W3C - Game news September 17

1. Trading Cargo Shuttles

Cargo Shuttles will be traded on the Direct Trading pages. There are trading possibilities both ways. You can offer a shuttle for sale or you can request to purchase a Cargo Shuttle.

We will make sure that there is always a possibility to purchase a Cargo Shuttle with no delay.

This addition to Simcountry will be installed on September 21st or 22nd.

2. War Game

We are developing the first stage of the new war levels. This limited release will include:
- Assigning war levels to all existing players, depending on the number of wars won. The levels will be 1, 2 or 3.

- When starting a war, there will be the choice to attack a C3 country of a higher level and if the war is won, move to the higher level. (We will implement level 1-5 only).

- Declaring war on another player will be possible if the game level is the same. This might be changed later.

This change is expected before the end of September. It might end up a little different than described here and an exact description will follow in the next game news, next week.

3. Larger Corporations - High Level Workers update

As published before, several types of corporations are hiring more people. More types of corporations have been changed with increasing numbers of workers. In this round of changes we have made sure that the number of HLWs is not increasing in any corporation.

In many types of corporations, the number of HLWs will decline and in addition, smaller numbers are needed when corporations are upgraded. This will result in an overall decline in the number of HLWs needed in corporations and will decrease shortages.

We will measure the effect after this upgrade and will make another change in the following update.

This change will take place on September 21st or 22nd. The next round will be one week later.

4. Cash Management in Corporations

Corporations continuously transfer money to and from the owner. This results in quick changes in cash levels, many questions to us, bankruptcies and also allows room for misuse of corporate loans.

To stabilize the cash situation in corporations, combined with their larger size and need for more cash, we have now made several changes.

Corporations will not transfer cash out, or allow any cash transfer out of the corporation unless the cash level is higher than 80B. Loan requests by corporations will be possible if the corporation cash position, including loans already requested will be lower than 20B.

These changes will reduce bankruptcies, and prevent fraud that has been going on for quite some time with misuse of corporate loans.

This change will take place on September 21st or 22nd.

5. Trading Plutonium - last update

Plutonium trading is currently taking place outside the world markets. This has disadvantages for many players. On the other hand, we want to keep Plutonium outside the market and have some limitations on the type of player who can buy the product.

We will now move most of the plutonium trading to the Carina space station. Plutonium trading is currently already possible on that space station.

Plutonium trading through contracts and direct sale in the five worlds will remain possible between countries, enterprises and corporations that belong to the same player. You can produce plutonium and sell it to your own countries and enterprises.

This change will take place around September 28.

6. Defense Support by Federation Members

Up to two federation members will be able to support an attacked federation member country. This is up from one and will enhance the defense capabilities of countries that are members of a well organized federation. The participating units must be within striking range.

The changes in corporate cash management are too extreme. It appears you are attempting to prevent debt bombing with this change. Requiring a maximum of 80b in a corp before cash can be withdrawn is unnecessary and problematic for president and ceo's. Most experienced players keep 40-50b in their corps, and experience no bankruptcy problems.
In addition, since you are preventing debt bombing, how about eliminating hostile bids by requiring the current owner of the corp to approve the bid first. Debt bombing is the only fallback since bids don't have to be approved and bids can't be retracted.

We will look at the bids and reconsider the conditions.

The limit of 80B is chosen because corporations are becoming larger and quantities of raw materials are increasing.

Revenue levels in corporations are also increasing and as a result they just need more cash.

what 40-50B used to be in the past, will become 80B in the future.

You know that you could have just eliminated the ability to bid on another player's corporations without approval, right? You've eliminated any reason for doing it; you've eliminated any chance of stopping it.

Why? Please tell me.

i fail to see the reason for making corps have more workers it sounds nice but why not make it so that we just train more HHW. so we can have more corps and BETTER ECONS

The stated reason for making corporations larger was to reduce the number of corporations and, ultimately, the server load if I'm not mistaken (I may be). In any case, this would make sense.

Why should we remove the possibility for a hostile takeover?

This is a function in real life and in the game.
it can have economic sense.

We were discussing economic wars as part of the peaceful game and the introduction of game missions.
what would you suggest?

Larger corporations

Larger corporations will reduce not only transactions and server load, but also, it will reduce clicking and reduce the effort of managing very large numbers of corporations, in countries and enterprises. This is an issue. Just try to look at a list of 400 corporations.

we might be able to reduce the required numbers for high game levels.

It will also allow us to use much more server power to improve other functions and introduce new ones while keeping response time reasonable.

In time, we are replacing servers by faster ones and the problem is less urgent than it used to be.

this is the third server generation and we will start to replace again.

Why should we remove the possibility for a hostile takeover?

That only happens with Public corps in RL. Private corps should be protected from bidding unless they are going bankrupt or the owner decides to sell them. Presidents should still be able to nationalize private ceo corps. If the game went in this direction, the advantages of having public corps would have to be enhanced. In RL, private corps that go public are usually able to expand their production as they raise capital from selling stock. Maybe a production bonus could be added.

I agree.

we are looking at possible new advantages for public corporations.

we will also soften the PE requirements (raise the PE limit) and also raise the required market value because market values are up and nearly all corporations fall within the current limit.

Currently, I do not believe there to be any reason to initiate a hostile bid. The recipient of the bid will usually receive more than the corporation is worth and could EASILY build a new corporation because of the corporation's mark-up. The increase in corporate cash to $80B could decrease the potential loss (bidder-side) posed by the corporate mark-up in smaller corporations. Maybe more hostile bids will surface?

If your goal is to allow economic warfare, I would like to point out that before the corporate mark-up, hostile bidding was a viable form of economic attack and the debt bomb (especially when you could still transfer out the cash) was a viable form of defense against such attack. Effectively, it has appeared to me that you've been trying to ELIMINATE economic warfare.

The goal of economic warfare would be to profit off the other person and make such warfare as costly as possible for the other person, just like regular warfare. Without the possibility of profit, there is no incentive to fight. The corporate mark-up eliminates much Hostile Bidding or hurts the person doing the bidding because the target of the bid is usually making more than the corporation costs to rebuild.

If realism is the reason you keep hostile bidding, then keep the debt bomb as it is. Corporations experiencing hostile takeovers will sometimes adopt poison-pill measures to prevent hostile takeovers in an effort to keep the other person from completing the takeover.

If you created a situation without the corporate mark-up and with the debt bomb (assuming current form: without cash transfers), then added the possibility of retracting hostile bids, I think you'd see more economic warfare. Remember how everyone used to complain about hostile bidding before the mark-up? It's beyond me why anyone complains about it now... unless it's a space corporation that was just set up. Anyway, that's all I have to say on the matter. The possibility of economic warfare is something that I've given up on a long time ago.

"Without the possibility of profit, there is no incentive to fight." -Scarlet

exactly, scarlet, but their are other factors to consider here. a country debt bomb can be get close to double the value of the country itself, over 100T of debt from one country, and i've heard of over 400T... by allowing that, you are actually removing ANY incentive to fight a war. The point of this move was to eliminate the country debt bomb...

perhaps a happy medium, would be to allow debt bombing as it was, and limit the number of corps a country can nationalize at one time to 6, just like for CEOs.

The debt bomb as you call it was a way to cheat.
when losing a war, people took money out and bankrupted the corporations.

I don't think a corporation should be able to take large loans and move the money out.
This was just an error in the game, allowing this to happen.
There are more such problems and we will solve them.

We can improve the economic game by the introduction of limited resources. (You cannot pump oil from the same place for ever.)
By adding the search for resources, ownership of concessions to build such corporations where the resource is and not arbitrarily anywhere.

There could be cartels trying to square the market and larger fluctuations of product prices.

There are many more such possibilities, just check the real world for some conflicts.

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Without the possibility of profit, there is no incentive to fight.<!-/Quote-!>

Wrong.

If you people only fight for profit, there would be a lot less bidding.

I like Orbiter's idea, but if debt bombing is to be done away with, then rest in peace, dear debt bomb. The primary reason for my comment was to illustrate the stated interest in economic war versus the actions taken that seemingly stifle the potential for any bidding wars (what I imagine was meant by economic warfare).

Laguna, I'm pretty sure there is a lot less bidding. Even if there isn't less bidding, hostile takeovers definitely aren't as big a deal as they used to be (measured by the fact that there is much, much less complaining... at least from my perspective). Even if there isn't less complaining, those complaints aren't founded on any realistic criteria. The complaints conceivably are simply used as a justification for conquering another player's sweet, ripe countries (by experienced players) OR unfounded on any demonstrable economic loss (by noobs) with VERY few exceptions.

Tom, that sounds like a reasonable solution to promoting economic-based conflict.

1. Site Update

All updates as described on Sept. 17 have been installed today. There are two additional changes:

2. CEO corporation numbers and Game levels

The number of corporations that are needed in the higher game level is reduced by about 10%. This is done to compensate for the growing size of corporations.

3. Game Levels and the number of countries

The number of countries needed for the higher game levels for peaceful players is decreased. The number at some game levels increased too fast and ended up too high. It is now reduced but more levels may be added in the future with an increasing number of countries needed.

Both these issues were discussed during the Jozi chat last Sunday and immediately included in this upgrade.

I hope u dont make that war level thing so you can only attack players your own level, Its seems lame

Nice reaction time w3c. If only more people were available to participate, the GM's could have heard more of the game concerns.

I find the 80B rule to be inappropriate. I have had no problems with companies Bankrupting from 10B-20B and no debt and therefore find the argument that the limit is required to prevent people from wasting our time with questions about unexpected bankruptcies to be without merit. Limiting net cash to positive values should be sufficient to prevent fraud and prohibiting transfers from reducing cash below twice debt should eliminate abuse. Given that there is also a prohibition on transferring cash into a company above 60B the rule is inconsistent and arbitrary. Most importantly, the limit breaks the illusion of ownership which is necessary to the enjoyment of the game. In short a less intrusive way of dealing with the issue should have been found.

80B in cash is needed in corporations and more so now that they are becoming larger.
raw material purchases are in most cases automatic and cause large expenditures, cash goes negative and there are automatic loans.

This is confusing for many players.

This was always a problem but with the growing size of the corporations and the growing size of raw materials purchases, 80B could be spent in a single game month.

I don't see the problem of the added cash in corporations. It is probably 1T to 2T extra if at all. You are not forced to inject 80B into all your corporations.

worst case, you use some of your cash, or invest 2 or 3 gold coins, exchange for cash and splash all corporations with sufficient cash with a single click.

No need for micro management.

This is much better than the previous situation with huge loans taken, cash taken out and unexplained bankruptcies of profitable corporations and all the frustrations that came with it.