W3C - Game News Nov. 18

1. Pending Bankruptcies

Many players have improved the assets of failing countries and increased the assets to a positive value. These countries will not bankrupt.
Some countries however have negative assets and the clock is ticking. The best way to save them is by a transfer of funds to the country.

When assets become positive for a period of 8 hours or longer, the "pending bankruptcy" clock is set back to 84 game months and will start again if the funds that were transferred into the country are removed again. This might be a "cheat" to avoid bankruptcy but part of the money will be used to fix shortages and the country will end up better than it was before.

2. New Products Added

Lead and Lithium have been added as new products and can now be produced. The products will be used, starting next week, in a small number of corporations. The numbers will increase gradually. The corporations that will use the products, will start purchasing them early so that the corporation will have some products in stock when the production process starts using them.

Also Batteries have been added as a new product. These are industrial batteries that are used in the car industry and other industries and not by consumers. Future alternative power industries will also use batteries.

House hold batteries will be added at a later date.

3. Indexes Document Added

A new document explaining the indexes in Simcountry is added to the game documentation.

4. Use of Mobile Devices and of Zinc

The use of Mobile Devices and Zinc that were added last week is increased. Mobile devices are now used by the population as a consumer product and the numbers will increase. More corporations will start purchasing these products and will use them in the future. We do not expect any corporations to suffer a setback in production as a result of the use of the new products.

5. The Navy

The navy is an effective weapon that can be used far away from your country. It is possible to fight the navy with offensive weapons but the defense against attacking navies and especially attacks by frigates and sea based cruise, was very limited.
This is a problem for wars where auto defense is used.

We have now added defensive capabilities that can help protect countries against navy attacks. Both defense helicopters and defensive missiles will counter attack navies in war, also conventional missiles and stealth bombers will participate in the auto defense.
This change will not diminish the capabilities of the navy but will extract a price for navy attacks. The attacker will suffer more damage to the attacking navies.

6. Conventional Missiles

We have improved the capabilities of conventional missiles and made them harder to destroy. The missiles are also effective against more weapons, including the navy. Mobile auto response conventional missile units will participate in the defense of countries that have them and will attack a wider range of weapon systems.

7. Lower cost for Some weapons and many types of ammunition

A further decline in the base price of weapons and ammunition, including also many defensive weapons will make wars cheaper and allow for a low cost for the defense.

8. More Tuning of the War Engine

More testing of the war engine and remarks and mails from players, resulted in some tuning of the war engine. This will result in some changes in the working of some weapons on some targets and of some defensive weapons and their response to attacks.

In face of an increasing probability of war between countries with presidents, it is important to make it possible for countries to set up a good defense that will deter attack and also improve the auto defense features in case of a war while the defending player is not available.

More work will be done in the coming weeks to allow for the setup of auto response units and the choice of targets that they attack in case the country is attacked.

Nice 1 GM's. A good update. Plus some new corps is always nice. Big thumbs up for the mobile cons.

+1 Good one Andy

Those navy changes were really needed. Until now, if you were attacked and your offensive weapons were destroyed, there was no way to stop a navy. This happened to me a while back and I almost lost a country.

I'm still waiting for revoking the common market member limitations.

Andy, as I took a look at the new index explanations page there are two things I would like to say:
1. Good Job.
2. I really have to object the fact that things like hospitals are closed down if FI falls below 150 while health is above 250. I would agree if FI falls below 100 as that means negative income, but as long as one is still in positive, why closing down stuff? Sure one only needs those high Indexes only at high game Levels but as the past has shown, market swings can happen and adjusting may take some time and may cause even well run countries to drop below 150 for a short time but in my opinion that doesn't justify auto-closing stuff that might take a lot of time and/or Money to rebuild

Awesome news

I agree with borg queen on the FI issue.

Also, I did a little experiment. I used my navy to attack a friend's mobile supply unit (just to see what kind of response I would get). She had two defence helicopter units nearby. I lost 12 cruise missile ships and supply ships. She lost nothing.

I agree that the navy was too powerful, but it seems that an entire fleet can be destroyed very easily now.

The number of members in a single common market is too high. We said that before.
don't hold your breath.

We do not want very large blocks to dominate the markets.
if markets will become larger, and spending per country lower, this might be an option in the future.

any short term changes (we do not plan any) will be to reduce the numbers.

I might support the issue of closures of facilities. We try to back away from closings.
This is a very old feature and FI may have been lowered in the following years. I will look into it.

Any info on quality in this attack?

Check the helicopter damage on these vessels.
I think you need 100 hits to destroy one boat of the same quality.

We will also do more testing.
such information helps a lot.
we will also look into war logs to see what happens.

I checked on supply ships.
they are never attacked by the defense as they never attack.

Other weapons may have been involved in the attack.
Only attack helicopters and navy fighters can damage supply ships.

I just tested it out Andy with my country SPQR on FB. WL 13. The helis wiped out all 12 cruise missile ships with no damage dealt to attacked country. Counties have no DMB's so this is heli response only. My quality 363. Heli quality 450.

Plus the SB's countered against my other naval ships doing a lot of damage.

Then I tested at wl 3. My quality 363, heli quality 180. Again attacked a county so no dmb response. My losses between 5 and 7 cruise missile ships per attack. Doing 15% damage.

I tested against a city with 40 dmbs. 7% damage with 7 cruise misile ships lost.

Looks like most players got what they wanted. A good defence v navies. Now there's no chance of using them against a country that has it's air defence up.

We're pretty much back to where we used to be with navies. I'm fine with that but now I don't see much use for them. There's other weapons that'll do the same job.

Also noticed the mobile cons where still having no effect. This a wl 13 c3's mobile con response. There quality must be 450. I had no air defence up, just garrisons and they alone are enough to nullify them completely.

Mobile Conventional Missile Unit Hereford is responding with a counter attack on Osano fortification.
SPQR (the attacked country,WL13) reports:
•No damage to Osano fortification is reported.
•The country used 183 missile interceptors in the defense.
•The defence was assisted by the Garrison TG5178.
•The War Index remains 99.97
The Kingdom of Diantha (the attacker,C3WL13) reports:
•Hereford lost 20 conventional missile batteries.
•Hereford lost trucks, gasoline and military supplies.
•The attack may have been reduced or eliminated by Anti Missile Missiles.
•442 soldiers were killed and 1234 were wounded.
•The War Index remains 100.00

For these mobile cons to be useful with so few numbers, 20 is nothing. They need to be as hard to hit as stealth bombers. Fighting c3's doesn't even come into my thinking when I consider the war game. I'm thinking pvp vs fed response always. We can fly 24 stealth bombers v fed air and still do damage and not loose every sb per attack. Until they can do that they'll be of no use.

I'm wondering about these new products added. Will corp profits be effected? More supplies needed to produce the same goods = less profit? I'm noticing a lot of corps are needing these new items.

#5 is great Andy, it allows the automatic defense to work as it should so that people who have a stout defense don't get screwed by a work around.

But, the issue is that there is still no cost effective way to wage war against high level C3's or more importantly, because you seem to want PvP wars, to wage war against strong countries. An attacker is always going to have to spend not only way more resources than they are going to gain, it's also way more time.

We need offensive units that are at least as strong as the defensive mobile units.

We need navy's that are strong enough to actually do any kind of damage against garrisons and mobile units.

We need to be able to sell the resources we've gained, that means not only assets in the country but population in the country. (If I can only sell 3 million pop a day and I take a 300M country, first it will take me 73 days just to sell the pop, second, I can only sell 220M of the pop, third, I can really only sell ~150 million pop because of the migration penalties, fourth, I lose even more population/cash in my other countries because for some reason their welfare index is affected by me selling the pop in the country I took which is ridiculous).

You've got to provide the incentives for war players if you want the war game to come alive and right now, there is zero incentive once you consider the amount of time it requires to take a large country in addition to the amount of time it takes to set up to do so in addition to putting my own assets at risk.

Regarding my experiment, all units were around 450 quality.

The newspaper showed that supply ships were destroyed, but I can't confirm that they were as they may have resupplied before I checked.

More testing is taking place here.
There are too many conditions to cover and your experience helps.

We will have a first round of tuning today.

In regard to the recent changes with the navy I received this message today from Khomey Peng from his exile from the forum and at his request I am publishing it for him -

"I tested the new tuning they just did to the war engine. I sent 10 cruise missile ships, all over lvl 300 against a lvl 13 C3. all but one cruise missile ship was wiped out against only 1 defensive battery."

Not specific enough.
what defense battery?
numbers of destroyed weapons?

Andy,

Khome y Peng messaged me that he has emailed all of the specific data to you for you to review. He is available by email to answer any additional questions you have about it. Thanks.

Andy the GM needs to rethink war levels this is JUST RIDICULOUS

A C3 has more defenses they a normal NATION. 3 Stealth bombers wing attacks and 2 conventional missile units attacks.
Your tweaking to C3 nations is not helping any one.
I beg the GM to please investigate this. C3 nations SHOULD NOT be harder to take then a Real War.

Double and triple auto weapons attacks. Massive defenses and garrisons that are higher Q then a player has.

C3 at war level 13 is hard and should be.
Level 14 and 15 will be added and will be harder.

You gain 350 gold coins for winning such a war.
It should not be a picnic.

If too difficult, let it be.

I agree Andy
Im not saying by any means it should be "easy"

But triple stealth bombers, double con missiles, plus defense levels that are unavailable to the players is not helping anyone. Your doing the opposite of what you are trying to achieve. Even with federations and mobile units a player CANNOT achieve what you expect us fight in a C3 war.

At war level 13 you make NO money, you have stated that you wish to remove cash raiding from C3, also you stated that they will get harder. A 1 time gift of Gold coins is enough to cover the lifetime war level bump.

The GM should come up with other incentives for a player raising their war level, because it as of now after a certain point its WORTHLESS to go past war level 7.

The GM just needs to look at adding some small tweaks to make the high levels more appealing.

Maybe at war level 13
10K professional soldiers and 3K professional officers be left in the nation
---Or---
even after winning the C3 war a very small amount of gold coins is awarded?

It was suggested before but how about at war level 13 instead of taking the county, i can choose to just end the war after a victory, which results in me gaining 20GC. That in retrospect is FAR FAR less then my costs but it would give a real incentive for warring at higher levels.

Im not asking for you to overhaul the system, im just asking that reweigh the risks and rewards.