W3C - Tiny Atlas & other features

Tiny Atlas is now running for some time and many small issues and problems seem to be resolved.
many of the issues we encountered were caused by the very small numbers of population and facilities in countries on Tiny Atlas.

There are well developed countries now on Tiny Atlas and the new product, Targon is produced in increasing quantities.

What's next

we have now added a new weapon and a new type of ammunition, using Targon.
a next update, will introduce this new weapon into the war process.

Two more rare metals will be discovered on Tiny Atlas soon and also Uranium in larger quantities than available on the other planets and at a lower price.

The new metals will be used in the production process of more products, including electric cars, large electric storage power banks and more.

We will introduce the storage of electric power as a function in countries.
Our intention is also to collect data on CO2 emissions and make them visible on a new CO2 emissions page that will inform presidents on the emissions footprint of their countries.

On the other hand, we are looking into the elimination of some rarely used, over complex features.
We will for example remove the pending workers feature that is in fact not used any more and shows numbers on the employment pages that are hard to understand.

In general, Tiny Atlas will become more strategic and being Tiny, resources might be scarce.

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In general, Tiny Atlas will become more strategic and being Tiny, resources might be scarce.<!-/Quote-!>

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There are well developed countries now on Tiny Atlas and the new product, Targon is produced in increasing quantities.<!-/Quote-!>

Considering that I'm 3 times larger than the next player. I'm ok with the basic concept. But with my population ever increasing, and creating am ever increasing burden on the rest of my account, some things should be re-considered.

I ask, that we be allowed to sell pop out of TA, to maintain managable pop levels.

I also ask, that Targon be allowed to be sold on the space station for GC.

Both these changes fall under the category, of "The riches of Tiny Atlas." As in, you brave the extreme challenges of TA, a trickle of Targon, that even if you could sell it on the open market, does not match the effort.

Also, would you please add the targon weapon to the documentation, so that we can see what it does?

We think that there are reasons to keep the population.
We have provided the population transfer for free, selling population is not a good idea because it is suppressing the entire economy by seriously reducing the welfare index. (The population does not like to be sold).

Numbers in many countries on TA declines because of low education and health index.

New functions will require more corporations.
Targon will be needed in larger quantities and more rare metals too.
iWe will add more natural resources on TA.

We also hope that at some point, many products will be produced on TA and allow the market to function.

Selling Targon on a space station will be added a little later.
we allow the producers of Targon to have the Tagon weapons as a bonus for their huge efforts in getting to TA and moving all these products around.

The weapons manual is updated.
The update will become part of the documentation with the next upgrade.

I will add a small upgrade in the week of September 11.

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We also hope that at some point, many products will be produced on TA and allow the market to function.<!-/Quote-!>

The flaw with this, is that, until countries are making a profit, no one will be able to go above GL2, to build these corps your talking about.

opps, double post

I doubt the Tiny Atlas economy will ever become truly sustainable. The Simcountry economy is designed with structural overconsumption / underproduction.

The Simcountry economy would collapse into endless, extreme shortages of everything, were it not for the GMs intervention, by adding products that are in shortage each month, to allow orders to be filled.

Because that function doesn't operate on Tiny Atlas, the planet will always consume far more than it can possibly produce, preventing it's markets from ever becoming truly functional.

What i'm seeing, i'm not sure thats true. maybe, maybe not. theirs more to it than that. but honestly, i don't think that the player base has the skill, cooperation, and drive.

I reduced my salaries from 330, to 120, my country now at 45m, has been growing a short 1M a day. My jewerly consumption dropped from 260ish, to 100. which means, that with high salaries, it'd take more than 3 corps to supply my empire, with low salaries, it'll take one. with the higher salaries, the extra production, does not equal the reduced consumption of lower salaries. you can see my saying allot of this, like 8 years ago in the LU thread, "pissing contest." the standard way of doing things, isn't always the best.

But independently of this, (yes, just before i made the salary change,) I was making +17B, because I know how to make money off of country supplies. then the GM tightened some nut somewhere, and now I'm loosing money. all three countries...

I could figure it out, but i'm putting my effort in a different direction to make a profit. as in using up my mid-range quality stock pile, and replacing it with lower quality. with no one able to build AEQ corps, the extra quality is just a waste. i could do something jinky, like sell my 200 q stuff onto the market, and buy it back in another country at min q, and make a profit reducing my quality to what i want. but i'd rather just chill.

Theirs allot of ins and outs in this game, that most people never notice. because anytime something goes wrong, we just blame the GM. the wind farm thing for instance... folks actually didn't connect buying wind farms to increasing gov cost, and blamed the GM.

the GM get allot of blame for things that the players can't figure out. they can't really say anything, because it defeats the purpose of developing game skill. thats not to say they don't do stuff that recks the place, but they get allot of flak for things that are really players not up to snuff.

I'm just doing it for the lulz and possible space fighters.

I am around 3m in population and surviving.

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Theirs allot of ins and outs in this game, that most people never notice. because anytime something goes wrong, we just blame the GM. the wind farm thing for instance... folks actually didn't connect buying wind farms to increasing gov cost, and blamed the GM. <!-/Quote-!>

That's because of a lack of information provided to the players, which is arguably still a reason to blame the GM. We can only base our knowledge off of what goes on.
And it's still broken by the way, my main country spends 30B buying wind turbines and that counts directly against the profitability of that country. The power produced by those wind farms is never reaccounted for, thus my country is permanently at a net loss even though it's (supposedly) making money. I have no idea though, because there's no screen showing: 1) how much power they provide per month and 2) how many wind turbines = how much power

So yes, it's still the devs fault. They need to provide more information. I'd rather have too much than not enough, which is the case with many of the systems right now.

And seeing as the "finance" index is for some reason accounted for in the welfare index, my entire country suffers because of this "net loss" that doesn't even really exist. It's honestly very frustrating, and the fact it still hasn't been fixed is surprising.

they've told us, that each WF makes 1.25k EP.

setting it up right, with 100 WFs for instance. means you use ~100wt, at 120q, and 59M price, the WT consumption would cost 7B a month. Selling at max 200Q, generates 78B, for a 71B profit, or 0.7B per farm. and all the info here, is either basic mechanics, or things the GM has said.

and everytime the the players complain, the GM make adjustments, that make me more profitable....

Sure, Andy's said it, but where does the game itself tell you any of that? Why do I need to go diving through the forums trying to find that information?
I know he's said they're gonna make an electricity page, but it's been almost an entire year since these wind parts came out.

And it doesn't matter that the farms themselves are profitable. It absolutely DESTROYS my country's bottomline because the electricity made by the farms is never accounted for in the country's financials. My financial index is 70 on my main country because of the stupid wind farms and I can't even change that since there's no way to get rid of the farms.

This would be less of an issue if financial index didn't also show up in the level calculations. Which are for score. Which are for rewards.

People who use this feature are screwing themselves over.

ok, i was writing up some stuff, because you do have some good points, and full on got me with one, i came back in like feb, i haven't been back a year. so i will take a bite of crow, and eat my words, at least with that one.

but something you said, made me stop, and delete everything. well 2 things you said.

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my main country spends 30B buying wind turbines and that counts directly against the profitability of that country.<!-/Quote-!>

and

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My financial index is 70 on my main country because of the stupid wind farms<!-/Quote-!>

i didn't catch it at first, because i calculate my wt cost very differently.

but a 30B cost, is dropping you to 70?

My main, on LU, "Project 1" has 1k WF, with a 78B monthly cost. and has a FI of 122. Which includes 10 i-wings, and 3 h-wings, for fed support. at 97M pop

I have more to say, but I'd rather speak to you directly.

You are right on the wind farms and I explained several days ago and also explained how it will be corrected.

The cost of maintaining wind farms is added to government cost.

the income from wind farms should be subtracted from the covernment cost.

Currently, the income from the wind farms is used to reduce the cost of products bought for the population.

It improves the country cash for exactly the same amount but the result is increasing the cash, it does not show on the country income and cost.

we will fix it ASAP.

we are also working on a page that will show the energy balance of the country and you will be able to see exactly how much energy is used and produced each month.

Are we going to get police and prisons added at the any point? thanks

Andy,

"The new metals will be used in... ...large electric storage power banks..."

"We will introduce the storage of electric power as a function in countries."

I just noticed this. Does that mean that storing electric power in countries is going to become limited, and subject to maintenance costs?

I just checked my country, I have over 132,000,000 electric power, with a current market value of over 50 Trillion SC$. I've decided to reduce this stockpile so I don't lose $50T when an update drops.

How much storage capacity do you intend countries to have for electric power? I don't want to have a large stockpile that gets erased when the update drops.

I don't want to beat a dead horse on the wind farm / financial index, but I just wanted to ask how specific you can be on the production on the wind farms offsetting the costs as far as the financial index. I've noticed that the Wind Farms produce Electric Power at a quality equal to whatever the value is that the country has in stock at the time. As my average quality of Electric Power has drifted higher through market purchases, I've noticed health and education costs shooting up rapidly as well. Is the plan for the farm generated electricity to offset the costs of those indexes as well? Sorry this may have already been answered, I'm just seeing the issue for the first time after tweaking my electricity quality.

I hear what Unsthable is saying.

Would it be better for wind farms and their costs to be excluded from financial index impacts altogether? Anyone have thoughts?

The windfarms could have the potential to be the main factor of one's financial index, and I'm not sure that's a great outcome.

As I said here before in recent days, we intend to change the financials related to wind farms.

currently you get the cash from produced electric power as a reduction of the cost government makes to purchase products.

instead, we will reduce the income from electric power from government cost.
this will have a positive effect on the monthly balance of the country finances and improve the financial index.

an energy page (in the making), will make it more visible.

Each wind farm produces 1250 units of electric power each month.
15.000 per year.
at about 300.000 per unit, or more, it amounts to 4.5 Billion per year per wind farm.
Maintenance cost is probably 10 to 20% of that, depending on the market price of the cost of the used products for maintenance.

We want to introduce power banks to store power.
The introduction will be gradual and nothing will get lost.
we never make changes that "rob" you of anything.

the maintenance cost of wind farms is a fraction of the income.

Power banks will represent a cost but it will also introduce advantages.

We have increased the capacity of countries to make profits.
we have reduced the operating cost of nearly everything and reduced the cost of the army.
we intend to reduce the cost even more in the next upgrade.

Oh, I wasn't trying to be disrespectful with my question by any means. Was just trying to get some insight if I could. I know that the wind farms are a big profit, but I also know that Finance Index is very important especially in terms of game level so was just trying to get a feel for where we were going to try to be best prepared.

Good stuff, Andy. As Unsthable alluded to - insights like the one provided here are super valuable.

What you seemed to outline about how the electric power will be removed from government cost seems like a good step to me, but in instances of a large amount of farms it won't fully fix the impact on the finance index. Perhaps that'll act as a built in limitation on how many farms are built in some countries for now. That isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, and the future state you outline will be an improvement on what we have now.

On the flip side, I was worried that the total value of all the power generated could impact the index if that was the balance. You've more or less confirmed that's not to be the case.

I'm interested to see more about power banks as that becomes available as well.

Andy

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we have now added a new weapon and a new type of ammunition, using Targon.
a next update, will introduce this new weapon into the war process.<!-/Quote-!>

I've got 10s of k defensive batts of various types, laying around waiting to get a more precise grasp of what targon can do. after which, i'll have an idea of how i want to set up my defenses, and upgrade units in prep for adding in targon.

please post the capabilities of targon weapons.

In case a country will have many wind farms, the government cost could become negative.

There will be a major impact on government cost and if the cost of the country declines, the financial index trends higher.

We will publish a new weapons document, probably next week.
it will include the details on how targon weapons function.

Power banks will be introduced with initially no consequences at all to the storage or not enough storage of electric power.

once reporting becomes much better, and there are incentives to the creation of storage of elecric power, we will gradually introduce the feature.

we do need good reporting on the use of energy, production of energy and storage too.

"In case a country will have many wind farms, the government cost could become negative."

Does this mean if someone buys 10,000 wind farms (just a very big number), they will have nearly infinite finance index? Their government cost would be so negative wind farms would pay all costs for everything?

My question isn't about profitability, it's about the impact on the finance index.