W3C- Game News Aug. 27 - 2010

1. RSS Feeds

Several RSS feeds have been implemented:
gamenews.xml on the Simcountry portal
votenews.xml on the Simcountry portal
warnews.xml on each of the worlds.

2. New Icons on the Simcountry portal

Facebook and Twitter icons and RSS feeds have been added.

3. Twitter

We have now created several twitter accounts and we are feeding some game information into these accounts. Following is the exact list and the type of messages that are being fed into these accounts:

Game News:
To stay informed on the simcountry Game News, follow the tweets on "SimcountryNews"

Vote News:
To stay informed on the simcountry Vote News, follow the tweets on "SimcountryVote"

Development News:
To stay informed on the simcountry Development News, follow the tweets on "SimcountryDev"

War News on Kebir Blue:
To stay informed on war news on the Kebir Blue world, follow the tweets on "SimcountryKBwar"

War News on Fearless Blue:
To stay informed on war news on the Fearless Blue world, follow the tweets on "SimcountryFBwar"

War News on White Giant:
To stay informed on war news on the While Giant world, follow the tweets on "SimcountryWGwar"

War News on Golden Rainbow:
To stay informed on war news on the Golden Rainbow world, follow the tweets on "SimcountryGRwar"

War News on Little Upsilon:
To stay informed on war news on the Little Upsilon world, follow the tweets on "SimcountryLUwar"

All News retweeted
All of these tweets are retweeted on "Simcountry". You can follow "Simcountry" instead of the tweets above if you want all to read all the news.

4. Facebook

The latest Game News, Voting Result and War Activities are published on our Facebook Wall:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Simcountry-Internet Game/152836221395353?v=wall

5. War Blackout Periods

The blackout periods have been extended from 4 hours to 8 hours per day. You can specify, per hour you want to black out. No attacks can take place on your country during a blackout period.

6. Defensive power

The defensive power of several defensive weapons is increased by about 5%. This is the second and for now the last time such a change took place in the past 10 days.

7. Direct Trading - cash transfer

To prevent misuse of the cash and gold coins offers, we have narrowed the range of offers to 25% under up to 25% above the standard exchange rate.

8. Cash Market - money exchange

The money exchange features in the cash market are being replaced by the direct market. The direct market offers features for direct exchange with no waiting time and allows players to place offers of gold coins and offers of game money. The direct market is now running for several months and it will replace the similar function on the cash market.

In the coming days, we will place messages on the cash market o direct all new offers into the direct Market. The current offers on the cash market will expire in time and the direct market will become the channel to exchange game money and gold coins.

All the other functions of the cash market will remain unchanged.

Now that weapons have been tuned for the second time. I feel weapon tests are in order. The Inanni People have passed by a landslide a legislative bill approving forward initiative in Weapon Tests to allow our country to stay at the forefront of weapons technology.

Any Volunteers?

Finally. RSS feed.

Why not merge the direct market and cash market into something similar to eBay's?

Being only necessary to bid 0,01B to outbid your contestants will once again become rather frustrating to players begin using the markets more regularly again. An increase of 5, 8, 10% or 20, 40B to rebid ought to be implement.

We will wind down the cash market and merge it with the direct market. Today's announcement is the first step.

The direct market will be expanded and include many more products. it will be improved and made easier to understand.

selling countries and enterprises, will continue with this bidding system but with a new feature that allows you to buy now if you agree to the requested price.

I like the Buy Now Button. Similar to Ebay....

I think the Ebay extensions will go a long way for advertising and Promoting.

With the existing player base, it is becoming increasingly harder to sell coins and more importantly Countries, for anything near Nominal Value or even Half.

As a Supplier of coins and Countries as a product I can always demand a price. Doesn't mean I will always get it. Buyers set the Tone for pricing. Most seasoned players rarely pay top price for assets, especially coin nor country.

With an Ebay Extension, not only will I be able to auction off my goods, but literally thousands upon Thousands of of potential new players will get to see Something that has to do with SimCountry. And if they purchase or not, they just may be inclined to google SimCountry to see exactly why the product is for sale and spark an interest to join, and otherwise have a head start that most players don't have when starting fresh, by purchasing not only Countries but Coins as well.

On the coin Side, I think that would definitely take some of the weight off the cash out feature for w3c. I hope this is moving up the priority list.

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6. Defensive power

The defensive power of several defensive weapons is increased by about 5%. This is the second and for now the last time such a change took place in the past 10 days.<!-/Quote-!>

What exactly does this mean? Referring to the documentation, is the 5% talking about "hit rate" or "damage" or something else?

The 5% up is mostly in the hit rate.
example: if hit rate was 60%, it is now 63%.

in some cases, when the hit rate was 100%, (not many) we increased the damage rate.

The weapons doc is being rechecked and updated.

It was not 100% correct even before these changes and will be republished in the coming week or two.

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The weapons doc is being rechecked and updated.<!-/Quote-!>

Yes! Thank you!
I've been waiting for this forever!

Suggestion: Blackouts should be empire-wide, not specified by country.

Further suggestion: A country's blackout periods should be visible in advance to everyone they're at war with.

Agreed on both Kitsune

Empire-wide i agree but why should you have the advantage of knowing when you can war?

If your going to war,shouldnt it be tough luck if you hit a black out thats not convenient?

and potentially wait 16 hours? that seems a bit much. naw, you should really be able to know when some one has their black outs...

as far as empire wide? i'm neither for or against it. being able to set it once for your entire empire, would be easy, and would make sense, but their are advantages to being able to stagger your black outs.

Asking for that kind of information to be public is like asking for the offensive and defensive index to become public. No. Take that private information to be part of the few uncertainties of war.

you can still get that info, or rather you can get the important part, if you know how. so by making it public, would equalize things for those that don't. but sure, keep it secret...

It's true, for those of us who have taken the time to figure these things out it is quite simple to find out someone's blackouts, I'll say it right here, not that it'll make a difference: All you have to do is test each hour with a sneak attack, don't actually have to do the sneak attack, just have to see if the system will let you. Now, the whole point of all these changes is to level the playing field and make war more accessible, showing blackouts will allow everyone to see the same thing, not just the people that have figured out how to find it who *generally* already have the big advantage in war experience.

Plus, once again, keeping this kind of information secret isn't just a problem for the attacker, but it's also a problem for the defender, the first day they'll have no idea when they can counter-attack and if they're trying to schedule things they should be privy to that information.

The defensive and offensive indexes are already basically public, it's the war rank. I don't think someone's blackout can be compared to being able to see their off/def indexes, it's more like being able to see their garrisons, which you can.

...

The Blackout should be publicly visible.

It was meant to allow you to set a time where you will not be available to war, not have some stealth war advantage. Why would I dec on a country that will take me 4 hours to take, shoot for three, than get raped by a blackout, and the WI resets?

This way, an opponent will be able to declare war when you are actually available to start, which is what I thought was the purpose of this feature, not a variation of a surprise element.

wow, well said wendy. you are absolutely right! it wasn't meant as a surprise element... but can be used as such!!! both offensively and defensively. and should be visible to every one.

Love is in the air!!??

it is, i'm in love with air, boy, do i love breathing, i just couldn't live with out it!!! i mean if i couldn't breath, i'd slowly suffocate to death, and i think that i'd rather die, than not breath!!! i really love air...