As mentioned and announced several times in the past weeks and months, wind farms that are not fully maintained will deliver less electric power than fully maintained wind farms.
The functions is now active. Max reduction started at less than 20% and this only happened when the shortages of wind turbines were extreme. By now, reductions are steeper but depend on the depth of the shortage of wind turbines. It can now reach 50% and will increase with the following upgrades.
At the end, countries with very large shortage of wind turbines, larger than 50 or 100 times the number of wind farms in the country, will see the output of wind farms deminish. They will not deliver any elctric power at all.
With extreme shortages, the number of wind farms in the country will start to decline and 4 to 20 wind farms will be dismantled each game month, for lack of maintenance during a prolonged period. The function is only active if the number of wind farms in the country is larger than 1000 and if there is a very large shortage of wind turbines for maintenance.
The function will be tuned up with the following game updates.
Silver will become more important. The new type of EV batteries will use Silver, in small quantities, but the numbers of future EV cars will substantially increase the use of Silver.
3. New Natural Resources - Nickel & Titanium [ top ]
New natural resources will be added to Tiny Atlas in the coming days and weeks. Both metals will be used (as in the real world) in the production of EV battery chargers and in EV batteries; also Power domes that will be used for the storage of electric power will use these metals. The two new metals will be added in the coming two weeks.
4. Transporting Goods to Tiny Atlas Will Become Easier [ top ]
The current upgrade will reduce the space needed for some products on a cargo shuttle. It means that a cargo shuttle will be able to move more products with each mission.
However, with more new products being introduced on Tiny Atlas, we are considering an easier way to transport products. Producing more Natural resources on TA will require more products to be transported to TA to make it possible to produce these natural resources and support the population needed to work in these corporations.
We are considering an easier way to specify which products you want to move to TA from a specific Space Center and automatically initiate multiple transfers.
It will take some time to develop and introduce such a function into Simcountry. When done, it will help reduce the number of details involved in the transports.
Corporations can retain some products and prevent them from being offered on the market. A recent error (last May), made it possible to retain unlimited amounts of products.
This too should be possible but not in the corporations that can bankrupt if they do not sell their products. Products can be stored in countries and enterprises. There are no limits.
We have now fixed this error and corporations will be able to retain 15 months of production. If they have more, 10% of the stored product will be sold on the market until the remaining products decline to less than 15 month of production.
The document describing many of the Simcountry products is extended with details on production, hiring and the raw materials used in the production process. More work is needed to add more products to the document and complete the detailed descriptions.
Electric power production in Oil/Gas EP corporations and in Nuclear power stations, increased some more. The cost is lower and the profitability of these corporations remains at the same level.
This ongoing tuning of these corporations will hopefully reduce the structural, huge shortages of electric power in all the worlds.
The max spending space of countries is 2.4T. Selling products had no limitations and proved recently to become a problem. We had to intervene in the market to prevent a large scale disruption with a declared intention to harm.
we have now put a limit of 10T per game month on selling products on the market.
This limit remains very high and is probably much higher than what 95% of the countries would ever want to sell in a single month.
It might become a little more difficult for a single player to manipulate the markets.
Depending on what we see in the markets, we might tune this max down a bit more.
Countries that are close to bankruptcy, used to start selling their assets to raise cash. It happened when the cash level went under -10T and the country reached the max loans it could have.
At the time, if a country cash went negative, there were automatic loans given to it to prevent is from bankruptcy.
Later, at the request of players, we stopped the automatic loans. As a result, the selling of assets never happened because although cash went very low, there were no loans.
We have now removed the loans condition.
Countries where the cash level goes under 10T will start selling assets and raise cash.
After several rounds of "balancing" and testing, we have now seen that a little more is needed. We have now slightly reduced the size of the defensive air force wings. These wings are essential in the defense of countries but proved to be too powerful and caused more damage to the attacker than considered reasonable.
More such changes will take place. we think that the defense should cause much damage to the attacker and come at a lower cost but the process must be more balanced.
14. Enterprises and the Army Maintenance Cost [ top ]
Enterprises will start to incur cost for maintenance of weapons they store. The cost will start to kick in at a low level in the coming weeks and months. It will remain lower because enterprises do not have soldiers and officers they need to operate the weapons but the cost of maintaining the army will become more proportional to its real size.
More reductions take place in the base cost of weapons and ammunitions. The actual cost depends on the market but when the base price declines, the general trend is also a reduction of the market price.
Setting up an army has become less expensive than before. more reductions will gradually take place.
although countries in general are very profitable, the maintenance of the army will represent a monthly cost and will probably be the limiting factor in the size of the army.
The profitability of corporations that produce weapons and ammunitions remained unchanged.
The market keeps fluctuating. The base price of electric power continues to decline. The price wind farms receive for power that is delivered to the country keeps increasing with full market price implemented and higher quality taken into account.
The maintenance problem of wind farms, in countries where there are shortages of wind turbines for maintenance will become a major problem in the coming weeks and will severely reduce or diminish the power output of wind farms.
Targon, Metadium and Baradium are now trading on the world markets in the 5 main worlds. There is not much trading to speak of for now, but when materials become available on Tiny Atlas and are transported to the 5 worlds, trading will be possible.
It will take some time before it becomes relevant.
To make immediate trading possible, the Gamemaster is delivering the ordered products and then orders the products on the market. The products are then delivered back to the gamemaster in the following hours and the product accounting remains neutral, meaning that the GM does not add products to the market.
Many products however, are hard to recover and the immediate delivery is becoming a feature that enables deliveries that should in fact not take place. We have already stopped immediate orders for Wind Turbines and Wind Farms.
we are now stopping the immediate trading for some raw materials. These materials must be ordered and delivered when the products are available.
Several natural resources are no longer available in immediate trading. These are: Gold, Lead, Lithium and Uranium.
we intend to extend this to other products and natural resources.
Natural resources are available in very large quantities in many countries on the main 5 worlds. There are huge quantities of unused natural resource in a very large number of countries and the number of such resources in a single country is many time larger than 100. It is easily possible to purchase or conquer a country with many natural resources and build Many profitable corporations.
Natural resources are in short supply in all the worlds and corporations producing them are among the most profitable.
We are now adding more natural resources on the Tiny Atlas world, were until now, there are only several rare metals that are not available in other worlds.
Although natural resources on Tiny Atlas are now being added, there is no urgent reason to mine these resources there. As mentioned before, there are currently many unused natural resources on many countries in all the worlds. The available quantities are such that we do not expect much of new discoveries in the foreseeable future.
In the coming weeks we will add 3 new products, in all worlds. These products will become important in Simcountry and will use the three rare metals that can be mined on Tiny Atlas.
We plan to add more current technology products.
The consumption model that is the base of spending by the population, will shift slowly into such products and will shift funds into spending on these new products.
once the population starts using such products, there will be a substantial market and large quantities will be used in production in new corporations.
These products will become part of what a country needs to purchase for use by the population and will become part of the supply package for countries.
Example:
Electrical vehicles will be introduced and countries will be able to decide on the portion of electrical vehicles they purchase within a percentage range.
depending on their choice, or some default percentage, countries will start ordering both cars and EVs.
Some rare metals will be used in the production process of EVs and in the production process of the automotive industry.
We have added Baradium and Metadium as new natural resources on Tiny Atlas some time ago. It was up to now impossible to mine them as they were not found anywhere.
the products are now available in many countries on Tiny Atlas.
Many countries have at least one of these two natural resources and it now possible to setup corporations producing them.
More natural resources on Tiny Atlas and some new products on all worlds will be published in the coming tow weeks and added to Simcountry.
The base price of Electric Power is declining further. The price that is used when the EP produced by wind turbines is delivered to the countries, is now much closer to the world market price. We will continue the tuning process for some time until the desired parameters are in place.
24. The Supply Index is becoming more important [ top ]
The supply index is becoming more important and it becomes essential for countries to make sure all supplies are purchased and avoid shortages.
Large economies are even more exposed. It is expected that these countries will make sure there are no shortages of supplies or otherwise, the supply index may decline to very low levels.
At very low supply index levels, the welfare index will decline too and the population may decide to leave the country in large numbers. We have published about this issue before and currently it is becoming very urgent.
Updates to the documentation are taking place and small updates are installed from time to time. This will continue for a prolonged period. We have now added some hints that were showing an empty window, and improved some errors in several documents.
Wind turbine corporations are now verifying the numbers of unsold products by checking their own current offers on the market. we have found that in most such cases, when these corporations report unsold product, the real number of offers on the market is zero.
The feature is now only used to validate wind turbine corporations but can also be used for other products.
To make it easier for newer players to build their army, many weapons and ammunitions will become a bit cheaper. The corporations producing them, will produce a bit more and their profitability will remain as before.
The increased production levels will also help to reduce the continuing large shortages in many products.
The changes will not cause any major shakeup in the markets.
The maintenance cost of the army on the other hand, will increase for some weapons. The increase will not be significant for countries with small and reasonable armies.
More corporations will produce a bit more. This was done several times before and as a result, shortages of products are now at lower levels than before. It is however not good enough.
An increase in production usually comes with a slight decrease in the price of the products. Profitability will remain the same or increase a bit because the cost of raw materials needed for the production process will also decline.
Also this change is not large enough to change much in the markets.
EP price declined a bit. The profitability of all EP producing corporations remains unchanged. The income of countries from EP produced by wind farms is now influenced more by the market price with all advantages and increased risks that come with it.
30. The pricing of wind farms and wind turbines [ top ]
The max price of these products was allowed to increase much higher than other products in Simcountry. It did not lead to much more products being produced but it did make it more expensive to purchase wind farms, and the high price of wind turbines pushed the maintenance cost of wind farms higher.
we are now slightly reducing the max level and will bring the pricing range back into the standard range as is used for all other products.
The cost of health is down a bit after a further reduction in the amount of electric power used by hospitals. This is the third reduction in the amount of power after comments by players who correctly commented on the high cost of electric power used in the health system.
Shortages in the numbers of high level workers are declining a bit more. The change is slow but continuous and will increase the portion of high level workers in the numbers of new workers joining the labor market.
No further actions were taken in this upgrade but the balancing measures taken in the past game upgrades are continuing to kick in and shortages on the markets become a bit smaller.
We have called for players to reduce shortages of wind turbines to prevent a reduction in their output due to lack of maintenance. We are delaying this function again to allow for more time to reduce such shortages. we now plan to introduce this function in August.
Our warnings todate were not taken seiously. The function however, will be implemented and can have very serious consequences.
Another tuning of production levels in some corporations. small changes. but in time, these changes add up. we see more products with smaller shortages and even some that are balanced and sometimes show oversupply.
There are also adjustments in the market with corporations producing some types of products being closed and other corporations created. Most of these fluctuations are done by C3 countries that react to oversupply and shortages.
New corporations now have no raw materials donated to them. These given products, at creation time, that used to appear from nowhere, became a problem on the market. New corporations will have a slight delay in going into full production but the supply used to be for 5 months only.
Some types of corporations are now hiring some more workers. The reason is, as it was before, that the population in the worlds is increasing slowly and the number of corporations follows this growth.
Too many corporations in countries caused problems in the past, among them the increase of processing time. We will keep increasing the average number of workers in corporations at a very low pace and doing so, will prevent an increase in the number of corporations per world.
If a corporation is becoming slightly bigger, we also update production numbers and make sure the corporation remains as profitable as before.
There are now many more corporations in Simcountry that are capable of producing very high profits.
Game level requirements are updated from time to time. The most frequent changes are the requirements for population.
The current required numbers are outdated and based on the population numbers we used to have a long time ago. The changes are very small and gradual. Most countries have much higher numbers of population than needed for their game levels.
Some financial boosters to financially weak country were misused to gain cash. we have now fixed this error.
there was also an additional error ("feature" ) in the order process that allowed for very large orders. The "feature" was created to allow countries to quickly recover from shortages.
1. The EP produced by WFs is now added to the country stock at Q150.
2. The numbers of HLW will increase. Last tuning was a small improvement but shortages remain too large. The numbers are now increased by about 4% of the total of available new workers entering the labor market. We think it will make a difference and will reduce the need for many conversions. If not enough, there will be another bump in the numbers in the next upgrade.
3. The health system reduced its use of Electric Power. The EP component in the health system is now smaller. Some other components in the cost of health care are slightly increased but the change reduced the total cost of health care.
4.Additional tuning of some production levels and pricing, reduced the continuing shortages on the markets. Many of the shortages are declining. Reducing extreme shortages will reduce the need for immediate orders.
Also, if some shortages disappear, and some C3 countries will close some corporations, they will start new ones, including Wind Turbine corporations. This can help reduce the huge shortages and in general, will increase the dynamics of the market.
It will take a while to see where the markets are going and how they change.
we do not think that many shortages will change into a surplus.
Some corporations are now producing a fraction more than before. This is done because certain products show shortages that are too large to fix. When a shortage is so large that hundreds of new corporations will be needed to bring production levels up to the required level, some corrections are needed.
In general, shortages continue to be very large.
The corrections in this upgrade will not cause any disruptions to the markets.
Shortages of high Level Workers continue to be quite large. we have now increased the percentage of new workers that become high level workers. The change is not large and is not the first one. we hope that the need for manual conversions will decline.
There are many controls in Simcountry to discover situations that are unlikely to happen. These controls exist as long as the game and helped us in discovering many errors in the past.
In the mean time, with many additions and new functions, many of these controls became obsolete and new situations occur where there are few or no checking.
we have started to add more checks on transactions in Simcountry that are strange or should be impossible. Some players try to do the same which is excellent and we hope to be able to find possible errors.
For your info, we do have a huge, multi gigabyte logs of transactions from every corner of the game and we keep them for a very long period of time. we will make an effort to comb such data and find anomalies.
The conditions/requirements for game levels in Simcountry have been tuned for the second time in the past months. Many game parameters were updated in the past years and game level requirements must follow. As an example: the requirements in terms of the size of the population are outdated. Population numbers used to be under 80 millions while now, the numbers can grow much higher. The changes are small.
Air force defense wings will become a bit smaller. it will take some time for this change to kick in, but when done, it will help to create more balancing the power of the offensive and defensive armies.
C3 countries will have the smaller air force units in all wars that will start from today.
A major problem was resolved that made it possible for players to arbitrarily increase the spending space and, in the process make a lot of money. this is one of the largest such errors found in Simcountry.
we have now fixed this error. several players made use of this bug but the numbers were very large and triggered alerts with the details of the action.
we have removed assets that were created in this way. we might find more such cases and will wipe out funds that were "earned" in this way.
51. Corporation production and profitability [ top ]
The requirements for game levels are being updated at a very low pace. Required cash levels and population numbers for some game levels ar slightly increased. The changes are very small.
Many players during many periods in the past, complained about the war game. Some complaints were specific, most just said the war game was broken. There was nothing to be done with such comments.
we have made corrections in the past but probably not enough. There were also conflicting changes that were either aimed at more balance and some that were aimed at keeping the defensive game at a lower cost than the offensive one.
Recently, specific comments by one player, including examples, did ring a bell here and we have decided to take actions on his comments.
I am sure we have missed such comments in the past. we have surely missed taking action when the comments consisted of claims and no details.
The upgrade includes mainly tuning of the war game:
1. Defensive weapons are using one missile less than before when defending the country. In most cases they use 7 missiles per round instead of 8. This is not a major change but will make a difference.
2. The effectiveness of defensive ammunitions is slightly reduced. where a defensive missile had a 60% chance of hitting a defensive weapons or a missile, the percentage now is reduced to 50. similar reductions are applied to nearly all defensive weapons. The details of these changes are in the war document.
3. Some defensive weapons now have a shorter range. The reductions are by about 10%.
4. C3 countries have smaller numbers of garrisons. The changes are quite large. The remaining numbers are much smaller. The changes apply to the first 6 or 7 war levels of C3 countries.
We think that these changes together will have an impact and will change the numbers of casualties and destroyed weapons in all wars. we are also quite sure that we are not done yet.
Using 1 missile less in the defense will make a change but 2 or 3 might be better. we need a lot of testing. reducing the impact of defensive weapons too should be reviewed and more reductions might be needed.
The number of garrisons was far too large. It could be that even with much smaller numbers, there will be too many garrisons remaining and more, smaller reductions will be needed.
we will listen to comments. we hope to receive more specific results, showing what really happens. Such information will allow us to continue tuning.
Executing these changes can be done quickly and does not require a lot of work.
The balance is however difficult and it is easy to go just a bit too far and collapse the defense capabilities of all countries.
Most changes in this upgrade, and some in the previous upgrades are internal changes that are aimed at improving the site itself.
In this upgrade, we have completed a process that improved the working of the Simcountry portal that also runs the cargo shuttles movements.
The performance of the portal deteriorated in the past weeks and completing the work caused a major improved of performance and resolved the problem. (for now).
more internal work is done to improve security and more servers were added and will be added in the coming weeks.
The portal has all the needed capacity and will be extended even further to allow for much larger numbers of active cargo shuttles.
After a recent increase in the number of workers that become high level workers in the previous upgrade, we have made another similar change to improved numbers even further.
as we explained before, changes must remain small and we cannot run the risk of overdoing these changes as there is no way to reduce the numbers of high level workers if there are too many.
we will now watch how numbers are improving but may need to make another change in the next upgrade.
It is close to impossible to predict the results of such changes.
we have improved the stability of C3 economies on Tiny Atlas. The population numbers that were kept in the past under 3 millions, are now 5 to 7 millions and a little easier in accepting more population and building corporations when a president is taking over the country.
The corporations that are producing these products are slightly increasing production. we hope that the disastrous shortages of the past will not return.
Profitability remains high and improved a bit.
The Cost of Defensive weapons maintenance
The cost of the products is reduced by about 3%. The change will cause a small reduction in the cost of the defensive army.
The spending limit is increased by about 50% for countries that have large population. The change is implemented only for full members who are the owners of large population countries.
We are experiencing a shortage of high level workers that forces many players to manually move workers and professionals between workers groups.
A slightly larger number of new workers will now become high level workers. the change will help in reducing the shortages we experience. It will however take some time to materialize as it does not change numbers in all age groups but rather increases them in the young groups.
We have slightly increased production numbers in some corporations. Changes are small but will help to reduce shortages. As a result, many corporations will make a larger profit.
We have done so before and may need to repeat this several times as shortages are very large. Such changes never cause any major changes in the market. They never transform shortages into oversupply or have any influence on the market prices.
Some products are showing extreme shortages on the markets. In extreme cases, like Defense weapons maintenance products, we will allow the price of such products to increase to a higher level.
Only a small number of products may undergo such changes and the higher price will hopefully convince more players to build such corporations.
For a long time, game level requirements remained unchanged. In the mean time, many Simcountry parameters did change and some have undergone major changes. For example: population numbers are now higher than before and the population grows far beyond previous "natural" limits around 60 or 70 millions. The requirements for game levels did not change.
The same is true for more conditions.
we are now looking into the game level requirements and will make some (small) changes to update them to the current situation.
This upgrade includes such small updates and changes will continue in the following rounds of game upgrades.
The game score needs to be updated. Despite many changes in Simcountry, the way the score is computed was not updated. As with game levels requirements, we will make some changes to the computation of the score. None are included in this update but some will follow in the next updates. Such changes will cause fluctuations in the score and will not be introduced in the last couple of days of the month.
Some parameters in Simcountry are easier to manipulate than others. Requiring a longer play time to reach the top scores, will make these manipulations more difficult. We are not going into details as we do not want to suggest any wrong doing or cheating.
- Population numbers
As all countries have larger numbers of population, a score boost requires a population of at least 80 millions.
- Contributions to the game
A longer commitment to Simcountry is awarded more than before.
- The base number of score points
The base number of score points is reduced. It was given to everyone and caused the score to become very high. With this reduction, the new score will decline over time and all players will end up with a lower score. This change does not influence the rank of countries.
Other parameters remain unchanged.
The financial index, the welfare index, health, education etc. remain key factors when the score is computed.
Production in some corporations is slightly increased. As a result, we expect extreme shortages to be reduced even further. The increase in production results in higher profitability in many corporations and with it, an increase in the market value.
Shortages in natural resources are caused by the small number of corporations producing them. There are however many countries with unused natural resources and their presidents are probably unaware of the potential in these kind of corporations.
There are also many countries without a president with very large numbers of unused natural resources. Conquering such countries is not very complex, purchasing them is an alternative. Countries with many such resources have the potential to become very profitable. The profit capacity of a natural resource corporation is several times higher than the average corporation.
Wind farms are producing large amounts of electric power without any CO2 emmission. They are also contributing to the country income and are improving its financial index.
Building wind farms is a long term very good investment but it should be done carefully.
Each wind farm is assumed to replace one of the 250 wind turbines each game month. The country should either produce enough wind turbines or purchase them on the market, to have a supply of one wind turbine, each game month, for every wind farm.
A shortage of wind turbines, will harm production and the income of the country from these wind farms.
The energy report shows the current energy balance in your country. It will be extended to show a potential shortages of wind turbines.
Having large numbers of wind farms in a country represents a major risk, The price of electric power can fall while the maintenance cost remains high. This could lead to financial decline.
Inability to purchase or produce enough wind turbines for the maintenance of wind farms, can lead to these wind farms to reduce production or stop production with major consequence.
More products are added to the product reporting. By far not all products yet but more than before.
some of the products have a table attached showing data about the corporations that produce the product. The data include production numbers, number of people working in these corporations and the raw materials that are used.
we will add more data in following upgrades. we will also add more products to the report.
The change is very large and might include some errors in the formatting.
Several game documents were upgraded. Some of the documents were not updated for some time and did not reflect the current status of Simcountry.
We have also added more information about Tiny Atlas.
We are adding more information about products in the game, including details on the number of workers and the products that are used in the production process.
Some of the most detailed documents however, are always up to date. These document are regenerated with every game update and include details that are based on the game code. These include the weapons docuemtn and increasingly, the products document.
There is more to come.
We are interested in information from players about errors and missing documents. Also, if anyone want to write a short document on a function which is not explained, please let us know.
There is a problem with the "Top" links in the documentation. the error will be solved ASAP.
October 22, 2023
77. Metadium will be added as a new product to Simcountry. [ top ]
Metadium is a rare metal that will become a natural resource on Tiny Atlas. It will be found on Tiny atlas but the introduction may take some time to materialize. Metadium will be used in the production of some new products that will be introduced when Metadium can be produced.
Metadium is the second rare metal on Tiny Atlas. It can be moved to other planets and corporations using it will be built on all the worlds. It will also be traded on the markets. More information will follow when we discover the natural resource. I t will include more data on the potential use of Metadium.
The production rules for Metadium are not fully defined yet and it is not visible in the production list.
78. The population of Tiny Atlas is Growing [ top ]
The population in C3 countries on Tiny Atlas will be growing in the coming weeks. Currently, numbers are around 4.0 million. These numbers might grow to 6.0 million. This change is made to make it slightly easier to develop new countries on Tiny Atlas.
The game news page in Simcountry is now up to date. There was a long delay in updating the game news page and the news was published on the game forum instead. We are now returning to more frequent updates on the game news page.
The added text is very large. We found several formatting errors. These are already repaired and will be activated coming Tuesday.
The corporations page in the Simcountry documentation always included the description of some products. The number was small. We have now extended the document and added some more products.
The number of documented products remains small and the document is incomplete. We will extend the document frequently in the coming weeks.
we also intend to extend the product descriptions and include detailed information on the raw materials used in the production process, the number of workers and professionals involved, the changes in the corporation when it is upgrades and more.
The products that were added in this upgrade, include the most complex ones versus many other products, that are not documented yet but are quite obvious and do not require much explanation.
We have updated the game requirements for some game levels. The changes in the previous upgrade were intended to be slight and ended up more serious.
The trend remains. Some parameters are not relevant today. Corporations and countries are now very different than before and some of the conditions became trivial. This problem is only partially resolved.
It is now possible to store Targon in enterprises. The functions should have been included in the previous upgrade but did not make it during the upgrading procedure.
The income from wind farms was already visible on the financial reports while the cost of maintaining the wind farms was added to government cost. We have now separated the maintenance cost of wind farms. It shows separately on the financial page. It is removed from government cost. Government cost will of course show a decline (if you have wind farms) while a separate cost item is added.
The worlds document now included a much more detailed description of the Tiny Atlas world, its features and some advice on how to participate.
86. Major restructuring of the Simcountry Database [ top ]
While not visible to players, this change is the largest item in this upgrade. we have restructured some parts of our database. The change will allow for easier additions of features and products.
A problem is reported by a player about the impossibility to transfer Targon from a Space Center. The cause of the problem was the impossibility to store Targon in Enterprises. The problem is now resolved.
90. Painting Defence Fortifications on the map [ top ]
The problem with painting more than 100 fortifications on the country map is resolved. You can now choose to show all of up to 150 defensive fortifications on the ma.
Following some suggestions that contracts are financially less attractive than selling products on the market we have tested the functions and these suggestions are found to be untrue. We have looked into many contracts and found the price to be market price multiplied buy quality, the same way it is on the market. The contract sales followed the market price from month to month. It is showing on the log of recent sales and purchases. You can see that sales on the market and contract prices are the same.
We have introduced another reduction in the maintenance cost of the defensive army. The reduction will start immediately and will affect the cost of maintaining the defensive army.
Another decline in the cost of defensive ammunition. The decline is by around 10% and it will start showing with the next purchases of ammunition. This is by far, not the first decline. Over time we have introduced many reductions and they accumulated to much more than 50%.
We have reduced the cost of maintenance of several government facilities including air ports, space centers, all education and health facilities. Some changes are small, some larger. Government cost will decline as a result. The maintenance cost of wind farms is currently part of the cost of government. We plan to separate them to increase transparency.
As we announced some time ago, we have continued to reduce the use and production of jeeps, heavy jeeps, land to sea batteries and land to sea missiles. These weapons are not part of any new military units, are not used in any new units or any attacks. It is now not possible to create new corporations producing them and they cannot be traded on the markets.
96. Shortages and the Profitability of some corporations [ top ]
We have reduced the use of some raw materials in the production of some products. The reduction is not very large. As a result, these products will be used in smaller quantities, reducing shortages and at the same time, the corporations producing them become more profitable. In some of the cases we have reduced product pricing to compensate for the reduced production cost.
We have slightly increased the quantities of maintenance products produced each month. As a result, we hope that shortages will become smaller and in the process, many maintenance corporations will become more profitable.
The first war tutorial is updated. We have added a short introduction, written by a player, Erik Olsoy. The way the war is fought is updated. Winning the first war is indeed easy but not trivial.
99. Wind Turbine Corporations on Tiny Atlas [ top ]
On Tiny Atlas, it is now possible to build a wind turbine corporation while in game level 2. Nothing changed on the other worlds.
100. War limit against C3 countries at war level 3 [ top ]
The limit is removed. We updated the code but were unable to test it. The change was very small and it should be OK. We never ask you to test, but anyone who bumped into this problem, please test and let us know.
The way income from wind farms is showing on the financial pages is updated. In recent days, income from windfarms served to reduce government cost. It caused problems on the income/cost of the country and in the computation of the financial index.
We have now added a line into the financial report, showing the income from wind farms separately.
Government cost does not include the income from wind farms any more. The maintenance cost of wind farms remains part of government cost. We might update it in the near future and show the maintenance cost of wind farms separately. The computation of the financial index is corrected.
102. Wind Farm contracts with the country where they reside [ top ]
A major problem with wind farms contracts delivering their products to the country where they reside is resolved. Due to an error, new wind farms were not delivered to the country but instead, sold on the market, despite the standing contract with the country.
In the evolving situation it is now very clear that electric power production with wind farms is an attractive proposition. We expect that many will want to increase such power production with more need for corporations that will produce wind farms and wind turbines.
Income and cost will increase but wind farms are and will remain very profitable.
103. Expected update in the maintenance of Wind Farms [ top ]
Wind turbines are essential in the maintenance of wind farms. Shortages of wind turbines will disrupt/diminish the production in wind farms. Countries with wind farms should have a sufficient supply of wind turbines that are used to replace one wind turbine per wind farm each game month.
If the country has a shortage of wind turbines, it means that maintenance does not take place. The production of electric power from the wind farms will decline by 50%. It might become even worse if the shortage of wind turbines is very large. This change is not implemented yet. We advise you to make sure you have all the wind turbines needed for wind farm maintenance.
The cost of maintenance, both for government facilities and for the army have declined recently and will continue to decline with the current upgrade. The actual cost also depends on the cost of products on the market but the long term trend is downward.
Shortages continue on all worlds and many products show short supplies. The situation is however improved and may improve further in the coming game months. Shortages are not about to disappear but may become smaller. The process takes some time to materialize but the long term trend is for more balance on the market.
It is now possible to set up Targon defensive units. To do so, you need Targon defence batteries and Targon Defence missiles.
These can be produced in all countries that have Targon. Targon can now be produced on Tiny Atlas and can be transported to all countries.
Targon defensive weapons and ammunition are very powerful weapons that are able to destroy many types of missiles. Details about the working of the Targon weapons and their capabilities against other weapons are explained in the weapons document.
Wind farms produce electric power and their output is added to the country stock each month. Each wind farm produced 1250 units of electric power each game month.
The maintenance cost of wind farms is added to the government cost. The proceeds from the electric power produced by the wind farms is now subtracted from the government cost. As a result, the government cost in countries with wind farms will now decline because the value of the electric power they produce is much higher than the maintenance cost.
The government cost can even turn negative if the country has many wind farms.
we have recently seen that the first war experience as intended for new players became trivial. The first war could be won without any significant fighting. we were alerted to the problem by a player and it was discussed on the forum.
We have now improved the first war experience and it became non trivial but it remains quite easy to win. To win the first war, you need to reduce the war index of the enemy to a level under 20. It used to be sufficient to reduce it under 40.
We will now continue to improve that first war experience. The description/tutorial for that war will be improved. We will also look into the process and tune it to the current capabilities of army units.
The current upgrade includes some tuning of many types of corporations. We expect that the shortages will keep declining. We have seen declines from extreme shortages in the past weeks and hope that the trend will continue.
Cost of maintenance for government facilities and the monthly cost of the army We have tuned down many of the operating costs for both government facilities and for many weapons, both defensive and offensive. We think that in time, operating costs will decline. More steps could follow to decrease cost even further.
110. Game Interventions in building facilities [ top ]
Nearly all interventions are tuned off. in extreme cases, such interventions will continue and try to keep the essential health and education facilities at acceptable levels. Much lower than before.
August, 2023
111. Several game upgrades have taken place during August. [ top ]
We have increased the production of several types of corporations. The changes are not very large and are not expected to cause major changes. as a result, we already see that the shortages in some products are declining.
Some products that have huge shortages for a very long time, are showing some increase in production and lower shortages. There is a bit more green on the utilization page.
Easier deliveries to corporations that reduced production because of shortages, will cause these corporations to produce more and consume more and shortages may decline even more. On the other hand, population numbers can resume growth and increase purchases of products.
The result is difficult to predict but most probably, the market will improve and shortages will decline.
We have seen that some players are having difficulties in keeping their countries at a good economic conditions due to mainly bad health and education. The conditions declined when we eliminated all help in balancing health and education unless a player explicitly ask for.
This was a required change but it created more problems than expected. We have introduced some more help. Some shortages in groups of professionals are seeing small corrections each month. In the real world, there is more flexibility when there are specific shortages. People are hired to fill jobs even if their education does not exactly match the available job. We are now making a bit more, small shifts, between multiple professions if there are very high shortages.
The change was implemented about two weeks ago and we already see many countries that were in a dire economic situation due to mismatching education, starting to improve.
The automatic shifts are more prominent in countries with low population and diminish when population numbers are larger.
Wind Farms require monthly operational costs (added to government cost), and produce electrical power. The value of the electric power produced each game month, is much higher than the monthly operational costs.
However, the electrical power is added each month to the country stock and reduces the cost of the country for products used by the population. That cost is in the cash flow of the country but does not show in the monthly cost of the country. It does improve the country cash position. This procedure is incorrect.
The value of the electric power delivered to the country each month, is in fact part of the cost of purchasing products for the population. The Value of the electric power wind farms deliver, should be subtracted from the government cost. The profit of the wind farms will then reduce the government cost. we will make the correction ASAP.
115. New Weapon and ammunition - using Targon [ top ]
Targon can be mined on Tiny Atlas for some time and new corporations were set up by players, producing Targon. We will upgrade Simcountry to make it possible for players to produce a new defensive weapon and a new missile.
These missiles are used by the Targon Batteries. Targon is used in very small quantities (one gram per missile), in the production process. The missiles come at a relatively low price and can be produced in sufficient numbers.
The following game update, will include a new military unit that includes 2 Targon Batteries and an updated war engine that uses the new Targon missiles.
Targon is now available as a natural resource in countries on Tiny Atlas. It is now possible to build a corporation that will mine Targon. once Targon is produced, it can be transported to another planet.
119. Targon will not be traded on the markets. [ top ]
Corporations that will mine Targon are quite large and need many professionals that might not be available yet in countries on Tiny Atlas. To mine Targon, you will have to build education in your country on Tiny Atlas to a level that will produce the professionals needed to run the corporation.
Targon is added as a new natural resource to Simcountry. Currently there is no Targon in any of the worlds. In the coming days, a discovery round on Tiny Atlas, will discover Targon in many countries and it will become possible to build Targon mining corporations. These corporations are large and require many workers at all levels, including very high level managers and high tech workers.
Carbon is available in very small quantities. It will be mined on Tiny Atlas only. We expect new industries, using Targon to start in countries in all worlds but it will be more difficult to build such industries on Tiny Atlas because of lack of other resources and lack of workers.
The max number that can be moved between workers groups is increased from 200.000 to 300.000. In addition, we expect the number of high level workers to increase a bit and reduce the need for frequent conversions.
When building new corporations, workers that are needed to work in these corporations should be available. Until now, it was possible to build even if available worker numbers were far too low. It made it possible to build too many corporations that were producing at low levels and made losses.
Population numbers in countries now depend more on the education index, the health index but also on the welfare and supply indexes. Population numbers can decline quickly if these indexes are at very low levels. Health and education at a level of 60 will result in many people leaving your country.
The welfare index has now a larger range. It is changing a bit faster than before and can go a bit lower than before. It is also a major factor in keeping the population in the country.
Effects are small except for countries where the indexes are extremely low.
An error prevented the sale of an enterprise if the buying country already had two enterprises. The max per country is four enterprises. The error is now fixed.
As we explained before, we are in the process of phasing out defensive jeeps, offensive jeeps and land to sea missiles and batteries. These weapons are not used in any units any more, production numbers diminished and they will disappear in the coming weeks.
We will publish how this will be done. The functionality of the weapons is replaced by added functionality to tanks and artillery and more capabilities were added to land based cruise missiles.
127. Intervention functions for new players [ top ]
We had several rounds of reductions in such functions and we have reduced the number of interventions. We have now revisited these interventions and reduced them much more.
If you turn all beginners help functions off in the game settings, there will be no interventions. If you do ask for some help functions, these will remain active as long as your country did not reach game level 4.
We have added the level 4 limitation to virtually all beginner support functions in Simcountry.
Tiny Atlas is running although we do have some problems. There was a problem several hours ago and it was resolved. In general, the fact that TA is quite empty, causes some problems. small problems in general but they can disturb the normal working.
As we enable more functions, and some facilities have zero numbers. (Schools, universities and hospitals), there are some unexpected conditions. we have resolved all problems and have run TA several months forward to catch up.
in the mean time, there are some functioning corporations. some countries are resolving the supply problems but the low education and mainly low health indexes, are killing many. A portion of the population will leave.
We will move TA to its definitive location today. Some little problems have been resolved and TA is moved to its definitive location.
A round of discovery of natural resources on TA will take place in the coming day or two.
We have enabled the trading on some of the markets on Tiny Atlas. There is not much to do on these markets at this point but in the long term, there might be more goods to sell.
Immediate orders do not function and will not be enabled. Immediate orders, in general, are delivered even if there is no product available and are compensated with regular orders by the GM.
On Tiny Atlas we do not want to have materials delivered in this way.
130. Cargo shuttle missions and maintenance products [ top ]
The long flights to Tiny Atlas are having their effect on the cargo shuttles and they are getting older faster than in the short flights between the other planets and space stations.
Make sure you have enough shuttle maintenance products in your Space Centers or otherwise, if such products are not available, shuttles will get older even faster.
Several food products and agricultural products were loaded on cargo shuttles in huge quantities. The numbers were far too large. we have made some corrections and reduced the amount of these products that can be loaded on a single shuttle.
132. Targon and Targon related new products [ top ]
Targon and products that use Targon will be added to Simcountry later this month.
Following that update it will be possible to set up Targon mines and transport Targon to the other worlds. It will also be possible to setup corporations that produce defensive Targo batteries and defensive Targon missiles.
Countries on TA are lacking health facilities and education. This situation causes high death rates and population declines.
Using the population booster for TA allows you to keep the numbers of the population up and create growth but these transfers must continue. Once the health and education system on TA reach higher levels (index>70), population reductions will stop. Death rates will decline and natural population growth will kick in.
There are now many cargo shuttle in flight. most of them are moving products to Tiny Atlas. Not sure if everyone is up to date on how these shuttles go about transports.
when a transport is started, up to 20 cargo shuttles you own, must pick up the products you want to move. The products are stored on a space center. you might have cargo shuttles parked at that space center. in that case, these will be used for the transport.
If there are no cargo shuttles available at the space center where products should be picked up, cargo shuttles you own, in other locations, will be called upon to move to the space center and pick up the products. This may cause many empty cargo shuttles to move between space centers while you did not explicitly asked for.
The cargo shuttles will then move from the place where they were parked, to the space center where they need to pick up products and then move from there to their destination.
The shuttles will deliver the products at the destination. if more needs to be moved, they will start a next round. once a cargo shuttle delivers the products and there are no more products to be moved, it will stay where it is and wait for a next transport request.
135. Changes in products/Weapons in Simcountry [ top ]
As we move forward and after the introduction of Tiny Atlas, new products will be introduced. Some will be related to Tiny Atlas, new natural resources and new products that will use these new products.
On the other hand, we plan to phase out some products.
We have started the process before and will now move it forward, to eliminate Jeeps. We have many land forces. Jeeps are not essential.
we will eliminate both types of Jeeps. There are some details to be taken care of. we will publish details when we get to the last phase. Jeeps use and production is being reduced.
We want to eliminate Land to sea batteries and land to sea missiles. we would like to hear your opinion on such a change.
At the last step, we will convert jeeps for armed vehicles in a way that will preserve your investment.
We think the idea to add naval combat features to land based cruise is a good solution.
In general, we want to implement the idea which was brought up by players a long time ago, to reduce the number of weapons. especially when we intend to add some new weapons that will make use of new materials.
Tiny Atlas is a very small world that was discovered outside the area where our current 5 worlds are placed. It has 677 countries.
Tiny Atlas is further away than the current 5 worlds and reaching it will take much longer than the time needed to travel between the current worlds.
Tiny Atlas is largely deserted. Countries have very few people, most of them have a population of 3.5 to 4 millions. It has no corporations, no education to speak of, no health care or infra structure.
The economies of all countries are in chaos and nothing of any substance takes place in any of the countries.
It is assumed that there was a time when Tiny Atlas did much better. Many countries have a space center but there are no materials stored and no cargo shuttles.
Countries are currently kept as they are and do not deteriorate much further. There are shortages of everything but this does not result in a further decay of the countries beyond the current chaos. Tiny Atlas will run 6 game months per real day.
138. The functionality of Tiny Atlas in General [ top ]
Tiny Atlas is in fact identical in its functionality to all the other worlds. Differences result from the fact that there is no functioning economy. Only when some countries are boosted with external materials and support from the other planets will it become possible to start the production of materials on Tiny Atlas.
In its current state, nothing of substance can be built. You cannot rely on the market in any way and you cannot produce anything to improve conditions.
It is not possible to build anything or produce any products because there are no raw materials, no corporations and no workers that could work in such corporations. Everything you might want to have in Tiny Atlas will have to be transported from other planets.
The existing space centers could be used to land cargo shuttles but these shuttles will have to come from existing countries in other worlds and they will need to transport everything and in large quantities.
Even when corporations are constructed, the materials needed for production will have to come from other planets, moved from the space center to the country stock and then be sold to the corporation for it to be able to start, or maintain production. Large quantities will be needed or you will have to make such transactions, very frequently.
Players who have a country/empire on one of the current worlds, will be able to get a country on Tiny Atlas, Everyone can look around on this planet, click and zoom in, see the continents and regions.
A player can make a choice for a country. Once you decide, the country can be reserved for 30 gold coins and will have to be paid for in gold coins as on the other worlds.
It is not possible to start playing Simcountry with a first country on Tiny Atlas and it does not make sense at all. You cannot do anything, or build anything when there are no materials, no market to purchase goods on and no workers to do anything.
Players who do have assets on the other planets and are able to purchase cargo shuttles and carry materials from their countries to Tiny Atlas, will be able to prepare a new country they have on Tiny Atlas, move population over and start developments.
A country you own on Tiny Atlas must be prepared to be able to accept new population. The initial population will be around 3.5 to 4.0 million. You will see the population declining because of disastrous shortages, hunger and emigration.
The country will have no food products, no corporations and in fact no economy to speak of. A new country will not be able to build any corporations for lack of raw materials and workers.
In the initial stage, the president's priority will be to transfer food and materials to the country by use of cargo shuttles, from other countries on other planets.
Everything must be moved over. There is no market to purchase anything and with lack of food, people will not survive.
Players will have to find out what the population uses based on what they use in other countries they have and transport large quantities of supplies into their country. Once there are some materials, consumption numbers will start to show up and the situation will become clearer.
Players will need many cargo shuttles and enough supplies in their other countries to be able to build sufficient supply levels in their country on Tiny Atlas.
We will explain how to move people into Tiny Atlas but you are advised not to start moving people as they might not survive without sufficient supplies. Moving people can only start if you have enough supplies to maintain them and you have sufficient capacity of moving supplies over to sustain the numbers of people you have in the country.
Healthcare, education and transportation are non existing on Tiny Atlas. Countries have very low numbers of education facilities and very few hospitals and no roads or railways. As a result, the related indexes will be low and the supply index initially extremely low. All this will cause high death rates and diminishing population. If no food products are available, it will cause hunger and death rates will shoot up.
These issues cannot be prevented and must be addressed with a high priority. With few schools, there will be very few teachers even if education priorities are raised for education and health staff. When more population is moved into Tiny Atlas, such movements will include some professionals and may help improve the situation. With very low population numbers, transports of 100.000 people will be relatively significant.
Once supply levels can support the existing population, supply levels must increase much further to support an increase of the population.
A new booster was added to Simcountry to enable the movement of population. Using this booster, you can move 100.000 people to Tiny Atlas. The booster can be used once per game month and is free. There is no cost attached to the movement of population into Tiny Atlas. The population comes from one of your countries. The choice is automatic, not always from the same country.
Be careful with these transfers. Supply levels on Tiny Atlas must be sufficient to sustain the growing population.
Increasing the numbers of the population is essential if players want to be able to start corporations and mainly, the production of rare metals that can be found on the planet. Once a country on Tiny Atlas manages to support its growing population, players will have to build a health system, education and transportation. Once in place, the country could start building corporations and create local production to be able to support the population and reduce the dependency on transports from other planets.
Each country on Tiny Atlas will have at least one deposit of a rare metal and will be able to mine it and transport products to the other planets. The rare metals that can be mined on Tiny Atlas will be essential in the production of advanced products, including several types of weapons and ammunition that have capabilities that are currently not available.
145. The Transport of Materials to Tiny Atlas [ top ]
As we said before, everything must come from countries in the current worlds. Everything can be transported if it fits into a Cargo shuttle. Products that are traded on the direct market will be tradeable also for countries on Tiny Atlas.
Energy production will be possible only if power stations can be built or with wind farms. Many wind turbined will have to be moved into Tiny Atlas if any wind farms are to be constructed.
We think that it will take a major effort and some cooperation between players to construct essential production on Tiny Atlas. We think that it is all possible but we realize that some questions might be raised in the process.
Tiny Atlas is quite far from the current 5 worlds and cargo shuttle flight will be longer and require more shuttle maintenance units per flight. Sufficient numbers of shuttle maintenance units must be caried on the cargo shuttles with every transport flight and include more such maintenance units for the flight back. In cases when cargo shuttles do not have sufficient numbers of maintenance units, the cargo shuttle will deteriorate and it life expectancy will be diminished more quickly.
You are advised to have many shuttle maintenance units in stock at your space centers, both at the source country and on Tiny Atlas to be sure missions can take place using maintenance units to preserve the life span of the cargo shuttles.
Due to the longer flight time to Tiny Atlas, it will be probably necessary to keep a larger number of cargo shuttles to be able to run multiple transports. As in the current situation, transports will use up to 20 cargo shuttles simultaneously if these are available.
Each flight to Tiny Atlas will be counted as 10 missions and also use 5 maintenance units. If no maintenance units are available, the cargo shuttle will age faster and the mission will count for 50 regular ones.
June, 19, 2023
147. Tiny Atlas is coming to life tonight. [ top ]
There are several issues outstanding that will be resolved ASAP. The location of Tiny Atlas is wrong. It will be moved to its designated location ASAP.
Some countries might have a corporation or even two. These corporations cannot produce anything and will probably close quickly. There are probably not enough workers and there are no raw materials for the production of any product. At a later stage, players will be able to start building corporations. we will look at activities and make the necessary tuning.
With no working corporations, no market to speak of, there is also no trading at all. Countries cannot place orders for products and no immediate order as everything must be transported from other worlds. At a later stage, trading will become possible and the market will start. we will then selectively restart trading functions.
Discovery of natural resources has not taken place yet. we know that there is at least one natural resource in each country and are waiting for the resources to be discovered.
Many functions/indexes will probably be slow to kick in. Initial values might be unstable and will find their real values within a couple of days.
We discovered some errors and resolved them. in the process, Tiny Atlas disappeared for several hours but it is back.
Shuttles did not deliver automatically. they quickly started doing this correctly.
Population numbers and death rate start to change. the reason is non existing health system and hunger.
Direct trading transfers will be operational one week after registration of a country on TA. There might have been a wrong message before but it is resolved. You can try to transfer and you will see the number of days. All other products can be transferred now. you will need raw materials transferred to TA before you can have an operational corporation.
the direct trading market closure is removed. Now there is only the 7 days delay for new countries. counted from the moment of registration.
Population numbers, birth rates and death rates, depend more on the supply index and the health index.
Countries on TA will grow to about 4 millions. slowly if supplies and health remain very low.
Population will probably get stuck at about 4 million and transfers of additional population will have a smaller effect until the supply index and health are improving.
To Build a new corporation you need a production plant. Each country on Tiny Atlas now has 2 production plants.
The first corporation you build should be a production plant corporation. Otherwise, you will not be able to build any corporations at all.
There is no market on Tiny Atlas and you cannot purchase a production plant. To be precise, you cannot purchase anything at all on the non existing Tiny Atlas market.
We will remove the requirement for game level >1 for many products on Tiny Atlas. The first changes will be made today.
Electric Power is traded on the direct market and these products can be moved magically anywhere. one week after you have taken a country on Tiny Atlas, these movements of products are possible.
to build corporations we will need educated professionals. A low education index and a low health index will reduce our population. Production plant corporations and also all other corporations can be created.
magically, these corporations have 5 month supply of all materials they need. this will not remain so for a long time but now it is.
you need to contract or directly sell materials from your country to the corporations.
you can sell them up to 120 months of supplies if these are available in the country.
We have made some small changes that are aimed at a better stabilization of the markets. we hope that shortages will start to decline but in general, changes will remain small and no shortages are about to flip into oversupply.
some C3 countries might build an additional corporation. If it takes place in many countries, production numbers will increase a bit.
There are always discussions about the war engine and suggestions about possible errors in the way it works. The war engine works in the same way from the start of Simcountry. Numbers were tunes and tuned again in the initial period and many megabytes of logs analysed time and again.
To date, we did not find any evidence of an error in the way it works and it has run through probably millions of wars.
Each attack in a war is divided into many mini rounds of attacks. In each mini round, there are weapons on each side and fighting takes place, blow by blow, one grenade and one missile at a time. Each mini round can consist of hundreds or even thousands of single shots that take place one after the other and each one of them is executed according to the capabilities of the used weapon and ammo with chances of hitting the target and creating a damage level, as documented for the specific type of ammunition.
Two mini rounds, with identical numbers of ammunition, will produce different results, depending on the order of hits and failures on both sides.
Having a chance of 40% to hit a target, means that most probably, 40 of 100 rounds of ammo will hit the target but never in the same order and the attacks will produce different results and then, the following rounds will start with different conditions and again will produce different results.
In time, players discovered and developed strategies about attacks and learned which weapons will have more success against many types of defence. The collection of weapons that are involved in an attack or in the defence determine the results. Numbers and qualities have a lot of influence on the results too.
Having a land unit close to the target you attack is essential too as it can make a very big difference is the results of the attack.
Each mini round can produce many thousands of lines of logging info that describe each round of ammunition or a missile used, and reports if the target was hit, how many rounds used, losses on both sides etc.
We have studies huge logs thousands of times. An attack that takes place like this, and with random chance of hitting a target that is based on the documented capabilities of a weapon, its chances to hit the target and the damage level it creates if the target is hit, is very accurate and any error in the process was evident as it occurred in each and every blow during the fighting.
There is no shred of evidence of such errors and even the slightest error would produce impossible results in 100% of all attacks that take place and make the entire process unusable.
If any shot of a missile would not take place according to the documented rules, the blow by blow results of such action will immediately show.
If a hundred missiles are used and produce 45 hits where 40 were expected, that would be a major error. If the defence would shoot down more missiles than expected within the few parameters of the correct process, that would destroy the entire result.
We are not computing the results of 500 pieces of ammo against 500 pieces of ammo. It is one by one, very simple process, with a chance to hit or fail.
This process was tested with low numbers and was tested with attacks of millions weapons in huge fighting rounds as was possible in early days. In the past years, we did sometimes change the power of weapons. The changes involved the chance of hitting the target, the level of damage and the numbers of rounds of ammunition used per weapon in each attack. These changes did of course influence the results of attacks. We have for example, recently, increased the power of land forces by increasing the chance of hitting a target and the damage levels such hits cause.
But the war process remained untouched. It produced different results because single rounds of ammunition produced different results both on the offense and on the defence.
There are many ways to optimize your war strategy. Experimenting with the right types of weapons against specific defensive force and checking the capabilities of weapons as documented did produce excellent results for many players We have described the way the war engine always worked, in details.
any claims of errors or statements that dispute this, should at least be based on knowledge and facts. there are no such facts because this description is the way it works.
we assume that the entire tirade about errors in the war engine are baseless and basic facts and functions were not referred to. for example, when talking about numbers of casualties, there was never any mentioning of military units that were moved close to the attacked targets. there were none.
also, some of the weapons mentioned in the attacks, were not effective against the attacked weapons. This of course reduces the attack power and increases the number of losses for the attacker.
Player responses can make all kinds of claims but if there are no arguments to prove them within the structure of the war engine and the way it works then such responses are not relevant. Huge numbers of wars were executed in that same way.
there were many cases when players did not like specific parameters attached to specific weapons and, for example, complained that land forces were not very effective, In these cases, we looked at the numbers and in the following weeks and months, tuned the power of land forces up and observed the result.
as it is now, land forces are much more powerful and our tests showed that We will however, make another tuning round for land forces and make them more powerful.
The base way the war engine works as described at the top of this discussion was never changed. All updates were always limited to the tuning of specific properties of individual weapons.
The reduced power of all attacks when there are no military units close to the attacked target is part of Simcountry not from the start but shortly after, many years ago.
Corporations continue to grow gradually and in the process reach higher turnover and higher profits.
Some values on corporations are crossing max values that were in place to help us discover potential errors. We have now made another round of checking of these values and made many corrections.
There are now more wind turbines and more wind farms are functioning in many countries. We have made several corrections to the current energy producers. The traditional electric power corporations now use both oil and gas and we are making a slow transition towards natural gas. The corporations are using more gas and will increase the use of gas while reducing the use of oil which is also the general trend in power stations.
We are also correcting the capacity of such power stations, and have reduced their capacity to a more realistic production levels compared to wind farms. After this upgrade, a power station using gas and oil, will have a production level that compares to about 5 or 6 wind farms. That number may decline in the future.
We intend to add a new energy page to each country that will show energy production in the country from all possible sources and will also show the current energy use in the countries and in the corporations that are located in the country.
We see more gains in the profitability of corporations. This is a long term change that has resulted, over a long period, in much larger profits in corporations in general. At the same time, corporations become a bit larger, they also need more workers than before and as a result, the number of corporations in each world remains stable or might even decline a bit.
157. Changes that are needed before the start of the new Tiny Atlas World [ top ]
Tiny Atlas is a new type of world that requires some updates to the current data structures in Simcountry. One reason is that Tiny Atlas has very small population numbers that are far lower than the minimum numbers in the other worlds. This requires some updating for the two types of worlds to exist next to each other.
We are also introducing a way to transfer population from the existing worlds into Tiny Atlas, once a country is ready and able to accept migration. The transfers will always include 100.000 people that can be transferred each game month. The transfers are free. No cash or gold coins are required.
We are currently testing Tiny Atlas, running many game months on it and are searching for possible errors. We think that that world will be ready to start very soon.
We will publish a detailed document before the Tiny Atlas world becomes operational. Playing on Tiny Atlas will take place in several stages:
A player who has a country/empire on one of the current worlds, will be able to get a country on Tiny Atlas, You will be able to look around and make a choice for a country. Once you decide, the country can be reserved for 30 gold coins.
The country must be prepared to be able to accept new population. The initial population will be around 3.500.000 and declining. The country will have no food, no corporations and in fact no economy to speak of. At this stage, the presidents priority will be to transfer food and materials to the country by use of cargo shuttles, from other countries. Everything must be moved over. There is no market to purchase anything and with lack of food, people will not survive. Players will have to find out what the population uses based on what they use in other countries they have and transport large quantities of supplies into their country. They will need many cargo shuttles and enough supplies in their other countries to be able to build sufficient supply levels in their country on Tiny Atlas. You are advised not to start moving people as they might not survive without sufficient supplies.
Once supply levels can support the existing population, levels must increase further to support more population. Population transfers can start and at the same time, more supplies must be brought from the existing countries to prevent any shortages. Shortages of food, but also other shortages, will result in disastrous death rates and decline of the population. Increasing the numbers of the population is essential if players want to be able to start corporations and mainly, the production of rare metals that can be found on Tiny Atlas.
Once a country on Tiny Atlas manages to support its growing population, players will have to build a health system, education and transportation. Once in place, the country could start building corporations and create local production to be able to grow the population and reduce the dependency on transports from other planets.
Each country on Tiny Atlas will have at least one deposit of a rare metal and will be able to mine it and transport products to the other planets. The rare metals that can be mined on Tiny Atlas will be essential in the production of advance products, including several types of weapons and ammunition that have capabilities that are currently not available. More information on these products will be published when Tiny Atlas becomes operational.
159. weapon maintenance corporations are using ammunition and there are many such corporations. [ top ]
Some players are buying ammunition in very large quantities.
There are no interventions at all by the gamemaster on the ammo market. we are not selling or buying ammunition.
There is an increase in the production of wind energy. it is growing slowly and replacing some of the traditional sources of energy.
Very frequently we see nuclear energy oversupply and a very low price while the electric power market shows a huge shortage. Countries with a lot of wind energy can sell their products on the market, contract them. we have promised to create an energy overview page to show both production and use of energy. we will do so ASAP.
the weapon maintenance corporations are among the largest in Simcountry and by design, are very profitable.
On the other hand, we have seen that the largest corporations are more dependent on the cost of raw materials and on shortages. production levels and profits can fluctuate.
to stabilize, we have slightly reduced their size several times while profits remained high. we have also, in the past several upgrades, tried to reduce shortages.
We have tuned birth and death rates to reduce the decline of the population in countries with very high population numbers. The change is quite significant and will make a difference, especially in the long run.
Birth rates are higher and as before, they decline with the increase in population numbers. However, the decline does not go as far as it did before and at very high levels, birth rates remain more than 0.5% higher on yearly bases. Birth rates are higher but as before, they are reduced a bit by cases of natural death that occur in all age groups. The numbers of death cases per game month now depend even more than before, on the health care levels in the country.
Currently, after this upgrade, very high health care index levels can more significantly reduce death rates. At very very high levels of the health index, the numbers of death cases can be reduced very significantly.
Very low health index levels will be more damaging in terms of the number of people dying at all ages.
With the size of corporations now larger than before, these corporations some times need larger loans. We have increased the max levels of loans corporations can get before they are considered insolvent.
Enterprises can now own more enterprises in a single country. The number is doubled. Enterprises can also purchase more gamemaster corporations each game month. The number is increased from 6 to 12 corporations, per enterprise per game month.
The enterprise4 score is computed in a slightly different way. The main change is a reduction of the assets factor in the score. The fact that an enterprise has very large amounts of cash is not a good reason for a very high score.
we are progressing with the development of Tiny Atlas and its release date is getting closer. The main issue currently is the stabilisation of the country simulation in a new setting with countries that have no population, or very small numbers. Some values and some indexes get extreme values and some corrections are needed.
When starting countries on Tiny Atlas, it will become possible to transfer population, each game month to the new world. Population however needs food and many other products that are not available on Tiny Atlas and must be brought from our current worlds.
These products should be transported ahead of time. Shortages of food on Tiny Atlas, or shortages of other essential materials will cause famine and death and the population might decline or even disappear completely.
Before moving people, players will have to prepare, find out what is used in the current worlds and set up transports of materials to Tiny Atlas to be able to sustain the population. There will be no international market to speak of as long as material are not available and not produced locally.
167. Large Population - Large Enterprises & Corporations [ top ]
Countries and Enterprises became more profitable in the past months and the trend will probably continue. This is true for most entities and nearly all types of corporations.
Population is larger in most countries, including C3 countries with a population of up to 28 millions, up from 22 and then 24 millions.
At the same time, we have also increased the maximum population numbers to 600 millions. We have eliminated enterprise tax for all enterprises with less than 750 corporations. (Nearly all enterprises). Exceeding these max sized makes very large countries and very large enterprises hard to manage.
The balancing of the work force becomes more difficult and very large enterprises cannot keep all their corporations profitable. The micro management of some types of corporations is undoable with these numbers.
Despite the declared limits and advise to keep countries and enterprises, under these limits, some players found workarounds that allowed them to surpass these soft maximum numbers.
The population limit of 600 million will become a hard limit and countries with more population will probably make a slow, soft landing and end up under 600 millions.
Huge enterprises also seem to be less profitable. Enterprise taxes are higher and reduce their financial power. Large enterprises with 750 corporations are easier and you can build multiple enterprises in each world. Enterprises can have many natural resource corporations which are becoming much more profitable.
Country population will probably grow to 100 to 120 millions depending on the welfare and health system in the country. These numbers are much increased from the 50 to 60 millions we had in the past.
in addition, in the past, when you tried to increase you population to much larger numbers, such increase was followed by quite steep reductions that tended to return the population numbers to lower levels.
this was indeed changed, already long ago, to eliminate the steep reductions.
Currently, numbers in the young groups, mainly the birth numbers are kept stable. Birth rates are programmed to decline if the population grows. we have made sure that these numbers stop declining and remain stable even at very high population levels.
despite all this, you do see declines. These declines are the result of natural death but mainly death from health related reasons in all age groups. The decline is much slower than ever before.
The decline can be much reduced if your healthcare is at a very high level. Death numbers can in fact go close to zero. I am not sure you want or can pay for an extreme level health system that will go so far. The numbers of births and deaths in countries with high population can be somewhat distorted due to the corrections in birth numbers at such levels.
we are very interested in detailed observations by players who keep finding situation where the numbers do not match our claims and errors do pop up, several times recently. All these errors were discovered and subsequently corrected, due to in depth reports by players.
Tiny Atlas will very small with very few countries. It will not be easy to colonize it. There is nothing there, very few people, no corporations what so ever, no education no healthcare.
To build a hospital, you will need to transport a lot of materials, people etc. To have professionals, schools and universities will be needed.
There is no food at all, people will die without food. It will require planning and decisions on what to bring there, in which order, how many people, when, and how they can be kept there and which materials are needed.
cooperation will be essential or otherwise, each player will have to do everything. You can't bring fixed assets by shuttle. you must build them locally.
On the other hand, there will be several new materials that can be mined there, that will have a very high value and will be essential for the production of new products that will be important for the production of new weapons, ammunitions and other products in all planets.
Mining these materials will give players more capabilities and more security. For example: a defensive missile that is built with electronics that contains some of these materials, will have a 100% hit rate and will not allow any offensive weapon to penetrate the defence. Availability of these materials will be very limited.
Enterprises can now place up to 30 corporations in a country that is part of the same empire. The limit up to now was 20. Enterprises can place up to 15 corporations in any country in the world. The limit up to now was 6. The change is overdue.
Countries now have higher numbers of population and the limits should have been changed before. The higher limits will make it easier to build enterprises more quickly. limits are essential to prevent an enterprise from completely dominating a country.
The change will take place in the coming hours. Starting with the next upgrade, an enterprise will be able to make bids to purchase up to 12 corporations. Currently enterprises can place bids on 6 corporations.
The welfare index depends on many other indexes and, for example, it depends on the lowest value of the health, education and transportation indexes.
Its dependency on the supply index is now already more important and will become even more important. in other words, make sure your country is buying what it needs.
also a low social security index can cause a reduction in the welfare index. The welfare index has direct impact on the production levels in corporations and can make a very large difference in the profitability of corporations and for the entire country. a welfare index of 125 is easily possible. a country with a welfare index at the 100 level or lower, will have a very slim chance of being profitable.
The investments in wind energy are profitable. there is a huge shortage of electric power and countries with a surplus can sell it on the market. If you contract some of the wind farms to your own countries they will produce a lot of electric power and your purchases of electric power will be reduced.
CO accounting will come only after the Tiny Atlas world starts running.
Every wind farm in your country delivers 1250 units of electric power to the country each game month. we will add an energy page ASAP to show all the energy numbers. As a result, your country is buying smaller amounts of electric power. If you have many such wind farms, purchases of electric power will decline and your production numbers might exceed the amount the country uses. In that case, you will be able to either sell electric power on the market or use the function that allows your country to sell electric power to all your corporations at once.
We have tuned the wind turbines and wind farm corporations to better fit into the range of corporate sizes in Simcountry. Both types of corporations were in fact too large and required more capital investment than most other corporation.
we advise players to make sure these corporations remain liquid to remove the chance they bankrupt for lack of cash. we will keep looking into these corporations and may increase loan limits. Both types of corporations have a very high profit potential.
some max values in Simcountry were reached and we have substantially increased them. Max values by design help us prevent the simulation from going "wild" and reduce the frequency of errors.
The game is very stable and such controls are now largely obsolete. New features however, new types of corporations and higher population limits make the continuation of such controls necessary.
We are gradually moving from power generation by burning oil into more natural gas and more wind energy. The transition will be slow to prevent damage. there are thousands of energy corporations on all the worlds and we do not expect them to disappear or turn into losses. these corporations remain very profitable but production is gradually being reduced.
we are continuing the work and are testing the working of game procedures in an environment with very few people. We will add the new world ASAP, although it will not run yet. It will be possible to look into countries. In the mean time, we are completing some features that have to do with populating the world.
Wind farms are now part of Simcountry. We have complete the wind energy function and it will start delivering electric power to all countries that have wind farms.
It is now possible to set up corporations that produce wind farms. these corporations produce wind farms and offer them on the market. you can also contract their production to the country where these corporations reside.
Only countries can own wind farms and each wind farm they have, will deliver 1250 million kWh to the country each game month. the number will in the future depend on the quality of the wind farm. We will add this update to the next upgrade.
Wind farms are operated by the country where they are. They employ several hundred workers and use some materials to maintain the entire installation. Among others, wind farms purchase one wind turbine each game month, assuming that one of the 250 wind turbines in the wind farm breaks each month. The assumption here is that wind turbines work about 20 years and are then replaced.
The cost of maintaining a wind farm is 400-600 millions per year. they initially deliver electric power at a value between 2 and 3 billion a year.
we expect the income per wind farm to increase. Income from a wind farm, based on quality and the price of electric power, could reach at least 5 billion per year.
The "traditional" electric power corporations in Simcountry all use OIL. We have started a transition of these corporations and they are now using both oil and gas. we will gradually increase the amount of gas used and reduce the amount of oil that is used by these corporations. Maintenance of the wind farm is 400 to 600 millions year. They produce 15.000 units per year and these are now selling at 110.000 or more. this amounts to 1.5B per year. A wind farm cost might be around 45-70B. this is not bad to start with.
consider however that a high quality wind farms might produce 2 times more. and we expect the price of power to increase in the coming weeks and reach 200.000.
Buying wind farms in immediate mode will be very expensive. The price could reach 60-90 B.
We do not advise you to purchase wind farms in Immediate orders.
We are making more steps into computing CO2 emissions and wind farms and possible sun collectors will be a factor.
We are also reducing the output of oil/gas electric power generators and of nuclear stations. The output of these generators was oversized and we are bringing it back to more reasonable quantities.
With the growth of profitability, and with many shortages of products on the market, many more orders are processed as immediate orders. This is a problem, causing increasing numbers of products to be delivered while they were never produced.
We will allow immediate orders to become more expensive and we might allow the price of products that are in short supply, to increase to higher levels. (Wind farms have a much higher top price and can become very expensive). Wind farms in immediate orders could cost 30 or 40B which will make them to expensive to buy.
Countries can do much more to produce products that are in short supply. A higher price may make it more profitable to produce these products and bring some more balance to the market.
The supply index is now reduced by 2 points for every product that is showing a shortage in your country. On the other hand, the supply index has an increased influence on the welfare index which is crucial in the economic success of each country. a lower supply index will cause a reduction in the welfare index. we advise everyone to check their countries for shortages and issue orders to get the products needed to eliminate these shortages.
Some changes in the energy market are pushing the cost of electric power up. The increased cost is compensated for by a reduction in the quantities of electric power used by countries and corporations. The adjustments are needed because the energy cost in Simcountry was very low and the use of power much higher than in the real world.
also the introduction of wind generated power requires an adjustment to make wind power an attractive alternative.
wind farm corporations will build windfarms. Each windfarm will use 250 wind turbines. Wind farms can be purchased by countries. each wind farm you purchase will require maintenance, like schools and hospitals. It will consume one wind turbine each month. Each wind farm will produce 1250 giga watt hour (or 1250 million kWh) of electric power each game month and add it to the country stock.
using these wind farms will be very profitable. Enterprises can have corporations that produce wind farms but enterprises cannot own them. Only countries can own wind farms. Countries with many wind farms might produce more electric power than they consume and they can sell some of their electric power on the market. At a later stage we intend to compute the CO2 emissions in countries. wind Turbines and wind farms will not produce any CO2 emissions.
The supply index declines if your country has shortages of products. a low supply index has a negative effect on the welfare index.
We are reducing the pace of decline of the supply index in case of shortages but its effect on the welfare index will increase. also, we will split the supply index into Supply index and Food supply index.
a low food supply index (shortage of food and hunger), will result in an increased death rate in the country and in increased emigration from the country. A low supply index will have a negative effect on the welfare and on emigration.
Some weapons increased in price a bit. This is part of a long term process that resulted in an increase in the cost of weapons and a major reduction in the cost of all types of ammunition. We will continue this process although at a slower pace in the coming months.
Following the introduction of wind turbines, we will shortly introduce Wind Farms that will be produced by wind farms corporations and purchased by countries. Wind farms corporations will each include 250 wind turbines. Each country with wind farms, will receive all the electric power that is produced by wind farms that are located in the country.
Wind energy wil be added to Simcountry. The system has several components and the first one is added to Simcountry with this upgrade.
Wind energy will be produced by wind farms that will be setup in countries around all worlds. Each wind farm will include 250 wind turbines.
Wind turbines in Simcountry are very large and capable of producing large amounts of electric power. Wind turbines can be costly; the standard price, before market influence is 45 million.
Wind turbines can only be installed as part of wind farms that are comprised of 250 wind turbines and become significant producers of electric power that is free of any CO2 emissions.
Wind turbines are the first new generation energy product in Simcountry. The intention is to start a transition from the traditional fossil energy based products to renewable energy and make it also possible to introduce CO2 measurements and an index that will reflect the energy use by each country.
The production of electric power from wind farms will be taken care of by wind farm maintenance corporations. These corporations will exploit the wind farms, use materials that are needed to keep such wind farms running and will deliver electric power to the country where the wind farm resides at the going rate for electric power. Total production will be 60GW x 250 per year or 1250 GW per month.
Wind Turbines are now added to Simcountry. It is now possible to build wind Turbines corporations. These corporations can produce 1200 wind turbines each year when running at a production rate of 100%. Actual production can be lower or higher depending on the way the corporation is operated and the availability of manpower and materials.
Wind Turbines can currently be traded on all worlds and can be stored by countries or enterprises. Wind farms corporations will be added in one of the next game upgrade and will start to be produced and delivered to countries to start production.
Some tuning will be needed to bring the various methods of producing electric power in line with other methods. Some changes have already taken place and more will materialize.
All methods of energy production will be very profitable. The issue of CO2 emissions will be addressed at a later stage and will influence the way energy is produced with sufficient incentives for renewable energy.
Countries have products on stock, bought in advance, based on expected use of these products in the country economy and in the army. Sometimes, products are not available on the market or players decide not to purchase them. As a result, sometimes, countries stocks of products show negative numbers which means that the country has a shortage.
Shortages are in fact impossible. you cannot use sugar if you do not have it and keeping the use of sugar and showing a shortage is unrealistic and of course impossible.
Players should take responsibility to this issue and make sure they have the products they need. This includes all consumption products the population uses and the ammunition used by the army.
Currently, the supply index declines with each product in shortage and when more than 4 or 5 are in short supply, the supply index starts falling quite steeply and at some point, results in a decline of the welfare index.
A decline of the welfare index has wide and severe consequences. It reduces production levels, it reduces the capacity of the industry to produce profits and the payment of taxes to keep the country profitable.
We intend to make the supply index more prominent and it will reflect shortages situations more quickly and visibly. Players should fix shortage problems quickly and prevent the supply index from declining. Increasing stock levels will help in managing and preventing shortages.
A declining supply index and shortages of essential food items can create hunger and will have implications for both the health situation in the country, death rates and will increase emigration numbers.
The health pages are restructured and are now easier to use. The page now shows several tabs and allows direct access of the function you want to use. we are continuing the work on the user interface and will introduce similar updates for many more pages and subsystems. Many more updates, and new products are close to completion and will be added in the coming weeks. This will include the first stages of the introduction of the new world.
Far away from the current five planets, a new, tiny planet was discovered. It is now called Tiny Atlas. The planet is deserted for many years. There are no inhabitants. There are several hundreds countries, no people, no corporations, nothing. The only one item in each country is a Space Center. The planet has 3 natural resources, rare metals, that are not available on the current planets. Countries have only one of the three resources but there are no corporations that can produce these rare metals from the available resources.
Initially, these three rare metals will be used for the production of several types of ammunition. One is a very powerful attack missile, another is an extremely effective defence missile. Production will probably take place on one of the current worlds. These ammunitions with the associated weapons will be very useful in war.
More special natural resources and more use cases may be found later and added. Possible also more planets with their own resources.
A new population function will make it possible to move up to 100.000 people to the new planet each month. There will be no other functions that can move people/exchange people or move any products. Money can be moved around by the direct trading functions for cash transfers. Everything that might be needed for the survival of the population or to build facilities, or corporations on Tiny Atlas will have to be delivered by cargo shuttles, by anyone who wants to develop a country, or an industry on that planet.
Large shortages of food or any other essential products will cause population losses to the point of full destruction. Shuttles will travel long distances and need maintenance/fuel materials to make the long distance trips. Space fighters are optional, with a capability to disrupt shuttle flights but the option may remain unused.
Local education on Tiny Atlas, health and other functions will be needed if any industry is to be built and sustained on the planet. Markets will probably not function. direct sales might be used. wars can take place but will require some more logistics. transports will be costly and may take some time.
Gold coins are only required when purchasing a country and when keeping a country or an empire running, in the same way this is done on the other worlds. The cost of countries will be low as all countries have exactly one natural resource. Conquering countries is also an option.
We have reduced the range of weapons again. This is the third round of reductions. We think that the changes now accumulated to 30-40% reduction. Before we continue, we will wait for some responses by players to decide on further changes.
The cost of weapons continues to increase slowly. This trend is ongoing. We have increased the cost of both defensive and offensive weapons in recent upgrades and introduced major reductions in the cost of ammunitions.
We had a complaint by a player who said that once units were set to be supplied by air, the setting remained in place even when these units returned to their country. We have now solved this problem and we reset the delivery method of supplies, to the default by land, when these units return home.
The consumption of products in Simcountry is based on a model that sets consumption as a percentage of income per product and per income group. This model does not necessarily match the expected quantities of product really consumed by the population. There is no computation of, for example, the quantities of bread used per person. There is only an amount of money reserved for the purchasing of bread.
Example of where it went wrong: The model assumes that a certain percentage of the income of all workers, depending on the level of their salaries, is used to purchase electric power. We have now looked at the numbers of kWh used by the population and found out that they are very big users. The amount that was set to purchase electricity, buys more than should be expected to be used, compared to what people use in the real world.
We have made a small correction to the consumption model to move it a bit closer to realistic numbers. We have no pretensions of making it realistic but just within a reasonable distance from reality.
We intend to check more products in the same way, make corrections and ultimately, to be able to create a new page that will show consumption numbers in countries, the purchasing of consumed products, shortages and the consequences of such shortages.
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.
The new tiny world is in the process of being constructed
Tiny Atlas or Tiny Atlas, or ... (the name is not definitive yet), will probably have less than 1000 countries and about 200 of them will have a space center which will make it possible to get materials into these countries and populate them. This world will be created without any people or assets. There will be nothing there.
We are in the process of checking the maps for major irregularities. If found usable, we will give the new planet a definitive name, and place it in space.
The next step will be to discover natural resources on the new planet, (these will be 3 rare metals) and place space centers in 200 of the countries. The last stage will be to allow players to purchase a country. It will always be a country with a space center.
Once done, the owner of the country will be able to transfer people to the new country and able to use cargo shuttles to transfer materials to the country.
198. New Rare Metals will be added to Simcountry [ top ]
Those metals are Paldium, metadium and Mortium These metals will be added to our natural resources but are not available in any of our 5 planets. These three new products will only be available on the new small planet that will be added to Simcountry and will be used in a small number of new special products. Paldium, metadium and Mortium will be listed in the natural resources list but it will initially be impossible to set up a corporation to mine them.
We currently have two types of corporations that are producing electric power. These corporations are using either oil or uranium. The standard electric power corporation is currently using oil. We will start moving these corporations away from oil and let them start using gas. Oil is rarely used in the production of electric power.
Wind turbines will be added as a new product. These turbines will produce electricity at 60.000.000 kWh per year which is very large compared to real wind turbines.
Wind farms will consist of a large number of wind turbines. Corporations that produce wind farms, will deliver around 12 wind farms each year. Each wind farm will consist of 250 wind turbines. Wind farms can be purchased by countries. Each wind farm will produce large amounts of electric power each year. Each wind farm in your country will deliver 1250 units of electric power each month for the total of 15.000 a year, or in other words, 15.000 mWh a year.
Operating wind farms will be done by automatically by the countries were the wind farms reside. The countries will receive the electric power that was produced and they will purchase the products that are needed to keep the wind farm working. Having wind power generated in your country will be profitable. Countries can reduce or even eliminate the need for electric power from other sources.
We intend to make it increasingly profitable and at some time also introduce an index for CO2 emissions. The text was updated on Dec. 24 and reflects the definitive design of the new energy related products. The first product to be introduced is the wind turbine. These can then be purchased by countries but will not start to produce any electric power until they become part of a wind farm. a wind farm will require 250 wind turbines.
The cost of weapons continues to increase slowly. This trend is ongoing. We have increased the cost of both defensive and offensive weapons in recent upgrades and introduced major reductions in the cost of ammunitions.
We had a complaint by a player who said that once units were set to be supplied by air, the setting remained in place even when these units returned to their country. We have now solved this problem and we reset the delivery method of supplies, to the default by land, when these units return home.
The consumption of products in Simcountry is based on a model that sets consumption as a percentage of income per product and per income group. This model does not necessarily match the expected quantities of product really consumed by the population. There is no computation of, for example, the quantities of bread used per person. There is only an amount of money reserved for the purchasing of bread.
Example of where it went wrong: The model assumes that a certain percentage of the income of all workers, depending on the level of their salaries, is used to purchase electric power.
We have now looked at the numbers of kWh used by the population and found out that they are very big users. The amount that was set to purchase electricity, buys more than should be expected to be used, compared to what people use in the real world.
We have made a small correction to the consumption model to move it a bit closer to realistic numbers. We have no pretensions of making it realistic but just within a reasonable distance from reality.
We intend to check more products in the same way, make corrections and ultimately, to be able to create a new page that will show consumption numbers in countries, the purchasing of consumed products, shortages and the consequences of such shortages.
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.
207. The new tiny world is in the process of being constructed [ top ]
Tiny Atlas will probably have less than 1000 countries and about 200 of them will have a space center. The space center will make it possible to get materials into these countries and populate them. This world will be created without any people or assets. There will be nothing there.
We are in the process of checking the maps for major irregularities. If found usable, we will place it in space.
The next step will be to discover natural resources on the new planet, (these will be 3 rare metals) and place space centers in 200 of the countries.
The last stage will be to allow players to purchase a country on Tiny Atlas. It will always be a country with a space center.
Once done, the owner of the country will be able to transfer people to the new country and able to use cargo shuttles to transfer materials to the country.
Both interceptors and helicopter wings became about 5% smaller. A third small change, aiming at more balance between offensive and defensive air force units.
The range of many weapons declined again. By now, the ranges are significantly smaller than before. More such changes, to a smaller number of weapons may take place in the coming weeks.
Far away from the current five planets, a new, tiny planet was discovered. It is now called Tiny Atlas.
The planet is deserted for many years. There are no inhabitants.
There are several hundreds countries, no people, no corporations, nothing. The only one item in about 200 of the countries, is a Space Center.
The planet has 3 natural resources, rare metals, that are not available on the current planets. Countries have only one of the three resources but there are no corporations that can extract these rare metals from the available resources in the ground.
Initially, these three rare metals will be used for the production of several types of ammunition. They will also be used in some new types of cars and in new medicines. One of the special products is a very powerful attack missile, another is an extremely effective defence missile. Production will probably take place on one of the current worlds. The new rare metal that was found on Tiny Atlas will have to be delivered to any corporation that will produce the new products.
These ammunitions with the associated weapons will be very useful in war.
More special natural resources and more use cases may be found later and added.
Possible also more planets with their own resources.
A new population function will make it possible to move up to 200.000 people to the new planet each month. There will be no other functions that can move people/exchange people or move any products. Money can be moved around by the direct trading functions for cash transfers.
Everything that might be needed for the survival of the population or to build facilities, or corporations on Tiny Atlas will have to be delivered by cargo shuttles, by anyone who wants to develop a country, or an industry on that planet.
Large shortages of food or any other essential products will cause population losses to the point of full destruction.
Shuttles will travel long distances and need maintenance/fuel materials to make the long distance trips.
Space fighters are optional, with a capability to disrupt shuttle flights but the option may be added at a later stage.
Local education on Tiny Atlas, health and other functions will be needed if any industry is to be built and sustained on the planet.
Markets will probably not function. direct sales could be used.
wars can take place but will require some more logistics.
transports will be costly and may take some time.
Gold coins are only required when purchasing a country and when keeping a country or an empire running, in the same way this is done on the other worlds. The cost of countries will be low as all countries have exactly one natural resource.
Conquering countries is also an option.
212. The new tiny world is in the process of being constructed [ top ]
Tiny Atlas will probably have less than 1000 countries and about 200 of them will have a space center. The space center will make it possible to get materials into these countries and populate them. This world will be created without any people or assets. There will be nothing there.
We are in the process of checking the maps for major irregularities. If found usable, we will place it in space.
The next step will be to discover natural resources on the new planet, (these will be 3 rare metals) and place space centers in 200 of the countries.
The last stage will be to allow players to purchase a country on Tiny Atlas. It will always be a country with a space center.
Once done, the owner of the country will be able to transfer people to the new country and able to use cargo shuttles to transfer materials to the country.
Many types of weapons have increased in price. The increase is in general around 10%. On the other hand, there is a large decline in the cost of ammunitions. The decline is implemented for all defensive and offensive weapons and for ammunition used by the navy.
As a result of the decline in the cost of ammunition, we expect the maintenance cost of the army to decline too. Changes in pricing and the change in the maintenance cost of the army may take some time to materialise. Countries have stocks of ammunitions that were bought at a higher price before this change and these will be used in maintenance for some time at the price they were purchased.
New ammunition will be purchased at a lower price, depending on market conditions.
The range of most weapons is reduced. This was discussed on the forum and we have promised to shorten weapon ranges. Ranges were reduced before and will be reduced more in the coming weeks.
Land forces abilities in war are now tuned up in agreement with earlier promises to do so. This was already done twice in the past. Many players asked for land forces to become more usable in war and one of the ways to do so is to increase their capabilities to destroy other weapons and make them effective against more types of enemy weapons.
Changes are not very large. we intend to test the results in more details and may tune land forces up again. All current capabilities are described in details in the weapons document.
Defensive air wings became a bit smaller again. The decline in size is about 5% and comes on top of a previous decline of a similar size. The aim of these changes is to make corrections to the balance (or imbalance) between the capabilities of air force attack wings and defensive ones.
217. Supplying Military Units in Peace Time [ top ]
We have fixed an error that prevented many military units from being supplied in peace time. Many units have negative numbers of materials and ammunition and are not resupplied. Some do, it depends on a wrong setting that causes the function to skip many units.
It was an annoying but not a serious problem because once war was started, all units were supplied by supply units and the shortages disappeared, provided the country had enough materials. as a result of repairing the supply function, many army units will be resupplied.
Supplying army units in peace time is not done by supply units. It does not make sense to have these units run around in all countries all the time. It is a major load on the systems. Instead, the resupply is done in the month run, 6 times every day and it happens very fast.
A lot of materials will now move into undersupplied units. Countries may see their stocks of materials and ammunitions reduced as they are used to supply military units.
Short term, there might be many orders for materials used in army units. we will watch the numbers. we have no intention to intervene but it all depends on the numbers involved. Once done. All units in all countries in peace time, will be fully supplied if the countries have the materials needed in the process.
Some of the indexes in Simcountry are designed to update at a pace that slows sudden changes that some time happen and are short lived. New index values depend on current computations and on the previous values and their changes are smooth as visible in the graphs showing their history.
we have now shortened the change periods and allow indexes too update a bit quicker to new situations. Example: the welfare index may now react a bit faster to conditions in the countries and corporations and adapt quicker than before.
219. Some Corporations are now a bit larger [ top ]
Several types of corporations, some in the defence industries, now used more workers. The change is a continuation of our effort to keep the total numbers of corporations in all worlds from growing too large and keep numbers per country managable.
There were many such updates before. The result will be an increase in the number of employed workers, in countries that have such corporations.
Simcountry has many products that take a long time to produce and come at a high cost.
Some of these products, including Cargo Shuttles, nuclear weapons, military bases and more, are produced at a rate of less than one product per game month.
The production per game month is in fact a fraction of a product and an entire product may take two or more months to produce. Selling products however, on the market or in bilateral contracts, is always a sale of entire products with a minimum of 1.
Fractions of products are never sold.
Corporations sell entire products and keep available fractions within the corporation, to be sold later, when an entire product is produced.
As a result, these corporations some times offer one product and sometimes do not offer anything as long as they do not have at least one product to offer.
All this results in an unstable level of sales in such corporations. Sometimes they sell a product and the month is very profitable. Other times they do not sell at all. They do incur salary costs, they use raw materials and have no turnover. This results in large losses.
The concept is very hard to understand for some players and in general causes fluctuations in profit and loss numbers and in corporate valuations.
we have promised to resolve the problem by increasing the size of such corporations, increase their production, gradually, and end up with all corporations producing at least one product each game month.
In the past weeks and months, we have gradually made changes to such corporations and many of them are now producing at least one product each game month or are close to it.
In de coming weeks we will make one or two more rounds of small changes and all corporations will reach this level of production.
221. Defensive Interceptor and Helicopter units [ top ]
Both interceptor and helicopter units are now slightly smaller. The change amounts to about 5%. The objective is to improve the balance between defensive and offensive units. The defence continues to be relative stronger and the cost of building a strong defence remains lower than the cost of the offensive and strategic armies.
In some rare cases, an air transport of a military unit could not be completed and a unit remained stuck in transport. Part of it transported and part not transported yet.
we have made a change that will insure that once a transport is started, it will always complete. In some cases a unit could end up transported but with a shortage of some materials and will not be usable as a fighting unit. You are advised to make sure units are fully equipped with all the weapons, ammunition and materials they need.
We have made some corrections to the names of weapons in military units. We had a complaint about the names of some of the products causing confusing as to which weapons are in fact part of the unit.
The top of the page menu is now shorter. It was too long after the last upgrade and was too wide for some mobile devices.
We have now removed the corporations option from the menu. The corporation option is, and was available on the left frame of the country page.
The Trade option in the top of the page menu is now moved to the left frame. It replaces the Loans command which is part of the finance option in the menu.
More work is underway to improve the menus, and more pages will be replaced by multiple tabs that will make the entire user interface simpler and reduce clicking.
Work will continue in the coming weeks and changes will be gradual.
225. The unemployment tab on the labour page [ top ]
The calculation of the social security payments on that page was wrong. We were alerted to the error by a player and corrected the page. There are similar errors on the pensions and investment pages. These will be corrected with the next game update, asap.
We were alerted on the forum to possible issues with very large corporations. In some cases, these corporations that are usually very profitable, suffered losses because of a very large increase in the cost of raw materials. when the cost of raw materials amounts to a large portion of the total corporate cost, fluctuations in the cost of materials can diminish the capability of these corporations to maintain their profitability.
We have improved the profitability and stability of these corporations by slightly reducing their total size and in parallel reducing the cost of raw materials. we will follow these changes as they kick in and find out if they are sufficient.
227. Some corporations become slightly larger [ top ]
Several types of corporations are becoming a bit larger. These changes are on going for some time and will continue. The aim is to prevent a large increase in the number of corporations game wide and prevent the need for increasing numbers of corporations in all countries.
Some menu functions have been changed to make it easier to navigate. The Departments menu option is removed and the separate departments became menu options. This change reduces the clicking when using these functions.
Some options that appeared in more than one place have been removed. More such changes are underway as we try to streamline the user interface and reduce complexity.
Many updates to corporations will in general improve profitability. Small updates to the corporation models will probably result in a slightly larger production level and with it higher profitability.
Some corporations that are producing fractions of products each month, now produce a little bigger fractions. This kind of changes are aimed at reducing the production of fractions in general and make it possible to set up contracts for such products.
Many types of corporations continue to become larger. Changes are not very large to prevent major effects on the markets but the process of making corporations larger will continue.
These changes, including a gradual increase in the numbers of workers, will prevent the need for an increase in the number of corporations in general. Countries with a very large number of corporations are harder to manage. Larger corporations will in time reduce the number of corporations that are needed in each country. Changes must remain small to prevent major increase to employment and will continue for some time to come.
Natural Resources Corporations continue to be a major source of profits to countries that build them. The profitability of these corporations continues to increase. There are many countries with no president where many natural resources are available. These countries have a potential to become very successful.
We continue the shift in the defence industry. The aim is to reduce the cost of war, both defensive and offensive. The cost of ammunition continues to decline. In previous changes, the reduction was mainly in the defensive ammo. Changes in this upgrade include offensive ammunitions. The cost of weapons is increasing a bit. In total, we expect these changes to continue the decline of the cost of war. We intend to continue the trend without disturbing the defence industry which is increasingly profitable. Defence related corporations are producing profits that are comparable to the profit of other corporations while they employ a substantially smaller number of workers which means that countries can set up more corporations with the same size of population.
Offensive weapons were updated by a small percentage and became more powerful. The change is not very significant to prevent a major effect but many offensive weapons create more damage on targets they hit and weapons they attack.
Land forces are now more powerful and are becoming an increasing factor in the offensive army.
Many players think that the cost of the offensive army it too high and out of balance. defensive weapons will always be more cost effective. It is essential that the defence will be cheaper than the offense.
We have promised before to improve the balance. The difference is now a bit smaller.
234. The cost of Offensive Weapons and ammunition [ top ]
The cost of offensive weapons will probably increase a bit. The cost of offensive ammunition will decline by a larger margin. The real cost on the market will, as before, depend on the numbers available and numbers requested.
Some corporations will become a bit larger and more profitable. This is the case across many types of products including the defence industry, and it includes raw materials corporations that have the potential to become larger and even more profitable.
In recent weeks we have revisited the Simcountry maps and repainted them with more precision.
The maps we have now, were created several years ago when the size of the maps and the processing time, were optimized to fit the capacity of our servers.
In the mean time, our servers were replaced, at least once, and processing time and size of maps became less important, allowing for more quality.
we plan to start replacing maps gradually in the coming period and improve their quality.
The purchase price of C3 countries was 30 gold coins (down from 300 gold coins some time ago).
There are however large differences between c3 countries, mainly in the number of natural resources available in the country. Countries with many natural resources have a much better potential to become very profitable.
We have now changed the purchase price of C3 countries and it depends on the number of natural resources that are available.
C3 countries with 10 or less natural resources are available for 30 gold coins as before.
C3 countries with more, or many more natural resources, are available for a price in gold coins, equal to the number of natural resources available x 3.
Example: if a C3 country has 25 natural resources available, cost price will be 75 gold coins. (25 x 3)
241. Corporations offering products on the market [ top ]
The numbers of products offered on the market and their status is showing on each corporation page. The numbers were rounded to show whole products.
The numbers now show with a higher precision.
As a result, you can now see the number of products offered and the number remaining, as a fraction.
There was a misunderstanding recently about these numbers and as we explained, it was caused by the rounding procedure that made any fractions >0.5 as a whole number (1).
Award penalties cause some scores to go negative and they show as a zero score on the score pages. The world rank page shows the true score of countries.
We have now increased the repair pace a bit to make the penalties decline faster.
243. Max number of Corporations in countries [ top ]
Countries in all worlds can have up to 1000 corporations. We think that very large numbers of corporations are hard to manage and in fact do not make much sense. Having a very strong industry, that is capable of very large production of many products, is however very important.
Simcountry never had any problem with this 1000 corporations limit because the max population was at 100 to 150 millions and these countries were not able to build so many corporations. We now have several countries with a population of 600 million and some are bumping into this limit.
The solution for the problem is in making corporations larger. If corporations become larger, they will produce more, employ more people, make a larger profit and become even more beneficial for their owners (in this case the countries).
If corporations become larger, the number of corporations that can be built in a country will decline. If for example, 800 corporations will be able to produce the same as 1000 corporations produce now and employ the same number as 1000 corporations did before, the problem of max 1000 corporations will be resolved and players will manage 800 corporations instead of 1000.
we think that both 800 and 1000 are too many but when you have a population of 600 million you are in a complex situation.
We have now slightly increased the number of workers in some corporations. The total effect is probably around 1%. We cannot make large changes or we will destabilize the world economy. we will repeat such changes. In the process, these larger corporations will produce more products, consume more too and their profits will increase proportionally.
February 28, 2022
244. Award penalties have been implemented [ top ]
Following the payment of some awards in SOL coins, we have reported here that the award penalties were not applied to countries that won SOL awards. The error is now corrected both for countries and enterprises.
We think that many other players, will have a higher chance to win awards in February. To win your award in crypto SOL coins, you must enter your wallet address into Simcountry before March 1.
245. Balancing the workers employment numbers [ top ]
A last small update is implemented. We think that the shortages in HLWs we have seen for a very long period are now subsided. We have tested in several countries in looked into many more and we see that the need for manual interventions has subsided.
If you think that this is not true, please let us know and give us a world/country name.
We see many countries with lower numbers of unemployed workers and many unemployed professionals. Reducing the education priorities for professional groups with many unemployed, will reduce the numbers of the unemployed and at the same time, will increase the numbers of unemployed LLWs.
Enterprise tax was a feature everybody loved to hate.
We have now eliminated enterprise tax in nearly all enterprises and made it much simpler to understand for the few enterprises where it remains. Enterprise tax is now eliminated in all enterprises that have less than 750 corporations which is documented as the max number of corporations in an enterprise.
Some players found ways to increase the number of corporations beyond that limit. For enterprises with 750 to 1200 corporations, the current tax level is 5% of the profit of the enterprise. There is no tax is there is no profit.
For enterprise with more than 1200 corporations, the current tax level is 9% of the profit of the enterprise. There is no tax if there is no profit.
We have now replaced the link to Discord by a permanent one that is not supposed to expire. If you click on the chat link in Simcountry, you will be able to quickly connect to our Discord server.
Many players will get a message requesting them to agree to the terms and conditions of playing Simcountry. The reason for this is a change that was made to the terms and conditions to include the crypto awards that were added to the game.
There are no further changes. Please read the crypto section and confirm.
249. Enterprise 3 corporations booster error [ top ]
After all this time, two players alerted us to a problem with the booster that allows you to build 3 corporations each game month. The error was only in enterprises and only in a very specific condition. It was never reported before.
The error resulted in some of the boosters that were paid for, were used while no corporations were built. It happened when corporations were waiting to be constructed while the president of the country did not (yet) give permissions.
The error is now corrected and the two players will receive the gold coins they have spent, back. The damage is very small but we consider it serious because it caused the loss of gold coins, however small the number was.
Some weapons, mainly offensive ones and their ammunition continue a gradual increase in price. This upgrade includes a further step in that direction. The changes are very limited.
251. The loan limit for corporations is increased. [ top ]
There are two levels. One causes a warning showing the corporation is in danger. The other causes the corporation to bankrupt.
Both were increased by about 50B.
The reason for it is that many corporations became larger and need more cash to make purchases of raw materials and only recover the cost a bit later. Another reason is the shortages on the market that increase the cost of materials and the need for cash.
We have raised the amounts of cash corporation are holding before they start transferring money to the countries or enterprises.
Also in this case, the reason is to make sure corporations have enough cash to be able to operate in a market with many shortages and with larger quantities of materials used and products they produce.
Awards for January are now paid in SOL and for winners who did not enter a wallet address, they were paid in gold coins as before. Penalties for award winner will be larger to make it possible for more players to win both SOL and gold coins awards.
The order tab on the corporation's page now shows only the orders that can be converted into immediate orders. You can use the page to replace orders. It is clearer now and more usable.
A problem in the sneak attacks is fixed and it now works as expected. 20 Conventional missiles, 300 land based cruise missiles and 300 sea based cruise missiles can now be used in sneak attacks.
We have updated the terms and conditions for Simcountry to include the SOL awards feature and related conditions. In the coming days, when logging in, you will be requested to accept the new terms and conditions. The SOL award provision is the only change in the document.
The maintenance cost for deactivated weapons in all countries is declined from 25% of the cost for activated weapons to 15% of that cost. We intend to increase the pace of both the activation process and the deactivation process.
Some types of corporations are now producing a bit more than before. It might help to stop the increase in shortages or even help to reduce them a bit. At the same time, we have made an additional small change in the numbers of workers needed in some types of corporations. The labour market, especially the problem with HLWs, seems to have subsided for a large part.
259. The cost of Offensive and Strategic Weapons [ top ]
The cost of these weapons is increasing a bit with each of the last upgrades. The cost of ammunition did not change. The trend will continue for some time.
260. Increasing the power of land forces and some other weapons [ top ]
Heavy tanks but also heavy artillery and heavy armored vehicles are becoming more powerful again and harder to destroy. The weapons are also becoming effective, or more effective, against more types of weapons. The details are in the weapons document that describes each weapon separately with all details.
Also drones are becoming more destructive than before and might one day be rehabilitated. Many players think the drones are unusable. Check them again.
C3 countries, mainly in the higher levels had sometimes a very strong defence that made wars these countries unwinnable. They remain hard to defeat, but the extreme numbers of interceptor and helicopter wings are reduced. More types of weapons are now available to them in smaller numbers.
C3 countries defence is now a bit less dependent on air power while garrisons are more capable. Some C3 countries now have more garrisons.
These changes are part of the plan we have published and are aimed at reducing the vast dependency on air power and a shift towards more land forces.
Some weapons have a very long range which is sometimes exaggerated. The extreme long ranges are now a bit shorter. This is the second update in ranges and by now some weapons lost about 30% of their original range.
Also the range of some offensive and strategic weapons is a bit shorter for the same reasons.
We intend to eliminate defensive jeeps from Simcountry. New units are not using them anymore. The next step will be to reduce the power of jeeps in the war game and in time jeeps will not have any fighting power.
We encourage you to eliminate jeeps from your army units and leave them as much as possible in their bases. At some point, we will convert jeeps into other land weapons, not one for one but at a rate the reflects their price. In time, we also intend to eliminate heavy jeeps. We will shortly remove them from any participation in new military units.
The cost of maintaining the army tends to decline. The main reason is the decline in the cost of maintenance products for defensive weapons but also for offensive and strategic weapons. Maintenance corporations produce more for a lower price in an effort to stop the surge of shortages on the market. These corporations remain very profitable and the market is short of all maintenance products.
Simcountry will shortly start paying some game awards in Crypto coins. we will pay these awards in $SOL. We have finished the work needed to produce the list of SOL award winners, next to the existing list of gold coins winners. This was needed before the end of this month to be able us to process the awards.
We are encouraging more players to join and enter a wallet address into Simcountry to be able to receive such awards. This is open to all players.
Offensive weapons increased in price a bit. This is part of an effort to reduce, or limit the size of armies while on the other hand, reducing the cost of maintaining the army. The cost of maintenance of weapons, and mainly the defensive ones is reduced.
Some army units, including garrisons are becoming larger. Another round of updates increased the size of several types of divisions. Smaller units remained unchanged.
we continue to gradually increase the fighting power of land units. This time mainly Heavy tanks that are becoming an important part of larger army units.
The enterprise score is updated. Some of the old assumptions were outdated. The score is now higher for all enterprises and will probably stay positive even after the CEO wins a major award. We are not completely sure about it and a further change might be needed next month. The way the score is computed and the main factors in the score, will be published on the forum ASAP. The information will also be published in the game documentation.
Spending limits will increase, mainly for full members. This changed will be activated in the coming day or so. A small upgrade is being installed, forced by an error in the functionality of heavy tanks. (discovered by a player, his comments are on the forum.)
274. More tuning of HLWs to achieve more balance [ top ]
The numbers of HLWs and some MLWs is reduced again to continue to balance the workers numbers needed in corporations. Recent updates already did much of the work but it must be done in small steps.
For your information:
If a country has too many MLWs and HLWs and a shortage of LLWs, a reduction in the education priorities can help.
Very large numbers of unemployed professionals can cause some of them to stop waiting for jobs and they become LLWs again. this process is slow but in time, helps in balancing the job market in countries.
We have further scaled down and pushed back conditions that can cause automated interventions to save countries from unwanted conditions. We always had complaints about interventions, building schools or hospitals and automatically creating corporations. we have completed another round of corrections to step back from any unwanted interventions and hope to have solved the outstanding issues.
Some C3 countries are now building more corporations. It has added thousands of new corporations on all worlds. This is not going to resolve shortages. It will however prevent even more. C3 countries are now increasing their population and more workers are available. They also consume more and more corporations are needed.
Tanks are again becoming more powerful. both in destructive and defensive power. Tanks are now also usable against new targets, including missile installations. Details are in the war-weapons document.
Interceptors are tuned down by 5 to 10%. They remain a good defence but just a fraction less than before.
281. The War Game - The cost of offensive weapons [ top ]
The cost of offensive weapons is increased. This is part of the plan as published on this forum, to try and transform the war game, maybe even convince players to reduce the size of their armies.
None of the war changes are substantial but they add up to previous steps. All the changes are part of the published plan, on the forum aimed at improving the war game, including improvements to the land forces and reducing the overpower of the air force as the main factor in wars.
we will publish an update to the war game plan this weekend showing the progress made to date.
The score computation is updated. The population numbers were very dominant in the score and were tuned down a bit. Population number in millions x 25 is now added to the score. It was a factor of 30 per million before that.
On the other hand, game level contribution to the score is tuned up. It was 700 score points per game level and it is now 800 score points per game level. Maximal and minimal scores are now extended.
Many countries and enterprises are becoming larger and reached what was previously regarded as maximal values. We have corrected several such maximal values to accommodate the current game status. Maximal and minimal values are important as markers for the simulation. When such values are crossed, we can check the reasons and make sure the simulation is working correctly.
Award penalties that are applied when a country receives an award have been increased. The reason for this change is that we would like to see more countries able to win awards. With awards being paid in $SOL, we would like to make sure that we do not have a situation where many of the awards are won by a single player.
With a larger award penalty, it will become more difficult to stay in the top winners list for several consecutive months.
We have improved the start conditions for beginners. New countries will have larger population numbers and will receive larger population donations when they login. They will also receive larger amounts of cash when they login.
In addition, we have increased the numbers of schools, high schools, universities, hospitals, roads and railroads etc. in new countries. As a result, they will have a much higher education, health and transportation indexes to start with and growing from there will be easier.
We are looking into more factors that could improve new countries. Improvements will extend to military capabilities in a next upgrade.
Population gifts are now 400.000 per gift for max of 12 millions. Cash awards are now 600 Billions per gift for a total of 18 Trillions.
more details on the Beginners discussion.
287. Military units and weapon capabilities [ top ]
More military units are becoming larger. Sized of units and garrisons are increasing by 10 to 20%. The fighting power of land forces is improving. Tanks for example become more powerful and a bit harder to destroy. These changes are part of our plan to transform the war process, make it less dependent on air power and shift a bit from air to land forces. New military units do not include defensive jeeps. On the other hand, numbers of tanks are increased.
An update to the enterprise score will materialize within several days. Enterprise score was not updated for a long time. Enterprises, their corporations, assets and values evolved in time and the score should reflect these changes.
More reductions in the cost of defensive and offensive ammunitions will reduce the monthly maintenance cost and the cost of war in general. The reductions in the cost of defensive ammunitions is now completed. Over the last few months, the cost was reduced by a factor of 3 to 4.
Land units are now more powerful. Several land weapons are more powerful and with the growing size of military units, land forces will become more significant.
As part of the plan to eliminate some weapons, defensive jeeps will be the first to be targeted. As a first step, new military units do not include Jeeps. Trade and production continues. Existing units keep using defensive jeeps. We will, at a later stage, convert jeeps into different weapons.
Several weapons with a very long range are now updated. The range is reduced a bit. Such changes will be repeated. The change includes defensive weapons but also strategic long range weapons.
There was a war limit in Simcountry. The limit was 200. It is now removed. All these changes are part of the short term plan we have published on the forum.
We have fixed an error in the function that checks wallet addresses. It is now working correctly. you can enter $SOL wallet addresses. Everyone who wins an award, and entered a wallet address will receive awards in $SOL. If no wallet address is entered, awards will be paid in gold coins as it it done now.
All players can win these awards, Not only full members.
Up to 75 awards in $SOL will be paid each month. the total amount can reach 6 $SOL. The current price of the $SOL is $ 140.
300. Spending limits in Corporations & corporate loans [ top ]
Corporations can now spend more when purchasing raw materials and if needed can receive larger loans. This is done because raw materials can cost more due to market shortages and not being able to order what you need, made the management of corporations more complex.
The Order function for corporations was recently upgraded and makes the ordering of needed materials much easier. The function is in the menu on the corporations page.
We have implemented another round of reductions in the numbers of high level workers in corporations. Many types of corporations now need smaller numbers of High level workers. We hope that it will help in resolving the long term shortages that force players to manually move workers between groups.
December 22, 2021
302. Awards will be paid in SOL crypto Coins - starting with the January awards. [ top ]
Awards, starting in January will be optionally in $SOL, paid into players wallets. $SOL can be easily converted to USD, Euro and other currencies.
Those who are not interested will continue to receive awards in gold coins.
The awards for January will be paid on February 1st or 2nd, 2022.
All natural resources corporations have been tuned up and will probably become more profitable and their market value will increase. New players are advised to build such corporations, even if it means that they need to close some existing ones.
Many types of weapons increased a bit in price. The price of ammunition is again reduced. The changes are not very large.
305. Cash amounts limitations in countries and corporations [ top ]
Some limits have been lifted. Corporations and countries are all more profitable and cash accumulation caused cash to bump into the ceiling in some countries. we have lifted the ceiling to much higher values. The max values are needed to prevent potential errors and to alert us to impossible values in the Simcountry database.
we have made a small change to the workers hiring process that might have caused a problem. we will check the results and may need another round to repair this problem.
Many times, corporations place orders and these orders are not executed due to shortages on the market. The solution for players is to replace these orders by immediate orders, pay more but keep the corporations in production.
The replacement process requires many clicks, replacing orders one by one, in many corporations.
The Order tab on the corporations page, was until now, used to allow players to cancel corporate orders. canceling corporate orders however, is not done a lot and the tab was hardly used.
we have now added order replacement by immediate orders to the Orders tab.
you can now use the Orders tab to replace outstanding corporate orders by immediate orders and you can do this with a single click for any number of such orders.
If the cash flow of the corporation is insufficient, an order will not be executed but will be replaced by an immediate order that will be executed in the following month.
Our testing showed that in nearly all cases, all outstanding orders were executed in a single action.
The command to sort corporations disappeared by mistake from many pages showing lists of corporations. the problem is resolved and the sorting is back on these pages.
We had a complaint on the forum, about the total defence cost that did not show the true sum of the defensive, offensive and strategic armies. It only happened in accounts in their first 180 days.
The problem is now resolved.
Computing the numbers of unemployed in shortage situations
A very old error is fixed that influenced the numbers of unemployed, especially when these numbers became very low. we have fixed this problem and hope that shortages of mainly high level and medium level workers will be reduced.
Another shift in the workforce of some corporations reduced the numbers of high level workers in corporations and increased the numbers of low level managers.
The change will help in resolving shortages of high level workers in many countries. The number of low level managers is easier to manage by the settings of the education priorities.
There is also a slight increase in the initial percentage of high level workers in the 24-30 year old group.
The population numbers in the 0-4 years old is now quite stable even in countries with very high population numbers. The stable numbers will gradually spread to the other age groups although this will take some time to materialize.
More (small) reductions in the base price of ammunition continue. The shortages in the market may disrupt these changes but even with shortages, the max price on the market follows the declines in the base price.
November 7, 2021
314. Population Computation System is Updated [ top ]
We have now updated the population computation system.
when population is very high, the number of births each game month will stop declining and will become largely stable.
Only the natural death numbers as they are computed in all age groups will remain in place and will cause slight reductions.
An increase in the total number of the population will not contribute to the decline.
The population will not naturally grow beyond a level of 100 to 120 millions. It will remain stable.
In case you grow your population by transfers from other countries, or you purchase population on the market. the new numbers will be sustained.
The way it is done is by preventing the numbers in the 0-4 age group from declining. Other groups may keep declining for some time, but in the long run, stability in the lower age groups will slowly spread into other age groups.
Stability in the total number of the population, will take some time to materialize.
The change will be quickly visible on the population page, in the numbers of the 0-4 years old.
We have explained it before. This was published here several days ago
As you probably know, Simcountry has a soft limit for population growth. This is done a long time ago to prevent population explosion. The limit was around 110 to 120 millions, depending on several factors, mainly health care. In all countries, as population increased, birth rates declined until a balance was reached and numbers stabilized.
Anyone who tried to increase the population by purchasing, experienced a decline of the population that ended at the same levels. It happened because after a purchase of population, the birth rates declined a bit more and the population started to decline until it reached the balance as it was before the purchase.
Reaching 200 or 300 millions was virtually impossible. The birth rates were very small at those levels and the population declined quite fast.
we have now introduced an improved procedure that will change the way the population growth is managed.
Starting with the coming upgrade, the number of new born added each month to the 0-4 years old group, will never be reduced to levels lower than the current numbers in the country.
Independent of the total number of population in the country, birth rates will not be reduced without limit. The number of new born babies, will always be at a level of the 0-4 years old, divided by 48. This is the average number for each month, in the 0-4 years old.
This change will lead, after some time, to the stabilization of the numbers in the 0-4 years old to start with, and will lead to stabilization in the other age groups, although this may take some time to materialize.
Purchasing population, increases the numbers in all age groups. Following the purchase, the new numbers in the 0-4 age group will not decline as they do now. The numbers will stay at about the new level.
One exception is the natural death rates that occur in all age groups. The numbers are quite low and depends on the level of health care.
As a result, we expect the population numbers in high population countries to decline at a much slower pace, slowing even more with time and end up at a very low level of decline that is consistent with natural death cases in the country.
when population is purchased, even at very high levels of population, declines will be at a very low level and the high population levels can be sustained.
The upgrade will take place today or tomorrow. The effect of the change can become visible in the 0-4 years old group but only in countries where the population was declining.
The education pages are now updated. The menu at the top of the page will direct you into a page with tabs.
These tabs replace the previous pages. The first tab shows the education priorities.
The education priorities page is in our opinion, one of the most important pages in Simcountry.
Previously to get to the education priorities page, you needed to go through the menu, and sub menu. Now, clicking on Education in the menu, you get directly to the education priorities.
We plan to introduce more improved pages and hope that progress will become faster.
Several documents are updated. We have already updated some in the past several months. the documents are now more up to date, and we tried to make them a bit shorter where possible. It seems that reading is not in these days. Simcountry however, has many features and reading a bit can help.
Many hints are also updated. All the new ones are shorter and easier to understand. (We hope).
Work will continue on both. There are many more documents and many hints that need rewriting.
Many types of ammunition are reduced in price. The changes are 5% on average and are mainly in the defensive ammunition.
This is done before many times. The reductions have reduced the cost of ammunition, the cost of defence, and the cost of maintaining the army. The total cost is much reduced in the past months. The cost now is about a third of what it used to be.
A small increase in production levels and a slight price reduction.
The change is very small. It is done to prevent even more shortages. The population in all worlds increased in the past weeks while the number of corporations hardly changed.
The profit of many types of corporations increased slightly in the process.
The cost of the defence continues to decline. The declines are in the cost of weapons and ammunition, mainly defensive ones but also some offensive materials. The cost of nuclear weapons did not change.
Also the maintenance cost of the army will decline. It may take some time to materialize because many countries have such products on stock.
Also in this case, the potential profitability of many defence related corporations may increase a bit.
We are updating the gifts to new players. new players receive gifts when they login, up to twice every day.
The gifts are either Cash or Population increase.
The cash gifts are now up to 500B from 400B the population gifts are now 300.000, up from 200.000
March 10, 2021
325. War against C3 countries (countries without a president) [ top ]
A new war declaration function is added to Simcountry today.
Fighting a war against a C3 country, you have two different choices deciding on the war level attached to the C3 country.
Until now, after winning a war against a C3 country, your own country moved to a next war level. you received a gold coin award, depending on the war level of the C3 country you fought. Wars became much harder when your war level increased and the gold coin awards increased accordingly.
In the new situation, you can choose to fight a C3 country as before and move to a new war level or You can choose to continue to fight against C3 countries of the same war level as the previous war and continue doing so several times.
The war level of the C3 country you fight against depends on the size of your empire.
If your empire on the world were the war is declared has less than 5 countries, you can fight against a C3 country of war level 3.
If your empire has 5 countries of more, but less than 10 countries, you can fight at a lower war level but in this case, the C3 country will have war level 5.
If your empire has 10 countries or more, you can fight at a lower war level but in this case, the C3 country will have war level 7.
This new type of war declaration significantly reduces the effort needed to win a war against a C3 country. On the other hand, such a war will not deliver any gold coins.
The choice to fight wars against C3 countries with increasing war levels and winning gold coin awards remains as before.
The functions is developed as promised in multiple discussions on the forum. In the coming weeks we will probably receive comments from players on how they experience its use. We may, at a later time, tune the function, repair any possible errors in the implementation and discuss its future use.
The game documentation is not updated yet.
We will update the game documentation by use of the same text as published here, in the next game update.
The cost of both defensive and offensive ammunition declined again. It will also reduce the cost of maintaining the army as the army maintenance cost is for a large part the cost of ammunition used in training. The reduction in the maintenance cost will take some time to show up because countries already have ammunition that was purchased at a higher price.
The cost of weapons is not reduced. several weapons cost a bit more.
The defence industry remains as profitable as before.
The defence industry is very profitable. It turns out profits that are comparable to other types of corporations while employing half the numbers of workers and more corporations can be created with the same population numbers.
Several types of corporations increased production by several percentage points. It may help a bit in reducing the large shortages in most products on the markets.
328. Population in free member countries and in C3 countries [ top ]
The population in such countries is now growing faster. Population of 18 millions seems like the new minimum and numbers will increase to the range of 23 - 25 millions. This change is gradual and may take some time to materialize.
The cost of ammunition is declined again by an average of 15%. Both defensive and offensive cost is reduced.
The reduction is in the base price. The real price is decided on the market but the price ranges are now lower.
The reduction will take some time to influence the maintenance cost of the army because countries bought ammunition at a higher price before and the maintenance cost depends on the average purchase price.
The cost of weapons is increased by a small margin. and also the cost of all nuclear weapons is increased.
The cost of maintenance products remained unchanged.
These changes are aimed at a long term effort to reduce the cost of the army. We have made several reductions before.
we continue to make small changes to the country page. We have again removed some information that is obsolete or appears twice. This time, we have simplified the corporation menu at the top of the page because many commands were in sub menus but also available as tabs on the corporations page.
Migration was always an insignificant feature in Simcountry and most countries had zero immigration even when the country was economically attractive. We are now changing the function and it will start showing growing numbers of immigrants. Work is in progress. We expect the function to be completed in the coming days.
Corporations are turning larger profits in the past months and countries that are managed correctly can make excellent profits. In the process, we have seen average PE ratios declining a bit which will probably help corporations reach the conditions to go public.
Population in C3 countries are growing and will probably reach 23 to 25 millions. The growth is slow and it will take them a long time to get to these levels. Many of the C3 countries now have a population of 16 to 18 millions.
We have made several small changes to the user interface, removing several options that appeared twice in different places, added the welfare index in the indexes block on the country home page, and made the beginner link more prominent on the country page.
We will introduce more such changes and try to streamline the user interface and make it easier to navigate.
The beginners document is updated and placed on a more prominent place on the country home page.
We have also increased the cash gifts given to new players and they can now reach 12T if they login twice a day. They can also accumulated 6.000.000 in population gifts.
More reductions in the cost of maintaining the army. Also now, the reductions are largest in defensive ammunition but also the price of offensive ammunition is reduced.
We advise players, and especially new players, to build natural resources corporations. These corporations are very profitable and may become even more so. even if your population cannot sustain another natural resource corporation, it makes sense to close a corporation that is turning a low profit (let alone a loss), and use the work force for another natural resources corporation.
the cost declined again. it is mainly the defensive ammunition but other elements declined too, including the cost of maintenance products.
changes will kick in day by day, depending on country stocks of products.
Nuclear weapons increase in price as was suggested by players here and some other weapons may also see a slight price increase.
Population in free member countries and C3 countries
The population will now increase at a higher pace and may reach a level of 18-20 Millions. This is intended, also with more cash, to give new players and better start position.
The function of land forces is slightly updated. we have said before that we intend to diversify the functionality of land forces. The first step in now introduced.
For details, we refer to the weapons document which is updated automatically to the current capabilities of weapons.
During a war, when a terrestrial target in your country is attacked, the local garrison will use any relevant weapons to defend the target. In addition, one of your interceptor wings will help in the defence and up to two interceptor wings owned by your federation members may participate if their weapons are relevant to the defence.
If available, up to 2 mobile military units may support the defence if within range.
Starting with this upgrade, one military unit, within a striking distance (40), will also participate. We have discussed this feature on the forum in the past weeks and indicated that it will be included in the next upgrade.
Small changes to several army units. The changes are slight and are part of a longer term upgrade.
Our intention is to make army units larger but keep their striking power per attack at a lower level.
It will make it possible for these units to perform several strikes before they need to be replaced or reorganized to return to full power. we hope that it may reduce the number of clicks in war.
we have made another update to many types of ammunition and reduced their cost. This will reduce the general cost of war but as the maintenance of the army is mainly the use of ammunition for training, the maintenance cost will decline (again).
As before, these changes are slow to show up because many countries already have a lot of ammunition that was bought before at a higher price.
The value of assets in countries includes cash, the value of corporations, military assets etc.
The decline in the price of some military materials will reduce the total value of these materials in stock and the total value of assets. the value of the military assets is calculated by multiplying their numbers by the current market price.
This already happened with previous reductions in the cost of ammunition and will continue this time.
All changes to weapons are documented in the weapons document.
Slight changes to defensive armored vehicles. They are more powerful and defend against more land based weapons. Slight changes to jeeps. They are effective in the defence against land based weapons attacks. WE are planning to equip Jeeps with hand held missiles. This change may take some time to materialize and will announced again, ahead of time.
Changes to land to sea missiles. The missiles are now more effective against sea based weapons. Also against sea based weapons they were not effective before.
Some more army unit changes Units can now have 68% of their weapons of one single type. Before, it was 70%.
Also slight changes to some units and mobile units.
The cost of maintaining the defensive army declined again. The maintenance cost of the offensive army also declined by smaller numbers. The changes are limited to prevent major changes for the defensive industries. The profitability of defence related corporations is excellent and the changes will not change it.
The cost decline will take longer to materialize because countries already have stocks of ammunition and maintenance products that were purchased at the then existing price.
We see the storage of very large quantities of weapons in enterprises as an advantage for rich players who hold large armies. It is a problem for smaller players. We urge players with such large stocks to sell some of the stock on the market and reduce such reserves. At some point, if nothing happens, we might set thresh holds on numbers and introduce a cost to excessive stockpiles.
Selling weapons on the market now might be more profitable than later because the price of many weapons will decline. Think about it ... Nothing is imminent.
Planned Change within two weeks As we have said several times in the past weeks, we will allow military units stationed at locations around the country, participate in the defence. One unit, which is stationed within a striking range of the attacked target, will participate. The unit must have weapons that are relevant to the defence against the attacker.
Mobile units already participate in this way. Up to two mobile units, if available within range and poses relevant weapons, participate in the defence.
The cost is reduced again. The cost of mainly defensive weapons and ammunition is reduces by at least 10%. Some types by more than that. Also the maintenance cost of the army have been reduced. Some offensive weapons were included in the change but reduction are smaller. Nuclear weapons are gradually becoming more costly as was published several months ago.
355. The capacity of Cargo shuttles & their speed [ top ]
The capacity of cargo shuttles is doubled. This is achieved by reducing the space each item occupies on the shuttle. As a result, a cargo shuttle can transport twice as many products. The change obviously reduces the cost of transport. Cargo shuttles also move much faster. This was already published before.
The cost of storage on space stations is reduced by about 50%. The reduction is achieved by the same reduction of the space needed to store products. Docking stations can now store two times more products.
357. Army Units and defensive capabilities [ top ]
Many army units are slightly changed. In general the defensive power of some units is increased. This includes some air force units, and also some land units. Some weapons and ammunition types have been slightly updated.
A military unit can now have up to 70% of its weapons of a single type. The percentage is now reduced 3 times from standing at 100%. The change will make military units include more types of weapons as was the intention when they were created.
In general, this is a step forward in improving the fighting capabilities of the defensive army.
The population of free player countries will increase a bit more in the coming weeks and months. The same for C3 countries which will give new players and better starting conditions.
We have made several changes to support the defence of countries in war.
The defence of a target during an attack, was until now supported by a garrison if available at the target, by a defensive air wing if available, and by up to two defence wings owned by federation members if these wings were available and within range. A mobile defence unit, if within a range of 20 from the attacked target, also participated in the defence. We have now increased the number of mobile units that can participate in the defence to two units and the range of such mobile units is increased to 40.
Mobile units that are located in various positions in the country now probably cover multiple targets and their chance of participating is larger than before.
The change is not very significant but can help the defence.
Our intention is to add one non mobile unit to the defence of a target if the range is less than 20. This change will be made within several weeks.
Some military units have been tuned down a bit (major navy carrier group), and some defence units are slightly larger. When setting up military units, you can change the default weapons numbers in the units but none of the weapons can consist of more than 80% of the total number of weapons in the unit.
We intend to continue with small changes to create a more balanced distribution of military power between types of units.
Population growth in C3 countries and countries owned by free players is slightly increased. The change is made to improve the distribution of people between age groups.
Changes will be slow to show up as population changes with time, birth numbers and aging.
Many types of corporations are becoming more profitable. We expect countries to become a bit more profitable, enterprises too. Profitability will improve but market values could end up nearly unchanged and P/E ratio could decline a bit.
All these changes are not very large. We think that the change will increase profitability.
364. Enterprise and the storage of weapons [ top ]
Enterprises, by design, can store weapons at no cost. This makes enterprises not only a source of cash profits but they can also reduce the cost of maintaining an army.
Some enterprises push this advantage very far. The low cost, combined with the possibility for instant transfer to countries to wage war, is a major danger for smaller players in war.
We are considering the introduction of some weapon and ammunition use while in storage at enterprises. It is not part of this upgrade and may take some time to materialize in any real format in the game.
It is intended for large quantities of weapons and ammunition that are stored in enterprises.
The alternative for free storage is space stations. The cost on space stations is the cost of docking stations that can be bought or rented.
we will publish details when we have them, ahead of any possible change.
The choice of weapons in the navy is slightly changed.
You cannot have a carrier group with 1104 navy fighters and nothing else. It makes the navy an unreasonable weapon and it is even more unrealistic than the default structure.
We are limiting the numbers per type of weapon in the navy.
In general, we will keep the possibility of the player to tune the numbers of weapons in units. This will be a tuning function but not one that creates "One type of weapon" units.
All types of military units will be tuned gradually in the coming months.
Birth numbers are slightly up in all countries. We have seen a slow population decline game wide for some time. numbers are now quite good and close to where we think they should be. We do want to stop the long-term decline and made a very small increase in birth rate. The population graphs will show it.
After simplifying the process of moving military units around, mainly the problem of moving them back home with supply shortages, we have also increased the speed of movements for military units in general.
This includes all units including transport airplanes.
The troop movement process is quite intensive, checking thousands of countries and units to decide if they are moving, where they are heading and perform the move.
It used to be a problem for our servers but the problem is long resolved. The process is optimized and the servers capacity is much larger. troops now move once in 5 seconds (used to be 15 seconds).
September 3, 2020
370. Closure of Natural Resources Corporation [ top ]
If a Natural resources corporation closes because of lack of materials or lack of workers, the remaining natural resource in the ground, remains available.
the remaining natural resource reserves in the ground remain available and a new corporation can be constructed in the country to use the available resource.
Before, when such a corporation was closed, the remaining resource was lost.
we promised to add this feature at the time natural resources were introduced into Simcountry. It took some time to implement and it is now available.
If the corporation closes when the natural resource runs out, there obviously no remaining resource to preserve.
The feature is available in Simcountry for a very long period. We are not sure that the exact conditions are known to players. here is how it works.
General conditions when moving corporations
The corporation age must be > 48 game months old. The corporation was not moved in the past 48 game months. The new country where the corporation is moving to, must have availability of at least 100% of the needed work force in all categories.
Limitations as to the max number of corporations owned by a single CEO must not be exceeded. Not in your own countries and not in foreign countries. The target country does not block CEOs. The target country should not have other requests for new corporations or for the move of other corporations into the country at the same time. Conditions for moving a corporation at no cost: A corporation can move out at no cost if:
The source country has no president.(C3). The move is immediate. The president of the source country has sold population. (in the last real month). The tax rate in the source country is above 40%.
The corporation is damaged. The reason could be war or a rebellion. The Production in the corporation is limited by non availability of manpower even though corporate salaries are above government salaries. The corporation must have a hiring target of 100%. It may produce at a lower level but its request for workers, at any level, is not fulfilled.
Military units need supplies. to move, they need Gasoline or Aircraft Fuel.
shortages can occur and the units are then stuck and unable to move, move back from another country etc.
The shortages can become very large and resupply can be difficult. the reasons for huge shortages are in general, the long time these units remain without supplied.
There could be more reasons but as of now, we did not discover any.
We have now limited the amount of shortage a unit can have. Letting units go into huge shortages does not make sense and makes it impossible to fix in some situations.
we hope that this change will have the desired effect.
We will continue to monitor existing cases and communicate with players. if this change is not sufficient, we will try to continue and resolve the problem.
We have limited the number of corporations in C3 countries. Until now, the automatic procedure that manages the creation of new corporations in C3 countries had the possibility of overshooting and sometimes created too many corporations.
Corporations in C3 countries have an important function in preventing very large shortages and in balancing the market.
when C3 countries create too many corporations, they are unable to hire all the workers they need and work at lower capacity.
the change, limiting the number of such corporations, will have an influence on the general market. It will materialize during a long period.
C3 countries will not create new corporations if the country has more than 14 state corporations and if the country does not have all the workers needed for the corporation.
Purchasing and moving corporations remains of course possible as before but these corporations must be at least 48 months old.
We just want to prevent a takeover of corporations that have the potential to develop a high market value but need a little time to build up a good PE value and have their market value reach a reasonable level.
before this change, the required wait time was 36 months/24 months.
Until now, the number you could exchange was 100.000 per game month. the number was frequently lower because the game itself, is using the feature to reduce shortages and in some cases uses all the 100.000 available.
The number is now increased to 200.000 per game month. The game procedure will continue to make conversions but it will never reduce the available quantity below 100.000.
so now, you can always change the profession of 100.000 and in many cases, the number may be higher and up to 200.000.
The number of corporations in an enterprise owned by a free player is limited to 100. This was in the game in the past. It was removed recently by mistake and was restored.
The frequency of rebellions is reduced. The main reason for rebellions was the long term occupation of countries that are part of large empires.
Larger empires make more sense now in Simcountry, mainly because of the introduction of natural resources as an essential resource. Having more countries allows players to own more of these natural resources.
We have recently started reducing the government cost in larger empires. The cost is much reduced and will be reduced even more.
The reduction in the frequency of rebellions and virtual elimination thereof in empires will help players who are interested in building larger empires.
Natural resources corporations remain very profitable and their profitability will increase even more due to their small number and continuing shortages.
In recent months, the high cost of natural resources caused an increase in the cost of raw materials for many types of corporations and influenced their profitability.
That effect on other corporations is receded in recent weeks.
As we see now in the markets and when looking into corporations in general, turnover is stable or growing, the cost of raw materials is much less influenced by the cost of natural resources and their profitability is improved.
380. Corporations and their number of workers [ top ]
Corporations increase the number of workers and professionals the need. The numbers are increasing slowly and the general effect is that many countries can sustain a smaller number of corporations that are in general more profitable.
We have explained the reason for this incremental tuning before. We see the number of corporations game wide, increasing with the increase in populations. We now have more than 860.000 corporations game wide, the largest number for a very long time.
The number of daily transactions in Simcountry reaches many millions each day and although everything runs just fine, we think that long term, we should have a slightly smaller number of corporations that are more profitable and a smaller number of them could keep countries very profitable.
The score is updated again. as a result, the score will gradually increase for all players, hopefully eliminating most of the zero score cases, caused by the awards penalty.
The welfare factor in the score is increased. It can now reach up to 6000+ points making it the largest contributor in most countries. Game levels deliver 700 score points per level and is very significant too.
As we said before, we will soon add a new, "Best Players List", showing the best players score before any award penalty is subtracted.
we will have the Best Players list and the Award Candidates list
Natural resources corporations slightly increased their production. Many corporations have become more profitable.
Countries will probably be able to build a slightly smaller number of corporations due to increasing numbers of people working in each corporation and the part of the population working in health, education etc.
The increase in profit on average in each corporation will more than compensate for possibly a slightly smaller number.
Government cost keeps decreasing for empires. The government cost for single countries or small empires was already quite low. the cost is decreasing for larger empires.
The score is updated again. as a result, the score will gradually increase for all players, hopefully eliminating most of the zero score cases, caused by the awards penalty.
The welfare factor in the score is increased. It can now reach up to 6000+ points making it the largest contributor in most countries. Game levels deliver 700 score points per level and is very significant too.
As we said before, we will soon add a new, "Best Players List", showing the best players score before any award penalty is subtracted.
we will have the Best Players list and the Award Candidates list
Natural resources corporations slightly increased their production. Many corporations have become more profitable.
Countries will probably be able to build a slightly smaller number of corporations due to increasing numbers of people working in each corporation and the part of the population working in health, education etc. The increase in profit on average in each corporation will more than compensate for possibly a slightly smaller number.
Government cost keeps decreasing for empires. The government cost for single countries or small empires was already quite low. the cost is decreasing for larger empires.
During a war, when a terrestrial target in your country is attacked, the local garrison will use any relevant weapons to defend the target. In addition, one of your interceptor wings will help in the defence and up to two interceptor wings owned by your federation members may participate if their weapons are relevant to the defence.
If available, up to 2 mobile military units may support the defence if within range.
Starting with this upgrade, one military unit, within a striking distance (40), will also participate. We have discussed this feature on the forum in the past weeks and indicated that it will be included in the next upgrade.
Small changes to several army units. The changes are slight and are part of a longer term upgrade.
Our intention is to make army units larger but keep their striking power per attack at a lower level.
It will make it possible for these units to perform several strikes before they need to be replaced or reorganized to return to full power. we hope that it may reduce the number of clicks in war.
we have made another update to many types of ammunition and reduced their cost. This will reduce the general cost of war but as the maintenance of the army is mainly the use of ammunition for training, the maintenance cost will decline (again).
As before, these changes are slow to show up because many countries already have a lot of ammunition that was bought before at a higher price.
The value of assets in countries includes cash, the value of corporations, military assets etc.
The decline in the price of some military materials will reduce the total value of these materials in stock and the total value of assets. the value of the military assets is calculated by multiplying their numbers by the current market price.
This already happened with previous reductions in the cost of ammunition and will continue this time.
All changes to weapons are documented in the weapons document.
Slight changes to defensive armored vehicles. They are more powerful and defend against more land based weapons. Slight changes to jeeps. They are effective in the defence against land based weapons attacks. WE are planning to equip Jeeps with hand held missiles. This change may take some time to materialize and will announced again, ahead of time.
Changes to land to sea missiles. The missiles are now more effective against sea based weapons. Also against sea based weapons they were not effective before.
Some more army unit changes Units can now have 68% of their weapons of one single type. Before, it was 70%.
Also slight changes to some units and mobile units.
The cost of maintaining the defensive army declined again. The maintenance cost of the offensive army also declined by smaller numbers. The changes are limited to prevent major changes for the defensive industries. The profitability of defence related corporations is excellent and the changes will not change it.
The cost decline will take longer to materialize because countries already have stocks of ammunition and maintenance products that were purchased at the then existing price.
We see the storage of very large quantities of weapons in enterprises as an advantage for rich players who hold large armies. It is a problem for smaller players. We urge players with such large stocks to sell some of the stock on the market and reduce such reserves. At some point, if nothing happens, we might set thresh holds on numbers and introduce a cost to excessive stockpiles.
Selling weapons on the market now might be more profitable than later because the price of many weapons will decline. Think about it ... Nothing is imminent.
Planned Change within two weeks As we have said several times in the past weeks, we will allow military units stationed at locations around the country, participate in the defence. One unit, which is stationed within a striking range of the attacked target, will participate. The unit must have weapons that are relevant to the defence against the attacker.
Mobile units already participate in this way. Up to two mobile units, if available within range and poses relevant weapons, participate in the defence.
The cost is reduced again. The cost of mainly defensive weapons and ammunition is reduces by at least 10%. Some types by more than that. Also the maintenance cost of the army have been reduced. Some offensive weapons were included in the change but reduction are smaller. Nuclear weapons are gradually becoming more costly as was published several months ago.
397. The capacity of Cargo shuttles & their speed [ top ]
The capacity of cargo shuttles is doubled. This is achieved by reducing the space each item occupies on the shuttle. As a result, a cargo shuttle can transport twice as many products. The change obviously reduces the cost of transport. Cargo shuttles also move much faster. This was already published before.
The cost of storage on space stations is reduced by about 50%. The reduction is achieved by the same reduction of the space needed to store products. Docking stations can now store two times more products.
399. Army Units and defensive capabilities [ top ]
Many army units are slightly changed. In general the defensive power of some units is increased. This includes some air force units, and also some land units. Some weapons and ammunition types have been slightly updated.
A military unit can now have up to 70% of its weapons of a single type. The percentage is now reduced 3 times from standing at 100%. The change will make military units include more types of weapons as was the intention when they were created.
In general, this is a step forward in improving the fighting capabilities of the defensive army.
The population of free player countries will increase a bit more in the coming weeks and months. The same for C3 countries which will give new players and better starting conditions.
We have made several changes to support the defence of countries in war.
The defence of a target during an attack, was until now supported by a garrison if available at the target, by a defensive air wing if available, and by up to two defence wings owned by federation members if these wings were available and within range. A mobile defence unit, if within a range of 20 from the attacked target, also participated in the defence. We have now increased the number of mobile units that can participate in the defence to two units and the range of such mobile units is increased to 40.
Mobile units that are located in various positions in the country now probably cover multiple targets and their chance of participating is larger than before.
The change is not very significant but can help the defence.
Our intention is to add one non mobile unit to the defence of a target if the range is less than 20. This change will be made within several weeks.
Some military units have been tuned down a bit (major navy carrier group), and some defence units are slightly larger. When setting up military units, you can change the default weapons numbers in the units but none of the weapons can consist of more than 80% of the total number of weapons in the unit.
We intend to continue with small changes to create a more balanced distribution of military power between types of units.
Population growth in C3 countries and countries owned by free players is slightly increased. The change is made to improve the distribution of people between age groups.
Changes will be slow to show up as population changes with time, birth numbers and aging.
Many types of corporations are becoming more profitable. We expect countries to become a bit more profitable, enterprises too. Profitability will improve but market values could end up nearly unchanged and P/E ratio could decline a bit.
All these changes are not very large. We think that the change will increase profitability.
406. Enterprise and the storage of weapons [ top ]
Enterprises, by design, can store weapons at no cost. This makes enterprises not only a source of cash profits but they can also reduce the cost of maintaining an army.
Some enterprises push this advantage very far. The low cost, combined with the possibility for instant transfer to countries to wage war, is a major danger for smaller players in war.
We are considering the introduction of some weapon and ammunition use while in storage at enterprises. It is not part of this upgrade and may take some time to materialize in any real format in the game.
It is intended for large quantities of weapons and ammunition that are stored in enterprises.
The alternative for free storage is space stations. The cost on space stations is the cost of docking stations that can be bought or rented.
we will publish details when we have them, ahead of any possible change.
The choice of weapons in the navy is slightly changed.
You cannot have a carrier group with 1104 navy fighters and nothing else. It makes the navy an unreasonable weapon and it is even more unrealistic than the default structure.
We are limiting the numbers per type of weapon in the navy.
In general, we will keep the possibility of the player to tune the numbers of weapons in units. This will be a tuning function but not one that creates "One type of weapon" units.
All types of military units will be tuned gradually in the coming months.
Birth numbers are slightly up in all countries. We have seen a slow population decline game wide for some time. numbers are now quite good and close to where we think they should be. We do want to stop the long-term decline and made a very small increase in birth rate. The population graphs will show it.
After simplifying the process of moving military units around, mainly the problem of moving them back home with supply shortages, we have also increased the speed of movements for military units in general.
This includes all units including transport airplanes.
The troop movement process is quite intensive, checking thousands of countries and units to decide if they are moving, where they are heading and perform the move.
It used to be a problem for our servers but the problem is long resolved. The process is optimized and the servers capacity is much larger. troops now move once in 5 seconds (used to be 15 seconds).
September 3, 2020
412. Closure of Natural Resources Corporation [ top ]
If a Natural resources corporation closes because of lack of materials or lack of workers, the remaining natural resource in the ground, remains available.
the remaining natural resource reserves in the ground remain available and a new corporation can be constructed in the country to use the available resource.
Before, when such a corporation was closed, the remaining resource was lost.
we promised to add this feature at the time natural resources were introduced into Simcountry. It took some time to implement and it is now available.
If the corporation closes when the natural resource runs out, there obviously no remaining resource to preserve.
The feature is available in Simcountry for a very long period. We are not sure that the exact conditions are known to players. here is how it works.
General conditions when moving corporations
The corporation age must be > 48 game months old. The corporation was not moved in the past 48 game months. The new country where the corporation is moving to, must have availability of at least 100% of the needed work force in all categories.
Limitations as to the max number of corporations owned by a single CEO must not be exceeded. Not in your own countries and not in foreign countries. The target country does not block CEOs. The target country should not have other requests for new corporations or for the move of other corporations into the country at the same time. Conditions for moving a corporation at no cost: A corporation can move out at no cost if:
The source country has no president.(C3). The move is immediate. The president of the source country has sold population. (in the last real month). The tax rate in the source country is above 40%.
The corporation is damaged. The reason could be war or a rebellion. The Production in the corporation is limited by non availability of manpower even though corporate salaries are above government salaries. The corporation must have a hiring target of 100%. It may produce at a lower level but its request for workers, at any level, is not fulfilled.
Military units need supplies. to move, they need Gasoline or Aircraft Fuel.
shortages can occur and the units are then stuck and unable to move, move back from another country etc.
The shortages can become very large and resupply can be difficult. the reasons for huge shortages are in general, the long time these units remain without supplied.
There could be more reasons but as of now, we did not discover any.
We have now limited the amount of shortage a unit can have. Letting units go into huge shortages does not make sense and makes it impossible to fix in some situations.
we hope that this change will have the desired effect.
We will continue to monitor existing cases and communicate with players. if this change is not sufficient, we will try to continue and resolve the problem.
We have limited the number of corporations in C3 countries. Until now, the automatic procedure that manages the creation of new corporations in C3 countries had the possibility of overshooting and sometimes created too many corporations.
Corporations in C3 countries have an important function in preventing very large shortages and in balancing the market.
when C3 countries create too many corporations, they are unable to hire all the workers they need and work at lower capacity.
the change, limiting the number of such corporations, will have an influence on the general market. It will materialize during a long period.
C3 countries will not create new corporations if the country has more than 14 state corporations and if the country does not have all the workers needed for the corporation.
Purchasing and moving corporations remains of course possible as before but these corporations must be at least 48 months old.
We just want to prevent a takeover of corporations that have the potential to develop a high market value but need a little time to build up a good PE value and have their market value reach a reasonable level.
before this change, the required wait time was 36 months/24 months.
Until now, the number you could exchange was 100.000 per game month. the number was frequently lower because the game itself, is using the feature to reduce shortages and in some cases uses all the 100.000 available.
The number is now increased to 200.000 per game month. The game procedure will continue to make conversions but it will never reduce the available quantity below 100.000.
so now, you can always change the profession of 100.000 and in many cases, the number may be higher and up to 200.000.
The number of corporations in an enterprise owned by a free player is limited to 100. This was in the game in the past. It was removed recently by mistake and was restored.
The frequency of rebellions is reduced. The main reason for rebellions was the long term occupation of countries that are part of large empires.
Larger empires make more sense now in Simcountry, mainly because of the introduction of natural resources as an essential resource. Having more countries allows players to own more of these natural resources.
We have recently started reducing the government cost in larger empires. The cost is much reduced and will be reduced even more.
The reduction in the frequency of rebellions and virtual elimination thereof in empires will help players who are interested in building larger empires.
Natural resources corporations remain very profitable and their profitability will increase even more due to their small number and continuing shortages.
In recent months, the high cost of natural resources caused an increase in the cost of raw materials for many types of corporations and influenced their profitability.
That effect on other corporations is receded in recent weeks.
As we see now in the markets and when looking into corporations in general, turnover is stable or growing, the cost of raw materials is much less influenced by the cost of natural resources and their profitability is improved.
422. Corporations and their number of workers [ top ]
Corporations increase the number of workers and professionals the need. The numbers are increasing slowly and the general effect is that many countries can sustain a smaller number of corporations that are in general more profitable.
We have explained the reason for this incremental tuning before. We see the number of corporations game wide, increasing with the increase in populations. We now have more than 860.000 corporations game wide, the largest number for a very long time.
The number of daily transactions in Simcountry reaches many millions each day and although everything runs just fine, we think that long term, we should have a slightly smaller number of corporations that are more profitable and a smaller number of them could keep countries very profitable.
The score is updated again. as a result, the score will gradually increase for all players, hopefully eliminating most of the zero score cases, caused by the awards penalty.
The welfare factor in the score is increased. It can now reach up to 6000+ points making it the largest contributor in most countries. Game levels deliver 700 score points per level and is very significant too.
As we said before, we will soon add a new, "Best Players List", showing the best players score before any award penalty is subtracted.
we will have the Best Players list and the Award Candidates list
Natural resources corporations slightly increased their production. Many corporations have become more profitable.
Countries will probably be able to build a slightly smaller number of corporations due to increasing numbers of people working in each corporation and the part of the population working in health, education etc.
The increase in profit on average in each corporation will more than compensate for possibly a slightly smaller number.
Government cost keeps decreasing for empires. The government cost for single countries or small empires was already quite low. the cost is decreasing for larger empires.
The score is updated again. as a result, the score will gradually increase for all players, hopefully eliminating most of the zero score cases, caused by the awards penalty.
The welfare factor in the score is increased. It can now reach up to 6000+ points making it the largest contributor in most countries. Game levels deliver 700 score points per level and is very significant too.
As we said before, we will soon add a new, "Best Players List", showing the best players score before any award penalty is subtracted.
we will have the Best Players list and the Award Candidates list
Natural resources corporations slightly increased their production. Many corporations have become more profitable.
Countries will probably be able to build a slightly smaller number of corporations due to increasing numbers of people working in each corporation and the part of the population working in health, education etc. The increase in profit on average in each corporation will more than compensate for possibly a slightly smaller number.
Government cost keeps decreasing for empires. The government cost for single countries or small empires was already quite low. the cost is decreasing for larger empires.
Corporations keep increasing the number of workers and their profitability is increased too.
This is another small update in a trend to stop the rapid growth in the number of corporations in Simcountry. Countries will probably, in time, end up with a somewhat smaller number of very profitable corporations.
Natural resources corporations
These corporations will probably increase their profitability and increase their market value compared to many other types of corporations.
From now on, any message you receive in Simcountry, will be forwarded as a mail message into your mail account as you entered into Simcountry.
The feature allows you to send an email message to players of Simcountry while their email address remains private and not published. Any message you send to another player in the game, will be forwarded to her/his mail account.
The feature also allows you to see game messages you receive in your mail account. Until now, you only saw your messages when you logged in.
The feature was requested here on the forum and we have promised to add it to Simcountry.
If you do not want to receive these mails, please go to the messages page and you can turn this feature off.
the feature is on by default and it is active now.
Corporations can retain products within the corporation and put them on the market at a later stage.
Players can also store any products, even in very large quantities, in their countries or enterprises.
It is also possible to contract the entire output of a corporation, or a certain part of it to the country or the enterprise.
Retaining very large quantities of products in corporations can distort the real production level and turnover of corporations. It is possible to retain products for a long period and not sell any product for a long time. This is quite unrealistic and it is also misused to manipulate the value of corporations.
We are gradually reducing the max amount of products that can be stored in the corporations. Storing products in countries and enterprises remains unchanged.
Currently if a corporation retains product quantities that are too large, a percentage of the products will be sold on the market each game month. The max quantities however is very large.
With these reductions in max quantity, products might end up sold on the market automatically at an earlier stage. this can easily be prevented by contracting the products to the owner country or enterprise.
Retaining products for 10 to 20 game months will remain possible.
433. A new round of discovery of natural resources is completed. [ top ]
It added a very large number of natural resources to all countries in all worlds.
Many countries now have a large number of available resources. In many countries, including many C3 countries, the number exceeds 60 different resources.
It is now possible for each country to build new natural resources corporations that are very profitable in all our worlds.
There are shortages in all natural resources. the corporations are very profitable. The quantity of resources in the ground is increased again.
In addition, Enterprises can now build natural resources corporations if the number of corporations in the enterprise is lower than 100.
Small, or new enterprises, can in fact quickly build up to 100 such corporations and will be very profitable.
In the past weeks, we have seen a larger number of such corporations being built.
however, we expect shortages in all natural-resources, to continue for a prolonged period, despite their increasing production and the easier way for small enterprises to create such corporations.
Enterprises with less than 100 corporations, can now build Natural Resources corporations.
The corporations can be build by all full member CEOs in C3 countries only. We have limited the feature to C3 countries to prevent the need for asking the president for permission before building the corporation.
When you choose one of the natural resources, you get a list of countries that have these resources and can choose where you want to build.
For some of the resources, it can take several seconds to find the countries because there are many of them.
The first version is completed quickly to allow for more such corporations to be built.
There are several additional features that will be added ASAP:
1. The list currently includes countries with a president.
If you choose one, there is an error and you can choose another country. we will improve the list and show only C3 countries.
2. We will shorten the list to show only 100 or so countries. It will reduce the time needed to create it.
The score computation is updated. The welfare index is even more important, game levels too. The score will increase for all countries.
Some countries have a negative score that shows a zero. The negative score is the result of winning large awards and the penalty that follows such awards. Increasing the score a bit, will help to resolve this problem.
We intend to add a best players list that will show best players with no award penalties.
The current list will be called: Awards Ranking List and will remain as it is now.
The welfare index is increased for countries in game level 5 or higher. In these countries, the welfare index will now gradually increase and in time, will increase by 5 points. This is a major change as corporations production levels depend directly on the level of the welfare index.
Some updates to natural resources corporations made them increase production a bit.
they remain very profitable and we will very shortly, increase the product price range which will increase the price of materials a bit and increase profitability of these corporations.
Small CEOs with less than 100 corporations will shortly, (next upgrade) be able to build natural resources corporations.
The size of some corporations in increased. the changes will in time help to keep or even reduce the numbers of corporations worldwide.
to keep/increase profitability and prevent overproduction, some corporations produce fractionally less product (changes in the range of max 5%). The standard cost of some products is slightly increased to compensate for the reduced production.
In general, many corporations will see an increase of profitability but the end result will depend on the market.
Salaries are slightly higher to compensate for the increase of product pricing. The changes are small. not sure they will be noticed.
The way the score is computed is updated for the second time. the previous change was last month.
Also now, the change is done in the middle of the month to prevent shifts in the last week of the month.
The changes in the score increased the weight of the size of population. (15 points per million), Also increased the importance of game level (500 points per game level) and also increased the weight of the welfare index on the total score. (the score includes 60 times welfare index - 90. A welfare index of 130 will add (130-90) x 60 points to the score. This is 2400 points.
The score is not changing very fast. it can take a week for the changes to settle. Increasing your game level in the last days of the month will have little effect on the score.
The automatic movement of workers between groups to help balance the workforce, is increased in size. it used to be up to 100.000. It was then by mistake reduced to 50.000. we recently discovered the error and it is now permanently increased to 150.000.
A slight change in the consumption model (<1%), is intended to move a bit more spending by the population to products, rather than some forms of saving (investments and pensions).
This is a method used several times in the past to help stabilize the market.
443. Increased population in low population countries [ top ]
Countries with very low population will see a small, slow increase in population. The end result could reach an increase of one million people in such countries.
The computation of the score is updated again. Changes are not very large and the score will probably decrease a bit for all countries.
The changes include an increase in the weight of game levels and the welfare index. The score includes the (welfare index - 100) * 50. Each point increase in the welfare will increase the score by 50 points. The welfare index depends on all the basic indexes, salary levels etc. Other indexes are in fact eliminated from the score (long time ago) and the welfare index became more prominent.
The score is slow to change. Increasing the game level in the last days of the month will probably be late to create a major increase in the score. The game level changes influence on the score will become even slower in April. The score includes a game level factor of 150 points per level.
The migration index is now mostly higher and changes more than before. Also the numbers of migrants is increased again.
we will look into the numbers and may tune them in the coming upgrades. The intention is to make migration more significant, allowing more people to move between countries.
Corporation sized continue to increase. Long term, countries will end up with a smaller number of corporations and also the game wide number of corporations will stabilize at slightly lower levels.
Potential profitability is excellent.
Feb 28, 2020
449. Cost of Defence and defensive weapons [ top ]
The cost of many defensive weapons is reduced again. Also defensive ammunition is reduced in price.
Offensive weapons remained largely at the same level; some are slightly more expensive.
also some nuclear weapons are now more expensive, this was discussed here several weeks ago.
Some defensive weapons are more effective. The changes are aimed at improving the balance between the defensive and offensive armies.
Some military units increased in size. A small number decreased in size. The setup process of military units allows you to make wide range choices of the weapons you want in the unit.
as a result, some units can be smaller and in fact, some units are obsolete.
Corporations keep increasing their sizes. Several types of corporations now employ more workers and managers to continue trying to limits the number of corporations game wide.
Natural resources corporations cannot be moved from one country to another. Before, you could for example, move an oil company to another country and all underground deposits of oil, were supposed to move along with the corporation.
Air transport units are only resupplied when they are called for action. This resulted in many error messages about the shortage of materials in these units. The messages are now removed. The supplies are delivered as before, when the unit is called for a transport.
The feature was requested and it was done. it did not make it into this upgrade. It will be included in the next one. The upgrade is now installed on KB. It will be installed on all other worlds after the current month run is completed.
A new tab is added to the Natural resources page. It is called: "Top 100".
It shows the top 100 countries that have the most natural resources in the world. It also has a link to directly show the list of available resources and by clicking on the country name, you get to see the country home page. You can also decide to purchase the country and you could decide to conquer the country.
It is now much easier to find countries with many natural resources.
460. Preventing large corrections in employment [ top ]
The max numbers of workers that are involved in any possible corrections or movements between groups, is now much lower than before. Extreme cases of moving workers between groups should not occur.
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.
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.
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.
471. Defensive ammunition - mainly missiles [ top ]
The basic price of several types of defensive missiles is reduced a bit to lower the cost of defence. The price you pay depends however on the market and will fluctuate with supply and demand.
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.
Some corporations now employ more workers. This is the trend for a long time. The changes are not very large. They will result, in the long run, in a smaller number of corporations. The number of corporations should decline in view of growing population. Also the management of very large corporations numbers is time consuming.
We have increased the base price of nuclear weapons, launchers and their maintenance. The intention is to increase the cost or nukes and increase their power.
We will not do this in a single change but rather execute this in several steps.
The trigger is a discussion on the forum. We agree that nukes should have a larger effect, will become more expensive and destructive and the use of nuclear weapons should have consequences to the country responsible for its use.
We have fixed a bug in sneak attacks that made the war level of the attacker visible. The war level is something you may want to know after a sneak attack but we have removed it because in some cases, it can immediately reveal the identity of the attacker.
Several documents have been updated. More were updated in the past weeks and the effort will continue. Also hints are being updated. They should become shorter and easier to understand. The next upgrade will have many updated hints.
This update is now done on KB only. It will be deployed on the other worlds in the coming hours.
480. Casualties in war (already updated several days ago) [ top ]
The number of casualties in wars is increased, both the number of dead and the number of wounded people. the number depends on the damage to the target, by nuclear or non nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons frequently destroy a city in one single strike. The casualties are then larger than after most non-nuclear attacks.
An error in the common market pages, similar to the one in federations, is now fixed. When you look into the details of a certain common market, you get the correct data.
Most corporations will see their profits increase. The profit depends on market prices for products, and for natural resources, but on average, the profits will increase a bit. this includes natural resources corporations that are now producing slightly more than before.
The range of defence helicopters and defensive missiles is now increased and documented. Before, these weapons were always effective, due to an exception in the software, independent of the distance but the documents were not showing the correct data.
The code is not changed but will never be activated because the range will always be sufficient.
In time, we would like to reduce the range of defence helicopters. It is long term, will be announce ahead of time and will be very gradual.
We expect population rates to rise a bit. Declines in countries with many people may continue due to smaller numbers in the lower age groups. This will stabilize in time.
485. Cost of Government (This too is several days old) [ top ]
The general cost of government is declining in empires. it declines more in small empires, up to 9 countries but also in larger ones.
C3 countries are reset from time to time to move them back to the standard start conditions for new players.
Many of these C3 countries have in fact too many corporations and after the reset, the population is unable to sustain them, resulting an many corporation running at small hiring and production percentages.
This is not helpful for beginners. It is impossible for them to understand what happens, corporations close, they suffer losses.
We are now closing more corporations when these countries are reset. We want them to be able to run the remaining corporations at 100% and make profits (independent of the beginners support features).
The changes are now in place and we will observe how c3 countries look after a reset. It is hard to predict, it depends also on non state corporations that are not being closed.
We have added many hints and completed the description of others. we are also updating existing ones, there are many, to be shorter. Nobody reads more than three words....
An error in the federation section is fixed. When trying to inspect details about any federation, the page showed the countries in the federation and other data about your own federation, not the one you were looking at. it is now working correctly.
When ordering products, the max quality is 330. When you create automatic settings, the max quality was 300. we now allow the automatic settings to be set to 330.
Changes in the financial index are now a bit slower. Before, the financial index was subject to a major change in the first month of each year. The change does take place as before, but it takes several game moths before it is fully materialized.
Many types of weapons and ammunition are now a bit cheaper. The cost reduction, like many before, is not very large but it adds up to many previous reductions. The trend will continue.
The maintenance cost for empires is reduced, especially for empires of up to 7 or 8 countries. The change is not large but with recent changes, allowing for easier buildup of empires, the cost reduction will make it easier to maintain such empires.
We are continuing the update of many documents. We are also trying to make the hints on many pages clearer and shorter. This is a major effort and will be done in stages, gradually improving the documentation set.
also defence cost declined a bit with the upgrade. the decline is the result of the reduction in price of some materials used in the army and a decline in the cost of some ammunition types.
It is now possible to have up to four enterprises in each world. The number used to be two enterprises in each world.
There is probably no wide need for more enterprises. The main reasons can be to have more private corporations owned by your own enterprises in your own countries. Another reason, for large players, is the possibility to have more enterprise owned corporations in your account.
When searching for a country for a specific natural resource, you can now click on the country name and see the country home page.
502. Small increase in the number of workers [ top ]
Several defence related corporations now hire some more workers than before. These corporations continue to hire smaller numbers compared to non-defence related corporations.
The change is one of many, intended to manage the growth (decline) in the numbers of corporations in all worlds.
The feature is now completed. The missing page allowing you to find where resources are is completed.
You can now click on any of the natural Resources and get a list of all countries where the resource is located and the amount of product in the ground.
504. Changing corporations to produce a different product [ top ]
The possibility to change the output product of a corporations does not extend to natural resources.
A corporation producing oil, cannot switch to producing Aluminum. This is now corrected.
The "remaining material" data block in corporations is now showing on the pages of mining corporations only. Before, it was on all corporations’ pages.
We have made some changes to the corporations’ model to ensure they keep making healthy profits despite a possible higher price of mining products.
We will keep monitoring corporations and may introduce more small updates while allowing mining products to become more expensive if shortages increase.
A new system is introduced to manage natural resources in all countries.
A description of the feature is placed on the forum and on the Nat. Resources page.
The page link is placed under the Indexes button on the header of the country page.
One of the functions, allowing you to find countries where a specific resource can be found, is under construction and will be added within one week.
In the first hours, existing raw materials corporations will show an error message, warning that the corporation will close for lack of resources.
This message is wrong and will disappear after another month is processed. This will be at about 11 am EST.
All corporations have now an added data block showing the remaining resource the corporation can mine. The data block is only relevant for natural resource producing corporations and shows the remaining product.
The data block is also showing on all other corporations, showing zero remaining product. This data block is not relevant for non-natural resources corporations and will be removed later this week.
FB is intended to be a war world. We are protecting new players on FB from war for an initial period but as it stands now, players in war levels 0-2 remain protected.
We will change this and move every player on FB to war level 3 after an initial period of 60 days.
This change will take place in the first days of November.
Players on FB, have chosen for a war world. They now have another two weeks to check their army and prepare for an eventual war.
Temporary war protection remains possible, also on FB. It is not a long-term solution but can be used in periods when you are not available to play the war game.
More reductions in the price of many weapons and ammunition will reduce the cost of the army and the cost of war. This happened before, several times and has gradually reduced the cost of war by 50% or more.
C3 countries could not build some types of corporations. We prevented them from building nuclear industries and some related products.
This limitation is now abandoned. C3 countries can build all types corporations.
This is part of an effort to remove and reduce limitations of all kinds. In this case, the inability of C3 countries to build such corporations, and the too small number of such corporations, caused very large shortages. Despite the increased profitability, very few players have created such corporations and shortages increased on all worlds.
C3 countries have already begun to build these corporations and we expect the large shortages to be reduced. C3 corporations build only if the shortages are very high.
Once shortages are reduced to more acceptable levels, C3 countries will probably move away and build other types of corporations where the shortages are more severe.
We are preparing for a change that will probably make it possible to start a war against a C3 country at war level 3 for strategic reasons.
Such wars will not result in a financial gain but will make it possible to gain control of a country far away to create a strategic advantage.
Fighting against a C3 country at level 3 does not produce any financial gain any more. We will test the results and may tune the process if needed.
513. Wars against countries with a lower or higher war level [ top ]
As we have written before, it is now easier to start wars against countries on FB world, where the war level difference is up to 9 levels. This will change in the next update to a difference of 14 war levels.
We have also added a new C3 country war level 22. It won’t be trivial to win such a war.
The process of lowering the cost of weapons continues at a slow pace. This time, the cost many weapons and types of ammunition is slightly reduced. It includes some strategic weapons and more will follow next time.
Nothing much is changed in this area but we think that there is some confusion. We explain this again.
Countries that are owned by a beginner/free player, have a population level of between 12 or even 10 million to 15 million. The population grows fast at the start, with large population donations when new players login. After the initial period, the growth of the population continues at a very slow level and will probably level off at the level of about 15 million. Such countries, in some cases, have a larger population but will in time return to the published range.
Once a free player becomes a full member, population growth becomes much high and population will grow quickly.
We expect the population of full members to reach a level of 80 to 100 million and then level off.
Higher numbers are possible. Right now, it can be done by purchasing population for gold coins. This feature is always available but requires gold coins.
We are planning a new feature that will increase the potential growth of the population to higher levels, depending on other parameters. This will be announced and explained at a later stage.
The numbers mentions here may vary from numbers in the past. The way population growth works is quite complex and does not allow exact predictions. We are learning, as you do, from observations.
We know how the process works but it is hard to predict where it will end.
When searching for a country for a specific natural resource, you can now click on the country name and see the country home page.
518. Small increase in the number of workers [ top ]
Several defence related corporations now hire some more workers than before. These corporations continue to hire smaller numbers compared to non-defence related corporations.
The change is one of many, intended to manage the growth (decline) in the numbers of corporations in all worlds.
The feature is now completed. The missing page allowing you to find where resources are is completed.
You can now click on any of the natural Resources and get a list of all countries where the resource is located and the amount of product in the ground.
520. Changing corporations to produce a different product [ top ]
The possibility to change the output product of a corporations does not extend to natural resources.
A corporation producing oil, cannot switch to producing Aluminum. This is now corrected.
The "remaining material" data block in corporations is now showing on the pages of mining corporations only. Before, it was on all corporations’ pages.
We have made some changes to the corporations’ model to ensure they keep making healthy profits despite a possible higher price of mining products.
We will keep monitoring corporations and may introduce more small updates while allowing mining products to become more expensive if shortages increase.
A new system is introduced to manage natural resources in all countries.
A description of the feature is placed on the forum and on the Nat. Resources page.
The page link is placed under the Indexes button on the header of the country page.
One of the functions, allowing you to find countries where a specific resource can be found, is under construction and will be added within one week.
In the first hours, existing raw materials corporations will show an error message, warning that the corporation will close for lack of resources.
This message is wrong and will disappear after another month is processed. This will be at about 11 am EST.
All corporations have now an added data block showing the remaining resource the corporation can mine. The data block is only relevant for natural resource producing corporations and shows the remaining product.
The data block is also showing on all other corporations, showing zero remaining product. This data block is not relevant for non-natural resources corporations and will be removed later this week.
FB is intended to be a war world. We are protecting new players on FB from war for an initial period but as it stands now, players in war levels 0-2 remain protected.
We will change this and move every player on FB to war level 3 after an initial period of 60 days.
This change will take place in the first days of November.
Players on FB, have chosen for a war world. They now have another two weeks to check their army and prepare for an eventual war.
Temporary war protection remains possible, also on FB. It is not a long-term solution but can be used in periods when you are not available to play the war game.
More reductions in the price of many weapons and ammunition will reduce the cost of the army and the cost of war. This happened before, several times and has gradually reduced the cost of war by 50% or more.
C3 countries could not build some types of corporations. We prevented them from building nuclear industries and some related products.
This limitation is now abandoned. C3 countries can build all types corporations.
This is part of an effort to remove and reduce limitations of all kinds. In this case, the inability of C3 countries to build such corporations, and the too small number of such corporations, caused very large shortages. Despite the increased profitability, very few players have created such corporations and shortages increased on all worlds.
C3 countries have already begun to build these corporations and we expect the large shortages to be reduced. C3 corporations build only if the shortages are very high.
Once shortages are reduced to more acceptable levels, C3 countries will probably move away and build other types of corporations where the shortages are more severe.
We are preparing for a change that will probably make it possible to start a war against a C3 country at war level 3 for strategic reasons.
Such wars will not result in a financial gain but will make it possible to gain control of a country far away to create a strategic advantage.
Fighting against a C3 country at level 3 does not produce any financial gain any more. We will test the results and may tune the process if needed.
529. Wars against countries with a lower or higher war level [ top ]
As we have written before, it is now easier to start wars against countries on FB world, where the war level difference is up to 9 levels. This will change in the next update to a difference of 14 war levels.
We have also added a new C3 country war level 22. It won’t be trivial to win such a war.
The process of lowering the cost of weapons continues at a slow pace. This time, the cost many weapons and types of ammunition is slightly reduced. It includes some strategic weapons and more will follow next time.
Nothing much is changed in this area but we think that there is some confusion. We explain this again.
Countries that are owned by a beginner/free player, have a population level of between 12 or even 10 million to 15 million. The population grows fast at the start, with large population donations when new players login. After the initial period, the growth of the population continues at a very slow level and will probably level off at the level of about 15 million. Such countries, in some cases, have a larger population but will in time return to the published range.
Once a free player becomes a full member, population growth becomes much high and population will grow quickly.
We expect the population of full members to reach a level of 80 to 100 million and then level off.
Higher numbers are possible. Right now, it can be done by purchasing population for gold coins. This feature is always available but requires gold coins.
We are planning a new feature that will increase the potential growth of the population to higher levels, depending on other parameters. This will be announced and explained at a later stage.
The numbers mentions here may vary from numbers in the past. The way population growth works is quite complex and does not allow exact predictions. We are learning, as you do, from observations.
We know how the process works but it is hard to predict where it will end.
The strategic navy unit is updated and now includes all navy weapons. It is also made larger and includes about 40% more weapons. The size should not be changed faster and more such changes will follow. We expect that unit to end up about twice its previous size.
In addition, we have made it possible to fully customize the navy units. It is now possible to exclude any navy weapon you want and customize the navy to your preferences. The maximum numbers are larger, as explained before but will be increased further to allow for more choices when you set up the unit.
More changes to the price of weapons and ammunition will further reduce the cost of war in general. The cost of any types of weapons and ammunition is now lower.
Maximum quantities of some products that can be stored in a country are increased The amount of products a country can store was too limited for some products and it is now increased. We assume that the problems, as discussed on the forum are now resolved.
We had a problem with the total death number that showed a number that was not the real total. It was the real number for the previous month. The problem is now resolved.
Some corporation types increased in size slightly. They produce a little more, use more workers and also use some more raw materials. This is a next step in an effort to slow down or even stop the number of corporations, game wide, from become a long term problem. Also some tuning of the use of infrequently used products to increase the number of corporations per world, producing such products. We would like to have at least 20 corporations producing each product in each world. We still have some that are under this limit.
In some countries, it was impossible to show the population page because of an erroneous value. Most were C3 countries and they did not complain. The problem is resolved anyway because the situation could occur in other countries too.
Many weapons and types of ammunition became cheaper with this upgrade. For some the change is significant. The reduction is across many weapons and ammo, not only defensive ones.
This is another step in reducing the cost of war. Some types of weapons remained unchanged and will be updated with the next upgrade.
The number of soldiers and officers in the army is also reduced by a small percentage.
The weapon and ammunition corporations remain very profitable despite the price reductions. The defence industry corporations employ a much smaller number of workers compared with non-defensive industries. The numbers are about 50% while the expected profit is nearly at the same level as in non-military corporations.
Some defensive products now have a wider range of pricing when shortages occur and the corporations can become very profitable.
538. Bug fixed - updating public user data [ top ]
A problem with the updating of the public data record is now resolved.
539. Shoes are added as a new product in Simcountry [ top ]
Shoes are only used as a consumption product, bought by the populations. Countries and enterprises can now store Shoes and real consumption numbers will start showing up after a day or so.
The market can be unstable in the initial days. The gamemaster is adding some Shoes to the market to prevent initial problems.
The aging process of cargo shuttles did now work correctly to the end. Many shuttles aged (by use and by time elapsed) but remained hanging in there and where not removed when expired.
This caused the number of cargo shuttles, game wide, to increase into very high levels. In fact, several thousand expired or nearly expired shuttles remain in the galaxy.
Cargo movements are updated very frequently and the processing of large numbers, checking if they have moved, aging, location etc. became a time-consuming issue.
We have noticed that the server where the cargo shuttles reside is becoming too busy. This happens to be our portal server.
With the fixing of the problem, we expect that many older cargo shuttles will disappear in the coming 2 to 3 months.
More changes will be released in the coming days. We intend to increase the number of smaller upgrades, starting at the middle of September.
We are updating some pages in Simcountry. The aim is to streamline some long ones. Make them easier to use and look nicer.
Some functions are spread of too many pages and can be improved. This process will continue for a long time and gradually transform the user interface.
Countries without a president have a population of between 13 and 15 millions. Countries belonging to free accounts will see their population grow to around 20 Millions.
Population growth in these countries is slow and it stops when the population reaches the maximum levels.
Full member countries have a much higher population growth rates. These rates depend on the size of the population. They are very high at the level of 20 to 40 millions. The growth is gradually reduced with the growth of the population. Full member countries can reach a population level of 100 to 150 millions, depending on the health care system in the country and its welfare.
Countries with more than 100 millions can also see population declines. These depend on the health care system, the welfare level and on the age distribution in the country.
Migration is also increasing in numbers. The welfare levels in countries will cause larger fluctuations in the migration numbers.
Small scale tuning is aimed at widening the use of some materials that are used in a very small number of other industries. Some other small changes are aimed at increasing the use of some materials that are hardly used at all. If the number of corporations producing a product declines under 15, the market can become dependent on A diminishing product and increasing production when needed, can take a long time.
We have looked into such products and tuned their usage up a bit to prevent instability.
Some corporations are becoming a bit larger. The aim here is to reduce the world wide number of corporations which went out of control recently and became a problem in the processing of large numbers of corporations and their transactions.
In general, the number of corporations in each world is declining a bit or remaining stable.
We will continue a gradual increase in sizes which also makes it easier to manage countries and enterprises with a very large number of population and corporations.
New navigation features are added to the Simcountry app as part of a longer term push to improve the user experience and bring the feature set more in line with the desktop version. A navigation bar has been added to all relevant pages.
The population in countries without a president and the population in countries that belong to free accounts is limited. Population growth is also limited and these countries will have a total population under 20 million.
Once the account becomes a full membership account, population growth is boosted and numbers start growing much faster.
Larger population allows for fast economic growth and much better results.
New players who login into Simcountry get awarded during the first weeks with population boosts and Large donations of game money. The monthly budget of their countries is also supported with external cash to prevent shortages.
In time, both budget contributions and other special presents are fading and the country is on its own.
548. Data base issues in Simcountry – all resolved [ top ]
Several weeks ago we have mentioned the large size of some database tables in Simcountry and the intensive processing required each game month to process all transactions.
In the meantime, we had a “soft landing” and all extreme sizes and excessive numbers have receded. The main reason for this is the return to “normality” of both populations and corporations in all worlds, smaller numbers of corporations that produce more and population in free countries returning to their normal range.
The reduction in the number of corporations was achieved but tuning countries without presidents to close corporations that were producing at a very low level for too long. This resulted in many closed corporations. Other corporations in these countries were able to increase hiring while not creating new corporations as long as hiring is not at 100%.
Some types of corporations increased their production slightly, and their hiring too, reducing unemployment and the need to create new corporations.
The game core has been updated as we have announced before.
The base score is reduced. Dependency on the population numbers is increased. The welfare index is more important and having war protection switched off, too.
The page describing different factors in the score will be updated in the game update next week.
The score is slow to change to prevent last minute fast changes before the end of each month.
Birth rates are tuned down a bit to reduce run away population numbers. Birth rates are reduced more substantially in countries without a president and in free playing countries.
Cargo shuttles stopped aging at some point. The process is now fixed and cargo shuttles become older and disappear. The process is very slow. Do not expect many cargo shuttles to disappear any time soon.
Corporations in C3 countries are now closed a bit faster if they fail to perform and produce at a very low level. This will allow other corporations in these countries to increase their production and make it possible for these countries to start new corporations producing materials that are in short supply.
The population in free playing countries is now at a level close to 20 million. C3 countries population is being reduced a bit more.
Countries owned by full members have a robust population growth that is gradually tunes down with the increase of the population and will stabilize around 100 M or less.
Some corporations use of workers has been updated to increase the number of LLWs and reduce the number of MLWs and HLWs corporations hire.
The change was mentioned in a discussion on the forum in recent days.
As a result, all countries will see some changes in employment, that will further correct the traditional shortages of HLWs and MLWs and surpluses of LLWs.
It will take several days for the dust to settle and we will then check again if this is sufficient.
The aim here is to reduce (not eliminate) the need for manual conversions of workers. That feature remains important but should not be needed everywhere all the time.
Birth rates are declining a bit in high population countries. The birth rate always declined with growth of the population and was highest in very small countries.
This remains of course but the break even point declines a bit.
It was increased to correct a problem with declining population several months ago and Now returns to a lower pace. Population numbers however remain higher than they were in the past.
The birth rates in countries played by players who are not full member are becoming lower to help maintain Population levels around 20M. Once a player becomes full member, birth rates will increase and population levels will increase quickly. The 20M number is not new but it was hard to maintain while birth rates were very high as with other countries with low population levels.
We have introduced yet another round of increases in the size of some army units. This is part of an effort, requested by players, to increase the size of army units so that the number of units can decline,
reducing the complexity of managing very large numbers of military units. This is the third round of size increases. This time, many land units, all the air force units and the garrisons, all increased in size. The size increase is between 10 and 15%.
The price of many defensive weapons is reduced (again). Also this is done on request of players who would like to see the cost of defending their countries reduced. We agree on this issue and have reduced the cost of defensive materials several times in the past weeks.
Reductions must be small and corporations producing these weapons and ammunitions must be updated too to make sure they remain as profitable as before.
By now, the total of cumulating reductions may have reach 30% and more.
Some military units increased in size. This is the second such change in the past weeks and it is aimed at a reduction in the number of military units in an effort to make it easier to manage the army.
The changes are limited to the land divisions and air force units. The size of the units increased by about 10%.
Such changes have consequences for purchasing of weapons and ammunitions and should be small.
We plan to introduce some more increases in the size of units and extend such changes to more types of units.
The cost of weapons and ammunition is reduced again. Changes are not significant but are adding to recent ones. The main changes are in defensive weapons and defensive ammunition but also other weapons are affected.
These changes are the result of players requests to reduce the cost of the defence.
We had a long period of corrections to the population distribution among age groups in the past months. These changes are completed. We are now looking at the birth rates and are making small corrections to prevent “overheating” and wild growth.
The corrected population model will support population growth at higher levels than before. Currently, growth continues at very high levels and it will be tempered a bit.
We expect population levels to stabilize at about 100M. (a year ago the level was about 60M). Population will increase under that level and may stabilize, or decline at higher levels. Experience will show if this is correct. We cannot predict and will have to wait and see.
Birth percentages in Simcountry, depend on the number of children in the 0-4 year old group. Percentages decline as the numbers in that group increase.
Birth numbers however, depend on the number of people in the age groups between 18-21 and 35-40 years old.
Shortages of high level workers are now smaller than before and this upgrade includes an addition small correction. We also continue to diversify the raw materials needed in production.
Corporations that are managed reasonably, are very profitable. Corporations that produce weapons and materials have profits levels comparable to other corporations and they achieve this With a much smaller number of workers.
January 29, 2019
563. Cost of defensive weapons and ammunitions [ top ]
The cost of defensive weapons and ammo continues to decline and reduces both the cost of purchasing weapons and ammo and the maintenance cost of the army. The army is using cheaper ammunition for training.
The changes are not large but will continue.
Corporations producing such products maintain their profitability despite the price reductions. They compensate by either producing a little more or by using smaller quantities of raw materials.
We are trying to find out what the max population number is if a country does not purchase any population Externally.
Growth becomes slower as the population grows and stabilizes at some level. High levels of health care strongly influence the numbers too.
This used to be around 60 million in the past. It is much higher now and we see growth at 120M. There is no way to compute this and we will continue to watch the numbers to find out.
Death rates settled at a lower level than before recent updates and strongly depend on the health care index. In a country with a healthcare index slightly higher than 200 (very high and expensive), life expectancy increased beyond 100 years.
We think that life expectancy should be a factor in the main score.
The price of all defensive weapons and ammunition is reduced. The reduction is around 10% of the medium price and will influence the maximum price possible when there are shortages and the minimum price possible when there is oversupply.
The real price will of course depend on the market.
The corporations producing these products retain their profitability level and will not suffer any long term reduction in profitability.
Our intension is to reduce the price of defensive weapons even lower but large drops could cause problems on the market. We will make more reductions in the coming weeks.
The size of several military units is increased 10 to 15%. The increase is aimed at a long term reduction in the number of military units in countries. If each unit is larger and more powerful, the country could probably do with a smaller number which is easier to manage.
The large land divisions are now about 10% larger. All air force units, offensive and defensive are now also about 10 to 15% larger.
Changes in the size of military units have consequences for the need for ammunition and other materials and must Be done at a slow pace. A next upgrade will increase the size more, and will extend to more types of military units.
C3 countries, depending on their war levels, also have military units and these units Are also increased in size.
All interventions in correcting the distribution of the population in the age groups are fading away. The correction is completed. Death rates and the Health Index
Death rates have been reduced in the last months and the dependency of the death rates on the health index is slightly increased.
We have experimented with the Health Index in a country with a population of about 115M. We have increased the health index in the country to about 215. The death rate declined in all age groups and it looks like it will end just under 1% with a life expectancy of about 100 years.
Yet another update to accommodate countries with larger population. Population growth partially depends on the size of the populations. In the past, when the population increased above 60 or 70 million, growth declined and the population became stable. At higher levels, the age distribution changed gradually and the average age of the population increased.
In the past months, we have made several small but incremental changed that in time repaired the population model but at the same time increased the growth potential and population keeps growing at much higher levels.
The game update today will increase the birth rates some more and increase the potential of countries To achieve even higher population numbers.
The death rates have been reduced several times in the past months reducing the percentage of the older population and making countries more profitable in the process.
This update adds a little more to that trend. All changes are quite small.
Small scale tuning of corporations, slightly increasing the size of some corporations and reducing the use of high level workers to cut long time shortages. Also this was done already recently.
You may see some more low level workers being employed and some decrease in the numbers of employed high level workers. Hopefully, the need to convert workers to balance the work force will be reduced. We do not want to make large changes and after evaluating the results, we may need to repeat this.
Several changes have been made to the simcountry app. The User Interface has been simplified in several places and text improved. The in-app help bubbles have been updated with new shorter texts.
Another upgrade is increasing the birth rate slightly again. This change might be the last one as we are close to a reasonable rate of growth. Death rates are a bit lower and the decline continues.
We expect birth rates to significantly exceed death rates in all countries with population up to 120M or even more. We expect a lower growth in countries with more population, up to 150M and probably a stable population number or even a slight decline if the population is at about 200M.
This is a long term expectation. We will keep following the numbers and may need another small correction later.
There will be no upgrades involving the population in the coming month or two.
We have checked many corporation types, their hiring and profitability to make sure market situation is not harming the economies of the worlds. We have made very small changes to some low tech corporations and improved their probability for profitability.
Recent updates of the population structure corrected imbalances that accumulated over a long period. However, in many countries the number of youths in the age groups 0 to 21 continues to lag behind the older age groups. The problem is smaller than it was before. If left as is, we could expect population declines to continue or resume.
This current upgrade is a further step to correct the imbalance.
Death rates are updated slightly. The numbers of retired people will probably decline a bit in the long run. It will be more proportionate to the total population and also reduce the cost of social security.
Birth rates will increase gradually in most countries.
The result of this change (as with previous ones) will be the increase in the percentage of young people in the country. It will help to prevent the decline of the population in the long run. The aim is to restore the capacity of the population in general, to maintain required levels in all age groups.
Corporations in Simcountry are very profitable and produce enough profits to enable countries To make sufficient profits and grow.
In recent months however, we see more exceptions, and more products that are in oversupply.
Although we had such periods before and the markets are very hard to predict, we think that the creation of new corporations might have gone a bit too far. We have recently seen the numbers of corporations break records never seen before. The worldwide recent changes in population may have contributed.
We have tuned procedures by a fraction. This may help temper the creation of new corporations. The changes are small and will not change the profitability of the corporations. You may witness a slightly larger number of LLWs and MLWs being hired while the number of professionals needed will decline a bit.
Slight changes in some types of corporations will make them hire a bit more. The profitability of corporations will not be affected.
Recently, on two of our worlds, the number of corporations passed a critical mile stone that could have adverse effect on performance. Slightly increasing sizes will slow down this trend.
changes are small.
August 29, 2018
This document includes changes that are 2 weeks old. The previous update took place on Aug. 14, 2018 but unfortunately, no game news were published at that time.
Crimson One should have started running by August 1. Unfortunately, the number of interested players is very close to zero. Crimson One represents a major development effort that took several months to complete and was done to answer once and for all, the requests for a place where unrestricted wars can take place.
We had long discussions on the forum about the war process and how it should be liberalized and make war possible without any protection, and back to “what is has been before”. This is now done, but interest is extremely limited.
We will keep registration open for Crimson One for a longer period and see if more players become interest. We will start it if at least 25 players are registered. If nothing happens for two more months, we will repay those who registered their gold coins back.
More war levels added to Simcountry. The highest war level is now 18. We intend to add more levels in the coming weeks and months. There are very few players reaching these war levels but it should remain possible. These war levels carry large awards in gold coins and game money.
Population birth rates are too low and the population in countries with very large population numbers tend to decline. Many have asked us to improve this and we have promised to do so in several stages.
We have increased birth rates and reduced death rates in the previous upgrade on Aug. 14. The change had a good effect and the numbers are now more reasonable but as we said before, it is hard to predict what the full effect would be.
Two weeks later, the full effect is visible and we are now introducing a next stage, increasing birth rates again and reducing death rates. Results should become visible on the birth and death rate graphs on the population page. It will kick in immediately and its effect will increase in time. We expect the full effect to become visible after one week.
Death rates can be reduced in every country by improving the health index. We have now increased the influence of the health index on the death numbers twice (Aug. 14 and today) and the result should be visible immediately.
Increasing the health index requires more hospitals, doctors and nurses and increases the cost for the country. It does result in much lower death numbers, keeps more workers alive and working, but it also increases the number of retired citizens and the cost of social services to support that group. The choice is yours.
We have recently added more raw materials to the production process of many products in Simcountry. The reason for these changes is that some materials are only used in the production process of only one or two products and it makes them unstable if the market for these products shows sudden changes. Corporations that depend on only very few buyers can then bankrupt very quickly.
To prevent disruptions to the production process, we have a gradual introduction process of new raw materials to existing corporations. Preventing shortages that can disrupt production. We have done so in the past two upgrades and have increased gradually the use of the new raw materials.
This is a good improvement in stabilizing the markets and we are looking for more products that are being produced by a very small number of corporations and used by very few.
We have added a new ranking system to all worlds for the best “War Lord”. Everyone starts with no points. Winning a war against another player and adding the country into your empire will deliver 100 points. Winning the war and NOT adding the country into the empire will deliver 25 points. Losing a war against another player will deliver -10 points.
Two new boosters are now available both on the desktop application and in the Simcountry APP. One booster allows you to directly exchange gold coins for game money. The other booster allows you to increase the population of your country for gold coins. These boosters are needed for the new “War competition world”. We decided to implement them on all the worlds.
This function allows countries to exchange people between countries, both within their own empire but also with any other country in the same world. The function remains unchanged but a country must have at least 12 million population to use it. We have seen countries that had population under 6 million which triggered rescue functions to make sure they do not collapse.
New corporations need many workers, and in some cases players (mainly new players), did not understand. that when there are no workers they should stop building new corporations. Building new corporations by new players, now requires that at least 50% of the needed workers are available in all workers groups.
589. Required Game Levels when Building New Corporations [ top ]
Each corporation requires a minimum qualification in terms of game levels. Building High tech corporations requires a higher game level than building an agricultural corporation. We have now improved the checking of game levels and require the level as shown on the Corporate building page.
As of today, war level 14 is available. Reaching war level 14 gives you 390 gold coins on FB and 250 on the other worlds. It also leaves 22T in cash in the conquered country. More war levels will be added soon.
The cost of maintenance, the cost of weapons and of government facilities are all reduced. The result will be a lower monthly cost for the country and a lower cost for setting up new facilities.
Two products, Trucks and rubber are now used in the production process of more corporations. This increases the market size and will help in stabilizing the use of these two products. The quantities are small to prevent shortages in these corporations and will grow steadily in the coming weeks.
We may do the same for more products that are used as raw materials in a very small number of corporations.
Simcountry will now notify you if a country is almost expired or expired. You can now choose to receive a notification if a war is lost.
To receive the notifications, you need to have the Simcountry app on your phone/mobile device. The App can be downloaded free of charge from both the Apple store and the Google game store.
All types of ammunition, both defensive and Offensive are now further reduced in price. The corporations producing these products are maintaining their profitability. Also the cost of maintenance for the army is further reduced.
These changes are intended to make war more affordable and are part of more upcoming changes in the war game.
Reacting to a suggestion by players we are looking at the use of some products in Simcountry that are used in a very limited way. We have added trucks as a required product in the production process of more industries and also added rubber as a raw material in more types of corporations.
These changes require a soft introduction to protect the corporations that will use these products. They will now start purchasing small quantities but will not use them. The next upgrade will start increasing the use of these products.
We will look into more products with a very small market.
When winning a war against a C3 country, your country will move into the next war level. Winning the war, already delivered a much larger amount of cash in the conquered country. As of today, the number of gold coins you win is also increased in all the worlds but mainly on FB.
Beginners support functions, if turned on, will now help many more countries. It is in fact an "easy mode" that will help you to develop your country. It can be best used by beginners and if you enlarge your empire, it can be used to improve the new countries in the empire. It can also be used if you are not able to play for a week or two and will try to prevent the country from declining too much.
The support functions do not make large changes but they consistently make improvements and over time, bring the country to a much better condition.
The cost of weapons maintenance is reduced and will reduce the total cost of defence each month. The decline is reached by a reduction in the cost of maintenance products. A reduction in the cost of ammunition, both defensive and offensive and a reductions in the cost of some weapons. The number of soldiers and officers needed in fortifications and defensive bases and military airports is also reduced.
Following a serious crash on KB that ended with full repair, we have improved our system checks and warning To help prevent such problems, and others, in the future.
All C3 wars will now move you to the next war level. The conquered C3 countries now have a much larger cash reserve you can use to develop the newly conquered country Or take it out of the country into your account or into other countries or enterprises you own.
Several problems in the App are now resolved and its functioning is much improved. Much more will be added and improved in the App in the coming weeks and months.
War can now be declared from within the Simcountry App. We plan to update the way war damage points are assigned and reduce the dependency on invading of the enemy country with military units (painting territory). This will be part of a next upgrade.
It is now easier for a New/Free player to wage more wars.
After conquering a country, a next war was not possible because a free account can have a maximum of two countries. Removing one country did not always reduce the count to 1 and war remained impossible. As of this upgrade, when you remove a country from your empire, the empire number of countries is updated immediately and you can start another war.
The price of weapons and ammunitions is reduce (again). This time, the reduction is by 10 to 20%. The aim is to further reduce the cost of war, also increase the production of such products and make it attractive to produce them.
We expect the number of corporations producing such each type of a weapon or ammo, to increase a bit. This is essential if such products must be available when you need them.
Weapons and ammunitions are profitable to produce. The corporations turn good profits while the number of workers is about 25% of the number of workers in other types of corporations. The weapon maintenance corporations use such products more than before and numbers of corporations producing war materials is expected to grow.
Nuclear weapons are now on the market in all worlds and can be produced anywhere. The cost of such weapons is reduced recently and reduced again in this current update.
All premium members can purchase nuclear weapons. Game level 4 is required if you want to set up your own nuclear weapons corporations.
The cost of many weapon and ammunition types is reduced again, this time the reduction is quite steep, making it easier to build up an army. Also production levels in war related corporations increased a bit so that more products become available on the market.
The maintenance of the major weapon systems, bases, and nuclear weapons is reduced. In most countries, the cost of defence will probably decline.
We have made corrections to the beginners support functions and made all these functions dependent on the automation settings. This was the intention from the start but with time, and with evidence of failing countries because of beginners errors, some became standard procedure for all countries.
We have now corrected the procedure and all support functions depend on the settings of the automation options. If you do not need any beginners support, you can go to the automation page and turn off whatever you want.
We advise beginners to keep the automation on. It is on by default when you start and it helps countries a lot, balancing the employment groups, adding money in some cases and helping in creating more work, increasing employment, health and education.
The beginners support functions, if turned on, work for countries in game levels 1-3.
Population growth is faster for countries with lower numbers of population. We have now lifted the limits, and growth will be faster and continue into higher population numbers.
At population levels of 70 or 80 millions, growth will depend more on the health index in the country and numbers can keep growing.
All this is true for premium accounts and growth can be accelerated by the purchase of additional population on the direct trading market.
For free accounts, population numbers will increase fast up to a population level of about 20.000.000. Growth will then stop and these countries will stay at around that number.
Free account countries with a population larger than 20.000.000, will see further declines and the number will settle at around 20.000.000.
Many small errors and some additional improvements are now part of the app. To have full advantage of the new features we advise you to download the latest version of the app.
As we have said before, waging war is now part of the app and the missing function, "War Declaration" will be added very soon.
There are more missing functions in the Simcountry app and we will add them ASAP. work is in progress to complete such functions and they will be added in the coming weeks.
The score depends on many factors, including game level and premium membership. The score advantage for full members is increased and the difference can reach 500 score points more than before. The game level advantage is increased by 30 points per game level.
Changes in the score are not immediate and can take up to 10 days to materialize. Boosting the game level of a country higher in the last days of the month, may be too late If intended to increase the score and win you awards.
Selenium is now traded on all worlds and corporations can be constructed by all players, game level 3 or higher. Before, production was limited to two worlds.
We plan opening the market for nuclear weapons to all premium members.
Setting up strategic corporations now requires game level 4. The limitation on setting up such corporations and the limitations on trade will be eliminated in the next upgrade.
We have upgraded the Simcountry app today to include fighting wars.
The new functions allow you to view the status of your wars on a mobile device, perform attacks and win a war from your phone or pad using the Simcountry app.
The added functions are extensive and include many war details, selecting targets, Selecting weapons for the attack, conducting attacks and they include all war reports in all details. You can view the results of the attacks you have carried out.
The only important function that is not yet included in the app yet is: War declarations.
Starting a war is only possible from the desktop. We will add the missing function ASAP.
There is no need to download the app again. If you already have the Simcountry app on your phone, you can just login and the new war functions will be part of the app.
Another round of tuning of some corporations will reduce the numbers of workers in upgraded corporations and will improve the profitability due to lower numbers of workers.
With efficiency upgrades becoming more meaningful in terms of numbers of workers, Some corporations are using a smaller number of workers and some are using more robotics products. In general, we expect a decline of up to 3% in the number of workers in the corporations in each country.
There is also some effort to increase the numbers of some types of corporations.
Some products are used in very small numbers and it creates volatility in the availability and pricing of these products. We would like to make sure that all products in all worlds are produced by at least 30 corporations. This will prevent large fluctuations if several such corporations are closed.
There are two ways to achieve this. Reduce production per corporation or increase the use of such products. We have used both methods but the changes are small.
Another step in the improvement of corporate profits further reduced the use of raw materials in some types of corporations that were not updated before. most of these corporations are producing weapons and ammunition.
These changes will result in higher profitability for many corporations and may also reduce some of the very high shortages of products in the market.
The entire change is not very significant and may account for 2-3% of the entire economy.
Corporations may increase the efficiency of their production process and as a result, they reduce the number of workers in the corporation, slightly increase the numbers of managers and high tech workers and increase the use of robotics products.
These efficiency upgrades are now more profitable than before for some of the corporations. The trend may be expanded to other types of corporations.
As a result of such changes, some fully upgraded corporations may see the number of low level and medium level workers decline by up to a total of 10.000 while the number of managers and high tech workers may increase by 1000 to 2000. Also the use of robotics products may increase in such corporations.
The net result is a reduction in the number of workers and increased profitability by up to 500M per game year.
During recent testing, we have seen a reduction of 2-3% in the number of workers in corporations in a certain country and we see the use of robotics growing in all worlds.
This change makes it very profitable to upgrade the efficiency of corporations. It also increases the possible number of corporations in a country with the available population numbers.
If you have setup modifications to create an in game message and You have downloaded the Simcounty APP You will automatically receive notifications on your mobile device/Phone.
All notifications that are selected to appear on your message system, will automatically notify you on your phone.
Currently it works on all Android platforms. We are waiting for the installation of the new APP in the Apple store.
625. New Notification Features added today [ top ]
It is now possible to add a notification to all your countries at once. or all your enterprises at once. when selecting the country to be notified, you can select "Any country" and the notification will be added to all your countries.
We will add more types of notifications and will extend the war related ones. Any ideas for notifications are welcome.
The notification features are also available in the Simcountry APP. you can use all the functions on your phone.
Many corporations will become more profitable. Some changes to the corporate model will make these corporations more profitable, mainly by reducing their costs.
This change will increase the income of countries and will also increase the market value of corporations.
We are also looking at severe shortages of materials in all the worlds. We think that some shortages will be reduced, The price range of products (the difference between the lowest price possible and max price setting for each product) should be extended.
We think that if products show very long term shortages, their price should increase more, making the corporations very profitable and attracting more players to create such corporations.
On the other hand, is there are surpluses, prices should go down further to the point of bankrupting the corporation. The country will then be able to replace these corporations with ones that can be more profitable.
players can of course preempt this by closing losing corporations or changing them to produce a different product.
It now includes all the older messages we used to have and it is located on the portal. All messages from all the worlds are now forwarded to the new messages system.
We have completed a major development to improve the notifications in Simcountry. You can now receive game notifications on your phone or any mobile device. The feature is now operational on Android platforms.
It is also submitted into the Apple store but the process there takes a little longer. we hope to have it within a week or so.
To get these notifications on your mobile device, you need to download the Simcountry app. Every notification you set up, and you request an in game message, will be sent automatically to your mobile device.
This development took more time to complete than anticipated but it is a major addition to Simcountry. Many types of events can be set up and you can receive warnings ahead of time that can spare you surprises when you log into the game.
It was essential to create this feature before major changes in the war game. It will make it possible for players to get detailed warnings about war declarations, attacks, shortages of materials etc.
The Simcountry Messages subsystem has been redesigned. The primary goal was to add "Messages" to the Simcountry App. As of today you can send messages to other players from the App as well as from the Website. The Messages subsystem will also show messages sent by the Gamemaster.
The Website and the App now share the same User Interface. In future updates the website and app will be brought closer together to expand the feature set available within the app.
The next Simcountry upgrade will add a 4th type of "Notification" to the game. Besides Facebook, Twitter and Email you can also schedule "Simcountry Message" notifications for important events in the game. Email and Message notification can also be scheduled from the App. Facebook and Twitter notifications can only be scheduled from the Website.
In addition, the next upgrade allows you to trigger App Notifications for messages you receive in the game. The App Notifications will popup on each device where you installed the Simcountry App. A new version of the Simcountry App will be available in the App Store to enable this new function.
We have recently and in the last upgrade, continued to introduce war related changes in preparation for a change in the war game to allow easier PvP wars. We have increased the size of air defence units but also the size of garrisons. Air defence units now have 200 interceptors and their missiles are more effective than before. Garrisons are larger and more large garrisons will be used in new countries. These changes will start to correct the imbalance of power between attack units and defensive ones.
632. The cost of the army and army maintenance [ top ]
The cost of many weapons, and mainly defensive ones is reduced. We have also reduced the maintenance cost of the army. As ammunition cost is declining and ammunition is used in the monthly maintenance of the army, the cost declines. We will continue these reductions in the cost of weapons and ammunition.
Other costs in countries are reduced too recently, including government cost, health and education.
633. The messaging system in Simcountry. Work in progress. [ top ]
The new messaging system will consolidate all messages on the portal and eliminate confusion about messages in the worlds and messages on the portal. There are currently too many message boxes.
The new messaging system will be available on the Simcountry website and on the Simcountry APP.
The notification system will be linked to messaging and allow you to set conditions for notifications on a mobile device when certain messages are received.
This could be war related, or messages from another player, or any other message indicating an event in the game.
We consider this important for the game in general but also essential in relation to the war game, alerting you to events during war.
All this is optional. Players can turn any type of notification on or off.
Our intention is to add more functions to the Simcountry APP that will allow players to use functions of the war game from their phone or other mobile device.
Another uptick in the value of fortifications in the defence of the country. On the other hand, we have again reduced the number of fortifications in countries where the numbers are >150. These countries were compensated for the value of the removed fortifications.
Defensive military units and Garrisons are now a bit larger. This is another small step in the effort to increase the defensive power of countries. Also the power of some defensive weapons is increased and some will fire more frequently during fighting.
Special units used to be very very small and used to clog maps. The cost is now increased a bit (They use more ammo for training) and these units will increase in size in the next upgrade and include two special unit weapons (currently 1).
At the end, these units will become more usable for the intended use and less usable as a way to clog maps.
We are trying to diversify the function of nuclear weapons, making them more usable against some targets and a little less against other targets and making them more different from each other. Details are in the weapons document.
638. Reduction in the cost of Education and Health [ top ]
Both costs are reduced a bit, due to reduction in the products used and the number of people working in schools, hospitals etc. This is part of an effort to reduce numbers and improve the profitability of countries.
Garrisons are now more like regular military units and invading forces cannot move past garrison as they could before.
642. Placing many map items on to of each other [ top ]
This practice was never intended on a large scale and the numbers are now limited. Some stacking must remain possible because many countries have more items/targets on the map than map cells in the country. When numbers decline, stacking could be limited even more. Current maps are not changed.
This is the third such change and the numbers of cities of all sizes continues to decline. This will reduce the numbers of items on maps and may, as we hope, reduce the time involved in wars.
some weapons are becoming stronger and some targets too. Some weapons can shoot more frequently resulting in more damage to targets. Fortifications are now a little harder to destroy but their numbers will decline. The changes are small.
Some defensive army units are becoming larger. and so do Garrisons. This is done to increase the defensive power of the army. The changes are small but may be repeated after we review some detailed war logs that will allow us to draw conclusions on the results of these changes.
We have added functions that collect data about numbers and types of units in each country and started collecting data on PvP wars, details of the number, and destructive power of attacks, losses on both sides etc.
The data will be used in future functions that will rank countries in their ability to fight PvP wars, and their track records while doing so.
646. Max number of countries with war protection in an empire on FB. [ top ]
The number is reduced to 10 several weeks ago. We will reduce the number to 8 early Thursday Sept. 27.
recent updates make it harder to force the price of shares to increase by placing share buy orders that cannot be completed because all the share owners are in fact one player and no shares are offered.
We have successfully limited such fake transactions and we let share values decline if there are no buyers or sellers and the PE values are beyond any realistic value.
The results are becoming visible on the share markets. More corporations now have reasonable Price Earning (PE) values and with it, also more realistic market values.
We have seen that the process works correctly and will make it a bit faster in the coming days.
An auto reactivation function for weapons is added to Simcountry. The feature can be set on or off. Once on, it will reactivate 10% of all weapons of each type once in a game month. If not turned off, everything will be reactivated within 10 game months.
The feature is done but NOT included today. It will be added tomorrow.
The cost of healthcare, education, transportation and government has declined today. The cost of government started declining in the past days and will continue at a slow pace in the coming days.
The maximum number of military bases and fortifications is now set as follows: Max 150 Fortifications. Max 80 military bases and airports of each type.
Countries with larger numbers of any type of these bases, will see a decline in the coming weeks at a slow pace. If a fortification or a military base is removed, the country will be financially compensated. ,br> Max numbers may decline further in the future.
652. Corporations Contracts for military bases and fortifications [ top ]
Corporations cannot sell military fixed assets to countries. The possibility to do so, allowed countries in the past, to have an arbitrary number of such items, surpassing any game max numbers. The possibility to do so is no more and numbers will not be able to increase beyond game settings.
This function (error correction) was completed and announced before but did not make it into the previous upgrade. It is now added to Simcountry.
654. Countries Trading with their own Corporations [ top ]
When countries trade weapons with their own corporations, they were able to only purchase active weapons from the country. From now on, they can purchase weapons from the reserves and when the reserves are insufficient, they can purchase from the activated weapons.
The function is used as before but the way it works is improved.
The temporary war protection feature is now limited to a maximum number of countries.
For now, the number on FB is 10 and it is very high on the other worlds.
However, we intend to gradually reduce the max number on FB in the coming weeks. When all the war updates are done, the max number of countries on FB that can be protected by temporary war protection will be reduced to one country.
Weapons entering a country from space stations or weapons that are delivered by direct contracts and sales (example: from your own enterprise) are now placed in the reserves.
If war is declared on your country, automatic reactivation will start and continue until all weapons are activated (provided the country have enough workers and medium level managers to join the army as soldiers and officers).
The reactivation can be stopped.
660. War Declarations and the start of the war [ top ]
The time between a war declaration and the start of the war is now restored to two full days as it was before. Worlds now run faster (6 game months each day) and the time was shortened.
It is now set to 12 game months.
Twelve game months will allow all weapons in the country to be automatically reactivated before the war starts.
Many corporations will become more profitable. Upgrading corporation?s efficiency is now more profitable, reducing the number of workers even more than before.
The process is applied in all weapon producing corporations and their work force is further reduced. More such changes will follow and will further reduce the number of workers in corporations, allowing president to add more corporations.
C3 wars may become a bit harder. This is a first step. In time, war levels will change and wining wars against C3 countries will have a different meaning in the game.
Cruise Missiles and Conventional missiles can be used from bases and their capabilities are now improved. More missiles will be fired in each attack with greater effect.
Some air force units are slightly larger while navies are slightly smaller.
There is a long time imbalance in the Power of these units and this change may be a first step in rebalancing them.
This is of course not possible on the real market but in Simcountry, you can be the main shareholder of the corporation, and control the fund which also holds some share while you also have the ability to offer to purchase or to sell shares.
We have introduced some corrections that will hopefully prevent some of the situations when share pricing went out of control.
We are in the process of adding new notifications to alert players to war declarations, attacks starting and more. The first additions will be part of the next upgrade.
More war features and small changes will be introduced in the next upgrade. These changes will include a further improvement in the capabilities of countries owned by new players.
Many weapon and ammunition producing corporations now employ a smaller number of people. There were several such changes before.� This will make it easier for countries to build such corporations.�
As a result, countries with many weapon producing corporations will see a reduction in employment and will be able to add new corporations.�
The change is not very large. we plan some more such changes but the end target is close.�
We see players, who increased their water treatment index to absurd levels (3000+). This has no effect at all as the system takes 2000 as a max and that too is already too high.� we are now removing a water system each game month and spare these countries both the manpower and the money.�
Efficiency upgrades reduce the number of workers, slightly increase the number of professionals in corporations and increase the use of Robotics.�
The numbers are now a little higher for many corporations, improving the profitability of corporations and reducing the number of workers even more than before.�
We want to make efficiency more important for corporations and we want it to bite deeper into the number of workers.�
The change will improve profitability in some corporations and reduce the overall number of workers, making it possible to build new corporations.�
We expect several rounds more of such changes. It is not possible to do it all at once.
Reduced numbers of workers in weapons and ammunition producing corporations
A further reduction in the number of workers in nearly all corporations producing weapons and ammunition, will free more workers and managers and make it possible for countries to build more corporations with the same population numbers. This is a further reduction following several previous ones and the end numbers are in sight. We do not expect any more large reductions but rather some corrections and reductions in several types of corporations that were not affected before.
Also the impact of having weapons and ammunition producing corporations in your country will be reduced and as their profitability is high, they could become more attractive to build.
The use of robotics is increased and many corporations will start using the product. The numbers remain small at this stage to prevent huge shortages on the markets but more robotics products will be used in the coming weeks and the number of corporations producing them will increase too.
Nuclear weapons can currently be used against a small number of targets, mainly fixed assets like cities and military bases and cause 100% destruction. They are not usable against many other targets and considered an overkill.
We are now looking at the entire functionality of these weapons, their use, targets and their price and may try to make them more attractive. There is also the additional issue of potential damage to neighboring countries. Although such weapons are unacceptable in the real world, they might be more acceptable in the game and contribute to a �do and don�t do� discussion.
As we have announced before, Robotics products are now added to Simcountry. The products are currently hardly used and there are no corporations that use them in the production process. However, Robotics products will be used as corporation�s efficiency is upgraded. The number of workers decreases with every additional efficiency upgrade and the use of Robotics will increase.
It is now possible to setup Robotics corporations in all worlds. The use of the products will start next week and will gradually increase. We expect Robotics to become a major product in Simcountry.
685. Increased use of previously introduced products [ top ]
All products that were introduced in the past several weeks are now used in larger quantities. There are already many corporations producing these products but we see shortages in all worlds.
686. War related corporations use fewer workers [ top ]
The number of workers in many war related corporations is decreased again. This means that countries with such corporations may now have more unemployed and can start more corporations in the country and increase their profitability.
War related corporations were always far too large. This was done to reduce the number of corporations in each world as very large numbers resulted in much slower processing. These days, with very large and fast servers, this is not a problem anymore. Many corporations can become a bit smaller and allow countries to increase the number of corporations.
687. Last week�s New products are now in use [ top ]
The four new products introduced last week are now being used although the quantities are small. The use of the products will increase in the coming weeks. The gradual introduction will prevent major changes to the markets and allow them to adapt to the new situation.
Strategic maintenance corporations consume many nuclear materials and are limited to Fearless Blue. The products will be used by any country holding nuclear weapons and ammunition but supplies of the strategic maintenance products will have to come from Fearless Blue. Simcountry has several ways to make that possible including space trading and transports between the 5 worlds.
The cost of maintenance will not increase. The new products are used instead of some of the products used in maintenance before. The use of services and military services will decline slightly. The corporations on Fearless Blue that are producing these products are very profitable.
689. Employment in Weapon & Ammunition Corporations [ top ]
Employment numbers in many weapons and ammunition corporations have been reduce a bit. The reduction makes it possible to reduce the cost of these products while keeping these corporations profitable. The unemployment numbers may increase slightly in countries producing weapons and ammunition and it may now become possible to increase the numbers of corporations in the country.
690. New Product is being prepared for introduction � Robotics [ top ]
Robotics products will be added to Simcountry in the coming weeks and will become very important in many corporations. Robotics products will be used in upgraded corporations only and their use will be linked to the upgrade level of the corporations. Each efficiency upgrade of a corporation is linked to a reduction in the number of workers, a small increase in the number of managers and engineers and in the future, increased use of Robotics. This change per upgrade is reducing the number of workers in the corporation and also increases its profitability.
The introduction of robotics into the upgrading process will eventually make robotics one of the largest products in Simcountry.
Space centers can now be destroyed in war. It is not easy but possible. The only weapons that can attack space centers is conventional long range missile. We may add more weapons to the mix at a later stage. Space centers can be protected with a garrison that includes antimissile batteries and a sufficient numbers of missiles.
In the past, airlifting required that the unit which is airlifted, should be fully supplies with supplies, fuel and ammunition. The requirement for ammunition is now dropped and units can be airlifted even if they are not fully supplied with ammunition.
Especially when moving units back to your country, full supply of ammunition is not necessary. The requirements for supplies and fuel remain.
We have made another small round of reductions in the number of workers in corporations. The main changes are in weapon producing corporations but also some in other corporations. The change will affect mainly the number of medium and high level workers needed and is another step in the balancing of the numbers of such workers.
Upgrading corporations becomes more profitable. The upgrades will further reduce the total number of workers in the corporation, make upgraded corporations more profitable and allow the country to set up more corporations due to the reduced numbers needed in current corporations.
A new product was added today. It will be used in the maintenance of strategic weapons. The product can be produced but it is not used yet. We will gradually introduce the product as part of maintenance and in the process reduce the use of other products that are used in maintenance, such as military services, services, high-tech services, electric power and more.
As a result, the cost of maintenance will not increase and some very deep shortages in the service products might be reduced a bit.
The main reason for the introduction of the product is to make the production of strategic weapons a more attractive proposition. Currently, some of these products are not produced at all or there are only very few corporations producing them. Then, when someone tries to purchase such weapons, it is impossible, for a long time, to get any.
Fearless Blue is the best place for such corporations because of the easier availability of the raw materials needed in the production.
A new product was added today. It will be used in the maintenance of many mainly government assets in the country. The product can be produced but it is not used yet. We will gradually introduce the product as part of maintenance and in the process reduce the use of other products that are used in maintenance, such as services, high-tech services, electric power and more.
As a result, the cost of maintenance will not increase and some very deep shortages in the service products might be reduced a bit.
The main reason for the introduction of the product is to make the production of many of these products more attractive. Currently, some of these products are not produced at all or there are only very few corporations producing them. Then, when someone tries to purchase such a product, it can take a very long time before they are delivered.
697. Two more Metals were added to Simcountry [ top ]
We have added Platinum and Mercury as new products to Simcountry. The main reason for this addition is the preparation for the addition of resources based functions to the game. We think that the number of products that are dependent on availability in certain locations should increase. We have added several metals in the past, two today and several more are planned.
The products are not in use yet and will be phased in, in the coming weeks. The main uses will be in the general industry, the car industry and jewelry. Platinum is also used as catalytic convertor in many industries.
698. The War Game � Attacking targets from Military bases [ top ]
As announced before, we have now made it possible to launch attacks by Medium range missiles from bases in your country. This is of course in addition to the use of the same missiles as part of military units. There are more weapons that were always used in this way; these include strategic conventional missiles, and nuclear weapons.
Many countries continue to have relative shortages of Medium level workers & High level workers. The number of available Low level workers is frequently much higher. As a result, players need to repeatedly �convert� large numbers of professionals into workers or otherwise they will not be able to add new corporations, or even achieve full employment in existing corporations. The game automatically contributes to the balancing of the workers groups but that process is many times insufficient. We have also increased the number of �auto converted� by the system, each game month.
To improve the situation, we have again, slightly reduced the numbers of Medium level workers & the number of High level workers that are needed in corporations. The change will free workers from many corporations and increase the numbers of unemployed workers in these two groups.
The capacity of air supply units is increased for the second time. A recent case with many stranded air force units showed that the resupply of such stranded units can take a very long time, much longer than intended. In addition, we have improved the computation of the amounts of gasoline and aircraft fuel used each month. The procedure miscalculated the used amounts when many units had shortages of fuel. This resulted in smaller orders made by the automatic ordering system that depends on the amount of product used.
As a result, larger quantities of aircraft fuel and gasoline will be ordered and shortages will subside. The change may cause large immediate orders from many countries but the situation will quickly normalize.
When creating a new garrison template, it is now possible to choose very low numbers of weapons, as in a tiny garrison and up to very large numbers, as in a large garrison. The minimum number of weapons in all cases is now 36.
Currently when moving units to locations outside the country, these units must be fully supplied, including ammunition. Even worse, when they are flown back, they also must be fully supplied with ammo.
We will remove this condition both ways. No ammo will be needed when moving.
A country cannot order more than 150 fortifications but if the country has corporations producing fortifications, they can contract their product to the country and increase the number above 150. This remains unchanged for now and makes it possible to get many fortifications.
We have now slightly increased the cost of maintenance of fortifications and may do so again. Keeping very large numbers of fortifications is expensive.
705. New product � Maintenance of Strategic products [ top ]
A new product will be introduced next week. It will be used for the maintenance of strategic weapons and nuclear missiles and bombs. The production process will, as is the case with other maintenance products, use the nuclear products themselves and by doing so, will increase the use of such weapons and ammunition.
The change will make it easier to build profitable strategic weapons corporations.
706. New Product � Maintenance of State assets [ top ]
A new product will be introduced next week. It will be used for the maintenance of a number of state owned assets in the country, including space centers, universities, schools hospitals, water facilities etc.. The production process will, as is the case with other maintenance products, use these assets themselves and by doing so, will increase the use of such products.
We hope to enhance the use of some of these products and increase their production numbers in all the worlds.
It is currently impossible to attack and destroy space centers in war. We will shortly make it possible to attack space centers, using strategic long range conventional missiles. Space centers will not be easy to destroy and can be defended by a garrison with missile interceptors that can, in sufficient numbers destroy attacking missiles or at least, make such an attack a very expensive expedition.
The change will take place next week. (Feb. 28th).
Many countries have relative shortages of Medium level workers & High level workers. The number of Low level workers is frequently sufficient. As a result, players need to repeatedly �convert� large numbers of professionals into workers or otherwise they will not be able to add new corporations, or even achieve full employment in existing corporations. The game automatically contributes to the balancing of the workers groups but that process is many times insufficient.
To improve the situation, we have slightly reduced the numbers of Medium level workers & the number of High level workers that are needed in corporations. The change will free workers from many corporations and increase the numbers of unemployed workers in these two groups.
The change will also slightly increase the number of corporations a country can build without creating shortages of workers.
The capacity of air supply units is increased. A recent case with many stranded air force units showed that the resupply of such stranded units can take a very long time, much longer than intended. The capacity is increased by a factor of 5. We will check similar cases to see if the change is sufficient. The change is achieved by an increase of the capacity of each aircraft. The unit size is unchanged and there is no need for additional aircraft.
Many corporations use the same raw materials. We would like to create more diversification between these types of corporations, make them use other materials and reduce the use of other materials.
Such changes are small and will not create any problem for these corporations nor will it create any disturbance on the markets. Many small changes will follow.
The war game is currently played with military units that are fighting the war from positions in their own country or invade enemy countries, move to other countries and attack remote targets from wherever they reside.
The war game also has some weapons that are used from military bases in the attacking country. These weapons are not part of military units and never move from their position. These include all the nuclear weapons and more.
We intend to make it possible for several missile launching weapons to wage war from bases in the country without the use of military units. These weapons will become usable in this new way but will remain usable in military units.
Attacks that are launched from bases in the country will always be less effective than attacks by military units that are very close to their target. As a result, the cost of such attacks will be higher than the cost of attacks carried out by military units.
Military base attacks are easier to launch but remain limited in their effect. It will also become possible to launch such attacks from the Simcountry APP. Currently this is not possible yet.
The introduction will be gradual, with ongoing evaluation of its use and step by step liberalization of the war process. In the first stages, wars can only end with victory if the enemy country is invaded and part of it is conquered.
The first step will be introduced in the week of February 20th. Medium range missile launchers will become usable in military base launched attacks.
712. Changes in the employment in some corporations. [ top ]
The main changes are in some types of weapon and ammunition producing corporations. Some types of corporations now use a smaller number of workers. As a result, you may see a jump in the number of unemployed low level and medium level workers. The number depends on how many such corporations are in your country. If you have none, nothing will happen.
In case you have many, the change might be large as we have reduced the numbers in some of these corporations by a little more than 10.000. We will continue with such changes in the coming period and extend it to other types of corporations.
Long term, countries will probably be able to add several corporations and increase their profits Without any change in the population. Changes will be small and will not cause any significant disturbance of the markets and in unemployment.
Some corporations produce less than 12 product per year. Such corporations need more cash and are swinging between profit and loss as they are not selling products every month. We have largely solved the problem in the past year by gradually increasing production. In most cases, the production number is 12 or more. In some cases however, the number remains very low (example: space shuttles, space centers and some nuclear materials). We will continue with small changes that will increase production, reduce the product pricing and try to normalize the economics of such corporations.
714. Some weapon corporations and weapon maintenance corporations have shed some manpower. They use a smaller number of workers. [ top ]
This will free more workers for other corporations. In the past we made corporations to be huge. One of the reasons was that the number of corporations in a world had to be limited or processing them each game month and the trading of their products could overwhelm servers capacities.
In the meantime, servers have been replaced and new servers can handle some more load. The changes are not very large but we will in the future continue to make some corporations use smaller number of workers and make it possible for countries to have more profitable corporations with the same numbers of the population in the country.
715. Diversifying the use of raw materials. [ top ]
Some corporations use more raw materials of products that were added to Simcountry recently like carbon, electric motors, displays, and some metals. At the same time, they use a slightly smaller quantities of other raw materials. The changes are small and will continue, the profitability of corporations is never harmed.
There are always requests for less interventions by the gamemaster in the world markets. These interventions have never been significant and took place when markets where entering a �danger zone� that could lead to a breakdown.
We have made some more small changes to delay such interventions and we allow product pricing to go higher or lower as a result of shortages or overproduction. There are more opportunities in the markets and some corporations can create very large profits. We will continue such changes as long as the markets are not showing wide range unsustainable shortages.
Some product pricing can now fluctuate more widely, allowing corporations to become more profitable if the products are in short supply. It will also drive them lower if the product they produce is in oversupply for a long time.
The changes are implemented, mainly for products that are more complex, and are not available on all worlds. The changes will continue and make such products more attractive to produce.
718. Using New raw materials in corporations [ top ]
We have made changes to some products aThe production process in some types of corporations is extended and more raw materials are used. For example, glass was hardly used and is now part of the production process in several more types of corporations. Also the used of recently added new products is increased. Their use was very low to start with because of the small number of corporations producing them, they were hardly available. With many more corporations available now, the use is somewhat increased.
These changes do not influence the profitability of these corporations.
The game intervenes sometimes when huge shortages in certain products threaten the markets. There were many requests from player in the past, and recently, to reduce or even eliminate these automatic interventions.
Recently, interventions where reduced by mistake. As a resultwe the markets became unstable and even close to a collapse. Players did not intervene and did not start corporations to reduce shortages. We do think however that the markets will offer more opportunities, and Simcountry will offer more challenges if such interventions are reduced even more.
We have made changes to some products and will only intervene in very extreme conditions. Depending on what happens in the coming days, we may extend the process and reduce interventions even more.
Some products have been tuned to widen their price range. The change in the price range is not very large but corporations producing these products may become more valuable if there is a shortage of the product and may suffer more if there is a surplus. Combined with reduced interventions, prices may start increasing more drastically. The corporations will turn higher profits. We hope that this will be an incentive for players to create such corporations.
In the coming weeks and months, we will add new products and raw materials to the production process of many corporations. The objective is to increase diversification in the products production and include more products as raw materials in the production process of a larger number of corporations.
This process has already started and small changes toward this goal will be made on a weekly basis.
We have now slightly increased the range of product price fluctuations for some products in Simcountry. These products are mainly high tech products for now but we may extend the change to more products.
Products with high persisting shortages will now be allowed to become more expensive than before and Ones with persisting oversupply, will see the price of the product fall some more. The idea is to create more incentive for the creation of high profit corporations at the cost of corporations that make losses.
This has always happened in Simcountry in the past but these changes will make the difference larger. Corporations that produce products that are in short supply, will become more profitable and their market value will increase more. Corporations that are producing products that are in abundance on the markets, will make larger losses and might bankrupt earlier than before.
Simcountry service will be taken offline for planned maintenance on March 22. Downtime is scheduled for 5 AM to 12 AM EST (9 AM to 4 PM GMT). If all goes smoothly we might be back online a little earlier.
We hope this won't be too much of an inconvenience and thank you for your patience!
Several new products have been added to simcountry. This is part of a larger rollout of new products. Introduction of new products starts with 0 usage to give corporations time to stock up before they actually start using them. Usage is then slowly ramped up to give the markets time to adjust.
Carbon was added recently. Usage is currently ramping up slowly to its intended target.
Displays and Electric Motors have been added today. They are integrated into the production economy but currently stand on 0 usage.
Several types of corporations are now a bit more profitable, their turnover increased a bit and in general, they use more of the new products that were added to Simcountry recently, including batteries and mobile devices.
Also production numbers in some types of corporations have been reduced by 2 or 3%, while the price is increased by the same percentage.
A small change will require countries to build a slightly smaller number of schools, universities and hospitals to achieve the same education and health index. The cost per unit is up by a very small percentage and the total cost mostly unchanged. We hope to move away a bit from index value inflation. At the end of the day, an index of 100 should be OK and 150 excellent. At this time, the numbers are much higher.
The score computation is updated and better explained:
1. When you click on the score, the page will show more and corrected details that are now a bit closer to the total score. This improved page does not show yet. It will be showing shortly. (Wednesday afternoon). 2. The finance index weight on the score increased a bit. 3. The defence index on the score increased a bit too. 4. Having a space center will add 200 points to the score (this was 100). 5. Your game level will have more influence on the score and its influence will increase more next month. 6. Selling population will decrease the score by 400 points. 7. The welfare index has also an increased influence on the score. 8. Some other indexes, that are all included in the welfare index, were removed from the computation of the score. 9. The total score is reduced a bit for all countries.
The number of schools, universities and hospitals that are needed to maintain your current health and education indexes is decreased. You need a smaller number and if the numbers remain unchanged, your index will increase a bit. On the other hand, the number of professionals needed in schools, universities and hospitals is increased slightly. The changes are all small, under 2%.
The numbers of professionals graduating from the education system each game month depends on the population but mainly on the education index. The numbers are now increased. It means that to produce the same number of professionals you produced before, you can do with a bit lower education index.
We think that this process should continue. Currently a good education index is higher than 200. It was in the past intended to be around 100 - 150.
730. Shortages in the labour setup of your country [ top ]
Many beginner's countries show an imbalance in the labour system with many shortages. It is hard for these beginners to fix the shortages and grow their economies. Especially for them, and for countries in game level 1,2 and 3, we have introduced more flexibility and more movements between workers groups and try to make it easier for these players.
This support system exists for a long time but we made it work a little harder to balance the workers groups.
Small changes of up to 2% have been introduced in many types of corporations. The changes are aimed at the reduction of exaggerated quantities in production and consumption of some products. In many cases, the change reduces production a bit, and also reduces the amounts of raw materials needed in the production process. In some cases, the production is reduced by a very small amount and compensated by a slight increase in the base price.
In the same process, the profitability of many corporations, was improved. This is mainly true for corporations producing weapons and ammunitions, and for corporations in mining, food products and agriculture.
We expect the profitability of countries to improve a bit. It might take up to a week for the market to absorb the changes but the scale of the changes remains very limited. There are no changes what so ever in the number of people working in any of the corporations.
Some types of corporations are too small in terms of monthly production and sales, and it is harder for them to become more profitable and increase their market value. We have now corrected some of these cases and slightly increased the size of some of them. We may need to do this more often. Changes are very small, (<5%) and some need to grow by 20%. This will be corrected in the future.
733. Automatic workforce changes have been improved [ top ]
Changes in the workforce and availability of workers takes place when there are shortages of medium level workers and high level workers.
These automatic updates are now more significant and shorten the time needed to fix shortages and improve the employment in a country.
Also in cases where the education priorities and rebalancing of the workers distribution were abandoned for some time, it is now easier to repair and the repair period is much shorter.
We plan more changes that will make the management of education and the availability of workers even easier.
A major upgrade to the mobile app has been released. It does not require a download through the app store. The changes include:
- Back end system for help and tutorial messages throughout the app. - The system is now in place. Many pages and help info will become available with the next update. - Help pages will show up automatically the first time a page is shown and can be recalled at will. - The ability to customize your account profile is now part of the App. This was only available through the web browser version of the game before. - The army section is now available. This section has the option to manage and build your army. It includes documentation. - Cash transfers from the account into countries are now possible in the App. - You now get a pop-up offering to transfer cash from your account if country cash is negative.
- Zooming into the country map is added to the map section. - The Education Priorities screen is now added. It is possible to view and update the education priorities for each of the professions. - Trading: Presidents can now trade all products. Countries can now purchase or sell all products on the world market. - The account overview is now available on the portal pages.
737. Further reduction of the price of many weapons [ top ]
Many weapons, mainly defensive ones this time, have been reduced in price slightly. The reduction by 2 to 5% represents a continuation of the downward trend in pricing in Simcountry and will continue.
Some products were added in the past months. (Batteries, Lead, Lithium) are now produced in sufficient quantities. We are now increasing the use of these products and add them to the production process of more corporations.
A change in the App has improved overall performance. More improvements will be introduced in the coming weeks, including added functions and more improvements in performance.
The next update will also include the country map.
The cost of several nuclear weapons is reduced again. The corporations production is increased and they become more stable. More such updates will be installed in the future.
Shortages of high level workers (HLVs) have been reduced in the past weeks and another improvement was installed in the update. It will reduce such shortages even further and might eliminate them in most cases..
We will check the numbers again and find out if another tuning round is needed.
The transfer of mobile units between the country and a space center is now limited to 10 mobile units at a time. Much larger transfers are in fact not needed and cause performance problems and related errors.
Navy bases have a very limited function in Simcountry. A navy base is needed for a country to be able to order navy weapons and ammunition but when a base is available, there is no additional function. We have now made sure that these bases cannot be attacked, do not show numbers of weapons as these numbers were not correct in some cases and caused a lot of confusion.
The first version of the Simcountry App is now available. More functions are being added and frequent updates will become available. The I-Phone /I-Pad version is also available but will take a little longer to appear in the I-Store.
We had complaints about the performance of maps, when painting them with many objects. Mainly maps of countries with a large number of military units could take very long before showing on the screen. A major optimization has taken place and the process is many times faster. Showing maps on the screen is now immediate, even with a very large number of military units.
The number of HLWs needed in upgraded corporations is decreased for many types of corporations. The change freed many HLWs in all countries and caused a onetime increase in the number of available HLWs. For countries with large shortages, it has improved the situation a bit.
The change will also reduce the number of HLWs with more upgrading of corporations and will structurally reduce the percentage of HLWs as part of the total number of workers in all countries.
Depending on continuing shortages, another update may follow to further reduce the numbers.
749. Reduced cost of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Missiles [ top ]
There was a further reduction in the cost of nukes. The change is part of the general trend aiming at a further reduction of the cost of war.
750. Tuning of Production and consumption of some products [ top ]
In an effort to reduce some very large numbers of production and consumption of products, several small changes have taken place. These changes have no financial consequences. Example: The production numbers of eggs are reduced by 10% and the base price of the product is increased by 10%. The corporations remain exactly as profitable (or not profitable) as before. The consumption is reduced by 10% so that the entire economy and market situation of the product remain unchanged.
Such changes may continue but as explained, have no financial consequences.
The Simcountry App is submitted to the store. It will take some time before it becomes available.
The Simcountry App is free.
This first version includes many game functions and it includes the Forum and Chat features. As a first version, it is quite large but some functions remain only available by use of the website.
Some large weapons, ammunition and some other large items in Simcountry have been update and reduced in price. The changes include nuclear weapons, the space shuttle and some parts of the shuttle.
This is another step in the long term general reduction of pricing and specifically the reduction of the cost of war.
More reductions, and at a higher frequency, will continue in the coming weeks.
Some bankruptcies have taken place. We have given players a long time to prepare and repair their countries and messages about possible bankruptcies were showing at login time and on the country pages two weeks ahead of time and then extended by an additional week.
We have also searched through our five worlds and looked for exceptional situations to prevent massive bankruptcies that might have happened on a single day.
The number of alternatives for counter attacks by auto response weapons is increased from 3 to 6. Your choice of target types to attack is now wider. It will increase the efficiency of such counter attacks.
Some weapons and ammunition have updated to reduce their base price a bit. The changes are small in most cases except for very high priced items and nuclear weapons that have been reduced more than other weapons.
This is another step in the long term general reduction of pricing and specifically the reduction of the cost of war.
Some bankruptcies have taken place in the past week. We have given players a long time to prepare and repair their countries and messages about possible bankruptcies were showing at login time and on the country pages two weeks ahead of time and then extended by an additional week.
We have also searched through our five worlds and looked for exceptional situations to prevent massive bankruptcies that might have happened on a single day. We have found very few such cases, one of which was massive.
To prevent a disaster striking any player we have, in only very few cases, added funds to save large empires from a sudden collapse. We have found that these empires were badly managed but added funds to save most of the consequences of bankruptcy. We have also prevented very large amounts of dent from being inherited by the main country. We have seen that the players, even as they were active, did nothing to repair anything.
This intervention was done once because the change in the bankruptcy handling might have destroyed these two empires. However, if they will not improve the economy of their many countries, and continue to neglect their economies, these empire will fall apart, at a slow pace in the coming months. We have warned the players about the huge problems in their countries, with unemployment at 50% plus in many cases and no effort at all to build corporations and fix the shortages. We hope that they will fix what needs to be fixed and save their countries. There will be no additional cash infusions. They have a lot of time to fix and it is very easy too. Their empires are their own responsibility.
758. Small Update in the Health and Education Systems [ top ]
With larger populations in many countries the numbers of schools, universities, hospitals etc. is very large. We have increased the size of such institutions by about 0.5% and the numbers needed was reduced by the same. The schools, universities, hospitals etc. will be slightly larger in terms of numbers of workers needed.
The result is that the health and education indexes may increase very slightly and your countries could do with just a few less of these "institutions" than before. The change is hardly noticeable.
The first release of the Simcountry app is expected within a few weeks.
The first release will include many basic functions of Simcountry. It will also include a fully functional Forum and Chat and will allow you to place messages on the game forum or chat with others.
Countries can setup auto response units as part of their army. There are currently two types of auto response units: Stealth Bomber Wings and Mobile Conventional Missiles Units. These units can be used both as active units in attacking your enemy during war and as auto response units that will react to attacks on your country.
The configuration feature for these units is now improved. For both types, you can decide what exactly these units will attack in case they are automatically triggered. You can decide on a sequence of possible targets. The units will try to attack the first target in this sequence. If there is anything it can attack it will execute the attack. If no such targets exist or the weapons of the auto response unit have no effect on that target, the auto response unit will move to the next priority in the sequence and try the same.
All the possible targets are shown when the unit is configured and you can chose for a sequence of three alternatives. The number will be increased to six alternatives in the next update.
A new feature is added to the "sequence" the player can setup, for the auto response unit to "Attack the attacker". Using this option, the auto response unit will try to attack the unit that was recently used to attack your country and will try to destroy it.
The auto response units can attack several times in each triggered counter attack. The number of times depends on the war level of the player. In most war levels there will be a single counter attack. However, in higher war level, the number may increase to two or three attacks in each round.
The sequence of possible counter attacks is now extended and can include the navy. The choice is for the player when the setup of these units is taking place.
763. The Use of New Products Recently Added [ top ]
The use of the new products that were added in the past two weeks is gradually growing. The slow pace is chosen so that corporations that are using these new products will not run into surprise shortages of a new product and stop production.
There are now more types of corporations using these products and numbers will continue to increase in the coming weeks.
764. Tuning of Army Units and War Capabilities [ top ]
A slight tuning of some units and their capabilities is meant to improve the balance of power between some offensive units and the defence. The tuning is based on recent tests and search into recent war logs.
The stealth units are slightly larger and the same has taken place for the mobile conventional missiles unit that was also improved with some defensive weapons to defend it against counter attacks. The defence wings are slightly smaller and now have 125 airplanes compared to 130 before. Several air force units have a slightly higher ammunition levels that will allow them to function a little longer before they need to be resupplied.
Very small changes to some types of corporations will improve their profitability. This long term trend has contributed to much better profitability of countries. In general we see larger profits in both corporations and countries and a potential for very large profits in countries that are well managed.
Many players have improved the assets of failing countries and increased the assets to a positive value. These countries will not bankrupt. Some countries however have negative assets and the clock is ticking. The best way to save them is by a transfer of funds to the country.
When assets become positive for a period of 8 hours or longer, the "pending bankruptcy" clock is set back to 84 game months and will start again if the funds that were transferred into the country are removed again. This might be a "cheat" to avoid bankruptcy but part of the money will be used to fix shortages and the country will end up better than it was before.
Lead and Lithium have been added as new products and can now be produced. The products will be used, starting next week, in a small number of corporations. The numbers will increase gradually. The corporations that will use the products, will start purchasing them early so that the corporation will have some products in stock when the production process starts using them.
Also Batteries have been added as a new product. These are industrial batteries that are used in the car industry and other industries and not by consumers. Future alternative power industries will also use batteries.
House hold batteries will be added at a later date.
The use of Mobile Devices and Zinc that were added last week is increased. Mobile devices are now used by the population as a consumer product and the numbers will increase. More corporations will start purchasing these products and will use them in the future. We do not expect any corporations to suffer a setback in production as a result of the use of the new products.
The navy is an effective weapon that can be used far away from your country. It is possible to fight the navy with offensive weapons but the defence against attacking navies and especially attacks by frigates and sea based cruise, was very limited. This is a problem for wars where auto defence is used.
We have now added defensive capabilities that can help protect countries against navy attacks. Both defence helicopters and defensive missiles will counter attack navies in war, also conventional missiles and stealth bombers will participate in the auto defence. This change will not diminish the capabilities of the navy but will extract a price for navy attacks. The attacker will suffer more damage to the attacking navies.
We have improved the capabilities of conventional missiles and made them harder to destroy. The missiles are also effective against more weapons, including the navy. Mobile auto response conventional missile units will participate in the defence of countries that have them and will attack a wider range of weapon systems.
773. Lower cost for Some weapons and many types of ammunition [ top ]
A further decline in the base price of weapons and ammunition, including also many defensive weapons will make wars cheaper and allow for a low cost for the defence.
More testing of the war engine and remarks and mails from players, resulted in some tuning of the war engine. This will result in some changes in the working of some weapons on some targets and of some defensive weapons and their response to attacks.
In face of an increasing probability of war between countries with presidents, it is important to make it possible for countries to set up a good defence that will deter attack and also improve the auto defence features in case of a war while the defending player is not available.
More work will be done in the coming weeks to allow for the setup of auto response units and the choice of targets that they attack in case the country is attacked.
775. Two New Products - Mobile Devices and Zinc [ top ]
Two new products are added to Simcountry today, these products are Mobile Devices and Zinc.
Mobile Devices: Mobile devices can now be produced by Mobile Devices Corporations. The corporation is in the High tech group. Mobile Devices will be used in many different types of corporations and will be added to the consumption products used by the population.
Initially while not produced in large quantities, Mobile Devices are used in small quantities only in the telephone corporations and internet corporations. Their use will be increased in the coming weeks as their availability increases.
Zinc: Zinc is now added to the mining group of products. It is initially used in the production of Steel and in construction corporations. The use of Zinc will be extended in the coming weeks as it becomes more available. More products will be added into the mining group in the coming months. These products will be needed when the natural resources extension of Simcountry is introduced in the near future.
When a country has a shortage of materials of any type, it should try to correct the situation as soon as possible. When shortages of materials become severe and the total value of materials in the country goes negative (extreme situations), the country risks falling into a managed status to help it correct the problem. Such extreme shortages can cause high emigration rates and severe loss of population.
A warning is issued on the country home page when you login, warning you of the problem. It is also easy to set up notifications to receive a message if such a situation occurs.
777. Fast ordering of products that are short. [ top ]
If the country has material shortages, it can now place immediate orders for the products it needs. These orders will be executed without any limitation of spending space. It will allow players to quickly solve any shortages issue. The country does need the cash to pay for such orders. Please make sure you transfer the needed funds to the country.
Countries with negative TOTAL assets are considered bankrupt. Negative total assets mean that the total of all assets, including government assets, materials, weapons and ammunition, the total value of all corporations the country owns, and the total of all cash and loans is negative.
A warning is shown on the account and the country page that bankruptcy is pending and the number of months you have to correct the situation. If bankrupt, the total negative assets will be paid by the main country in the empire. Correcting the problem ahead of time, ends up cheaper than letting the bankruptcy take place.
To allow more time for everyone to fix what needs to be fixed, we are resetting all warnings back to a period of two weeks. (84 game months). Please transfer some cash to these countries, make it cash positive and purchase the missing materials.
A lot is said about this recently. However, we do not expect any large number of countries to bankrupt. Small players and beginners are financially supported and none will bankrupt. We expect a very small number of countries, members of large empires that are unwilling to support the weak links in the group.
Investment funds pay more to their investors. Many investment funds are very rich and can afford larger payment. These payments increase the income of the population and also the taxes the population pays to the country. Funds that do not have enough cash, and are unable to raise cash by selling shares, do not pay out.
War level 13 is added to Simcountry. The war levels document will be updated today or tomorrow. More war levels will be added in the coming weeks.
781. Reduced Pricing of Weapons and Ammunition [ top ]
More weapons and ammunition have been reduced in price. The process is continuing at a low pace to further reduce amounts in Simcountry and also reduce the cost of war.
Migration numbers are now showing on the country home page. Please check. Migration can increase when the country has severe shortages of materials, negative cash and when bankruptcy is pending.
783. Bankruptcy and "Close to Bankruptcy" Conditions Updated [ top ]
The Unclear and outdated conditions for bankruptcy have been renewed and documented. Countries will bankrupt only if their total assets become negative. Assets include not only cash and loans, but all the country government owned assets, army assets and the value of all the materials in the country.
Warnings of pending bankruptcy will show for 84 game months (2 weeks) and it will give the player time to improve conditions.
The documentation is updated and described the condition in all details.
Close to bankruptcy conditions, when cash is lower than -1 trillion or the value of materials becomes negative, are also enforced and a message is showing on the country home page.
New notifications are now available, allowing you to receive warnings if such conditions occur.
Migration is updated to include numbers of people migrating if the country is in a close to bankruptcy situation, salaries are very low or basic materials such as food, energy and some other basic materials, are not available.
The number is showing on the country newspaper and will show also on the country home page.
A bug is fixed in the "unbalanced" exchange that required at least 1 worker to "balance" the numbers. You can now just move up to 200.000 workers each game month.
A problem is fixed in the function that allows you to build types of corporations, depending on your highest game level achieved on a specific world. The function now works correctly.
Conditions for civil unrest have been relaxed. It occurs if you have more than 10 countries in the empire and the chance increases if the numbers are larger. It only occurs in countries in such empire, that are part of the empire for more than 180 game months.
War damage numbers have decreased. The function works as before but the damage is smaller. This will further decrease the cost of wars.
789. Base price declines and Corporate profitability [ top ]
Some products, and some high cost weapons and nuclear missiles are now cheaper. This is a continuing trend. The profitability of corporations is keeping a steady increase.
After fighting 4 wars against C3 countries at your current war level, your war level will auto increase. Increasing war levels win you gold coins on all the five worlds but the number of gold coins is higher on the Fearless Blue world.
When starting a war against a C3 country, you can now choose between multiple options. You can start a war at a higher war level. Winning such a war will move you to the next war level. You can start a war against a C3 country at the same war level you are. Such a war will win you the resources in the country and will move you to the next war level only after you win 4 such wars.
A new option, allows you to start a war against a C3 country at war level 3. The war may win you the country but there are no money rewards. The feature is added on request of some players for strategic reasons, trying to win a country closer to an area where they intend to fight a different war.
The base price of many types of weapons and ammunition is reduced again. The reduction is around 5% but in some cases up to 10%. Some types have not changed at all. The change is a continuation of the reduction in the cost of war.
When setting up a new corporations, the choice depends on your current game levels. This is now changed. The choice now depends on the highest game level you have reach any time in the past with the empire the country belongs to.
When a corporation reduces its production for lack of workers or materials, the minimum hiring levels used to be 10%. The minimum hiring level is now reduced to 5%.
A common market can have a maximum number of 25 members. The max number is now imposed also in cases when players are accepting invitations.
795. Military Bases, military airports and fortifications [ top ]
The number of military bases in a country used to depend on the numbers of weapons and military units. The rules became confusing when players started trading in military bases and were limited in their trading policies by the size of their own army.
We have now simplified the system and removed the dependency on the size of the army. A country can order a max number of 100 military bases or military airports of each type. When the number is reached, manual orders for military bases and airports will be prohibited. However, corporations that contract such bases and military airports or fortifications to the country will be able to do so without any limitations.
796. Wars against Computer Controlled Countries (C3) [ top ]
It is now possible for any country in any war level to fight a war against a C3 country at a lower war level. When winning such a war, there is no cash reward and the war does not count as a regular war that was won by the country.
The feature was added to make it easier for presidents to take over a country that is close to a country they want to fight against.
It is now possible to lend a mobile unit to one of your countries in the empire or to a member of your federation. The unit will be placed in the army of the borrowing country and will be under its control. It will be supplied as part of the army.
The origin of the unit will be kept and the unit can always be given back to the owner at any time. However, there is no guarantee that such a unit will be in the same condition as it was at the time it was transferred. It can be damaged or even destroyed in war.
Ammunition shortages are a problem in Simcountry for a long period and have caused problems in countries where the president assumed that the army is operational, only to discover that part of the army cannot be used in war because it lacks ammunition.
Ammunition is ordered automatically in most cases, but when such supply is stopped by the player, or in cases of severe market shortages, or non availability of certain types of ammunition on some of the worlds, supplies could even go negative.
The problem is now solved and the following is added:
1. When ammunition supplies are lower than what is needed for one (game) year, an automatic notification can be issued and the player will receive a message warning of the approaching shortage. There is then enough time to solve the problem. You need to set this notification on.
2. If a player does not resolve the problem and the ammunition goes negative, a new game procedure will, in stages, solve the problem automatically. The procedure will not change any cash conditions in the country. It will take the following steps:
a. Several weapons that are using the ammunition type that shows a severe shortage, will be exchanged for ammunition. The procedure is limited in size and will be repeated each game month until the shortage is resolved.
b. If there are no weapons in the country that can be exchanged, the procedure will try the reserves or a space center in the country to find weapons that can be exchanged.
c. If none are found, the procedure will dismantle an army unit to recover weapons that can be exchanged for ammunition, to resolve the shortage. Such event appears in the country newspaper.
In time all the shortages of ammunition will be resolved. We advise every player to set the notifications on, to get messages when shortages occur. The entire procedure will never kick in if the army is supplied with the ammunition it needs.
The investment funds have been restructured and now do more of what they are expected to do. Until now, funds accumulated cash, invested part of the cash in the stock market and paid very little back to their investors.
The funds are now restructured to pay more to their investors. They will also, gradually start to invest more in the stock market and reduce the pile of cash they have.
Funds that are short of cash will sell some of their holdings in the stock market to replenish their cash. Funds that are short on assets will stop paying their investors until they are able to increase their holdings.
800. Support Functions for Failing Countries [ top ]
Countries that are in bad financial conditions and are in danger of bankruptcy have always been supported to prevent their demise. The supporting procedures are set on automatically when countries are accumulating debt and are making large losses.
The procedure have been improved and is helping such countries in more ways and a bit faster. The procedure does not give the country any cash. It helps in managing the education, making more people available for the economic process and builds new corporations to fix the financial situation of the country.
Corporations continue to increase in size at a low pace. Each game upgrade increases the size of some corporations and improves their profitability. The process will continue at a low pace and will help us to keep the total number of corporations in each world from increasing very quickly.
Some products have become cheaper again. We keep reducing the price of some types of ammunition and of some weapons. The cost of nuclear weapons is continuing to slide, but also the price of some space products, cargo shuttles, military bases etc. The production numbers of these products are slightly higher and the corporations producing them are much more profitable.
We intend to continue this process for some time to come.
803. War Levels rules will change in the coming weeks [ top ]
Countries that fight wars against C3 countries at their own war level, will in the near future, automatically move to a higher war level after winning 4 wars at that level. Countries can move to a higher war level if they fight a C3 country at a war level which is higher than their own.
We will now add an automatic move to a higher war level even if they keep fighting C3 wars at their own level.
It is our intention to make such war more attractive by adding new incentives for the players who are fighting such wars. This is part of an effort to move away from fake wars that are fought by one player against an automatic war engine.
