| Andy | Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 03:43 pm 
1. War Protection
The temporary war protection feature is now limited to a maximum number of countries.
For now, the number on FB is 10 and it is very high on the other worlds.
However, we intend to gradually reduce the max number on FB in the coming weeks. When all the war updates are done, the max number of countries on FB that can be protected by temporary war protection will be reduced to one country.
2. Weapon Deliveries and deactivation
Weapons entering a country from space stations or weapons that are delivered by direct contracts and sales (example: from your own enterprise) are now placed in the reserves.
3. Automatic Reactivation of weapons
If war is declared on your country, automatic reactivation will start and continue until all weapons are activated (provided the country have enough workers and medium level managers to join the army as soldiers and officers).
The reactivation can be stopped.
4. War Declarations and the start of the war
The time between a war declaration and the start of the war is now restored to two full days as it was before. Worlds now run faster (6 game months each day) and the time was shortened.
It is now set to 12 game months.
Twelve game months will allow all weapons in the country to be automatically reactivated before the war starts.
5. Increasing profitability
Many corporations will become more profitable. Upgrading corporation?s efficiency is now more profitable, reducing the number of workers even more than before.
The process is applied in all weapon producing corporations and their work force is further reduced. More such changes will follow and will further reduce the number of workers in corporations, allowing president to add more corporations.
6. C3 Wars
C3 wars may become a bit harder. This is a first step. In time, war levels will change and wining wars against C3 countries will have a different meaning in the game.
7. Changes in Weapons and Units
Cruise Missiles and Conventional missiles can be used from bases and their capabilities are now improved. More missiles will be fired in each attack with greater effect.
Some air force units are slightly larger while navies are slightly smaller.
There is a long time imbalance in the Power of these units and this change may be a first step in rebalancing them.
8. New players
New players countries are a bit more powerful both in terms of numbers of units and their quality.
We intend to make more changes that will improve the fighting and mainly defense capabilities of such countries.
Pending some testing, more changes will follow.
9. Further reduction in the Pricing of weapons
The base cost of defense weapons but also the price of nuclear weapons have been reduced.
10. Corporations buying their own shares
Corporations used to be able to offer to repurchase their own shares on the share market. The feature was disabled, probably due to an error.
We have now restored the function.
11. The Share market
This is of course not possible on the real market but in Simcountry, you can be the main shareholder of the corporation, and control the fund which also holds some share while you also have the ability to offer to purchase or to sell shares.
We have introduced some corrections that will hopefully prevent some of the situations when share pricing went out of control.
12. Notifications
We are in the process of adding new notifications to alert players to war declarations, attacks starting and more. The first additions will be part of the next upgrade.
13. The War Game
More war features and small changes will be introduced in the next upgrade. These changes will include a further improvement in the capabilities of countries owned by new players. |
| Letsie | Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 03:48 pm
Did you also adjust the game levels? Having 2 countries was not a requirement for level 5 before and it seems to be 1 now.
It seems rather creul to change it just 36 hours before the end of the month. There is to little time to change. Had you done it a few days sooner people could have changed their strategies. Had you done it 2 days later it would have been the start of a new month.
|
| Porter | Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 04:51 pm
I was under the impression that all reactivation of weapons would be set to automatic now that moving weapons from space centers deactivates them. You have to be crazy to think im going to participate offensively in the war game if I have to manually reactive my weapons month after month for days on end. Might as well go grind in some pointless MMO. |
| SuperSoldierRCP | Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 05:50 pm
Andy,
I like most the changes, but I do want to address 2 issues I think you guys might have over looked. Letsie is right, It seems you guys did in
fact change the level requirements and that seems VERY ill timed. With the new month starting tomorrow it seems very unfair to change the requirements needed.
This change hasn't effected me personally, but I do think its ill timed for those smaller players who have spent a month trying to place in the top rankings only to now be thrown aside. Maybe in the future look at coordinating level changes after the new month?
I 100% understand what your trying to accomplish with the reactivation of weapons via space/sales, but because it will take MONTHS of reactivation, the price of having a military will dramatically increase (please check my LU nations). Right now for nothing but 150 forts and 1 base and airbase I pay over 10B a month for just my defensive forces alone.
The problem players are speaking of are these monthly costs.
If you compare you country "Andy" on LU to any of my nations, I pay twice what you do because I buy 300Q and you buy 120Q, but what benefit do I get? Military is already one of the most expensive parts of the game but by adding Quality factors, reactivation, long term costs. It is starting to become a deterrent. The GM really needs to look at bring these costs down if you want to make having a long term standing army effective. |
| Andy | Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 07:05 pm
We will add automatic reactivation. You can turn it on once and it will keep going.
The worries about it in this forum were about the beginners countries not being able to reactivate on time. It was presented as a problem for the attacked country, not for the attacker.
People advised us not to do so as these attacked countries will not be able to reactivate.
I promised to solve the problem for these countries and we did.
Now it seems that these attacked countries are forgotten and the issue is the cost.
I agree on the cost.
It will cost more to have a huge army if you want to use it in war.
Also if you do not have enough soldiers and officers, the reactivation may be disrupted. In the past, you could probably attack many times before the shortage was noticed.
You might decide to reactivate only a smaller part and reduce the cost.
Our view is that war level based limitation on which countries you can start a war with, was a wrong choice and we should move away from it, at least partially. This is also the opinion on the forum.
Instead, we should reduce the difference in power between long time players and newer player making it harder to obliterate them.
This can be done by increasing their power from the start and by making it slightly harder for large war players, to amass a large army instantly and start an unbalanced war.
Having a very large army at a very high quality must carry a price or no one will ever be able to compete in the war game with any of the established powers who can destroy anyone at will.
(Aries was very clear about it recently and said that if he would not like the solution, he will destroy such countries).
Do we want a PvP war game or not.
If we do, the smaller players should be able to fight such a war and not be destroyed in two minutes.
They should be able to fight and create real damage that will make a change.
The change we want is that very strong war players will not be able to walk over others with no damage at all and dictate the way the war game is run.
As to the very bad timing of the game level requirements:
It is true. It is very unfortunate.
The change was done earlier but missed the previous upgrade and was now activated.
I agree that it can make a difference in some cases, but the moves between game level 4 and 5 is not massive, there are not many.
I will find out how many.
and also, it is a change for everybody in these groups, in the same way and it is not a huge difference.
I am very sorry about it.
We will make sure such changes never take place in the last week of the month. |
| Aries | Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 07:53 pm
Andy, I never told you what my intentions were. I only said that the system should be simple because you can't predict what players will do. A good example is War Levels where it was assumed war players would climb war levels. Well, the aggressive war players didn't. They stayed at low war levels and, in many cases, attacked new war players at low war level. This happened to me.
We still have not heard who is getting assistance. What defines who is a "new" or "smaller" player? War levels proved to be a poor determiner on who is new and who isn't. Again, I think this is a poor policy for several reasons I mentioned on the other thread. That change I suggested about federation air defense, again, well likely help more than whatever you intend to add to "new" players. |
| Letsie | Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 08:49 pm
Andy.
At LU it's going to make the difference between who will be number 1 and number 2. Those 200points matter a lot for me since zevenland (the current number 2) and I have been 'fighting' for the number 1 spot for several weeks. Those 200pts are going to give him just enough of and edgde to pas me in the last 24 hours. |
| Andy | Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 09:05 pm
Aries,
You have said this, previously on this discussion:
"In short, what are you going to do about it if I become the bad guy? Say, I make a fed on FB, and I declare only my fed shall get cash rewards. We scour the FB war page, and annihilate other players who attempt to lay claim to awards. If you leave the powerful unhappy, this is not a remote possibility. Players can find ways within any system to make their own fairness."
This is a threat and if players try to do so they should be seriously wounded and suffer major losses. Also, a federation will not be able to attack a single country like this.
We will think hard on what we need to do. We can do anything that may help. A player who becomes a full member and drops the war protection could be helped tremendously if needed.
I agree that these new players, mostly inexperienced full members, should/must join federations and we will, as I said before, give them incentives to do just that. This is a better solution.
We cannot force them.
We can however, change the grossly unbalanced situation, into a simpler unbalanced situation.
We can continue to prevent wars in a more limited way and help these players to prepare and then drop the protection. |
| Aries | Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 09:43 pm
I did say that to make a point that you can't predict what players will do. After the changes, the players will determine whether they think the changes are fair and adjust accordingly. Maybe I am offering honesty that you are not used to.
Before War Levels were implemented, did aggressive players tell you that they planned to stay at low war level and prey upon war level 3-4 players? What if this time, these boosts are interpreted as a challenge to other war players? What if rather than deterring conflict, instead these boosts bring these "new" players more wars? How likely do you see it that these boosts will have the effect you intended? |
| Putin | Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 11:23 pm
Andy,
Loving the current changes.
Thank you. |
| Madoff | Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 11:44 pm
Regarding share repurchases, I don't know whether to be happy that it's finally fixed, or to be sad that it took 5 years. Thanks for this fix and for the other improvements. |
| Khome | Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 11:59 pm
How does deactivating weapons if they so much as make a move improve anything? What is the point? And if 100% of them truly reactivate right in time before a war starts, why do this at all? It still does not solve the problem of the imbalance in favor of the attacker. A defending country can sit, and languish in constant weapons maint and ammo costs, waiting for the attacker's "moment". Meanwhile, mister attacker, like a "new guy" who drops trillions within a few months amasses a huge army, and demolishes a defending country that cannot reactivate their weapons in time because they were in the shuttle bay. Oh, can't do that...
And reading through all those changes, it occurred to me; these are just more layers and layers of overly complex stipulations, rules and conditions added to an already bloated system of rules. It's like a trip wire system where even laying out a strategy, some little stipulation holds everything up. I can't see the motivation, and giving a head start to "new" players also does not make sense. I'm sorry, did I just waste 5 years on this game, building what I have only to be told "sorry, we need more new players in to start the craziness". Looking from a "new" player's perspective, and I'll use the term "new" in reference to someone who just signed up, they are going to be extremely frustrated and confused with all of these rules and conditions. They would just go right back to their phone app game; at least it's easy to jump in to. But these rules for war levels, the weapons activation nonsense, this strange need to have more and more corps in each country (after we had said that there are too many to begin with).. this just all astounds me..
What are you trying to achieve? I' seriously asking... If you're looking to make this into a PvP game with thrills and chills of amazing combat experiences, might as well just play call of duty. Ease up on the constant "can't do that" stuff.
Like I said... what's the long term objective here..? |
| Andy | Thursday, August 31, 2017 - 12:14 am
Letsie,
I will see what can be done tomorrow. |
| Andy | Thursday, August 31, 2017 - 12:15 am
Aries,
We cannot predict but trying to prevent this serious imbalance seems like a good direction. |
| SuperSoldierRCP | Thursday, August 31, 2017 - 01:14 am
Andy,
I have an honest suggestion that might make the game a bit more balanced. I very much see where the GM is coming from in regards to the massive armies veteran players have and how they can be a big threat. My question is has the GM ever thought of limiting the amount of units attached to bases?
For example, I can make 50 interceptors wings per creation to 1 base and do this over and over. If in war the base is destroyed the air wings stay in place.
Maybe a future addition is limiting the number of wings per base (Host/Home base). If defensive air bases where allowed lets say 10 wings per base and offensive bases allow 5. This wouldn't limit the war game but in fact would reduce the overall numbers dramatically well still leaving the game dynamic, this can also be done with land bases as well. This could force players who have large armies to have huge base counts as well. This means more military forces and creates of cycle of necessity over want.
Also lets say someone is able to nuke the base or destroying it. Any wings or units attached would disband and be put into the players inventories until a new base could be built. This puts everyone on an equal footing and playing ground.
I'll write up something formal later for you to read. Just a thought. |
| JWUrton | Thursday, August 31, 2017 - 02:32 am
I have to say that I am glad to see the GM making the balance thing an issue and I can see where they are coming from. I was thinking the same thing more or less as SuperSoldier just said. Having more bases would help the GM's with their problem due to the cost I would think. A base should be heavily defended too ,as in real life, if an airbase is destroyed the air wings attached to the base are destroyed or at least can not be utilized. In war infrastructure and military bases would be the first targets among others in order to limit the enemy's response. |
| AeroCommander | Thursday, August 31, 2017 - 02:43 am
I dont understand why bananas, watermelons and other fruits not have a peeler incorporated. Just imagine, you want to eat mango and the fruit undressed itself so you can enjoy the pulp.
Hello Andy: Is it possible to search corporations in different way as actual "View share market"? Because when you look for a corporation "Show position on the share market" its different when you search in "View share market". Thank you! |
| Andy | Thursday, August 31, 2017 - 03:05 pm
Letsie,
The game level reduction takes some time to materialize.
you seem to be OK.
If this will go wrong, please mail the gamemaster. |
| Andy | Thursday, August 31, 2017 - 03:18 pm
Supersoldier, JWUrton
Good ideas.
We do have a limitation of the number of weapons per base but the limitation of the number of units is sitting on our wish list.
It could help.
Once we have that, we could look further into consequences of war destruction.
AeroCommander,
We are analyzing the the fruit message.
I am not sure I understand the corporations issue:
is the problem about searching the share market for a corporation?
Show position ... is meant for you to find a specific corporation on the list. It is close to the top of the page.
The View function, is sorted by the PE ratio.
You mean that we need a search function on the share market page?
Type the name and find it?
as easy as peeling Bananas? |
| Khome | Thursday, August 31, 2017 - 04:15 pm
Can someone direct me to the automatic weapons reactivation "button"? Unfortunately, I cannot log on every game month to manually reactivate a very small percentage of weapons at a time.
Thank you. |
| Andy | Thursday, August 31, 2017 - 04:34 pm
Khome,
Please read the text above:
"We will add automatic reactivation. You can turn it on once and it will keep going."
hopefully next week. |
| AeroCommander | Friday, September 1, 2017 - 04:53 am
Hi Andy: Yes, we need a search function on the share market page, typing the name and find the corporation, something similar to search a country.
I was thinking and not only fruits should have peeler incorporated, coffee can be harvested as a delicious cappuccino coffee...direct from the coffee plant, in contac with nature! :D |
| Yankee | Friday, September 1, 2017 - 05:52 pm
10. Corporations buying their own shares
Corporations used to be able to offer to repurchase their own shares on the share market. The feature was disabled, probably due to an error.
We have now restored the function.
Not yet, corporations still cannot repurchase shares. They still simply transfer back to the controlling entity and do not lower the number of available shares on the market or take any money from the actual corporation.
If I have a corporation with 200B in cash and 810,000,000 available shares, I should be able to lower that number of available shares to 800,000,000 or whatever as long as the corp has the cash to buy them. |
| Yankee | Saturday, September 2, 2017 - 04:44 am
Sheepman you aren't the only one pissed off at what they are doing. Blasting the forum won't do anymore good than any of the other posts that "supposedly" sparked these changes.
I doubt I'll ever really completely give up the game but I intend to do some real hard consideration on whether or not I'll ever pay for it again when my premium on my mains run out.
You never know .. they might surprise us, doubtful but possible. Most of this reeks of the initial changes that brought all of this about. Create features, change the rules once everyone heavily invests in them.
The original sell point on having a space program was the ability to move armies between worlds. It's still in the documentation until they get around to removing it.
Just let them do what they want, they will anyway. Either it works or it won't.
Hey I've given away and deleted accounts before so it might be worthwhile to wait and see all the advantages "new players" are going to get. I like building more than maintaining anyway so starting over isn't a big deal for me. Actually with the current features a free account would suit me just fine  |
| Andy | Saturday, September 2, 2017 - 11:38 am
I will check the share trading again.
I am sorry if the problem is not fixed yet.
We will look into it coming Monday. |
| Andy | Saturday, September 2, 2017 - 11:50 am
Copied from another discussion:
We have published a list of features we intend to add/remove and change in the war game to increase the probability of PvP wars.
We intend to continue along this way.
C3 wars
We were criticized many times, and recently in these discussions, for making C3 wars that do not require any warring capabilities. These wars were used as a way to make money.
One possibility is to just fix it.
If you get to level 4, you might be ready for PvP wars.
Make money with a great economy. We are making it easier to make money.
It looks like some of the great empire, rich players, with large armies, do not want a change that might make the war game into a challenge or reduce their power to destroy.
No change will please everyone.
We will however make the game more fair and easier for beginners.
We assume that there will be those who will look to find ways to keep things as they were before. Some players where clear about it.
This is excellent, as it will challenge us and guide us through this process of improving the war game. |
| Aries | Saturday, September 2, 2017 - 07:43 pm
Andy, Wars start 12 game months after a declaration of war is made. How long does it take to reactivate deactivated weapons once automatic reactivation is turned on? If a player gets the war declaration notification (and lets hope this works) and logs in, say, 3 game months after the war declaration, do they have time to reactivate their weapons before the war starts?
Again, one thing to keep in mind. On another thread, there is a discussion how there is an intentional division of countries within a player empire. A reasonable player empire might have 8-10 countries. A paying premium member might have such an empire on multiple worlds. A smart attacker will declare war on an entire empire when they intend to actually launch attacks on one country. Is it reasonable that the attacked player will have all weapons necessary to mount an effective defense in each country? Is it not reasonable that the defender may have to shift weapons when they learn the actual intended attack target?
With this is mind, I ask again. How long does it take to reactivate weapons once automatic reactivation is turned on?
-----------------------------------------
On another issue. Again, I understand we are trying to draw this line for what defines a "new" war player. I think it is important for this to be discussed before this is determined. One factor I have not heard considered is that if there is concern that if nothing is required to "earn" the assistance that is being considered, is it possible a player using multiple accounts can cause some real damage to players who put some time and effort into their empires. It seems any time there is entitled stuff offered to an account, there is that risk. In the case of free military capability, this offers a unique challenge in that this can do real damage to other players before it is detected.
-----------------------------------------
"It looks like some of the great empire, rich players, with large armies, do not want a change that might make the war game into a challenge or reduce their power to destroy"
Nothing that has been suggested by any player or by you is going to offer up a challenge to a skilled war player. However, if the rules are complicated it makes it no easier to help new players into the war game.
The most likely thing that will create a competitive environment is creating reason to be out of game war protections. I still think the initial incentive direction went the wrong way. Don't reward battles, reward players who create, build, and maintain outside of artificial game protections. Destroying is easy. Look around the game and try to count how many players have meaningful assets outside of fake protections. It isn't many. Being able to pick and choose when you want to fight a battle just before you hide in protection again is easy. Keeping your things outside of fake protections is a higher challenge. |
| Andy | Saturday, September 2, 2017 - 10:27 pm
Reactivation starts automatically when war is declared on a country.
It takes 10 game months.
I need to go.
will continue tomorrow. |
| Yankee | Monday, September 4, 2017 - 01:13 am
Does anyone else wonder what placing direct sales of weapons to a country into inactive reserves is going to do to promote the war game?
I can't even rebuild my EXISTING air defense unit with the 30 extra DH and 60 INTS they now require without waiting for those units to become active.
Country purchasing power was always a limiting factor on direct sales.
Now it seems you've got two choices:
Maintain a crippling load on your economy or get rolled up by whoever is willing to place a crippling load on their economy (probably because they NEED your assets to keep from going bankrupt).
I'm sorry but from what I can see this will have exactly the opposite effect.
Good lord, I already HAD enough DH's and INTS active in country to reactivate 30 DH and 60 INTS immediately before this so called improvement.
It's going to be interesting to see if I have to wait 10 months to reactivate 90 pieces of equipment  |
| Khome | Monday, September 4, 2017 - 08:55 am
I have always wondered this; why aren't we allowed to reactivate all of our weapons at once whenever we decide? |
| Josias | Monday, September 4, 2017 - 02:43 pm
isn't reactivation 10%? this leaves allot of play with space transport. you can truck in a bunch of weapons, reactivate the equivalent of what woulda been 50%, create units, re-load your space center, and hop, skip and jump over a few countries, over 2 days.
the automatic space transport thing, will assign up to 20 shuttles per request. and you can set the same request several times. so if you have 1350 ints in your CEO Space center, you can make 5 auto-requests for 1350 ints to be transported, and each will have up to 20 shuttles assigned to it. and each will keep going until it transports 1350 ints, or the SC is empty. its my trick for multiplying the transport speed.
with a little imagination you can make things work, and as always, the hyper-active players have an advantage. |
| Josias | Monday, September 4, 2017 - 02:50 pm
one good question for a player to know the answer to, roughly what time during the Game Month, are weapons reactivated. you can do this, just by paying attention, I don't invest myself into the game that much any more to know when cities/bases repair, the effect of stocked up construction, timing of re-activation, and such.
knowing this, would make anticipating space transport more efficient. you truck in your weapons, empty your SC, having a rough idea of when they will actualy be activated, you'll be online at the right time to re-load your SC and move them to the next country, if thats what you want to do, |
| Yankee | Monday, September 4, 2017 - 04:35 pm
Well I disbanded my units and was able to reactivate all 90 units the next game month.
Not much use if those units are hard hit so I would assume you can still reactivate 10% of your active weapons not in units which is not much help IMHO.
I gotta test some more. |
| Aries | Monday, September 4, 2017 - 06:23 pm
This discussion here hits on my concern. I am not that worried in my own defense. Like Yankee and Josias, I am sure I can figure it out. But if the solution is tricky/complicated, it will be a burden to the new players we want to get into the war game that the GM was trying to help in the first place.
The GM always assumes a player post is intended to be self-serving. Mine are not. Nothing even considered is going to challenge my power in the slightest. I will still be okay. More than okay. I look at these changes as a challenge to help new players. I see future chats where I am trying to make explaining how to defend their empire easier. Adding a few units to their defense, or whatever, is beans compared to what they will need if they have more than a few countries to defend.
We know how it used to be before mobile units and before space reinforcements were figured out. From Wildeye's guide, "Defense does not win wars. All defense is is a speedbump.". Exactly. All that was counted on was that defenses could slow down an attack. Make an attack on you take longer, and hoping that it gave you enough time for your own attacks to succeed. But, if the game is moving in the direction passed artificial protections, players cannot always be online. Attackers set a schedule that is convenient for them. A defender might have to contend with multiple attacking countries. A defense capable of stopping an attack must be possible, and all the necessary weapons can't be kept at every country in a player empire when the attacker can focus all their weapons where they wish.
Veteran players will figure this out. Will new players stand a chance? This is where my questions are going. |
| Yankee | Monday, September 4, 2017 - 07:05 pm
Simple fact is if it's confusing to someone that's been playing for sometime, what chance does an actual "new player" have?. |
| Josias | Monday, September 4, 2017 - 10:11 pm
ironically, this "confusion," has always been to the advantage of long term players. but every attempt to equal the scales, results in more vets leaving than new players staying.
seriously, if the over all problem is game enthusiasm/competition, y'all should really try thinking outside the box. the last ten years of rule changes that I've witnessed, all had the intent to make the game more competitive, and always had the opposite effect.
as far as weapons from space being unloaded as inactive, thats probably a good thing. when a player has enough weapons to vomit a war mammoth any where, inside of 2 days, it kinda makes an experience mismatch. if you want to do that, you should have to work harder, and figure out how, and it should require allot of shuttles.
further, i also know that one of wendy's favorite tactics, was to dec a player, watch their weapons re-active, then deactivate do to manpower issues. then nuke the crap out the newb, for their failure to notice their nuke defense de-activated. being able to just shuttle in tons of weapons already had more hidden challenges than have been mentioned here. while your shuttles where transporting in weapons, you'd also need to buy a couple mill pop, jack up your MLM priority, demote professinals to LLWs, take over a couple of C3s, and do worker trades for LLW and MLM to fill your army.
the process was already complicated. this new challenge does favor newbs that don't have all the knowledge.
but personally, i'm over all neutral, i don't think this will make the war game more attractive. it will balance things for players that don't really want to put in the effort to figure out the finer details of a very sophisticated game. in the end, it is a lose/lose move. |
| Khome | Monday, September 4, 2017 - 10:42 pm
About the reactivating after a space transport; even after shuttling weapons to a country's space center, they won't reactivate until after logging on and transferring whatever made it to the space center to the country's stock for the auto reactivation to begin. The immediate deactivation of weapons after a direct sale, shuttle transport or country to country transfer can only be translated as punitive.
This is no way to respond to an attack in time, especially after Aries' point about multiple declarations. Iv'e be declared on by an attacker a long time ago, who selected about 5 countries for me to guess. Needless to say, after the wait period was over, I found myself having to log on constantly throughout the day, at work, even setting alarms at night to check since I wasn't even sure what time zone the attacker was from. Fortunately I was able to take them out once their forces were revealed to be far less than mine; (at the time I didn't think to check account profiles to see what amount of military assets one would have on each world/county). Before the end of the war, they casually said that they just wanted to just stop playing and decided to attack to go out with a bang for the hell of it. The attacker had no vested interest in this, yet it was ok to cause alarm for another. Basically, it was meaningless. And what if the "new" player was, hypothetically, a returning player who knows how to play the game by restarting a new account. What would stop this "new player" from decided to dump trillions into brand new weapons and ammo and then declare on another player who is languishing in unmanageable defense costs for "what if" while the attacker never had to worry about these long term expenses?
Again, the changes just invite carelessness and benefits the casual player who thinks they just got into clash of clans. If anyone ever read the reviews on the Google play store for the SC App game, you can clearly see that the vast majority of these almost "new players" didn't even get the basic concept. They complained about not being able to declare war immediately. My favorite complaint for the game was "hey, I have nukes; why can't I nuke anyone? this is stupid..." etc. etc... or "this game is just a bunch of numbers, too confusing, can't even start a war"...
Clearly they didn't get the concept that this game is not just a glorified game of "Risk, the board game" or some high paced app game where you can dive in and start attacking after listening to an instructional avatar congratulating you for building your first barracks; now go build an army.
Making endless amounts of "trip wires" for current players who had invested years (real years) into SC is disheartening. Unintended consequences. The changes of deactivating weapons after just moving them, the confusing rules behind war levels/protections and their implications on federations will not protect the new players. There aren't any predatory giants, not anymore. Perhaps that is because they were defeated by the good giants who came to the aid of those being preyed upon; the defenders engaged in collaborative defending. In that process, the defended learned from the experienced, while the aggressor was vanquished even with their overwhelming military hardware. This is true fed activity, or just plain old game communication and diplomacy. The attacked player did not survive due to game "protections" or other nanny laws, they survived and later thrived out of collaboration.
Ease up on the rules and the artificial conditions; let us play the game. Trust us; we got this. There are "good guys" here willing to help and guide others. They would actually learn something then; not become dependent on the welfare of the GM.
Maybe others see it this way, or at least in part. But this is just how I see it.
Thanks |
| Andy | Monday, September 4, 2017 - 11:46 pm
I answered the question about reactivation. it takes 10 game months and after the next upgrade, you will be able to turn automatic reactivation on and 10 game months later, the entire army will be reactivated.
If you add weapons during the process, 10% of the total weapons you have of each type, (active and not active), will be reactivated.
I think that the problem of all assets always hiding behind war protection, will change when the number of countries that can have war protection is reduced.
Khome,
If you want to have everything active, do not deactivate. If you want to cut the cost, use it. It is either one or the other.
if you turn auto reactivation on, everything will be there before the war starts.
again, If anyone has a better idea on how to protect small players against a sudden surge in the army of their neighbors, please explain.
From what I read here, it seems that countries will probably keep more weapons activated. Everyone is used to deactivate or to moving out all weapons to cut cost.
Is this a good feature?
If you have a huge army, why not pay and maintain it.
It might convince some who have huge armies to reduce, or not use part of it and I think that this will be a good change.
We are looking at fed wars.
We do not think that a group of countries should be able to attack a single country player. Fed wars are great but 10 to 1 is not.
A new player, with multiple countries?
multiple premium accounts? I do not think that this will happen.
We do not intend to pour huge assets into every new account and then wait to see what happens to the country and what they do with these assets.
Maybe delay any support until they are attacked? Premium only?
We are not out of the bush yet.
Next upgrade will also allow deactivated weapons to be delivered to corporations (no extra clicking, just deliver what is there and start with the deactivated weapons).
We will also block the possibility to contracts bases and fortifications to yourself and keep the numbers of bases and forts under the max. number allowed.
Those who have too many, will see some disappear from time to time and will be compensated. Then, the numbers everywhere will go under the max and stay there.
we are looking into other groups of large numbers of items on the maps and will reduce.
Cities continue to grow and their numbers decline more.
Numbers in general are declining.
Government cost is declining and health will follow after the next upgrade. |
| Sheepman RGB | Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - 02:37 am
its just sad since its wanted to make something but there current formula for activation(not sure the real equation/algorithm as this is just for example purpose) atleast iterative speaking:
T= Total weapon count
r= 10% of total weapon count
i = deactivation count
a = active count
start
if i not = 0 then
T*.1 = r
if i (lesser then or equal to) r then
i+a = f (Final activation - equal to T)
i-i = g(0 remaining deactive)
end
else:
r - i = i(iterative count)
r + a = a(iterative count)
If i not 0 - If End
Restart
To see; if we take/give a percent to T it will effect the ration r and its ability to raactivate simply enough, for players who can give more to T (richer more experienced) can simply fill to for its efforts and remove it/desize when needed, little more hassle for the big boi. Little guy? cant give to T, then they will spend lets say 1% reactivating total of there forced(with each month being 0.1%) compared to the big bois 100%; inwhich there force is a massive whopping 10%; shocking since its still the show of 100 times more force, that even if little man can do something big man can still power up and crush the shit out of little man.
I tried to tell you in a comment you bois called "unconstructive crap" and you dident like my language, well love my criticism them! it takes time out of my life to care about this shit(yeah because of stuff like this!!!) game that it doesent matter if you manage to fix and polish the floors you take away the damn ease/reason of players for the sake of experiment, you will have a problem. I mean, andy if you are talking about someone who needs 100% force active(aka all assets weapon total), the gimmick of reactivating works. But to someone massive, nope. and you think that its big players the problem, yet you say countrys that have been around for 2 years should have more force and there it is, not to mention in all the wrong ways as its still the most expereinced player; doesent matter its a mountain or a new stone its like gangous khan said; a great wall only good as he who defends it. Same with the game and reality. There is ways to limit the flux, just give us time and yourselves, still feel the rush for things that arent really going anyway. Just keep the game clean and buffed, i got ideas but really i dont know behind the scenes so theres not all i can say. I just have to speculate and do the best to figure this things out, as i regret being rude to you guys as it cost a very important point to say dont you dare put that in the game i dident think you would but i dont think it was even acknowledged to the extend it should have been. Its part of what drove me to be so rude to you guys. Its a good way to constipate us really, but as to start up war, lean advantage toward not experience but rather country age/population and index.
At best i would say with the weapon limits/activation limits ofcourse its likely a load of too much but i would say needs to detemine these things not a raito of the total number that effects the total output as if some is given its all good, you take some thats deep waters!!
Im sorry for the bottem pats and such, i love you lady but really i just have to say i do appricate you being here andy thats helped the game i personally believe 1000% over all else. Being here caring is atleast for the most a good thing, lets us all know your there and atleast possibly acknowledging somethings. I do regret being rude i should have said more about this, its really just a thorn, hard to even notice anything else like said with this sore.
A suggestion if needed and not to much excess in reguiding the massive heap of build up that is this game i assume but reactivation/weapons goes more with military base power and miltiary bases are variously based on country situations, like employment needed for bases other then just soliders, possible index minimal, even population minimal. Even in excess when a country gets a new president, change its presidency date to the current takeover date and make it have purpose to buff/advantage such as more bases/population. A bit much but atleast vector is set to say no just a constant for reactivation but something more generated also make it happen automatically regardless of war or not, that is a lame feature. sure before war starts its nice but really thats not helpful to someone in a c3 war(especially higher level one).
Point being, population/age/index/ could be a better factor ability for activation, particaular with bases as more means more activation but also better of such requirements. |
| Yankee | Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - 02:59 am
Andy if you remove the possibility of contracting forts to yourself you better make sure they are a profitable corp. Right now they are a money pit.
I have no reason to have them in a ceo if I can't use them and it's very obvious C3 corps are nowhere near capable of dealing with the demand.
I wouldn't care if you limited the number to 25 forts if you made them worth having in the first place.
All you need to do is make them block a region requiring land forces to deal with them and their garrison before they can paint that part of the map. |
| Khome | Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - 07:01 am
"Khome,
If you want to have everything active, do not deactivate. If you want to cut the cost, use it. It is either one or the other.
if you turn auto reactivation on, everything will be there before the war starts."
This does not address the issues I clearly stated above. I'M not the one deactivating; the new game "features" are automatically deactivating my weapons whenever I transport them from shuttle bay to country stock. I assure you, what you have said is very very clear; however, the deactivating is not MY doing. Te deactivation is, as stated, a result of the game process. That is the problem.
To be clear;
-I know that there will be an auto reactivation system
-I'm not choosing to deactivate; it's an automatic response after transferring weapons
-If auto reactivation promises to have all weapons ready before war, why not just let us activate when we want? (this question was not answered).
-Auto reactivation would not work for weapons in shuttle bays, so why should they be deactivated prior to moving into the country stock?
-Hypothetically, if I have weapons that are deactivated, why would they suddenly become active if I sell them to another player? That doesn't seem realistic, nor does not make any sense.
"A new player, with multiple countries?
multiple premium accounts? I do not think that this will happen.
We do not intend to pour huge assets into every new account and then wait to see what happens to the country and what they do with these assets.
Maybe delay any support until they are attacked? Premium only?"
If this is in response to my hypothetical scenarios, may I suggest rereading what I have posted.
-I didn't say anything about multiple premium accounts
-I didn't suggest that the "new" player would have the multiple countries (if this is what confused you); the suggestion is that the "new" player would be ATTACKING multiple countries. Big difference.
-In relation to what I just said, this hypothetical "new" player could be just a returning player who knows how to set up a quick army and knows how to wreck havoc
"Next upgrade will also allow deactivated weapons to be delivered to corporations (no extra clicking, just deliver what is there and start with the deactivated weapons)."
Please elaborate. |
| Andy | Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - 04:47 pm
Sheepman,
Thank you. I appreciate your response and your care for the game.
I am very good in forgetting past issues. just looking to keep going and improve if possible.
There are many issues in the text you refer to and it is not really clear.
If you want to make a point, please explain precisely what you meant.
and not too many points in one message please.
On the reactivation:
It is far from a solution, I agree but I do not have a better one.
Making it depend on more parameters will make it hard to explain. the game is too complicated as is.
for the warring parties, it causes a delay but they can have it as they wait for the war to start.
Very big armies will indeed have a huge surge after each reactivation round.
we will always have unbalanced wars but the question is: will they win with little damage or will there be destruction on both sides, even more damage to the attacker because offensive is more expensive.
we remain open for improvements and ideas.
We prefer to remove features rather than add more. make things simpler and work better.
Yankee,
I answered on the other discussion.
Khome,
The deactivation is slowing down the build up process. We think that Information on weapons transport from space should be available and hope that countries will have more info about a possible war.
Sudden transports, after the war started, and immediate availability of activated weapons make it possible to fight and win a war even before the shortage of officers and soldiers is noticed and causes part of the army to deactivate.
This will hopefully not happen any more.
Answering your question about delivering weapons to corporations:
Countries could until now, sell only activated weapons to corporation.
Starting in a couple of days, they will be able to also sell the deactivated weapons.
This deactivation feature does not do everything we would like it to do but we think that the main problems with it are being resolved and its effect on your ability to setup your army is also very limited.
Multiple countries
This is not intended as a direct response to what you wrote.
There are issues here about all kinds of situations that might occur and the definition of a "new player" or one we would like to support.
What I am saying is that it is not clear, undecided and we will have to find solutions to many open issues.
One of the big problems was, many countries attacking one.
If we resolve this, the entire problem of "sudden elimination" might shrink. |
