Game News

A good point coming from the worker shortage thread is that the changes happening in game are hard to follow along with because you have to go sifting through random forum posts hoping to find information. Game News, where change updates should be posted, hasn't been updated at all this calendar year despite numerous changes. That gives the idea that updates haven't been happening.

Any game update, even the smallest change in formula, should be posted there and be specific in the changes without going into exceptional detail as to why the change is happening. Give the information in News, leave the explaining to when questions are asked in forum.

A perfect example is Wind Farms. As far as Game News is concerned, they don't exist yet despite being a key tool in fighting the electric power shortage. The last post regarding Wind was on December 25 and said:

5. Wind Turbines
Wind turbines are the next product to be introduced. We hope to add them to Simcountry in the next upgrade. Wind turbines will be needed to build wind farms that will produce large amounts of electric power. Wind farms corporations will be introduced a bit later. The corporations building wind farms will become the largest in the game and will need wind turbines in large numbers.

A sensible current update based on them:
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Introduced 2 new Utility Corporations
1) Wind Farms - Product used by countries only.
2) Wind Turbines - Product used by countries and corporations.

Introduced Wind Farm Feature
A country may purchase Wind Farms on the market or through contracts - up to a limit of 5000 total in the country. Each month, each owned Wind Farm produces 1,250 Electric Power which is placed directly in the country assets at no direct SC$ cost. Each Wind Farm consumes 1 Wind Turbine from country assets per month.
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It is an update that is clear and precise and allows players to play without guessing. Just using Wind Farms as an example again, a player would have no idea what the limit is on those without doing a forum search - and the limit has been changed a couple times. Detailed information will allow players to be able to adapt to and take advantage of these changes without feeling blindsided. This current change that has impacted workers, some players have reported on the other thread as having lost considerable amounts of SC$. But if we don't know specifically what the change was, we can't adapt.

Unsthable,

Agreed. Without clarity about when changes have been made, and what was changed, it's incredibly difficult for players to understand what is happening and plan accordingly. Which often leaves us feeling like we are fumbling around in the dark.

Game news were published many times on the forum this year.
we try to explain every change in the game.

we are not going into the details of fomulas because these formulas are sometime longer than a full line of text and involve many parameters.

many times we introduce a change and are waiting, like you, to see the exact result as results depend on current data in countries and corporations.

on wind farms
we promised an energy page that will show consumption and production.
we are now working on it, and are in the process of collecting all the data needed for the page.

we have also explained today, on the forum, a coming change to repair a the way wind farm finances work.

Wind Farms were just used as an example situation. The premise of my post was that there is a 'Game News' tab in game where all of these changes that you're putting on the forums should be posted. And I'm certainly not asking for you to forecast long term results of changes, but you should be able to be open about what changes are being made when they're made. Tweaks to formulas obviously don't have to be specific to the number, but things like 'we're introducing x to the game and you can have a limit of y' should absolutely be something that don't require stumbling onto a forum post to be aware of.

You are right.
it should be done.

I will update the gamenews document ASAP.