Thoughts on Tiny Alpha

Andy,

A few items I have observed.

1. Wind turbines are too bulky to transport by shuttle. This is a major drag to provide electricity. Can turbines be moved to direct trading? Or lower the requirements to build them on TA?

2. Selling items to corporations needs a better screen. Ideally a list of all corporations with the ability to quickly sell the appropriate items from stock.

3. Earthquakes on TA are a pox that makes a difficult job even harder, can they be suspended to get more poeple involved?

I agree, Tiny Atlas has been established long enough that trading between countries on Atlas should be fluent. Earthquakes are a nuisance not needed at this point. Mining needs to be established, ridiculous to believe with present technology we would not be able to build mining corps over the expense of mining then shuttling products to Atlas. lowering the requirement to build wind turbines would be nice.
Rob

yea, what they said, TA needs more than one upgrade.

I've been wanting to go to Tiny Atlas for awhile
Biggest issues I've heard or what has prevented me

- Only 1 targon deposit is not enough each nations should have a few at least

- No other natural resources doesn't make sense. There should be other deposits of basic natural resources to get things started.

- Simplify needed products... To be honest in my free time I have been writing up a couple of corps that would be unique to the space game allowing more in-depth gameplay, while simplifying the supply chain.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I'm currently building new corps, which I want to propose to service Tiny Atlas.
Such corps would allow new mechanics and gameplays to thrive
They would all be used by countries on Tiny Atlas(and other space entities).
Simply put, instead of shipping "Services, construction, and military services" a corporation could be built to produce:

"Inter-Planetary services"

Tiny Atlas countries would then consume this resource instead of those resources.
This would allow more strategic production on other planets, while simplifying the supply chain.

Inter-Planetary services (includes the use of Services, Military Services, Construction)
Inter-Planetary maintenance (Road, Rail, Water, Asset)

These are just some suggestions

We intend to add new special products on Tiny Atlas.
we have recently reduced the pace of changes as it created a lot of discussions and unrest.
we think that a more stable environment is better.

Electric power on Tiny Atlas

I have a country on Tiny Atlas and I produce much more electric power than my country and all its corporations need.

I tried to move wind turbines by Cargo shuttles.
moved a couple of hundreds and gave up. it was indeed slow.

Instead, I have built many corporations on Tiny Atlas, producing wind turbines and now have 6 corporations (maybe more) producing Wind Farms.

This is in fact the main product of the country.
Earnings from Electric power are now so high, the entire economy of the country is based on that income and the country is very profitable.

For anyone playing on Tiny Atlas, services are the least of our problems.
these can be transported, in large quantities without the need for cargo shuttles.

Trading on Tiny Atlas

I think we all want the market on Tiny Atlas to work
However, most of the countries are C3's and if the market opens, they will place many thousands of orders on the market and we will not be able to get any products at all.

The orders will accumulate for ever and the situation will become absurd.
There is a need for at least 200 countries on Tiny Atlas that produce a lot of products and able to supply the markets.

we are not there yet.

We intend to add more incentives for players to go to Tiny Atlas, develop countries and gain advantages in the game for doing so.

Players with countries there will be the first to gain from new features that will be added.

Tiny Atlas will become a major source for natural resources, both ones that are only available on Tiny Atlas but also other resources that are becoming less available and more expensive on the other worlds.

we intend to discover more Targon but also other resources.

Firstly

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

we have recently reduced the pace of changes as it created a lot of discussions and unrest. Andy<!-/Quote-!>

I strongly disagree with that statement, but I'll stop at that.

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

There is a need for at least 200 countries on Tiny Atlas that produce a lot of products and able to supply the markets. Andy<!-/Quote-!>

While I can follow the logic. Their are currently 33 player countries, and what, half-ish? are GM countries not doing anything useful. Just how realistic, is to expect players to endure, how long?

The suggestion, has been to make auto-buy for player-controlled countries only. With a strong need for basic game features, like natural resources.

The GM has one country on TA and the country is very active.

35 corporations producing wind turbines and 7 producing wind farms.

there are many more corporations and population over 100M.
We are not expecting anything.
What I said is that for the market to fully open, you need at least 200 countries with a president or the market will fail.
we do not have these numbers as you counted recently.

If we add more players and more incentives the numbers will grow.
getting to 200?
That is far away and we cannot currently expect the markets to work.

We will add natural resources in the coming weeks.
both new ones and start with some that are also available on the other worlds.

I do not understand the "Auto Buy" suggestion.
where will these products these countries want to buy, come from?

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

We will add natural resources in the coming weeks.
both new ones and start with some that are also available on the other worlds. -Andy<!-/Quote-!>

See this, is what you needed to say, (and follow thru) like months ago. We are playing a game. While it is SimCountry, the endurance aspect, in this way, doesn't sell.

While the player consensus, is that lack of Natural Resources, and other feature, make TA very un-attractive, when players say that, you folks have a tendency to have the attitude, "You can't tell us what to do," and a ridiculous situation gets worse, and the players get mad, or give up trying. Making your long term goals for TA less viable.

The idea of Tiny Atlas was the introduction of new metals, as new natural resources, only available on Tiny Atlas.
these material can be used in new weapons and ammunition that can be produced elsewhere.

This was the setup and it was done.

We also said, that gradually, more such products will be introduced and be used in the production of more new products.

This is and remains the plan.

At a later stage, we came up with the possibility to produce Uranium on TA, and also as a result of some players requests and ideas, we concluded that the production of other natural resources might be a good idea.

We do not see this as a way to resolve the problem of lack of products on TA.
From the start, it was clear that everything you need, must come form the 5 existing planets.

For some, it was too complex and they decided not to play on TA.

We think that in time, with more products and incentives, it will become more interesting and profitable to play on TA.

The planet is very small by design. We did not expect very large numbers.

For most players, the 5 large planets are OK.
we do not push anyone into TA.

Maybe remind you what happened with the tournament world that was requested and promoted by players some time ago.
A lot of effort went into creating that worlds that had players consensus.

At the end, 3 players registered, one of the was the gamemaster.

we have to be careful about what exactly we do, what players really want and how fast we introduce changes.
Many players do not like changes and say that we are changing the game rules while they play.

Most new features are first hated, then, sometimes used.

Wind farms were greeted by a lot of negativity and the most asked question was: "how can I removed them". At the end, two players asked them to be removed.
we said all the time that they will be very profitable but the consensus was very negative.
Some parameters had to be changed but the consensus remained negative no matter what.
One player had a specific idea and wanted to force it into the game but it was not a good idea at all.
Now they are used a lot and they are very profitable.
We think that they are essential on TA.

Similar episodes happened in the past with other new features.

we have many more features we think will be interesting but making sense and interesting does not win.

I do not think that new players come here because of the new features they expect from us in the future.
How many new features do we need?

Maybe it is more important to fix some of those we already have.
I just improved two little things. The spending space and the workers exchange numbers. Players asked for these fixes. These changes were greeted positively.

""I do not understand the "Auto Buy" suggestion.
where will these products these countries want to buy, come from?

I mean a couple product are in the green. But nobody buys them, I would like my country to order these automatically. I understand my order might not get fill, but at least the price of the product will increase because of demand, and then maybe another player will want to build them and make a profit? The way it is now, product are in the green, my country have shortage but it isn't buying the available items.

Like literally we are just asking that player can turn on the already existing feature " Automatic placing orders for products that your country needs"

Turn it off by default and then if I turn it on, my country will put a buy order on the market. Let the magic do the rest.


[url=https://postimg.cc/mh7dk4hX][img]https://i.postimg.cc/v8NCPHys/Screenshot-20240123-092117-Chrome.jpg[/img][/url]

Also while we are at it,

Why can CEO on tiny atlas only create 20 corporations in the same country?

This limit is 30 in every other worlds AFAIK.

Nowhere it tells you this kind of crucial information.

I am not aware of this limitation on TA.
I will look into it.

Andy,

"Maybe it is more important to fix some of those we already have."

I agree, new features are nice, but proper bugfixing and maintenance for existing features, is more important.

Making sure that features work properly, is more important than having 'more' features.

Quality is more important than quantity.

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

We intend to add more incentives for players to go to Tiny Atlas, develop countries and gain advantages in the game for doing so.

Players with countries there will be the first to gain from new features that will be added.<!-/Quote-!>

I have no issue with this. I understand TA is a major project the GMs have decided to proceed with. New weapon types that are difficult to build is a fun idea.

Despite the fact that I fight in many wars and likely could utilize those new weapons, TA is unattractive for me because of the required playstyle, not because of the reward.

While I understand the idea is to make TA a challenging environment, it's tough to find the right balance between "challenging" and "not worth my time." I say that without judgement, and only to comment that I hope some quality of life features will improve the quality of gameplay on TA. Things like that take time to figure out.

Last thought: Much like I could have imagined a war tournament world failing in a game where almost no one fought player wars, I imagine TA will remain limited in player count in a game where self-supply is mostly unused, inefficient, and unprofitable on core planets. The basic mechanics involved are foreign to most players and clunky to use on top of the other hurdles involved with TA. I will continue to hope improvements will be made in general to self-supply, common markets, and contracting.

Best wishes on the project.

Is TA a world where the country self-supplies itself by building the corps needed to supply the country? When I first played this game (many years ago) that is what I tried to do until I quickly realized it was not profitable.

I can't build Targon factories with my Enterprise Wilsons? This message comes up!

"Sorry, only small Enterprises can build Mining corporations."

thats normal, you can only build mining corps on any world if your below 100 corps. its the reason i've had 88 corps in my TA CEO all this time. got some ear marked for deletion with the new stuff coming out.

this one tho, i'd say the GM should leave alone, their are only 600ish countries on TA, with one targon deposit each. their are enough CEOs at this moment, to use it all up

double post some how, please delete this one.

Thanks Josias.