W3C - Game News 30.08.2017

1. War Protection
The temporary war protection feature is now limited to a maximum number of countries.

For now, the number on FB is 10 and it is very high on the other worlds.

However, we intend to gradually reduce the max number on FB in the coming weeks. When all the war updates are done, the max number of countries on FB that can be protected by temporary war protection will be reduced to one country.

2. Weapon Deliveries and deactivation
Weapons entering a country from space stations or weapons that are delivered by direct contracts and sales (example: from your own enterprise) are now placed in the reserves.

3. Automatic Reactivation of weapons
If war is declared on your country, automatic reactivation will start and continue until all weapons are activated (provided the country have enough workers and medium level managers to join the army as soldiers and officers).
The reactivation can be stopped.

4. War Declarations and the start of the war
The time between a war declaration and the start of the war is now restored to two full days as it was before. Worlds now run faster (6 game months each day) and the time was shortened.
It is now set to 12 game months.

Twelve game months will allow all weapons in the country to be automatically reactivated before the war starts.

5. Increasing profitability
Many corporations will become more profitable. Upgrading corporation?s efficiency is now more profitable, reducing the number of workers even more than before.

The process is applied in all weapon producing corporations and their work force is further reduced. More such changes will follow and will further reduce the number of workers in corporations, allowing president to add more corporations.

6. C3 Wars
C3 wars may become a bit harder. This is a first step. In time, war levels will change and wining wars against C3 countries will have a different meaning in the game.

7. Changes in Weapons and Units
Cruise Missiles and Conventional missiles can be used from bases and their capabilities are now improved. More missiles will be fired in each attack with greater effect.

Some air force units are slightly larger while navies are slightly smaller.

There is a long time imbalance in the Power of these units and this change may be a first step in rebalancing them.

8. New players
New players countries are a bit more powerful both in terms of numbers of units and their quality.

We intend to make more changes that will improve the fighting and mainly defense capabilities of such countries.

Pending some testing, more changes will follow.

9. Further reduction in the Pricing of weapons
The base cost of defense weapons but also the price of nuclear weapons have been reduced.

10. Corporations buying their own shares
Corporations used to be able to offer to repurchase their own shares on the share market. The feature was disabled, probably due to an error.
We have now restored the function.

11. The Share market
This is of course not possible on the real market but in Simcountry, you can be the main shareholder of the corporation, and control the fund which also holds some share while you also have the ability to offer to purchase or to sell shares.

We have introduced some corrections that will hopefully prevent some of the situations when share pricing went out of control.

12. Notifications
We are in the process of adding new notifications to alert players to war declarations, attacks starting and more. The first additions will be part of the next upgrade.

13. The War Game
More war features and small changes will be introduced in the next upgrade. These changes will include a further improvement in the capabilities of countries owned by new players.

Did you also adjust the game levels? Having 2 countries was not a requirement for level 5 before and it seems to be 1 now.

It seems rather creul to change it just 36 hours before the end of the month. There is to little time to change. Had you done it a few days sooner people could have changed their strategies. Had you done it 2 days later it would have been the start of a new month.

I was under the impression that all reactivation of weapons would be set to automatic now that moving weapons from space centers deactivates them. You have to be crazy to think im going to participate offensively in the war game if I have to manually reactive my weapons month after month for days on end. Might as well go grind in some pointless MMO.

Andy,

I like most the changes, but I do want to address 2 issues I think you guys might have over looked. Letsie is right, It seems you guys did in
fact change the level requirements and that seems VERY ill timed. With the new month starting tomorrow it seems very unfair to change the requirements needed.
This change hasn't effected me personally, but I do think its ill timed for those smaller players who have spent a month trying to place in the top rankings only to now be thrown aside. Maybe in the future look at coordinating level changes after the new month?

I 100% understand what your trying to accomplish with the reactivation of weapons via space/sales, but because it will take MONTHS of reactivation, the price of having a military will dramatically increase (please check my LU nations). Right now for nothing but 150 forts and 1 base and airbase I pay over 10B a month for just my defensive forces alone.
The problem players are speaking of are these monthly costs.

If you compare you country "Andy" on LU to any of my nations, I pay twice what you do because I buy 300Q and you buy 120Q, but what benefit do I get? Military is already one of the most expensive parts of the game but by adding Quality factors, reactivation, long term costs. It is starting to become a deterrent. The GM really needs to look at bring these costs down if you want to make having a long term standing army effective.

We will add automatic reactivation. You can turn it on once and it will keep going.
The worries about it in this forum were about the beginners countries not being able to reactivate on time. It was presented as a problem for the attacked country, not for the attacker.
People advised us not to do so as these attacked countries will not be able to reactivate.
I promised to solve the problem for these countries and we did.

Now it seems that these attacked countries are forgotten and the issue is the cost.
I agree on the cost.

It will cost more to have a huge army if you want to use it in war.
Also if you do not have enough soldiers and officers, the reactivation may be disrupted. In the past, you could probably attack many times before the shortage was noticed.
You might decide to reactivate only a smaller part and reduce the cost.

Our view is that war level based limitation on which countries you can start a war with, was a wrong choice and we should move away from it, at least partially. This is also the opinion on the forum.

Instead, we should reduce the difference in power between long time players and newer player making it harder to obliterate them.

This can be done by increasing their power from the start and by making it slightly harder for large war players, to amass a large army instantly and start an unbalanced war.

Having a very large army at a very high quality must carry a price or no one will ever be able to compete in the war game with any of the established powers who can destroy anyone at will.
(Aries was very clear about it recently and said that if he would not like the solution, he will destroy such countries).

Do we want a PvP war game or not.

If we do, the smaller players should be able to fight such a war and not be destroyed in two minutes.
They should be able to fight and create real damage that will make a change.

The change we want is that very strong war players will not be able to walk over others with no damage at all and dictate the way the war game is run.

As to the very bad timing of the game level requirements:

It is true. It is very unfortunate.
The change was done earlier but missed the previous upgrade and was now activated.

I agree that it can make a difference in some cases, but the moves between game level 4 and 5 is not massive, there are not many.
I will find out how many.
and also, it is a change for everybody in these groups, in the same way and it is not a huge difference.

I am very sorry about it.
We will make sure such changes never take place in the last week of the month.

Andy, I never told you what my intentions were. I only said that the system should be simple because you can't predict what players will do. A good example is War Levels where it was assumed war players would climb war levels. Well, the aggressive war players didn't. They stayed at low war levels and, in many cases, attacked new war players at low war level. This happened to me.

We still have not heard who is getting assistance. What defines who is a "new" or "smaller" player? War levels proved to be a poor determiner on who is new and who isn't. Again, I think this is a poor policy for several reasons I mentioned on the other thread. That change I suggested about federation air defense, again, well likely help more than whatever you intend to add to "new" players.

Andy.

At LU it's going to make the difference between who will be number 1 and number 2. Those 200points matter a lot for me since zevenland (the current number 2) and I have been 'fighting' for the number 1 spot for several weeks. Those 200pts are going to give him just enough of and edgde to pas me in the last 24 hours.

Aries,
You have said this, previously on this discussion:

"In short, what are you going to do about it if I become the bad guy? Say, I make a fed on FB, and I declare only my fed shall get cash rewards. We scour the FB war page, and annihilate other players who attempt to lay claim to awards. If you leave the powerful unhappy, this is not a remote possibility. Players can find ways within any system to make their own fairness."

This is a threat and if players try to do so they should be seriously wounded and suffer major losses. Also, a federation will not be able to attack a single country like this.
We will think hard on what we need to do. We can do anything that may help. A player who becomes a full member and drops the war protection could be helped tremendously if needed.

I agree that these new players, mostly inexperienced full members, should/must join federations and we will, as I said before, give them incentives to do just that. This is a better solution.

We cannot force them.

We can however, change the grossly unbalanced situation, into a simpler unbalanced situation.
We can continue to prevent wars in a more limited way and help these players to prepare and then drop the protection.

I did say that to make a point that you can't predict what players will do. After the changes, the players will determine whether they think the changes are fair and adjust accordingly. Maybe I am offering honesty that you are not used to.

Before War Levels were implemented, did aggressive players tell you that they planned to stay at low war level and prey upon war level 3-4 players? What if this time, these boosts are interpreted as a challenge to other war players? What if rather than deterring conflict, instead these boosts bring these "new" players more wars? How likely do you see it that these boosts will have the effect you intended?

Andy,

Loving the current changes.

Thank you.

Regarding share repurchases, I don't know whether to be happy that it's finally fixed, or to be sad that it took 5 years. Thanks for this fix and for the other improvements.

How does deactivating weapons if they so much as make a move improve anything? What is the point? And if 100% of them truly reactivate right in time before a war starts, why do this at all? It still does not solve the problem of the imbalance in favor of the attacker. A defending country can sit, and languish in constant weapons maint and ammo costs, waiting for the attacker's "moment". Meanwhile, mister attacker, like a "new guy" who drops trillions within a few months amasses a huge army, and demolishes a defending country that cannot reactivate their weapons in time because they were in the shuttle bay. Oh, can't do that...

And reading through all those changes, it occurred to me; these are just more layers and layers of overly complex stipulations, rules and conditions added to an already bloated system of rules. It's like a trip wire system where even laying out a strategy, some little stipulation holds everything up. I can't see the motivation, and giving a head start to "new" players also does not make sense. I'm sorry, did I just waste 5 years on this game, building what I have only to be told "sorry, we need more new players in to start the craziness". Looking from a "new" player's perspective, and I'll use the term "new" in reference to someone who just signed up, they are going to be extremely frustrated and confused with all of these rules and conditions. They would just go right back to their phone app game; at least it's easy to jump in to. But these rules for war levels, the weapons activation nonsense, this strange need to have more and more corps in each country (after we had said that there are too many to begin with).. this just all astounds me..

What are you trying to achieve? I' seriously asking... If you're looking to make this into a PvP game with thrills and chills of amazing combat experiences, might as well just play call of duty. Ease up on the constant "can't do that" stuff.

Like I said... what's the long term objective here..?

Letsie,
I will see what can be done tomorrow.

Aries,

We cannot predict but trying to prevent this serious imbalance seems like a good direction.

Andy,

I have an honest suggestion that might make the game a bit more balanced. I very much see where the GM is coming from in regards to the massive armies veteran players have and how they can be a big threat. My question is has the GM ever thought of limiting the amount of units attached to bases?

For example, I can make 50 interceptors wings per creation to 1 base and do this over and over. If in war the base is destroyed the air wings stay in place.

Maybe a future addition is limiting the number of wings per base (Host/Home base). If defensive air bases where allowed lets say 10 wings per base and offensive bases allow 5. This wouldn't limit the war game but in fact would reduce the overall numbers dramatically well still leaving the game dynamic, this can also be done with land bases as well. This could force players who have large armies to have huge base counts as well. This means more military forces and creates of cycle of necessity over want.

Also lets say someone is able to nuke the base or destroying it. Any wings or units attached would disband and be put into the players inventories until a new base could be built. This puts everyone on an equal footing and playing ground.

I'll write up something formal later for you to read. Just a thought.

I have to say that I am glad to see the GM making the balance thing an issue and I can see where they are coming from. I was thinking the same thing more or less as SuperSoldier just said. Having more bases would help the GM's with their problem due to the cost I would think. A base should be heavily defended too ,as in real life, if an airbase is destroyed the air wings attached to the base are destroyed or at least can not be utilized. In war infrastructure and military bases would be the first targets among others in order to limit the enemy's response.

I dont understand why bananas, watermelons and other fruits not have a peeler incorporated. Just imagine, you want to eat mango and the fruit undressed itself so you can enjoy the pulp.

Hello Andy: Is it possible to search corporations in different way as actual "View share market"? Because when you look for a corporation "Show position on the share market" its different when you search in "View share market". Thank you!

Letsie,

The game level reduction takes some time to materialize.
you seem to be OK.

If this will go wrong, please mail the gamemaster.

Supersoldier, JWUrton

Good ideas.
We do have a limitation of the number of weapons per base but the limitation of the number of units is sitting on our wish list.
It could help.

Once we have that, we could look further into consequences of war destruction.

AeroCommander,
We are analyzing the the fruit message.

I am not sure I understand the corporations issue:

is the problem about searching the share market for a corporation?
Show position ... is meant for you to find a specific corporation on the list. It is close to the top of the page.

The View function, is sorted by the PE ratio.
You mean that we need a search function on the share market page?
Type the name and find it?
as easy as peeling Bananas?

Can someone direct me to the automatic weapons reactivation "button"? Unfortunately, I cannot log on every game month to manually reactivate a very small percentage of weapons at a time.

Thank you.

Khome,

Please read the text above:

"We will add automatic reactivation. You can turn it on once and it will keep going."

hopefully next week.

Hi Andy: Yes, we need a search function on the share market page, typing the name and find the corporation, something similar to search a country.

I was thinking and not only fruits should have peeler incorporated, coffee can be harvested as a delicious cappuccino coffee...direct from the coffee plant, in contac with nature! :D

10. Corporations buying their own shares
Corporations used to be able to offer to repurchase their own shares on the share market. The feature was disabled, probably due to an error.
We have now restored the function.

Not yet, corporations still cannot repurchase shares. They still simply transfer back to the controlling entity and do not lower the number of available shares on the market or take any money from the actual corporation.

If I have a corporation with 200B in cash and 810,000,000 available shares, I should be able to lower that number of available shares to 800,000,000 or whatever as long as the corp has the cash to buy them.

Sheepman you aren't the only one pissed off at what they are doing. Blasting the forum won't do anymore good than any of the other posts that "supposedly" sparked these changes.

I doubt I'll ever really completely give up the game but I intend to do some real hard consideration on whether or not I'll ever pay for it again when my premium on my mains run out.

You never know .. they might surprise us, doubtful but possible. Most of this reeks of the initial changes that brought all of this about. Create features, change the rules once everyone heavily invests in them.

The original sell point on having a space program was the ability to move armies between worlds. It's still in the documentation until they get around to removing it.

Just let them do what they want, they will anyway. Either it works or it won't.

Hey I've given away and deleted accounts before so it might be worthwhile to wait and see all the advantages "new players" are going to get. I like building more than maintaining anyway so starting over isn't a big deal for me. Actually with the current features a free account would suit me just fine

I will check the share trading again.
I am sorry if the problem is not fixed yet.
We will look into it coming Monday.