W3C - Country Failure & Bankruptcies explained

Why not Andy? The game has functioned like this for a long time. Now all of a sudden your making statements like " Simcountry does not allow negative value of materials" As if this has always been the case. So why the change?

Bankrupting a country for a shortage of construction is outrageous. It makes no sense at all when the country has every other product it needs, trillions in cash yet for a meesly shortage in construction the country shuts down.

You say it's to help countries who have fallen into trouble. But dropping the sals and the welfare doesn't help at all.

There are no shortages of food or anything to do with civilians. Its military shortages. Mostly maintenance for weapons. It has positive cash and it had millions of negative stock in each maintenance category. Its been 8 days I almost have it totally under control. I understand where your coming from its a serious problem. But understand it had negative stock when I received it after the war. You didn't allow me to correct the problem which I have almost done. As soon as I took it the next month auto features where triggered. Some players are capable of fixing countries I am one of them. I don't need auto features to help me do this. there should be a time frame where these auto features don't kick in after a war to allow the president taking it over to fix it.

We were looking at it in the same way.
if there is cash, why is there a shortage.

We will probably add an automatic, immediate purchase order to close the shortage, if the country has the cash.
It will solve the problem in such cases.

Initially we thought that players might see the warning and prefer to place the orders themselves.

As to conquered countries, you do have a point.
I think it will disappear.
we have reduced the damage caused by war, the numbers are declining.

There are many materials in the country and one negative should not get the total to negative.
If construction shortages will become even smaller, the total will not be negative.

Thank you Andy. I've been trying to get it under control since I took it.

Nooooo automatic features I admit to being a tight arse and not wanting to spend an extra 20% on immediate orders. I was wanting to fix the issue over time. So what if things don't get built from a lack of construction or my people don't have eggs for a while or no butter to put on there toast for a few months. They can hack it. Though my construction companies might like an immediate order feature.

But then again I think that'll be exploited in war aswell. Doing damage forcing your enemy to buy immediate construction whilst your buddies jack up the price. I don't like the thought of that.

Andy - I think there is a simple solution here to avoid screwing with active players. First, give a 2 day warning before these automatic systems take hold, that gives a window for active players to actually notice there is a problem and correct it. Second, allow unlimited immediate orders for all negative items. I personally went through trying to recover a country that had massive negative materials due to my own inactivity and the system was constantly fighting against me as I tried to rebound while even using GC's to boost the spending space.

I understand what you're trying to accomplish by having the system respond to negative materials, but your own automatic system is fighting against itself when players are actually trying to fix their own situation.

The fact that the military deactivates so quickly but it takes so long to reactivate it makes no sense and puts players at serious risk if a war happens to be declared on them at a time when they happen to fall into negative materials or negative 1T+ in cash. When you have large countries all it takes is a severe shortage on a world for the former to happen or a severe shortage to be cured to create the latter. The -1T level makes sense for a c3 sized country but it makes zero sense for a country of 300M where there are often several trillion or more in products purchases that go through in a day or two.

There are TWO WEEKS of warnings of pending bankruptcies.

There is a notification you can set to warn you.

we will now add a mail you get for each country that is in that situation. (negative assets).

you are right on the immediate orders when you are trying to fix shortages.
They are already looking into it.

However, to avert bankruptcy, you just need to fix your assets. moving money into the country will solve the problem, even if materials remain negative.

Normally the total material value + the army assets and government assets together are compensating for any cash shortages and total assets will not become negative.

Serpent makes a good point Andy. I was only away for 4 days and returned to find my 2 war slaves on KB (South Apo and North Apo) in total chaos. Salaries at 30, military deactivating etc. And all this because I forgot to transfer some cash from my account before I left, so they went slightly negative (about 2-3 T while I had over 200T sitting in my account). I'm trying to fix it but it is a very slow process (reactivating and raising salaries).

I have two proposals: 1. When there's cash in the portal account, the game should transfer automaticaly enough cash to keep the country from going in the negative. 2. Allow us to raise salaries and activate weapons faster when trying to recover from such situations.

There maybe 2 weeks before bankruptcy but the game starts intervening right away. Dropping sals, raising taxes, sending the army inactive.

There needs to be a window before auto functions kick in. I think that's what everyone has a problem with. The immediate intervention even in very good countries like my 1 you seen Andy.

Most players posting on this issue are successful at the game and know how to fix there countries.

My proposal is this. STOP intervening in our countries. A 2 week window to fix the issue is perfect. Aslong as the game stays out and doesn't start ruining my settings. After 2 weeks we loose our country if the issue isn't solved. I think everyone would accept that.

Christos,

we really do not want to take cash out of players accounts. This goes too far.

It is very easy however, to set a notification that will mail you or send you a message in the way you want it to warn you on some level of cash and other parameters.

any suggestions for new notifications are welcome but quite a few are already available.

You can setup any warning you want.
low cash, even lower cash, it is all possible.

What about a box that we can tick if we want the game to automatically transfer cash from our account to prevent such situations?

I agree that taking cash out of players accounts is a step too far, but if the player has consented to it I think it's ok.

the -4B in construction will cause a negative in supplies available and then the automation system will wreck the country causing salaries to eventually drop to nothing. Ive seen one country with almost nil salaries
make construction except from the calculation
as for building companies goes make the auto system build the ones with high amounts like chem, oil, and the other mining cos. Instead of junk profit companies like military

Does the game manage edu priorities at all during bankruptcy edu priorities are a big problem for a lot of players

Andy - I don't think there is a concern from players that are actually active that we'll lose countries due to bankruptcy, the concern is that the automatic systems create massive problems when a relatively small swing in assets occurs. Like I said, a 300M country can swing several trillion in cash in a day if there are large shortages on a world.

There are a few good options, here are mine in order of preference:

1. Allow a player to refuse the automatic systems, if that's selected then give at least a week before the system intervenes, that week can be included in the window of potential bankruptcy for the country so that the system can still shut down the country in the same amount of time.

2. Allow immediate orders on negative products without a spending space requirement and allow players to reactivate all weapons as long as there are workers to service them, cash is positive and negative materials have been corrected. You can add to this the ability to restore salaries for both public and private workers to the prior level immediately.

3. Go with Christos' suggestion above that a player can select the option in each country to automatically transfer in cash from direct trading account if the cash goes negative. This is a good option as long as the player has the ability to select it for each country.

I have to imagine that options 1 and 3 are the easiest to put together. Option 1 is the best as it gives plenty of time for an active player to intervene without the automatic system screwing up their country and still allows for the country to go bankrupt in the same amount of time.

I agree with Serpent

Running larger nations sometimes you cant buy supplies and they they do they buy them in massive bulks causing swings.

I think the BEST scenario here is to let people opt out of the intervention for at-least a week like serpent said. Also as an additional form of protection, why cant the empire game cash total be taken into account. The game levels can tell you how much money you have in your empire. I say that as long as that number is positive, the auto features don't intervene.

If you have 5 nations with an average of 6.2T and 1 country has economic issues, its very apparent the player in question has the money needed to fix this issue.
Now if they have 5 nations and the average is a negative number then there is a problem.

Also as for conquering countries.

I do think the GM should add some sort of rule to allow 100 game months before bankruptcy notices start.
Taking a country will always leave it in negative stock SOMEHOW. Giving the player 100 game months or 2 real weeks to correct the problem is MORE then enough time to deal with a crisis.

I'm in favor of this update but i think the GM needs to tweak it to allow a little bit more time before warning and notifications start posting.

It looks here like the repair system is new.
It is not.

It has worked like this for years.
the only thing changed is to make it fix the availability of workers more quickly.
the repair of education priorities is part of it from the start.

It was triggered before when cash was low.
At such time, material shortages also occurred.

Now it explicitly checks for negative total value of materials.

With many materials positive, a negative total is quite serious.

Negative construction used to be a large factor. It will become a much smaller factor.

We are adding the possibility to place many immediate orders if stock is negative.
It will be possible to place such orders without bumping into any purchasing limit, as long as you have the cash to pay for these orders.

This will allow you to resolve the situation at once.

We do not need to add many new features and tricks to make this work. You just need to resolve it and any possible interventions will stop immediately.

A new update, with the immediate purchasing feature will be installed coming Tuesday or Wednesday.
It will also reset the bankruptcy warning back to two weeks and allow everybody much more time to fix.

The "Close to bankruptcy" status will be renamed.

Andy I have a suggestion I'd like you guys to consider? With these new rules I'm mostly encountering problems in countries I've just conquered. Mostly due to a lack of construction.

My suggestion is this. Allow us to move construction and other products directly from our account into the country. Currently there's a week delay. I have several B in construction in there but I cant send it. Instead I need to buy or move in through space. Lifting these restrictions would be a big help?

Also I cant send profesionals for a week either.

You say it's not new, but if that were true then why are so many players bothered by it all of a sudden? I don't remember mass military deactivations and salaries dropping to nothing when a country went 1T in negative cash. It's certainly new that you can't even go into a country that is negative 1T in cash.

It just doesn't make sense that a country with 100's of trillions in assets goes completely haywire when it falls below 1T in game cash. I'd rather the system force sell assets than start deactivating everything and dropping salaries like crazy.

How about a system that provides automatic loans to countries but secures those loans with assets the country possesses?

Serpent,
It only happens if you do not move some cash into the country.

It is very easy and quickly done and nothing happens.

The limit used to be -3T. true.
is there a difference? you need to move the cash anyway.

now you just need a loan for 2T and you are in fact back at the point when the limit was -3T.

Also, at bankruptcy, the entire negative assets are inherited. so if your cash is -5T and your materials are negative and the entire assets are -30T, your main country will pay 30T at bankruptcy of that country.

In the past, we tried to prevent bankruptcies.
It caused very strange constructions and they were only taking place in large and very rich accounts.
some countries had a lot of money, some have huge negative assets.

New players, small accounts do not have these problems. They are supported in different ways.
so this is a problem for the rich who can solve it easily.

It is very easy to keep countries very profitable.
In the past months, profits are increasing steadily.
These accounts have the money to solve the problem. They can also let the automatic procedure fix it.

Andy

I completely agree with you that the bankruptcy issues have gone to far, but what serpent is saying is that if i have a country with 500Billion cash,then spend 3T in month (causing) that means I'm 2.5T in the negative. IMMEDIATELY the system takes over and messes up the country.

What some players are asking is that there be a buffer in new feature before it kicks in.
Please correct me if I'm wrong because im trying to understand everyone's side.

--- Your saying the nation will take loans then accumulate negative cash(during which time it will sell assets to pay back loans)

--- What the players are saying (and have seen) after 1T in loans the auto features kick in which causes the selling of resources and drops in salaries.

Also i have a theory on the issue at hand

I have been C3 warring lately to test weapons and have noticed that after i take a nation at war level 3, it does not ALWAY take loans immediately. Sometimes the nation has to wait a month or two, which results in it having negative cash, which causes features to kick in.
It seems like each month it is hit with negative cash balance the features kick in, then the next month the loans kick in and auto feature disappears for the time being.
I think this might be the cause.

Andy
If the game is programmed to respond to these negative numbers this might be the reason people are having problems. Negative cash has to appear BEFORE loans can be given.
Could the way loan system works be contributing to this issue?