W3C - Shortages of ammunition

We see the shortages as a serious problem.
We cannot force anyone to purchase laser guided bombs, and we cannot be sure they have the money to pay for them, but having stealth fighters means you need them, and there is a maintenance use each month. Low, but continuous.

You cannot stop using them when at zero, because nobody will ever purchase them if maintenance becomes free and your stealth wings remain functional.

Having a negative number should mean that the stealth fighters should become unusable but that too, will not solve the problem.

We think that when the number of stealth bombs becomes negative, we should exchange, or force sell, one stealth fighter and deliver 50 or 60 bombs. The price is the same. No money transactions involved.

In this way, there will never be a negative number. If you never purchase them, the number of stealth fighters will decline in time, and when there are none, no laser guided bombs will be needed any more.

This will be a good solution.

The same can be done with other ammunition shortages.

Negative numbers of ammunition must disappear from the game. Shortages also reduce the supply index and it is very damaging for the economy in general as the welfare index declines with very severe consequences.

Making sure you purchase ammunition when the numbers are low, will of course prevent any such transactions.

Andy instead of force selling why not get rid of the monthly ammo uses? It's an incredible waste. You say the cost is low but I would disagree with that. A large standing army consumes a lot of ammo every month.

I don't have an army at the moment but perhaps someone who does could give us some numbers? I know it can be upwards of 20B every month. Combine that with the soldiers wages and your lucky if your breaking even.

The thought of having a standing army whilst it wastes all my ammo puts me off the war game entirely.

You say nobody will buy the ammo then but I'd disagree again. Nobody wants to play the war game when there country consumes the ammo without firing a shot.

Forced selling is just complicating the problem.

Getting rid of the monthly ammo uses would be a positive solution. Forced selling is the opposite.

Why won't it solve the problem if weapons stop functioning without ammo?

Then you are paying money to maintain stuff you can't use... that seems like a good incentive to do something.

Please don't do this forced selling thing. I regulary run out of ammo because of all the wars i fight. Then the weapons simply stop working. That seems fair to me. I don't want to be affraid that if i run out of ammo i suddenly start losing weapons as well.

Even if there is no money lost you still lose the effect of training if you lose your weapons.

@ vikingX
Yes maintaining a decent sized offensive army is really expensive. It's a LOT more then 20B if you include ammo costs.

no the problem is the game has no shortage notification. in real life my general would tell me we need LGM and i would fix the issues. right now the game puts this SUCH important issue in some obscure newspaper. this is an example of game dictation that limits players. what the game doesn't do is count what is in the unit. as long as a unit has ammo it should function. the game should never show negatives. we should be getting a unit is not being supplied, if that unit runs out of maint and total lgm then don't they usually dissolve and used to be without warning again.

andy sorry I think this is a little extreme action when in fact there is ammo available, just none in reserve. and I am guilty of not always everyday checking my newspaper. cause notifications are the way to go. this game lacks advisory type functions that other games have. i get it tho, i see the intent, but please give us more communication that shows our issues for empires. I think forced actions are the last resort to any issues. -100

and what if the shortage is cause by market not the player? just asking cause I've had shortages that were market based, so it sales my stuff too!? I am sad to see this topic.

We will add shortage notifications.
This is a good idea.

Maintenance will continue and is essential to the functioning of the ammunition industry.
Without it, the entire industry will bankrupt and the building of the army will become trivial as you just buy weapons once and don't have to worry about monthly cost.
There will be much larger armies in countries that in fact cannot maintain them.
We have experience with weapons that do not have any maintenance cost and it does not work.

Stopping weapons from functioning will be very damaging. The message about shortage will come and go and then when you remain defenseless, you will not be happy.

We do not want to enforce such exchange for weapons into ammo. we just want to make sure everyone is purchasing the ammo they need.

I am sure you do not want to make it all trivial.

I like this change.

What I don't understand is why it's so damaging if weapons stop working?

The war engine is quite good and realistic. If I don't have bullets in real life I can't shoot my gun either. This becomes even more true if we get a warning telling us that we need ammunition. If you then decide to not buy things then it's your own fault for having weapons without ammo.

It will probably give a massive boost to the war industry. All of a sudden lots of people need to keep an eye out on their ammo or they won't be able to defend themselves. It sounds a lot more fair to me then having your weapons automatically converted to ammo.

Aries you don't get a say in this you are to far ahead of us ;)

Yes, the message is good.
You will know if you are close to the limit and you will purchase the ammunition you need.

There is no reason to keep the ammo on the negative and you should take action to fix it.

Probably, it is not know to some players that shortages reduce the supply index and with it, the welfare index and their entire industry is switching to a lower pace as production levels decline.

@andy, Thanks for adding a future notification! it makes what you are saying before much more reasonable, if you are made aware and do nothing, then you can just plain out expect it to happen.

can it be reasonable to have a screen like the account status pop up with important notifications vs emails or would they be like the messages you get when weapons are moved into inactive status because of profit or debt issues with a message sent to the main country?

I support the change.

although if I can make a recommendation there's a way under your order strategies for us to individually select the quality of goods we want and obviously weapons and ammo we're going to buy much higher quality than country good. Could there be a way to the gm can add an ability to allow was to specify what type of ammo at Quality on an over all buy strategy? Maybe separating consumer and military orders and quialities.

If this system of automaticly trading in your weapons is implemented why would I need to build ammuntion corps?

I could just focus on weapon corps and not build any ammo corps.

So what is going to happen? Lets just say I'm on WG (which I am) and I have several stealth bomber units (which I do). I can't buy LGB on the market. I'm not using the SB's as a sneak attack unit, but rather as a defensive weapon against aggressive attacks. To get rid of negative ammo is fine with me seeing as some of my supplies are in the negative right now. How about opening up the market for LGB's so I can buy some. It is a pain in the ass to have to go to space to buy supplies, as it is also a hassle to purchase directly ever few months.

With the new system will my wings be dismantled? or will they just stop working? Or will they be sold? What is the proposal here?

The ammunition shortage messages will be add to the alert system we already have.
In this way, you can receive an email message even if you do not login into the account.

The exchange will not get you a lot of ammunition, just make sure you are not creating a shortage.

It will also be a bit more expensive in this way, so you better just purchase the ammo you need.

If weapons are gone and you have more of them in military units, we think that a unit should be disbanded.
You cannot have a unit while the ammunition is showing a shortage.

We should realize that this is a minor issue.
Just get the ammo you need and you will never see this taking place.

To me this would be a pain, I am probably one of the few that prefer auto purchasing ammo. Could we retain the option to keep auto purchasing ammo?

Any weapon must have ammo. I see the monthly useage as training expense. The acquireing of stealth capability comes with a price. If You can't get the ammo You are SOL. Yes it is a pain, ain't nothing for free. You want it You pay. I have laser guided for sale by the way. LOL

@Andy - I think disbanding the units kills all the training too no? So if I am too busy to play for a little while, or if I have a hard time getting weapons, all the training that I paid for this unit is lost as is the time I spent upgrading it. And for the ammo I have to try to find it as it isn't for sale directly on WG. Now I understand everything has a cost, but come on now, disbanding a unit? Can you auto purchase weapons that aren't for sale and can't be manufactured on WG?

@Jennifer -ha ha, sure I'll take 2-5k LGBs The Grand State of Basilka - WG

Disbanding a unit simply means that the weapons will average their quality with the ones you have in stock. The upgrading is not lost other than you cannot pick and choose a mix of different quality weapons back from your stock.

"Maintenance will continue and is essential to the functioning of the ammunition industry.
Without it, the entire industry will bankrupt and the building of the army will become trivial as you just buy weapons once and don't have to worry about monthly cost.
There will be much larger armies in countries that in fact cannot maintain them.
We have experience with weapons that do not have any maintenance cost and it does not work"

I don't see how you can call ammo usage per month "maintenance". It's a complete waste. Has no benefit whatsoever. All it does is drains your supply and your cash.

Why would the building of an army become trivial if the monthly usage was gotten rid of? I build an army to defend my country. That's not trivial.

Plus it's not like there's no other costs. Paying the soldiers is expensive enough, why cant that be the only cost? It used to be that way for a long time and the game worked fine. Plus the ammo industry was booming.

I urge the GM to consider it. Give a little back to the players not take stuff away. That's been your MO for years and look at the game now. It's a shell of what it used to be.

I love this game, particularly the army building side of it. With the monthly ammo waste its actually cheaper to have my soldiers unemployed and my weapons sitting in a ceo. I mean come on that is BS.


Yes Blah Blah the cost is staggering for offensive weapons especially. Just on ammo alone, I'm not talking wages. I moved 1000 con batts into my country with the intention of upgrading them. Seen the amount of ammo they where wasting and I moved them straight back out. Forget the number now but cost was huge.

The new notifications are in place.
you can turn them on now and will be notified when there are shortages.

automatic purchasing of ammo remains unchanged and can be used of course but some types cannot be purchased on some of the worlds.

The exchange as described before, in case of ammo shortages will be implemented next week.