W3C - Game News - January 29

Cost of defensive weapons and ammunitions

The cost of defensive weapons and ammo continues to decline and reduces both the cost of purchasing weapons and ammo and the maintenance cost of the army. The army is using cheaper ammunition for training.

The changes are not large but will continue.

Corporations producing such products maintain their profitability despite the price reductions. They compensate by either producing a little more or by using smaller quantities of raw materials.

Population

We are trying to find out what the max population number is if a country does not purchase any population Externally.

Growth becomes slower as the population grows and stabilizes at some level. High levels of health care strongly influence the numbers too.

This used to be around 60 million in the past. It is much higher now and we see growth at 120M. There is no way to compute this and we will continue to watch the numbers to find out.


Death Rates

Death rates settled at a lower level than before recent updates and strongly depend on the health care index. In a country with a healthcare index slightly higher than 200 (very high and expensive), life expectancy increased beyond 100 years.

We think that life expectancy should be a factor in the main score.

Thanks for the update.
I noticed some changes to non military products in price and production as well.

Production for every corp in my countries or ents on KB all dropped within the last month. Employment did not plummet prior to this . Production effectiveness did not change. Just actual production .Anyone else?

Well, after a closer look it appears that the drop in production mainly affects products utilized by weapons corps.

Overall defense costs in monthly expenses have actually risen after this change.

Yeah.. to note as well; you guys keep lowering ammunition and weapons cost you might as well start paying players to buy them!

And for the population, hopefully find out soon! Rapid swings in population have left things disorderly for some..

yeah Khome, i noticed some changes definitely in the market the last week or so.

Even though these are the small steps I really appreciate the direction and expect much more to come.

The cost of defensive materials declined.
The cost of other weapons remained unchanged but fluctuate with the market .....

We have slightly reduced the numbers of soldiers and officers needed in bases, to reduce cost of the army and increase the number of workers.

Corporations always change a bit.
The markets are tight with very large shortages in many products.
It seems that there are not enough workers in C3 countries to automatically create more corporations.

We are also always looking for products that are produced by less than 10 corporations. Sudden increase in purchasing of such products is then impossible.
We try to make sure that minimum requirements will increase the numbers of such corporations to 10 or more.

Except for such minor changes the market is amazingly autonomous and regulates itself.

Andy,
On WG the less than 10 corps you mentioned are all Strategic. Why don't you just send them back to FB where they belong. To satisfy a few war mongers you made nuc's available on all worlds. If someone wants to be a nuclear power let them go to FB or a space station.

Obviously the peace loving citizens of WG have no need for nuclear weapons.

Furthermore I protest that you made my countries need Strategic Weapons Maintenance when I do not own any Strategic weapons. Your are creating fake demands for products that no one wants just to keep them around for 1 or 2 players.

You have a point.

Removing the strategic weapons from the worlds is however not an option.
some people want to have wars on all worlds, and we had many before.

you do not need to participate, you do not need to produce any, you may need (fake) maintenance products but there is no reason to participate in any of this.

I still don't understand why the monthly costs of defense keeps climbing once the changes were implemented. It's not making sense to me.

Also, I'm not sure if your response addressed the question about the drop in overall productivity in many corporations, such as Services or Chemicals. The corps in question have 100% employment and report 100% production with no changes with quality or effectiveness. However, the overall available production has dropped significantly, resulting in less income for each corporation.

Case in point: I'm seeing in some countries, with minimal weapons, deactivated, surging in defense costs. I checked the defense stats, and I see that the defense index dropped, the number of military personnel NOT increasing, yet the costs of defense keeps surging. I checked spending, and I see no purchases of weapons of any kind. I can only assume that military service spending increased? But I cannot verify.

This is crippling my economies, please let me know. Thanks.

The cost of defense may change as the price of weapons and ammo fluctuates. Check the market, there are many shortages in weapons and ammo.

The defensive cost should in general be lower now and will decline more next week. This is the cost for the defensive army.
Weapons are cheaper but you will have the advantage if you purchase more.

Ammo is cheaper, and it reduces the monthly cost of the defensive army
directly.

Other parts of the army remain unchanged but if there are shortages in ammo, the cost of ammo may increase, or decline with oversupply.
this will influence the monthly cost.

Some bases use smaller numbers of soldiers and officers. This caused a decline in numbers employed in the army and the monthly cost.

We do not see declines in productivity.
we see that factory maintenance corporations produce a bit more (There are very large numbers of corporations and high shortages) but then the price declined a bit and profitability remained unchanged.

services are unchanged.

we see a small decline in use of services but it is the market and players doing it.

Please give us specific examples.

Defense index drop? the formula is unchanged, so you must have changed the number of weapons.

The price of defensive weapons and ammo will keep declining with the next update next week.
small changes but accumulating.

Here's an example, check on KB The Peoples Republic of Malizi

You will see a gradual increase in overall defense spending in the monthly statement.

Check any services corp for example, you will see a drop in production starting several months back.

There are many other countries in my empire experiencing the same issues. Not all of them, but most of them used to have balanced budgets. Now they run constant deficits with increasing defense costs and decreasing income, specifically due to reduced corporation tax income.

Please look at this very closely, it is causing significant financial problems that I had not experience before.

Andy or Jonni,

Can something be done about the Cargo Shuttle issue? Obviously the market is inflated because of the players. Fearless blue is 4,000 in demand and LU is almost 3,000 in demand for shuttles. I dont know the other worlds, but I would guess they are comparable. The game is building more assets corporations because of the resent changes in population, but shuttles cannot be produced nearly fast enough. Even at current rates it would take real weeks for the markets to balance out if there is no additional demand. I and other players for several real days/weeks haven't been able to produce anything in out asset main corporations and it is really starting to have an effect.

I would like to offer a two suggestions. Maybe one solution is that since you are growing population and asset main is much more in demand might I recommend you double shuttle corporation production from 6 to 12 and cut the price in half. This would allow twice as many shuttles for the same price, in addition the monthly production of 1 shuttle instead of one every other month would allow the corporation to see more steady monthly incomes.
Also if a player buys a shuttle right now it goes to there account and is "lost to space". Can something be done to allow us to recover those shuttles and sell them on the global markets? I know a lot of players who buy them thinking they can resell them or use them in corporations only to lose them forever in their account.

Andy, Jonni, SuperSoilderRCP,

I agree with SuperSoilderRCP. I have been watching the shuttle market for quite some time, and the situation isn't correcting, if anything, it may be getting worse.

A week ago I made an Asset Maintenance Corp, to test the market situation.

I have had buy orders set to Best Price, and my corporation has not managed to buy a single Cargo Shuttle or Space center all week. To the best of my knowledge most other Asset Maintenance Corps have similar issues.

Since Asset Maintenance Corps are also used to stabilise demand for everything from Hospitals, to Roads, to Schools, to Airports. The Asset Corps stopping production is now impacting a whole range of products.

So far there have still been enough Asset Maintenance on the market for my nation not to run out. However, if this continues for a long time. Countries could experience shortages. Leading to falling supply indexes, falling welfare indexes, and a drop in the productivity of all corporation, causing global shortages.

Given only players above level 6 can produce cargo shuttles and space centers. And there are very few of those players. There is very little the player base can do to correct this situation. The GM is going to have to intervene.

Personally, I'd suggest lowering the amount of cargo Shuttles and Space Centers each Asset Maintenance Corp uses per month. That should lower demand, and enable production to catch up. 0.06 Shuttles and 0.04 Space Centers per Corp, per Month, is to many.

Considering that there are over 700 Asset Maint Corps on LU. We'd have to produce over 42 shuttles and 28 Space centers, every month, just to supply the Asset Corps. This is to much, and leaves nothing for the players that actually want to buy shuttles to use them.

Signed President of DanNation on LU