Open up an educational world

This suggestion is geared so that sc can gain membership.

When working on my undergrad we used to play simulation games all the time, and they were all on a completely micro level instead of a broad based game like this. We didn't play any in grad school =(, sucked because sim games gaurenteed my A =(. Anywho, if a semester long world would come up and tear down each semester it would be less expensive. And professors have that special power to impose costs onto their students, like when I had to buy the professors book he wrote interim semester waves fist in anger! So the suggestion is too market to schools and enstate a special world for them too optimize the experience.

The hope would be that the endeavor would do far better than just breaking even, but also inspire some of those business and/or econ students to join the game. In the process bring a new calibur of intellegent players to the community. Competition is always fun, well as long as you can still beat them ;)

... maybe its me but that made no sence

Its you Soldier, and it 'sense' not 'sence'.

It probably would go down well, there are a couple of games I have played that have resets like that, and yes they do seem to be mainly populated by students. Only thing is, the ones I've seen are rather shoot 'em up.

I wouldn't like resets here myself, I like the long term, so dont encourage GM, he has mentioned resetting before...NOOooooo

it will work if gm/owner of sc has any interest to grow this game.

my current view is that, it will unlikely to succeed unless gm/owner has tolerance to take input/suggestions from the playing/paying customers, at the moment i'm seeing a lot of attitude of superiority on that side. anything anyone say that does not jive with its philosophy then it's auto against them.

this game has great potentials, but the owner has to realize those potentials. now it's just trying to milk the current players for as much as possible. looking around, i think i'll get bore of the game once i'm say level 10 up. that's when players will move on to something else more challenging.

ANDY!!!! is this possible. I'm thinking of you and your team with this one =D

To quote Bender from Futurama, "Anything short of immortality is a complete waste of time!" If the game just resets, everything I have built will be gone. That doesn't leave me any incentive to do well. I could just run my country into debt and wait for the reset.

The world isn't for you. The world is for econ professors to assign to students and grade them on the effectivity of their decisions.

Then the students might decide to join a regular world after, because they enjoyed it so much

That is a wholly different game. The only thing this game might be good for is for Operations Research.

@drew,
back in college days i remember professor said someone try to model the earth's economy on supercomputers. they did not succeed, due i suspect to that the economy do not depend on concrete variables, but human behaviors play a great part in the way the economy behaves.

need to go back to check on those econ notes

and i highly doubt that the sc team has the resources to consider most of the variables that run an nation's economy, as you can see there are only about 200 products in sc and about 50% of these products are military related. in the real world, would difficult to run a nation base on too much military related products.

I'm not suggesting a Micro-Economics class world. But understanding supply and demand, stratetigic management in product development (Q levels), trade relationships on the common market. Point of diminishing returns with salaries compared to production level's compared to prices.

This game doesn't need to have every variable, it just needs to be capable of teaching lessons. It can do that very easily, there are so many lessons it can teach. And in multipl areas, polisci, global-econ, marketing, finance, managerial accounting, business administration.

So don't get me wrong I know the game is a perfect simulation. But the game as is, would in fact already be appealing to certain professors, and as far as sim games go this is the best I've played. and if many of you don't think so why are you here?

@drew,
if to be so, it would be macro, not micro?

you're running a country, you need to deal with macro economics

this game is more of trial and error learning, rather than any any specific guidelines. by now you may already realized that the guidelines for military related are more concise in this game, than for other products?

for example, when you build a corp it mentioned that you need "x" amount of materials and "y" amount of personnel. it doesn't tell you exactly how those personnel and materials will be mix to produce the product of the corp.

but if you go to the wiki page, it tells you what military weapons do what, and what weapons will counter what weapons.

i'm beginning to see that this game is not about managing a country, it's about using your USD to buy GC to buy the military weapons in the game to war with other players.

all of that is unimportant. The military game itself is substadard to many other games. Games without a rl intent.

This game isn't about being a credit card warrior its about making good decisions. You take other people's criticism too heavily xiong. I don't NEED gc, but if i can't earn them before my ent or my prem run out that would suck. I don't buy tons of pop or cash i don't need to I have no debt in my countries.

So when reviewing countries you can look at salary levels of 100's (org behaivior) how can you better optimize your personal. Boom Grade. You decided to build corn instead of FMU's. And wonder why its not making a profit. Boom Grade. How you handle trade contracts. Boom Grade. Where you start and stop upgrading. Boom Grade. There are concrete things too grade on. There is blatent stupidity too mark off. A student will not neccessarily have to experience the entire game if he isn't going to keep his country anyways.

And so if the doc told you exactly how much x and y then what? everyone would get an A? If doc told everyone exactly what to do we would all be Quadrillionaires right now and in the exact same position. Get off this kick of not enough documentation this is a real suggestion. The only doc lacking is Military units because there is a mixture of military units on any division so it is nearly impossible to isolate their effect.

@drew,
may be i'm missing something but i have been lurking around in all the worlds checking out some of the good players' countries. something that does bugs me a fair bit is that those countries that are doing very well tend to focus on technology indutries, while many of them have $0.00 for food and agricultural companies productions.

that is just one of those concepts in this game which defy reality and us as living organisms that require food to survive.

yeah, some countries have over 50m population an no food companies and agricultural companies, but many industrial and high tech companies. really, so the people of these countries can live without food (i.e. corn, bread, rice, etc) and their software codes will feed them?

my point on not enough doc in this game is that, there are no concrete rules to the game. every good game has good rules, from checkers, chess, soccer/football, volleyball, etc... but not this sc game.

it is no doubt this game has great potentials, but to get there will require some reality checks.

surely for this game to work on your school project, there will need to be a lot of more variables to consider into the game. supply and demand on any products are secondary variables, industrial and technological goods depends on whether its people have enough food to live first

i think you get the point?

Yeah i sure do get your point. But please don't take offense when I say it's irrevelent. I'm refering to university level and it caters to direct lesson plans and so this game will work.

If you decide to reference reality assume Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, Intel, and AMD. Would that country have the availability of capital to purchase food from other countries? Plus SC I don't think likes seeing shortages of country consumables so c3's make excess food. Making it so that food is always in shortage. And you said it yourself the big players have the HT products that is a sign of an induustrial country and mirrors the actual world quite accurately.

@drew,
this forum is open discussions to learn from each other, no need to be offensive or defensive

when i analyze my monthly consumption of the products and services in my country of about 20M people, food related products only about 5%, military related products about 27%, and non-food related with services about 68%. these figures tell me that my people do not eat very much at all. you can go into individual products or services, and you may notice that food consumption is usually much less than the others. for example, in a month, my people consume about 500,000 units of books and newspapers while only about 1,000 tons of butter. even when i add all the food related products together, the total is not even 400,000 tons. so really, 20M people eat less than 400,000 tons of food every month. while my country/people consume over 2,000,000 units of military related products, or almost 6,000,000 units of non-food and services?

these are just some basics why i don't think it would work in your school project. i don't know about your university students' intellects, but while i taught at the university for a few years my senior students were top of the line intellects. if your project was for elementary school students, it may work very well since those students are not yet informed of the world too much yet.

to reality check, you could compare with an earth country like australia with about 22M people, the nation produced about 2,000,000 tons of potatoes each year. in sc my 20M people only about 30,000 tons of potatoes. i'm sure aussies consume more than 30,000 tons of potatoes a month

some other things about sc is that, there are five worlds but each of the worlds seem to have lttle advantages over the others. the main difference seems to be the spin?

say look at the USA, it can produces enough food to feed its people? prior to becoming a technological and industrial nation?

really, if you're the professor of that project, i'm sure you'll be pulling your hairs when you are being question on your grading them

Okay okay, I'm going to get defensive not offensive. And you really can't hear my tone, or see my expression. It's not filled with animosity it is to explain the system you don't fully understand.

There is 1 size of a corporation's productive power. Just 1! So your country needs veggies, milk, chickens, corn, meat, food for your meat, bread. What happens if a new player builds those corps? He will have leftover everything and no room for anything else. When this game allows multisized corps things could possibly change a bit (potential future upgrade i think). So when you think about the scope of the game everythig would break if players built what they needed.

With that said is doeesn't touch on the realistic concern. So i'll do that here. Umm assume for me that McDonalds owned a cattle company, and it did all the works and made it into meat and stuff. McDonalds will sell in the stores and people wll buy it. Meat is then put on the free market (world market). Does it matter what country buys it? That's exactly what this game has done, it turned agriculture usually mostly consumed by the state in which it belongs into a toyata camry, or an apple iphone. Where corporations don't care who buys things as long as they sell. This is fine, this is realistic. you won't see a problem if you tear away the titles of things. product 1=bread. Now forget that product 1= bread. Product 1 is demanded by x amount in every country and y amount of companies make product 1. Is it in your best interest to make product 1? Product 2=fmu's. all corporations need x amount off product 2's and there are y amount of product 2 corps. However produt 2 has an increased barrier of entry and it is more difficult for people to make product 2's. Is it better to make product 2 than product 1 in the short term? long term?

Quite simply your argument like I said before is irrelevant you are being caught up in practicality not in it's functional purpose. There is cost management, weighing of oppurtunities, competition, strategic trade relations, marketing (unconventionally, but in regards to influencing pop gains, for productivity increases, among others). Not to mention you are wrong to an extent. Take a country like Qatar. This country has the second highest income per cap, it doesn't make ANY food. Luxembourg is the same way, it makes a little a think though. All through history trading cities were built up and used it's niche to get the things they wanted they didn't neccessarily need agriculture.

If i was the professor I'd be sure they know what they're supposed to be doing, if they begin nittpicking at irrelevant things they will be wasting their time. So just take the labels off things, and this game will prove to be an outstanding learning tool. You may have seen my thread in general that points out that it takes over 25Billion LBS of stone to make a production plant. But I didn't post that because it's inconsistant i posted it because I had 6 and now 11 production plants corps that used to make a base of .1 and not it's down to .07 units a month. It affects my profitability, it affects my functionality in this game. Right decisions/wrong decisions aren't hard to see.

Also you are wrong if you think someone like crafty (no offense, i see your name a lot and you answer lots of questions) if you think he started with high tech products when he first started the game and never deviated from them you'd probably be wrong. Countries start at game level 1, then move forward and so those niche markets through history you make to give you capital to buy food. It is no different from real history. Why make products in abudence, in sc or in the real world? when you can make a product that makes the iphone obsolete? if you have the resources you do it! labor is the most important resource. This game does a fantastic job proving that to be the case.

@drew,
i'm not sure if an earth country can be sustain with 29 food products, 100 military related products, and 86 non-food and service products. these are what sc has at my last check few days ago.

it would be nice to know in sc that if your country don't produce, then you import into your country. but in sc if you don't have then you don't consume it, such as my people don't consume any beans

if the game is going to get details, then it needs to do well otherwise why not just be superficial. just say each people consume "x" amount of food per month, without how many beans, corns, etc...

well, i think McD is a bad example. it's a secondary industry, not a primary industry.

again, if you don't produce then you buy from outside your country. that's mirrioring earth countries. you can check on qatar, i'm sure they spent a lot of money to buy/import foods, if they don't produce any.

sc does not take competitive advantages into consideration either. on earth countries, if oil could be produce in every country, USA won't be bothering the middle east nations. in sc, you can produce oil regardless of where you are in the world?

and earth countries, it would be difficult to buy population on the market, difficult to buy war protection, difficult to get secured mode, and so on...

i'm very sure university students are not naive enough about the world, that you can dumb them down.

perhaps, someday sc can be use in school projects when it is better developed. at its current stage, i highly doubt it can pass the screening stage into the school ...never hurt to try

there are still too many quirky stuffs with sc

i was wonder how do/did i have 9 precision bombs monthly use, while i got 0 (zero) precision bombers?

please explain something like that to me?
did i explore those bombs in my country, some of my people eat those bombs, got stolen, i have no order to dismantle those bombs, or what happen? remember i don't have the weapon to use that ammo, so how can i have a monthly use of that product?

does the doc said anything about these type of mystries?

There is an economist named Edward Castronova who specializes in studying the economy within games. He has identified some online games as realistic economic simulations.

Perhaps checking out his work is a way to find an educational game.

Simcountry originally was a simulation but it keeps drifting further away from that. I doubt the gamemasters want an educational world. That's available elsewhere.

It's not a good idea for a business, including a game, to try to be all things to all people.

The lessons are already there though. This game is very complex and at the very least has some teaching potential in supply and demand. I only bring up the idea because I've played simulation games when I was at school and none would have been as beneficial as this. It is a good business idea I believe though, the costs shouldn't be too heavy, and if Simcountry has a problem in its business plan it is definately exposure.

Xiong, I guess I should give up on justifying the same response. I'll say it again one more time though, peel off the labels and look at it as product 1, needs p2,p3,p4. p1 and p3 is in severe shortage. p3 needs p2, p4, p6. Few companies make p6 and they all sell 350Q products what do you do? Tell me that, that situation isn't full of a learning capable analysis. A sensible reason to use a contract of p6 to make p3's and p1's. As p3's become profitable you can supply some to your p1's, right?

The world's are emptying out, this would be a cheaper solution than most to revive the community. Hire one guy to go talk to a bunch of universities. Then a smaller server to house the game. Gaurenteed revenues from any professor you goes along with it. And the possibility of repeat business from the students themselves. Sounds pretty solid

@madoff,
agree that this game is far from trying to mirror reality on earth. one could clearly see that the priority of this game is for creating wars.

for this game to be educational, i think it still got at least 90% of the way to go.

@drew,
i'm not trying to kill your enthusiasm for the game to be a school project. i have not played this game long enough, but for the last few months that i have played, the more i play it the more i see issues. and it also seems that the more issues you bring up, the more the gm/owner ignore you too. it is actually the first online game that i played that my feelings are that the gm/owner don't want suggestions/criticism, from us lowly players minds.

and as i have said before, the game has great potentials, but the harvesting of those potentials will depend on who is the driver.

i'm sure you're aware that once you're game level 3, you could produce/manufacture all the products/services in the game? there is no competitive advantages taken into consideration as i have mentioned before.

my perception may be wrong, but the indexes go in the order of finance, education, employment, health, social security, transportation, business, war, defense. population is listed first on this list, and i agree that a country without a decent population to develop will not advance. i think with the indexes, if you can figure or there is guidelines as to how each influence/affect the others, then soon you will have them figure out and the game will become boring then. this is where i am at, trying to crack the understanding of these primary variables.

you mentioned about products, these are just the ingredients of the main variables. if my hypothesis holds water, trying to start from the bottom up will be more difficult than from the top down. and i'm very sure some of your smarter students will look at the results before they start the processes. say have you ever look up the answer to a mathematics problem, before you start solving the equations?

and if your students are capable of solving several complex simultaneous equations, then getting the required Q and all the P's will bore them to death after they figure the first few out.

for example, look at the education index?
it is pretty much an independent variable, that is linear. does it has much tie to the population, their age group, and so on. the more school you build, the higher this index?

and so far i think that population is perhpas the most important variable, or should be the most important variable in the game. as i have posted before, to make it mirror reality, it should be that you cannot buy them from the gm/owner with gold coins. it should be that you are such a great president, that people from other countries will naturally migrate to your country and you have the option to take them to be your citizens or not as on earth countries.

it should be that the gm/owner to set the birth and death rate for the game, and it's up to the players to amass the population base on the players abilities to build their countries with al the factories, industries, services, etc..

but for the gm/owner to pull 300M population as a gift to your country or you can buy population, just defeat the mirrioring concept of the game.

don't get me wrong, not every thing in the game is bad. most in my view just need to be improved, and not defy our human logics

please do let us know how it goes with your school project.

and if you really want to teach students simulation, perhaps have them enter the business plan competition that i think most american universities have them for their senior students

@drew,
i'm not trying to kill your enthusiasm for the game to be a school project. i have not played this game long enough, but for the last few months that i have played, the more i play it the more i see issues. and it also seems that the more issues you bring up, the more the gm/owner ignore you too. it is actually the first online game that i played that my feelings are that the gm/owner don't want suggestions/criticism, from us lowly players minds.

and as i have said before, the game has great potentials, but the harvesting of those potentials will depend on who is the driver.

i'm sure you're aware that once you're game level 3, you could produce/manufacture all the products/services in the game? there is no competitive advantages taken into consideration as i have mentioned before.

my perception may be wrong, but the indexes go in the order of finance, education, employment, health, social security, transportation, business, war, defense. population is listed first on this list, and i agree that a country without a decent population to develop will not advance. i think with the indexes, if you can figure or there is guidelines as to how each influence/affect the others, then soon you will have them figure out and the game will become boring then. this is where i am at, trying to crack the understanding of these primary variables.

you mentioned about products, these are just the ingredients of the main variables. if my hypothesis holds water, trying to start from the bottom up will be more difficult than from the top down. and i'm very sure some of your smarter students will look at the results before they start the processes. say have you ever look up the answer to a mathematics problem, before you start solving the equations?

and if your students are capable of solving several complex simultaneous equations, then getting the required Q and all the P's will bore them to death after they figure the first few out.

for example, look at the education index?
it is pretty much an independent variable, that is linear. does it has much tie to the population, their age group, and so on. the more school you build, the higher this index?

and so far i think that population is perhpas the most important variable, or should be the most important variable in the game. as i have posted before, to make it mirror reality, it should be that you cannot buy them from the gm/owner with gold coins. it should be that you are such a great president, that people from other countries will naturally migrate to your country and you have the option to take them to be your citizens or not as on earth countries.

it should be that the gm/owner to set the birth and death rate for the game, and it's up to the players to amass the population base on the players abilities to build their countries with al the factories, industries, services, etc..

but for the gm/owner to pull 300M population as a gift to your country or you can buy population, just defeat the mirrioring concept of the game.

don't get me wrong, not every thing in the game is bad. most in my view just need to be improved, and not defy our human logics

please do let us know how it goes with your school project.

and if you really want to teach students simulation, perhaps have them enter the business plan competition that i think most american universities have them for their senior students

sorry, double posted. even this forum don't have an edit or delete for your own posts