What Does SC Do Best? (Little Upsilon)

I'm making this thread because it seems that W3C is trying to make improvements to this game but a lot of their time and investment is useless or adds nothing to the game (city maps, changing the layout), or doesn't come close to meeting expectations (space trade, and likely space wars). I'd like to start some constructive dialogue with the developers, because I'm sure they mean well. After all, they've made SOMETHING here that draws people and keeps many. So, I'm curious to hear from other players what it is you like about SC or what you think they do best and what should they concentrate on to improve it?

Personally, I've always liked the interaction in the game. Unfortunately, it's pretty limited to feds, forums, and chat. Feds have some serious flaws that have been pointed out by many here, forums can be dangerous if you (knowingly or not) say the wrong things, and chat is often full of asshats. So, I'd like to see some development that would actually increase interactiion, whether it be through feds, or trading, or assistance, etc. I won't go in to detail. I'm mostly curious to hear others opinions and ideas.

BC

I'd like to see the 75% tax countries done away with. (Voluntary basis)

It's antisocial. Discourages ceo's from investing.

How to accomplish this?

Make corporations less profitable when tax rates go over a certain level.

I agree that I enjoy the interactions. I enjoy trying to make the country as profitable as possible. I enjoy building the armies and controlling the costs of it.
I do like the 75% tax rate. It has its own benefits, but I use 0 tax for most of my empire.
I don't care at all about the graphics or the maps or whatever. I hide my country map on most of my countries. If i was here for graphics, I would have left long ago for something better.

Tax is tax. Funny how the discussion immediately heads for an economic basis right off the bat.

What's there to say, we've got a disparate grouping of people who thrive on the numerical aspects of the economic portion of the game, and then there's the people who thrive on the numerical aspects of the military portion.

Now what changes I wouldn't mind seeing is refining some of that information, since somethings haven't changed in years that are still as useless as when they first launched.

I still don't get why the contract amounts for anything Common Market related are in dollars and not the units of material...

Maestro2000 (Golden Rainbow)
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - 01:43 am Click here to edit this post I'd like to see the 75% tax countries done away with. (Voluntary basis)

It's antisocial. Discourages ceo's from investing.

How to accomplish this?

Make corporations less profitable when tax rates go over a certain level.

-----------------------------------

Nonsensical at best, Maestro.
It would be less profitable to run a corp at 75% rather than at 0% That would be a basic assumption. Certain economies in the game run best at 75% when run properly. Would You rather w3c take choices and options from players who are rulers of a nation? I don't get it.

I like the game, interaction.

I wish the game would allow for sale outside of the game server of game assets. Like Ebay of Empires, Game Cash, Gold Coins, Accounts in general. I think this is a huge part of the reasons that WoW series is so popular in the online arena. Simcountry could be no different.

The graphics are lacking but other parts of the game make you 4get about it. Not to say that a graphic upgrade isn't way overdue or unnecessary because it is.

The war Engine is too complex and the documentation is inadequate, and although it is updated, some weapons are still not included in the updated version. Random BS happens from time to time, and this is a serious threat to the game. The war engine should work the way it is intended to work at all times. Newer players shouldn't be surprised by 'workarounds' or those 'Jedi Skillz' we hear about from time to time. And if the W.E. is working the way it is intended, its' workings should be common knowledge of all who are enticed to play the war game. Again, I will say that this is the biggest threat to players staying and their longevity in maintaining membership.

Tax isn't my biggest concern as far as CEO building. I'm looking for people that are going to be around for a while. I don't mind paying 30%, but I'll take 0%

Graphics are DEFINITELY not their strong suit, and I don't think that's much of a problem. It may turn some people off, but judging from the recent updates (city maps and space) I don't expect changes. Maybe the Dutch aren't big on aesthetics.

I wouldn't mind seeing them do something with the government types sometime soon. It would be interesting, and seems like it wouldn't be too difficult. I'd like to see a tweak in the fed systems and like Wendy said, MOST of the military units. In fact, I'd personally like to see a complete overhall of the war engine.

Another recommendation would be that countries are turned into territories that are added to your main when conquered, rather than having several countries to manage. In that respect, I think it should be far more difficult and costly to hold a country far from your main. Make it a more regional game using alliances and networks for global domination.

Simple things like that

The game is a decision game. A typical strategy game asks the player to take a series of decisions that lead to a decisive and clear Victory. Here, you can win the battle, but you cannot win the war. There is no manner of decisive and clear Victory at the end. As such, the rational long term outcome is coexistence, peaceful of preference and design. In a sense, this is the only Victory possible, marked by the fact that it is collective - social -, and not individual.

Irremediably, this would be the fate of other strategy games on the internet, with all things remaining equal. But assuming all things equal is ignoring reality. A common and powerful driving force of change in our world is young people, new blood, tomorrow's future. As in anywhere, when a new member joins his decisions will largely be unsynchronized with the more seasoned members. The resulting actions - rebelling or altering the state of things - will not change the outcome, but it can disturb the process and indeed postpone it; and given enough new members join in regular intervals, the outcome can be postponed indefinitely.

In our case, the influx of new players is small enough to be negligible, thus we reached and maintain our current collective end-game status. Besides, even though I don't see how exactly, the system is setup in such a manner to mitigate the effect of new players. I suspect it is a question of fear or shame on part of new players.

What does SC do best? Showcase collective and individual decisions.

What can be done? You can turn Simcountry into your typical strategy game by increasing the influx of new players at regular intervals, which can be achieved mainly through periodical advertising. Alternatively, Simcountry can be changed into something more unique.

How exactly should it be unique?... A matter of opinion, but the question what SC does best needs to be answered first. I have already given my answer. Besides that, I just like to watch the numbers.

LoooL, yeah, those evil stinky numbers.

'Save the Clicks' <---- Priority #1

I like the idea of having some line of sight to clear goals. I think we should have a reason to log in other than to extend WP, or scan for players to raid.

I think players like dub and Scarlet have done good jobs in creating websites to expand the social aspects of the game. Unfortunately, I don't believe that SC is really exciting enough to get most people to care. Most of us go through phases. We get the bug, expand, conquer, whatever, get bored and then go quiet for a while.

SimCountry encourages you think, experiment, learn. Thats what it does best. You get to enjoy the fruits of your dedication by achieving ranks, positions, winning wars, accumulating assets, whatever interests you most.
Introducing more automation, taking away the decision making process and feeding the resultant pap to new players will degrade the game to the level of many other rubbish MMORPGs.
This is what is unique about SC, without trying to sound elitist: it takes a certain level of intelligence to get on here.
Basically, I should have just copy/pasted Lagunas comments.

As for the interaction, maybe it is a little sad at the moment, but it beats anywhere else online I've tried to date.

i agree with several of you about needing to be able to think to play this game. when i first started i told people that you almost needed an MBA to play the game and that it would be a great game for high school and college students to have as a course. the social aspects are important too. i like it when we have an occasional nOOb asshat that livens things up. otherwise it gets real dull. and maybe along the way the nOOb asshat picks up some social graces and learns a little that'll help him/her in the real world. i'd like for the GM to periodically insert an aspect to the game where if you're smart enough you can make a pot full of money over a couple of real months. and then let them shut it down and insert another feature. we need something like insider trading or something to liven things up a bit. and if we get caught, put us in jail for a while. all the loopholes have pretty much been closed.

I agree with Parsifal. We need more crazy asshats to liven things up. 100 free nukes to every new player!
(That suggestion is only semi-serious.)

What does SC do best? Well, it's a complex (or at least complicated) simulation game. It appeals to people who like the idea of running countries. It is (or should be) a game that requires some intelligence to play.
I agree with others that SimCountry is interesting and unique in the opportunities for interaction that it presents. The problem is, there isn't much interaction. I think federations would be more relevant if war was more common.

I have some other gripes/thoughts:
Less clicking please. What's war in this game? An orgy of clicks. What's the economy? An orgy of clicks.

Fix the war engine. More strategic/tactical decisions, less clicks to achieve the result. Don't make individual units duel each other. If war becomes more fun, more people will fight wars and federations will be more relevant. I can't really give more specific suggestions here. I don't have that much experience with war and I'm not sure exactly what it should be like.

Fix the interface. Let me manage my corporations by group, already. Don't make me click a billion times to manage my enterprise. Fix contracts. Contracts should be based on the number of units consumed. If I sign a contract for 100% of monthly supply of (for example) Industrial Equipment, that corporation should always buy on contract 100% of the Industrial Equipment it will need that month. It should not be based on dollar amounts and it should not adjust itself without my permission.

It'd be nice to have more goals to work toward. Sure there's game levels, but ... those are flat and boring. With enough time, anyone can figure out how to fart around with the numbers enough to achieve higher levels. Also, some of the requirements just suck. Example: the health index requirements run counter to maintaining an efficient empire. High health index = old people all over the place.

As far as interesting goals go, I think a war world would be good. It's been brought up before but all that's occurred since is silence. Let us fight for control on a world where everyone starts on an even playing field and getting destroyed doesn't represent the loss of a very large time investment.

Space travel is not necessarily bad. It could be interesting. I think shuttles should be automated. Let us give shuttles a route and allow them to transport cargo on their own. If this is too powerful, introduce some kind of balancing factor. Limit the number of trips a shuttle can make in a given time while automated, or increase the costs involved.

i like that their is no clear winner... you can be a military power, economic power, or a diplomatic power. or any combination between. in fact, i would define a "vet" is some one that plays a mix of all those things, with a degree of competency...

and the higher the the average mastery of those things, indicates the level of player, i wish that the score system could reflect that. not just add up various indexes...

i would like to see certain aspects of buying and selling corps improved, like allow the owner of a corp to remove the bidding fee, and maybe even have a market that they could put their corp up for sale on.

to the players, their really should me more true public corps, where the owner has 24% of the shares, allowing other CEOs to buy and sell shares with the IFs.

also, i think that a crime aspect should be added. you would build police stations, jails, and national security centers (anti-espionage.) the index would be effected by welfare, education, and employment. perhaps crime could go up, the longer a war goes, or if a country sees frequent wars.

also, we should add espionage, allowing us to check ammo levels or see deployed ndb of other players countries. maybe get the financial page of a country... you know things like that. maybe more difficult things like sabotaging corps

I, too like the development of a game without a clear winner and only a vague measure of success. I think it makes the game much more diverse and complex. For me, games which promote ultimate cooperation among players are truly fun.

As a little bit of a history buff, I like how Simcountry is one of the first online games to introduce historical strategies into its war engine. Things like Phyrric victory, schorched Earth, sanctions, terrorism and nuclear fallout are always present in Simcountry and for me that makes up for the exhaustive clicking required for war. What really made the war aspect attractive to me was Secured Mode. Every other country sim that i know of requires a constant defense, and precludes the idea of a peaceful nation, but Simcountry finally allows you to abstain from watching random blinking lights for 60 hours straight.

Also a big plus is the price. I played runescape and world of warcraft and evony and ibory, but Simcountry charges about half for gameplay worth twice as much. Kudos to W3C for showing that a good game can be made without violence and good graphics.

Lolosaurus - "I have some other gripes/thoughts:
Less clicking please. What's war in this game? An orgy of clicks. What's the economy? An orgy of clicks."

Amen!

one other thing. the country portfolio of stocks is useless unless i've been unaware of it's potential, but something could be done to improve it and make it a profit center. btw, i got rid of my ceo's because even though i had been #1 several times, they began to make so little money it didn't carry itself for the monthly 30gcs. that's a shame since it got me to looking at other countries and helped build relationships with othe players.

I think that it is an excerise in supply and demand(at least the econmy part) Haven't gotten much into the war game hope to one day though. The investment fund is a good idea could use some work though. We should able to adjust tax of the people. Space we be more usefull of you could buy things and but it directly on the shuttle without paying .4 coins to rent the docking part for a day. But still not a bad idea.

And since we are dealing we partial goild cois the ability to but and sell partial gold coins could be added.

But the overal compelxity of the game make it entertaining as a whole

Orbiter

"i would like to see certain aspects of buying and selling corps improved, like allow the owner of a corp to remove the bidding fee, and maybe even have a market that they could put their corp up for sale on."

I second this idea.

Great idea.

Where this would be a great help is in strip countries. Instead of the strip artist closing down quality corporations, allow these corps to be auctioned off on the direct market with no penalty commission... And no movement penalty for these corps.

Maestro, i think i read something similar to that in some ones else's post... so i'm not sure i can take credit for the idea. but its a good one, non-the-less

i think a person could "farm corporations" for profit, build one, wait for its value to reach 80-100B and then sell it, i think their is a profit potential their... as well as you said strippers offering good deals. you could even build the type of corps you want in your country, then offer those state corps for sale, at an extremely low rate... i think their are ways to make money both buying and selling corps, depending on your favorite flavor, (another great thing about this game,)

Parsifal, their is a lot of money that can be made via stocks. IF funds can build up your pop's income like raising wages, with out the higher costs of ed, health, ssi, ect... but it takes allot of time, and care to build it up to a significant level. i agree, that this should be revisited, expanded, and streamlined, to make it more playable.

lolo, and bc, i agree that the amount of clicking should be reduced, and as far as the war engine goes... W3C has been trying to scale back the over whelming size of defenses, to make the game more playable, but things that simplify that game are often resisted by the players...

as far as the interface goes... a suggestion about that, would be to allow you to configure pages in your ceo, like allowing you maybe 3 "project pages," where you could create a list of your own corps that you are trying to do something with... an example of what i mean is understaffed corps, i could put all my understaffed corps into a project page, so instead of loading 500 corps every time i want to look at them, and then hunt for them... i only have to wait for it to load say 80 corps. so i can make the move request, and as i'm waiting for it to move, the page i check doesn't have to load ALL my corps.. you could do something similar for high tax countries, or what ever you want...

also, the share goals page is rather 2 dementional... i'm not sure specifically how it could be improved, but i'm sure their is a way

and the effectively of some weapons should be adjusted, their are some weapons, that are so useless, they aren't worth having. i think war can become more of a chess game by making some weapons like OAAMB, or AH more effective

and what would people think of manually setting priority targeting for their weapons in general, and/or units? like setting int wing to shoot fighters first, then bombers... the manpower of some weapons may need to be adjusted to reduce defense sizes, so that defenses don't badly outmatch offenses, just a thought

As for the economy, I'd like to see more strategy in the corporations. As it is, everything is ASQ. Let's see some cost-leadership opportunities where you can try to be the low cost alternative and sell on volume. That would require several tweaks, since they all produce and sell roughly the same amounts. Maybe there could be marketing strategies involved, endorsements, etc. Some things to add complexity to the CEO game. As it is, CEOs are mainly used to support your empire.

What happened to the idea about certain countries/regions having resources that other do not have? Maybe certain areas can be better at producing oil, gold, uranium, raw material for food, etc.... I thought this idea was kicked around one time, maybe not I'm not sure.
As for what I like about SC, well many things. It is a strategy game that demands patience, which funny thing is... in real life I don't have alot of LOL. But if you stick with it and invest alot of time the first few months, you can build a rather nice empire for people to rai..... errr enjoy looking at. It does have both the economics and military aspects that are not perfect of course, but still can be enjoyable if used correctly. And of course all my 'online friends'. Somebody needs to organize a SC convention, I think it be neat to meet alot of you guys... anyway, enuf rambling! Later

Wendy

You are missing the point.
My point on the 75% tax rate is to encourage outside ceo's to invest in other players countries.

When tax rates go over a certain rate, productivity should suffer on a sliding scale.

Hey, I could flip my WG empire into a 75% tax pool but choose not to.


This game needs more interaction between players. Give ceo's more advantages when investing in other peoples countries such as:

*10% Added quantity advantage for production
*10% Reduced Tax rate for startup business
(Valid for the first 5 years)
*5% reduced monthly FMU usuage factor
* Health care credits
* Educaton credits

Whatever the added incentive may be, the goal is to get players to work together.

@maestro. what if i dont want outside investment, why should i be told what i have to do with the countries I pay for?

As for interaction with other players, i do just fine, ingame,in chat and on msn.even with raised taxes across my empires.

@serpent. I remember this idea being mentioned, i liked the concept of it.


Im still for the idea of breaking down ceo or even countries corp list into section where you can adjust salary,quality etc, by group. ie publics, ecpc etc thus taking some of the mass clicking out of a ceo.

1. I like Serpents idea of specialized industry - live in a region where cattle are king & cattle/food etc. can actually make a profit selling to regions that are desert & may have oil etc. It would guarantee economic dependency or require conquest to get necessary goods. 2. game has ships already - lets make fishing industry? 3. Orbiter's idea of crime is good, & DTA wrote about a spy game that would open a new game spect - navy seals or homelands kill spies - spies rob industry, or technology, I think they proposed spying as powerul as war game 4. W3C is great because they dont get in eveyones hair 5. I give loans & see the new players who quit easily & go broke like I did, some games I play have "Online helpers/mentors" at bottom of screen you can communicate with. Would help them to know what quality to buy at, or where the 'special clinics' are set lol - I send notes to new players with debt but most quit & those that gain 26M pop get eaten by the mob & then quit. If one go into chat they get cursed out - its a club where no one gives correct info 6. Littel Upsulon is faster paced - but still slow as hell to build army sufficient to thwart old time MOB types - maybe a world thats 4 times as fast as L. Upsulon where army can grow? just a thought~

Lol 26 mill get eaten by Mob.

The last raid Mob had on LU was February, unless you count when DTA attacked us.


What does W3C do well? They created a game that changes just enough periodically to keep players interested and playing. Although their tweaks often eliminate useful loopholes etc., it does keep everyone learning and testing.

I do like MissileUpU's comment about helpers/mentors. I have been concerned at the lack of federations these days. When I started, federations fought over recruiting new players. I learned much from players who recruited me, and open dialog between players is a great way to learn. I'm not sure how W3C could improve this though - unless federations are strengthened somehow.