W3C - Game news September 9 2010 (Little Upsilon)

1. Trading Plutonium

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, in the coming two weeks 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.

Starting September 22, selling plutonium outside your own corporations, countries, enterprises and empires will be possible on the Carina space station.

2. Direct Trading - correction

The direct trading menu is corrected and now shows the new trade page for gold coins. The feature became available last week but was only usable from the direct trading link on the left home page frame.

3. Larger Corporations

As published before, several types of corporations are hiring more people. These corporations are slightly changed with more people, mostly the same raw materials used and higher production levels. This is the next round of such changes that will continue over a long period.

4. Cash Management in State Corporations

State corporations with a high level of cash are transferring part of their cash to the country where they reside. We have now added a transfer of cash from the country to a state corporation if the corporation is short on cash.

This is done to save many corporations that are bankrupting because of high loans while the player does not know about the debt or does not realize what should be done to prevent their closure.

This change will save mainly beginners corporations and make the game easier for them.

While revisiting this function, we have increased the level of cash corporations can hold before it is transferred to the country.

Expected Next Week (September 15 or 16)

- In war, fed members will be able to participate in the defense with two air force units (up from one).

The units can come from a single fed members or from two fed members.

The choice depends on the power of these units. The best units within range will participate. Losses during fighting are shared by all the participating units (this is also the current situation).

- The War Game

Description of our intentions for the further evolution of the war game.

- Corporations

another increment in the size of some types of corporations.

Expected in Two weeks

- Defensive spending space will be separated from other military spending. The defensive spending space will be increased.

This will make it possible to increase the defensive spending space after a country is confronted with a war declaration.

- Another increment in the size of some types of corporations.

- Probable addition:

Direct trading of Cargo Shuttles.


Both updates may include additional items.

So, am I missing sumthing here Tom, I think this means Plutonium will be saleable to myself, but not third parties unless through a space station?

2 wing air support will destroy the war game only option will be massive amounts of nuclear weapons, this is a horrible decision, final nail in the coffin for the war game.

I got a question, My navy weapons keep deactivating, It says i need more miliary bases to support it, But navy i thought you only need supply ships. And none of my other weapons are turning off, Why is this?

You need more than 1 carrier barren. 25k weapons per carrier/fleet command. They act as bases for naval weapons.

Tom.
Ok, so now I have thousands of kilos of useless plutonium, seeing as how I have no wish to get involved the space trade game until it is tuned. Now, I could possibly make nuclear weapons with this pluto, but can you assure me that they too wont be tradeable only through space stations soon? Or is your intention to force space trading on us?

All of my countries with well established education systems that had plenty of excess workers are now suffering virtually unmanageable worker shortages, particularily Hi Tech seniors and Execs, can you do some sort of analysis of the effects of the changes to corporations you are making and maybe allow the first lot to settle in before you compound it with another round of corporation changes too soon? I'm sure it will all level out eventually but at the moment I have 100s of corps losing money due to less than 100% hiring which will add up to a very big hit after a RL month.

Thankyou, Crafty.

lol.... so war will now require large amounts of nuclear weapons AND you'll have to go into space to get plutonium~

Niiice...I couldn't have done it better myself!

I'll second that Crafty.

Tom, the players with more mature empires, high employment and fully upgraded corps are really suffering here. I have been closing corps like mad, have had HTE and HTS education priorities set at 20 since the change, and I am still short almost 200,000 HTEs and 20,000 HTSs in every country.

Can you find a temporary fix that allows us to radically alter the demographic, just until the game stabilises? Something like allowing us to change professions within other groups than just LLWs, MLWs and HLWs? If I could change Teachers or LLMs into HTEs and HTSs, it would go a little way towards solving the problem.

The prospect of it getting even worse, when we are still trying to cope with the last one, is horrendous!

Hugs and respect

Jo

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

Expected Next Week (September 15 or 16)

- In war, fed members will be able to participate in the defense with two air force units (up from one).<!-/Quote-!>

Tom, you dolt!

*snickers*
This moves the war advantage to multiple attackers. Air defense is like an eggshell once cracked, the gooey yolk of raided assets spills out. This is incentive to pirate multiple players at once with multiple players. Rather than single asset raids, we are justified in raiding multiple countries. I can't afford the 100K-120K Bombers it takes to crack 600 Defense Interceptor Wings, but I can afford 50K-60K and my friends can afford the other 50K-60K. We'll just take out 6 countries at once. Dismantle the godless empires of any econ player.

You know what the best part is. They won't be able to crack our defense because we will have spent months building up the offensive resources needed and they will have not.

THEY HAVE NO CHANCE.

You will have killed the lone wolf to bring forth the pack. Any sheep that does not befriend wolves as allies will be doomed to destruction, but why should the wolf protect the sheep? They have no reason to. Wolves do best to kill the sheep, eat the sweet assets for dinner, and follow it up by breeding more wolves to kill more sheep. Haha, you dolt! How easy do you think it is to develop close, competent allies? With the herds of federations that would rather whine about changing the game to favor "econ," you can be guaranteed that those sheep won't be able to learn anything or to build anything to stand against the wolf pack NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU HELP THEM. They'll demand more concessions, a bigger fence...and the wolves will learn to use ladders. What use is the shepherd nowadays? He can't stand before the pack. No single player can now amount to anything with this; the shepherd will fall before he can organize his sheep and teach them to defend themselves. He can no longer rely on himsel, his own assets and skills. Sheep are incapable of aiding the shepherd. How many shepherds, players willing to defend the weak at great cost to themselves, do you think there are? The sheep don't know how to counter-attack wolves. They just die because they count on the shepherd. Why shouldn't the wolf reign supreme nowadays, all he needs to do now that he didn't before...is to hunt in a pack! And he was doing that already. It is the shepherd that should be afraid.

From a strict cost-benefit analysis, you've just increased the cost of raiding by maybe 90 GC per 600 DIW. Usually 6 countries worth... sometimes 3 countries worth. If I'm understanding this, that's 15-30GC more per country. 3-6M population? Heck, it take more than 3M population to support an increase from 100 DIW to 200 DIW. Not much of an incentive to not attack. If the profit of a single raid is decreased, it stands to reason that the number of raids will increase.

Dear Reader,
The IDC is recruiting on GR and LU. I can help teach you the strategy and tactics required to PROPERLY defend yourself.

EDIT:
If my post wasn't clear, Tom, you've only increased the learning curve and preparation time required to win a war (both benefit the attacker). Each increase in defensive strength and decrease in offensive strength (aside from introducing a complete inability of the attacker to break through defense) will accomplish this. Why? Because all attackers learn first to defend themselves. Nothing you can do will change this. Any increase in defense benefits both sides. Those that choose not to invest in offensive equipment will always be doomed to failure. Offense wins wars; Defense stalls the inevitable.

This isn't the fault of game mechanics. This is the result of the failure of the presidents themselves, but why should you make it more difficult for newer players to build an effective offense? Older players will have no trouble either way.

I agree with CC....If I where to say whats on my mind about worker shortages it wouldn't be nice. So I won't say anything at all.

SO with a two wing assisted response...this is a 1200 int or heli response?? That seems a bit drastic. I agree completely with Whiteboy...nukes nukes nukes.

This is only going to cost the attacker more in weapons and ammo...which means that they (I) will just have to attack more often to make up the difference. WB's also right...the nails gonna be in someones coffin when the decs only INCREASE from this change.

Well well now, I'm glad I got a buttload of nukes then huh.

Scarlet. Can You teach me how to properly defend my country please?

Yeah W, except that it won't matter. What this means is we should all just have our entire defense structured around air d and nuke defense and entire offense around nukes. Which means those tiny little holes which is the only thing you know how to find for sure won't be there, if people don't have to stock a bunch of offensive weapons and instead just a bunch of strat ammo and bombers, no holes from deacts. Speaking of which, when is it going to be time to fix the things that were supposed to be fixed and were of much bigger consequence than this silly change, i.e. c3 warfare and deact sequences AND equally as important, letting fed members who counter declare to defend fedmates begin their wars at the same time?

Scarlet and EC are exactly right as well, I've been telling you that the stronger you make defense, the less war you will see (which is maybe the intent) but the severity of the wars will grow and because there are fewer wars people will have even less of an idea than they currently do of how to actually fight them. Leaving those that are already better than everyone else at war even better than they already were because they now have basically unbreakable defense (if done correctly) and all the knowledge on how to actually win wars.

This is going to be ugly.

Termite - Contact Scarlet at "Scarlet Zeppelin" on LU

The pace of growth of corporations will be reduced to allow for easier accommodation to the new size.

In time, corporations will grow much bigger than they are now so you can either add population or close corporations. There is oversupply in some products and removing such corporations will cause little damage.

The total value of corporations in all countries and enterprises is increasing and will increase much further.

It is now already much higher than a month ago.
Even after the closing some corporations, the total value will remain much higher.

All the defense changes we are currently making were discussed recently on the forum and there was wide support for a stronger defense including the participation of multiple fed members. We have also discussed the possibility to make the number dependent on the numbers of attackers on the country.

In the past, all fed members could send interceptors to support the defense, there was no limitation and tens of thousands interceptors participated each time.

We have changed that to reduce the huge numbers and losses and reduce the cost of wars.

A high quality attack wing will be able to win such attacks easily.
We will increase the max quality of units to 200 ASAP.

Read our new war document in the coming days. we want war to become much more of a challenge and less of a routine. It will require more than just fighting another air wing.

You can't have high quality attack wings Tom, there is far too much risk in them being destroyed by your opponents to just leave them sitting there, even more so when upgraded. Plus, making that statement is silly when your opponent can then have 200 quality int wings, which, combined with 3 units participating in defense LITERALLY will make countries untakeable. As I said, only chance will be either blowing through nuke D ammo or finding a hole in nuke D...was that the intent of this? To increase the already excessive use of nuclear weapons in the game?

There was not widespread support for multiple wings, there was mild support and coming from people that do not necessarily understand the true implications. I, personally, can adjust as will many of my friends, the rest of Simcountry, not so much. By just increasing the strength of defense (multiple times now in the past few weeks although this was by far the most) you are making war even less likely thus creating an even wider spread between those who know and those who don't. Many of us are trying hard to close that gap, but the changes you are making just keep increasing it. Stop adjusting weapons and focus on adjusting the ease of war and making it more widespread, that is the only way people will learn.

I'll also note, when you used to be able to have so many ints participate in defense, you also *VERY IMPORTANTLY* weren't limiting weapons such as NFP's to 400 per attack. With 3 int wings responding it will blow out an entire wing of fp's/drones, 500 bombers and certainly all of the 400 nfp that can be used to attack. It's a joke, it's more clicking and a complete deterrent to war. Again, if that is what the intention is, then just say so because the statements about war being a big part of the game are in complete disagreement with your current actions AND the priority of changes that you've been making. I'd just like to at least know where the game stands, if it's behind the econ guys and in opposition to war, that's your choice, just let us know so we can actually make plans instead of having this stuff sprung on us.

Honestly, with these kinds of changes, I feel like there are three options, become an econ player (boring), quit the game *or* get back together with my old mates and add even more of the players who already know or are interested in the war engine so that war can still be cost effective for us. All three options...well...they suck.

Think about what you're doing, it isn't good for the game or for business.

dum dum dum dum .........duuuum.

...

Plutonium

This update is a mistake

Plutonium trade should be allowed in world.

Maestro, your membership was a mistake.

Terminated and revoked.

Wendy, are you having a slow day?

Sorry I couldn't make it to your birthday party. My flight was cancelled.

As a strictly econ player,your need for nooks is none existant unless u aim to supply.

Restricting its open sale stops needless throwing of nooks by noobs. Using space, the newer players will have to have a lil gumption about them to get there.

Econ players do sell pluto

But making a rule to force the sale in space only...

I call that a restriction of trade.

U can make it for ur own use only.

There arent enough products for u to trade in, in this game? LMAO