time it takes for a supply unit to reach them? |
| Andy | Friday, October 10, 2014 - 12:05 pm
No I don't think so.
The supply unit does not have any supplies for them as the stock of these materials in the country was negative.
otherwise, the entire procedure would not be triggered.
The only way this procedure can start is if the country stock goes negative.
then there are several steps before it gets to dismantle.
simply buying some ammo would close the issue. |
| Jennifer McLaughlin | Saturday, October 11, 2014 - 03:26 am
Might be nice if You told Us how to activate notice. Where the hell is it? |
| Jennifer McLaughlin | Sunday, October 12, 2014 - 04:37 am
Craig, just make sure Your Country has the backup ammo BEFORE You war. I have plenty of supplies if You need them. You know where I am. lol |
| craigwilliamson79 | Sunday, October 12, 2014 - 08:33 am
Thanks Andy and Jennifer. I thought I had more than enough of everything, but I guess I must have missed something. I'll take better care in the future. |
| Khome y Peng | Sunday, October 12, 2014 - 11:14 pm
Yeah this auto dismantle stuff is getting stupid. Had a whole fleet dismantled without notice.
Seriously, this isn't making sense. |
| Khome y Peng | Monday, October 13, 2014 - 02:18 am
Even with my ammo being automatically purchased, units and garrisons are falling apart left and right. This is absolutely ridiculous! Really Andy, why was the negative ammo such a big deal to you anyway? If there is an egg shortage do we dismantle the chicken coops? Negative ammo means
NO ammo, just like any other product that goes into the negative.
There is no way to manage this, especially with all of the ammo shortages, and there are allot of shortages going on.
Just please do us all a favor, don't dig your heels in over this and bring it back to normal. It's not about being right in your own mind. This is ruining more of the game for players working hard. |
| SuperSoldierRCP | Monday, October 13, 2014 - 05:02 pm
Let me give some non-bias insight here
Guys
I'm going to side with Andy on this issue, I've been around a long time. People having massive neg number ammo numbers in the past was pretty bad, and got heavily abused if you knew what you where doing. It was a problem and was something that needed to be addressed.
Andy
Something i don't think the GM considered was disbanded units become deactivated. As you know we can only reactive so many weapons per month. When this happens during a war, it can all but shut down entire military's. If the markets in the red and you cant get interceptors missiles,you have to watch your ENTIRE defense disband, which is kind of absurd.
What i suggest is that the GM add a feature that instead, when a player runs out of ammo on (DEFENSIVE FORCES) all needed purchases are auto bought for the player on the immediate buy setting. This means the SC economy is still stimulated, and players get what they need. When it comes to offensive weapon units, i think the rule should remain the same let them disband and all.
The GM needs to look at defensive air wings/garrisons as special because they are critically important to the defense of our nations |
| Rage Fury | Monday, October 13, 2014 - 06:12 pm
Negative numbers abuse is simple to fix, just flag the units as non-deployable until the situation is rectified. You could even prevent purchase of new weapons until it is rectified. There is Absolutely no need to disband or convert anything.
I can live with it looking to weapons not in a unit, as the first option for conversions. I can keep a stock of disposable weapons for 'just in case' as well as increase my ammo levels on the off chance I might overlook something later.
Will a New player think of this? How will new players react when they don't have a clue what is going on to begin with? How will new players gauge how much ammo they need before war and AFTER, when experienced players misjudged it or overlooked it? Do we expect new player retention to increase with this 'feature'? Not likely, more likely the opposite.
This may fix an issue needing to be addressed and I am not saying the issue should not be addressed. But seriously, this is not the best way to do it. The game needs more players, not more crap to confuse and irritate new folks. |
| Jack | Monday, October 13, 2014 - 06:34 pm
Rage Fury - I agree with you just make the units non-deployable until they have at least the minimum ammo/weapons needed. That is what really happens in a military. I agree something has to happen but disbanding units and even whole navy fleets is totally unrealistic. Especially at a time when the GM has decided to turn this into a war game while at the same time limiting raiding for the cash needed to maintain a proper military. |
| Rage Fury | Monday, October 13, 2014 - 08:33 pm
If there is ANY conversions to be done, it should look to country stockpiles for the resources needed to construct the ammo. It should convert the resources a corporation would use to construct the ammo but perhaps using a bit more than a corporation would and with an added fee to make it so it is not cost effective to let this happen. Thus encouraging countries to continue to buy ammo as per the usual.
Until said conversions are done or ammo is in fact bought, the units should be non-deployable and remain so for both defense and offense. Upon rectifying the shortage units should immediately be deployable once more. They should remain left intact. That would be the logical solution imop. |
| Lucky | Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - 04:24 pm
I don't think this works properly? I had a con missile shortage of -50. Last night when I checked I had 1900 con batts in that country. I log in today and only have 1400 batts but still -50 con missiles. The sale of 500 batts cant cover a -50 ammo shortage?
Something's not quite right here. I don't understand why there was a need to sell my damm weapons. Highly prized weapons at that, which aren't easy to get. I'm perfectly capable of fixing this shortage myself. |
| Andy | Friday, October 17, 2014 - 09:19 pm
nobody ever had anything dismantled without warning.
The notifications, if set as we have advised are on time.
you can wait for the notification or just check your ammo and make sure you do not have any shortages.
notifications come she your ammo goes under what you need to a age year. |
