W3C - Countries "Nearly" Bankrupt

When countries are close to bankruptcy the system tries to save them.

This "Support" function has been there for a long time and we have now made an effort to improve the process.

The repair process as described below is in place for a long time. We have now tested it for a very long period, and have tuned it at some points to make sure it continues all the time until it is completed.

What is "Close to Bankruptcy"?

When cash is lower than a certain threshold (currently -1T) OR the total value of materials in the country is negative, we call the country "Close to Bankruptcy".
(The negative -1T may move to -2T but currently it is -1T).

When cash goes lower than this limit, the system starts making an effort to repair the finances.
Purchasing of products stops, part of the army goes into the reserves, units are dismantled and more weapons go to the reserves.
Mobile units will also be dismantled, some each game month until the problem is resolved.
All this reduces the cost of the army and the use of ammunition.

As consumption continues (the population must continue eating and continue some spending), materials go short but the population does pay the country for the used materials.

In addition, salaries of government workers start declining, corporation salaries follow.

As a result of lower salaries, the cost of the government declines, Education and health and the cost of the army decline too. These sharp declines may already balance the finances.

In time, if this is not enough, salaries diminish to 10% (sometimes from a level of 300 and more).

Corporations remain very profitable with these very low salaries while the country cost declines substantially.

The country may see large shortages of materials but the procedure concentrates on balancing the income and cost and will continue.

At the same time, education and health levels are protected and will even be increased to a 100 level to prevent complete depletion of these functions.

The system also makes sure there are enough professionals in the country and balances the education priorities.

New corporations are built at a rate of one corporation per game month. (As long as the existing corporations have full hiring).

We have now improved these functions and tuned them to be more powerful and made sure they work effectively.

Observing some countries that were in a desperate situation we have seen that they are gradually improving.

as employment levels increase, profitable corporations are added. the income of the country is increasing and at some point, it becomes profitable.

When cash is improving, orders resume and the country flip flops between cash positive to negative while the order backlog is being processed.

The repair process can take a long time.

In the future, the repair process will start sooner than before and desperate situations will be prevented. The repair process will then be much shorter.

The entire process does not involve any cash infusions. The country is in fact repairing itself.

Please try to prevent such situations.

Negative cash in countries prevents the president from logging in and requires a cash infusion before you can play it again.

If no cash is transferred, the country remains under control of the system until such time that it is repaired.
(This is not new. It works in this way in the past years).

1T close to bankruptcy? That is a pittance Andy and should be much higher. I have went into that amount negative many times by accident. Buying up weapons and such.

To think that my units will start dismantling etc isn't cool.

I will add, having been in war with 8 countries. This neg ammo is a real pain in the neck. Having to make sure every country has positive ammo always or risk loosing my army is hard to manage and so easy to make a mistake. We need atleast a little time to fix it before the army goes?

It was -3T for a long time and we had not even one complaint.
prices are now at least 50% lower than at the time it was set to -3T.

also of course, you can take loans.
loans are limited too but 10T of loans will get you very far.
negative cash does not exist.
you cannot spend when there is no money, you take a loan.

so the limit is not -1T.
It is -1T plus all the loans you can take.

If you's didn't have a complaint why change it? -3T is much more of a buffer than -1T.

So it's -11T before weapons get deactivated? Does the auto loans still kick in when Neg cash?

Andy pls see my post in the Problems page about invincible mobile units.

Stop Ignoring me

You need to ask for the loans to get them.
the loan limit is probably higher than 10T but even at 10T is it huge.

Ok so I think -1T is to low in that case. Deactivating my gear because of a meesly -1T shortage is harsh.

The numbers in the game decline.
prices used to be 10 times higher and much more.

-3T was a small amount.

we decrease the numbers gradually to get into more "realistic" figures.

a precision bomber used to sell for 1.5 Billions.
1000 used to be 1.5T.
everything came down, spending limits too.

Yes I've noticed the falling numbers and I'm unlikely to fall that far into neg numbers. But still, maybe I do by not logging in for a bit. Deactivating or force selling my stuff is extreme.

Selling your stuff does not happen for a very long time.

You should really make sure you can transfer money into the country if needed and prevent the support functions from going into action.

make sure you have +5T in cash and everything will be fine.

countries these days can be very profitable and it is improving all the time.

I was referring to the neg ammo with regards to the forced selling. I thinks it's too harsh.

Suggestion. Why doesn't the game take out auto loans? I'm pretty sure it used to when you went negative? Take out loans up to the max 10T to pay for any neg ammo or supply the neg cash.

After 10T loans then start selling/deactivating.

10T maybe to much. Make it 5T. Just give the player more of a chance to fix the issue.

You do not have negative ammo.
you are warned long before it happens and you just make sure you have ammo.

why do you need weapons when you do not have ammo?

this case is closing as many are buying their ammo now and the negative numbers gradually disappear.

There was only a small group who "used" this "feature" and in all cases we have seen they had lots of ammo in their empire.

There were many complaints against auto loans.
they are available in some cases but experienced players are required to manage their finances.

Also here, many of the countries with negative cash are part of empires with huge amounts of money available.
not fixing these countries is a choice.
not a very good choice.

If you have an empire, you must take care of all the countries or discard them and keep those you want to develop.

How can I take loans if I can't log in

" Thank you for trying to help. I paid $36 USD to play this game, and now any of my entity that's below -1T debt has been blocked from me to play. Yet the W3C keeps on playing these entities to when they reach -14T before turning them off from me? Everything the current procedures do have not help me, including building corps to have zero production or corps which have large surplus on the market, or these state corps just get destroy by rebellions. Lowering salaries to destroy my welfare indexes, raising tax to deter CEOs to build in my countries, and so on. My assets in SC are more than 5.6Q SC$ while total debts less than 275T SC$, so what is the logic that I cannot repay my debts?

Hmm...It would make sense to allow players access to indebted countries as often as they like...how else can they turn the debt around?

I agree with Craig. It does not make sense to cut them off from the entire thing, they should at least have access to the systems they could use to turn the debt around with.

Not true and confusing players.
You can easily login into any country if your assets are as you describe.

If you have the money, you can transfer some to the country and make it cash positive.
make sure it has no material shortages and all GM interventions will stop immediately.

Instead, some are keeping huge amounts of money in some countries and keep other countries far below zero.

Bankruptcy is disastrous as the debt of the country is transferred to the main country.

we are trying to prevent it by invoking these procedures.

The support system, is building profitable corporations, reducing cost and in time, repairs the country economy.
If you think you can do better, you are welcome to do it yourself.

We have now seen a case where a badly dented country that should have been bamkrupted, was improving steadily, improving employment and it would eventually come out of this situation.

we have seen that player moving some cash in to take over, closing profitable corporations, selling population which is now dragging the entire empire down and the country is deteriorating again.
he did nothing to fix the education system that was repaired by the system from education index of 9 to 24 or so and could be improved much faster by the player.
there was no effort to fix education priorities.

It is his right to do so. It is his country.

but you can hardly blame the support function.

We will let players and the automatic support function some time to repair countries.

At the end however, we will require players to fix such countries or drop them.

A country that has a negative assets value should be either fixed or abandoned.

Most countries with negative assets are part of large empires. Small players rarely have such situations.

Most countries are currently very profitable if played reasonably or less, and hugely profitable if played well.

The rules for bankruptcy have been shifting in the past years as we tried to prevent it from taking place.

in the coming weeks, we will exactly define and publish the conditions for country bankruptcy and for "Near bankruptcy"

We will also describe what exactly happens when a country is bankrupt, in case it is the only country or in case it is part of an empire.

We will preannounce dates for implementation and then put these functions in place.

Ahh so players can log in and fix things. I have encountered negative cash situations and transferred an appropriate amount of cash to fix it. It seemed odd to me that they couldn't do the same. Sounds more like the player did log in and FUBARed things even more, then got slapped on the wrist. Tough luck, no sympathy...
If it works as you have just described, then I have no problem with it at all.

Most players if it happens to them at all, do just this.

they transfer the amount, most times a small one, go it and fix what needs to be fixed and become profitable.

there is always a way out.
we did not just blocked the way for a player who wants to repair.

Yes I think his situation may have been poorly explained an he doesn't understand the function fully but you can't argue with the principle that people who pay to play a game should actually be able to play it.... Locking people out of their countries and calling it bankruptcy is not a feature

You can ALWAYS play your countries.
You just need to move some resources into the country.

In that specific case, the player himself stated that he has huge resources.
He just does not want to move some to that country.

It means that he is giving up on the country but does not realize that when it is bankrupt, these negative assets will move to his main country.

If you have an empire, play it and take responsibility.

why did you edit my october 24th 4:55am post andy

Publishing unacceptable text in the name of others does not remove your responsibility.

I wanted to prevent someone here who is watching over it from removing you from the forum or removing the entire post.

Please don't publish for others.