W3C - Game News Sept. 7, 2017

I think there is, but only within the realm of those who understand it. That's a whole other discussion though...

Yes well aware of that bug *coughs. I didn't get caught you grassed me up.

Lol I had skills enough to relief you of an empire and I've the skill to do the same again but luckily for you I cant be arsed jumping through all the hoops to get to that stage. I'll just sit back content with that fact.

You had the skills to utilize a weapon that was made broken by the navy update. Up and down the original thread, I warned of making navy weapons too powerful too. After Altered Carbon's fed used them on me and then I used them back, I posted again. I said "See GM? I told you! These weapons are broken". They still were not changed. It wasn't until I lost the empire you talk about that changes were made. Oh, and I was in the hospital with CANCER! So, yeah. You got skills to take an empire using a broken weapon against a player who was stuck in the hospital for a few months. Good job man. Keep patting yourself on the back.

The one thing I agree with you on is that war levels remain too powerful. It contributes to what I call the "single-player experience". I believe you are saying the same thing, just differently. As I have said before, this isn't a good single-player game. Hearts of Iron 4, for example, is much better. When I want to play single player, I load that up. Simcountry needs to be a massive multi-player experience, and right now it just isn't. That is the core problem of this game.

You are right about who caught you too. It is sad that I even had to point out that you had so many duped mobile units, it wasn't even possible to load your map. You might have got away with it had the GM had a quick map fix instead. So sad. I reported the other dupers and the GM didn't act.

The war part of Simcountry is not the main function and the option to play a peaceful play is here to stay.

We do think that the war game should be improved and become an option for more players. This is why we are now concentrating on some improvements.

War levels are not the problem.
The problem is the current limitations in the war game that depend on war levels.

We intend to improve the war levels and make them more challenging and change the way war can be declared and make PvP wars more likely.

War levels are now used to win gold coins and for some, a way to hide from real war.
Winning gold coins will remain possible but we intend to add incentives for players to fight a PvP war instead of hiding behind war level differences.

I still believe adding incentives to fight war is the wrong way to go, and it won't take long for me to demonstrate why, shortly after such a change. Instead, incentives should be aimed at players who choose to build and exist outside of FAKE protections.

*cough* Runescape *cough*

PvP was the main style of gameplay overall in the game, few bad updates/an combat change over the years made things change and PvP died. They made incentives recently/over the years but more so to attempt to gain players again, but rumered to be a farmed item (wouldent doubt it! people have used multis to take before and i have watched it happen!)

Long story short, good job on getting players 1/2 actually be 2 legit sources of players with game play of there own to win the rewards offered by the third party source.

Just to say Andy its no good for third party incentive, its just a total bust and mess. Just to say hide from a real war, not bad unless its the war world! There was a time before were things slowed down before the war levels were around as i said i remembered! But really that is only part of the problem as the incentive still should be something for players to enable gain/building for the risk, because its still simple to just utilize gold coin gains with war levels and just drop right out with the rewards no harm.

We will try to make PvP war attractive.
Also, as we said before, try to convince new players to join federations.

One thing we must do, is to make it harder to wipe someone out.
Not so easy to do but we will add more steps to the process.
we are far from done.

next upgrade tomorrow will include:

- Garrisons will block invading units, like other units do.
- Garrisons are becoming more powerful.
- Limits on stacking of fortifications and other targets on top of each other.
- The defense is becoming stronger.

More details and other issues in the game news tomorrow.

We also think that war rules should change a bit:

- When you declare war, the attacked country used to respond to attacks. Mainly, defense air force unit responded. (unless the player was awake/available and waiting for the war to start).

We think that the attacked country should immediately start attacking when war starts independent of any attacks from the declaring party.
It could use its offensive units and auto response units to attack the declaring party as if the player is manually doing so.

These attacks should be unpredictable, unlike the fixed order of priorities in current auto response attacks.

That same procedure could be used in wars against C3 countries.
In this case, as war starts immediately, these attacks will follow the war declaration.

This will be part of a later update.

"One thing we must do, is to make it harder to wipe someone out.
Not so easy to do but we will add more steps to the process.
we are far from done. "

See? Andy andy, When players say war needs less clicking, and with no real inventive/fun based wars going on its not like this is going to help. This is the process that stops pvp

-Are we trying to make war/pvp battles for people to risk gains for rewards are we trying to make the person who has to defend the winner, like most battles here in the last few years (not all! but some its the case) as the attackers wanted what the defenders had just not the strength.

-Start attack immediately? Lol whos going to war, the attack or the defender? the problem isent making units gouge themselfs its making people prepared/necessary to do so. An auto attack feature doesent save the game and time of people need to have units combat, unless the game automatically gives up free ammo every few days.

-C3 wars arent even worth fighting anymore, why make them something thats more of a pain/even less of hassle to fight, pretty soon the best idea will be just remove the whole war engine.


Not bad with the garrisons though. Theres a step in the right direction. I just for the life of me do not know were the agenda "make everything more difficult" comes in. Like the deactivation thing was also real popular with the game, like i knew it would be ;/

The "harder to wipe someone out" needs clarification on how this would be done. I read it and first thought, "isn't secured mode enough". Sheepman read it and saw it as more clicking to take a country. The statement is generic enough not to understand what this means would be changed.

Garrisons block? okay, no big deal either way.

Garrisons more powerful? need clarification. this simply mean that the cap for their weapons increased or something else?

Stacking limits? what about existing maps?

Defense stronger? again, super vague.

I really like the idea of attacked countries responding in more ways. in theory. If that is done right, this could help address the issue of many defending countries under threat for the same player at once. Say, once the war goes active, offensive units from all countries that are defending launch attacks on the attacking country.

This also would help offset the "attacker advantage", that being that they, the aggressor, choose the where and when. They probably set the when for a time convenient for them to be online. The defender most likely didn't plan to be at their keyboard for hours at that time. Obviously, creative and smart implementation of this would be key.

Oh, and Andy, when are we going to have email notifications working again that inform us when we have a country at war or if an entity is about to expire? This is an item that should have top priority and it appears to have been forgotten.

Sheepman,

When I said more steps, I meant more steps to change the war game, not more clicking.

If you want players to drop war protection, they should be able to have a chance for a serious fight.

Without some confidence of being able to fight back, no one will give up war protection.

We are reducing the number of targets and so reduce the amount of clicking. We do not want the ability to win a war against a new player with several attacks. It will not going to bring back any type of PvP wars.

As Gaz said before, we need the threat of war.
Even if we make those changes, we do have more protection than before. One country in secured mode, or other war protection, limited hours each day and with better defense, we might get closer to a more challenging war game.

To clarify:

Garrisons are becoming larger, more weapons, better defense of fortifications, bases and corporations.
Stacking targets will be limited but we will not (for now), change existing maps.
Stronger defense means that some targets will suffer less damage from attacks and some weapons will shoot more ammo that will be a little more effective.

We plan to add more notifications very soon.

We also intend to add notifications to the mobile APP and make it possible to receive notifications on your phone if you wish to have them.

How about this suggestion:

As it is now, most military expenses are based on the consumption of products, such as military maintenance products. On the finance page, profit and loss reflects the cost of these items as a part of "Total Defense Costs". Since the actual cost is "paid" when the items are purchased by the country, the finance page balances this by including all of the following in the Cash YTD tab.

-"Profit and Loss" which reflects the cost of the item as part of monthly consumption

-"Materials Purchased" which reflects the purchase price of the item when the country actually purchased the products.

-"Materials sold or used by the government" which reflects a credit for the exact same amount as the amount paid in "Profit and Loss" for "Total Defense Costs"

Essentially, "Materials Purchased" is when the actual money is spent. Your country orders the product based on your ordering policy and typically are set to purchase a number of months worth when your stock hits its "low-water mark". The other two entries in "Profit and Loss" and "Materials sold or used by the government" are used for recording purposes and simply estimates the cost of the items that are consumed each month to upkeep your military, in this case (similar processes are followed for other tracking of daily product use)

Now, I understand what I just explained probably just went over the head of 80+% of the player base. Especially, players who have never had to contend with defending country with weapons, rather than FAKE protections.

So, now to my suggestions. The monthly reporting, that is the "Profit and Loss" and the "Materials sold or used by the Government" does not include the ammo expended as a cost for having weapons in your country. Essentially, the function that describes itself as "Total Defense Cost" is bogus because it leaves out ammunition, which is a very significant cost of defending a country.

Andy, soon we are moving, at least on one world, towards some system that encourages or coaxes players into replacing FAKE game protections with actual force of arms. To prepare for more players to deal with the inevitable expense of doing this, does it not make sense to include the costs of monthly expended ammunition as a part of "Total Defense Cost"?

Make FB no war levels, no war protection.

Aries,

Don't underestimate anyone here.
People who are interested in the details, and look at these numbers will figure it out as you did.

The maintenance cost of the weapons in the country includes some materials, maintenance products cost AND the ammunition that is used in maintenance/training.

The function is 100% CORRECT. (Please be careful .....)
I designed this myself, it was tested and calculated many times.

The separation of cash expenditure from the actual cost may be complex to some but it shows the real cost.

Doing it on cash bases will cause very large fluctuations that will be even much harder to understand.

As far as I can see, the entire cost of the army is represented by the cost of defense as reported.

Jauterson

I agree on limitations of war protection on FB but war levels, if serious and a measure for capabilities, offer free gold coins.
Maybe you mean that there should be not connection between your war level and any war protection it provides.

Yes that's pretty much what I was getting at.

Check it again. Ammunition is certainly not included as part of "Total Defense Cost". Check any one of my countries on LU that are out of war protection. You have 9 to choose from. It is obvious.

I have brought math to the forum a number of times. I am not up to it right now, so I will give you two options. Please, check it again, because adding ammunition costs to "Total Defense Cost" is very important for proper reporting, if we plan to get more players involved in the war game. The other option is if I spend the time to bring the data and indeed prove you wrong on this, how about I get compensated? I could always use the coins.

Excuse me Aries but you are spreading false information!

Ammunition is calculated in the maintenance cost of each and every weapons and the cost is part of what is shown as the cost of defense.

I appreciate your knowledge but believe me, I know the code, I designed the function. and it is 100% included.

There is a fraction of a piece of ammunition, that is used per year, for every weapon you have.

You should stop this discussion as it is baseless.
You knowledge is great but you statement on this is false.

The cost is far too high to ignore.

We did it when ammunition corporations were closing because of low interest.

we have replaced the cost of some materials by inserting the cost of ammunition.
we caused the use of ammunition to increase and created a market for ammunition, leaving the total cost of maintenance unchanged.

This was done at least 5 years ago, before that, ammunition was not used in the maintenance cost and also then, the total cost of defense included everything used.

Gosh darnit. I will open a notepad and get started. I will admit if I am wrong, but I expect some gold coin payment if I can clearly show you are wrong!

Example:

One offensive anti aircraft missile battery maintenance per year takes the following:

Gasoline 11.4 units
Electric power 4.5 units
Offensive Maintenance units 30
Off anti aircraft missile 0.78
Military services 900
Military supplies 204
Soldiers 12
Officers 5

Each and every product has its own schema.

All the products are subtracted 1/12 of this quantity, from the country stock each game month.

That doesn't show this. I am asking whether all these costs are reported on the financial page for Profit and Loss next to "Total Defense Costs". No one is questioning whether we lose the actual products from our country stock.

Start here. Where am I wrong? It appears that gasoline and electricity are shared by military and other use, so it is difficult to determine the price amount on our financial page going to military. Does this not make up the amount I cannot account account for in "Total Defense Cost"? That country uses a heck of a lot of monthly ammo. You still think there is accounting room for that ammo in "Total Defense Cost"?

Your turn!


CC2 on LU

Aug 3949

Total Defense Cost 75,164.75M SC$

Total Salaries 2,008.82M SC$
Total Products 69,036.89M SC$
Total Accounted for 71,045.71 SC$
Unaccounted for 4,119.04 SC$

Salaries Yearly Monthly

Soldier 16,000 SC$ 1,333
Officer 32,640 SC$ 2,720

Drafted Soldiers 778,652 1,037.94M SC$
Drafted Officers 343,218 933.55M SC$
Professional Soldiers 14,540 19.38M SC$
Professional Officers 6,600 17.95M SC$


Total Salaries 2,008.82M SC$


Airforce Maintenance 9,005.81M SC$

Def Weapons Maintenance 33,463.19M SC$

Military Bases Maintenance 7,973.22M SC$)

Navy Vessels Maintenance 0

Off Weapons Maintenance 1.20M SC$

Aircraft Fuel 4,256.23M SC$

Military Supplies 1,871.80M SC SC$

Military Services 12,465.44M SC$ SC$


Total Products 69,036.89M SC$

Where did Andy go? Alright, perhaps his shift is over.

Tomorrow, if you need to bring an excuse, a crow, and a bag of gold coins, but only have two hands, just bring the crow and the bag of gold coins and leave the excuse at home!

It sure is looking like the score is Aries 2, Andy 0, on this thread though..

Was I right? Just took me 25 minutes to gather that data from the country, though I admit that I had looked into it before. There is a little-known thread where I threw my knowledge and analysis of the financial page on the LU forum. This raw data that shows my thoughts at the time is under "Pissing Contest". I didn't name it, Josias did.

I suspect if I am right, this means that your perception of the true cost of setting up defenses might be off. My 9 slave countries on LU are good accounts of real PvP defenses. It is my experience that I need to have much more cash available to meet the expense than what "Total Defense Cost" says, in order to maintain the number of weapons I need and purchase ammo to replenish what is used.

Is it perhaps the case that not just the reporting needs an update but a revisit to the monthly burden of maintaining a military as well? It appears that ammunition, maintenance products, and military services are the top three costs, but, again, I seem to be able to account for about all expenses in reporting except the ammo, which I most prepare for with my off the books calculations.