W3C - Game Update March 12

Military Units

More balancing of military units.
some are smaller, many more are now larger.

Also some weapons were tuned.
Nuclear weapons are now more effective.

the aim is to create more balance between defensive and offensive weapons.

Weapon and Ammunition Pricing

we keep increasing the cost of nuclear weapons while the cost of defense is declining.
some offensive weapons slightly increased in price.

The Score

The computation of the score is updated again.
Changes are not very large and the score will probably decrease a bit for all countries.

The changes include an increase in the weight of game levels and the welfare index. The score includes the (welfare index - 100) * 50.
Each point increase in the welfare will increase the score by 50 points.
The welfare index depends on all the basic indexes, salary levels etc.
Other indexes are in fact eliminated from the score (long time ago) and the welfare index became more prominent.

The score is slow to change. Increasing the game level in the last days of the month will probably be late to create a major increase in the score.
The game level changes influence on the score will become even slower in April.
The score includes a game level factor of 150 points per level.

The Migration Index

The migration index is now mostly higher and changes more than before. Also the numbers of migrants is increased again.

we will look into the numbers and may tune them in the coming upgrades.
The intention is to make migration more significant, allowing more people to move between countries.

Corporations

Corporation sized continue to increase. Long term, countries will end up with a smaller number of corporations and also the game wide number of corporations will stabilize at slightly lower levels.

potential profitability is excellent.

Good changes except for the army unit changes. Andy you have made air defense even more impossible than ever before. By increasing air defense wings to 500, and interceptors wings to 500, you are looking at air defense responses of 1500 helicopters and 1500 interceptors. By simultaneously decreasing the size of offensive wings, the balance is very skewed toward defense now.

I think that increasing migration is very bad idea as countries are fighting against corona virus.

XDDDD

John Galt,

This is far outside my area of expertise, so correct the bits I get wrong/fill in the blanks...

On the Defense...
One Defensive Wing responds from the country that is being attacked.
One Defensive Wing responds from the country's Federation.
There are 500 Interceptors or Helicopters in a Defensive Air Wing.
So, that's 1000 Interceptors/Helicopters for the defender.
Where do the extra 500 come from to make it 1,500?
Also, isn't there a 1,000 weapons of the same type limit, in a single battle?

On the Offense...
A Long Range Division, can have upto 1,300 Offensive AA Batteries.
An Air Force Attack and Bombing Wing, can have 650 Fighter Planes.

So that is 1,000-1,500 Helicopters, vs, 1,000-1,300 Offensive AA Batteries.
Or 1,000-1,500 Interceptors, vs, 650 Fighter Planes.

With the exception of the smaller number of Fighter Planes, there doesn't seem to be much of a disadvantage to attackers.
Additionally, by having a ground unit nearby, I've read attackers get some kind of bonus to their air attacks?
That bonus might even out the playing field, for the Fighter Planes?

You get two wings from federation Daniel and one wing from the country being attacked.

The 1000 limit only applies to attack. There is no such limit for defense.

650 fighter planes vs 1500 interceptors is a futile battle.
1000 navy fighter planes vs 1500 interceptors or 1000 offensive AA vs 1500 helicopters will also be very difficult.

NFP have same damage as Interceptors but a slightly lower hit percentage and fire 3 fewer missiles. Offensive AA have slightly more damage but significantly lower hit rate and also fire fewer missiles. These weapons are completely outclassed.

The entire war game needs to be redone. The actual war engine is great, but all the weapons need to be reworked in my opinion. I dont care either way. I have insane amounts of every weapon so I will be fine no matter what changes they make. The war game is broken anyway.

Andy,

How is the migration index calculated?

The tool tip mentions 'welfare', 'wages' and 'employment'.
Is that still accurate?
Is it an average of those factors? Or is it a 'lowest value only', like when calculating Education, Transport, and Welfare Indexes.

If wages factor into Migration Index, does it use 'Industry Salary Index', 'Government Salary Index', or average earnings that include CEO wages?

When it says 'welfare' does that mean Welfare Index? Or Social Security Quality Index?

Daniel, wages and welfare do calculate greatly. However the recent changes seem to have made salaries more important in the calculations. My migration index has managed to hit a max, 200, likely a result because of my 4000 salary index

And yes, that does mean my low level workers are getting close to 200k salaries hahah.

Cyc, then your people can pay for trash pick-up. The complaints of people throwing trash over the border and abducting our goats are mounting. :/

That is a pretty high migration index Cyc! I just had a look at your country though and you only gained 230 migrants this month. It seems like there is still not enough people leaving their countries. Maybe if you change your capital city icon to look like the Statue of Liberty, more people will come haha.

Edit: My country Atlas Shrugged on LU gained 1100 migrants with an index of 63. I wonder if yours is much lower because you are close to the population cap already.

Cyc, as the Ruler of the Nevrondona Empire, I am going to need you to keep quiet about that LLW salary. My executives making 25k don't need to know about that.

John Galt, Andy,

It's not a shortage of people leaving their countries.
It's C3s taking most the migrants.
Most C3s I looked at, received over 500 incoming migrants per game month.

Ideally, C3s should sit at the break even level, where they don't give, or receive migrants.

Hahah. I am sorry, we will pay for the trash pickup!

And yes, Daniel, I identified this problem in an earlier post. There are many migrants, but because of the way migration is calculated, all C3s by default at their current indexes will GAIN immigrants. Therefore, the migration is spread out across thousands of countries instead of countries where immigration would actually be attractive.

Therefore my suggestion is similar to yours--- you are right on the fact that C3s should not get or lose citizens from migration

Having 1500 interceptors in the defense is unlikely.
Theoretically possible but nearly never happens.

migration should indeed be stopped as long as the corona virus is with us.

We think that the defense is now a little more serious but losses remain high.
we have always aimed to make the attack more expensive than the defense.
you are probably aware that until recently, defense wings were wiped out with very few losses to the attacking wing.

attack numbers can be >1000.
the numbers depend on the structure of the attack wing and currently, it is possible to eliminate all other weapons and have a wing which is attack airplanes only.

we are planing some more testing in the coming week or two and may tune a bit but the situation as before was way unbalanced.

The migration index:

depends on the welfare index, the business index and the social security payment level.
there are more small factors but with little influence.
I will check the tool tip and update if needed.

The max is indeed 200 and will be increased with the next game update.

We were tuning the numbers of migrants and will increase it to higher levels, depending on a migration index that has a wider range than before.

I am surprised by the numbers of immigrants you see in C3 countries and will look into it.

Hi Andy,

Attack number can be max 1000 and it doesn't matter if you have 1500 weapons of the same type readdy in the unit. I am glad to hear you will test it.

This is the main reason why we have been asking to add more weapons to the units, not to increase the power of the unit but to decrease number of clicks.

Mndz

The testing is meant to see the balance between attack and defense units.

on migration:
we think that migration numbers in C3 countries should be lower.
an example of high migration numbers in a C3 country is welcome.

I am happy to see you testing war features instead of just changing it according to the gut-feeling.

Andy 1500 interceptors is extremely likely. Any attack on my countries or my fed mates will have 1500 interceptors 100% of the time. Anyone in a federation with an air defense network will have 1500 interceptors, which is pretty much every competent player. If you only have 500 responding you are doing something seriously wrong.

I am not trying to be disrespectful here but Andy it is very evident that the development team does not have a complete understanding of the war game, specifically the mechanics, current tactics, and the problems that arise as a result. You guys are making changes without fully knowing the impacts of them. I really think if you guys are serious about fixing the war game you should take some of the suggestions Mndz and I put forward into serious consideration. The war engine is truly amazing for a browser game and it does not need any major overhauls. The things that need to change are more superficial in nature but relate to how players interact with the war engine. Things like unit sizes, weapon/ammo prices, maintenance costs, existing arsenal sizes, and eliminating the offensive/defensive weapon distinction. Please take this in to consideration. There is so much possibility with the war game to make it great and balanced.

lowering the size of offensive wings and units was a mistake "another eye roll"

We are only testing several specific issues.
most of the changes were tested before.
we had many changes in the past years and have a lot of log data about such attacks.

I understand that the number of losses is now increased a bit.
but that was the reason to change.
The number of losses, when destroying a defense wing was 50-60.

why is a smaller size a mistake?
We could make the units all 10 times larger.

the number of losses will increase 10 times.
will that be better?
how much money will be lost in each attack then?

I remember a time when in some wars, up to a million weapons were lost in several attack rounds.

There is no reason why it should not be 500 losses or more against 500 interceptors.

I don't believe it is at that level yet.

If an error, it was allowing these units to be so large and even worse, letting a free choice of weapon mix which made it possible to have fighter only wings by eliminating all other weapons.

This is the reason why interceptor wings must be large enough to counter a much larger number of fighters.

remove this free choice and numbers of fighters in a wing will be reduced and interceptor wings can also go back to smaller numbers.

There is no air unit in Simcountry where the number of aircraft was larger than 500.
In fact, there is none now.
There is one at 500. the interceptor wing.
The largest attack wings were remodeled to have only fighters which ended up with many more than 500.

where does this 1000 Max come from.
we never got to 1000 when units remained in their original model.

so what I am saying is:
we cant have it both ways.
we cannot have small interceptor wings and attack wings with 1000 fighters (including complaints about 1000 max being insufficient).

Andy 500 interceptors is not the maximum you will face on defense. Any country that is in a federation will have 1 wing from their own country plus 2 wings from their federation responding. This totals to 1500 interceptors.

The 1000 attack limit allows only 1000 of the same weapon type to participate in an attack. For example, if I make a Long Range Division with 1400 offensive AA batteries, only 1000 can participate in an attack at a time.

Andy you have to be consistent in the changes you make. If weapons are going to remain cheap and abundant, which they are now, unit sizes need to be large to avoid excessive micromanagement. If you want the game to be realistic with smaller unit, you need to increase the price of weapons at least 10 fold, and reduce existing arsenals 10 fold, and reduce production of the weapons 10 fold also. What you guys are doing right now is making units smaller and making weapons cheaper. All that does is frustrate players with micromanagement. If cheap weapons is the direction of the game, give us massive unit sizes so that players only need to control 30-40 units max in a war. Having to control thousands of units is not fun.

I would prefer more expensive weapons, cheap ammo/maintennce/manpower, small unit sizes, decreased weapon production, no change to ammo production, and trimming down existing player arsenals by the same factor as the price increase. I also strongly recommend that offensive and defensive weapon distinction be completely eliminated. Give defending units a flat percentage bonus in damage to make defending cheaper. Right now offensive weapons are completely defenceless when they are attacked by other offensive units, This is wrong. All it does is encourage players to only deploy a few offensive weapons at a time so that they don't all get destroyed without any chance at defending themselves. This creates big problems for short range weapons because if I don't deploy them then I can't get them in range, but if I do deploy them, they will all get picked off without even defending themselves. This is why I have hoarded 1 million conventional missile batteries because it is the only offensive weapon that can hit any target without having to be deployed in a unit. Please please please please I implore you to look at what is happening to the war game. There is so much potential for it. The war engine is wonderful. It just needs a rebalancing.

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Andy: I remember a time when in some wars, up to a million weapons were lost in several attack rounds.<!-/Quote-!>

Such glorious, glorious days!