W3C - Planned update to to Simcountry (not war related)

Matty, you seem to be assuming that defensive weapons won't require maintenance and only the cost of offensive weapons will increase.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You'd get bored after the first 10,000 clicks.

After 20,000 you'll be wondering what the fuck you are doing with your life.

After 30,000 your wife has left you out of sexual frustration and your cat has died of neglect.

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?

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.

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.

"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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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:

1. Player declares war as now - no changes
2. 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
3. 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.

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.

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.