| Andy | Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - 03:15 pm 
1. Pending Bankruptcies
Many players have improved the assets of failing countries and increased the assets to a positive value. These countries will not bankrupt.
Some countries however have negative assets and the clock is ticking. The best way to save them is by a transfer of funds to the country.
When assets become positive for a period of 8 hours or longer, the "pending bankruptcy" clock is set back to 84 game months and will start again if the funds that were transferred into the country are removed again. This might be a "cheat" to avoid bankruptcy but part of the money will be used to fix shortages and the country will end up better than it was before.
2. New Products Added
Lead and Lithium have been added as new products and can now be produced. The products will be used, starting next week, in a small number of corporations. The numbers will increase gradually. The corporations that will use the products, will start purchasing them early so that the corporation will have some products in stock when the production process starts using them.
Also Batteries have been added as a new product. These are industrial batteries that are used in the car industry and other industries and not by consumers. Future alternative power industries will also use batteries.
House hold batteries will be added at a later date.
3. Indexes Document Added
A new document explaining the indexes in Simcountry is added to the game documentation.
4. Use of Mobile Devices and of Zinc
The use of Mobile Devices and Zinc that were added last week is increased. Mobile devices are now used by the population as a consumer product and the numbers will increase. More corporations will start purchasing these products and will use them in the future. We do not expect any corporations to suffer a setback in production as a result of the use of the new products.
5. The Navy
The navy is an effective weapon that can be used far away from your country. It is possible to fight the navy with offensive weapons but the defense against attacking navies and especially attacks by frigates and sea based cruise, was very limited.
This is a problem for wars where auto defense is used.
We have now added defensive capabilities that can help protect countries against navy attacks. Both defense helicopters and defensive missiles will counter attack navies in war, also conventional missiles and stealth bombers will participate in the auto defense.
This change will not diminish the capabilities of the navy but will extract a price for navy attacks. The attacker will suffer more damage to the attacking navies.
6. Conventional Missiles
We have improved the capabilities of conventional missiles and made them harder to destroy. The missiles are also effective against more weapons, including the navy. Mobile auto response conventional missile units will participate in the defense of countries that have them and will attack a wider range of weapon systems.
7. Lower cost for Some weapons and many types of ammunition
A further decline in the base price of weapons and ammunition, including also many defensive weapons will make wars cheaper and allow for a low cost for the defense.
8. More Tuning of the War Engine
More testing of the war engine and remarks and mails from players, resulted in some tuning of the war engine. This will result in some changes in the working of some weapons on some targets and of some defensive weapons and their response to attacks.
In face of an increasing probability of war between countries with presidents, it is important to make it possible for countries to set up a good defense that will deter attack and also improve the auto defense features in case of a war while the defending player is not available.
More work will be done in the coming weeks to allow for the setup of auto response units and the choice of targets that they attack in case the country is attacked. |
| DickDastardly | Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - 04:24 pm
Nice 1 GM's. A good update. Plus some new corps is always nice. Big thumbs up for the mobile cons. |
| Christos | Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - 05:16 pm
+1 Good one Andy |
| craigwilliamson79 | Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - 05:36 pm
Those navy changes were really needed. Until now, if you were attacked and your offensive weapons were destroyed, there was no way to stop a navy. This happened to me a while back and I almost lost a country. |
| Lyudmil Vodenicharov | Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - 12:17 am
I'm still waiting for revoking the common market member limitations. |
| Borg Queen | Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - 12:43 am
Andy, as I took a look at the new index explanations page there are two things I would like to say:
1. Good Job.
2. I really have to object the fact that things like hospitals are closed down if FI falls below 150 while health is above 250. I would agree if FI falls below 100 as that means negative income, but as long as one is still in positive, why closing down stuff? Sure one only needs those high Indexes only at high game Levels but as the past has shown, market swings can happen and adjusting may take some time and may cause even well run countries to drop below 150 for a short time but in my opinion that doesn't justify auto-closing stuff that might take a lot of time and/or Money to rebuild |
| jammiebrown1978 brown | Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - 01:53 am
Awesome news |
| craigwilliamson79 | Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - 07:41 am
I agree with borg queen on the FI issue.
Also, I did a little experiment. I used my navy to attack a friend's mobile supply unit (just to see what kind of response I would get). She had two defence helicopter units nearby. I lost 12 cruise missile ships and supply ships. She lost nothing.
I agree that the navy was too powerful, but it seems that an entire fleet can be destroyed very easily now. |
| Andy | Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - 12:35 pm
The number of members in a single common market is too high. We said that before.
don't hold your breath.
We do not want very large blocks to dominate the markets.
if markets will become larger, and spending per country lower, this might be an option in the future.
any short term changes (we do not plan any) will be to reduce the numbers.
I might support the issue of closures of facilities. We try to back away from closings.
This is a very old feature and FI may have been lowered in the following years. I will look into it. |
| Andy | Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - 12:39 pm
Any info on quality in this attack?
Check the helicopter damage on these vessels.
I think you need 100 hits to destroy one boat of the same quality. |
| Andy | Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - 12:40 pm
We will also do more testing.
such information helps a lot.
we will also look into war logs to see what happens. |
| Andy | Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - 01:05 pm
I checked on supply ships.
they are never attacked by the defense as they never attack.
Other weapons may have been involved in the attack.
Only attack helicopters and navy fighters can damage supply ships. |
| DickDastardly | Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - 01:52 pm
I just tested it out Andy with my country SPQR on FB. WL 13. The helis wiped out all 12 cruise missile ships with no damage dealt to attacked country. Counties have no DMB's so this is heli response only. My quality 363. Heli quality 450.
Plus the SB's countered against my other naval ships doing a lot of damage.
Then I tested at wl 3. My quality 363, heli quality 180. Again attacked a county so no dmb response. My losses between 5 and 7 cruise missile ships per attack. Doing 15% damage.
I tested against a city with 40 dmbs. 7% damage with 7 cruise misile ships lost.
Looks like most players got what they wanted. A good defence v navies. Now there's no chance of using them against a country that has it's air defence up.
We're pretty much back to where we used to be with navies. I'm fine with that but now I don't see much use for them. There's other weapons that'll do the same job. |
| DickDastardly | Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - 02:04 pm
Also noticed the mobile cons where still having no effect. This a wl 13 c3's mobile con response. There quality must be 450. I had no air defence up, just garrisons and they alone are enough to nullify them completely.
Mobile Conventional Missile Unit Hereford is responding with a counter attack on Osano fortification.
SPQR (the attacked country,WL13) reports:
•No damage to Osano fortification is reported.
•The country used 183 missile interceptors in the defense.
•The defence was assisted by the Garrison TG5178.
•The War Index remains 99.97
The Kingdom of Diantha (the attacker,C3WL13) reports:
•Hereford lost 20 conventional missile batteries.
•Hereford lost trucks, gasoline and military supplies.
•The attack may have been reduced or eliminated by Anti Missile Missiles.
•442 soldiers were killed and 1234 were wounded.
•The War Index remains 100.00 |
| DickDastardly | Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - 02:14 pm
For these mobile cons to be useful with so few numbers, 20 is nothing. They need to be as hard to hit as stealth bombers. Fighting c3's doesn't even come into my thinking when I consider the war game. I'm thinking pvp vs fed response always. We can fly 24 stealth bombers v fed air and still do damage and not loose every sb per attack. Until they can do that they'll be of no use. |
| DickDastardly | Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - 08:06 pm
I'm wondering about these new products added. Will corp profits be effected? More supplies needed to produce the same goods = less profit? I'm noticing a lot of corps are needing these new items. |
| Serpent | Thursday, November 20, 2014 - 05:42 am
#5 is great Andy, it allows the automatic defense to work as it should so that people who have a stout defense don't get screwed by a work around.
But, the issue is that there is still no cost effective way to wage war against high level C3's or more importantly, because you seem to want PvP wars, to wage war against strong countries. An attacker is always going to have to spend not only way more resources than they are going to gain, it's also way more time.
We need offensive units that are at least as strong as the defensive mobile units.
We need navy's that are strong enough to actually do any kind of damage against garrisons and mobile units.
We need to be able to sell the resources we've gained, that means not only assets in the country but population in the country. (If I can only sell 3 million pop a day and I take a 300M country, first it will take me 73 days just to sell the pop, second, I can only sell 220M of the pop, third, I can really only sell ~150 million pop because of the migration penalties, fourth, I lose even more population/cash in my other countries because for some reason their welfare index is affected by me selling the pop in the country I took which is ridiculous).
You've got to provide the incentives for war players if you want the war game to come alive and right now, there is zero incentive once you consider the amount of time it requires to take a large country in addition to the amount of time it takes to set up to do so in addition to putting my own assets at risk. |
| craigwilliamson79 | Thursday, November 20, 2014 - 10:06 am
Regarding my experiment, all units were around 450 quality.
The newspaper showed that supply ships were destroyed, but I can't confirm that they were as they may have resupplied before I checked. |
| Andy | Thursday, November 20, 2014 - 10:07 am
More testing is taking place here.
There are too many conditions to cover and your experience helps.
We will have a first round of tuning today. |
| Jack | Thursday, November 20, 2014 - 03:35 pm
In regard to the recent changes with the navy I received this message today from Khomey Peng from his exile from the forum and at his request I am publishing it for him -
"I tested the new tuning they just did to the war engine. I sent 10 cruise missile ships, all over lvl 300 against a lvl 13 C3. all but one cruise missile ship was wiped out against only 1 defensive battery." |
| Andy | Thursday, November 20, 2014 - 04:20 pm
Not specific enough.
what defense battery?
numbers of destroyed weapons? |
| Jack | Thursday, November 20, 2014 - 08:51 pm
Andy,
Khome y Peng messaged me that he has emailed all of the specific data to you for you to review. He is available by email to answer any additional questions you have about it. Thanks. |
| SuperSoldierRCP | Friday, November 21, 2014 - 05:24 am
Andy the GM needs to rethink war levels this is JUST RIDICULOUS
A C3 has more defenses they a normal NATION. 3 Stealth bombers wing attacks and 2 conventional missile units attacks.
Your tweaking to C3 nations is not helping any one.
I beg the GM to please investigate this. C3 nations SHOULD NOT be harder to take then a Real War.
Double and triple auto weapons attacks. Massive defenses and garrisons that are higher Q then a player has.
|
| Andy | Friday, November 21, 2014 - 09:18 am
C3 at war level 13 is hard and should be.
Level 14 and 15 will be added and will be harder.
You gain 350 gold coins for winning such a war.
It should not be a picnic.
If too difficult, let it be. |
| SuperSoldierRCP | Friday, November 21, 2014 - 07:03 pm
I agree Andy
Im not saying by any means it should be "easy"
But triple stealth bombers, double con missiles, plus defense levels that are unavailable to the players is not helping anyone. Your doing the opposite of what you are trying to achieve. Even with federations and mobile units a player CANNOT achieve what you expect us fight in a C3 war.
At war level 13 you make NO money, you have stated that you wish to remove cash raiding from C3, also you stated that they will get harder. A 1 time gift of Gold coins is enough to cover the lifetime war level bump.
The GM should come up with other incentives for a player raising their war level, because it as of now after a certain point its WORTHLESS to go past war level 7.
The GM just needs to look at adding some small tweaks to make the high levels more appealing.
Maybe at war level 13
10K professional soldiers and 3K professional officers be left in the nation
---Or---
even after winning the C3 war a very small amount of gold coins is awarded?
It was suggested before but how about at war level 13 instead of taking the county, i can choose to just end the war after a victory, which results in me gaining 20GC. That in retrospect is FAR FAR less then my costs but it would give a real incentive for warring at higher levels.
Im not asking for you to overhaul the system, im just asking that reweigh the risks and rewards. |
| jammiebrown1978 brown | Saturday, November 22, 2014 - 03:25 am
Is that only mobile conventional missile batteries that participate in defence or also standard conventional missile batteries as well |
| DickDastardly | Saturday, November 22, 2014 - 10:02 pm
Mobile Devices Corps need some tuning Andy? I have several fully upped and they're loosing between 18B/20B per year. This is on FB. The market has severe shortages yet the corps are making these huge losses? I've looked at other presidents corps also and they're all making similar losses. Prob has something to do with the huge cost in supplies needed per corp. |
| Orbiter | Saturday, November 22, 2014 - 10:05 pm
i was curious about the very thing DD said, mine aren't upgraded, but they are doing really poorly |
| DickDastardly | Saturday, November 22, 2014 - 10:39 pm
After looking more closely we need 13 supply products to produce them. Almost 1M units of software per month, 1M electronic components per month. That seems alot |
| Perival Lovacore | Sunday, November 23, 2014 - 05:36 am
They most certainly are NOT I-Phones....we need a Steve Jobs type manager to look at those margins. |
| Andy | Sunday, November 23, 2014 - 10:41 am
Mine is also losing money. I checked the structure again and it is correct.
These corporations are bigger than most and as with most very large corporations in Simcountry, they are less profitable when they are not upgraded to high levels, and very profitable when upgraded.
I see the graph going up steadily and they will improve a lot. These are high tech corporations and they should be very profitable.
Also the product price is increasing and will contribute to the results. |
| craigwilliamson79 | Sunday, November 23, 2014 - 01:16 pm
I've just super boosted one, so let's see if it will turn a profit now. I'll post some results when I get them. |
| Jack | Sunday, November 23, 2014 - 03:55 pm
Mine were all fully upgraded from day one and are not making any profit. That isn't the answer to these corporations. |
| craigwilliamson79 | Sunday, November 23, 2014 - 04:52 pm
I've upgraded two (in two different enterprises with slightly different settings) Quality about 211, profit about 150 million with upgrades at 202. The quality should continue to upgrade and so with that in mind, I'd say these corps should turn a decent profit. But, probably not as much as FMU or high tech services. |
| Andy | Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - 01:48 pm
Thanks for testing.
I am sure they will turn out more. if not, I will check them again. |
| Christos | Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - 06:18 pm
Actually at top price (7,700) and nearly upgraded (174) my state corp North West Mobile Devices (North West Apo, KB) makes a hefty 1B/month profit now. I don't know what changed, but it's ok now. |
| Christos | Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - 06:18 pm
Btw, what kind of a "mobile device" costs $7,700 lol |
| Andy | Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - 02:34 pm
And what king of bomber costs so much, and the same is true for nearly any other product.
and this is after so many reductions.
we want to continue gradual reduction in pricing in Simcountry and reduce amounts used across the game. |
| cl108 | Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - 05:30 am
The mobile devices corps don't produce a profit. The price is at its max and my CEO has some of them fully upgraded and all 8 are doing poorly. Same settings as my other corporations.
Cl industries on WG |
| Jack | Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - 12:54 pm
+1 |
| Andy | Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - 03:29 pm
Mine are profitable and increasingly so.
Market value is increasing too.
I expect them to increase profits. |
| cl108 | Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - 05:33 pm
What world and country? I just want to check your strategies. |
| Andy | Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - 01:15 am
andy on FB
there are two of these corporations. |
| Jack | Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - 04:58 am
Well my mobile device corps are not profitable. They are fully upgraded and many corps with the same settings are very profitable. This is on KB. I will give them some more time before they become something else that is profitable.
How about the battery corps? They are much worse than the mobile devices. Is there any projection when they may become profitable? |
| cl108 | Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - 06:58 am
Ok here's what I saw. As a CEO, a player will make losses. The income that your corps are making a month is too small to cover a ceos country resources cost, so yes mobile devices can turn a profit, but just not for a CEO. |
| Christos | Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - 08:54 am
OK Andy I took a look at your two Mobile Devices corps on FB. Benita makes 170M/month (2B/year) and Richmond makes 200/month (2.5B/year). They are both fully upgraded and employ 300K employees.
Let's now compare them to your only Def Weapons Maintenance corp, Zerbst, and one of you Factory Maintenance corps, Martina (they're all the same). Both are fully upgraded, their product prices are the highest possible, and the slight differences in revenue are only a result of supply prices fluctuation:
Zerbst makes 600M/month (made 10B last year) with 272K employees.
Martina makes 750M/month (made 9B last year) with 263K employees.
I won't make any comparisons to Off Weapons Maint or Airforce Maint corps, as their products are very cheap right now.
So Andy as you can see there's something really wrong with the setup of Mobile Devices corps. Either supply quantities must be lowered, or output raised by 15-20%, or preferably the top price must be made substantially higher (a 18% increase should do it). |
| cl108 | Friday, December 5, 2014 - 02:35 pm
Update: my CEO mobile devices are beginning to turn a tiny profit (<150m) not enough for me to actually build more, but at least its something I guess. I'll update if things change. |
