Questions About Game News (Little Upsilon)

1. Will Intra-Empire professional transfers count against the Migration Index?

2. Will Migration only occur between between player countries?

3. Will unit training be implemented soon?

4. With the implementation of the Welfare Index, are higher game levels now reachable?

I would actually like to see these "quality upgrade" kits introduced now, before the quality feature is introduced, so I can get a head start on my upgrading!

Will they just be for the weapons/ammo in deployed units, or can we use them on our stockpiles as well?

Also, can you tell us a little about how exactly a 250Q Fighter plane with 250Q OA2A missile will function as opposed to a 100Q plane with 100Q missiles? Or any weapon system/ammo...

I would like to be able to plan how this will affect my armed forces and adjust accordingly. But overall, I'm excited - sounds like a great change :D

I too would like to see the upgrades available more quickly.

Will there be increased maintenance costs for the higher quality weapons?

It also looks like we added a few corp types that use Solid Fuel. I have been building these lately. The break even point for these corps is actually quite low.

If we could get the GM to stop adding stock so the price could go up we would see good profits we a small price increase.

Surely what would be negative from transfering out of one country will be positive to the receiving country so Platos first point is moot.
Point two, ?, who cares?
Point three, the news does say.
Point four, the welfare index has always been 'implemented', as long as I've been here at least, in fact its a vey important index, so I cant see it effecting levels any differently than it does now.

Will you guys stop worrying about such trivial matters and wait to see what happens...

Crafty

Errare est humanum.

I had in my mind the Development Index when I was wondering about higher levels.

I personally enjoy even trivial details - a personal foible of mine. The littlest trivial details often become useful. I remember during a particularly fun war on FB when Danneh Turner took down my "invincible" fleet while I was asleep by sending drones at it one at a time. That was an expensive lesson learned. Or when in the same war, Treasurer stopped a land invasion cold though vastly out-numbered by putting 100's of 1 jeep units in the way so that he could not be painted.

The devil is in the details and so are the advantages.

Doesn't anyone else wonder what might happen if a 500Q nuclear missile comes calling and the defense is a 1XXQ NDM. Is it possible that in the future nuclear attacks may become possible against low quality defense? Could be an interesting angle to check on later.

Errare est homo...

or, Erratus est homo... maybe

or, Errare est homines...

or, Errati est homines...

Latin is so fun.

Shh. Trying to get a few days off from school here retro. No more latin! :S

@ Crafty

2) of course it matters where people migrate. If people migrate to random countries with better welfare index(or migration), then you have to improve your indexes. But if people will migrate to countries around them, then it's a different story. same if it's within the empire. So it's quite important to know where people migrate to. I guess it will be in random countries with better indexes, but there are many possibilities.


There is nothing trivial about these details, as we all have a window to adjust our countries.

I also have a question on army units being stronger with quality : Are the indexes going to be calculated differently and taking more into account the quality of weapons in countries?

- Professional transfers have no influence on migration or on the welfare index.

- Migration occurs between any countries in the world.

- Unit training is planned for the end of this year or very early next year. we are already checking the war engine for the changes we need. Variations both ways are possible.

- The welfare index is not new. The influence of population transfer is new. You probably mean the development index which is not implemented yet. We will add more levels in the coming weeks and many more when Game missions are implemented.

- We have added weapons grade components today. It is a first product that will be used in these upgrades. Upgrades will be used 1 per weapon in a unit. so to upgrade a unit with 2000 weapons you will need 2000 and more for the ammunition. This may be costly but: the quality is planned to be linear.

- The upgrading will be limited to entire units.Product quality will count at 50% when the weapons are used in the units. so weapon quality will help some.

- The maintenance cost will remain unchanged but units, and also many products, will see their quality decline very slowly, in time.

- we are not adding solid missile fuel to the market. we are converting more missile corporations to use it. 2 or 3 each week.

Migration goes from countries with a very low migration index to countries with a very high migration index.
Between very low and very high there is a large gap with no migration.

I will publish the exact numbers in the game news next week.

Thankyou for your efforts Tom in keeping us informed and answering questions promptly.

Sounds like some interesting stuff and could certainly be changes for the positive for the war engine. One question, currently we can use LRP's to inspect units, garrisons, etc., will we be able to see the quality of the garrison/units inspected? It sounds like it would be information that would be absolutely necessary when planning for war, etc...so I was just wondering if that was thought about.

Anyway, thanks for the hard work lately...so many updates this month.

Tom,

It sounds like you all plan to use the Weapons Grade Components to upgrade units. I hope that we will be able to upgrade garrisons, as well.

Tom,

Will weapon quality or unit training affect the Defensive Index?

This is good to know.

I have another question though about migration index:
Does transferring population between two countries that I own affect it? Not professional transfer from the employment page or buying/selling pop for GC, just the transfers that are allowed on the empire page.

The level of the migration index below which emigration occurs is supposed to be 26, as per game news ("Migration Details." I have a few countries whose indexes dipped below 26, but are now in the low 30s, still experiencing emigration. I even have one country with a migration index of 41 (Paradise Lost) losing 20,000 people per month to emigration.

It also says in game news that "The numbers also depend on the total number of migrants who have left their countries." In what way, positive feedback or negative feedback? And is it supposed to continue even after the migration index is above 26?

Game news says "Migration numbers could become larger if the country was involved in selling its population in the preceding period." All the countries experiencing this did sell population on the cash market. But none since Nov 15, over a real-life month ago. So I'm wondering, how long is a 'period'??

I think the migration/emigration feature is a great addition, a real disincentive to keeping a country in trashy shape. However...I think a little GM attention to how the emigration ends when the country is fixed would be in order.

There are in fact two migration movements.
One depends on the migration index and it stops when the index reaches 26.

The other depends on your sales of population for gold coins.
that type of migration causes more migration out of your country as a follow up.
selling population is a bad signal for the economy and of what you think of the country when you sell the population off and they vote with their feet.

this can go up to 20.000 per game month.

I will try to explain this more clearly than in the recent game news.

Tom, approximately what is needed to get the migration index to pass 75? For a large country (80m+), would the increase in migration be worth it in terms of the cost needed to keep the index that high? I'm thinking in terms of trying to stem the population die-off for large countries.

20,000 per game month, that's 80,000 per real life day on FB, or 2.4 million per real month. For how many real life months must one pay for the sin of selling some pop?! Or does it just become a permanent feature of the country?

On the other hand, I sold some pop from a migration index=56 country yesterday, and it still has incoming migration, albeit small. So I guess you just transfer from the crummy country to the good country, and sell from there. Oops, maybe that should be a secret.

I'm just saying the feature might need a little adjusting.

I have you guys looked at the economic game level requirements. Do you think you could pull that off without getting raided? 25T average cash at level 10.

I am sorry to see newly conquered countries not counting against your averages for a week. I have used this to drop my score before the end of the month when going for the top award. Now I guess I will just change over to the economic levels.

Sure, it could be done. Stuff 125T into your main and put it out in loans.

Needing 5 countries for level 10 is pretty extreme though. 10 countries for 14!!

It's easier to just build an army Though, this should help new players at early game levels.

Is it even possible to hold a population of 120 million people in 15 countries without having to constantly inject new population?

the migration index depends on indexes you want to increase anyway.

it depends on the level of payments to social security receivers (indirectly linked to salary levels in the country), the welfare index and the business index which is a measure of corporations utilization.

The welfare index depends on all the basic indexes like education, health, transportation, employment etc.

If you increase your game level, your migration index will probably increase too.

Country "Paradise Lost," migration index is up to 49, yet the country is still losing 20,000 per month due to emigration.

Last sale of pop for gold coins was Nov 15.

Game news says "Migration numbers could become larger if the country was involved in selling its population in the preceding period."

My question to the GM still is: how long is the 'period'?

No one else seems to care about this issue. I'm guessing that's because most people who sell population are in the process of stripping the country. Or, maybe you sold one or two million and are having trouble with your workers and keeping a stable population but don't realize what the source of the problem is. Or, possibly I'm the only one experiencing this problem.

What problem? I have six countries that are losing from 7,000 to 20,000 pop per month due to negative migration. Why? I believe it is because I sold a few million pop from those six countries in mid-November, and the new migration rules include an ongoing migration penalty when you sell population. Is it a big deal? 20,000 per game month, that's over 2 million per real month. That's up to 8 gc per month per country involved, sort of.

Why not just get the migration index up over 55, won't you get positive migration then? Well, that's difficult when you're losing workers. I did it with one country, Paradise Lost, the MI is now up to 56. It was losing 20,000 per game month, now "only" 16,000. Perhaps if I get the MI to 60 it will stabilize.

Is this a permanent feature of a country, or does it wear off after a while? So far it doesn't seem to be wearing off, after 6 real weeks.

Is anyone else experiencing, or not experiencing, this problem? I mean, if you've sold any population in the past month or so, could you describe what your migration numbers are, and what the MI currently is? And what those values had been if you were watching them before?