W3C - Game News October 3, 2023

Wind farms

The way income from wind farms is showing on the financial pages is updated.
In recent days, income from windfarms served to reduce government cost. It caused problems on the income/cost of the country and in the computation of the financial index.

We have now added a line into the financial report, showing the income from wind farms separately.

Government cost does not include the income from wind farms any more.
The maintenance cost of wind farms remains part of government cost.
We might update it in the near future and show the maintenance cost of wind farms separately.
The computation of the financial index is corrected.

Wind Farm contarcts with the country where they reside

A major problem with wind farms contracts delivering their products to the country where they reside is resolved.
Due to an error, new wind farms were not delivered to the country but instead, sold on the market, despite the standing contract with the country.

In the evolving situation it is now very clear that electric power production with wind farms is an attractive proposition.
We expect that many will want to increase such power production with more need for corporations that will produce wind farms and wind turbines.

Income and cost will increase but wind farms are and will remain very profitable.

Expected update in the maintenance of Wind Farms

Theis expected change is not part of this upgrade but will probably be part of the next upgrade in a week or two weeks.

Wind turbines are essential in the maintenance of wind farms.
Shortages of wind turbines will disrupt/diminish the production in wind farms.
Countries with wind farms should have a sufficient supply of wind turbines that are used to replace one wind turbine per wind farm each game month.

If the country has a shortage of wind turbines, it means that maintenance does not take place.
The production of electric power from the wind farms will decline by 50%. It might become even worse if the shortage of wind turbines is very large.

Costs of maintenance

The cost of maintenance, both for government facilities and for the army have declined recently and will continue to decline with the current upgrade.
The actual cost also depends on the cost of products on the market but the long term trend is dwnward.

Shortages

Shortages continue on all worlds and many products show short supplies.
The situation is however improved and may improve further in the coming game months.
Shortages are not about to disappear but may become smaller. The process takes some time to materialize but the long term trend is for more balance on the market.

I don't see it listed in your notes here, but additional change noticed between 8 hours ago and now:

Base monthly production of Wind Turbines corporations has reduced from 23 to 20.

Monthly supply consumption for Wind Turbines in Wind Farm corporations has increased from 25 to 30.

To use an example of the change, I have a country with 850 Wind Farms and 27 Wind Farm corps. At 100% production the country needs 67 Wind Turbine corporations to be supply stable for Wind Turbines. This morning, with no other changes to production considered, the requirement is now 84 Wind Turbine Corporations.

I'll be the first to admit this country is a bit of an extreme situation. At the same time all of these numbers had to be mined based on in game experience rather than update notes. The notes have said for a long time that there is an attempt to help the game's perpetual issue with shortages. This update actually works the exact opposite way. Just to maintain current production in the example country will require 17 new Wind Turbine corporations (ignoring other supply consumption increases). That's an additional 7,798,750 employees to maintain supply of one product, that are not available to work in other corporations that could address other shortages. Again, all for just one country.

This change is particularly crippling for countries that may have purchased many Wind Farms but relied on the world market for their Turbines. In WG, the current Turbine shortage sits at over 200,000. That's 10,000 corp months of production. The only option to avoid suddenly losing a considerable portion of the electricity production is to build ones own Turbine corporations. For some notable players that have a thousand wind farms, that means they'd need to carry 50 Wind Turbine corporations just to sustain their existing farms. In this example, that's 22,937,500 player owned employees that aren't being used to address any of the other countless product shortages. The whole Wind power thing has gotten pretty out of hand.

A seemingly more sensible approach outside of all of this silent tinkering may be to make Wind Farms less enticing in a practical way. The income they generate especially with long term implications is miles ahead of anything else, and the answer isn't to keep increasing production time and supply material consumption. That only makes the players that are 'behind' on them more behind. If you feel Wind Farms are out of hand the sensible thing to do is announce a couple weeks before hand that you intend to reduce the electric power output produced.

The output of these things is seemingly the one thing you haven't thought about changing to balance them. They can be beneficial without being essential, but right now these things are contributing considerably to other shortages because the number of workers needed in their production keeps increasing substantially and its impractical to think players would close down their existing corps. The only option right now is to double down and in my case close down non-related corporations to free up 8 million workers in just that one country alone.

The key idea is to announce intended changes before hand. Give players time to adapt rather than having to walk through fog trying to figure out what random unannounced changes they'll bump into. Because I can tell you right now from your update announcement here you went at length to say how essential Wind Turbines are and how punishing it will be to not have them, but made no mention that you both reduced their production and increased their consumption overnight. These updates are full of your commentary but severely lacking in actual gameplay details.

Also seemingly minor issue that becomes larger as the player grows where the Financial Index with Wind Farms is concerned. If the intent is to have the index balance out between the cost of Wind Farms/Turbines and the expense of them, it currently is falling short.

The income generated is based on market value Electric Power without any quality considerations. That is significant when held against electric power as a cost for the government having quality considered. For example I don't know the exact monthly power consumption of hospitals, but I know I have observed a meaningful increase in Health costs as the quality of my Electric Power has increased.

Since Finance Index matters in many areas of the game, most meaningfully in being a benchmark for Game Level requirements, it should stand to reason that if Wind Farms and everything about them are going to be a part of the index it should paint the whole picture. Either have the quality of the Electric Power produced count in the income, or don't have the quality count in the costs.

There are changes in corporations from day one.
these changes are very small most of the time and they will keep coming.

we have increases hiring in corporations, we have increased the profitability of corporations, many times, over and over until they more than trippled.
i do not remeber any complaints about it.

we have created huge possibilities for very high profits by the imtroduction of wind farms.
I don't remember anyone saying that these profits are overdone.

we are adding features and will keep adding features.

I don't understand what the problem is on TA.

we added one time, one game month on TA in the past hours because we suspected an error.
It was not an error but TA ended up running one extra month.

TA skipped several game months in the past weeks due to start difficulties with a world with low numbers of population.
never heard anything from anyone.

As to the quality of electric power delivered by wind farms, we think that there is no need to take it into account.
same as with schools and hospitals.
There are more products that do not have any advantage from quality.

Wind farms are extremely profitable. Currently, income is 3 to 4 times higher than the maintenance cost.

we had a case, documented here, where the income from wind farms was larger not only of the cost of maintaining wind farms, but larger than the entire cost of gavernment, health education and all other cost put together.
This is of course far too good to be true and unsustaiable.

If someone comes to the conclusion that wind farms do not make sense for her/him, please let us know. in the absense of a removal function for wind farms, we will, and have done in the past, remove your wind farms for you.

We also think that the max number of wind farms in a country, should depend on the size of the economy or the population. mayby one or two per million.

The wind farm functions are not completed yet.
there will be some more tuning, a removal fuction will be added and an energy page will provide better reporting on the details of the energy situation per country.

Health cost might increase if the cost of electric power is increased.
However, we have recently reduced all costs of health, education, transportation and the cost of maintaining the army.
even if the cost of electric power will double, countries will pay less for all these facilities than they paid before.
In addition, we have reduced the amount of electric power used by corporations by about 50% in the past months and never heard any complaints.
The number of wind farms produced was too high and remains too high.
players can continue building them but the process cannot turm the economy of countries upside down in a matter of several days.

This is and remains a complex part of the game.
It is similar to the introduction of cargo shuttles when corporations bankrupted because of the high need for financing.

Now, as then, we have said that there is no need to participate in the roller coaster trip and prevent the unrest.

Shortages, as also mentioned in the game news, are becoming smaller rather than larger. The current upgrade and the previous ones, all included small scale tuning that are aimed at reductions in the shortages.
the changes were small but cumulating. By now, shortage numbers are smaller.

Recent changes in the wind farms corporations may present an uptik in the need for raw materials but many other updates are reducing the need for such materials and as I said before, shortages are falling.
you can take one detail and draw conclusions but the numbers do not add up and the conclusion is wrong.

Building your own wind turbine corporations is probably essential and again, if you are not interested, leave that new energy market. it requires changes in your industry, economy. it requires large investments and if you think they are not profitable, do not do it.

I understand that you have to defend the work you do, dealing with criticism is an unfortunate reality that you have to deal with as a business owner. When mine started I had plenty of direct customer interaction that at times could be contentious l, which is why I try to remain relatively calm and polite with you.

A lot of your response unfortunately falls flat. Calling back on a ‘we made this change at this time and didn’t get any complaints’ is a hollow response. With so many of the changes to the game happening in the dark, there are many that I would assume people just don’t notice and chalk up to changes in country situation. I know I personally don’t realize the changes in multiple corp supply consumptions and outputs until I notice my spreadsheet that I maintain no longer adds up and I go through it finding what I have written down to compare to the games current status. Players should not have to put in so much of their own effort to know what you actually change. As a business owner you should realize first and foremost that the only people that do what you call complaining and I would call constructive criticism (there is a big difference) are ones that want the business to succeed. Most express their dissatisfaction by taking their money and time elsewhere. Let your demographics and your income from the game over time be your guide.

Wind Farms are a complex part of the game, you are absolutely right. Your actions have made it considerably more so. Minor changes that you have made to other systems has no bearing to the actual discussion at hand. You work on the game, nobody is disputing that. Making the changes that you make with absolutely no prior notification or acknowledgement after you change them is a huge problem. Like it or not, you introduced a product that changes the face of the game, one that people could absolutely build their economy around. It is extraordinarily unfair to those players to completely turn the game upside down on them so repeatedly and most importantly with no notification.

Changing a key new part of the game so dramatically, 50% reduction in farm production and significant reduction in turbine production coupled with increase in consumption in just a week is absolutely significant, and you didn't announce any of it. It all had to be sourced by players that discovered it. Your response of 'if you don't like it don't do it' is actually very frustrating and not becoming of someone trying to run a business, which this game is.

Thanks for fixing the Wind Farms Contract issue.
Keep it up ^^

"Costs of maintenance

The cost of maintenance, both for government facilities and for the army have declined recently and will continue to decline with the current upgrade.
The actual cost also depends on the cost of products on the market but the long term trend is dwnward.

Shortages

Shortages continue on all worlds and many products show short supplies.
The situation is however improved and may improve further in the coming game months.
Shortages are not about to disappear but may become smaller. The process takes some time to materialize but the long term trend is for more balance on the market. "



I think your cost of defensive weapons maintenance cuts have gone too far or the corps need a re-balancing on supplies as the price cap cut has pushed them unprofitable. Defensive weapons maintenance is fairly difficult to manage due to market difficulties in their supplies which requires lots of contracting or immediate orders (which drives supply costs up), and now its also unprofitable. This will lead players to stop producing defensive weapons maintenance and increase future shortages.

Just my 2 cents

Every reduction in the cost of maintenance was compensated by either a reduction in the materials used, or an increase in the number of products produced each month or both.

we kept all corporations withing the earning model they had before.

there is a gradual decline in the total size. this time less than 3%.
the reason for that is that these are very very large corporations that, as we discovered, are more difficult to keep stable.
by slightly reducing the size while keeping the earning capabilities we improve their stability.
It can fluctuate but should remain very profitable.

if you have examples to the contrary, please give me the details and I will look into it.

The earning model for these corporations has an expected profit level which is nearly 2 x higher than what is expected for a high tech services corporation.
This is at full production and can decline quickly if production is reduced.

again, show me examples where it does not work as described and I will check.

@Andy, please look into Jiggle Defensive on White Giant, up until you changed the price cap 90+% of the Defensive weapons maintenance corps within were profitable, now 90+% are generating losses.

It looks like over all the enterprise is still profitable, but now less so and would be better off if the DWM corps were all closed and only sold the weapons, especially for the extra headaches of the required contract model and manual orders occasionally required.

The defensive, offensive, airforce, etc... maintenance corps are some of the hardest to manage due to limitations on the contract options and supply market conditions, yet the profitability is decreasing.

@Andy On the Financial Index income, you say:

'As to the quality of electric power delivered by wind farms, we think that there is no need to take it into account.'

Can you please elaborate on why you take that position? You feel that product quality (and thus price) should apply for posted costs but not apply for posted income? I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around that logic if the intent of the Financial Index is to paint a true picture of the country's financial health.

Using my own country as an example, my current FI will balance out at 139.7 with reported income of 1022.37 and costs of 731.75, a significant portion of those costs being the electric power consumed by gov't facilities. Based on allowing quality to matter for cost but not for income, I am hard locked at a maximum peaceful game level 10 (the game has 16 levels) just right now. As I build more Wind Farms, with the ballooning cost of Wind Turbines and quality being a factor only for costs, the Financial Index will further only drop more as the country's actually getting more and more financially healthy.

You cite realism as your guiding principle for a fair amount of the decision making in this game, so please explain the position in a way I can understand because it makes absolutely no sense to me that an improving financial situation means a lower game level cap unless the player artificially drives down their own power supply average quality to the minimum to lower its impact on the cost side.

So I ask please elaborate. Improving the Financial Index by making less money is what you're saying is actually intended?

Andy,

The short version of what many players are trying to say, is that they want to be told when changes are made to the game, even if those changes are small.

There is a lot of guesswork, when players have to account for the possibility that something might have changed, without knowing what the change was.

Something like "Gamemaster reduced consumption of Electric Power in X corp type, from 1000 to 975 per game month. Update planned to go live at 11pm 6th Oct 2023 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)" is a small change, but it's still worth telling players, so that they understand when they see shifts in their economies.

This is especially important for Tiny Atlas, since players have to produce or transport every item, they need to know when the consumption or production of an item changes, so they can plan their production and transportation properly.

Speaking only for myself, Daniel hit the nail on the head. It can seem like piling on the GMs but at the end of the day all that’s being asked for is some level of communication and interaction. Nobody expects you to address every problem instantly and to respond to every idea by making changes. Players should absolutely be able to expect consistency and communication.

I say again, hanging your hat on the idea that you have made some changes that weren’t complained about is a poor tactic. If you’re at a store and they mess up your order, you may complain. Most, however, simply leave and don’t come back. The people responding here want your game to succeed, but for your business to succeed you must prioritize their entertainment and respect their time. You’re competing against every other game on the internet for our time and subscription.

Josias said it best. In the recent changes, you completely pulled the rug out from under your player base after major promoting of the hot new game products. Worse, the changes had to be discovered by players and the information changed. It sets the tone that any thing can change at any time on your whim without any respect for your players time or entertainment value. It is not a recipe for success.

Jiggle billy

we did not change any price cap in maintenance corporations.

@ Andy, on about September 28 the max price defensive weapons maintenance could sell for reduced, whether intentionally or not. I saw my corps suddenly drawing losses and looked at the charts to see if it had gone surplus and it hadn't, extreme shortage still but the market price dropped. I do not have a screen shot of the change, just a discord conversation in the WGA discord.

EDIT: This would be much easier to discuss if available data wasn't limited to only 2 game years, hopefully you have older logs to look back at.

@Andy, figured out how to download older data. Here's a picture showing change:

Failed at upload

.

Andy,

"The maintenance cost of wind farms remains part of government cost.
We might update it in the near future and show the maintenance cost of wind farms separately."

I think this would be a great idea, and make it much clearer to players, how much their Wind Farms are costing to maintain.

We plan to do this.
too many issues currently.
we will get to it.

Andy,

I understand, it's not urgent. I was just providing feedback that I thought your proposal was a good idea.

Yes.
thank you.
I can't wait to see income and cost on the smae line on the financial report.