W3C - Game News December 22

Chat
Last week the chat client was upgraded to be more in line with the mobile app. Some changes were implemented in the back-end as well to improve performance and system logging.
Chat is still being worked on, expect more improvements to performance in the near future.

New Product
Carbon has been added to all worlds. A number of corp types will start using it as a material. To avoid market fluctuations, use will slowly be ramped up to normal levels. Current usage is 0 to allow corps to stock up.

cool carbons

What are the intended usage levels of carbon by the various corps? I'd like to figure out how many mining corps I should build. Also, presumably this represents fancy types of carbon, like graphite or nanotubes, since bulk carbon is already in game as Coal. If this is so, I'm surprised it's not being used by things like stealth bombers or spaceship design - both of those use a lot of that stuff IRL.

For those who haven't looked, here's the corp types that will use it:
Batteries
Cars
Chemicals
Electric Power
Electronic Components
Industrial Equipment
Machine Parts
Nuclear Power
Sport
Steel
Weapon Quality Upgrades

How long does it normally take to create actual demand for a good like this? It's been over two weeks now, and most of the corps that produce it seem to have gone bust unless they've been propped up.

oh is this why the app crashes when i open it every time now!

@Al Sadius
Carbon usage will start slowly ramping up in a few days. The delay is not just to avoid market collapse. It also gives us some time to check for bugs in the process.

@Adam
I assume you mean the mobile app? On which platform are you using it?
if iOS: Try to reinstall the app. This clears any locally saved data.
if Android: Try to delete app-data (settings -> apps -> simcountry -> storage -> clear data).

Jonni, could someone please check the coding of the Help-Section of the Forum. The increasing numbers of top-bars seems to be linked with creating new threads and is really annoying.

Thanks jonni. It's android and miraculously it is working without touching it... Wouldn't restarting the device clear cached data?

I understand why Carbon is part of these production processes:
Cars
Steel


and I can MAYBE imagine how its part of these processes:

Chemicals
Machine Parts
Industrial Equipment


But I fail to see how Carbon fits into these production processes:

Batteries
Electric Power
Electronic Components
Nuclear Power
Sport
Weapon Quality Upgrades


I may be ignorant of the involvement of Carbon in these processes, and so I welcome enlightenment into how Carbon is included in how these products are actually made, besides of course Carbon based lifeforms. . .

Additionally, I don't personally believe in space travel (I would argue that space travel as we know it is a Masonic conspiracy, but that's a sidenote as everybody is entitled to believe what ever they want), but I'll go ahead and point out how Carbon is highly utilized in the Aerospace industry fo

Batteries: Lithium-ion batteries have one electrode of graphite, which is a form of carbon.

Electric power: No idea.

Electronic components: A lot of them contain small batteries and such, so maybe carbon gets used similarly there?

Nuclear power: Old-style nuclear reactors often used graphite as a neutron moderator. It's not popular today for safety reasons(flammable materials in a nuclear reactor is very good at making bad situations worse - for example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire ), but that's probably what that's about.

Sports: Probably a reference to the various carbon-fibre this and composite that that's use in sports equipment these days.

WQU: Same idea as electronic components, I'd wager.

Good points Sadius

@Adam
Clearing the app-data in Android is essentially; restoring the app to it's default state. All data like user settings and cookies are wiped. When an Android app is malfunctioning this is usually the go-to fix.
Restarting the device doesn't affect application cache.

@John West
While it is called Carbon, it should be thought of as a collection of Carbon based materials. examples: Graphite, Carbon Fibre, powdered carbon and carbon nanotubes!
The real-world possibilities for carbon based materials are endless

Thanks for the clarification, I didn't look at it that way. Now I think it's an interesting addition. I was just thinking rolls of carbon fibre ha ha. Again I would expect Carbon to be utilized by airplane and cargo shuttle parts.

The list of corp types that require carbon as a resource is not necessarily final. I've made a note of your suggestions in case we need them.

Although I don't think it's the most important issue to focus on, I think it's cool you took note of my suggestion, thanks. I made that suggestion as I think it adds to the realism of the simulation and I would think it's probably easy to adjust while you're making similar adjustments to things anyway.

Will there be Marines added to the navy fleets? just wondering I see a lot of things voted and approved just wondering when they will be implemented. Thanks

Marine landing forces attached to naval battle groups would be awesome

Battalion sized units,armored vehicles,tanks,artillery, attack helicopters ya know like in real life lol wink wink

Quick followup on this.
The start of Carbon use was delayed due to a hardware failure and subsequent upgrades.
Carbon is now being used in small quantities and will ramp up over time.

wait are some of you saying we should be able to offload battalion sized marine ground units via ship? we can already transport division sized units via air, which the overhead for that to me seems to be greater for airplane transport as airplanes use more expensive fuel and ships have much larger cargo space, so airplanes have to make more round trips to transport as much cargo as a ship, so I think we should also be able to transport units as large as division size via ship. I could be wrong though because I don't know how much cargo a fleet can transport in one trip. Battalion size may be correct depending on whether anybody knows how much cargo a individual fleet can realistically transport in one trip?

Stealing information from another web site, the C-130 cargo plane extensively used by the U.S. military has a cargo capacity of 18.9 emperical tons...
It has the space capacity of 92 troops, or 64 paratroopers, or 74 litters plus two medical attendants; other loads include light/medium towed artillery pieces, wheeled or tracked vehicles or standard pallets.
A standard wing typically consists of 20 such aircraft. Thus, a single air wing would be capable of transporting 1840 troops at once. A single air base typically houses 2 such wings with the capacity to house up to 5 such wings temporarily.

So a typical base with 2 airlift wings are capable of transporting up to 756 tons of cargo in a single trip. However, entire wings rarely all fly at once - operations are more of a 'spooling', with a few aircraft being loaded, a few taking off, a few making their drop/landing, and a few on their way back.

Meanwhile, the C-17 has a cargo capacity of 76.6 tons, but the cargo space is only marginally larger - capable of transporting 102 troops. These are primarily for heavy tanks and other heavy equipment. One of these aircraft can transport but 1 modern mainline tank per trip. Maybe 2 light tanks or 3 APCs. A C-130 would barely manage 1 APC.

That is very interesting numbers there. I think the C-17 is phasing out the C-130 completely, as I know from first hand experience they are at least using it to transport troops, which I admit seems like an unworthy task for such a beast of an airplane, but why would they keep the C-130 around when they can spend so much of our money to eventually replace them all with C-17s??

Do we have any comparative info on navy ships transporting ground forces?? I know close to nothing in regards to the navy.