W3C - Tuning the War Game

Starting with the next upgrade (mid August), cruise missiles will become more effective and their price will be reduced a bit. Their range is increased by 1000.

The same will apply to conventional missiles.

Also in the same upgrade, Offensive anti aircraft missiles will be able to operate from base and not only as part of military units.

Medium range missiles can also operate from a military base. This is made possible some time ago.

Nuclear weapons become effective against more types of targets and their base price is being reduced a bit. The real price will depend on the market on FB and on space stations.

Please don't let aggressors with nukes, or any kind, use gold coin purchased game protections to hide from retaliation. This is broken. This type of protection must be disabled for current participants in a PvP war.

We need to limit nuclear weapons ownership.
Any idea on how to limit?

This could be done by a requirement of a population level, or a minimum war level (when war levels mean more than being able to beat C3 countries).

These updates are good improvements. To use nuclear weapons, countries already need a minimum population of 20 million (see item #292). But there are good reasons to eliminate that population limit:

1. Countries already can prevent nuclear attacks by using nuclear defense batteries.

2. PvP was much more popular when there was no population limit. Using small countries to attack big countries was a popular simulation of guerrilla war.

*Blows kisses towards andy*

hehe funny stuff here, i like it

I agree with Madoff to remove the population limit but, again, the real issue is that the attacking empire can put up gold coin purchased protections on its important properties. For the ##th time I mention it, players already in a declaration of war of their choosing should not be protected by gold coins protections. We need a war game that is more simple and intuitive, or players will continue to avoid it. In the case of aggressive countries with nuclear weapons, it makes sense to the players that the cost of this is that you could be nuked back. Doesn't it?

Also Andy, before expanding strategic weapons targets, have you considered that some countries have, literally, hundreds of cities, all targets of nuclear weapons? Have you considered the burden and challenge of protecting these in the actual state of the game? It is important I hear your thoughts in this and whether the utility of nuclear protection is working as intended under these circumstances. For example, should larger population countries have their number of cities reduced if you plan to add other targets.

and again, I recommend war levels be unpaired with PvP play. I see no way to resolve the issues with this system as I have detailed them in the other thread.

I've been here a long time and honestly the 20M population requirement is one of the more important war updates and I fully support it.

It requires the person with the country to have population needed (limiting C3 nuke warring), it forces that there some form of economy, and a military presence.

On the positive side it provides the player in question some forms of "winnings". Also if a player counter nukes and drops the country below 20M it prevents them from nuking back.

I would rather have the option to declare war on their 100-300 million pop country if they declare war on mine and intend to nuke it. Again, I am fine with secured mode, but disable their gold coin protections.

I think the simpler option would be that WP should be an all or non booster. It should be applied to the entire empire on a planet or non of them at all.

So far, this just means that specific missiles will be much more beneficial.

What other changes can we expect?

Lets be serious, a nuclear missile, should have different payloads and different variations of destruction. Surely a high payload nuke could easily demolish 4 cities within close proximity and devastate many others. Some forms of defence would be more sophisticated than others, preventing certain missiles with higher payloads from hitting. Of course we could change these forms of defence to targeting specific payloads, rather than a generic setup that prevents all nukes.

I think the nuclear threat should be available, and should be a worrying thing for ANY player. E.g. If Aries went to war with someone who only has say, 100 nukes, but of the highest payload, that could destroy 50% of each city before said player dies, you'd expect Aries, or Super or whoever (old school vets) to have a vast amount of defences to try and prevent this, and at a great cost.

This would mean that everyone and anyone is always on alert, you'd get the old tactics of stabbing people in the back, people being spies, baiting others out, alliances vs smaller alliances but with the same amount of threat.

The nuclear option could certainly be, a devastating, but invigorating aspect. It could also revive this game, and push it in a greater direction.

My 2 cents.

Ya
No offense brother, but that would be a very bad update. Arguably one of the worst updates the GM could make.

Considering nuclear weapons don't effect just the country in question but neighboring nations. I could kill you without even declaring war on you.

Lets say I take over a nation and let my ally nuke it with me strategically setting cities on the border knowing it will effect you. Then what, How do you protect yourself? You cant stop the nukes because your not at war, and even if you declared war, it would take 24 hours before you could do anything. I could do a lot of damage in that time frame.

So, what then?
You cluster all your cities in the middle to defend yourself. Anyone with enough stealth bombers and SF could punch a hole into one city and BAM, huge amounts if not all your population killed in a single move.

I'm not trying to bash you or devalue your ideas, but this is why I keep telling everyone. We dont need new war game features, we need to tweak and fix what we have first.

You cannot build a strong house on a weak foundation.

What if you could only nuke your slave countries, and mains could not, unless out of WP?

Ie you could damage the slaves, but even if you nuked the edge of the declared slave, it wouldn't harm neighboring WP countries?

I hear where you're coming from, i'm just trying to put forward ideas to make the game interesting for new players, and old.

"I think the simpler option would be that WP should be an all or non booster. It should be applied to the entire empire on a planet or non of them at all."

I am good with this. Obviously, you can't add it after being at war or declare war with it up. It's Genius!

Would a country that has nukes not fire back just because they've lost some population. If the USA were attacked in reality, I'm pretty sure that there would be a vast response of force of some kind.....

How about that if a country that has nukes attacks another country then every single country that has nukes that is in the same region as the country being attacked automatically responds with their nukes and attacks the country that is the aggressor. This way we can see how good the aggressor's defences are in staving off retaliation if they want to be an aggressor and warmonger....

You should really think about adjusting the way ammo is upgraded. Dormant ammo should be able to be upgraded. It makes no sense that it shouldn't, as in RL, military personnel repair and upgrade their weapons and ammo on a daily basis. you should add a section reserved for dormant ammo.

Ammo upgrade corporations aren't competitive on any world. This would solve two problems at once.

Aris
I am afraid that if war protection, purchased for gold coins, is made more difficult, players will not start a war.
We need to give them an incentive (this was said many times before) and increase their risk but in a limited way.

Any ideas?
We could make war protection very expensive in time of war.
We could in general, reduce the price of the defense.
What about sneak attacks. we could expand the feature and in time of war, many such attacks could take place regardless of war protection.
We could greatly improve the automatic counter attacks and require the needed weapons and units+ammo as part of the conditions for war levels.
I am looking for a first, small step, not a revolution.

Nuclear defense is now less expensive than before and having a large number of these weapons will reduce the chance of damage.
Reducing the number of cities and town is a good idea for more reasons. it will reduce that congestion on the maps and make them faster. It will of course make nuclear defense easier. Also the population max is now 300M, more than before.

I will look into it.

I think Putin wants more risk. Nuclear or not.
Also more risk to large and rich players.
not an existential risk but wars that cause devastation.

Small players should be able to deter and respond forcefully.

Supersoldier: As far as I remember, damage to neighbors after a nuke attack does not depend on the location of the attacked target. and of course, it could be tuned up or down.

what about the suggestion of a nuke response.
Federation members or even auto response units, respond with nukes if the country is attacked with nukes.
(provided it has the weapons).

What is dormant ammo?

WP all or none
It makes sense but will anyone turn it off to be able to declare?
Maybe allow a player to stop the war half way and pay a bonus to the winning party?
Or even when the war is lost, have the option to keep the country by paying a bonus to the winner.

will it make people less afraid of being wiped out?

the amount changing hands can depend on the game level of the parties.
War level and related bonuses can be added.

Dormant ammo is the ammo that is stored, not used in units.

I think you can upgrade it.
I will find out.

ok, ty

Many want the war protection.
You may say they are hiding behind it. May be but they want to keep their assets and their will not just drop it. You may but you want a huge number of gold coins to do so.

I want to increase the risk but dropping it? who will do that and will they fight each other? I doubt it.

Natural resources can add an incentive for war.
We need more incentives.

If losing a war costs money (10T?) fake wars may not be a problem. The warring parties are full members, don't want to lose their money. we can try to enforce some war experience before they get involved in PvP wars.

We must do it in small steps.
We should tune some of the parameters to make it easier to fight PvP and harder to hide.
We can add auto response units that really fight back hard and give players more confidence in their ability to defend.
I mentioned nuclear auto defense if attacked by nukes.

More alerts that send you messages if war is declared, starts, attacks are launched etc.

the possibility to suspend attacks for an hour or two, using your phone
and of course,
the possibility to launch large attacks from weapons at your bases, using your phone.

Maybe add highly upgraded weapons and ammo in sufficient quantity to penetrate strong defense and destroy targets in counter attacks. This will reduce the confidence gap between small and large countries.

Such features will make it easier to defend.

Why would anyone raise their war level, to PvP levels, if there is nothing to deter an attacker for initiating a war on them for little risk?

It is important to look at this from both sides. I don't understand why we are only looking at it from the aggressor side, when we have not solved the problem for the majority of the player base who never raise their war level and effectively opt out of the war game. Allowing attacking nations a free hand to do damage for no risk is a fundamental problem in the war game. Choose not to solve this, and the war game remains broken.

The better alternative is create an environment where federation provide the protection and provide the necessary deterrent to player action. If an attacker can choose what to risk and the defender cannot, it is terrible and un-intuitive to the game experience, creating a real problem for anyone to enter the world of federations and PvP (especially new players).

"The warring parties are full members, don't want to lose their money. we can try to enforce some war experience before they get involved in PvP wars. "

-This was the entire reason for my War College idea, that has been posted on the appropriate forum and pushed by me for years. I can only assume that you had the opportunity to look it over in that time and have found a better solution to prepare players for PvP, though nothing exists currently nor has been announced as forthcoming. War College was an excellent introduction to my Battlegrounds (revised) suggestion as well.

"More alerts that send you messages if war is declared, starts, attacks are launched etc."

-I reported that alerts for expiring entities and for declarations of war used to work, and are now broken. I have reported this multiple times. In the current state of the game, someone can overlook logging in for a few days and lose their empire, without ever having received an email (to either expiration or PvP war).

'Natural resources can add an incentive for war. "

-I am willing to add more to this discussion. I have more ideas, but I am awaiting your comments on the framework I proposed. As you know, there is intentional malice for having a larger empire. One of my suggestions, for example, described how natural resources would enter the game. This would occur through player purchase with gold coins. It is important not to expect existing players to expand their current empires, with the larger empire malice intact, to take advantage of this feature.

My full description of my outline of natural resources now exists on multiple threads, and, like War College, has been there for years. I await comment to see if it is worthwhile for me to contribute further to this idea.

"This will reduce the confidence gap between small and large countries."

-I am somewhat concerned about this language and similar that typically is recited by new players. It seems to come from the thinking that the experience is almost solo-player. That it is always one player against another player. This seems inherently flawed, because my impression is the goal of the game experience is a Massively Multi-Player one. Many solutions seem to overlook that fact.

I wonder what our goal is. Is it to sell this game as an experience where you are alone in the woods playing the game all by yourself or one in which you are part of a community of other nations and players. My ideas always push the later idea, but it seems so many solutions push a single-player experience. That seems fatal to the mission of this game.

This game should push the Massive Multi-Player experience it is meant to be. Remember that countries don't fight countries. Players fight players who should seek assistance from other players and be part of federations. If this is not happening, something is wrong until it is happening. Right now, it isn't happening.


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Oh, I just saw the ammo question. No, you cannot upgrade stored ammo. It was thrown around that an update could change this but nothing ever came to fruition. Honestly, there are large problems with the war game anyway, so it is not something I bring up. If larger issues were resolved, I could bring to the attention of the forums a list of fixes I see as a lessor priority.

'I think Putin wants more risk. Nuclear or not.
Also more risk to large and rich players.
not an existential risk but wars that cause devastation.

Small players should be able to deter and respond forcefully. '

This. One hundred percent this.

^^^^

See? Small and large players should be in federations. Balance should be found there. This type of thinking encouraging game design is dangerous. Honestly, this game is not a good single player game. I have played single player strategy games, and still do, that are much better. If Simcountry attempts to compete with these games, it will lose. It must be the Massively Multiplayer experience that we came here for.

Federation wars are even better but then too, you must be able to forcefully defend.

and what about a large federation attacking a single player of a small federation of new players?

do we need to push everyone into two or three huge federations?

will they fight? Devastation could be immense and just pulverize them.