New Home Page (Little Upsilon)

I find many of the screens hard to read with the green background.

switch to red or some other color then

i personally like the blood red one

What I don't like is logging into my messages and getting the same message for 45 different new messages. Something is wrong.....

Also, it appears to be a little bit of room at the bottom of the page, can we keep the newspaper in the open, with the option to minimize, maybe...?

i also think it needs a bit more fixing on this.

Still, from the new interface, i am getting duplicate message for all new messages. I have 69 new and have yet to see what they say.

I know it isn't on my end becuase on my LU main i have the old interface, and i read all new messages fine, just something to look into before you guys make this permanent.

I'm not sure how I feel about the new home page. Instead of making it more intuitive, as the W3C team probably hoped, I think it instead now suffers from an information overload. Whereas navigation may have been difficult for new players on the standard home page because they are unsure of which link goes to what, the new page - in my opinion - simply throws too much in your face. But, as always, I hope W3 will refine their latest improvement. They have been particularly good about that in the past year or so.

The new page is completely UGLY.

I hope that they will allow players to keep the old format on, and somehow get rid of that useless popup that says you can switch back.

I saw, disliked and switched back.

I barely tolerate the ugliness of the portal page.

would it look prettier with a train running across it?

The country page would not look "prettier"

but if train transportation were introduced, I think the gameplay would be greatly improved.

You fail to specify how.

Edit: Let me be kinder. Manny, I am not against your suggestions or any suggestions for additions to the game. However, when the advantages that would be added to gameplay are not clearly specified it leaves me thinking it would be a feature "just because it would be cool." We don't need more superfluous junk added to the game (like the street maps) ahead of more essential fixes or exciting depth-adding features.

You give me a run-down of how you'd like to see trains implimented and they ways they would/should affect the game + the strategies they would add for players... I will then sign on.

-Wild

Alright then. I will produce an extensive analysis and explanation on how the introduction of "trains" will be beneficial to SimCountry above the obvious "trains are needed for train tracks and traintracks without trains are useless" analysis.

Manny

I would appreciate that, because the "trains are needed for train tracks and traintracks without trains are useless" analysis entirely misses the point of distinguishing "useful additions" and "superfluous additions"

Let me get you started, for example... if you were to suggest a way in which more train tracks and perhaps high quality locomotive engines would aid in the war-time supply system. That would be great. Perhaps a productivity bonus to corps for the ability to transport large quantities of supplies and end-products cheaply?

There are two good ideas for you. Much better than your idea to include advertising fees for corporations that you suggested in Jozi chat.

Things that raise costs for players without and benefit down the line = bad suggestions.

Things that potentially add benefits or create new ways to run countries = good suggestions.

You make both kinds of suggestions quite frequently, Manny. IMO, Laguna, Jozi, Tommi, et. all, would take you far more seriously if you learned to distinguish between the two and create supporting arguments or at least supplemental ideas for how your suggestions can be the latter.

I actually don't mind the new page too much, I can see how it could be info overload for some, but I actually like the large amount of information being so readily available. However I do have one big complaint, when looking at another country with the new format the 'Map Customization' option is not available which makes things much easier when looking at defenses/garrisons etc since some objects can't be clicked on either because they are not displayed or there are units on top of them.

Am I overlooking a link in the new homepage for education priorities and worker transfers? I am still going through the GENERAL Tab for Important Things To Do to get to these 2 screens.

Thanks Petra/Wild.

I started the research already. I should be able to present you with a report/study in early Jan.

P.S. I never suggested advertizing fees for corps. I don't even understand your reference. What are/would be advertizing fees ?

Thanks for your comments!

I will discuss all these points with an engineer in the coming week and we will make corrections where needed and possible.

As to the amount of information on the screen:
you can just remove whatever you do not want or don't like and it will not come back unless you put it back.

You can remove the map, or any of the widgets. You can move them around by clicking on the headers as on the portal page and change the configuration of the page.

You can also change colors of fonts, background, titles etc. and your screen will look very differently.

The messages:
we received a couple of complaints on this and obviously something is wrong. There was no detailed explanation but if it is a general problem, we will find it.

Education priorities have never been on the country home page but rather in the menu at the top, under departments--> education etc.
this remained unchanged.

There are indeed some problems with readability and color choices. Some of the pages have not been updated.
This will be corrected coming Tuesday.

In the coming weeks we will add:

The automation button in the header will lead to a page that will allow you or mainly beginners, to request automatic running of some aspects of their country like education, transportation, health but even more in depth, helping them prepare for a buildup of their defensive army.
Each of these options can be turned on or off.

The automatic system will not get them a top score but will make sure the essential things are done correctly.

To achieve higher levels, they will have to turn automation off.

We will also add a new button in that row, "What's next" or similar.

This will allow beginners see what they need to do and help them do it.
We have the important things to do but we want a better one, more context dependent, that will show a small number of items and lead beginners into some learning.

Any ideas on this are welcome. we are now listing the possible features on that page and will implement it ASAP.

We see this as essential and a problem for a long time. New players get to the country home page, look around and think:

Now what?

any answers you have, may help.

Happy new year to everyone.

Would the auto setting buy schools/hospitals/roads/tracks/water in quantities that a new country can afford? Make that part of the automation initially?

What about auto upgrades to corporations, and explanation about what they can do for a corp. Make that part of the initial automation initially?

If a new player doesn't know that 25 new corporations can't be added immediately, limit the number of new corps that can be built.

Once a new player takes over a country, automatic building of corporations should be turned off so that they don't end up with new corporations which supply a product which will already be in oversupply due to c3 overbuild. It can be turned back on by the player. This is one automatic system that seems to do more harm than good.

MAKE LINKS to the section of docmentation for each subject which make the final cut on your list. Of course the documentation needs to be correct.

YES, an updated documentation should be of high priority, especially weapon types that are not expalained in the detail section.

Also, any timeframe on Space station trading?

Thanks for the suggestions.
we will take this into account.

We will introduce targets for various indexes and in some cases, allow the user to decide on the target. we will take cash and profit and loss into account. sophistication always comes as an evolutionary process. we will do it in stages, trying to improve in time.

Automatic building corporations in C3 countries:

The current process only builds corporations producing products that are in short supply.

This may of course change overtime but at time of creation, there must be a shortage of 50+ corporations, most times it is 100+ and only several are being build before the next game month and a new evaluation of the market.

Tom, have you read the suggestion I made with regards to automation options for investment funds?

https://www.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/discus/board-auth.cgi?file=/8/14299.html&lm=1261324810

Just curious how possible it would be to do something like this.

Tom,

Can you please promise that that veterans and other players who want to keep the old layout will be able too.

I think the old format is great, and I hope I can keep it. Also, How do i get rid of the popup that says:

"Available now! A new layout for your country page. If you don't like it, you can revert to the old layout on the settings page. "

I reverted back to the old layout yet this annoying popup still shows up.

Petra,

I just read it now.

It makes sense and most of it is even easy to implement as we are now using our own limits and settings which means that the system is already in place and we just need to allow the users set their own parameters.

Some is new and will require more work.

Don't hold you breath but I will have it looked into in more details and have it written up for a developer. Then, I will have to wait for a development time slot.

I will try to have some of the easy parts implemented quickly.

Thank you very much, Tom.

So I guess my comment was ignored