| Andy | Sunday, January 2, 2022 - 05:50 pm 
The following is a result of recent discussions on the forum about possible changes to the game.
We intend to implement these changes.
1. We will replace the Simcountry chat by a link to the Simcountry server on Discord. The forum remains unchanged. Players will be able to join the forum immediately after registration without any delay.
2. Limit the storage of weapons on enterprises. We will explain/announce before actions are taken.
3. No change in the number of corporations moving out of the countrty. Will add more messages and warnings before it happens.
4. There are many players with a lot of money, they need new ways to use the money.
We intend to add new features.
5. Game maps will be improved. Mainly the graphics of the larger maps can be enhanced. Other improvements too.
6. We are looking at a feature that will make it possible to relocate your country to a different place in the same world. The function frequency of use will not be limited. The country should not be involved in war and relocation will carry a price in Gold coins.
7. Upgrade the initial screens when players and visitors are entering Simcountry. Visitors should see the 5 worlds and some of their parameters and be able to zoom into these worlds and end up with a choice of a country.
8. We will increase the spending space for countries with larger population.
9. We are currently streamlining many pages and are improving navigation.
10. Selling countries should be improved. The conditions are too tight and by the time the sale should finalize, some conditions are frequently out of the required range.
11. The number of Federation members will be revised. We will look into the number of players instead of only the number of countries.
12. Several data fields are missing on the Enterprise financial page. These must be added. |
| Lord Mndz | Sunday, January 2, 2022 - 06:13 pm
This sounds fantastic, both the fact that you guys started sharing your development backlog and also the above changes prioritized - this is highly appreciated.
just few comments/advices from me:
1. This is just great
2. Let's discuss the concept before you commit to develop it - in general please review what is "Active" and what is "Inactive" weapon and cost related to this as consequence of this change will mean reviewing how weapons should be stored in countries instead.
3. no comments
4. Yes, please add more ways - maybe buying professionals using cash could be an idea.
5. Cool, looking forward to seeing this.
6. I am glad you like this as well
7. Sounds great
8. Super, you may also need to reduce military spending for new players
9. We see and like that, please continue 
10. cool
11. Finally! super happy reading this
12. yes, please add this missing information to bring transparency about CEO financials. |
| Andy | Monday, January 3, 2022 - 04:31 pm
New Issue added:
13. Increase the corporate construction queue from 10 to 18 corporations. |
| Johanas Bilderberg | Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - 01:28 pm
I like the list so far except for weapon storage in enterprises.
I would like more discussion on that item. |
| Andy | Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - 02:54 pm
We have a problem with storage of weapons in enterprises.
The weapons are moved away from the countries to cut cost and are not maintained.
The problem can be resolved by a general decline in quality for all products depending on their type.
20 year old vegetables and agricultural products?
weapons and ammo sitting there for 100 years.
we need a deterioration function that will reduce quality, slowly, depending on product types.
We will not try to be realistic. In reality, everything is gone quickly and max 20 years. Most products deteriorate much quicker, and we will take longer.
we also have a problem with huge enterprises.
we will not force them to reduce their sizes but we need to set a limit. |
| Lord Mndz | Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - 05:37 pm
Andy,
you don't need to be too realistic, just make what makes sense gamewise.
in old days there were no inactive weapons cost and no weapons in ceos, countries had weapons reserves and used that when needed. that was simple and good.
if goal is to limit size of armies, then the best limitation is number of solders and officers. if players lack them they will buy population. limiting how many weapons players could store adding depreciation cost will prevent people from defending as they wont know what weapons to buy. |
| JOEL | Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - 06:01 pm
I really dont see the issue with weapons storage. The only people I see complaining about weapons storage are the people who dont really know how to use the feature. I dont see the the big problem surrounding it. Who is it hurting? I think there are bigger issues to the game then weapons storage. |
| Andy | Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - 06:53 pm
There are bigger issues than weapons storage. we will not implement it next week.
but large scale weapon storage by very rich enterprises, not paying for maintenance is significantly increasing the advantages for these players.
Nice that there are rich players, no problem, but they do not need the additional advantage of not paying for maintenance.
The problem could be resolved if everyone would move the weapons from the enterprises into the countries. Is this a better solution?
I fail to see why this function will be a problem. |
| Andy | Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - 07:06 pm
Mndz
I know we do not have to be very realistic. we are not and we cannot.
Inactive weapons were always maintained or for a very long time. the cost is and was a fraction of the maintenance cost for active weapons.
The aim was not to limit the size of the army.
The aim is to make sure that a large army costs more than a small one.
The limitation of the size of the army is implicit.
It it costs more, everyone will have to limit the size.
Limiting the number of soldiers, is very complex and errors will pop up when you purchase weapons, hard to explain, what about the professional soldiers and officers.
Some players use the storage as a strategic reserve. They can replace destroyed weapons while not having to recruit very large numbers into the army.
This is the good part of this feature.
the bad one, as I said before, is that it creates a financial advantage that should not be there.
In a situation with a loss of quality, there will be a real tradeoff.
strategic advantage with some cost vs. no storage in enterprises. |
| neutralsc | Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - 09:13 pm
Loss of quality will actually make this game feature ineffective, or a hassle for players to work around the intended update. If the intention is to reduce weapons stored, I can understand this update, because the weapons will become worthless, and even worse, a burden due the averaging mechanics when weapons are added to it.
But having read that your intention is to increase costs, then please just do that. Military assets are accounted separate on the financials page of enterprises, so just increase the already present enterprise tax for military assets or add additional maintenance tax/cost to it. Or reduce costs of inactive weapons stored in countries.
Please also note that enterprise size does not say something about empire sizes. |
| Ethelred | Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - 10:30 pm
2. I'd like to see storage of weapons in enterprises stopped completely. Enterprises were never meant to be a part of the war game and not all players have an enterprise. Having an enterprise should not give a player a strategic military advantage only an economic one. |
| Gaius Batavius Mattimus | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 12:12 am
Hurts the ability to wage war further. Makes war more expensive and time consuming than it already is. Ordering on a consistent basis is difficult enough. Huge CEOs are already a massive drain and limiting their size will also seriously alter some people’s entire eco strategy.
Very against those changes. Really hope they don’t come to fruition. |
| JOEL | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 12:42 am
Unfair advantage? How is it unfair when your spending 30 GC a month to have this Ceo we are paying to maintain that Ceo. We are paying Maintenance costs some of us with real money. Id say its highly likely that of that feature was removed there be a lot less players paying for CEOs |
| Ethelred | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 01:09 am
No one said it was unfair, Joel. My opinion is that the CEO game is primarily intended for the economic part of the game and players have found a way to use this as a strategic military asset. I personally would like to see this loophole closed to prevent you from stockpiling lots of weapons at no cost. ;) |
| JOEL | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 01:15 am
Andy forcing people to store weapons in their countries would bankrupt empires. Weapons that are deactivated still cost tons of money. Moving 30000 MRMB in one country even deactivated would cost like 50B - 100B. So imagine players with 500K MRMB what would be done with these because storing them in the country is bankruptcy. Punishing players who have prepared for the possibility of war is unfathomable. Whos actually complaining about this besides players who arent prepared for the possibility of war? However if this is really an issue then you can explore the possibility of significantly lowering maintenance cost for deactivated weapons. |
| Gaius Batavius Mattimus | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 03:46 am
It is not some magic loophole. It allows you to have large quantities of weapons and therefore large wars. You discourage this, you are discouraging an already dead war game. Wars are so far and few in between most players are just going to shrug and not bother with the increased cost as only a handful even participate now.
It makes it harder to buy weapons as the market already is dried up.
It makes it harder to get ready for war.
It makes it harder on established empires that already spent hundreds of trillions.
It makes war less likely to happen, especially between peers.
Take a long break? Sorry, your military has to be built from the ground up because 200 quality is useless. Oh and since you cannot pick and choose what quality of equipment to sell, you have to sell it all now if you want a military that can trade well.
If you think the stockpiles get too big, why not slap on a tax, or have it cost more to store in CEO? Why not have the price grow as your stockpile does? Or even a hard limit? I am more than a little biased as my Empire is very large and requires very large stockpiles of weapons AND my economy is profitable because I IPO all of my corporations into my very large and ever expanding CEO.
These changes would for me and others be a very fundamental change and probably require us to completely change gameplay styles. For those of us with 50+ countries across several worlds it would not be a very fun update.
Functionally, this just drives up the cost of war to no real benefit and hurts well established empires. |
| Gaius Batavius Mattimus | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 04:05 am
To run an experiment, I have:
120,000 Interceptors
115,000 Helicopters
10,000 Jeeps
30,000 MMRB
22,000 OAA
In inactive weapons in a country on FB.
The active running cost of these were -347b a month. Let us see what the inactive cost is. |
| Lord Mndz | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 10:27 am
Andy,
I see your point and agree to some degree on a principle that larger power needs to cost more.
this is how I would like to see this implemented:
-reduce maintenance of inactive weapons from 25% to 10%
-increase weapon reactivation/deactivation % from 10% to 30%
-forbid weapons in Ceo
weapon reactivation is too slow in order to replace destroyed weapons. With small armies it is a must to use as much of reserve as possible. |
| neutralsc | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 10:57 am
I endorse Mndz recommendations.
But I want to add.
- Combine this measure with the intended implementation of better usecases for gamecash.
- Please provide sufficient liquidity for weapons when the selloff starts.
I believe the degredation measure is horrible and will lead to all kinds of loopholes like selling/storing at low qualities (Q120) and sell to open market, creating surplus, buy back at Q330 at the desired country, right before you plan to war.. This will again favor larger players at the cost of smaller players. |
| Clonan | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 11:25 am
I Agree with Joel... Forcing people to Store weapons in their empire especially for small and developing countries would certainly bankrupt these countries... There are more important issues than seeing storage of weapons in enterprises stopped... |
| Andy | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 11:37 am
Great and thank you for your contributions.
You convinced me that the quality reductions could be devastating.
We will not implement them.
But
You also convinced me that we need to do something about it.
The quantities quoted here are huge.
30000 MMRBs? 500000 MMRBs?
I think quantities should decline
cost of storage in enterprises should be introduced.
It will be slow, accompanied by a change for larger military units, maybe some reduction in maintenance cost (it was already reduced a lot in the past months).
We will discuss here the activation/deactivation pace and the cost for maintenance of deactivated weapons.
Don't hold your breath, we will take small steps, and add them to the development plan ahead of time.
About enterprises
The cost is 30 gold coins per month.
some of these enterprises are making thousands of billions in profit in each game month. the money makes it possible to support their countries if needed and pay for any wars.
I think it is a very good deal.
we made it possible to own more enterprises but they should not dominate everything.
Currently, someone could have 10 enterprises with 20.000 corporations. 5% of the entire game, not including their countries.
doing so with countries is impossible.
you will be clicking 24x7 and bankrupt because of the increasing cost in large empires.
There is no theoretical limit but a practical one.
same should apply to enterprises and their storage.
There are complaints about clicking and requests for automation.
this could make the war much faster and you will be able to destroy a country with 5 clicks. Is that what we want?
or
manage an empire much faster, resulting in 300 countries in an empire.
we have made it possible to have and keep a very large population.
a smaller number of countries with a very large population will be better than huge empires. |
| Jiggle Billy | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 01:09 pm
"The cost is 30 gold coins per month.
some of these enterprises are making thousands of billions in profit in each game month. the money makes it possible to support their countries if needed and pay for any wars."
In profit and loss terms they can make that much, but in cash flow they are typically losers currently. The enterprise tax, which does not show up on the P&L statement, only on the cash flow statement eats all and often more than the profits received.
I do not know of any player who can take cash out of enterprises on anything of a regular basis, almost all have to keep adding cash. This is not saying there are not other benefits to them to support countries, the weapons currently, the benefits of having CEO corps in a country vs country owned for the country, etc...
Currently in Hodg Industries 2 which has 792 corps:
Enterprise tax -135.36B
Cash transfer -5B
Profit Payment 80.44B
Income from Dividend 56.30B
Result -3.62B cash flow
The P&L Statement shows 511.24B profit for corps,yet cash flows negative 3.62B
Currently in Union Inc owned by Joel
Enterprise Tax -52.24B
Cash Transfer -110B
Profit Payment 34.28B
Income from Dividend 0.31B
result -127.65B
The P&L Statement shows 163.09B in profit for corps, yet cash flow is negative 127.65B
Currently in Golden Goose owned by King Aaren I, just made top CEO last month
Enterprise Tax -229.93B
Cash Transfer -50B
Profit Payment 295.35B
Income from Dividend 3.13B
result 18.55B
Yet the P &L shows 687B in profit for the corps, this is with 856 corps.
Currently in trader owned by you Andy
Enterprise tax -9.41B
Cash Transfer 0
Profit Payment 9.57B
Income from Dividend .25B
result .41B
Your P & L shows 19.15B profit
Currently in WGandy owned by you
Enterprise Tax -5.14B
Cash Transfer 0B
Profit Payment 4.87B
Income from Dividend 0
Result -0.27B
Your P & L Shows 3.58B in profit
Also if you look at your trend lines on WGandy its constantly down for cash.
These are just 5 examples, if you add up cash flows for most enterprises they are typically negative. Also look at cash available charts they almost all trend down with sudden upticks when cash is added. The way enterprises display profits is pretty much useless for determining the actual enterprise performance. |
| Johanas Bilderberg | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 01:49 pm
Weapons upkeep is a logical requirement Andy.
I am more than willing to pay simpeople to start my military equipment a few times a year and keep the fluids changed. |
| neutralsc | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 01:51 pm
Andy, you say 30k mrmbs is a high number, but have you ever calculated how much oaabs or mrmbs you need to take actually advance to war level 25 per level? Some weeks ago I started with 24k oaabs Q315ish on WL12 and my 24k oaabs got slaughtered by C3. I will retry soon, but with 40k. If you say this 40k number should go down, why you have 800 helicopter defense wings at Q690 in a WL25 C3 war if I may ask?
Enterprises:
The only very profitable enterprise I see is KarlVs Wolf Industries at FB. He is banking 5.7T gross, which is probably 4T net (70% due 30% C3 country tax), minus 1.7T enterprise tax, is 2.3T (=40% of 5.7T gross). But how did he manage this?
1. He builds 95% mining corporations, currently 2399 corporations, which are naturally limited at 100 per enterprise, but if you create a second enterprise, which he has, its called "Imperial Estates" at FB", builds them there, and after 8 days, his Wolf Industries buys them from Imperial Estates, you can circumvent this limitation. Buying corporations is limited by 6 per hour. Lots of clickings/micromanaging.
2. He gets an enterprise tax deduction, because the "Total Market Value of all Corporations" value is maxed out @ 3000T, which enterprise tax is based on.
3. He has virtually no other assets in his enterprise. |
| Gaius Batavius Mattimus | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 02:00 pm
@Andy
On the quantity of weapons,
Part of the reason it is concerning is because that is what is required to take down other countries. The quantities are indeed large, but even for a country outside of Federation air defense the offensive cost is very high. In his post about our war with David, EO highlighted how much it really took to take down a country, even outside of Federation air defense. In the end EO succeeded, but only due to an ungodly amount of MMRBs and OAA's. If David had two countries with similar defenses up responding with Federation air defense, it might have been impossible. The quantities of weapons currently provided are arguably not enough and we're talking about reducing them by driving up their maintenance cost.
I understand that Federation air defense is being looked at currently, but I just caution making it even harder on attacking forces. It is very difficult now. I know of two sure-fire ways to defeat Federation air defense and they both require massive amounts of weapons.
A very popular method of taking down defenses is using the MMRB/OAA combo. Using LDI as an extreme example, exactly how many MMRBs and OAAs do you think it would take to break their Federation air defense? We're talking about millions of interceptors and helicopters. If the numbers above surprise you, test it out yourself. Make three test countries, put 50k ints/helis in with like 10mil ammo each and see what it takes to break Federation air defense, or take the country. Or really, any other weapon.
Basically,
I don't think the amount of equipment is the issue. The casualty rate offensive forces take when Federation air defense responds is not-sustainable. In the games current state the only way to try to overcome this is overwhelming numbers of offensive weapons, which some argue is still impossible. But because you can hoard weapons, for some large groups it still is.
I think the "numbers problem" is inexorably tied to the War Engine and a decrease in offensive weaponry will only serve to make this problem worse. |
| Ethelred | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 05:55 pm
Matty, you seem to be assuming that defensive weapons won't require maintenance and only the cost of offensive weapons will increase. |
| neutralsc | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 07:02 pm
Andy, you said;
"There are complaints about clicking and requests for automation. This could make the war much faster and you will be able to destroy a country with 5 clicks. Is that what we want?"
You are probably right about this. However, this game, also pvp warring, already requires way too many clickings by todays modern standards. Considering high amounts of clickings desirable in some regards in order to suppress larger players eating up smaller players too fast, is imo not the way forward.
I wonder.. has it been ever considered to make the (pvp) war game turn based, with turns of like every 12 or 24 hours, in combination with attacking in batches? |
| Gaius Batavius Mattimus | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 09:25 pm
If the cost ratio remains the same, it does not matter.
Defensive weapons are always cheaper and cost less to maintain. Quantity is not the issue trades are. If it remains the same price ratio we have the same problem. It will affect the offensive side of things more. At best we have the same problem we have now, at worst a change is going to make it even harder on attacking forces.
You yourself argued it was nearly impossible to break fed air d. It is too strong. |
| Ethelred | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 10:07 pm
Strength of fed air defence is being reduced. I think pretty much everyone agrees this will be a positive change. The other major obstacle to waging war is the 10,000 plus clicks that makes it tedious, an overall reduction in the amount of weapons a country can have will bring those clicks down to an amount that makes war feasible.
Right now war is merely a numbers game with hardly any strategy involved but if you are forced to work hard to build a decent economy in order to support a strong military then it brings more of an element of strategy to the war game. There are quite a few players who have poor economies but have become very powerful. Meanwhile some of the most skilled econ players have nothing to spend cash on. This is two sides of the same problem and making war materials more expensive to stockpile solves both problems. |
| Drac | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - 10:45 pm
I dont think Fed air defense is over-powered, defense in general is over powered, 1 unit vs lord knows how many. Ground units are very very powerful although tanks should take less losses to defensive helios because theirs no way to really combat the enemy ground forces without using missiles or air units currently. Adding a function to add multiple units to form a single attack is more ideal and will solve most of the problems (how many defensive units join the defense is up to w3c). Bigger battles means more damage to each side so that 1 side doesn't get obliterated. This alone will shorten the amount of clicks, balancing attacking/defending damage to the enemy and wont require price deductions that will hurt the corps profits. |
| Andy | Thursday, January 6, 2022 - 05:38 pm
It all makes sense but a solution is not simple.
The talk is about winning a huge war against a fed, and many of you want feds to be even larger. (Reduce the clicking per member?)
These several very large wars can probably not go all the way.
You can build huge defenses that will require so many weapons, ammo, money and endless clicking to destroy them and at much higher cost than the cost of the defense.
The best survival strategy for years was: make your defense so strong that nobody will dare challenging you.
This remains true now too.
Some players will do that and remain virtually untouchable.
But they too, will not be able to destroy other large feds.
We do want to reduce all armies.
If units are larger, you would expect the number of units to decline.
I am not sure it will happen.
The cost can limit the buildup but for some, cost is not relevant and then there is no balance nor any tradeoff in sight.
Some of you are for a weaker defense for obvious reasons.
You are going to win anyway and doing so at a lower cost and with fewer click is what you in fact want.
We do not think that we should automate anything.
It will only increase the pace of destruction, so armies will have to become even much larger and we will be back at square one only with much higher cost.
As to maintenance cost: we did not say that it will increase. only weapon cost will be higher. ammo is already much cheaper than before and ammo is the main factor in the maintenance cost. |
| Andy | Thursday, January 6, 2022 - 05:46 pm
As I said before, we will not reduce quality of storage but will keep taxes on assets in enterprises.
Make sure money losing enterprises do not pay enterprise tax. I think they do not pay but will check to make sure.
at the same time, we will reduce the cost of maintenance of weapons in countries, both active and non active.
enterprise sizes should be limited. as I said before, a small number of them owns a very high percentage of all non state corporations. |
| Ethelred | Thursday, January 6, 2022 - 07:55 pm
Andy, you state, 'we do want to reduce all armies'. Did you mean to say, 'we do not want to reduce the size of armies'? I assume it was a typo because many recent and planned changes will result in much larger armies. Larger populations, larger military units, decreases in defensive weapon costs, reductions in weapons and ammo maintenance costs all lead to armies getting larger not smaller. |
| Gaius Batavius Mattimus | Thursday, January 6, 2022 - 09:32 pm
The problem against wars against a Federation is not how many people are in the Fed but how many wings respond to each attack. A group of six countries can make it nearly impossible to take a single one. But if that is the intent, that is the intent.
More players in a fed means you do not have to make several Federation branches. Making them larger means you just do not have to make additional Federations to fit everyone in. Federations of all sizes are allowed currently, you just have to chop it up into regional sub Federations. |
| Ethelred | Thursday, January 6, 2022 - 11:38 pm
I think we just have to accept that there is a clear intent to make war between two countries with capable defences unfeasible. If you want to have a war it will have to be against c3's, inactives or players that can't defend themselves. There is no point in attacking a player with 100,000 interceptors/helicopters, the recent war between Lord Mndz and Drac proved this. |
| Johanas Bilderberg | Friday, January 7, 2022 - 04:37 am
War between large players is definitely possible.
It just requires the will to do so and a complete lack of caring about the cost in sim soldiers and material. |
| Ethelred | Friday, January 7, 2022 - 07:38 am
You'd get bored after the first 10,000 clicks. |
| Ethelred | Friday, January 7, 2022 - 07:42 am
After 20,000 you'll be wondering what the fuck you are doing with your life. |
| Ethelred | Friday, January 7, 2022 - 07:49 am
After 30,000 your wife has left you out of sexual frustration and your cat has died of neglect. |
| Andy | Friday, January 7, 2022 - 08:48 am
The reduction in the cost of defense, cheaper ammo and cheaper maintenance cost, will make it easier for smaller players to build up a defense.
larger units, we hope, that are quite expensive to build, will reduce the number of units.
Hopefully reduce the complexity of having to wage war against armies with so many units.
This might help, or not.
I did not hear any suggestion as to how to reduce numbers.
Only click complaints.
These are very true, but no suggestions as to how to reduce them, except for automation which will only make things worse. The destruction will make you build even many more units.
To reduce the clicking, we need to reduce the number of targets you need to destroy.
If you have any constructive suggestion to reduce the clicking, offering smaller players a chance to build a strong defense, then we will be happy to hear.
At this time, the prospect of having to click thousands of times, is stopping you from waging that war.
Nobody clicks 10.000 times.
what you mean is, you cannot win a war against such a defense.
should you? |
| Lord Mndz | Friday, January 7, 2022 - 12:22 pm
Hi Andy,
there is only one good approach how to reduce number of clicks which is making units size larger while leaving the same number of weapons participating in attack/defense. this also needs to be done with increasing response range of land units in order to cover bigger land area. you can also limit number of units players could create based on war level.
in the past i had 1 fleet and now i need to have hundreds for the same amount of weapons in total. i would like to have 1 again
another thing is to reduce war index dependency on ground targets destruction but make it more dependent on destruction of military units. it makes more sense as essentially people lose wars when army is beaten. |
| Lord Mndz | Friday, January 7, 2022 - 12:30 pm
another issue is standing active armies, it takes a lot of time to get it right and there is no chance for new player to get everything needed from first time. i mean if you are attacked you need to spend hour or a few just arranging defence and contra-attack, getting weapons, resources etc. as it is too expensive to always have active army due upkeep cost. it takes insane amount of clicks per country and for empire it is even worse.
in the past when there were no units it wad simple reactivation of weapons, but now player need to build tons of units and make sure support units are doing the right job, resources are availble. |
| Super Cheese | Friday, January 7, 2022 - 11:41 pm
"At this time, the prospect of having to click thousands of times, is stopping you from waging that war.
Nobody clicks 10.000 times.
what you mean is, you cannot win a war against such a defense.
should you?"
Yes, you should be able to win a war against such a defense. Nobody should be invulnerable. A player winning a war through a well thought strategy, proper planning, and through coordination and timing with friends/allies, are the hallmarks of a good war game. It's bad when the thing keeping a nation secure is that fighting them is less fun than watching paint dry.
Your primary complaint with "automation" of attacks seems to revolve around the idea that it will lead to the rapid defeat of a players nation before they have had the chance to respond. An easy fix to this problem (and something I saw suggested) is making war turn based, or at least slow down the rate of attacks. Make it so a nation can only do so many attacks a game month perhaps? |
| neutralsc | Saturday, January 8, 2022 - 02:10 am
The number of clicking does not have to reduce the number of targets if you reduce the required number of clicking per target. Hence, it even enables the possibility to increase the number of targets without increasing the number of clicking. Considering extra clicking as desirable because it prevents behavior that is a core element of the game is a counterproductive mentality when trying to improve playability of the game that is way too inefficient due the fact it stems from an 2002 user interface.
If you want war to be not so easy, make sure players have decent defenses. Why dont they have it now?
1 Complexity. And partly as a result of that lack of knowledge.
2 The high amount of effort it requires, aggravated by the inefficient UI.
3 The combination of the 2 above.
And as a result of that many new players just quit. Especially when getting stuck at war or just plain wiped off.
I really believe the game needs to dumb down. Currently it is just not intuitive, the documentation is limited and overwhelming at the same time. Organizing an army is complex and how to use your army as a beginner is a mystery.
I started in September 2021. I had to read on the forum, after extensive searching, that you need air wings as a basic defense. That you actually have to garrison targets. That you need Q300+, while starters are given an interceptor wing Q120 at start. I figured out myself that I need to produce ammo myself, because with current shortages, it takes ages to execute. -XX- How patient are most players? -XX- Producing ammo yourself also requires Q300/330. You need supplies of Q215/220 for that. -XX- Lower than Q220 and end-quality is bad plus higher/lower than Q220 makes profitability tank. Imo this doesnt add depth, only mystery for the unknown in favor of the known/experienced. -XX- I could go on and on. The amount of effort I had to take, and the unstructured way I gathered this information, makes 95% just quit. And even then I had tons of questions, that EO answered for me.
I also got a starter country on KB, a relatively deserted planet, with 16m pop and 70ish education and health indexes. Its very hard for a beginner to turn these countries around due the negative spiral they are in. Lack of education > lack of teachers > lack of education, and lack of welfare, low profit, etc. I later learned this are freshly resetted countries and best is to deregister them and pick one with 20m pop and good indexes, which are also present in high amounts. Why do these bad C3s even exist and why are they given to starters? For years now. Same for enterprise builds. You need to avoid these countries to build your corporations in as an enterprise, otherwise your corporations have very low hiring. Look around at enterprises. Many do not know. I found this out by accident/observing that this was the reason the hiring was really bad. Please just make these countries vanish. And when done, dont let me click/search plenty to queue 1 corporations at my enterprise. I want my corporation in a random C3 without bad indexes (or available within 1 week, because that means bad indexes in couple of days).
For example:
I click -XX- I want to build High Tech Services in a C3 -XX-
How many?
I type/adjust -XX- 12 -XX- from the preset 1.
I click -XX- Build. -XX-
Boom it queues 12 High Tech Services corporations in 12 random C3s with good indexes.
A recent update was that the max price of natural resource corporations was increased, because players unfortunately failed to recognize the value of these corporations. I fail to understand what upping the max price will do to address this issue. Wouldnt it be more effective that when a C3 country is assigned to a new player, is being resetted with 20m pop, good indexes and lets say 10 natural resource corporations, with supplies at Q215? Dumb down, do it for them. Not knowing doesnt add depth, only mystery. And upping the max price does not up the level of knowledge of the unknown. Ironically the ones who already knew profits from this update. Btw I sometimes see swings in monthly profits, even after observing several variables as unchanged, for reasons i cant grasp.
Many new players build too many new corporations resulting in a lack of workers, because they do not know. Long time ago the queue was limited to 10 for this. Again, I fail to understand how this limitation is addressing the issue. It only results in more micromanagement and is ineffective in resolving the problem. A bad trade-off therefore. Upping the queue from 10 to 18 helps a bit demping the micromanagement, but better would be to remove the limit (or up to 50) and just deny a build request when lack of workers is present. Or give them a popup so they learn better. Give them info popups when lack of workers are present which explains the situation and how to resolve. Experienced players can uncheck these info boxes at settings/automation/whatever.
I suggested dumbing down the game on Discord and the response I got was -XX- many players like the complexity of the game -XX-. Well, to some extent, so do I, but if you have 5 (potential) paying members, of which 1 likes the complexity, and 4 quits due the complexity, but with a dumbed down game 4 or 5 would stay, dumbing down the game would be worth considering.
I believe the war game should be fundamentally changed. How precise, I do not know. But please consider this. Building up a country takes high amount of effort, partly as explained above. When you have 2 paying members going to war against each other, the most likely outcome is that 1 kills off the other, resulting in 1 less paying member. The winner becomes stronger, because in this game, winner takes most and loser takes nothing. And the smaller (paying) members becomes relatively weaker. This does not align with a sustainable business model and imo explains the resistance of making changes to the war game in favor of the attacking player.
And yes, I do believe you have to make the war game turn based. Everything is better than considering extra clicking as desirable to discourage players from warring (aka playing the game). Also, who is going to coordinate a war at 3 am as a defender if the attackers lives in another timezone? |
| Lord Mndz | Saturday, January 8, 2022 - 07:04 am
in the past attacks were limited per time, but majority of players hated that because after launching very few you had to wait for 5 minutes or so. the idea might work if players are given number of attacks per game month, then if mistakes are done defending player could have chances to regroup or buy what if missing. it could also be that in the first few game months after war starts the number of attacks per game month are limited but in the later months there are no limitations.
i fully agree with neutralsc that initial country and army set up is misleading. army units should be in 330Q, countries should have good indexes and some natural resources corporations. on the other hand players need to learn and fing buddies to explain the overall logic. |
| Gaius Batavius Mattimus | Sunday, January 9, 2022 - 05:22 am
The running cost for inactive numbers above is like -250b a month. York typically profits 170b, and is down to -130b now.
As the war game stands now you need those types of numbers of equipment to break a target.
No further comment besides that. |
| Andy | Sunday, January 9, 2022 - 03:54 pm
Thank you for the responses.
This really helps.
especially neutralsc and mndz but also others.
We love criticism, especially the non destructive form.
I see here many issues that are spot on and can be fixed quickly.
also some that cannot be fixed quickly.
there will be short term action.
I wonder what you think of the suggestion to end wars before total defeat.
Total defeat sometimes results in the loser coming back to take revenge and many times results in a player quitting.
We would like very much, any suggestion, to improve on that.
I think that profitability is in general OK. but we will reduce the cost of the inactive army and speed up the activation process.
In addition, check the weapons that can be used from base, without the need to be part of a unit.
we will listen to any suggestions on how to improve this and have a war process where both forms can be used, attacks from/on bases and military units. |
| Lord Mndz | Sunday, January 9, 2022 - 06:14 pm
Thanks Andy, for always listening and taking actions on what makes most sense.
I have been thinking about this war without total defeat concept for a very long time, not an easy one for sure. Please see the below attempt to resolve it. Other feedback/adjustments are welcomed.
Principles:
Defeated countries could be taken under certain conditions but more as an exception
Winner should get bounty for winning war
It should be possible to recover defeated country pretty fast
War Course:
- Player declares war as now - no changes
- War index reaches low threshold(e.g. 10) - winner is offered a screen with option to Loot country or Continue the war. Looting means taking part of population, resources, cash. If this option is taken war is ended, country is looted. Country defeated could be given a bunch of boosters to recover fast. War protection would be given for some longer time
- If Player decides to Continue, war continues until war index reaches 0. Then player has below options
- Take over country and pay compensation. Compensation could be some percentage of country value(e.g. 50%) and should be paid in cash to loser's of war cash account.
- Ask Security Council to approve take over of the country. If option is not approved, it moves to loot option. If approved, country is added to winner's account.
- Loot country - as offered above
I see most of the countries taken are dropped, so looting could be really popular, but would prevent from taking everything.
in my proposed conditions defeated player would always get something back to better plan defences and potentially would not leave the game. |
| JOEL | Monday, January 10, 2022 - 05:14 pm
Lord Mndz That's a brilliant concept. I believe that would reduce the amount of players that quit and also make more players comfortable going into the war game. I cannot stress enough a lot of war begin because people simply wants that countries population and not the country itself. |
| rob72966 | Tuesday, January 11, 2022 - 07:28 am
I'm not sure about this. I see some good ideas, but penalizing the winner by paying compensation and asking for the security council to approve the take over noway. In the last large war on Fearless Blue we saw two presidents spend multitude of trillions in there war. How would that be compensated for the winner? The victor ended up with a country worth nothing. On Fearless Blue I like the idea of being able to pick one of your countries from being destroyed.(War ends at 10%), but only able to change that country every 25 game years. That country would need to pay the winner full compensation for the cost of the war plus a 3 trillion winners bonus. This package could be paid with a very low cost loan say 1.5% interest rate that would be deducted from the loosing countries economy once a profit was being made. The individual country would be protected from war and unable to buy weapons or be involved in any wars until his economy was able to pay off it's loan.(Just That country) Other countries in his empire would be able to fully participate in all aspect of the game, but no protection in war unless the loan was paid back. Just some thoughts, I would like to say I like how the game is evolving, and I love the input the players are contributing. This definitely makes the game more entertaining. |
| Lord Mndz | Tuesday, January 11, 2022 - 08:32 pm
Hi Rob,
war cost cannot be compensated, because then people will always play expecting for that. war cost should be a detractor, so when somebody sees a new player with wise defence, he could reconcider the attack as looting will not cover the war cost.
the only thing that can be compensated is part of the value of the country defeated if you want to take it over, or you could rely on security cauncil decision.
I think for that reason security cauncil needs to contain representatives from all largest federations, to ensure honest decisions. |
| Andy | Wednesday, January 12, 2022 - 05:27 pm
I started a discussion about this to separate from the general discussion about planned war updates. |
| Lord Mndz | Wednesday, January 12, 2022 - 05:28 pm
ok |
| neutralsc | Saturday, January 15, 2022 - 04:29 pm
OK. My second attempt to take a WL12 C3. I took out the 10 helicopter wings. Took me around 30k oaabs and 15k mrmbs at Q320. So took out all interceptor wings and all other defense units. Took me around 350k oaa missiles. Also several thousand mrmbs for clearing mobile/land defense units.
But i just calculated i have to take out 28 fortifications as well, plus additional ones because painting is a hell.
Every garrison costs me 3.3k mrmbs at Q320. So 18 cities, 18 factories, 28 fortifications, times 3.3k mrmbs, is 212k mrmbs.
Total costs to take WL12 C3? 262k mrmbs and 35k oaabs and tons of ammo.
I also lost several Drones (useless btw), precision bombers and stealth bombers to try out, but after losing 35k oaabs and 50k mrmbs, being stuck at War Index 51.81 and calculated how much I need to sacrifice more, I just threw in the towel.
So please clearify why 30k mrmbs are too much if you need like 262k+ (!) mrmbs to clear out defenses of a WL12 C3 please? |
| Ethelred | Saturday, January 15, 2022 - 06:49 pm
lol. but tanks have been made a bit more powerful, so it's fixed now. |
| neutralsc | Sunday, January 16, 2022 - 02:12 pm
To correct my previous msg. Not all forts were garrisoned so made it to WL12 at the costs of like 60k mrmb or something like that, on top of the 30k oaabs. |
| Andy | Tuesday, January 18, 2022 - 11:02 pm
Thanks for the info.
The numbers are huge.
We will start such a war for testing and may draw some conclusions on the power of C3 countries in the higher war levels.
will need to do much more on several fronts.
In the mean time, any ideas you have on how to reduce the sizes of armies might help. |
| Ethelred | Wednesday, January 19, 2022 - 12:04 am
Now that countries can reach sustainable populations of 600m armies will be much larger. We've seen armies of over 6,000,000 troops in countries of 100m population. 36,000,000 strong armies will now be possible.
Attacking a large nation is no longer feasible. Players who want to fight will only attack much weaker players or c3 countries.
I suggested making weapons and ammo very expensive. Will this work when a country of 600m will be able to turn a monthly profit of over 1T?
Lots of players already have invincible armies but no one to fight and vast sums of money but nothing to spend it on.
Military power needs to be about more than cash and population size so what about making army unit upgrades automatic instead of being bought with game cash? They all start at 120 and increase based on experience and welfare. This is realistic as experienced soldiers are better and soldiers from countries that have happier and healthier populations have more to fight for. |
| Lord Mndz | Wednesday, January 19, 2022 - 05:25 pm
Andy,
the below numbers are minimal I think per country:
Defense weapons:
150 forts
50k anti air batts + 5M ammo
50k defense missile batts + 5M ammo
20k helicopters + 10M ammo
20k interceptors + 10M ammo
1k anti nuclear defense batts + 10k ammo
Offence weapons:
200k Mid range batts + 3M ammo
100k Anti air batts + 5M ammo
If you could think about how to make this minimum amount cheap( staff and maintenance wise), that would be very good. Currently even this minimum is very expensive to maintain not even talking about adding navy and other less effective weapons. |
| Andy | Wednesday, January 19, 2022 - 05:33 pm
The prospect of much larger armies is not a happy one.
however,
600 million population can only be achieved with gold coins.
natural growth will not go much higher than 120 millions.
The numbers advised here are larger than we would like to see.
but making it cheap, also weapons.
I thought you (Mndz) were calling for more expensive weapons and affordable ammo. |
| Lord Mndz | Wednesday, January 19, 2022 - 05:39 pm
I am still on that Andy, but I also need to reflect the reality. I currently have around 1 million of each batteries and tens of millions of ammo.
If weapons are more expensive then numbers might change but they will not change if weapons price is not increased by tens of times.
This is what I can buy with single budget having maximum price as market is in shortage. What I should think when seeing this numbers? Shouldn't I spend at least one full budget for 1 type of weapon?
If you increase the price 10 times I would think that I might need 10K or so as a default, but not 50K. If you increase the price 100 times (as I recommend by the way) then I will really think about numbers. |
| Andy | Wednesday, January 19, 2022 - 06:04 pm
Ha. 10 times!
we think the the price should increase but we cannot pull the rug under players who have a plan to purchase and will be hit unreasonably.
so yes, the price will increase but in smaller steps.
we are also increasing the power of land weapons but also this is done in small steps. next upgrade will see land weapons increasing power by additional 10-20%. |
| Lord Mndz | Wednesday, January 19, 2022 - 08:57 pm
you are making a good progress but i am here to challenge even more
there could be 2 ways, if weapons remain cheap then i want to have big numbers of them in large units. million of interceptors is just a number and i used to have tens of millions back in the old days. what need to be fixed is maintenance cost, both on military supplies, staff, innactive weapons and ammo side. cost can be reduced by x times without damage to anyone.
other option is with very expensive weapons, then units need to be small and have various weapon types in them, weapons number participating in attack should also be small. maintenance can stay as the current level it will not hurt. weapons deactivation/reactivation need to be big percentage.
land units must be stronger in any of the scenarios, when you think is the time you can also make forts being destroyable by land units only.
just my thoughts as usual |
| neutralsc | Thursday, January 20, 2022 - 12:51 am
Raising prices of weapons will benefit weapon assets rich players because it will inflate military (weapons) assets value. It will hurt smaller and newer players, because they need more SC$ to build an army. Lowering prices of weapons will have an opposite effect, but will hurt your aim to reduce military army sizes. Also, with lowering prices you are banking on the assumption most smaller players will actually seize the opportunity to increase their army sizes, which I dare to doubt given what I wrote earlier.
Military assets rich players were able to accumulate their military assets due their SC$ earnings power (aggravated by no SC$ spending alternatives). As long as their superior earnings power remain (+reserves) their ability to have larger army sizes than their earnings power weaker opponents will remain as well.
Andy, you wrote that the aim was not to limit the size of the army, but the aim is to make sure that a large army costs more than a small one. Later you wrote you want to reduce army sizes. The most effective way in my opinion would be to introduce a very steep progressive military assets tax on the account level. Even more effective: let them pay in military assets (aka reducing quantities over time, instead of quality as you considered earlier).
Any attempt to reduce the strength of stronger players by reducing their military assets will fail due their superior earnings powers (+reserves), unless you hard limit them and exterminate any circumvention. But then you are basically saying: "hey, you played this game way too well so we are going to cripple you for this". I believe a better way would be to reduce complexity of the game and to eliminate the current disincentives to not to war pvp against stronger players. The aim would be to weaken the stronger players by strengthening the current weaker ones. And weaker players are more likely to stay, which imo is more important than any of this all. |
| Andy | Thursday, January 20, 2022 - 12:37 pm
Mndz
I agree. and most of it is already underway.
question;
You used to have a larger army. what made you reduce the size?
neutralsc
I agree.
we are determined to help new players and smaller players to become stronger more quickly. It will not close the gap.
I do not think we should hurt successful players but if weaker ones become more powerful, it will help.
we have many ideas as to how to help new players and ones who are playing for only weeks to 3 months.
both in population, cash and high quality military units and garrisons. |
| Lord Mndz | Thursday, January 20, 2022 - 01:04 pm
Andy,
I did not reduce, i moved a lot of weapons to ceo, most of big players have done the same. Now i have moved something back to countries because:
-time to establish an army from having innactive weapons on ceo to active units in countries is very big. i want some of them active all the time to simply save time.
-quality of weapons in active units can be upgraded beyond 330 which allows me to have more powerful units if they stay active
-maintenance cost prevents from having too many active, but i would deploy a lot more if needed during major war
-army staff is limited and i could not have more than staff allows, they would be deactivated and i need to be wise to chose active weapons not to end up in the situation where i could not defend or attack
i count how much i need to max defence in garrisons on main targets and leave the rest for land defence and supply unit.
with the current cost level it is not possible to max defence in garrisons, each garrison could be around 1k weapons and having to defend few hundreds would make me deploy 200-300k batteries only for garrisons, not talking about air defence and attacking weapons. |
| Andy | Friday, January 21, 2022 - 02:28 pm
Thanks.
I hope some of our ideas to improve the war process will help. |
