W3C - Game Update December 5

Federations Bug

An error in the federation section is fixed.
When trying to inspect details about any federation, the page showed the countries in the federation and other data about your own federation, not the one you were looking at.

it is now working correctly.

Quality of products you order

When ordering products, the max quality is 330.
When you create automatic settings, the max quality was 300.
we now allow the automatic settings to be set to 330.

The Financial Index

Changes in the financial index are now a bit slower.
Before, the financial index was subject to a major change in the first month of each year. The change does take place as before, but it takes several game moths before it is fully materialized.

Cost of Weapons and ammunition

Many types of weapons and ammunition are now a bit cheaper. The cost reduction, like many before, is not very large but it adds up to many previous reductions. The trend will continue.

Empires

The maintenance cost for empires is reduced, especially for empires of up to 7 or 8 countries.
The change is not large but with recent changes, allowing for easier buildup of empires, the cost reduction will make it easier to maintain such empires.

Documentation and Hints

we are continuing the update of many documents.
We are also trying to make the hints on many pages clearer and shorter. This is a major effort and will be done in stages, gradually improving the documentation set.

Messages and mail

work is underway to add a feature that will allow players to receive mail messages when their game account receives a message.

The feature can be disabled.
It will probably take a while longer before it is completed.

That's wonderful! Thanks for fixing that and updating everything.

Good changes all around.

very good

Thank you, Son, for all your hard work. :-D

Also included in the update, but not in the patch notes.

1). Base price for several non-military goods has been changed. All natural resources, now have a lower base price. Electric Power now has a higher base price. Many others likely changed as well, but I haven't had time to look through every product, and only products at their price maximum/minimum make these changes visible to players. So others will have changed as well, that I can't see.

2). Market protection has been enabled for Natural Resources. This means that when a shortage is severe, the GM's automatic market protection system will sell that product on the world market, to prevent Corps from shutting down due to resource shortages. (This is the only explanation I could find for the sudden appearance of massive amounts of new supply on the market, despite the fact that production continues to decline. This new supply is proportional to the degree of the shortage. Which is exactly how Market protection works in Simcountry).

3). Birth rates have been reduced again. This is part of the ongoing process of reducing the natural stabilization population, for premium players, to ~100M population.

There will likely have been other changes as well. But these are the ones I have been able to isolate as being deployed as part of this update. The GMs could likely provide a more complete list than me.

Thank you Daniel. excellent!

Nearly all true.

The base price of Nat resources is not changed.
The max price shot out of our balancing procedure and was reduce by 1%.

The procedure that adds products for natural resources was there from the start. It is also increased by 2% because shortages create a danger of wider damage to industries.

I am not sure this is enough.

birth rates are declining a bit for months. We have announced it several months ago, putting a target for high population countries at around 90 to 100M.
Numbers remain higher.
The changes are about 0.05% or less.
despite this, the population in the game increased recently by many billions and we are looking into the reasons.
we should not fall back into the reverse distribution of population we had about a year ago.

ANDY i normally cannot stand some thing that are done in this game but today you did something that was worth my thanks

thank you for what you have done with this new update

Robert,

Thanks.
you reported a clear bug. it was easy to check and easy to fix.
I love clear bug reporting.
It is an opportunity to make it better.

Hello Andy,

I would like to report another very clear bug.
When I build a strategic carier group it does not matter what I put in it, it will say: You do not have the required weapons for this unit and the button next will stay 'gray'

But when i fill it up with ships (for example 1400 cruise missle ships) and press the still gray next button it will still form the fleet.

Thank you for your time,

Have a nice day!

I have the same bug Senna but thankfully it does not prevent you from deploying the fleet.

Andy,

Thank you, to you and the team, for all the work you put into the game for everyone. I really appreciate it.

Simcountry players are often intellectuals with a love of detail. So there is no game change so small, that we wouldn't want to be able to read about it, in the update notes :D

Often the guessing about what might have changed, can actually cause more confusion and disruption for players, than the actual changes.

The market protection increase seems to have had a big impact. We've gone from impending resource apocalypse, to business as usual, in a single update. 2% Seems very small for the size of the impact it had. How is the 2% calculated?

As for population increases recently, several players have noticed it too. I've found that it seems to be effecting age groups over 50 the most. With age brackets below 24 declining as normal. Even though I haven't opened new hospitals.

Several of us have noticed that C3's don't seem to be building mining corporations, or don't build them often. If extreme shortages for mining products persist, that might be part of the cause.

Quite a few more products seem to be in surplus after this update. I'm guessing it's mostly due to corporations being able to produce again. Now that they aren't stalled due to a lack of resource inputs. Overall, it's good to see a more dynamic market.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

I'm finding this update very unfair. Balta, my main with a pop of 30m has been devastated almost instantly. Its gone from steadily increasing pop to losing 60k+ citizens EVERY MONTH.
It feels like something that isnt my fault and more of a hard cap that is being placed on the player, which makes no sense because why should there be limits to how much you can develop or grow?

I thought the point of the game was to be a free to play nation management sim, where you build your own country up to be powerful.
As is, playing is literally useless esp as a free player because with the new pop changes , there is nothing you can do to improve your nation and change anything in a meaningful manner

Sorry for my rant but this bad to be said at some point because it really damages my appreciation of the game when its practically instantly completed the moment you log in

(cont.)
Anyway really it is damaging the game. If many of these caps were simply turned from hard caps to soft caps (aka can be pushed beyond limits but gets more difficult), and the game was made more interactive and player actions more meaningful (so their choices, corps, etc actually have an effect), there would be no player count issue in the first place

@Cycrillix

Over 8% of your population is older then 80 and almost 20% of your population is older then 65. That is an insane amount! It is inevitable that a population like that is going to shrink at some point. This update might have had something to do with it. That is possible. But even without this update it was going to happen.

In about 45-50 game years your population is going to shrink again. It does not matter what you do these are the consequences of your demographics.

@ Andy
You guys have done a lot of work over the past 6 months and for that I would like to compliment you guys. Personally I think it is weird that a 2% change is making this big of an impact but that could just be me.

As for the population increase it happend after the last update. It almost felt like a small setting had been changed. I understand what you guys want to do. But why not let it be like this? It is not causing any problems...

@Letsie

Before the update, my birth rate was rising, average age was actually DECREASING, and I was having success modifying my demographics.

As soon as the update was rolled out, my birth rate began tanking, average age began tanking, and my average age started going into an endless increase because all of the people that are dying are actually my workers & young pops.

It would be understandable if gradually I declined in population and my population gradually aged, in which case yes, then it would be my fault.

But that isn't how it is.

Instead it's an instant 180 from decreasing age, rising births & birth rate, and healthier demographics to rapidly increasing avg age, plummeting births & birth rate. That isn't my fault. That's the game's and the devs fault for forcing through such a cap like this

Thank you Andy for your update it is nice to see you are working so hard but is it true what cyc is saying?

Just to be clear, I am a free player as well and I know about cycs 'experimental' country. If this is true then it affects me as well.

Cycrillix, Senna,

There is a cap of 20M population for 'Free to Play' players. Some players manage to overshoot it for a short period of time. However, ultimately the cap will bring their population back down.

Being able to increase your population above the 20M cap, is one of the main benefits of going Premium. If you want a large population, you have to get a Premium account. Otherwise, plan your nation around a long term population of no more than 20M.

Nearly all of the game's features are available for free, to everyone. However, growing your population to ~80-100M, is only an option for 'Premium Players'.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

There has been a soft cap of around 19-20M Pop for as long as I can remember. The procedure that controls this has been altered recently to be more reliable.
Free countries used to regularly overshoot (and then correct) which caused big fluctuations in population.
The caps haven't changed, only the enforcement has become more reliable.

We won't be raising caps for free players.

We will check the strategic carriers group and the reported error. Thank you for alerting us.
I will get back here when I have an answer/plan.

The change in the natural resource management was very small. It did flip the shortages from impossible to just about manageable.

It did not change the fact that there are very very large shortages on all natural resources.

so players are not doing much to resolve the problem.

Our plan is to let the price increase more and stimulate players to take more action.
In the mean time, the small interventions in the market will prevent it from falling over.

The population cap is in place for a very long period.
However, there are some more corrections we had to do to prevent other problems in the population model and the fix for that, was sometimes, to allow some age groups to cross the limits.

We have seen that many countries had population numbers that exceeded 20M, sometimes by a large margin and we are correcting it.

Free players max population is between 19 and 20M.

As Daniel Iceling said, this is one of the main differences between free accounts and full member accounts.

Our aim is not to place many servers running free accounts although we love to see many players.

Our aim to to survive and keep Simcountry running. For that, we need more people to support the effort and become full members.

We probably need to ask Starbucks for a free Grande Latte every month and have the money for a month of full membership.

We thank everyone who is supporting us by being full members.

Andy,

can you allow to build multiple corporations on the same resource? That would help in a short time.

If the game was made more dynamic, and the free game made more enticing, player retention would be higher and you would get more players and more premium players in the long run

Most players that join Simcountry leave because of these arbitrary limits on free and premium players, and every player that leaves is one less chance for another Premium player.

In my opinion, I would allow Free and Premium players to reach the same levels, but simply give Premium players bonuses such as increased growth, and other various benefits, and maybe troops and mechanics unique to Premium players but not in a way that would limit free players.

Encouraging player retention and increasing the number of free players increases the potential number of premium players drastically

wanting something for nothing

Dear Cyc,

You have played Simcountry for how long now as a free player? From what I've read, you've reached your limits in the game of what free play allows. Why don't you go premium for the full Simcountry experience? That is your next step. :-) We would love to have you as a premium member.

As for limits, restrictions........you are an economic player. I don't think there are that many restrictions on the economic part of the game. Matter of fact, the GMS have created more levels and opportunities for awards and such over the years. Come experience the true challenges and complexities of Simcountry. Come over to the premium side!

Actually, Wicked, thank you for asking but the answer is no, I dont want to upgrade to Premium because by the looks, Premium has the same issue except on a larger scale, instead of capping out at 10m they cap at 100m.
I would have already paid probably hundreds of dollars already if the game did not have these caps, or at least made it possible to go past them.

As for the economic freedoms, you are absolutely incorrect. It has gotten even worse recently, as a lot of economic power comes from workers, which are currently being killed off. In addition, Free players can no longer build resource corps, and we already couldnt build many good corps since we cant advance past Level 3.

As for the rewards, it is basically physically impossible for me to get rewards. I dont get rewards for levelling up as a free player (which isnt that much of an issue because gc is not required to play), and I found its literally impossible as a free player to get enough score to get monthly rewards. Closest rank I got to was rank 23.

Continuing with why I dont want Premium, I think the devs strategy to get sales and premium payers is quite frankly, absurdly rude and agressive. The game has no growth, no experience or fun as a free player. It is borderline extortion. At least in other games, you are given enough experience and content to get you hooked before you essentially have to pay money just to keep playing--- in Simcountry it just feels like you get a free account and are immediately put at gunpoint to buy Premium