W3C - Game news October 10, 2023

Kebir Blue is now upgraded.
All other worlds will be upgraded in the coming two hours.

Targon Units

The problem with Targon Units is resolved. It is now possible to create the units and place them in the country.
We think that the function is now completed.
If you encounter any additional problem with Targon units, please let us know.

Targon weapons on the defensive army page

This problem is also resolved. All defensive weapons are now showing.

Targon in Enterprises

A problem is reported by a player about the impossibility to transfer Targon from a space center.
The cause of the problem was the impossibility to store Targon in Enterprises.
The problem is now resolved.

Painting Defense Fortifications on the map

The problem with painting more than 100 fortifications on the country map is resolved.

Contract Pricing

Following some suggestions that contracts are financially less attractive than selling products on the market we have tested the functions and these suggestions are found to be untrue.
We have looked into many contracts and found the price to be market price multiplied buy quality, the same way it is on the market.
The contract sales followed the market price from month to month.
It is showing on the log of recent sales and purchases. You can see that sales on the market and contract prices are the same.

Maintenance of Defensive weapons

We have introduced another reduction in the maintenance cost of the defensive army. The reduction will start immediately and will affect the cost of maintaining the defensive army.

The Cost of Defensive Ammunition

Another decline in the cost of defensive ammunition. The decline is by around 10% and it will start showing with the next purchases of ammunition.
This is by far, not the first decline. Over time we have introduced many reductions and they accumulated to much more than 50%.

Decline in Government cost

We have reduced the cost of maintenance of several government facilities including air ports, space centers, all education and health facilities. Some changes are small, some larger.
Government cost will decline as a result.
The maintenance cost of wind farms is currently part of the cost of government. We plan to separate them to increase transparency.

Jeeps and Land to Sea weapons

As we announced some time ago, we have continued to reduce the use and production of jeeps, heavy jeeps, land to sea batteries and land to sea missiles.
These weapons are not part of any new military units, are not used in any new units or any attacks. It is now not possible to create new corporations producing them and they cannot be traded on the markets.

Shortages and the Profitability of some corporations

We have reduced the use of some raw materials in the production of some products. The reduction is not very large. As a result, these products will be used in smaller quantities, reducing shortages and at the same time, the corporations producing them become more profitable.
In some of the cases we have reduced product pricing to compensate for the reduced production cost.

Maintenance products

We have slightly increased the quantities of maintenance products produced each month. As a result, we hope that shortages will become smaller and in the process, many maintenance corporations will become more profitable.

1. I LOVE the transparency and updates here! I hope military cost reductions can allow players to tinker and explore more with their military toys. Additionally, most of these changes appear to help players become a little more profitable, which I'm a fan of. More spending money = more to click on, more to build, and more to buy for players.

2. I have commentary/thoughts to share on one topic!

Some comments on contract pricing:

Contracts are not as profitable in how they play out. The price isn't the issue I've had, it's how the whole system works in common markets and internal markets.

I don't know of a need (ever) for supplies of higher quality than 220. If you contract goods between your corporations, almost all supplies will be higher than this. Close to 270 for state corps and higher for private corps. This means all of your contracted corporations are overpaying for supplies.

Example: I want my corporations to have supplies of 220.

How it plays out with full contracting: All of my corporations upgrade fully, and produce quality ~quality 265-270 goods. If they don't upgrade fully, the corporations aren't as good. These q270 goods are sold to each other as supplies. This means all of my supplies are overpriced, because I want 220 quality. There is a price cap on quality produced if you have higher than 220 average for supplies. In my example, my corporations sell at the same, capped price as if they had q220 supplies, but are buying more expensive supplies of q270. As a result, they are less profitable.

If there was ASQ like there used to be, common markets could be of benefit. For now, they're not useful. I'd be curious to hear if anyone has any ways of using common markets for increasing profits.

Last thought: Contracting corporations internally means you miss out on immediate buys and the other benefits from the world market. Any spike in profits is paid for by your own corporations or countries, and almost always for qualities that aren't helpful.

Outside of solving supply issues for particular products, I don't see any benefit to contracting anything.

as a thought, if common markets were more of a private market. as a market inside a market. your corps would first try to buy and sell inside the common market, like in the open market, before they attempt to buy from the open market.

to me, this would make allot more sense for weapons and ammo. it seems odd that i might randomly be supplying my enemy, by selling weapons on the open market. getting together a group of players to pull resources, and maybe by-pass world shortages easier.

also, wasn't their talk about monopolies, partial victories, and some sort of trade guild? these would seem to mesh, in very helicopter view.

with my concept, we could co-ordinate. I could produce enough carbon, to keep the private market green, and you could do the same with aluminum, and we can both build WT off of cheap supplies, at a minimum commitment from each. this would require the option to restrict sales of some or all your corps to private market only, just saying, i think this has some possibilities.

We will have another good look into this issue.

Glad to see these updates, great work Andy.

I have a question about the reduced Defensive Munitions / Maintenance however, how is that being done?

Is the cost per unit of ammunition or maintenance going down, so that players pay less per unit per month? If done this way, was corp production slightly increased to maintain profitability?
Following this process would also help to reduce shortages.

OR

Is the total number of training shots and maintenance units used per month going down but the cost per unit is the same?
If done this way, was corp production reduced slightly to compensate, or were production rates left untouched to help reduce shortages?

Either way would work, I'm just curious which path you took.

Great update and changes.
As EO say and explain is exactly how it is.
And as a person who tries to be self sustained the only pros/positives on using the Common/Local markets are:
Holding most of the money internally/in a close loop and being immune to the issues of shortages and the "problems" the world market can cause.

And as orbiter suggests is also a good idea.

"Contract Pricing

Following some suggestions that contracts are financially less attractive than selling products on the market we have tested the functions and these suggestions are found to be untrue.
We have looked into many contracts and found the price to be market price multiplied buy quality, the same way it is on the market.
The contract sales followed the market price from month to month.
It is showing on the log of recent sales and purchases. You can see that sales on the market and contract prices are the same. "

This is correct and no one was arguing otherwise, the issue is often when buying on the market we request the optimum quality for profitability not just max quality. With how the game is designed most corporations need to be upgraded quite high to be profitable but also buy supplies at lower quality. This makes contracting unattractive in most situations as you'll be buying higher quality than required and can drive costs too high.

Also contracting has no mechanism to handle supplies that only utilize fractional units per month, you can not contract less than a whole unit (reasonable) nor can you contract at frequencies other than monthly (unreasonable)

is that why my light tank ammunition corps have been totally nerfed haha

Brandon
The price of many types of ammunition is declining for a very long period. This was another round.
we kept profitability at the same level by slightly reducing the amount os raw materials used.

We are also reducing the use of some materials, especially military services that are one of the products that are in severe short supply.

Billy

we are looking at the issue of contracting fractions of products.
Not a simple issue with many consequences.

Joo

nothing happened to tank ammo corporations. Doing just fine.

Andy,

Thank you for the updates, and communication with players.