W3C - Game Upgrade Jan. 25, 2020

Corporations

We continue to slightly increase the size of some corporations. The reason, as said before, is to reduce the growth in the number of corporations in all worlds and possibly even reduce the numbers.
It will make it easier to manage and reduce the numbers of transactions taking place each game month.

The changes are not large, and they do not change the profitability of corporations.

Support functions - Game level 3.

These functions should only be active in countries in game levels <4 and only when the president asked for these functions to be active.

We hope that it is all resolved but will listen to any comment about it and hunt for any remaining bugs.

Automation - existing corporations

A bug on the existing corporations automation features is resolved. Changes to many corporations in a single click now work again.

Sneak Attacks

When sneak attacks are reported, the war level of the attacking country is not showing any more.
This bug fix was reported in the previous upgrade but was not included and the bug remained. It is fixed now.

Enterprise reporting

More work is needed to improve enterprise reporting.
Several limits on showing enterprise corporate value and enterprise cost have now been removed.

Shuttle maintenance products

The cost of these products was too high as shown on the forum. The price is now reduced by about 50%. we may do it again in a next upgrade.
The idea is that shuttle maintenance products should become attractive in reducing shuttle aging. The price before was far too high.

Defensive ammunition - mainly missiles

The basic price of several types of defensive missiles is reduced a bit to lower the cost of defense.
The price you pay depends however on the market and will fluctuate with supply and demand.

Hints on many of the game pages

Many hints have been improved, also made shorter, in an effort to make the help texts clearer and readable. (as people read less, shorter messages might be more effective).
There are thousands of messages in Simcountry explaining many details on many pages. Changes will be gradual and will become available with every upgrade to Simcountry.
We have recently added hints on some pages where they were not available at all.

thanks so much Andy!

It would be very nice if you allow community to update these hints and explanation of different things. You would of course could approve final versions. I feel players would explain things in a way it is easier to understand for other players. And you would save lots of time to develop what is needed.

I agree but it is a very complex thing to do.
In practice it requires a lot of handling per message.
A small numbers can be taken care of.

If anyone can describe where EXACTLY there is a problem and EXACTLY where the hint is and provide a good replacement for the text, we will make an effort to replace.

Texts should be shorter than the existing ones.
We think that even several lines of text make people stop reading.
so short and simple will help.

Same goes for documents.
a replacement paragraph, with exact location will be replaced if clearer and shorter.

Thanks for pushing for better quality.

Ugh, so awesome! The checkboxes on the automated page was such a pain! I'm so glad it's working! Thank you so much!

I am happy too.

We know now when it was broken and it is a long time ago.

I am happy to hear that we are allowed to propose changes. Will have that in mind when I see something not very clear and report to you by email. thanks

Andy,

bug found with sneak attacks. When you set up notification it not only shows attackers level but also indicates the attacker's country

please fix ASAP

Good catch Mndz. Also, the name of the attacking unit is still showing in the newspaper. I think this should also be removed.

Hostilities between Attacker and Barney Rubble
Thu Mar 17, 4374 military unit attacks Clifton fortification
Barney Rubble (the attacked country) reports:
No weapon losses were reported.
The defence was assisted by Air Force Defense Wing ADW 006 and Air Force Defense Wing ADW 014.
The War Index remains 100.00
Attacker (the attacker) reports:
SCG 010 lost 1 cruise missile ship.
SCG 010 lost supply ships, gasoline and military supplies.
The attack may have been reduced or eliminated by Anti Missile Missiles.
The weapons chosen were not effective in this attack.
39 soldiers were killed and 91 were wounded.
The War Index remains 100.00

Thanks Lord Mndz,

It is now gone from the newspaper.
we will look into the notifications.

John,

excellent.
keep going. we will end up without any references.

Oh yah Andy, is there any word on the invisible navies being fixed? Right now, you can only see the navies of countries you are viewing and their neighbours. This means that if a country sends its navy across the world to someone's coast, they won't be able to see it.

I believe this is happening because the navy location is displayed purely as coordinates, whereas military units show the country they are located in. Since navies never attach to any other countries on the map, they are not visible. I think the solution is to either make navies always visible (like in the old war engine), or have them attach to nearby countries like military units do.

I think when navies switched over to the new war engine, you made them operate in the same way as military units. I understand military units only being visible to the selected country and their neighbours for performance issues. Also there is no need to see them beyond that distance. However, with navies, since they can move anywhere in the world, they need to be visible all the time. I don't think you would have major performance issues from doing that since there are so few of them. Also it would look cool as hell to zoom out to the world view and see navies scattered all over the world map

I very much support John on this, navies should be visible at all times.

stealth navies?
Not so good.

I am aware of the problem. It was reported before.
I will have it fixed immediately after the current "message to mail" feature is completed.

Great to hear!!

Thanks Andy. I am really liking the direction of the game right now! I think we are going to see great things happening on FB, and hopefully it will convince you to adopt similar changes on other worlds too

Oh yes Andy, I forgot to ask. Is there any possibility of allowing any weapons (except nuclear of course) to be used in sneak attacks? Only having land & sea based cruise is pretty restrictive. It would be nice to open it up to other weapon systems too. Plus there would be some interesting decisions to make. You could use closer range weapons that may be more effective for what you need, but the risk of detection will be much higher since you have to be positioned closer.

It is an old request.
Too much work to do.

I will look into it and check which ones could be used in this way.

I think these additional weapons would be useful and realistic:

For fleets: guided missile frigates, navy fighter planes, and seals.

For air: precision bombers and stealth bombers

For land: mid range missile batteries, land to sea missile batteries

I believe attack submarines should also have sneak attack capability for fleets.

Hi Andy,

Thanks for updating helis/documentation, but we've tested and see a gap.

The documentation says helis respond at ranges of 18000, but when we tested, only helis from the defending country responded with helis, and not helis from federation members.

Is this the intended result?

I did a sneak attack and still got a federation response. Not sure what happened there. Maybe federation wings dont respond in the first round of combat and your conn batts likely destroyed the target on first shot. Maybe try another attack with 1 battery and tell it to attack defense.

I am also assuming all your federation wings are supplied, but does not hurt to double check that.

I know in the old war engine defensive radar planes were required for air defense to work consistently. You only needed 1. I am not sure if they are still needed but I keep 1 in every country just in case. Maybe that played a role?

John, defensive heli wings do respond for fed members. The question is, the documentation was updated with helis at 18000 mile range. For close combat, we've seen helis from fedmates respond, but we're helis updated to respond at 18000 for fed defense as well?

We'll test more, but right now the results are helis from fedmates do not respond in long range wars, though their range is 18000.

I see what you are saying now. That is a possibility too. I believe the old docs stated 7000 km was the range for helicopters. Andromeda is quite isolated from the rest of Mndz's empire so its possible. I noticed the federation responded to your nukes on Milky Way. I guess the question now is whether the range is determined from fed mate to attacker, or fed mate to defender.

Hahahaha yeah, there was accidental misdirection that caused a nuclear explosion in the Milky Way and inversely a nuclear attack in Genesis. It may or may not have been the fault of the highest chambers in the Doublestar Empire. J

As for helis, My attacking state is further from Andromeda than Mndz's empire is. If helis respond at 18,000, as updated in the documentation by the game master, it should respond with federation mates the same way, just as it used to.

I think what is the big problem right now is that you cannot trust documentation now as it doesn't show correct information at what distance your federation members air wings will support your countries under attack.