W3C - Game news September 26, 2013

Targon Units

It is now possible to set up Targon defensive units.
To do so, you need Targon defense batteries and Targon Defense missiles.

These can be produced in all countries that have Targon.
Targon can now be produced on Tiny Atlas and can be transported to all countries.

Targon defensive weapons and ammunition are very powerful weapons that are able to destroy many types of missiles.

Details about the working of the Targon weapons and their capabilities against other weapons are explained in the weapons document.

Wind Farms and Government Cost

Wind farms produce electric power and their output is added to the country stock each month.

Each wind farm produced 1250 units of electric power each game month.

The maintenance cost of wind farms is added to the government cost.
The proceeds from the electric power produced by the wind farms is now subtracted from the government cost.

As a result, the government cost in countries with wind farms will now decline because the value of the electric power they produce is much higher than the maintenance cost.

The government cost can even turn negative if the country has many wind farms.

First War

we have recently seen that the first war experience as intended for new players became trivial. The first war could be won without any significant fighting.
we were alerted to the problem by a player and it was discussed on the forum.

We have now improved the first war experience and it became non trivial but it remains quite easy to win.

To win the first war, you need to reduce the war index of the enemy to a level under 20. It used to be sufficient to reduce it under 40.

We wll now continue to improve that first war experience.
The description/tutorial for that war will be improved.
We will also look into the process and tune it to the current capabilities of army units.

Shortages on the market

The current upgrade includes some tuning of many types of corporations.
We expect that the shortages will keep declining. We have seen declines from extreme shortages in the past weeks and hope that the trend will continue.

Cost of maintenance for government facilities and the monthly cost of the army

We have tuned down many of the operating costs for both government facilities and for many weapons, both defensive and offensive. We think that in time, operating costs will decline. More steps could follow to decrease cost even further.

Game Interventions in building facilities

Nearly all interventions are tuned off.
in extreme cases, such interventions will continue and try to keep the essential health and education facilities at acceptable levels. Much lower than before.

Thanks for the updates and transparency, Andy.

I am interested to see the reaction and impact of the windfarm updates.

Thank you.

My country on Tiny Atlas now has negative govenment cost with less than 20 wind farms. It is of course a small country.

It’s not in your notes here, so I have to ask if it was intentional or if I just completely missed it on a past update. Wind Farm corps generated 2 per year, but on setting a new one to build it is now 1 per year. It’s perfectly fine, if it’s an intended change, stealth changes without notice to game systems just make maintaining the spreadsheets more challenging.

Maybe I'm missing something but my government costs are unimpacted in countries with wind farms on WG and FB. I am probably not looking at it correctly.

When I view your country finance report in TA, I see -2b in government costs (roughly).

My country "Khaganate" on WG has about 400 wind farms and unchanged government costs.

https://sim03.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=cntrhist&miKey=4171&miColumn=vCcostOfGovernment

I continue to be horrendous at uploading images LOL. Attempt 2:

can you give me the name of the country on WG?
I will have a look.

with 85 wind farms in my country on KB, government cost plunged by 35B per month.

We are repeating the upgrade procedure.
It could be that the reduction in the government cost will kick in after this update.

The output of a wind farm corporation used to be 1.0 to 1.4 depending on the welfare index. It was higher when we introduced them.

It was reduced a bit in the past weeks.
We think that it is unrealistic to build a 250 turbines wind farm in less than a year.
should probably take much longer.

These are very large installations with a major impact on the energy market and the finances of the countries where they reside.

Creating them is a challenge and should take some time.

The country is "Khaganate" on WG in my example. My government costs have increased, if anything, and as I mentioned, I have more than 400 wind farms there. I definitely saw the update impact your TA country, which is why I was curious about it seeming to not really impact my countries.

These are my gov't costs in that particular country:

https://sim03.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=cntrhist&miKey=4171&miColumn=vCcostOfGovernment

Perhaps the cost changes will kick in after your next update.

Thanks for taking a look.

It looks like changes went through this game month. I now notice a massive impact.

I don’t mean to nitpick. I know some of my last couple messages can sound like nagging but I do appreciate the work put in on the game after all this time. I’m just one of those evil spreadsheeters so when things aren’t adding up I seek clarification.

While the update with wind farm production being factored in is appreciated (hooray not being stuck at game level 2 because of financial index) it seems to only go part of the way. I could be mistaken here so I’ll have to test to verify over the next couple in game months, but I feel from recent experience that the issue I’m bringing up is true. The income generated by the wind farms as far as finance index appears to be based on the standard market value of the electric power without quality factored in. The issue lies with the idea that electric power consumed by the government, health care, etc is expensed at the true quality level of the electric power being consumed. So the true income value of the generated electricity still doesn’t appear to be accurately reflected in the finance index in comparison to the expended electricity. I know it’s a very minor issue that most won’t even notice, but if the finance index is meant to be a true representation of those costs and revenues it should factor product quality evenly in both income and expense.

Unless I’m wrong and am misremembering some of my recent expenses. Which is possible so I apologize if I’m off base here.

myself, i don't see a need for the game to say i'm making over 400B. Except for the posiblity of a postive ledger on TA, i'd rather this was an over all nutral swing, rather than from a FI malus to a postive.

but i hope this looks like a short, quick, not mad at all, type complaint.

Targon weapons and ammo are not showing in the defensive link. When i click on "Defensive Index," which shows me the D weapons and ammo that i have in stock, but not in units, it does not show them, at all.

Also, the unit itself, just might be buggery. I don't have a weapon to put into it yet, but setting it up, in prep for having some. It shows 2 sets of NDB when i click on the unit itself

These are good changes, however you did not change the war limit problem you previously agreed to do. (limited to 500 hundred wars level 3) you were going to remove that limitation on the next couple of upgrades. It now has been over seven real months. I know you have been busy and I believe what has been done was worth the wait, but it's time to follow through on your word. Thanks
Rob
The Brain
Fearless Blue

ATM, I've got 3 Targon weapons, and enough missiles. Trying to set up the first unit in "Project 2" on LU.

I get this error
Could not allocate muDefTargonMissiles

Everything seems to be fine unti i click on, "Finish," on step 3 of the set up process. It gives me that message. It goes ahead and creates a targon unit, with just aamb and ammo.

If I try to change the weapons in the unit, to add in the TDB, then it gives this message ->"Oops"<- And looking at the list of slider bars, it shows 2 sets of Nuclear Defence Batts, and no Targon option.
---
In addition to this.

All My WG countries are dropping thier FI. One is solid at 30, and the other 2 look like theirs doing the same.

One of my countries is doing the same with finance index, Josias. It has total costs of -68b (not government costs, but the total costs in general) and the finance reporting says it makes 149b profit, but it dropped to exactly 30 finance index in one or two game months.

Country is "Delusion and Hysteria" on FB.

I doubt the game programing was prepared for negative costs

At some point, I'd be interested to hear the logic or the restrictions behind triggering the 30 finance index. Just wish to understand what's happening.

I had a country that went to over 400 finance index and then dropped to 30 in one game month.



I agree regarding negative costs, Jiggle, but there are some players with several hundreds of billions in negative costs now. I'd have thought this might've been considered given how this impacts those players, who are the wind farm leaders, so to speak.

Im still too early to build wind farms, but thanks for keep maintaining the game .. that reducing of soldiers cost and weapons will be greatly appreciated. I remember the day when we can build several units with immediate order as a free player within unupgrading spending space, maybe it was 10 years a go .. at that time, simcountry was a popular online game with so many players. Unfortunately i was a highschool students that cant afford premium. But playing as a free player was fun enough with a lot of interaction between player.

Hope that time will be back and simcountry become a popular browser based online game again.

I am aware of open issues that are quite urgent and ones we promised to fix/complete.

We were very busy with the unexpected effects of having many wind farms and needed to fix these problems quickly. Also issues with wind farms contracts.

I am aware of the problem with the war limit and promised to fix it.
I am aware of the problem with the Targon military units and the defensive Targon weapons not showing on the page with defensive weapons.
Only max 100 fortifications are showing on the map while the max number is 150.
Also the default price on common market contracts is too low and should increase.

we have more urgent issues that are annoying but not difficult to fix.

we will have another upgrade next week Tuesday and hope to include solutions to some of these issues.
Not all will be included but we will give full priority to the fixing of these issues before we move on.

Andy,

Thank you for the bug fixes, and acknowledging that you are aware of bugs that remain. It helps put our minds at ease, when we know that you are aware of the issues, and working on fixes.

Thank you.

The issues mentioned above are all resolved.

Please read the game news.

we are far from being done.
there are many functions we want to add/change/fix.
we will continue doing so.