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Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - 07:02 pm  I've paid for a full membership, but I have to say I'm getting severely tired of all the little dodgy things that make playing this game much more of a chore than it ought to be. To wit, my attempts to relocate an offensive airport. The airport is occupied by a number of air units, so I go to map customization to make them invisible so I can click on the base in the relocation map. The air units duly go invisible on the small map in "My Home" but when I click on the "Relocate objects on the map" button up pops a big map with the air units still visible. So I can't relocate the base. Or purchasing extra corp upgrades, but seeing no apparent way to use them anywhere in the corporations menus. Small things, but irritating, and there are plenty of them - too many to list. Some of them are malfunctions like the problem moving the base, and many more are due to lack of clear explanation - or any explanation at all. I'm starting to wonder if I should have spent my money after all... I know, I know. Buyer beware!
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| Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - 07:31 pm easiest way to solve the air units problem is to dismantle the units first, then move your items, and then re-make the units Upgrades do 2 things. Increases efficiency so you use fewer workers. Fewer workers mean less salary for the corporation and more workers to use for another corporation. The other is improving the quality of the product they produce. When the quality goes up, so does the price, thus making you more money if your trade strategies are set right. Don't get discouraged, it is a rather complicated game, but once you get the hang of it, you have a hard time getting away from it! Most players will offer up help if you ask.
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| Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - 07:50 pm Thanks for the reply, Travis! Players like you are one big reason why I stick around - and trust me, I've been asking for help like crazy. In fact the trick of making units invisible was recommended by another player. I just feel having to dismantle units and recreate them in order to move them is kinda ridiculous. Why shouldn't I just be able to move the damn things where I want them?? And don't I lose the weapons when I dismantle a unit? I tried it with a small unit and darned if I could find the weapons in stock afterwards. I wound up buying them all over again to reform the unit. I know I must be missing something there... As for upgrades, I understand the value and I've been upgrading at every opportunity. What I did was go buy a whack of extra upgrades with some gold coins. I expected to see some kind of indication that I had these extra upgrades the next time I logged in to the corp upgrade pages, but I didn't see any difference. I guess I have to take it on trust that I have a reserve of those extra upgrades and am now going through them? Don't get me wrong. This is an awesome game. And I understand it when a game has a steep learning curve. It's just that in this case I think a lot of the 'steepness' has to do with minor glitches in the way the game works and is presented to the player, and less to do with the inherent complexity of the game itself.
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| Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - 08:37 pm moving units can get frustrating. There is some stuff that needs to be improved and there are glitches. When you dismantle them, they shouldn't disappear. I've never had that happen before. When you dismantle them they should go into your stock. As far as upgrades, I don't spend gold coins on upgrades, I just set up the automation process to order them automatically. Just make sure when setting your trade strategies you check the box "follow quality" to make sure when your quality goes up, your selling price will follow. Otherwise your wasting money.
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| Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - 09:01 pm One thing that is a useful tool of reference is the game documentation. After logging in but before clicking on your country, there is a row options near the top of the screen including forum and live chat. If you click on documentation, there are descriptions on how most things work in the game.
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| Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - 09:11 pm I have also bought military transport aircraft, and actually airlifted units to new base locations. Mostly because I kept enough gasoline/aircraft fuel reserves at the time that trying to click on the fuel slider bar for setting up new units would require 200K trucks for a single unit. But the airlift alternative is clunky as well...
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| Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - 09:59 pm I have to refer to the game documentation every now and then, but when I was starting the game documentation seemed OVERWHELMING. I've been playing for almost a year and when I began I had a lot of sound advice from other players. They seemed to explain things better and they made more sense. I'm just trying to return the favor for those that helped me. I still have to check things with the documentation from time to time.
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| Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - 11:30 pm Much of the game documentation is overridden by more recent changes anyway. The changes remain in the game news, but the entry in the game documentation for whatever subject is seldom updated. This makes most of the game documentation obsolete and of questionable value, not to mention fragmented. Because of this, I've lined up contacts to instruct me on using a navy, rather than deal with the convoluted game documentation. Best advice for new players is simply to make friends with the older players who can teach you ways to play the game effectively. 
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| Thursday, November 13, 2008 - 12:38 am Just encountered another irritating thing. I'm planning to invade a C3 that is actually a couple of borderlines away, to practice airlifting, remote depots etc. I've set up some air transport, have three units to build an airport in the invaded country, and a couple of airborne special forces units to make the initial invasion. But every time I went to set up the airdrops the game told me the units had to wait for enough supplies. (Meanwhile my supply units weren't doing anything - just sitting in their bases.) After a couple of days of trying to figure this out, I went to check the target supply levels in the airborne units. Gas was set to 3! And the mil supplies were at negative levels. Granted I'm a noob, but I'm not stupid enough to have set gas and supply targets at cripplingly low levels like that. I don't know how this happened. As for the documentation, I've printed out reams of it, and while it gives a good overview of what the game is all about I find it has little value as a "how-to" aid.
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| Thursday, November 13, 2008 - 12:59 am Almohad117 There are quite a few misleading things in this game. One of the truest sayings I've read is "playing this game is like driving a big oil tanker, it is slow to respond". Discovering how to get things done is also a part of this game, hence the learning curve. These are not necessarily bad things, just different than the instant response and answers we often expect. I would suggest you find a good federation, it would be very beneficial in helping you be successful in Simcountry. This is a good source for game information: http://simcountry.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
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| Thursday, November 13, 2008 - 02:34 am Thanks. I actually think that learning things the hard way probably produces a better player in the end - if you can be bothered to stick at it long enough.
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| Thursday, November 13, 2008 - 03:44 am Almohad117 - you may not have enough Supply Units? I try to keep 100+ going in every country, so things happen pretty quickly. I would also update the unit's requested supply levels of course I haven't seen the problem you are reporting, so if you didn't just click the wrong button or something, then updating the supply level should fix it. I'll also echo others' suggestion to join a fed - the advice and guidance of veteran players is invaluable. Best, -Emi
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| Thursday, November 13, 2008 - 05:29 am Thanks. My cash position right now is really poor, so I've been deactivating weapons and dismantling quite a few units, and don't want to set up any new supply units at the moment. I did get an invite to a fed, and replied to the message saying I'd like to join, but I haven't heard anything back.
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| Thursday, November 13, 2008 - 01:22 pm sounds like with those upgrades you bought, if you go to the page of a corp you wish to upgrade quickly, at the top right is an upgrade now, super boost or somesuch link where you can use the upgrades you bought for GC to advance productivity, effectivity quicker than the normal game process.
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