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The Aries Simcountry Priority Wishlist - 3/1/2016

Topics: General: The Aries Simcountry Priority Wishlist - 3/1/2016

Aries

Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - 09:54 pm Click here to edit this post
Lots of good ideas out there that should not be forgotten. Perhaps highlighting a list of them and adding a priority to their importance could help keep things in the limelight and organized. The following would be my list but isn't designed to consider every great idea right now, just the top ones floating in my head at the moment. Comments are welcome or tell me about your own list.


1. Unit Simplicity (revised)

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/8/25577.html?1456859816

2. Unconquerable countries/Unable to get all painting points.

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/9/24851.html?1430779348

3. Unlimited Forts (through contracts) issue.

-Allow war score to apply the greatest value of country damage between either "remaining forts" or "forts destroyed".

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/16295/24916.html?1435096125

4. Player Power Rankings

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/8/24236.html?1451569550

5. The War College

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/8/25043.html?1453899584

6. Battlegrounds (revised)

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/8/25045.html?1439461174

7. Natural Resources

-Allow players to choose a bonus for an existing country they own. They must pay for it in gold coins. The bonus only applies if the player is war level 4+ and has removed war level protection. The bonus for that country, once paid for, applies permanently for that country for any owner as long as the current owner is war level 4+ and has removed war level protection.

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/8/25184.html?1447874172

8. Total War/All-Out War

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/8/24038.html?1434986948

Michael

Wednesday, March 2, 2016 - 10:06 pm Click here to edit this post
This is all good however there is a bit of a focus on war players -might add to have incentives for econ players as not all on this game are in it for war

Aries

Wednesday, March 2, 2016 - 11:05 pm Click here to edit this post
It is true that the game is not just for war. In my view, the econ game already receives adequate incentives at each stage. If you do an adequate job getting your country going, you generate cash. Cash is needed to put together everything needed for the war game and can lead to generating products on direct trade and in space for player trade for coins.

You can easily hit early game level and rankings awards in a short time. Rankings awards are repeatable obviously with continued country maintenance. Higher level game level awards are available as your country grows.

The econ game also has a high level of detail and allows fine tuning of countries beyond simply seeing the population grow and adding more corporations. Managing and growing your country's investment fund and a good understanding of your country's consumer spending can offer tools for your country to improve over a time of "real" years.

In short, I already find adequate incentive to constantly optimize my countries years after my account registration. I find no lack of incentive in the econ game and find the game is not lacking in a general sense in this area. I do find that the fruits of the econ game have little use due to a fairly stagnant war game. Indeed, this is the area of the game due the most attention right now.

Aries

Thursday, March 3, 2016 - 03:55 am Click here to edit this post
I thought about an old post tonight. Check this out. An oldie but goodie.

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/8/21792.html?1363212181

Couple interesting things about it, other than it was posted exactly 3 years before this thread. First, you will notice a form of both my first two suggestions were implemented into the game. It used to be that you could raid hapless computer countries continually at the same war level and each win a cash award even more than what is earned today. I suggested an end to that and the game changed to force an automatic advancement in war level with 4 wins at the same war level. The second suggestion was to encourage some type of benefit from not being in some sort of game war protection. This was implemented and a mild welfare benefit exists if you choose to drop war level protection (another of my suggestions) and are of least war level 3.

The other interesting thing is that I made these suggestions back when the reverse of balance between econ and war players was true. Players focused on their economy were hopelessly outclasses in gaining assets compared to a war player, who could ignore their country and repeatedly follow a simple guide to mega-trillions. This was obviously out of balance and required fixing. My suggestion to curb unlimited raiding cash was not popular to some but needed to balance rewards with the econ game. Today, the econ game offers rewards on par with what can be gained in most conflicts and carries no risk. The balance has changed to deter players from advancing into the war game.

None of my suggestions on this thread would return to the silly imbalance that used to exist. Indeed, I remain first an econ player though I think classifying players as one or the other as kinda overdone. Players have choices to choose their participation of the war game (remember that war levels are figured by world) and the option is there to enjoy some of both. What exists now is a difficult path, for most, to enter participation in the war game at a steady,non-frustrating, pace. A change that offers rewards for participation, in-line with the game, that will offer tools and lessons needed to compete with more experienced players is needed. Many of my suggestions at the top are towards that goal.

Johanas Bilderberg

Friday, March 4, 2016 - 12:30 pm Click here to edit this post
So it is your fault we can't raid to build an empire.

Thanks a lot.

jdlech

Friday, March 4, 2016 - 01:40 pm Click here to edit this post
Wouldn't giving production bonuses to 'war gamers only' give them an economic advantage over econ gamers?

I think the cost of producing weapons and ammo should be reduced, plus a slight reduction in the importance of weapon and ammo quality. The war game should be more about strategy than who can field the most expensive military.

Increase the number of civilian casualties incurred in war. Artillery should produce tons of civilian casualties while precision bombers and cruise missiles should not. Painting should cause civilian casualties too. Nobody likes foreign military forces taking over their farm.

Aries

Friday, March 4, 2016 - 02:44 pm Click here to edit this post
With the "production bonus", are you talking about the Natural Resources idea or the welfare bonus that already exists in the game with dropping war level protection? With the war-level protection thing, what you describe is already in the game. The effect is minor, however.

The idea behind "Natural Resources" is to give war players something to fight over, similar to traditional conflicts over land and resources in the real world. Though war players may experience an economic advantage by holding such a resource, this would be balanced by the fact that they would be required to defend it, without the assistance of some type of war immunity offered by the game.

If you check game updates, the cost of weapons and ammo have been reduced many times, about a few dozen the last time I counted. Your belief that this would lead to a situation where wars would be then decided more by strategy by such changes is false. The result of these changes is that the war players, in general, simply have more weapons. If you watched the recent war with Whiteboy and I, you would know that hundreds of thousands of weapons were lost on both sides.

Take a look at my first suggestion, Unit Simplicity, which tries to remedy the problem caused by a series of making weapons less expensive and keeping unit sizes relatively small. Now, it is too easy for top war players to reinforce their defense relative to an attacker's ability to achieve a decisive war result. Try to grasp that, literally, Whiteboy and I spent 10 hours shooting at each other in the most intense warfare that Simcountry currently allows.

As to damage caused by war, did you check the casualty numbers I posted about the recent war? I will add here for convenience:

Aries Total

Dead 1,742,500
Wounded 3,965,000

WB Total

Dead 2,675,000
Wounded 7,400,000

I believe damage done by weapons is about right. Remember, that these were inflicted within one game year. I would also note that I don't believe Whiteboy's total includes any civilian casualties at all, his being all military casualties. Jdlech, have you experienced a PvP war yet? I am wondering what you are seeing to suggest some of these ideas.

Aries

Friday, March 4, 2016 - 03:52 pm Click here to edit this post
and that's right Johanas, it's my fault you actually have to build an empire to build an empire. You can't simply fall over cash repeatedly raiding at war level 4 and 5 anymore. For that matter, most of those players didn't bother to build an empire at all. What was the point?

jdlech

Friday, March 4, 2016 - 04:28 pm Click here to edit this post
You're right, I don't like the idea of an economic advantage for wargamers only. As you already pointed out, it (and any other economic boost) will only result in even larger armies in the field.
And again, you're right; I don't know anything. I'll just quit making suggestions.

Aries

Friday, March 4, 2016 - 05:16 pm Click here to edit this post
I am still unclear of which "economic advantage" you are referring to. As far as "larger armies" one of the primary issues contributing to it is that there is seldom an incentive to fight a war. Consider that the largest Simcountry armies have been building for some time. The lack of something to fight over is the single largest contributor to the imbalance that exists between a relatively new war player and a veteran that simply stocked weapons and ammo for years with little reason to pull them out and use them.

I would be interested what you consider to be a "wargamer". As I mentioned earlier, I think these tags are overdone. Am I a "wargamer" because I fight a PvP war here and there? I have fought about 8-9 different player opponents making me one of the more experienced war players you will find. Now, check my empire on LU, my main country is Candinnalm. I have an empire of well over 2.4 billion population. In an average "real" year, I login and manage my empire several times nearly every day. In that same year, I fight maybe 2 PvP wars total. My economy is the best is Simcountry, it isn't close. Am I an econ player? How do you think I paid for all these weapons in the first place?

The truth is, ever since the update that removed unlimited low-level C3 raiding for megabucks, it is no longer possible to be a successful war player for long without being a very good econ player. In the long term, this is how I have always planned to defeat any potential opponent. My econ is much better which means I can replace my stuff much faster than my opponent. If you are worried about the relevance of building econ, your worry is in the wrong place. None of these suggestions would change that.

Aries

Friday, March 4, 2016 - 06:01 pm Click here to edit this post
Oh, and on you making suggestions, I am more implying that I may not know something. If you check my suggestion pages, for example, you will notice that the trend is that I will point out my game observations, identify something that I think should be corrected or could be better, and offer a suggestion. This gives one the ability to add to the discussion if they have different observations or perhaps have the same observations but have a different solution, and so on.

If you simply offer a suggestion without the underlying data, it is more difficult for a reader to understand the purpose of your suggestion. When I ask questions about one's suggestions, my goal is to understand the basis of your observations and the purpose of your suggestion. In this way, I have the opportunity to test on my own or share my own similar observations and move the discussion forward. Indeed, I ask because I don't know.

jdlech

Saturday, March 5, 2016 - 03:49 pm Click here to edit this post
My definitions are almost entirely arbitrary, as I suspect are anyone else's. I consider a wargamer to be someone who has made the decision to pass into WL3, and leave secured mode permanently (there's always the exception of buying it with GCs, of course).
An econ player is one who has made the decision not to leave secured mode.
By my definition, one cannot be a wargamer or econ player until one has made that decision. We all start out as econ players by default. So the question is: did you decide to leave secured mode for good?
And yes, clearly, you have mastered both sides of the game.

Imagine an 800lb gorilla, like yourself, who is well nigh unassailable by military means by all but a select few players, suddenly obtains 100X the production of a half dozen natural resources. You flood the markets on all worlds and depress the prices forever - leaving everyone else unable to profitably produce their own. At will, you can embargo an entire world as often as you like, for as long as you like. And you can squash others who dare produce their own - either by flooding the market again and making it unprofitable, or by military invasion and the destruction of their country and factories.
Now imagine a half dozen of those aforementioned select few obtain similar control of their own half dozen natural resources.

Argument #2.
Why would any small player want to both leave war protection AND obtain a reason for you to invade him? As you have demonstrated, your military is larger than most empires. How is a level 4 or 5 player supposed to protect a country with something you want against a player of your size and calibre?
As it stands, 90% of the countries in the game exist because of either war protection, or the fact that they have nothing you, (and a select few other 800lb gorillas in the game) want.
I've heard of players in World of Warcraft who have high level characters. But all they ever do is go about beating up on low level characters and taking anything they have. And the only way to stop them is to run away. So how is anybody supposed to 'run away' from a guy your size? Countries can't run away; they can only hide behind secured mode.

I'm not sure if you realize it, but the suggestion to tie production bonuses to leaving secure mode is essentially asking the Gamemaster to give players something which you can take and the ability to beat them up.

Think of the corollary argument; if you can't beat them up (because of war protection), then they shouldn't have any production bonuses for you to take.
I know I'm picking on you, but the argument applies to all the big, experienced players. You just happen to be a good foil for the argument.

I like the idea of bringing individuality to all the countries. But individuality should be for all the nations. Especially since that is where all the new players start.
The game is kinda moving towards a multi level game, where big players like you should move on to bigger and better (in space?) and leave the sandbox for us kids. I feel like a 9 month old baby looking at a 12 year old with his enormous sand castle and thinking "there ain't no way in h*** I'm leaving war protection".
Just a thought.

But there's nowhere for guys like you to go. The sandbox is getting more toys, but it's the same sandbox for us all. Mastering the country/enterprise game should be the launching point for the war and space games. Mastery of which should be the launching point for an even more epic game. But in each case, the 800lb gorillas should be moving on and leaving only their footprints behind for the new players to play in.

This is actually the reason why a lot of war games have to keep launching new worlds. As the older worlds mature, they become dominated by a few 800lb gorillas, and nobody wants to play in the shadow of 800lb gorillas. So they launch new worlds, which puts everyone back on a level playing field.
(Whew, too much typing)

Sunnyknight

Saturday, March 5, 2016 - 04:03 pm Click here to edit this post
This game isn't moving anywhere. Not now, not ever.

However, i do agree with Jdlechs most recent explanation.

Aries

Saturday, March 5, 2016 - 05:07 pm Click here to edit this post
No, I have not left secured mode. I have it active for my main country in both of the worlds I am on that have it available. By your definition, I am an econ player.

I am lost in this next set of text. Like my last post, I would prefer to know what you are commenting on. Instead, I have to put myself in a fantasy scenario that has little basis in Simcountry. Newer players have an unrealistic view of how it is possible to manipulate the market. Again, I appear to be equipped with real game data and observations, you either lack such data or chosen to not share such data to back up your Simcountry market fantasy.

Indeed, I have around 4000 corporations that I control on LU. "Flooding markets" and "depressing" prices is both unrealistic and would not even be in my benefit. Sure, I could make 4000 clothing corps or some other concentration of production that would oversupply one product or two but why would I want to run a bunch of corps that would be inherently unprofitable in that way? Every time I am asked on the forum or in chat, my advice is to make stuff that are constantly in demand, I often use the word "stable" when describing corps I like to run. I follow my own advice.

-----------------Important stuff-------------------
I guess that last paragraph was an argument since there is an "argument 2". Again, please tell me what you are commenting on in the initial post, what observations you have made in the game to come to your conclusion, whether you see the same problem I do or not, and ,if you still see some type of problem related to what my suggestion is intended to fix, your alternative solution. This would be a more effective discussion my friend.
---------------------------------------------------

About argument 2, I guess I am lost at the get-go. I feel we are talking about a 2 player game. If it is a 2 player game, obviously, I feel good about my chances in that scenario. Simcountry is not a 2 player game. Simcountry has 5 worlds, including more than one in which I have no presence. Simcountry allows player interaction, including player defense pacts called federations. I feel we need to talk about Simcountry.

Talking about Simcountry, obviously I would think the incentive would be there for a small player to join a federation. I remember when something called diplomacy used to happen in the game. I am generally not difficult to reach nor are some of the other players that you compare to large animals. You might be surprised to hear that I invite new players into my federation. You may be aware that I have posted some of the best guides going on the Beginners Forum. I am very interested in players who advance with my C3 Raiding guide and Path of a Warrior guide. My pattern is to defend such players from others that you describe as large animals as I did in the Battle of Camp Foxtrot, found here:

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/3711/25234.html?1447529218

As far as I know, it is currently rare for these large Simcountry animals to attack new players. Again, do you have any data? No? That is okay, I guess I will supply enough for the both of us. Here is more stuff that actually occurs in Simcountry:

Here I defended several players from another player. Like the Battle of Camp Foxtrot, I didn't actually declare war on anyone and helped some new players organize their defense:

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/3712/25013.html?1440096777

This one is a long thread. It was back in the days of another player who would attack new players. Not sure it was clear in the text but I ended up retaking countries that acorn lost and returned them to him:

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/4969/22622.html?1376531340

The interesting thing about all three of those conflicts is that none of the players I assisted were in my fed when they needed help. You might consider that very few players in a stable fed, mine isn't bad, have to deal with this aggression in the first place. You also might consider that not every player with the means is out there to beat the "little guy".

I would be interested to hear you comment on the War College and Battleground suggestions as they are right up the alley of that small player you are concerned about. How about we be fair here? Again, tell me what suggestions you wish to comment on, what you are observing, whether you see the same problem I do, and how you might resolve the issue differently. C'mon, my friend, we can be more constructive than this.

Aries

Saturday, March 5, 2016 - 05:45 pm Click here to edit this post
I believe there is an important trait that separates a successful player from one that is less so. As a new player, it is possible to see large empires run by successful players and play the game with a goal of building your own large powerful empire. This player seeks to learn from such players, reviews their empires and finds out how they work and why they work. They find out that these players often invite even small new empires into their federation. When conflict occurs with their fed, they see it as an opportunity to learn about war strategy. They continue to use what they have learned to advance game levels, advance war levels, and obtain the tools needed to be a greater and greater force in the game.

It is also possible to view the large empires as a threat. You recall playing many games in the past, many played in the 1st-person, where the sight of higher level players meant that you were about to be beat with a very big club. You play within every game protection you are given, yielding to play in which game realities and lack of game experiences keep you endlessly confined. Your empire stays no bigger than a few countries and your game level and war level advancement is slight.

Here are a few world statistic posts on LU that were taken in the first few months I played the game (I started play 12/10/2012):

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/4969/21323.html?1356726698

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/4969/21628.html?1360305743

Johanas Bilderberg

Monday, March 7, 2016 - 01:20 am Click here to edit this post
Farming c3's was around long before you started playing then.

Sad to see the only way to build an empire is gone by the wayside.

Aries

Monday, March 7, 2016 - 02:32 am Click here to edit this post
Only if you ignore my Path of a Warrior guide, Game Level guide, and C3 guide. A handful of players have followed my guides to a lot of success. I would assume you would be an advocate of the War College and Battlegrounds suggestions too. The only question is if you read them and chose to complain anyway or you didn't read them and chose to post to this thread a second time without giving the topic a chance.

whiteboy

Monday, March 7, 2016 - 02:51 am Click here to edit this post
I have no idea what jdlech is talking about...

But, I will ask Aries, although the prior ideas were ultimately implemented, did it increase the participation in the war game at all? I obviously don't have any data on that but I can still see right now that the war game is dead. I think you saw a bunch of players constantly raiding and thought that if you took away their incentive to do so, that they would then turn on other players and reignite the war game, but that didn't happen.

A big deterrent to the war game is actually that you can't raid c3's endlessly for profit in order to build an empire. You've got to understand that the more difficult you make it to acquire assets, the less likely that anyone is going to be willing to put them at risk. This is why the GM's really screwed up the game when they completely changed the GC value and didn't allow players to sell cash for GC. Back in the day you would get 400-500B per GC and there was constant buying/selling, at that value players could take their game level awards and any rank awards and actually build their own large militaries. Now that it is 36B per coin, you can't build anything with that and taking away the ability to constantly raid c3's for 1T a pop (plus whatever else you could milk out), took away (almost) any other opportunity to build a large empire without expending tons of real cash. At 36B per coin it takes you 28K ($2,800) coins to gain a quadrillion in military assets and that makes the barrier to entry far too high.

At some point this game is either going to go away completely or someone is going to finally realize that they need to loosen up on the asset trading and allow people to gain assets with their time in addition to not allowing people to have unlimited assets at zero cost to them. Before space trading you could be a dominant player on any one world and there were barriers to entry for anyone else who wanted to enter that world to try to compete with you, you could have a reasonable amount of assets and really have a good time. Now, with space trading, you are either completely dominant or no one.

Our battle was a battle of two people with a dominant amount of assets and it was fun, but my guess is that at this point in time, I could go after almost anyone else in the game and take them down very easily with the huge asset advantage in addition to the strategic advantage (we may soon find out).

Aries

Monday, March 7, 2016 - 03:10 am Click here to edit this post
I started a longer response but I just noticed nothing you wrote would indicate you read my suggestions at the top of this thread. I took the time to offer real suggestions that I believe are the best ones out there to add to the war game. I will give you the courtesy of answering your long post, point-by-point, if you extend me the same courtesy of reviewing the suggestions that I took the time to put together and telling me what you think on those.

I will add, I pay $180 Billion per coin. It is on this forum, it is on the trade forum, and I will add it here. If you give your coins to the GM for game cash, you are a sap.

HEY EVERYBODY, I PAY $180 BILLION PER COIN!

{I am offering 1 million electric power in direct trade at 300 quality for .5 coins. This amount of power should sell for $90+ billion on your world most of the time (any time market price is 30,000+). This provides you a return of $180 Billion per gold coin, which is 6 times greater than the GM offer. To take advantage of this, go to direct trade and follow these steps:

1. Purchase the power. 2. Transfer it to your country following the link "exchange products with countries and enterprises". 3. Sell it to the market at "Best Price" (The power will likely sell when the game month changes). }

Aries

Monday, March 7, 2016 - 05:13 am Click here to edit this post
In fact, it is very difficult for me to point out any player that has posted so far has read any of the suggestions. What, nobody thinks it is a good idea to fix countries that are impossible to conquer?

Whiteboy, you got nothing on unit simplicity? You ready to go another 10 hours with me before you think the game needs an update in this area?

Nobody thinks the game needs a ranking system that actually shows something other than who has the lowest score penalty?

What player thinks after dispatching enough C3's to hit war level 3-4 that they are ready for PvP? War College and Battlegrounds have no merit?

Is this the best you guys got? Complain about the state of the game but offer NO suggestions and don't even take the time to read and comment on ones made. Really, you guys need a complaint thread. Then you guys could at least stay on topic. Who wants to do the honors? Whiteboy? Jdlech? Johanas?

whiteboy

Monday, March 7, 2016 - 08:08 am Click here to edit this post
Sorry Aries, but to be fair, you went into this topic early on in the thread and I focused my response on it because the overall focus of the thread from my reading was how to fix the war game. All of your points are valid and I wouldn't have an issue supporting any of them depending on the implementation, but all of them combined won't go as far in restarting the war game as the ability to raid for resources went towards killing it. I appreciate what you've done in regards to offering much more value per GC, but it is a bridge too far for most people to understand even how to go about implementing it including having to have either purchased or rented a dock.

And don't say I've offered no suggestions, I've offered many including in the post you were responding to and for the most part, my ideas require little to no implementation time/cost and for the most part would just be deactivating things that were done which shouldn't require more than the GM's clicking a button. I'll reiterate the way to turn around the war game very quickly:

1. Allow exchange of GC for game cash between players with the market setting the rate.
2. Allow countries to be sold down to 20M population as they used to be.
3. Place limitations on space imports in the same way that general product and military spending have limits.
4. Reduce effectiveness of defensive weapons/increase effectiveness of offensive weapons.
4a. Easy way is to eliminate 3 wing fed support and go back to 2 wing.
5. Do away with quality impacts for weapons/ammunition as they cloud up the math and make the war engine slower.
6. Eliminate weapons maintenance units as they make the cost of having a standing military way too expensive.
7. Reinstate the ability to fight WL4 c3's and earn 1T per.
8. Make the navy's as they used to be, as they are now they are worthless because the number of weapons possible makes them useless.
8. Reduce the number of weapons in general, there are close to half of offensive and probably a quarter of defensive weapons that aren't usable and just add further complication.

Those would all be a good start and other than eliminating weapons maintenance and killing off useless weapons, the remaining should just be checking some boxes/going back to programming that already existed.

From your suggestions, I would add all of those in as well to further make things better but I think for the most part they are more complicated programming/time consuming discovery (painting points). I do think the fort issue could be solved pretty easily by just not allowing forts to be contracted at all.

whiteboy

Monday, March 7, 2016 - 08:18 am Click here to edit this post
Oh and Aries, I get the frustration with the negativity and I appreciate that you're trying to put some very good ideas out there. I just wanted to point out that there are often unforeseen consequences.

And now that I'm thinking about this, maybe there is a compromise on the space game that would allow for great flexibility for the most part but would have the intended effects when it came to war: Unlimited space transfers as long as there are no PvP declared wars, once war is declared, space transfers have their own 1T per game month limit. Or to make it even a little more flexible, unlimited space transfers remain as long as they are between countries on the same world.

Aries

Monday, March 7, 2016 - 01:27 pm Click here to edit this post
There is no dock required to take advantage of my gold coin offer. Whiteboy, check direct trade. You don't need a dock. You don't need shuttles. Purchasing and accessing the power I have for sale is as simple in your experience as purchasing professional soldiers and officers and transferring them to your country.

Many players are taking advantage of this. I had 3 players purchase a total of 27 million power for a total of 13.5 coins yesterday. Between selling a few items in space and selling power and cargo shuttles, I have had about 200 coins worth of sales in the last 8 days (that is as far back as my gold coin log goes).

FOR EVERYONE ELSE WHO WAS CONFUSED LIKE WHITEBOY. NO SHUTTLES NEEDED! NO DOCK NEEDED! GET $180 BILLION PER GOLD COIN TODAY!

1. I have no problem with this one. This has kinda happened already in electric power. I have been consistent in being the market-setter for the exchange of coins to cash for the last 6 months or so since I have and make the most game cash in Simcountry. If I could offer game cash for coins directly, I would similarly take over that market, except I would predict the increased demand might push the market towards $120 Billion/coin. I can't disagree with your idea here as I would benefit, though I believe every idea at the top of this page would help the game more.

2. I disagree here. You are talking about selling population for coins. This had to change since unlimited worker transfers went into effect combined with unlimited war level 3 raiding. This is also counter to the ability to build an empire and economy, since selling population creates an empire welfare penalty.

3. I disagree here. I assume this has to do with the rate of war reinforcement. Check my Unit Simplicity suggestion in detail. I believe it solves this war issue and doesn't unnecessarily effect simple econ shuttle transfers.

4. I disagree here. The balance between offense and defense is very good right now.

5. I disagree here. This would compound the problems I describe in detail in Unit Simplicity. Quality is essential as a force multiplier and is integral to the game in general.

6. I disagree here. I would bet from some of your comments that you have not seen my LU empire in some time. A strong economy does allow considerable profit even with considerable forces deployed. My average LU country has 60 million less pop in your main but produces 40% more product and brings in $200 Billion more govt income per month. Check CC2 in my empire which currently has 228.5 million pop, 1.6 million soldiers deployed, and makes $300 Billion in monthly profit. I would make some of the changes I suggested at the top, which I believe will make wars more common, and see how game balance changes from there.

7. I disagree here. Plenty of reward can be picked up from raiding computer countries already. I would add the War College idea which adds a bit more. After that, incentives should rest in PvP. I would appreciate you looking at Battlegrounds which would be a more fun replacement to even more C3 raiding after getting your war levels and completing War College.

8. This would be a drastic change and requires a bit more explanation. I will admit that, currently, I found value in every weapon except attack boats, which changed to be a corp supply. I buy just about every weapon when I find a low market price and often find uses for them.

Again, I would be against limits on space transfer. Even adding a PvP limit sounds clunky and would be a shock to a new war player who is not prepared for an unsuspected mechanic.

Whiteboy, I think your ideas look too far to the past. I believe the problems that existed then also exist now. The main issue being that more rewards should exist in PvP itself rather than a system of repeatedly raiding a computer opponent. Battlegrounds, Natural Wealth, and Total War are superior solutions in that they are more fun and reward for effort beyond following a step-through guide.

-------For those unfamiliar with the old way-------

Imagine the game World of Warcraft. Many have played it. Most are at least familiar with it. Imagine that it is still as large and has just as many challenges but the epitome of getting wealth and advancing in the game was repeatedly killing boars (anyone see that South Park episode?). Sure, you could go to the more challenging areas but the boar area is the most rewarding. The entire user experience is spent in this area and then going to the PvP area with your boar loot to kill other players. If you lose, no matter, back to killing more boars.

That is how Simcountry used to be. The epitome of gaining wealth was spending an hour raiding a handful of computer countries using the same method over and over. Those that tried to actually build empires and make money in econ were saps. Most could never hope to make the cash in a week what a c3 raider could make in an hour following a simple guide. Plus, the raider could spend two hours, or, more if they wanted. There is absolutely no limit to killing boars, um, raiding c3s until you got very, very bored (see what I did there) with it.

Sure, PvP wars happened but, like now, were not really rewarded on par with the additional challenge. This was the real problem then and is the same problem now. There needs to be stuff to fight over and there needs to be a system that allows players to fight PvP with somewhat less risk for some reward. Ideas that further that are at the top of this page. Unlimited boaring/boring c3 raiding is not fun and is not in the same league as the War College and Battlegrounds ideas.
--------------------------------------

Sunnyknight

Monday, March 7, 2016 - 03:15 pm Click here to edit this post
Didn't WL 10 yield a profit of 20T (Holy mother if only that was the case today) (give or take a few t) per country back then?

I wonder if that remained today if we'd have any concerns with purchasing weapons and ammo, or losing them in a war for that matter.

Hmm....

Aries

Monday, March 7, 2016 - 05:16 pm Click here to edit this post
I believe it used to be an amount in trillions equal to the war level, so $10 Trillion for WL 10.

A quick check of the docs will show reaching war level 10 pays 220 coins on Fearless Blue and 100 coins on any other world in addition to $4.8 Trillion in cash. As I pay $180 Billion for coins that means you could cash out at about $45 Trillion on Fearless Blue or about $23 Trillion on any other world. Sunny, it appears the solution you seek in your last post is already in the game. You have also now posted twice looking to complain rather than to comment on game suggestions. Maybe you are our guy to start off the complaint thread.

I still say you guys are on the wrong track. The important thing is that there is parity in the game in how assets are acquired, not how quickly it is possible to accumulate them. If it is easier, it is easier for all. If it is harder, it is harder for all. Parity is what is important . Whether a player chooses to gain assets through econ or through war the gain should consider the effort and risk.

Again everyone! Today you earn $45 TRILLION for hitting war level 10 on Fearless Blue and $23 TRILLION on any other world! More cash than you can shake a stick at!

whiteboy

Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - 06:26 am Click here to edit this post
I think you're looking too much towards what you know and not enough towards the past when there was an actual war game Aries. It's pretty simple logic for me, past=very active war game, now=very dead war game. So, were people participating in the war game in the past in spite of it being worse (possible but not very likely) or are people not participating in the war game now because it is worse (very likely but still possibly wrong). There were problems in the past and there will continue to be problems, but in the past there was an active war game and now, there isn't.

I didn't bother to provide explanations for my suggestions but since you are questioning:

1. The rate of GC exchange used to actually be 460B per coin FROM THE GM's and when the market was flooded with cash from war conquests you could get 550B+ per coin. Talk about a stimulus to the war game.
2. Again, this goes to being able to cash in on the spoils of war. If you've ever turned over a country to the GM's with 80M in pop that you don't want to keep (and there is no direct trading market for countries anymore), you should understand this frustration. There used to be an extra 240-360 GC's in profit in countries than there is now. That difference is further hurt by the welfare penalty which you mentioned which causes the profit potential to drop by even more.
3. You're focusing on the rate of reinforcement, it has very little to do with that. It has to do with understanding your opponent/having any knowledge of what you face. In our war there was every chance that I was just a dead account at that point and you could have taken my countries with little resistance or instead, you could have spent tons of assets and gained nothing except for a good experience. What I don't get about anyone's disagreement about this is that there are zero posts about getting rid of general spending limits or military spending limits but everyone is completely against space transfer limits. This is how I know that everyone else is in it for their own game and not for the betterment of the game overall, I'm willing to significantly hurt myself by saying that there should be a spending limit for space as there already is for general/military spending even though I have probably the most (or close to it) space assets. I get you guys have invested a bunch in the space game and like your ability to have super powerful militaries at no monthly cost to yourselves, but it's bad for the game and makes no sense whatsoever.
4. The balance between offense and defense is terrible, I do like the MRMB covering OAAB but you're still left with extremely expensive options that also happen to be very time consuming at that point to destroy garrisons/targets. If you've done the cost math on HT/HA or MRMB to destroy garrisons/targets, you know that they're 4-6x as expensive as PB for the same purpose. When it comes to mobile units you have a massive advantage in the air game as you get 3 wing defense and offensive mobile units of any kind are worthless.
5. This is simple, when there was no quality impact for weapons, very active war game, with quality impacts it's dead. You can't ever know the quality of units you're attacking or the quality of units attacking you. Quality takes way too much time and resources to develop and that is the last thing you want when you're trying to set up either for offense or defense. In addition, it makes the war engine far slower than it needs to be. Which I'm sure is further complicated by the 3 wing defense as mentioned above.
6. I'll be happy to take a look at your LU countries and all the more power to you for finding a way to make more money via the econ game but you could be making even more and people would be more willing to actually keep defenses in their countries if those maintenance units (which didn't exist before and it wasn't a problem) didn't exist.
7. "Plenty of reward" is a relative term, you've got (I'm assuming because I haven't looked) quadrillions in assets, it's easy to decide that plenty of award is a couple hundred billion. For those starting from a few trillion in assets it is not meaningful when it comes to being able to compete with large players.
8. If you've found a use for them then good for you, I've also purchased every weapon and have a stash of them all. But navies in general are useless at this point and I guess technically all of the weapons have some use but most of them are nothing more than distractions that confuse players that don't know any better.

As far as your post about incentives for moving up in WL, you're failing to mention that the rewards for each step only apply to when you actually make that step up in WL. As you move through that process you can end up with a couple hundred trillion in the end and it will make you nothing but a minor bit player/target. But, if you didn't have to worry about someone like Aries or myself importing quadrillions into your world then it would make you a serious player.

I do like the war college, I do like the battleground, but I know that for the GM's that is a huge amount of programming (which I've already stated). I just happen to think that people will be far more motivated by traditional warfare than they are by other forces and to get them involved in the war game they have to feel like they have the ability to re-acquire assets if they lose.

Aries

Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - 08:15 am Click here to edit this post
1. Yes, as said several times on this thread. Econ was practically useless, everyone who participated in PvP wars was forced to raid low-level c3s until their eyes bled. This introduced 100s of trillions of cash that just magically appeared into the game on a daily basis. This made cash to coin exchange rates silly. No, we should not go back to that.

2. I understand what you are saying here. I like the solution in my Total War idea better than changing this limit which rewards victory with coins in the first place which is balanced by the risk of open PvP.

3. I honestly have no difficulty sizing up my opponent. I predicted I might have to shoot down as many as 400,000 helicopters or more and I was prepared to do so. You did not disappoint. From a strategic perspective, I was prepared to make this trade as long as you would let me since I am aware I am unlikely to face a similar air defense anywhere else and I am confident in my ability to replace my losses. Do you believe I failed in this calculation?

I lose you in what you are saying about spending limits. Are we back in believing that entering space is expensive? Shuttles cost .27 coins per shuttle, or less, since I last looked. The lowest of game level or war level awards make space entry as simple as finding the link for direct trade. Oh, and I tested the other day, there seems to be a limit of around 240 shuttles that will participate in missions, at least for me, at a time. That means anyone picking up the game level 2 and 3 awards can move stuff just like the big boys.

On the other hand, spending limits pertain to purchasing from the world market. They are annoying in some ways but manageable with the addition of more countries and/or an enterprise. Even a player who plays peaceful might be willing to add that 80 mil pop country you were talking about earlier.

So space is very accessible, as I have shown. I don't see an issue with sizing up an opponent. Maybe I can give you tips there. I always seem to know what to bring in my dozens of conflicts. Does this solve your concerns about space?

4. Once defensive air wings are dealt with, garrisons are no problem, even with mid-range bats. I am curious if you could share your experience with that. I will share mine here. I took a very notable country, 2 countries total in this battle, on LU about 10 months ago. I was opposed by Stephen Ryan, who is not considered to be a slouch in the war game. My summary can be found here:

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/4969/24866.html?1433621286

As far as the air power itself, I believe air wings are not overpowered. I will add that the last several players I have fought, including you, owned and deployed far more mobile units than I have, so I am not speaking to my benefit.

If your air wings only put up a 2-wing defense in our last war, however, I would have cut through them like a hot knife through butter. Even with your 3-wing defense if you made the mistake to take my attack lightly, you would have lost both of your countries. As it was, my data tells me you lost around 189,000 helicopters, most of those from mobile units and I have the firepower to repeat that attack and more.

5. Quality is supposed to take resources and time. It can be mitigated by effective management of your empire (and is a benefit to having an empire). Countries are for more than making a few bucks, a successful empire can manage very large upgrading operations. Quality should be a defining factor in war, though again I am aware I have far fewer mobile units than some.

6. If I understand right, I believe the costs always were there, the added products and corps just took out the void the cash used to go to. I could bend a little here if my first suggestion, Unit Simplicity, were implemented. As this would increase unit sizes, a corresponding reduction in price or consumption in defensive type maintenance might make sense.

I actually floated an idea that garrisons should not use maintenance at all in the past. This was based on the idea of giving players the ability to be more prepared for conflict on the defensive end. Players planning an offensive have such an advantage in choosing the time of war and such that it seemed somewhat of a fairness issue as well. This somewhat touches on the type of warfare you were pleased I did not wage against you. The disposable c3 warfare which I have faced myself in wars against Wendy and Gaz. Removing maintenance consumption for garrisons could be a good compromise.

7. Check my Path of a Warrior Guide on the Beginners forum. There I describe in detail how to earn $78 Trillion and 640 coins (about $115 Trillion worth of coins) going no higher than Game Level 4 and War Level 6 on a few worlds. No one should be limited to "hundreds of billions" or a "few trillion" if they exert a little effort to follow my guide.

A handful of players have already found success in my Beginners Forum guides. How about Zentrino, who first hit War Level 2 in late August? He is now War Level 10 and looking at your challenge on the other thread. He also built a nice empire and acquired assets on his own. PvP? He was decced on by Blackeyes a few months after he was still learning game basics. I provided advice and support but the lion share of assets on the front line were his. Another new player Zen was also a big help. Read about it here:

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/3711/25234.html?1447529218

The path to assets should be a bit easier for a new war player but it should not be taken to a point that gains are far out of balance of econ. Those are the goals of the War College and Battlegrounds ideas.

8. It used to be that fighters and precision bombers were the vogue. I think I took you by surprise a bit with my strategy, even though I well documented my use of them in the war with SR and I have even used them prior to that. I think similarly, navies are the new area of the underrated. Not sure I want to say more on that but, suffice to say, I am making some investments in this area.

A couple hundred trillion is a good start to get an empire going and a powerful defense as a part of a federation. Imagine where even three new players would rank in war readiness by combining such resources in a federation. War College and Battlegrounds would help these guys even more.

Are there bigger players out there? Sure, why not? There will almost always be a bigger guy out there. A lot of times, that is what makes it fun. The smart players will learn all they can from them, if they have the opportunity, before they choose to ally with them or another path..

Have you checked War College and Battlegrounds recently? War College is modeled very similar to gaining war levels. Battlegrounds was described by Dub in this way:

"I read this expecting to disagree with the idea because of excessive coding requirements etc. But from what I see it would actually require very little work from the developers, simply giving certain countries a [battlegrounds:defender/attacker] tag, and adapting either the daily reward or beginners income functionality to deliver required weapons etc. Good job, although it does bear many similarities to the two team solution I suggested to you in chat a number of days ago"

Battlegrounds would be an ongoing way to re-acquire assets. It offers the opportunity to earn up to $30 Trillion each month. Obviously, something we haven't talked much about is the higher level game level and war level awards and that these are repeatable on each world. Almost everyone, even long-time players, have thousands of coins on the table from awards they have not worked on achieving yet. The war level awards on Fearless Blue alone are jaw-dropping.

whiteboy

Thursday, March 10, 2016 - 03:26 am Click here to edit this post
1. I don't know that econ was useless, I have heard from other econ players that actually found more places for profit in the game than there are currently and my experience has been that there are less possibilities in the econ game than there were previously but I'm certainly not the person who would know on that. I've spent little to no time beyond basic strategies (which again are also from days past). It also isn't at all true that people made their money by endlessly raiding c3's, there were very few people who were willing to put in the time to do that because the profitability was even worse than it is now. People (like me and the vast majority of players who were driving the war game) made their money by raiding left behind assets and PvP wars and then there were others who were investing lots of actual dollars in the game on a regular basis to build assets. And by the way, that wasn't such a bad decision if you were impatient when 100 coins could get you 50T and move you forward very quickly (also wasn't such a bad deal for w3c).

2. I think this is fundamentally where we just don't see eye to eye, I come at everything from a profit perspective (and subconsciously so does everyone else even if they don't know it). If you're going to take up that much of my time to set up on an opponent and then the resources to invest to go along with it, I want to see a good profit if I win. I enjoyed the tradeoff of being able to transfer in 200K people per month in the beginning until I realized that it completely warped the population aging spread and in a month or two of doing that your population died off because you were overloaded with old workers and not the appropriate number of children to go along with it. This is again where your support of unlimited space trading doesn't make sense to me, if you don't think space trading should be limited then why would you think that people trading should be limited so severely?

3. I'd love to hear how sizing up an opponent so specifically is possible, I haven't seen that and after poking around a bit tonight, I have no way of telling what people do or do not have stashed away in their CEO's and I know I left my secrecy off on my countries (because I was trying to sell) which helped you know very well what I had in my countries. As far as spending limits, I'm not sure why my point isn't coming through. Can you buy unlimited weapons/ammo every month? Can you buy unlimited non-military products every month? Can you transfer in unlimited weapons/ammo/products from space every month? One of those things is not like the other. If w3c was on their game they would have already sniffed this out and fixed it because it’s a profitability nightmare for them. But it also makes the game completely unlike the real world, in the real world there are costs that go along with having military assets, being able to infinitely transfer weapons while keeping those assets in places with no maintenance costs makes no sense. So, I don’t understand why you’re not making the argument that there should be no spending limits at all if you believe that you should be able to infinitely transfer weapons via space. In addition, and I haven’t even mentioned this yet, but space also allows you to just transfer assets out of your country if you don’t want to fight or if you feel like you’re going to lose a fight. The most likely scenario if you ended up taking my countries would have been that you were left with population and little else because I would have transferred it out once the air D was down and I didn’t have further reinforcements.

I have more responses but I’m traveling for work at the moment and I forgot to bring my laptop charger (ouch!). In general though, I do have to say that you’ve put a lot more thought into this than I have and I like many of your ideas. I just don’t happen to think they’ll have as much impact in reinvigorating the war game as correcting the issues I have mentioned.

Aries

Thursday, March 10, 2016 - 04:51 am Click here to edit this post
1. You admit you don't know. I will inform you. Yes, econ was useless in those days as I have said. The two options you pointed out were about it for getting ahead, that being either endlessly raiding c3s or spending real money.

Parity for effort in gaining assets is more even now and that is a good thing. What is lacking is incentives equal to the risk of PvP.

2. Pop transfers and worker exchanges are more useful than you put there. Check out Zen's very excellent guide on the Beginners forum. It isn't as simple as "raid country a" then "transfer to country b", there is planning to it similar to setting up good econ. Ever since unbalanced worker transfers have been in the game, moving pop is every bit as easy as space trade ever was. The "limit" you identify here is false.

3. As far as seeing what players have, have you checked out my Player Power Rankings on this same forum I posted some months ago? Here is the link:

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/1/25215.html?1447160799

Secrecy on or off has nothing to do with it. One highlight of standings as of 11-9-2015:

Super-Military Powers

1. Aries MP 11
2. Whiteboy MP 10
3. SirSmokesAlot MP 9
4. Blackeyes MP 9
5. SuperSoldierRCP MP 9


This means your military was about double that of Smokes, Blackeyes, or Super, where mine was about double yours. This is available to see on asset pages. Been some shake-ups in this with Blackeye's military split up between several players. In addition to asset numbers, I had the added intel of your post about what assets you had when you were selling things and I tend to notice what players have available to sell in space. I knew you were weaker on helis than ints. I maintain significant ability to go either way.

Actually, I have start disagreeing with your point on space. There is indeed a limit to transfers, as I have pointed out earlier. Again, as I have said in the prior post, only a bit over 200 shuttles will ever work at one time. This is a low bar that can be met by any player that has the military worth transferring in the first place. It is also, indeed, possible to give transfer orders that take more than one game month, in some cases many more, to process.

In a losing situation, it is not as easy to evacuate as you say. Shuttling takes time. There is reward to a quick attack. I will give an example and touch on something you said earlier. Does it cost more in ammo to destroy targets with mid-range missiles? Yes, it does. It is much cheaper to hit many targets with conventional missiles and cheaper to hit forts with cruise. For raiding, the answer is no, I don't advise hitting targets with mid range missiles. For PvP, I absolutely use mid range to hit targets. Why? Speed. Much more likely to end up with more of their stuff. PvP has much more strategy than at first glance.

I am not for a change in moving things in space. There is already a limit and I believe you may not know how much parity already exists here. Each of my 10 countries on LU completely refresh their $308 Billion military spending limit each month. You should know that that amount does not count quality. You can already store ammo, obviously, for no cost. All of my slave countries sit on as much ammo as they will likely ever need, I have seen countries of yours where you can relate.

This means with a change in space, I could still move over $3 Trillion in weapons, again before quality, to my countries each game month. If I wanted to concentrate weapons in a single county, that is no problem. I could have 9 of my countries purchase about $2.7 Trillion from my enterprise and use the "transfer goods" function to move all of those weapons to the country I need them in. That is a pretty impressive amount of stuff moving in a single game month. It isn't too shabby even compared to what space can do in 4 hours.

Again, I don't see space imbalanced. It has a limit. I mentioned it multiple times on this thread. Mega space powers really just have a bunch of shuttles piddling their thumbs. This is why I limit the Space Power Level in my Player Power Rankings suggestion to 4. It is important, but has a low limit that any war player can easily reach.

Al Sadius

Thursday, March 10, 2016 - 05:16 am Click here to edit this post
I'm mostly with Aries here. I'm a newbie, and not a terribly serious player, and I got a goodly-sized shuttle force together with zero difficulty. The hardest part was clicking those stupid buttons hundreds of times.

whiteboy

Friday, March 11, 2016 - 08:08 am Click here to edit this post
I had a massive response which was probably way too long but Aries would have probably enjoyed it but then as this wonderful site does, it crashed and I lost the entire thing so I'm going to briefly respond.

First Al, again, it's not a matter of access. It's a matter of strategy and being able to have infinite weapons without any costs to maintain them with the ability to transfer them anywhere in the SC universe with very little time required.

Second, Aries, raiding c3's is a newer phenomenon as it wasn't really profitable relative to the GC exchange during my time back in the day. And although I don't know how effective the econ game is now vs. then, I do know that I could have 400K ints and 200K helis plus max garrisons in my country and still make a little profit/break even with just basic econ strategies shared by others.

Also, if you think I couldn't have stripped out my countries in 3-4 game months, I'd beg to differ. I could have had those countries stripped out and left nothing but D mobile wings behind for you to destroy and then once I figured out if you were going air/land I could have transferred out the majority of either heli/int wings and left you with nothing but the population as profit. Which you could have then sold down to 80M but you would have only been able to sell about 150M of the 220M due to the welfare impact, the fact that you can only sell 3M per day and that there isn't that much of a market for population. So, you would have been left with ~300M pop to sell after taking down a couple thousand mobile heli units, at the current exchange rate that would be ~65T and you would have lost a ton in that encounter even with the W in the win column. That's for you as the attacker, I as the defender would have scored a 30M pop country that I had zero use for and if you smartly had transferred out the weapons (via space) that would have been my big score for losing hundreds of trillions in assets. Pretending like space is limited is ridiculous, I get that you've done tests on the number of active shuttles (although I think I know how that situation can be remedied) but have you looked at he dollar value of those assets vs. the strategy you discussed with direct trading and then transferring (by the way, I'm fully aware of and have utilized that strategy many times before space even existed so it wasn't something I hadn't thought about)? I'm not talking about 10's of trillions of assets per month, that's nothing when it comes to large wars, I'm talking about hundreds or thousands of T in assets being transferred via space. In addition, the method of surpassing the spending limits is not so simple/easy. If I declare on all of your 10 countries to distract you/spread your resources/ensure the greatest chance of profitability (which is something I would absolutely do) then you're now left with only the spending space of those countries and then you have to take 10 c3's per country in order to have that leverage in spending space. Spending space is not so simple as every country gets the full 300B per month, large countries do and small countries only get ~100B per month and that spending space is not impacted by quality when it comes to direct trading but is impacted by quality once the purchase is completed. So, you don't end up with 100B for the next month after the purchase is made, you actually end up with negative spending space and 2-3 months until you can purchase anything again. So, you have transferred trillions of assets at this point but that's a drop in the bucket to the 100's or 1000's of T that is needed to participate in a big war with a large opponent because space trading allows infinite transfers and the bandwidth isn't even close to the limit of spending space.

All that being said, I'm going to end this conversation in this forum from my side as I do think that your ideas will be good for the game and I'll reserve my further opinions unless the changes do not have the desired results. So, I support your suggestions and wish that the GM's will implement them. You've got a way better grasp on both the econ game and the war game than I do at this point so I'll defer to current knowledge.

Aries

Friday, March 11, 2016 - 04:28 pm Click here to edit this post
On space limits: I don't see where you have made the point on a change here would add to strategy. There is already a limit to space, as I have pointed out multiple times on this thread. Further, you can see what players are transporting on the eve of war if they choose to use shuttles to do it. That sounds like some strategy right there. In fact, I often move things that I want my opponent to see. If you looked carefully, I moved fighters, bombers, and their ammo before the war and deployed them on my map. My attack strategy was already set at that time but I about always show signs that I am going to do something different than I end up doing.

You would have had to make the choice to pull stuff out shorty after the decs were made. That is your choice and I am not sure what your position on this is. Are you saying that a player that is caught by surprise by a war declaration should be limited by space to the extent that it would not be possible for them to remove and add sufficient forces to their country before the war goes active? The position of the game runs counter to this, believing that a defender should have this ability.

I think what you go into next cuts into this even further. I do think we see this differently. In my eyes, the attacker has a substantial advantage in a few key areas. They choose the fight, they choose where, and they choose when. Obviously, the attacker can certainly be prepared for battle at the get-go. The attacker can also do things to dictate the map, as I did in our war (you were stuck in your borders). They can also dictate the terms of battle even further, by making last minute adjustments to blacklist periods in relation to the timing of their war decs and even adding temporary war protection to countries they can leave immune to counter-decs.

Indeed, often the attacker advantages are too much. The first few years I played this account, it was almost unheard of to see a successful defense of a country. This was with space still in full swing.

Next to all this, the limitations you describe (but haven't yet detailed) would largely impair the defender. I disagree with this and the game disagrees with this thinking. The delay in the war going active was designed to allow the defender to play catch-up with all the advantages the attacker is given. If space was even more limited than it is now, it would make it that much more difficult to defend the assets that you already say are often to valuable for players to risk.

--------------------------------
Going to hit your numbers real quick. That massive 300 million pop country that you have that is so filled with weapons that it can very barely break even, how much in weapons does it have? $1000T? $500T? $100T? Nope. The answer: $11T.
---------------------------------

On raiding C3s: Lose you a bit here. You are saying you can deploy some weapons to your country and break even? Looking at your countries, you manage $350 Billion in INCOME on one and $400 Billion in INCOME on the other. If it still isn't clear, that is the amount of money your 300 million pop countries make before any monthly expenses. Currently, one of those countries, indeed, breaks about even and the other profits about $200 Billion/game month. The one making the profit does not have close to the forces you describe being able to base there. I would estimate the other still falls a bit short.

Next to this economic performance, you say you want to return to the ability to raid war level 4 C3s for $1 Trillion each. In my experience, the cash from closed corps can pay for the cost of the raid, so it is fair to say profit would be about $1 Trillion per raid. A week of your current economic performance would be 6 game months times 7 days times $200 Billion = $8.4 Trillion. Again, without the weapons you say and with 2 300 million pop countries (if it is not clear, most war players wont have these economic resources). You believe this is balanced with an unlimited ability to raid low challenge computer countries for $1 Trillion each?

I think after the initial rewards that exist now, and are largely detailed in my "Path of a Warrior" guide, that the next step should be more PvP prep, in my War College suggestion, and a limited PvP arena, shown in Battlegrounds. Battlegrounds is superior to unlimited c3 raiding as it would be more fun and adds the risk that should exist with ongoing rewards in the war game. The way it is designed, it is also not a replacement for income generated through econ.

I appreciate you like my ideas. I wish you would comment on them specifically. Are they good as is? Could you see participating in Battlegrounds? etc. For my own part, I have tried to setup mock battles similar to what Battlegrounds would be. Rather than mopping the floor with an opponent, as some would think I may do, I would seek to give an opponent a fair challenge (make them earn it) but would be inclined to surrender the reward in the end.

whiteboy

Saturday, March 12, 2016 - 10:56 pm Click here to edit this post
It's pretty simple on how it would change the strategy, people would actually have to have defenses in their country and incur the maintenance costs of those weapons instead of being able to magically change an econ slave into a war slave overnight. Because they are incurring the costs it limits the size of forces that can be there by your econ strategy and how much cash you can produce on a monthly basis. There will also be players who have more weapons than their countries can support and they will in turn have to raise cash via other means (hmmm...PvP wars perhaps?). To further increase the likelihood of PvP wars, players will actually be able to view the defenses of their potential foes or at least have an idea of just how much they have by their war rank (which is a completely meaningless stat at this point and should be improved in general).

Space also makes it such that you aren't just fighting what a player has on one world but instead, what they have in all worlds which is a huge advantage for the players with the most assets compared to players just starting out or even a year into the game.

I don't disagree that the attacker has advantages with regards to all that you mentioned and I have leveraged those things many times, but I still believe that the structure of the war game, weapons, mobile units provide more of a tilt to the defender. You paint that limiting space transfers would be a further benefit for the attacker, but it wouldn't because like I said, players would already have their defenses in place in their countries, just like real countries.

As for the speed of space transfers and how much you can move in/out, you do realize I had no defensive weapons at all in my countries when you declared war (other than jeeps in supply units) and because I screwed up the initial transfers, I really didn't have much time to get my defenses in place which I ultimately did in about 8 hours. Not only did I not have any defensive weapons, the only offensive weapons I had were about 3K bombers and 4K fighters. But before the war went live I had a couple thousand mobile units in each of 3 countries as well as all the nuke batts for my targets, over 100K AAB/MIB/DMB in each of the two countries at war about 25K fighters and 100K bombers in addition to many other weapons of various types. That's ridiculous, it would be the equivalent of the US declaring war on Switzerland and a year later when the first shots were fired Switzerland had a larger army than the US.

You keep referencing my countries in their current state and it's not really all that pertinent. All they have in them now are mobile units that I'm upgrading and I have put zero time into rebuilding the economic infrastructure that was and is in disrepair. The total value of the weapons also isn't pertinent, it's the maintenance cost and ammo usage of those weapons. My countries are also a poor example of anything as before you declared war on me, I was averaging about 1 login a week just to move the 10-15T per week into direct trading, peak in on the forums and see if there was any game news and I was doing literally zero maintenance on my empire for probably close to 6-8 months. I had 20M+ unemployed LLW's in each country and worker shortages in most categories, I was for all intents and purposes, an inactive player and yet I really wasn't worried about losing my countries at all because I knew I could transport 100's of trillion in defenses before a war could ever start. You did give me a nice scare and I did strongly think about just turning over the countries after I stripped them out and I absolutely could have, even at the end I could have gotten the vast majority of assets out once the air D was down while you were dealing with forts, corporations, etc. and I would have been driving you crazy just dropping and then putting back up air defense as well as creating painting nightmares. I do know it's a formality once the air defense is down, but I can make that formality take a very, very long time as I have done to others in the past and they have done to me and you were in the process of doing to me when you ultimately sent me the peace offering.

As far as it being balanced, I'm not particularly concerned with balance when it comes to war vs. econ. I'm concerned that with the harder you make it to acquire assets whether by exchanging GC's, raiding, etc. the more attached people become to what they have and the less likely they will be to put them at risk in PvP war. They also will be more likely to bitch and complain about the game and how unfair it is if and when they lose their assets and then ultimately more likely to quit instead of rebuild. In the econ game, you make a poor decision or have a poor strategy or test something and it doesn't work and you lose a little bit of game cash, your risk is not that you lose your enterprise or your corporations or your countries. In the war game, if you make a mistake you lose everything in your countries including all of the time you took to build them and any econ strategies that you worked hard to put into place. The greater risk in war needs to be balanced out with greater rewards.

As far as your ideas, some are very straightforward and obviously should be implemented because they've been complained about for YEARS, unconquerable countries and unlimited forts and your solutions are simple and make sense.

Unit simplicity is another pretty obvious one, there's no need to have hundreds or thousands of tiny units especially when the game can't support them without serious lag. The fact that I had to click 100 times to move 1000 mobile units from my space station into my country because the system can't handle moving any more than that at a time should have been a clear sign to the GM's that something was wrong. Add to that, it takes almost a minute to load your unit page once you get over 500 or so units and you can only build 50 at a time and further if you try to upgrade once you have that amount you get a stall out page that takes about 2 minutes to load.

I like the war college pretty much as is.

Battlegrounds, I'd have to think on a little bit more but I like the general concept, there are things that I might consider but they would probably increase the programming needed significantly which would hurt the simplicity of the idea. As far as participating in Battlegrounds, I honestly don't know that I'll even have an account in a month or two but if I'm still around I'm sure it would be something I'd check out if I was around.

The total/all out war is interesting but I'm unclear as to why a defeated country would be turned over to the GM with all assets instead of being part of the spoils of war.

Like I said though, rather than rehashing here and causing further clouds/opinions for the GM's to get distracted by, I'd rather just support the ideas as they are because I do believe they will be improvements over the current state of the game. Feel free to message me in game if you'd like further opinions/discussion. I'm not trying to shut down the conversation about these and other topics at all, just trying to clear the playing field so that in the small chance the GM's read your suggestions they will be more likely to implement the changes if there isn't a bunch of squawking back and forth about this or that detail.

Aries

Sunday, March 13, 2016 - 12:13 am Click here to edit this post
Couple things there.

1. The reason I pointed out the value of your weapons it to point out the futility of some type of space limit lending itself to requiring country defenses. All ammo can already be there. Weapons can be moved very quickly since it is their value that is taken into consideration when moving through spending limits.

2. I am well aware you moved in stuff in the run-up to war, as you should. You had a good jump on it as much of your ammo was already in place. I see nothing wrong with that. As the attacker, I had plenty of time to have my stuff in place before even considering the war dec.

3. I am going to disagree with who it benefits to add this limit. I don't say this lightly. No player in the game is more experienced dealing with game limits as I am. I likely know limits that you don't even know about. If a change was made in space transport that affected war build-ups, this would not change who I would bet on between an experienced player and a new war player. It would be one more thing the experienced player is ready for that newbie would not be. It isn't just sitting assets that decides a war.

4. I know how to deal with pop-up air d as well as any painting things. This isn't my first rodeo. Gaz and Wendy are well aware of how to do things like that too. SR and Altered Carbon tried more of the full retreat thing. Your country wouldn't last an hour without a 3-wing air defense. Count on it.

5. Balance, what I call parity, is where we will differ. There should not be an unlimited open-ended money maker on one side of econ/war and not the other, outside of open-PvP, which carries the necessary risk. Though, you didn't carry this argument into where I would specifically differ, that being unlimited low-level c3 raiding. If there is PvP risk tied to it, I am all for it. That is where Battlegrounds I believe carries that balance. Limited to 3 contests/player/month. PvP risk, though not your own empire at risk, tied to large reward.

6. With Total War, like most of my ideas, I had it rolling around my head for awhile before putting it down. The real challenge with it was finding a way to prevent abuse, as in fake wars. Keeping it open, as in allowing the participants to be freely declared war on by anyone, regardless of war level, was one way. This prevented a private affair. I still thought that there needed to be a way to prevent "you take my country/i take it back" stuff to rack up coins. Releasing the country to the GM was the only solution I could see work properly.

Aries

Sunday, March 13, 2016 - 12:59 am Click here to edit this post
I will add that the current space limits are already very real. As many as you own, only a bit over 200 will actually transport items while the rest sit idle. Obviously, each shuttle, in turn, has a limit on how much it can carry. I put in transport orders last night, they took about 12 hours to complete. I put in some more in about 4 hours ago. I will be lucky if those are done 10 hours from now.

Maybe something you haven't considered with a new space limit is just how much ammo is used by defensive weapons kept in your country. As I said before, I already do this. here is a look at CC2, an average country in my LU empire:

Ammo Usage per Game Month:

Anti-Aircraft Missiles 1,241
Defensive Missiles 1,941
Missile Interceptors 2,692

Again, that is one country's use. For those curious, this is about $60 BILLION in ammo consumed each game month. This is also omitting defensive air wings, and any other weapon, entirely. CC2 is actually below average in pop related to the other 8 slave countries I have with similar deployed defenses. Assuming CC2's, low, numbers were the same in all 9 slaves, my monthly ammo usage looks like about this:

Anti-Aircraft Missiles 11,200
Defensive Missiles 17,500
Missile Interceptors 24,200

Remember, this is usage in one game month. Obviously, there are 6 such game months in a "real" day and 42 in a week. Every week I need to make sure I am acquiring enough ammo to replace consumption (I am often playing catch-up on the weekend). So, how much do I need to replace?

Weekly Ammo Consumption Estimate:

Anti-Aircraft Missiles 470,500
Defensive Missiles 735,000
Missile Interceptors 1,020,000

Wow! That is ammo I consume on a weekly basis in my LU empire. That is about $22 TRILLION spent on defensive ammo per week. Oh yeah, what was I talking about transporting at the top of this thread? Ammo, duh! Maybe you should share how you would further limit space transport. Would the amount of ammo a single shuttle could carry need to be raised to support this? Would you simply lower how many weapons a shuttle would carry?

Would the change account for that space is currently limited by player? For example, would W3C want to place a player who chooses to pay for additional empires at a disadvantage versus a player with a single empire?

Further, Who is ready for the added expense of storing more weapons in their country with more shuttle limits? Obviously, I do it already. To be honest, the change would mostly benefit me. I might be forced to buy a bit more ammo at home (rather than aggressively seeking deals on other worlds) but otherwise I already put up with the added expense. Would more space limits help a newer war player more? I am interested to see what they think.

I think a lot of questions need to be answered about the goals of a new space limit change and the unattended consequences I outlined above.

Aries

Sunday, March 13, 2016 - 04:59 pm Click here to edit this post
Still not done with that second transport. A good ways to go still. Had to retire 8 shuttles too.

whiteboy

Sunday, March 13, 2016 - 05:48 pm Click here to edit this post
Very real limits means I can take a country with no weapons at all and turn it into defensive index of 2000 and an offensive index over 1000 in less than a day? Give that a shot with just buying military assets with spending caps in place.

With every point you've made it's as if this would be a completely novel concept on which we had no data and we'd just blindly be guessing by moving forward with it. But this game existed for 6 or 7 years without space at all and during that time, less or more PvP wars?

As far as how I'd limit it, if I had my preference it just wouldn't exist as it didn't exist before which keeps the worlds more unique and forces you to develop assets on that world if you want to become a power on that world. While doing so, you're at risk and would have to rely on fedmates/allies to make sure you aren't taken down while asset poor. But, I highly doubt that is in the cards, so, what is transferred in should count against your military/standard spending space limits depending on the type of product.

Yeah, you do go through a lot of ammo which means the market for ammo gets a boost, although I believe w3c has bumped up the amount of ammo used in order to counteract the fact that players don't need to keep weapons in their countries. That's why very early on I said that the maintenance costs would have to be reduced in order for it to work, I used to be able to run max garrisons in all cities and bases, half garrisons in all other targets (fort limit was only 100 I believe...maybe even 50) and then have about 100K ints and 75K helis with a strong navy and offensive air force and be able to come close to breaking even in a country with only 80-100M. Give that a shot today, which is part of why I don't buy the argument that the econ game is so much better today than it was then. But, I'd love to learn more about why you think that's the case.

As far as the parity argument, there are two factors that you are either ignoring or undervaluing. One, an active raider actually has to use their own time whereas on the econ side, once you get it set up, it's relatively minor maintenance. Second, the risk in the war game is not in going against the c3's, it's the fact that by doing so you put yourself out of protection and as you're developing assets other war players will then want to come in and take them. You may get wiped out a time or two (I did) and the ability to raid for assets is the balance to that risk so that you can rebuild. Again, on the econ side, basically no risk and limited amount of time spent.

Aries

Sunday, March 13, 2016 - 07:09 pm Click here to edit this post
On econ and supporting military, I have already gave it a shot. Have you checked out my LU empire yet? I have max garrisons in cities and bases and have garrisoned all forts. As far as whether econ is "better" today, it is about the same but more balanced with war as the war game no longer has an unlimited money maker outside of PvP.

I had an idea about how your idea could work. Spending limits should not apply to shuttles. Those limits should be unique to the other methods of transferring and acquiring products. It would be much simpler to stick with how space transport is currently limited, how many shuttles will work simultaneously. The most logical thing to do is relate that to the number of owned space ports of the player.

For each space port the player owns, whether in a country or enterprise, that player can operate, say, 10 shuttles. That way it appropriately scales with the size of the player holdings. For example, if you have built a space port in 3 countries and 1 enterprise, you would be able to operate 40 shuttles at a time. This will ensure the ability to move things scales properly with the size of player holdings.

On parity, I think you would be the one ignoring or undervaluing the time argument. I understand econ is not your thing, so I will tell you I have always spent much more time on econ than I did raiding and I wasn't the only one. Even during the days of unlimited low war level c3 raiding, it wasn't close. Try to match the econ of my LU countries and you will see. My LU main makes your FB main look absolutely silly in econ. You could employ all your unemployed to the man and this would not get you close to the economic performance of my average LU country. This did not happen by chance.

The risk you say existed on the war side only existed in theory. You know that most of those players never developed countries that existed outside of secured mode. I would be all for some relation to unprotected assets and the ability to sustain additional income. In fact, many of my suggestions including Battlegrounds and Natural Resources hinge on this relation. Your suggestion makes no link to needing unguarded assets whatsoever.

Aries

Sunday, March 13, 2016 - 07:33 pm Click here to edit this post
You said "on the econ side, once you get it set up, it's relatively minor maintenance"

Candinnalm versus WB 001 AB FB

Candinnalm

Population: 284,129,009
Workforce: 143,161,287
Employment Rate: 96.84
Number of Corporations: 453
Total Employment in All Corporations: 110,980,616
Worker Income: 560114.70M SC$ ($560 Billion)
Monthly Income per Worker: $3912
Monthly Production: 1,781.29B SC$ ($1.78 Trillion)
Monthly Production per Corporate Worker: $16050

WB 001 AB FB

Population: 298,093,041
Workforce: 136,443,906
Employment Rate: 96.88
Number of Corporations: 391
Total Employment in All Corporations: 99,750,534
Worker Income: 392085.60M SC$ ($392 Billion)
Monthly Income per Worker: $2874
Monthly Production: 1,138.66B SC$ ($1.14 Trillion)
Monthly Production per Corporate Worker: $11415

Yes, you can choose not to spend time on econ. The difference will be apparent however from someone who works at it compared to someone who sees econ as an exercise in "minor maintenance". You haven chose to close your financials. I bet you dollars to doughnuts that I own you all over that page too.

Aries

Sunday, March 13, 2016 - 08:25 pm Click here to edit this post
You just opened up financials or my pages are wonky.

Candinnalm

Total Govt Income: 673,580.72M SC$ ($673.6 Billion)

Total Non-Defense Govt Cost: 222,392.88 SC$ ($222.4 Billion)

Total Profit -Defense: $451.2 Billion

WB 001 AB FB

Total Govt Income: 338,470.53M SC$ ($338.5 Billion)

Total Non-Defense Govt Cost: 196,557.94 SC$ ($196.6 Billion)

Total Profit -Defense: $141.9 Billion


I don't count defense costs due to my country philosophy. I see countries as tools and the ability to host a military as a capability. As such, I measure the might of an economy without counting what military forces might currently be stationed there. Basically, I don't see an economy as better or worse if you happen to move more or less weapons into it.

whiteboy

Monday, March 14, 2016 - 12:27 am Click here to edit this post
I don't think I am undervaluing the time argument, unless you are talking about econ in terms of trading in either products or stocks, I could see how that could take a lot of time. But, again, very little risk and I bet you could make some serious cash on a daily basis if you got very good at that...not as much as you could make raiding back when you could raid Lvl 4's at 1T payout each but I bet the return would be slightly better when you factor in the risk.

All of the stats you post are regarding country income/profit so I'm making the assumption that it is that aspect of the econ game you are speaking to and yes, you're right, that takes a good amount of time to SET UP. But, my point was that once it is set up, it requires relatively little maintenance. So, take your 300B per month difference (again, not really an apt comparison as you're basically looking at an econ system I set up over a year ago and haven't touched since but doesn't really matter for the purposes of this argument), how much extra work are you doing on a daily basis on that country to produce that extra 300B per month/1.8T per day? My guess is not much. Especially when compared to the amount of time it would take to raid countries, that would basically be two country raids per day and on the raiding side I am exposed to risk whereas you are not on your econ countries. And to be equivalent, I'd have to keep up that 2 per day every single day of the year. So, assume that I took the time to develop all of those econ strategies and make my country as profitable as possible because I wanted to make as much cash as possible to support my defenses and then Aries comes along and wipes out my country. I'm out all of the time I put into developing my countries/econ strategy/profitability, all of my population and any weapons I didn't get moved out AND I have no realistic way of building myself back up because I now have no 200 or 300M pop countries that have the ability to generate that kind of income. That is why so many players choose to stay in the low war levels and maintain economic protection, they can generate infinite cash at no risk to themselves, so yes, they should have less ability to generate cash than players who are willing to war/raid for cash because they have no risk. Now that the WL requirements have loosened, you're at risk once you hit WL4 so you should be able to get that 1T per country.

But, thank you for all of the econ shaming, give me 10 or so real days and lets get back and recheck the math again, I sunk a little time into analyzing what was going on and made some changes (spent maybe 1.5-2 hours looking and then tweaking) but you know it will take some time before they'll start to really show results. Honestly, one of the reasons I spent very little time on this after I came back is because I realized I didn't have to actually maintain a defense anymore so I really didn't care all that much about it. Another big reason is that the accounting system in this game is horrible, it's hard to tell whether you're just stealing from one pocket to put in another (country to enterprise or vice versa) made more difficult by the fact that the profit numbers from countries and enterprises don't seem to match up anywhere near the cashflow. But, that was lazy of me and we'll see if I can do better.

I did get a chance to look at some of your LU countries, it's impressive stuff, we'll see how much of that is daily work and how much of it is setting the right strategy and letting it play out. Perhaps it's time for a new Econ guide where you can share what you've figured out with all so that players have the ability to make cash and thus may be more willing to participate in the war game?

whiteboy

Monday, March 14, 2016 - 12:38 am Click here to edit this post
Oh and I just did my own test on space transfers, averaged 211 mobile units transferred per HOUR with 845 total units transferred in 4 hours (all different kinds). At 600Q each mobile interceptor wing has an imputed value of $230.37B, 850 int wings in a game month (4 hours) would be the equivalent of $196T in military assets per month, that's a limit to you? That's 1.2 QUADRILLION per real day in possible transfers. I'm going to test out just bombers and then just ints and then I'll test out some ammo. But, it's ridiculous, if you could buy 600Q mobile int wings with military spending space you could buy 1.5 per month without going into negative spending space the following month (depending on size of country) or take the quality effect out and you could buy 9 per month.

whiteboy

Monday, March 14, 2016 - 12:38 am Click here to edit this post
Oh and I just did my own test on space transfers, averaged 211 mobile units transferred per HOUR with 845 total units transferred in 4 hours (all different kinds). At 600Q each mobile interceptor wing has an imputed value of $230.37B, 850 int wings in a game month (4 hours) would be the equivalent of $196T in military assets per month, that's a limit to you? That's 1.2 QUADRILLION per real day in possible transfers. I'm going to test out just bombers and then just ints and then I'll test out some ammo. But, it's ridiculous, if you could buy 600Q mobile int wings with military spending space you could buy 1.5 per month without going into negative spending space the following month (depending on size of country) or take the quality effect out and you could buy 9 per month.

Aries

Monday, March 14, 2016 - 01:21 am Click here to edit this post
You still undervalue the time, effort, and skill it takes to setup "impressive econ". I teach econ and war skills and I will tell you what, it is more difficult to teach econ. I assume you have seen my C3 guide on the Beginners Forum, and if not you should take a look. Teaching raiding is as simple as step 1, step2, etc..

Teaching econ isn't as simple. It takes much more skill to do it well. It also takes continuing effort beyond what you give credit for. It would take you a lot of work to get close to the economic performance of my countries if you even knew where to start. I will give you those 10 days. Heck, I will give you 30. Good econ isn't as simple as spending a short time building it up and a shorter time maintaining it any more than it is simply building enough corps to employ all your people and setting a tax rate. See your country in 30 days (I will post your results) and we will see if you are undervaluing time invested in econ or not.

-If you have any econ questions, let me know and I will help. I am also as expert as you will find in the game to analyzing the game's accounting system.

I don't see where you addressed how unlimited raiding had little to do with having something at risk. In Battlegrounds, I require players to complete War College, which removes war level protection on the world. In Natural Resources, no country can benefit from a bonus unless it has no form of war protection. What would the return of your form of unlimited raiding do other than see war players raid from the safety of secured mode or simply have token slaves to take pop from? Without something substantive here, your "risk" argument goes out the window.

I still think a continuing system of earning awards should not be found fighting more computer countries with the simplicity of following a simple guide (a view shared by the GM). It should also not be unlimited. The Battlegrounds system, which allows players to get real PvP experience with limited risk to their own countries, solves the issue of an entirely "fake" experience versus the computer. This is then matched with a reward for victory of $10 Trillion and is possible 3 times per "real" month. I would bet it is a lot more fun competing with players 3 times versus repeating a guide up to 30 times against the computer.

Any comment on my space shuttle idea? I think tying it to number of countries/enterprises with space centers (only the 1st space center in each country/enterprise counts) and leaving it at the current model of number of active shuttles is genius. 10 active shuttles per space center strikes the right balance of addressing a limit that might otherwise penalize players who run multiple empires. This is an activity I would bet the GM would not want to discourage.

Aries

Monday, March 14, 2016 - 01:48 am Click here to edit this post
On transferring mobile units. Yes, these move quickly. A quick glance:


---Takes 50 Shuttle Trips----
50 Mobile Air Defense Units
(20,000 Anti Aircraft Missile Batteries)
(600,000 Anti Aircraft Missiles)
------------------------------

----Takes 128 Shuttle Trips-------
20,000 Anti Aircraft Missile Batteries
600,000 Anti Aircraft Missiles
-----------------------------------

----Takes 50 Shuttle Trips----
50 Mobile Missile Defense Units
(4,000 Anti Aircraft Missile Batteries)
(6,000 Missile Interceptor Batteries)
(10,000 Defensive Missile Batteries)
(120,000 Anti Aircraft Missiles)
(180,000 Missile Interceptors)
(300,000 Defensive Missiles)
---------------------------------


-----Takes 128 Shuttle Trips--------
4,000 Anti Aircraft Missile Batteries
6,000 Missile Interceptor Batteries
10,000 Defensive Missile Batteries
120,000 Anti Aircraft Missiles
180,000 Missile Interceptors
300,000 Defensive Missiles
------------------------------------

----Takes 50 Shuttle Trips--------
50 Mobile Attack Wings
(12,000 Fighter Planes)
(900,000 Fighter Missiles)
----------------------------------

----Takes 408 Shuttle Trips-------
12,000 Fighter Planes
900,000 Fighter Missiles
----------------------------------


Mobile units are special. The were made to be, um, mobile. They are not the basis for which space transport speed is considered by a long shot. No one is surprised if you add up the value of 600 QUALITY weapons and ammo compressed into a MOBILE UNIT and boast about how much value you can move through space in a short time.

Next time, Try moving the equipment to form 200 regular fighter plane or precision bomber wings and do it between worlds. I would also be happy to add up the other consideration in all this, which is the cost to field and replace shuttles and SC maintenance. On my end, I have retired 15 shuttles so far this weekend.

whiteboy

Monday, March 14, 2016 - 02:35 am Click here to edit this post
I'm not saying that I'll have the equivalent in 10 days, just that I believe I will have made up a large amount of the gap. I may be undervaluing the amount of time it takes to MAXIMIZE profitability, but I wonder what the difference between maximization and just good strategy/settings that required relatively minimal maintenance really is.

As far as raiding, once you are WL3 you are at risk and the way the system is set up, 10 raids and you are WL3 and now at risk of attack by other players. That's the risk that comes along with making money via raiding based on how the system is currently set up. I would say that econ players have a massive advantage in the learning curve of the game whereas someone interested in the war game gets 1 C3 at WL1, 3 at WL2 and 6 at WL3 and then they're fair game (with whatever WL to WL restrictions there are, I think FB is now WL unlimited once you reach WL3). Meanwhile, econ only players have infinite protection which is a nice advantage for them that never existed before (and I lobbied for it and I like that it is there now).

On your limitation on space it could work to an extent, but once you have 20 space centers you're now at the shuttle limit and that actually creates an advantage for players with multi-world/very large empires, they can now transfer pretty much unlimited while players with small empires would be pretty limited on what they could do. How about this, much like the docks on the space stations, space centers have limited capacity (would only make logical sense) and you're only allowed a max of 1 per 100M population (or 2 or whatever the right number would be). That allows you to fully utilize the space game but it limits the throughput on a per country basis.

I know mobile units are meant to be...mobile...but given that they are the most powerful defensive units (or I guess just the most powerful units period) in the game and offensive mobile units are the most terrible offensive units in the game, that's an even bigger edge for offense vs. defense. It is a big deal that you can pack that much firepower into a unit that can then be moved at a rate of 800 per month, it's a complete distortion. You and I both know that PvP war is all about air D and the fact that you can move over a quadrillion worth of air D in a day is ridiculous, even if it was half that and you only counted the effect up to 300Q it would still be 600 TRILLION a day.

This is why I'm still not the least bit interested in PvP war in the current system, am I facing 100 mobile int/heli? 1000? 10,000? I know they can keep pouring in at a rate of 800 per game month, so that's 4,800 before a war could start and then 800 a month after that. You know how much time and effort it takes to saw through huge amounts of air D, when you have no idea just how much you're going to have to go through and you face the prospect of 1000's (which is also A LOT of CASH to burn in assets), it just doesn't seem worth it.

Aries

Monday, March 14, 2016 - 03:12 am Click here to edit this post
You got 30 days to find "good" econ and compare it to mine. If it takes you less time and if your "good" econ is close to mine, those would be feathers in the cap of your argument.

Your numbers of early c3 war level advancement are a little off. You can have 5 wars and still be level 2, with a 6 country empire if you wish. Your 6th takes you to war level 3. War level 3 actually has a limited form of protection from other players, even on "Fearless Blue", check out the thread titled "No war with level 3" on the Problems Forum for details. Obviously, you get 4 more wars before advancing to war level 4, which is the open on FB and protection outside of 4 war levels on other worlds.

All that said, nothing says you need to build anything out of secured mode to take advantage of your idea. Ignoring econ fairly completely or building only within secured mode is exactly what the war players of old did. This is where your risk argument fails and you have repeatedly not addressed this.

I am not sure I understand your proposal on space centers. Are you saying that guy with 20 countries/enterprises has a limited amount of space in his centers and needs to continually switch entities and empty his space centers to keep shuttles going? If that is it, how about NO. I have no problem with the econ guy moving things at all and certainly no problem with the war guy, who has over a dozen countries to defend, having a bit more capacity to move stuff.

On transporting mobile units, you are the only player that you are describing. Only you, and maybe Sunny (who inherited Blackeye's stuff), have 1000s of Mobile Units now that Blackeye's assets were split up. YOU are the exception, not the rule of the game. Rest easy, there is no opponent that you are likely to face, ever, that can draw on the mobile unit reserves that you can. The vast majority of my air defense is plain old regular units. My military doctrine has had to account for being vastly outgunned in mobile units for quite some time. If you checked our war, you deployed over 5 million professional soldiers before the war went active, before any reinforcements. My peak strength (after reinforcements) in professionals was about 200k. You outnumbered me in mobile units in the area of 25 to 1.

Any change made in new ways to limit space should not act to your advantage versus players that actually need to move regular interceptors, helicopters, and their ammo, versus you leisurely moving mobile units. It certainly should not be any slower than it is now to move regular forces.

whiteboy

Monday, March 14, 2016 - 06:58 am Click here to edit this post
We'll see on the econ, in 1 game month in WB2 I popped up the income by 40B (literally from 1 month to the next) before I pulled all profit transfers the following month. My guess is you'll still have me by around 100B per month after 10 days or so if all goes well.

My apologies if my numbers are off, I was reading from the game docs which said 1 war takes you from WL0 to WL1 and then 3 more wars at that point puts you at WL2, then 6 more wars to WL3 and based on the documentation (Countries in war levels 3, 4, and 5 can declare war on any country with a president) once you're WL3 you can declare war on others so I assumed that meant war can be declared on them by other players. So, either way, your point is that I haven't explained why players that want to raid for assets have something at risk and I think I've made it pretty clear they do. You can raid 14 countries on FB before you're open to being destroyed by other players, so at that point you've gathered some coins and some assets, but you are then at risk to lose whatever assets you've gained and whatever else you've invested. I'm unclear how you haven't picked up on that point based on everything I've said. Unless you're referring to only having a secured main, which may be more of where you're coming from now that I'm thinking about it. Is this simply that my home world has always been FB in all of my iterations and your home world has always been another world where secured mains exist? It does make sense that in those worlds you could just keep your one country and constantly raid without ever putting anything at risk. Maybe we just have a FB vs. other worlds issue here?

I think you understood it somewhat well, there would be limitations on how much each space center could hold in the same way there is a limitation on how much each space docking station could hold. You say no because you ultimately still want unlimited space transport. But again, space didn't use to exist and we all got along just fine. The idea is pretty simple, you maintain your own defense (and offense in your country) and space is then just for supplementing your defense/offense if/when war is declared. For peaceful players or even for war players who aren't actively involved with a war declaration, go ahead and allow unlimited transport, once a war declaration is live, you're limited which means you have to maintain your own defense/offense which has three major benefits: 1. Players know what they're going up against, 2. You don't have to deal with unlimited reinforcements, 3. Players will have to maximize their econ or invest further in the game in GC's if they want to run at a loss to maintain an even larger military.

It seems weird to me that I would be the only one that figured out that mobile units create a very significant advantage from both a defensive power and a transportation standpoint. It also seems odd that you'd have to operate trying to deal with the mobile units instead of just having a bunch of your own (and I swear you were selling them for quite a while). If what I was dealing with was just non-mobile int wings, then the defense is even more slanted than I thought against air offensives. You do keep quoting our war as if both of us had completely open secrecy when it came to military, that was just me because I had been trying to sell the account, so I had no idea how many professional soldiers you had employed.

I'm pretty sure I'm not suggesting any change that would only help me, my argument has been clear that I don't think you should be able to transport insane amounts of military via space and clearly the most insane amounts come in the form of mobile units. Like I said, my preference is just to eliminate space trading altogether which would hurt me (if I really do have the most mobile units) more than it would hurt anyone else, don't try to twist it up as if I'm looking to develop an advantage when I'm the one with the weaker econ and the biggest mobile force (again, if that's true). I'm arguing against my own interests here, other than having to fight you I could easily deal with pretty much anyone trying to take my countries and if I wanted to up until this point, I could have taken downs tons and tons of cash by going after other people who weren't as skilled in the war game or as asset rich as I am. I haven't gone that direction because I'm not that type of player, I have always either gone after the most challenging targets or at times, the people that would mouth off and wouldn't heed the warnings (and no I'm not at all talking about you, I just want to be clear and honest because I have in the past taken down weak players after they wouldn't back off of their claims of how dominant they were or how much they could easily kick my ass, if anyone researched they'd find examples in the forums and I don't want to look like the guy who is trying to change history).

I enjoy this discussion, I just feel like at this point it is pretty much between you and I.

Aries

Monday, March 14, 2016 - 08:32 am Click here to edit this post
"It does make sense that in those worlds you could just keep your one country and constantly raid without ever putting anything at risk."

Glad you can join me on this side of the discussion. This isn't theoretical. In the era of unlimited c3 raiding, "war players" did exactly that. Maybe, they would build up a secured main but no more than your impression of "good" econ. They would do exactly what you said as far as doing "just enough" and maintaining here and there and spend most of their game time raiding for unlimited amounts of cash. Econ and raiding c3s each have limitations right now that make sense when considering time,effort, and skill. Returning to unlimited grinding of c3s for cash should not and will not return to the game.

"You say no because you ultimately still want unlimited space transport"

Is this what I said? I am pretty sure I have pointed out that space transport is already limited. I am also sure that I said that limiting the capacity of space centers to force players to police a few dozen, or more, space centers makes no sense whatsoever. I am also sure I made my own suggestion to simply relate the number of active shuttles to the number of countries/enterprises a player has with a space center.

If mobile units are moving too quickly, maybe a combination of balancing them with other weapons and ammo is in order first. Transporting ammunition and weapons piecemeal is, by far, a very different experience and should not be any more limited than it is now. Currently, most offensive ammo is transported 2500 at a time and most defensive is at 5000. You could double these amounts and a mobile unit would still carry more stuff/trip. So, we should start there. Double the ammo currently carried by shuttles. That would achieve more balance with mobile units. Then you could apply the active shuttles limit to the number countries/enterprises with a space center and say maybe 5 active shuttles per space center.

You are not the only one that knows the value of mobile units. From my understanding, you inherited much of what you have from another player. I recall calculating that just the professional soldiers and officers you deployed (not counting the cost of all the 600 qua weapons/ammo) would run about 7000+ gold coins.

I did not inherit my military assets from anyone. I had to acquire my stuff on my own. 7000 coins is not an amount many players stumble upon in the course of the game. Yes, I sell some of the mobile units I put together and carefully calculate the value of pros, weapons, ammo, and upgrades to make sure to recover my costs. When you sold mobile units below the costs of me making my own, I bought yours. Where did you get yours from?

whiteboy

Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - 12:37 am Click here to edit this post
So, we agree in principle on the issue of unlimited raiding while just hiding in your secured main = bad idea, so can we then agree that no secured main on FB means raiding strategy puts your assets at risk and therefore there should be a payout for that risk?

No, it's not what you said, I'll clarify, you want the limit from a shuttle perspective of around 200 shuttles to remain as is and you have 20+ countries/enterprises so you would still have the same amount of transport capabilities. I just don't think the limit on a per country/CEO basis makes sense because it means the more countries you have the higher your bandwidth which again is a further tilt towards people with large empires. Some kind of limit on the space center side makes more sense because that becomes a limit on the amount you can actually get into any one country (leave enterprises unlimited because it makes no difference how much you're moving in/out).

We agree mobile units are moving too quickly then, but I think the answer needs to go the other direction. Your solution is to speed up everything else to equal mobile units and that just means more and more stuff can be transported more and more quickly. I know it's more difficult because the easy structure is 1 unit/1 shuttle, but mobile units need to be slowed down.

Along those lines, you didn't address my point that int wings are far too strong if in fact what I was shooting at was mostly standard units. That was ~450Q PB, Pbombs, FP and FM that I was firing at you and those units were getting wiped out losing about 200 PB and 100 FP per shot (200 PB/200 FP mix which was the best mix after testing). That's to take down 125 ints? You were getting away with ~200 MRMB and some slight OA2A losses against 3 wing helis but I still have no idea what quality you were shooting (back to my annoyance about quality effects), so the balance is already terrible and even more terrible if you weren't shooting 450Q (as I suspect you were not). That's why I ultimately decided to just shoot through as I had no idea how much more you'd keep reinforcing and I could take out targets and only lose around 325 PB per shot while for the most part taking out 1 target per shot. Anyway, if we're going to talk balance, there needs to be some more attention paid in this area.

No, I know others value mobile units, but not to the extent that they should. I built my own force and after a year or so of constant raiding and figuring out a trick or two (let's just say there's a reason they will only let you move 10 mobile units at a time now) and then helping Xon with his experiment which gave me some spending coins based on the deal we made, I then got Serpent's account (I gave him and some others chunks of mine before I left the last time). But, the account was really just a shell at that point, he only had a couple hundred mobile units if I remember correctly and they weren't upgraded and most of the weapons/ammo weren't even 300Q. Anyway, I eventually sold that off in pieces for real cash and then I sent him the cash, he ultimately got almost the full $450 he wanted for his account when he was trying to sell it.

As far as the cost of the professionals, with the advantages the mobile wings provide I'd say it is well worth it (although I definitely didn't pay that much), but I've been actively buying professionals to rebuild my defenses in the past couple of weeks. But, this is the kind of stuff that your power rankings can't pick up, I've got 11K gold coins in my account right now and before this most recent spending spree to rebuild my defenses, I had over 500T in game cash just sitting in direct trading too. I haven't always been keen on the econ side of running countries, but I've always been very good about amassing assets. I've reached at least level 10 on every single world (level 15 on FB), WL 8 on every single world (14 on FB), I time up my monthly awards so that I can win for country/enterprise on multiple worlds at the same time to maximize the reward. There was a time when I was averaging probably 10 WL4 raids per day back when it was paying 3.2T per (ah, the good old days). But I also don't just let those assets sit and have to pay monthly for them when I don't have any use for them anymore, for over a year now my account has just been cash/GC generating and zero spending.

Aries

Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - 01:19 am Click here to edit this post
(let's just say there's a reason they will only let you move 10 mobile units at a time now)


That is not a trick. That is an exploit. I ran into forms of that three times and reported it to the GM each time. Taking advantage of that bug is classless. I would bet a good part of your coins and cash are from selling duped weapons, ammo, pros, and mobile units.

whiteboy

Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - 03:20 am Click here to edit this post
I reported it as well as I have reported many other bugs including bugs that had been floating around for a long time that many players knew about and those bugs ultimately got corrected. The speed at which the GM's move on this kind of stuff is the issue, like you said, you reported it three times.

I've also had mobile units straight disappear as well as professionals, I'm having an issue now where mobile units can't be moved out of a country because they are 'incomplete' even though they were just created and you can't create an incomplete mobile unit and then when I go back in and dismantle them all the sudden professionals have disappeared. I've lost hundreds of trillions in wars with bugs in the maps and lost giant countries that I put tons of resources and work into because of unexplained game freezes that kept me from logging in while somehow the attacker was able to keep shooting. In our war space completely froze for me for about 8 hours and that easily could have been the difference between winning and losing that war. All of these reported to the GM's, pretty much all of them with no response.

Pass judgement all you will, but I've put far more into this game and lost far more than what is redeemed by the duplication of a few hundred mobile units which occurred because I was trying to do something with a clear basis in the game, move mobile units from country to space center and then ultimately reported.

As far as selling, I sold probably 500 mobile units at a significant discount to other players and I've never sold professionals that I can recall.

Aries

Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - 04:14 am Click here to edit this post
Obviously, we all have experienced various game issue with various levels of response. I reported that there was no effective way to defend against cruise missile or guided missile ships months before losing my first FB empire (2 of the countries had about 550 million pop between them) to that very thing while I was in the hospital (being treated for cancer). I experienced several issues you described. Off the top of my head, I have had units I could not recover because they got stuck somewhere. I have had mobile units disband for no reason at a remote depot. I have even found a hard cap for cash a single country can hold (losing the cash that accumulated above that level before I noticed the problem).

Despite all this, I have reported myself multiple times when I first encountered a beneficial bug and stopped the activity that benefited me immediately. I could not fathom doing otherwise. I am proud that all of the assets of my account I have legitimately earned, 100%. I share my knowledge of econ and war with any player that would listen and I can tell them that everything I have gained in the game is possible for them too.

I would find it disgusting to use use illegitimately gained assets to war another player. You boast of having the resources to take down most players in the game and, indeed, that is true. However, is it not hollow if you didn't earn them the right way?

Numbers-wise, you say you had 500 mobile units to sell. Overlooking the fact that this compounds the problem, putting duped mobile units on the market versus legitimately constructed ones, that had to add 2000 to 3000 coins to your account. How many duped mobile units did you keep? How many did you disband and simply sell off duped weapons and ammo for cash?

I am very familiar with the gains from game level, war level, and raiding of old. Your account assets don't make sense unless you duped around a few thousand mobile units. I know what it takes just to upgrade the things, let alone the 7000 to 10000+ coins worth of professionals you have. Hundreds of mobile units are possible if you gain assets at the highest clips any player has the last few years. Thousands of mobile units with hundreds to spare to sell, just isn't.

whiteboy

Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - 07:10 am Click here to edit this post
Umm, weren't you the one who was raping empires using the same cruise missile ships? I can't find the post but I remember posting in a thread that it was ridiculous that there were no defensive weapons vs. cruisers and I swear it was because you had just taken down several large countries with that strategy. If it wasn't you, then my apologies, but I did argue on your behalf. I then proceeded to take a couple hundred c3's using that strategy. If the GM's are going to leave a clear vulnerability open even after they've been made aware of it, I'm going to take advantage of that.

I'm also proud that I've earned 100% of my assets and even more than that. The GM's show no remorse and provide no reimbursement when their screwups cost the players assets/coins/cash, I have no remorse when going the other direction and what they've cost me in screwups far outweighs anything I've gained from them. There is also no speed to respond to those screwups or speed to respond to found exploits (again as you mentioned you had to contact them about the same thing that was costing them 3 times). You know it's funny, if the GM's implemented a double entry accounting system that kind of thing would never happen and I know that's been suggested for as long as I can remember and there's no real reason not to do it other than not wanting to be transparent.

I also share my knowledge with anyone/everyone with any questions and unlike you, I actually built, together with the original Aries, giant federations which taught a lot of the players that are known as some of the greats of the game. Also unlike you, I never went after solo players who were weak in war relative to what I could do. I even mistakenly set up on players like that who had massive war indexes but who turned out to be just econ players trying to level up (before there were peaceful requirements) and I worked out deals with those players and left them with their assets instead of taking from them. I've also given away more assets than you have now to friends and fedmates. So, you can go holier than thou on me about screwing over the GM's who screw over the players all the time (and have screwed me over far more than I have them) but I never screwed over another player by taking their assets. I'd feel far worse about taking assets from a clearly inferior player than you seem to. I'm also the one here arguing against my own self interests and telling the GM's they should devalue mobile units because they distort the game.

Also, I never really intended to use any mobile units against other players, like I said, I wasn't interested in PvP war with the war engine as currently constructed. You forced that issue, not me.

I'm guessing at how many I sold, even very cheap there wasn't much of a market out there. But, I think 500 is a good number. I never disbanded any of them, they were much more valuable whole to me as I didn't need game cash.

You're very familiar with what you know now and I have to admit you're very connected and notice a lot. But, maybe when you were away or maybe just some world blindness caused you to miss a lot. I raided literally thousands of countries when it was 3.2T for WL4 countries on many worlds including taking down almost the entire continent of CD on FB for Xon where we had a deal worked out for GC's in exchange for the effort.

There's something you should know about me, I'm not like anyone else in the game at this point, I would have had the same number of mobile units regardless because I find ways to get things done and I wanted to have that number of mobile units. Maybe I'd have a few thousand less GC's or a few hundred trillion less in cash, but I wanted to have a defense that was as close to guaranteed to hold up as possible. The OA2A/MRMB wrinkle tossed me a bit, but guess what, now I know and I've been doubling down on mobile helis to slow it down (and there is no longer a way to duplicate units). I don't have the same passion for this game as I did before (although you definitely grabbed some interest), but I can't find a purchaser of my account that makes it feel worth the cash so I am just trying to figure out what the end game will be.

Now, can we get back to my other very important points in the post that started this all off? We're not going to get anywhere with you questioning my bad deeds as I'm sure I'm not going to get anywhere with questioning yours.

Aries

Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - 08:22 am Click here to edit this post
I used navy once against an opponent that heavily used the same weapons first to hit an ally. After that conflict was over, I posted again about the problem. I originally raised concerns in the thread about the game update that created the problem in the first place, and was ignored. Your version of events is not close to accurate. Several players, including Josias, posted on my behalf, pointing out I was not the first to use the weapons and had no other recourse.

On going after weak solo players, who do you have me confused with, or who do you consider that I fought to be weak. Indeed the majority of my conflicts were imposed on me. Even if it was possible to find any truth to what you are saying, what are you saying I am guilty of? Playing Simcountry? There are a number of ways to opt out of PvP in Simcountry.

Wendy, who is much more known to setup on weak and new players, could come out of hiding/retirement/whatever and have a completely valid point if she were to say how wrong it is that you exploited a bug to generate game-breaking amounts of assets. You don't get bonus points because you gave away or sold under-priced duped units. Nor is it okay to have a pile of duped units because it is your opinion that it would be any attacker's fault to declare war on you. Further, what does it say about you if you say you could have achieved the same results without duping?

whiteboy

Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - 07:01 pm Click here to edit this post
Quick search revealed this: https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/3711/24302.html?

That was clearly someone who may have thought they were a war player but definitely was not.

I also remember the complaining on the thread with regards to cruisers and I knew your name did come up, I obviously don't have the complete backstory but I wasn't incorrect in what I remembered clearly.

We fundamentally disagree on when it is or is not OK to take another players assets, in my mind unless the player is at least somewhat of an equal from a skill perspective you are basically just robbing them and at the same time turning them away from the game. I find it far more disturbing to take assets away from an inexperienced player than any tweak/twist in the game that can be taken advantage of, especially because I do report those when I find them.

Like I said, you're not going to get anywhere with convincing me that I've done anything wrong or that I have any more assets than I've earned, so keep going on that if you'd like but it'll be a one sided conversation.

Aries

Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - 07:24 pm Click here to edit this post
That was Gaz in disguise and was the aggressor. He wars from the school of Wendy, using the whole "fighting from c3" war thing that you so hate facing. The reason the war started as a war of attrition was because I had little time to fight him, going from appointment to appointment. He ended up taking my whole FB empire using the navy thing we just talked about while I was in the hospital. Try again? You are so clearly wrong. Why don't you stick with stuff you know?

Edit: the thread with the rest of the story I will post below. I stayed mostly out of it but several players came to my aggressive defense on the forums over the whole thing. Long thread, the discussion over this conflict is mostly at the end of it.

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/1/24362.html?1422398159


Start at Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - 09:43 pm

whiteboy

Wednesday, March 16, 2016 - 04:10 am Click here to edit this post
Fair enough, I'll stick to what I know. I know from a war skills perspective you're a lot more like players of old in skillset and there aren't players with that skillset around anymore that are still active in the war game (I know a few are still around but don't play the war game any longer). That's the same boat that I'm in and because of that, I have chosen not to participate in the PvP war game because I don't want to just take assets away from players. I have tried to provide you and the GM's with reasons why there are no longer players with strong war capabilities and why those who do have those abilities are inactive in the PvP war game.

You are fine with taking away assets from players regardless of the fact that they aren't on your level, I judge you on that but you don't see any problem with it, just a difference of opinion. I'm not going to dig through the forums to find every war you've been in, but you've developed the reputation that you can take down whomever you want and that no one can take your countries. That's enough for me to know that you've taken down several/many players with skills far below yours and you didn't have any real challenge until you went after me and frankly, in this state of the war game, I'm not that good.

Now again, we can continue with the personal attacks or we can move on to trying to figure out how to progress the game forward assuming the GM's ever decide to do something about how dead it is. I've got no personal issue with you, maybe you have a personal issue with me, I really don't care one way or the other. I don't particularly care about what you have or haven't done in the game and I may know very little about that, you also know very little about what I've done in the game. So how about we both stay out of that?

Aries

Wednesday, March 16, 2016 - 05:23 am Click here to edit this post
Where are you getting that I take assets from players not at my level? Your one example was horrible. I will say I essentially don't have something wrong with it but it has never been my style, ever. I have intervened more than once to protect weaker players and I have even taken countries back that were lost and given them back to the player that lost them. Again, even if you were to judge someone else out there that is notorious for the thing, warring another player is an entirely different thing than feeling you are entitled to exploit a bug for 1000s of Trillions in assets.

You were on my radar since were putting up those first mobile interceptor units for 3 coins each. You then offered details of your mobile units on the forums when you looked to sell your account. I was pretty certain then that you gained your assets in a dishonest way. You might not have time to "judge" me. You stumbled unto the reason you were my target in the first place. It isn't personal, I just don't think you deserve the leg up on players you achieved in that way.

Apply any suggestion out there, yours, mine, anyone's, to make it easier for war players to get the assets they need for the war game. Why should they work to catch up to dishonest amounts of assets out there? I usually shoot down suggestions that gaining asset speed isn't important as parity in how to gain them but, in an environment with stacks of dishonest assets out there, it starts to make more sense than it should. The solution that makes more sense is that these dishonest assets should be removed from the game. There should be some room on my list for that suggestion.

whiteboy

Thursday, March 17, 2016 - 01:02 am Click here to edit this post
Well congrats, because that's pretty much what you did, I lost about a 3rd of my mobile units and was left with zero 600Q helis/ammo and I gained nothing from that war, you are the great equalizer.

Since you discovered the same issue and reported it, what exactly happened to your duplicated units? Did you destroy them? Did the GM's take them away? How exactly is everyone supposed to know?

Aries

Thursday, March 17, 2016 - 03:38 am Click here to edit this post
I was careful to limit repeating any step that would repeat the bug. My concern was more about the integrity of the game. I have worked too hard to understand how to play the game well than to replace my work with a cheap exploit and, as I said before, no player should have to compete with players who abused such means for their benefit.

I just checked over the records of my communications to the GM on that issue. I emailed the GM 8 times about it from updates on experiencing the issue to odd market activity that seemed to stem from selling mobile units assets. The three separate situations I experienced the bug, I did not get many mobile units and identified to the GM exactly what happened and where the duped mobile units were located. The GM replied to my concerns 6 different times about progress in fixing the bug.

In the end I was told to hold unto the few mobile units that resulted from the bug and was awarded a few coins for my assistance. The units I got were so few in number that they effectively have never left my space port in one of my LU enterprises. Of the mobiles I have remaining, sold, or lost, no more than 5% resulted from the bug and the rest are ones I made or captured in a pvp war.

There are only 3 players I am aware of who have or had 2000 or more mobile units. No other player I am aware of, including me, is close to that number. Of those three, one no longer players the game, one had their assets seized by the GM, and only one still has that number or more.

whiteboy

Thursday, March 17, 2016 - 07:16 am Click here to edit this post
So, because I was actually trying to save myself money by not having to pay maintenance/ammo costs on units, I'm the a-hole? I literally was moving hundreds of units when it started happening and those were all completely built on nothing but earned assets, I spent tons of game cash on maintenance/ammo and upgrades to get those units to 600Q while dealing with the stupid deactivation rules that would constantly throw multiple game months long kinks in trying to get it done. But, it was wrong for me to then try to move those units into my space centers to transport out? When hundreds of units got duplicated in one country and in other countries they disappeared and I emailed the GM's about that (they ultimately reappeared), what exactly did I do differently than what you did in the *8* times it happened to you?

This seems to be a fundamental difference between the way you operate in the game and I do and it is why I said that I would have ultimately ended up with the same amount of units but with less game cash/GC's in the bank. I was moving/upgrading hundreds (and by hundreds I don't mean 1 or 2 hundred, I mean 5 or 6 hundred) of units at a time, I spent the GC's to get the professionals and I raided like a madman to get the upgrades/cash. In the meantime, you were focusing on your econ which was the most important thing to you, the most important thing to me was developing these magical units that could be transported at insane speeds so that I didn't have to pay maintenance/ammo costs on my defenses.

To put it in perspective, just since our war which left me without any mobile heli wings, I have developed over 2K mobile heli wings and that's with the new rules that only allow you to move 10 at a time and definitely no duplication in addition to the difficulty I've been having with professionals disappearing (which the GM's apparently don't care about either). At the same time I also built several hundred mobile int/AA/nuke def units and upgraded them as well. You can't understand how I do what I do in the same way that I can't understand what you do with the econ game.

Also, have you considered the fact that pressing on a game issue might actually be what finally gets the GM's to respond to it? You messaged them about the mobile unit issue *8* times, I messaged them about it once, but it wasn't until it was no longer that just a few units were duped that they actually responded and fixed the issue (in the most terrible way possible so that you can only move 10 at a time into/out of a country despite the fact that you can transport over 800 a month to a country). You told the GM's about the issue with cruisers and I commented on that thread too (or at least one thread after it was exploited) and nothing happened until I used that same fact to take over several hundred c3's. Sometimes when there are issues in markets that aren't being addressed despite the warnings (ahem, housing market), the best thing you can do is stack up bets on it to really force the issue and just like all bad systems they will eventually crumble (the more pressure the more quickly).

Aries

Thursday, March 17, 2016 - 09:59 am Click here to edit this post
I would believe in your benevolence if you discarded with your duped units and pros now that the bug is fixed. You remain the only active player in the game, that I am aware of, that still has a direct residual benefit from the existence of that bug (leaving only those that bought under-priced units or inherited units from that player who no longer plays). The assets I have already expended removing the first handful of your mobiles from play has already far exceeded the few mobiles I reported.

Send them to a recently taken c3 and release the country. Only three people have the power to remove them from play. You, me, and the GM.

Al Sadius

Thursday, March 17, 2016 - 01:35 pm Click here to edit this post
There's a difference between the GM saying "Keep them, it's your reward for reporting the bug", and deciding to keep them yourself.

whiteboy

Friday, March 18, 2016 - 04:35 am Click here to edit this post
You're ridiculous, like I said, you already disposed of them, congratulations to you.

You would believe in my benevolence if I had disposed of them??? How am I supposed to believe in your benevolence since you did not dispose of yours? Oh, I get it, you're benevolent after the fact because you kept them but you now consider it your honorable duty to have taken mine away. Although at the time you declared war on me out of nowhere, you had no idea about anything to do with mobile units other than that I had a lot of them. Wow, so benevolent of you.

I'll put it extremely simply for you, I lost all of the units that were duped and more when you attacked me without any provocation other than either an asset grab or to try to prove that you were better than me at the war game despite the fact I wasn't even active at the time. Either way, I gained nothing in that war and quite the contrary, I not only lost a few thousand mobile units but also 100K+ bombers and fighters each plus all of the ammo to go along with them. So, I'll go ahead and give your suggestion a giant NO and will not address it again.

And Al, the GM never told Aries 'Keep them, it's your reward for reporting the bug' just like they never said that to me after I reported the same bug. We both reported the bug and neither of us got any response and we both kept the units. Because I was aggressively pursuing building huge amounts of mobile units and Aries was focused on econ, there was a large variance in the amount of units we each received (based on what Aries is saying, although I have no evidence either way).

Aries

Friday, March 18, 2016 - 04:48 am Click here to edit this post
Stick with what you know.

-----------------------------------------
Re: Mobile Unit Duping Bugâ€
Re: Mobile Unit Duping Bug
Simcountry Gamemaster
Add to contacts
9/03/15
[Keep this message at the top of your inbox]
To: XXX
simcountry.gamemaster@gmail.com
Hi XXX,
The duping bug has been fixed.
I sent you 50GC as a thank you for your assistance. You can also keep the units that resulted from your discovery of the bug.
Regards,
Jonni


----------------------------

Yes, you aggressively pursued exploiting a bug. I did not. You still have the coins. You still have massive numbers of duped professional soldiers and officers. You still have massive numbers of weapons and ammo that were upgraded by the bug that you are simply forming into new mobile units.

jacksonz24

Thursday, June 2, 2016 - 06:49 pm Click here to edit this post
also you guys forgetting the fact you lose your country if you lose the war form a attacker i don't like that idea so when you take away war protection for good it make it easier for noobs to lose there country and quiet the game

WildStallion

Friday, June 3, 2016 - 12:24 am Click here to edit this post
I'm interested to know what you mean Aries re your 16th March 5.23am post and 17th March 3.38am post re you limited repeating any step to exploit the bug. Do you actually mean you completely stopped repeating any step to exploit the bug, or that you did know of the bug and at that point being aware of it had you exploited it at some point on one or more occasions? It's good that bugs that unscrupulous players use to benefit themselves are reported so that they can't be exploited, it's strange though how the decision to credit you 50GC was made for your assistance and you were also allowed to keep the units as well. A fairer "fix" would have been for you to get the 50GC and for your account to have been put back to the same figures before you'd made the decision to create those units. Only an opinion - no right or wrong, what's done is done and it's past history, but how many more "bugs" are still being exploited that players ARE using to get one over the lesser experienced players or other experienced players that may not be aware of them?

thenewteddy

Friday, June 3, 2016 - 03:12 am Click here to edit this post
It's messages like the one above my WildStallion that made me quit the game the last time I was playing. Bluntly, it's none of your business what the admins did with regard to another player, and if you have a problem with it, take it to the admins.

Aries

Friday, June 3, 2016 - 04:34 am Click here to edit this post
Wildstallion, when I encounter a bug, I report it. When I benefited from the bug, I include in the report exactly what I gained and where to find the stuff. I don't continue the bugged activity. It is likely the reason the GM even addressed the units in the email is because I advised where to find the units and fully expected them to be deleted.

Unfortunately, at least 2, and very likely 3, players continually repeated the exploit to create very large numbers of assets. Most of my recent PvP wars have been as a result of trying to contain these players, as the GM has not taken action on all the exploiters.

WildStallion

Friday, June 3, 2016 - 12:28 pm Click here to edit this post
The General Forum is where things can be discussed openly, in this instance thenewteddy I made the mistake of not messaging Aries directly to just ask what i'd put in my message in the forum. Aries knows I've not got a problem with whatever the GM decided, it's just an opinion which we're all allowed to have. I'm glad thenewteddy you've made the decision to return to the game and wish you all the best. Regards W.S.

marshal.ney

Saturday, October 8, 2016 - 09:23 pm Click here to edit this post
At the risk of being called a necro lord, I really want to revive this thread. As per the conversation between Aries and Whiteboy. Not the tangent the last few posts got into.

Unit Simplicity. Having a factor increase is definitely an improvement over the other suggestions I've seen advocating an unlimited number, or one so high as to be the same thing. I think the echelon attack as suggested by another player is superior to this suggestion, however. If this is accompanied by a change in how war levels can be used to determine who can be attacked via war levels, I would support it. It's too easy to reach the current war levels that remove protection, - I think that is a perception that matters. Personally, I'd like to see two different war levels. One for PvE, and one for PvP - and have the second category dictate who can attack who.

Countries not Paintable - this needs to be fixed ASAP. Failure to do so by the GM's is in effect handing long term players who know of these locations an unloseable country. This problem is well over a decade old. It's time.

Defensive Fortications over 150. Regardless of how they got there. (via contracts was stated as an issued to be put on improvements to the war engine on June 2015.) Defensive fortications should have war damage each, of the max divided by 150. Defensive Fortifications over 150 should not be allowed. Allowing them to be built over the maximum allows Zones of Control, which are not breached until the fortifications are destroyed. If the GM's desire a slower game pace in PvP, this can be addressed elsewhere.

Player Power Rankings. I think this would be a great replacement for war level ranking in determing PvP. By all means, keep the levels for GC awards. But add this in as a determination of who can be attacked rather then an arbitrary number which has no relation to any skill set. The rule was changed to promote more PvP, and it has failed disastrously. Time to try something else. Going by power ranking would ensure more equal contests - and perhaps remove the fear of either having to risk losing everything within a few days of start, to the humiliation of being forced to being protected by a small handful of plaayers, who have donated their time and effort to doing the GM's job. While these players deserve our utmost respect and thanks, we simply have no guarantee that this will continue. I'd like to see a double power ranking stat. Per world, and across all worlds.

War College. A lot of games have a quest type system that helps you learn the skills to play the game. I think this is similar, and a good idea. I think the system should be open to all players, not just premium members (with the exception of any goals that specifically require membership, such as taking over a third country.) I think that any advancement in war levels that occur during this training should receive the award as they are earned. Not at the end. I am not sure why a player would forfeit war level protection upon completing the course of instruction. Any awards for the completion of specific events should be tied to both the difficulty of the task, with an eye towards the new player benefits upon log on. I think it is similar. They should be waited toward PvP. Extra units or ammunition, weapon or ammo quality upgrades, perhaps some small populations of low level workers or managers.

Battlegrounds. No country gain at the end. A grace period given to remove assets etc. Selection of Country. Any unpaintable country can be chosen as a Battleground. This would remove it from the player base entirely, as it seems the GM's cannot do so. Instead of having to completely reduce the war index, it need only be reduced to it's maximum capacity. Award more then 10 trillion to make up for the loss of owning the country afterward. Remove the war college degree requirement. If a limit is desired, input a war level or power ranking requirement instead. (and please keep at least one open for us lowbies.)

Natural Resources - I think it's a great idea. Perhaps a two tiered system. Renewable and non-renewable. For the renewable, perhaps a bonus for production etc of certain products or in their quality. For non-renewable, a finite supply. This affects both PvE and PvP. I see no reason to tie war level or protection into this as a requirement. Unless we are stating that this asset can be seized and moved. I'm failing to see why war protection is tied into this as well. This would greatly be to the detriment of Econ only players.

Total War: I tied myself in knots on this the last time I was in SimCountry. Discretion is the better part of valor, and I chose not to make a fool of myself again.

The point I made about using Power Rankings as a determinant instead of war levels goes along with a bit of what Whiteboy said. Games created more worlds, power structures etc to keep the established players happy, while keeping space to entertain the newer/casual player. A lot of things that affect one side, affect the other disproprotinately.

If the community hasn't noticed, I am a little bit of a curmudgeon. I hereby apologize for any offense I have caused or may cause in my posts. My heart is pure, even when my tongue isn't.

Cordially yours,
MNey

Aries

Saturday, October 8, 2016 - 10:13 pm Click here to edit this post
On player power rankings: The current restrictions on player combat already create an environment where one feels they are no longer a part of a community of competing nations but more of a single game experience. This is one reason for the fall of the importance of feds and the rise in power of solo players. The state of the game does not lend itself to players feeling they need to invest in the social game and seek the protection of a fed. This is why the social outlets of the game, the chat and the forum, never talk of game politics and rarely speak of superior game strategies. For this reason, new and creative ways to limit PvP combat should be put on hold until a way to bring back the feeling of an immersive world environment is found and preserved.

On War College: The idea is to graduate players to a level of knowledge and provide the resources to get them involved in world affairs. The should be ready to join a fed or maybe even form their own with other friends finding their way through the rewards of the War College.

On Battlegrounds: War College, though doing its best to simulate PvP, cannot replace the experience of facing a real player opponent. Players should complete War College to have a base level of skill before competing against real players. This should also be an activity reserved for players who have committed to join game politics and not be protected by solo/econ game protections. The game already is filled with solo/econ players. These enhancements are to bring back the promise of a real "Massive Multiplayer Online Game" as presented on the sign-on screen.

On Natural Resources: The idea of this is to have something to fight for on the world map. The truth is that in most player war instances, nothing is at stake other than ego. Player wars usually cost far more than anything that can be gained and nothing can be gained in a player war that can't be gained, often more easily, through econ. Natural resources are a stab at changing that. Again, the solo-play econ players don't need additional incentive. Currently, those are the only players that exist.

Psycho_Honey

Saturday, October 15, 2016 - 01:08 am Click here to edit this post
I can only say after reading this entire thread, I told you so.

Khome

Sunday, October 16, 2016 - 02:48 am Click here to edit this post
the changes?

Psycho_Honey

Sunday, October 16, 2016 - 06:12 am Click here to edit this post
No the changes, on many levels are good. The lower active number of players cloud that. Many unhappy older players, who drove a large portion of the action have stepped back. There have been few able 'and' willing to fill the gap. This doesn't mean the changes are all good or bad, but ultimately for the better. A balance of indefinite war level protection vs progression to pvp levels has surprisingly been achieved in my absence. And perhaps that absence was necessary to see it through.

My comments were geared toward an observation I made within the initial wave of Aries' problem/reaction/solution series. The sentiment being thoroughly seconded by other players throughout the thread. As in ~The changes you(Aries) suggests strikingly have a clearly placed self benefit neatly tucked into them behind a veil of improvement or protectionism or advancement of x,y, z.

There were some great points and counter-points made. I'm just troubled that through most of the initial posts, Aries made a significant effort to completely ignore counter arguments(detailed, valid and compelling btw) and deflected the conversation back to players addressing his suggestions rather than acknowledging the core issue. The argument as it progressed here is moot however, these same infinite circles of illogical suggestion have been had before and for example led us to war levels. The newest version of which, has flaws yet is far superior to the initial introduction.

Not to get too deep into it, but yeah. Too many of these self benefit suggestions are camouflaged with white-knight like intentions. It is at the point of suggestion itself where naturally everyone reading should begin to suspiciously and objectively examine the motive and potential outcomes of any proposed changes, period. If the suggestion is valid, everyone BUT the author of the suggestion should vet it out, not the author. If it is indeed good, and well intended, the author need not defend his position at all. The suggestion alone will defend itself when placed under objective(<-- KeyWord) scrutiny from other players to be affected by said change.

Naturally, these things should be voted on through the polls system, or in the suggestions section. But they frequently with great uproar end up here in the general. Where the spiral of logic within posts devolves to sim-character assassination and the good points are drowned out among the pointless posts that have nearly nothing to do with the original post. That too, is a well observed practice in many other threads of suggestions by the original author. This occurs when a well crafted logical suggestion is met with an even greater logic. *Thinking* -"If you get on my suggestion threads making sense with logic I can't counter, we will move into why you aren't qualified to be in the conversation." Either you use questionable tactics(i.e. Wendy as referenced) or you took your assets 'dishonestly' and so forth. That's nonsense and utterly useless to the thread imo.
Then we get what happened with the rest of the 45-50 remaining posts. Noted. But as Nate Diaz would say..., "I ain't surprised mo*explitive*rs."

Aries

Sunday, October 16, 2016 - 07:55 am Click here to edit this post
What possible self-benefit for me exists in these changes? Honestly, I already have all the stuff I need. The suggestions were all geared towards new players having an easier progression to gaining the knowledge, motivation, and resources to participate in PvP, fixing a few game issues that are obvious to everyone, and fixing a problem with managing units in high-level PvP wars.

For my part, I have done about all I could for some time towards reviving the war game portion of the game. I was a consistent presence in chat, offering advise to all players with no bias and I published a number of guides on the forum. Many of the suggestions I made was based on feedback from the players I would talk to. I also tried to glorify how fun PvP can be by posting a number of stats and stories from actual PvP wars, see "The Battle of Camp Foxtrot" or "First Day Stats: Lucky vs. Aries" on the FB forum or "Operation Complete" on the LU forum. I even offered to sponsor competition between players, see "Sign up for War Games. Win up to $20 Trillion" on the General Forum. I have had some successes. Several new players over the past few years have acquired considerable resources and knowledge of the game.

I have seen your recent posts and read your blog. I wish you luck in shaking things up and hope you are successful in making things more interesting. The social game is lacking and I believe that reviving interest in the war game is the key to changing the game experience from a solo-play one to the immersive experience it should be. If there is anything I can help with let me know.

Psycho_Honey

Sunday, October 16, 2016 - 05:20 pm Click here to edit this post
Aries, first of all, I wish you health above and beyond all other things.

Somewhere in the first few posts, the original player countering your ideas explained much better than I will, point by point what changes would benefit the class of players to which you belong. I couldn't have done a better job of making the case, and short of making references and quoting snippets of previous posts, my effort to rehash it plainly ends there.

I have been on a number of your previous posts throughout the years and mentioned the same thing nearly every time. The changes benefit you. More generally your class of player, a class that I used to belong to. In some important instances, the changes suggested that were eventually implemented in the name of

Quote:

geared towards new players having an easier progression to gaining the knowledge, motivation, <--read *White-Knighting*


actually protected this class of mega-rich players and nearly shut the door for new entrants.

Case in point, two of perhaps your legacy achievements. Ending c3 raiding, and devaluing the gc to cash ratio.

Ending raiding of c3s. While you somehow in the shortest time possible appeared from nearly nowhere(when you started), gained a mega account with mega resources (I know you put a lot of work into it too, don't fall over), then went on to champion the one change that would essentially stop any newer player who desired to gain a meaningful amount of assets(in relation to your/my assets) with a bit of diligent c3 raiding. To put this in econ terms. This makes no economic sense, unless of course, you are a mega player and don't need this feature because you already have so many assets.

It's a carbon copy scenario with the gc rate. When the gms began moving the rate down to something like 200B per coin, you made a huge post about how you think it should be even lower, even less than 100B. There too, I objected and stated the same thing. This ONLY benefits those of the mega class. If I have nearly a quad or several quadrillions of cash at my disposal, I don't need to worry about exchanging more of my coins, for progressively smaller sums of money every time I log into the game. See how that only benefited players like us? I'm sure you did then, and I know you do now. I also know without question you are going to defend it to the death, however it may appear and if it contradicts the reality created by it. So we shouldn't go back and forth over it. I already objected to these things, and the reasoning behind it.

Making my way back around to the topic at hand. The player at the top of the thread with you, explained to you more coherently than I ever will exactly what your proposal would do. I'll quote it if I must, but people can and should read if they find themselves interested. Scroll up. His/her arguments were sound and valid. Even more valid when they are viewed through his eyes and position in the game. You disagree and refuse to address his points from a view other than your own mega class-view, if you did at all. This is a problem to have such a narrow view.

Suggestions should be made no doubt. But the merits of those suggestions should be debated by objective 3rd parties. There is a track record of these suggestions benefiting a class of players if not you yourself. You are aware of how small that class size is and is becoming.

I can roll down this hill with older war level suggestions, the quality of weapons and ammo and more. But why?

I know without question you have tried to ignite a war game. I only ever questioned your motives. I also don't like how you did WB. At all. If you had any bug problems you noticed, that should have been the end of all the wars right there. Especially since he was willing to put up a fight, not complain publicly or diminish your gains. He actually played it out the exact opposite of how I would have. No posting, no hard feelings, no forum banter. Yet you still went on to take the rest of what you could from him. It is never a good fight you have been looking for. It's assets. You'll say you have so much and you didn't need his stuff. But if this were true, why do it after the first victory? It is plain.

I want a good fight. I asked for a battle royale world years ago. Because players like you, set up, you had the numbers, you took something. New players think this is some measure of skill or greatness. I read it endlessly. "Aries is a war God." Perhaps in mythology, but not in this simulation. Aries is a nickname. I know without question, in a match setup with even numbers and no "tricks", "gags", "exploits" or whatever else we can call them, I wipe the floor with you 99 out of 100 times. Players like Whiteboy, wipe the floor with you 99.9 out of 90 times. This game is set up to make the war index move to zero, but that is just numbers and more importantly preparedness. Skills and tactics actually factor in less than ammo quality.

It took me a long time to get to that point, forgive me. I want you to heal up. It'll take me some time to get some meaningful things going. I started completely over. I want you to take care of yourself above all things Aries. I am a little crazy but I am human. If you want to help me I would greatly appreciate it. We can balance our Sim-Karma together. Start suggesting the battle royal world/platform. No space centers, just weapons, skills, and tactics. No prestige or account size to hide inconsistencies. Just straight up pvp risk free or friendly wagers. They do pay attention to your suggestions, suggest that.

Johanas Bilderberg

Sunday, October 16, 2016 - 10:37 pm Click here to edit this post
Well said Wendy.

As a returning player I haven't found any new possibilities with the new changes Aries pushed for. In fact in the six years since I left the game has stagnated.

Raiding C3's and inactive's for population and money was the only free way to grow an empire. Now that path is gone.

Sad that the days of great world wars are gone, the fact that federations are basically useless, and player interaction is so low.

I assume that we can either change with the times or become extinct.

Sam.

Let Sie

Sunday, October 16, 2016 - 10:44 pm Click here to edit this post
I don't Always agree with aries or the changes he proposes but you've got to give him some credit. He's helped more new players (including me) then a LOT of other people over the years.

Did he do it to benefit himself? I doubt it but even if he did he still deserves respect for all his hard work.

Aries

Sunday, October 16, 2016 - 11:03 pm Click here to edit this post
I didn't change how c3 raiding worked, the GM did. I did message and post about how easy and unbalanced it was to gain game cash compared to actual country/empire building. The effort to actually build a worthwhile empire was not rewarded on the same level as following a simple guide. Some changes were made but there are still substantial rewards to be gained by completing trivial wars with the computer. See "The Path of a Warrior-Aries" post I made on the Beginner's forum where I document how some $78 Trillion in cash and 640 coins can be gained post-changes.

I don't recall a post about changing the exchange rate for coins with the GM for game cash. I can say that I had worked to make it easier for players to get more game cash for the coins through player trades in electric power. See my post "Get $180 Billion per Coin" on the general forum. I do believe that it should be up to players to offer a better deal on exchanges than the GM does. Direct and Space trades should be meaningful and highlighted above dealings with the GM.

On the suggestions, I will give you some time and see if you have your own solutions for reviving the war game. I feel I have tried all I could but have been mostly inactive in recent months. Keep in mind, the interest you have thus far on FB from players is from players I consider my allies. Players I have given advise in the past to and fought wars together with. In particular, you have more to learn from Zen and Zentrino than they have to learn from you.

On the war with Whiteboy, you are simply wrong on the facts. I took nothing from Whiteboy. We fired at each other for 24 hours and no countries were taken. A draw was reached when after heavy amounts of weapons were lost on both sides, my 35 million pop country's war score was effected by casualties more than his 300 million pop country. We both had the weapons to continue but I had no stable base any longer and for his part he was having difficulty painting my map, as he had no direct access to it by ground. Neither of us "wiped the floor" with anyone. More details on the war can be found on WBs forum post "WBs last fight" on the general forum and since that war, WB has been in WP since.

My two most recent opponents, Whiteboy and Blackeyes, both would not question my skills at the war game let alone my allies. I don't feel I need to prove myself to you, considering I was getting the better of you when you had the mega-assets and I didn't. Since my goal is to expand the game to include more war players, I would be more impressed if you could pass on whatever knowledge and tactics you have to two of your own recruits and have them compete against Zen and Zentrino. I will offer a substantial reward to the winners of a fair contest.

Johanas: Did you try my simply guide to gain some $78 Trillion and 640 coins by beating on the computer? Why don't you try some econ as well and build a profitable empire?

Thanks Let Sie, I appreciate it.

Psycho_Honey

Sunday, October 16, 2016 - 11:35 pm Click here to edit this post
LetSie what is in question is the track record and consequences of changes that have been proposed by Aries. Not him helping or not helping. Honestly, his sainthood and everyone else' lack of ethical actions are not on the table at all. There are more than enough players falling to their knees to praise Aries and his benevolent guide-making. They are very useful to new players. Many of them should also have a publishing trademark - "Brought to you by Aries, who suggested the changes that made the need for this guide." I also lost whatever point you were trying to make in relation to my post. Not purposely, it might have been due to how far off-topic your comment was, I can't be certain either way.

Johanas Bilderberg

Monday, October 17, 2016 - 12:13 am Click here to edit this post
No I didn't try your guide and I am already profitable ,but that is neither here nor there.

I miss crushing my sim enemies, driving them before me, and hearing the lametation of their women.

Also I dispute anyone ever got the better of Wendy. We fought wars on multiple worlds for real months. I would never claim to have gotten the best of her.

Psycho_Honey

Monday, October 17, 2016 - 12:30 am Click here to edit this post
Aries...

I know you didn't change anything. You fear mongered the entire newbie population into war level conversation threads, which you either started or hijacked.

The GM wanted changes because threads like those, which in many cases completely skewed my activities were a primary driver. With new and semi new players dying in fear thinking if they didn't have war levels Wendy would come along and soak up whatever they had so painstakingly clicked into existence. With multiple threads and posts like this which skew reality of course, no you didn't change anything.

Its a FACT, my riches in this game were acquired economically. Like nearly 90% of them or more. I know that is hard to understand, because you make guides and give advice, not listen much. Yes I raided inactives. Yes I even warred with many people, even newer ones. What was the result? Stuart, Homer, more and more I cannot name went on to become active members in powerful feds capable of developing them into real players. No one ever left this game because I ever took everything they worked for. I rarely took anyone's countries ever. Look at the war threads. Link them. People constantly posted about how I didn't take anything. I only prided myself on trashing countries of stronger players or groups of players mainly in Historically Legendary feds who's ranks included the who's who of all time fighters to grace the game. In maybe more than 95% of all wars I was severely outnumbered by fighters far superior to my assets and true war abilities.

Unlike you, I fought my wars at a disadvantage. You are not a warlord. You have participated in the war-game, no doubt. The ONLY reason you can be mentioned on the topic of war was due to quality changes in weapons and ammo space transfers. You had prepared yourself with higher quality air units which I never cared to. Do you really have yourself convinced you ever got the better of me? I had enough gold coins in my account to keep the country I let you attack on LU. I had the conversation with 4 or 5 other players and your exercise proved the entire conversation's point. We concluded that war is now an exercise in futility and asset wasting was a way to reel assets back in to the game from mega players. I had over 100K ints and 60K helos and countless millions of ammo. They were all 300q. what an incredible waste. What makes you think I couldn't have wiped you right back out if I so chose to use the mega assets you assume were so much larger than your own? I could have easily, I am certain. I likely could have done it with not a single mobile unit. It may have taken some time and a few wars but it's just numbers and I am Wendy bruh... get real.

This is the type of conversation that is unnecessary and unproductive. You can believe you got the best of me, or you can think I let myself see how many attacks it would take 450q air wings to take down a crapload of 300q air wings. I know its a lot. I only need to open some old notepads and find out. It was a few hundred Trillion sc$ experiment but the data ensures me your saving grace was quality enhancements, a newly added feature championed by who!!! Who!!! Am I an owl or was it Aries? (<--- Trick question)

If we could both be afforded a fresh country, filled with necessary weapons and ammo, no quirks, no glitches, a clean war... If you beat me I would gladly give you your due credit. I wouldn't want to let letsie and the other's who believe in you down. Sadly that server doesn't exist yet. But it will if you start suggesting it. Maybe it's the way you layout the requests or how you present it. Just give the suggestion the way I asked clean. The confusion between skill vs willing to choke up coins on "thousands" of mobile units will quickly be made clear. I hope your next post or thread is the framework for the battle world/server suggestion.

On WB's last fight, it is my understanding, perhaps the way the thread ends is misleading. The first fight between you was a 'draw'. Then near the end, you declared again. The somebody ended the thread with some snarky remark implying you gained whatever it was you declared on. Perhaps you could post the ending on it to make sure there is no room for confusion. Did you end up following through with the war or not?

Aries

Monday, October 17, 2016 - 01:29 am Click here to edit this post
I lost where we are going on war levels. I thought the original discussion was on gaining wealth through endless low-level c3 raiding, which was changed and I advocated. The existence of war levels came about at a time I wasn't playing Simcountry, before I started this account. The ability to take countries for war positioning in the new system was preserved by the ability to take countries at war level 3, regardless of whether you are at a higher war level. That change was my suggestion and preserved your preferred way to war. I am not sure what points or counter-points you are saying I made, "fear-mongering" and such. When I first made this account you had me confused with someone else. Perhaps this is still the case?

On quality, I am a bit confused where you are going here too. I played long ago, when the game was new, starting up a bit before White Giant came out and moved there to start over fresh when it was released. I then took over a 10 year break from the game until 12-2012. When I came back, the whole quality thing was new to me and was one of many new systems I had to learn. I was never there to champion a change related to quality and not sure how whatever issues you had in managing your mega-stocks compared to my newbie account relates to a handicap in our wars to follow.

How did we get to how you made your account riches? I really don't care. 99% of my account wealth is through econ. I started as an econ player and learned the war game to protect my stuff. Like you claim to do, all my wars have been against the most capable opponents around. I seem to remember you declaring war on my empire as soon as you realized I was out of war protection though. By your post, I must have been a "stronger player" some 5 months after I made my account.

On the WB war, this is why you shouldn't try to make points on stuff you don't know about. At the conclusion of the "draw" WB went into WP on FB and created countries on LU to threaten my empire there. As he was building up those LU countries I declared war on them as they left war level protection. In retaliation, he declared war on my FB countries with some small countries while his mains stayed in WP. The result of that war was that I wiped out his new LU countries, of very low value, as WB says on that thread, and WB messaged me that he would not be warring me on FB either. This was a forgettable war for me. I simply ended the threat to my empire on LU and consider our last real conflict, as WB would too, to be the draw.

Again, I feel I have no need to prove my prowess in war. If I much teach you a lesson directly, I will attempt to make it costly for you. I am more interested in helping you generate more general interest in the war game though I still believe some of the suggestions to begin this thread to be the best way to do that. In my view, if you feel there is another way, I am ready to help and be impressed.

Johanas: Because she gave you trouble, no one can handle her in war?

Psycho_Honey

Monday, October 17, 2016 - 03:37 am Click here to edit this post
That isn't how the WB's last fight thread ends. Why not just link or quote the latest messages. You do that well.

I wouldn't have anything to prove either if I were aware of a different outcome other than winning. Just sayin.

I'm down to help the game with you as well. Regardless of a future conflict. But I will be clear, you have no interest in a level conflict because we are both aware of your ability to do math and you know why you got the best of me lol. As for any demonstration of skills other than spending gc on pro soldiers for thousands of mobile units, it remains to be seen. I would like to see it, if its skill indeed, or just a bunch of mobile units. I already know the answer to that, as you do. But the public needs to know. Is the hype about either of us really real?

The other points about war levels and stuff go back to you justifying war levels using me as an excuse or at least the main case. There are numerous threads on that too.

Aries

Monday, October 17, 2016 - 05:17 am Click here to edit this post
I said that the last battle with Whiteboy is forgettable. Why would I post about it? I can only think about posting about wars if I need to engage in politics or am trying to make wars interesting, by providing stats and things. That war didn't apply.

The math I remember is that my account was about 5 months old when I started defeating you despite your mega-stocks. Fighting from c3/useless countries is just about your trademark around here but I managed to take some important countries when you neglected WP. Fort TNA was the biggest battle but the country that I kept as Camp Victory was the most valuable.

Another correction. The last few wars I was vastly outnumbered in professional soldiers and mobile units. Whiteboy had over 10 times the mobile units and pros that I did. I have had to have a strategy for this type of conflict for some time. If I simply tried to compete mobile unit for mobile unit, the last two players I fought would have achieved easy victories. Is this the related to the "math" you were talking about?

On war levels, you are going to have to clarify what you are talking about and what your position is. For my part, I have been suggesting things to loosen war levels a little for years, including a few suggestions at the top of this thread and I have suggested elsewhere to remove war levels from the "war" world.

Psycho_Honey

Monday, October 17, 2016 - 06:30 am Click here to edit this post
Utter blasphemy. You are running circles around yourself. You declared on WB again after the stalemate. Did you follow through or not? I read the thread that is what is there to read.

Who cares, my case is already plain.

I could dig up the threads on you and your suggestion, but I find watching water come to boil a far greater use of my time. I'll save my eyes for old age.

I don't have to clarify something that is already transparent from the top of the topic to the bottom. You continually suggest and champion changes that solidify your class.

By this point we are so far off topic, no surprise. We get away from what is plain and begin rewriting history, contradicting ourselves and each other. I know you need some time but you have very little to lose from a fair battle on a level playing field other than your title of "God of War" to the Queen of c3 Battle. I understand how that may seem important but it would really confirm or deny these rumors you have seemingly earned. Imagine someone in a 5 month old account mysteriously beating a years long mega-rich player as you state. The idea of it escapes even basic logic. It's not that you are good it's that no one cares to expend the figures on mobile warfare needed to expose the shenanigans.

Make the suggestion and move on. You are right on one point, you do have nothing to prove. Only something to lose. Even if it is a facetious title. I wish this were implemented while I was gone, would be really cool to get this underway already.

marshal.ney

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - 02:58 am Click here to edit this post
To return to the original discussion, or some facsimile of it.

Why not split the war levels completely? Have one for sims only for the econ minded player, and one for only pvp for those who enjoy the full game?

You'd have to fight 4 wars against a player of the appropriate level in order to advance your war level for the full game.

And no matter how many wars against a sim led country you fought, you would never be forced up in war level beyond 1 for pvp, even on Fearless Blue. There are other mechanics at work there.

(I'm not a fan of the endless C3 raiding at lower levels. That has a finite threshold. Once the game gets more popular, it will start spiraling down. Just due to the mechanics to return the conquered to the game as a target)

That should satisfy both sides, no? Someone mentioned world of warcraft in one of these threads. As a long time player of that game, let me say something about the pvp there. It's by choice. There are servers that are PvP - but you do not have to play on them, nor visit them. Just like on here there is no mandatory requirement to go on Fearless Blue. The only other places to go into pvp would be similar to the suggestions of Aries above.(battlegrounds,arenas, and skirmished that you have to queue up for. Duels that you have to accept to participate in.) And limited strictly to them. And thats in a game where you lose only the time spent participating or ranking. You don't lose any kind of loot.

When it comes to it in the end, any suggestion that a player who is only playing the peaceful game should have to participate in PvP isn't going to work. The only suggestion along that route that would is to completely remove the peaceful only option in the game. And instead of a lot of players hiding at lower war levels, I think you'd just see a mass exodus from the game.

Thinking of warcraft, going to offer one suggestion. Something they came up with, when not enough folks were participating in a battleground to make it viable to play. The lower side received a buff upping their power ratio to put them back into near contention with the more numerous side. How that would work here would be off something akin to your power levels. If you go up against someone 1 power rank above you, your combat output would double. Double the casualties inflicted, half of what would normally be received.

As I said, something akin to the power levels you described. The only meaningful measure would be the actual number of military units and their quality. The rest only describes a capability of putting power into the field. Not that it has been.

Zentrino

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - 08:04 am Click here to edit this post
I am not a fan of boosting the weaker player. Why would I spend money buying high quality weapons and spend time and resources upgrading units if my opponent is going to be rewarded with a force nearly identical to mine? That would seem to encourage new weak players to attack seasoned players. What would they have to lose except the forces given to them freely by the game?
If something like this were done, it would have to consider who attacked whom. If a strong player attacks a weak player, than maybe I could see an argument for that. But if some weak player with 50T in military assets attacks me, I would not be happy if the game just gave him several 100Ts of weapons to make it "fair."

Aries

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - 12:37 pm Click here to edit this post
Wendy's post is just not comprehensible at this point.

Marshal: None of my suggestions push any peaceful player into PvP. The econ-only option already exists in the game and is well protected by numerous game systems that my suggestions do not change. The suggestions I offered simply are options a player can choose to deliberately enter the war game. From your post, I cannot understand your objection to a particular suggestion.

As far as leveling the playing field, my suggestions address that as well, by offering a tutorial of PvP, of sorts, before facing an actual player. They also offer resources for such a player to get started. Beyond that, players should interact and engage in politics to seek a level playing field with any potential opponent. Not rely on some game system to make a fair 1 on 1 battle. The game is not and should not solely be based on balancing a 1 on 1 battle. It is supposed to be a "massively multiplayer" experience. Make friends. Join feds.

The most exciting parts of Simcountry history are about clashes of feds where even newer, smaller, empires can have an important role to play. Regardless of the amount of forces I have at my disposal, the presence of another set of eyes on the war situation, the other set of hands at a keyboard, can still have much value. After a simple adequate number of resources is reached, skill becomes a more important factor than adding more resources to a player.

Beyond that, Zentrino brings up other important points. Another consideration is that an important components of PvP is the capture of countries and their associated assets, including military. The game adding forces to a side would be exploitable in this way. A change of "combat output" would introduce its own set of problems.

Power rankings was a suggestion to show a true gauge of the top players in Simcountry free of world bonds, which are easily broken, and score penalties. The idea is to aspire to higher levels of a "truer" power measurement as motivation beyond world rankings, that don't fulfill this purpose. Power rankings are not meant to handicap wars, reversing the motivation to reach the higher tiers.

Let Sie

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - 02:16 pm Click here to edit this post
They should just. Remove the country cap for free players. No more no less.

There are tons of rewards for paying members. And paying members will still have a huge advantage. But as long as I can conquer 100 countries without ever having to go to war against a player because there is simply enough space there will never be real tension.

In all other online war games, space, not resources is the limiting factor. Everybody can, with some time and effort, get enough resources. And yes even YOU can get those 10.000 mobile units if you really want to. It's the amount of provinces somebody can or can't control that makes all the difference. If free players can control more countries you'll get a natural tension and wars will be fought.

The empire building mechanics in this game are enough of a barrier to prevent everybody from running 30 countries. It's the most simple and effective way to make people more active. It works for the other 99% of war games out there so why not here?

As a side note, I'm really against artificially pumping people. That seems just bad...

Psycho_Honey

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - 02:33 pm Click here to edit this post
You comprehend just fine.

For the record, a large class of previously actively game-engaged players were not pleased with war levels. I was among them. However the way they are now, is just fine, and I am totally satisfied with their evolution. Protection is offered, with a clear path up the ranks. Forcing a player to face tougher c3s and ultimately a pvp war. This is ideal.

However to test Marshal's theory, I think he is onto something. Fearless Blue should be as-is yet all out war. There should be no protections there at all. It is after all, "The" war world. On the opposite end of that, perhaps a single world can be set apart for ONLY peaceful play. Kebir Blue maybe. Nothing war like ever happens there and that is historically valid for about a real-time decade. Wouldn't you agree. W3 can and should track the participation rates of these worlds and get a true sense of what their players want. The default when you start should be to drop players on 1 of the 3 traditional worlds and then track where they migrate to.

As far as the space issue. Without imposing limits and being too intrusive, why not just limit space transfers to empire to empire on the same world? Weapons and good can and should be purchased in space for transfer to any world. However, good originating from a world economy should stay present in that world. So if I have a space center on LU packed with 500T of military hardware and ammo, it should be transferred to any country within my empire on LU. Why should it be available to my White Giant Empire? This will also curtail universal powerhousing, and level the playing field somewhat for new entrants to the war game. This actually makes more sense than I previously imagined. Heh. The mobile units should be the ONLY units that should be available to move off-planet for use anywhere in the galaxy. That is why they are mobile units, no? I know the space aspect was intended to increase trade between the worlds, but the game itself is simply not in a robust state to realize any benefit from this. This unnecessarily exaggerates the advantage of superpowers to the detriment of newer players.

The one flaw that is obvious with war levels is the abuse of sub war level presidents participating in air defense in a PVP war. This makes no sense. If you are under a pvp war level, you should not be participating in a PVP war, even on defense. I know it is costly to the defender, but it is more costly to the offense when these defensive air units are constantly replenished and or reformed yet cannot be destroyed.

I will say this in opposition to separation of the game entirely. The truly peaceful game is offered. It is the enterprise game. There is no realistic situation where a government can run a country without the aspect of defense of the homeland and potentially offensive wars to protect their interests. A realistic medium would be to test the extremes out. Peaceful mode on KB where it exists by default oddly enough. Prewar level SC on Fearless Blue where the mode should exist by default.

And Aries... I'll tell you like LG told JohnFire, "Don't be Coy, Scarlett!"

Aries

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - 09:40 pm Click here to edit this post
On unlimited countries for free members: I think you have a misunderstanding on how assets are obtained. Several players do have dozens of countries out there but they do no better than players who run a few very good countries. In fact, the top players run no more than 2-10 very good econ countries.

Several other issues are that the war game does not handle well wars encompassing many countries. It takes time to take each country, which is why fighting from just several trash countries can be effective, let alone an empire of some dozens. Lastly, this change makes it more difficult to monitor multi-play and other cheating activity. Limiting certain paid features, such as the country limit, to paid members helps the GM in that it limits the damage that one, or a number, of new free accounts can do if the GM does not act quickly to enforce game rules.


On no war levels on FB: I have repeatedly suggested that FB have no war levels. The "war" world is a joke. 21 days protection is already offered when you start on the world.


On a peaceful world: They are all peaceful right now. Is any change really needed to add more peace?


On limiting space transfers to within one world: This defies the promise of space. This is a non-starter for most players and the GM. Nice try though.


On limiting air defense for low war level players: A change only effecting them is uneven compared to the ability of higher war level players simply basing the same air wings from secured mode countries, countries they threw temporary war protection on, or simply a newly conquered c3 country on the eve of war. That player can easily have as many countries as they choose that are not involved in the current war to base their wings. No different from the lower war level player.

Overall, I dislike this change because it is unnecessary and is counter-intuitive to what the game needs. Larger, active feds of players that each have something to contribute.


Hey look. I commented on specific ideas. The trend on this thread is that my suggestions are overly generalized by posters, often in a why that is totally inaccurate. It is as if most responders didn't even read them.

Psycho_Honey

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - 10:26 pm Click here to edit this post

Quote:

On limiting space transfers to within one world: This defies the promise of space. This is a non-starter for most players and the GM. Nice try though.




Well thank you for the view of someone who would entirely benefit from being able to swing assets from planet to planet. Again, a major benefit of players with huge accounts not afforded to those without. One should not be able to swing assets so easily to a world where they have not put the time or work in. This benefits players like us Aries, who regardless of our start, will endeavor to become ever larger. Not every player has the time or the ambition to compete on 4 or 5 worlds. Some only have the time to maintain a single empire on a single world.

It wasn't a nice try, it's common sense. Again, your objection to this is that it limits your ability to project yourself asymmetrically to whatever world you desire to war on. A very self centered view. And keeping with the current theme, (In my Nate Diaz voice)" I'm not surprised M***********S.

Changing it would help others compete. I will be space bound and asset rich no doubt, in time. But not everyone will, and certainly not those just starting to learn the game much less attempting play war at a competitive level.

You should really abandon the narrow view when discussing these things. It doesn't exactly come across as genuine input, it looks rather selfish. Although this is a good survival instinct in the real world, this is a simulation. It is a game, you maybe have one of the top 5 positions in the game from what I read, you can have some concessions in a discussion. Or is it that important to you?

This would only limit your 'power' to planets you choose to not place the bulk of your military assets. Not take from you in any way. Besides, if you want to play as a superpower on a world, should you not have adequate assets on that one world? Being able to produce wares and ammo on 3 or more planets only ensures that no newer player will be in a position to defend themselves adequately from you much less pose a challenge offensively. So why the objections?

It doesn't defy anything. The only thing that defies logic is how someone could transfer hundreds of trillions of not just ammunition but weapons in a matter of minutes. That defies the promise of a 'realistic simulation', something this game is actually based on. While it is not realistic in every way, this aspect has to be the most unrealistic and serves just a narrow sliver of the total players present and active.

If not removing altogether, limits on military should no question be imposed to create balance. If you can't admit that you can dismiss yourself from any rational conversation about space and weapon ammo transfer.

I am at least the second player of note to mention the need for at least 'some' measure of controls. Going with common sense, the war game got on just fine without space transfer of weapons. The space feature was introduced as a way to promote 'trade', but has become incredibly lopsided to high asset wielding players transferring an enormous amount of military in just minutes in a time of war.

Currently, there is no technology that can lift 100,000 interceptors or fighter planes to the next planet in any fashion whatsoever. Keep in mind these planets I thought were located in their own star systems.vWe are talking about only minutes Perhaps the planet bio's changed I haven't read them in years?

Imagine how someone can be so against raiding because of Helicopter Money in C3's yet be such a strong advocate of throwing real life months of military production into a war zone on an entirely different planet. One example actually happens in the real world, meaning money is printed out of thin air. The lightest of items aren't even transported to the moon regularly. Your line of reasoning escapes anyone with a brain. Nice try though?

Aries

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - 10:51 pm Click here to edit this post
Yes, nice try. It wont happen.

Space is available to everyone and is not expensive. Over 1500 shuttles are on direct trade, starting at .16 gold coins each. Having a powerful interstellar empire is a game motivation. Something that many players work towards and is readily achievable, as my "Path of a Warrior" guide outlines. The game needs more motivation and stuff to achieve, not less. Further, weakening the inter-connectivity between worlds would further damage the already lacking social and political game.

Lastly, it is counter-intuitive. Imagine new player after new player starting in a Sim-galaxy that offers space and runs into these limitations. Docs would need to be updated and take great pains to explain such a limitation. Even then, it would make no sense, generating much confusion among players. Such a change would create many problems and attempt to solve an issue that doesn't need solving. Yes, some players achieve stuff. Get over it and play the game.

Psycho_Honey

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - 10:53 pm Click here to edit this post
Aww, you mad bro? I keep making all this sense lol. Tough pill I know.

Aries

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - 10:54 pm Click here to edit this post
Wow. How can I argue with that? You win. gosh gee.

Psycho_Honey

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - 10:55 pm Click here to edit this post
Like war levels, the initial implementation needed some tweaking and a refined product has emerged. Same thing with space. I know you can't agree, you need to protect your position. No worries though. I am certain you'll feel the same sooner or later. The shoe goes on the other foot from time to time.


Quote:

Imagine how someone can be so against raiding because of Helicopter Money in C3's yet be such a strong advocate of throwing real life months of military production into a war zone on an entirely different planet. One example actually happens in the real world, meaning money is printed out of thin air. The lightest of items aren't even transported to the moon regularly. Your line of reasoning escapes anyone with a brain. Nice try though?


Aries

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - 11:06 pm Click here to edit this post
It has nothing to do with protecting "my position". Removing the ability to create an interstellar empire removes a primary motivation in Simcountry. A motivation to be premium is to setup on multiple worlds and achieve this. The GM will not make a change to curtail a primary motivation to be premium and players with not put up with such a low ceiling on advancement just so some type of "balance" can be reached in your eyes. Never going to happen.

Psycho_Honey

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 12:03 am Click here to edit this post

Quote:

Removing the ability to create an interstellar empire removes a primary motivation in Simcountry.




That statement is a joke right? Poor question. It is. Can I lol now?

The primary motivation in SimCountry(Not AstroEmpires) is to build a country with an economy that can sustain a military.

Players struggle with building the right corps, and taking their first c3 and even believe it or not, pvp warfare on a single planet. Interstellar Empire?! *Spits Coffee* Monkeys and Chimps galaxy wide and even in alternative universes are jumping up and down and rattling their cages with laughter.

It is NOT the view of my eyes. It is more than my view. Nobody suggested taking the feature away. There was only a suggestion, to make some realistic or reasonable limit. Balance doesn't need to be reached in my eyes. This absurdity is obvious to more than just I. Whiteboy states the same. The original objector near the top of the thread also stated the issue with mega accounts from his perspective as well. As in the perspective of everyone you hope joins simcountry to grow this game.

You are very hypocritical in assuming you are the only one qualified to make observations leading to suggestions that actually make sense for this game. Every single one of your suggestion threads takes your view and your problems. All while disregarding all feedback that is a contrarian view of your opinions. There is no compromise, no reason-ability, no discussion. There is simply Aries. The way Aries sees it. The way Aries understands, or doesn't apparently. The sims revolve around Aries and his singular wisdom that only he can see and interpret.

Unless you are the GM in disguise, "Never going to happen." Is a strong statement to make. Even if you are just guessing. You aren't trying to tell us all something are you. Didn't think so. Pipe down and have a conversation. Quit 'yer condescending tone.

Aries

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 01:14 am Click here to edit this post
If you were right in identifying a problem where players lack the ability or desire to expand their accounts to multiple worlds, then you have identified a bigger problem the any type of balancing you are attempting. The goal of the GM is to make premium accounts attractive. Limiting game enjoyment to what a free account can very adequately fill would be counter-productive.

However, I think you are simply wrong on the facts. Most new players who stick around graduate to premium and empires on multiple worlds. Why don't you poll the players who have any interest in your "council" or whatever you are calling it on FB. I would bet most players who have been around for some months, have such an Interstellar empire. Graduating players to have interest in Interstellar empires and hopefully to some type of social game/politics are the keys to keeping such players.

Psycho_Honey

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 01:26 am Click here to edit this post
If you are going to continue flaming the topic, I am going to disregard you as a common troll. You are drowning out an otherwise productive conversation based on observations and practical suggestions.

No player here has suggested limiting game enjoyment of premium accounts to the level of a free account. Misrepresenting anything any player has said in this thread as such is irresponsible and plain silly. I won't stand for it.


Quote:

However, I think you are simply wrong




A wise man once told me, "Thinking comes from not knowing." He was right.

I think you are wrong
I would bet

Pure speculation. Less hysteria more logic.

Aries

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 01:52 am Click here to edit this post
Is that your way of not addressing my points? golly gee, you be so smart.

You clearly stated you believe players struggle with basic achievements. If that is so, wouldn't that be something to fix?

You also clearly stated a low bar of motivation, to have a single country that can support a military. If this was the case, something also to fix. We want people to succeed here and graduate to premium and multiple worlds.

It is clear to see what you said about these things and, if true, these would be real issues to address. No?

And, I completed a quick poll of your new council on FB. Of players around more than 5 months, 100% of them have Interstellar Empires. Maybe your points just aint so?

Psycho_Honey

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 02:18 am Click here to edit this post

Quote:

You clearly stated you believe players struggle with basic achievements. If that is so, wouldn't that be something to fix?




While true, as stated, that discussion deserves another thread and diminishes what should be being discussed here.

I.E. Topic: How can we improve players' understanding of basic functions and operations in Simcountry.


Quote:

You also clearly stated a low bar of motivation, to have a single country that can support a military. If this was the case, something also to fix. We want people to succeed here and graduate to premium and multiple worlds.




While true, as stated, that discussion deserves another thread and diminishes what should be being discussed here.

I.E. Topic: How can we improve....


Quote:

It is clear to see what you said about these things and, if true, these would be real issues to address. No?




While true, as stated, that discussion deserves another thread and diminishes what should be being discussed here.


I.E. Topic: How can we improve....


Quote:

And, I completed a quick poll of your new council on FB. Of players around more than 5 months, 100% of them have Interstellar Empires. Maybe your points just aint so?




Most players have countries, most are in shambles.
Most players have corps, most are not run optimally.
Most players have a military, most have no idea what to do with them and bankrupt their countries trying to figure it out.

So... maybe my points are so, and you're just being salty?

And stop with the interstellar talk. AstroEmpires is suffering the same issue Simcountry is. Dedicated player interest plagued by general inactivity... So please... You cannot realistically expect to revive one far more superior game with that of a failing alternative with the interstellar thingy as its core idea. Space trade and transport is good for sim, but like war levels, needs to evolve to more realistic. yet competitive state.

Not a single player in this thread has ever in any post advocated for the removal of the space aspect of the game.

Again, get out of your own narrow view and get into the frame of mind a new join or existing member dreaming of one day competing in the game thinks. Although it won't line up with your objectives, that is the player base sim needs to add. New Players.

How are you so against helicopter money in c3s yet so for the egregiously unrealistic transfer of tonnage via space in just real life minutes?

That's the real point at hand. Talk about it. And take your time with it Aries. Currently on display is the weakest you I never dreamed of. If you don't challenge me intellectually with real responses and leave yourself open to emotional outbursts, it isn't really a good look. They expect it of me, but you. You're Aries.

Aries

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 02:24 am Click here to edit this post
What the heck is helicopter money? Can you explain it to myself and the masses? Not sure I can be against it without a firm understanding of what it is that you are advocating. What exactly is it do you want that you describe as "helicopter money"?

Just to clarify, I mean in terms of how Simcountry works.

Psycho_Honey

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 02:32 am Click here to edit this post
marshalney joined the room.

aries: anyone here know what "helicopter money" is?

fattymcbutterpants: lmao

marshalney left the room.

fattymcbutterpants: It is the term used to describe Ben Bernanke's program of printing money in the united states.
fattymcbutterpants: Do you even economics?

aries: wendy is talking about it. i think she is talking about a return of "follow cimple guide for mega-bucks"?
aries: *simple
aries: well, i meant in terms of Simcountry

fattymcbutterpants: <--- Wendy bruh, and no its really the Fed's program. Yes it is a reference to your objection to raiding c3s for 5T

Aries

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 02:41 am Click here to edit this post
The GM moved to limit benefits from what the GM called, "fake wars". It has been that way for two years. Reasoning and discussions on this can be found at these places.

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/1/24185.html?1413592528

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/1/24292.html?1414263979

The GM was right and this will not be changed back. deal with it

marshal.ney

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 03:53 am Click here to edit this post
As I said much earlier, many of the suggestions you made are spot on. The trouble I have is that some of them have ' remove war protection" or "no war protection if they do x". I think that leads to a lof of sacrificial lambs being led to the slaughter.

The PvP Tutuorial is an excellent suggestion. I think I chimed in on that as well. A tutorial for all aspects of the game would be a nice change, leading the player through all apsects of game play, teaching them how to do things. The doc's are some intense and often frustrating reading. How many of us have read the entire thing one or more times? Much less have it memorized?

On the boosting idea: going to say 2 things, 1 of them tongue in cheeck. Yes, I think it should depend on who attacks whom. I think the reasons people are hiding at lower war levels is comprised of a number of factors. Knowing that they are open prey to a lot of big sharks is one.

Now for the tongue in cheek: It is a massively multiple player game. Those big guys should get into a fed to have the smaller guys protect them. Makes just about as much sense from an asthetic view point, doesn't it? Encourages just as much political and federation stuff. (take it as it's meant, light heartedly.)

War levels against sim countries are not a sufficient preparation to paricipte in pvp. The college etc are all excellent ideas, from the knowledge and skill viewpoint. It's not going to help with logistics or preparedenss. Again, not a big fan of endless c3 raiding. That doesn't teach anything either, and leads to a grind like in Evony or similar games. It's also not a true indicator of power level, like your power rankings are. And that's what PvP should be balanced around. One of the things that rankles some players (conjecture here) is that when the endless raiding hit the wall, there was no reduction of any kind on the side of the players who had already benefited from it. All players from that point on were put behind the curve. I argued for a devaluation of the currency, but to no avail. Again, going with a power ranking determination for PvP will help. It might not at the top end, though it would in time. If we want to see more PvP, we should want to see more of it at all levels.


Moving on to the space stuff. When the space program was introduced, I think it left a lot of things out of the equation that should have been factored in. The transferring of military goods is only one aspect of that. yes, there should be some kind of limit. Whether that is similar to the spending limits, or whether the time to move between worlds should be a lot longer as Wendy mentioned are both good starting points for a debate. Despite this being a space game now...it's not Star Trek. We have space shuttles on our Earth. They are a lot smaller. (lessening the amount per trip.) And interplanetary travel takes a lot longer. (increasing the time.) The tech may just be a discoonect. But I'm not seeing laser weapons, or planet buster weapons etc. The technology is most things seems to be about Earth current, maybe slightly ahead. Ye Gods and little fishes, we still have coal fired electrical plants.

There are other factors that should have been taken into account. There was a mention of extending the empire limits. With quick travel between the worlds, I'm wondering why Empires are limited to one world, and not across them. Most products can be shipped across. The same with contracts. Would be nice to set up space based contracts - especially for those products that can only be produced on a single world. It would also be nice to set up something similar to the counter attacks of stealth bombers and conventional missiles with shuttling of units or supplies in war time. In short, the space program should have been more though out, and have better integration into the entire game.

Going to say one more thing, and please don't take it as a sign of disrespect. Your comment about reading a guide, and using it to grind endlessly. You've done that also, a little bit. :p Your air war guide for c3 warring is great. But it's cookie cutter. There's not a lot of explanation of why you do a,b,c. Like the combat process in explaining why to attack defenses before the target.


And please all. There is no reason for any personal rancor to enter into the debate. Ideas are a free exchange, and should be hotly debated if needed. It detracts from the debate.

Cordially yours,
MNey

Psycho_Honey

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 04:55 am Click here to edit this post
Agreed Marshal.

Adding to the c3 thing...


Quote:

The GM was right and this will not be changed back. deal with it




I have not asked for it to be restored. However I did ask you


Quote:

How are you so against helicopter money in c3s yet so for the egregiously unrealistic transfer of tonnage via space in just real life minutes?



Aries' response did not address the question at all. Now further, I have not advocated for the ability to be removed.

Simply limited to some reasonable quantity for weapons and ammunition. Planet specific product transfers are an obvious need. The feature needs to be refined.

I yield to alternative views if anyone would add.

Aries

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 05:54 am Click here to edit this post
Weapon and ammo transfers are already slow to move through space. The current cap is that no more than some 200 shuttles can slowly move objects through space at one time. Based on the current market, any player who can grab the third prize rankings awards can afford such a fleet and match any player in interstellar transfer speed. In that way, the current game is very level on access to space.

As to how quickly 200 shuttles can actually move things, I posted some stats before on this. Yes, "mobile" units are much easier deploy-able through space.

---Takes 50 Shuttle Trips----
50 Mobile Air Defense Units
(20,000 Anti Aircraft Missile Batteries)
(600,000 Anti Aircraft Missiles)
------------------------------

----Takes 128 Shuttle Trips-------
20,000 Anti Aircraft Missile Batteries
600,000 Anti Aircraft Missiles
-----------------------------------

----Takes 50 Shuttle Trips----
50 Mobile Missile Defense Units
(4,000 Anti Aircraft Missile Batteries)
(6,000 Missile Interceptor Batteries)
(10,000 Defensive Missile Batteries)
(120,000 Anti Aircraft Missiles)
(180,000 Missile Interceptors)
(300,000 Defensive Missiles)
---------------------------------


-----Takes 128 Shuttle Trips--------
4,000 Anti Aircraft Missile Batteries
6,000 Missile Interceptor Batteries
10,000 Defensive Missile Batteries
120,000 Anti Aircraft Missiles
180,000 Missile Interceptors
300,000 Defensive Missiles
------------------------------------

----Takes 50 Shuttle Trips--------
50 Mobile Attack Wings
(12,000 Fighter Planes)
(900,000 Fighter Missiles)
----------------------------------

----Takes 408 Shuttle Trips-------
12,000 Fighter Planes
900,000 Fighter Missiles
----------------------------------

Is that a low bar can be met for any player to easily afford the necessary shuttles and considerable time/effort/expense is needed to move non-mobile units not enough?

Aries

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 06:12 am Click here to edit this post
Marshal: I have considerable PvP experience. Don't discount what "smaller" guys can do. Regardless of one's size, attacks and other strategic movement doesn't happen by itself. I rarely go to war without ready allies. I have been both the "smaller" guy and the one with more assets, and never have I felt that I could not contribute or that it would be wise to turn down anyone with skill, regardless of assets.

I am very proud of what new players can do who can take advantage of whatever guidance I can give them. Check out the post of "The Battle of Camp Foxtrot" that can be found here:

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/3711/25234.html?1447529218

Zentrino and Zen started the game and were newbs in August 2015. In November 2015, they went to war, with some assistance from me, against a player I would rank as the 3rd most powerful player at that time in the game. Zen and Zentrino had the active war decs against Blackeyes, I was not declared on and did not declare war myself. By Wendy's accounts of newer players, Zen and Zentrino should have been crushed under Blackeyes' boot. This did not happen and, believe me, Zentrino and Zen carried most of the load. Don't underestimate what newer players who gain the necessary skill can achieve.

As to the suggestions, you mentioned that war college would help with skill and knowledge but not help with "logistics" and "preparedness". If you mean assets, I do recommend in war college that rewards be granted for each level of completion. My recommendation is a total of $35 Trillion, with the idea that additional rewards are available in the next step, Battlegrounds. I don't see you comment on the level of awards I suggested that I indeed have right there in my suggestion write-ups.

On the c3 guide, I tried to keep it simple and many players have found it invaluable. It basically contains all the information I used to type of manually in chat off the top of my head to help new players. I choose to leave out "why" in the guide to let the new players learn a bit on their own. Ideally, they follow the guide closely and get some very successful raids under their belt and then they are free to experiment and, perhaps, learn more of the why on their own. Additional info in that write-up could have caused too much confusion and been more intimidating to a new player. That was my calculation.

Psycho_Honey

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 07:27 am Click here to edit this post
Okay clearly we are trolling now...


Quote:

By Wendy's accounts of newer players, Zen and Zentrino should have been crushed under Blackeyes' boot.




Umm what? Who said this? Try not to drown out conversation with baseless drivel. Let's try not to drown out the real problem here.

You again and constantly will champion any cause that strengthens your position, or your player class position. Your comments and hardline reasoning is hypocritical at best, engineered by design at worst. We are more than aware by now it is the latter. It doesn't matter how many times anyone says anything. Myself and anyone else saying anything but what you want to hear is going to pointed in the direction of the driest novels on the web. Aries "Guide to the Galaxy"

You continue attempting to drown out everyone and anyone with nonsense. You feel this... You think that... By xxxx's account... all nonsense.

What is so bad about limits on unrealistic space transfers? If new players should not be underestimated, why should you do so bad without this option? Not the ability, but the ability to do it limitless?

Why do you think players can only do well if they follow your guides? Is everyone too stupid to comprehend the game without your omniscient consent? If only you follow my guide to this... my guide to that. Granted, in the volume, Simcountry for dummies, your guides will serve an ignorant player-base well. But you even talk to Sam Houston and say, "Did you follow my guide to path of an economist?" If you did you would not be complaining about anything. In my head I'm like is this guy really serious? Sam Houston, needs a guide to making money in Simcountry. Wow. How dare he or anyone profit without it! The really saddening part is yes, by now it is clear you really are serious.

Why do you think you have the only omniscient view of Simcountry, it's problems in total? You already admitted you have tried everything in your power, including your ego-stroking guides that nobody can play without, to spark interest in the war game. Including your sponsoring of x.y, and z challenges. Those threads are about as dry as your inbox. Nobody has interest. You assume everyone is here for your entertainment, but you can't see that. You cannot deal with people in that way, it is a shame you don't instinctively understand that.

Every single response you have posted here in this thread to anyone has been if you read my "guide to the earth"... if you only read my "guide to the moon" and so on. Players have to read these guides as a requisite to think independently and come to rational conclusions? You need to think more. Really.

Perhaps you are the most recent smart-guy in the game. But your biggest deficiency is the adoption of a pansophical self view so severe that you cannot comprehend anything but yourself. Perhaps this is why with 'your suggestions' this game is in the diminished state it is in, presently. Despite your best efforts. Congrats. Give yourself a big pat on the back. Write another guide on "how to suggest a game into ruin."

Psycho_Honey

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 07:44 am Click here to edit this post
For the record. What Wendy actually said was limitless transfers of weapons and ammo via space is an unrealistic problem and advantage for already advantage laden mega accounts. Limits should be imposed to achieve a balance. This will allow newer players finding themselves growing on a planet to not be surprised by some player who can cart over 10 times the amount of military assets he currently possesses in just minutes. Just sayin.

It won't be a problem until 90 days from now I am snapping up players hugging Aries too tightly with this feature. Then, mysteriously, you all will come out in droves and scream abuse...

The feature needs to be tweaked. That is what I said.

Guides are good. Wendy has always been better.

Zentrino

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 08:44 am Click here to edit this post
I will say a couple of things about space movement of weapons.
First, it takes longer than a few minutes, even on the same world. When I was last attacked back in May, I mobilized my defensive weapons from the enterprise to the attacked country. It was about 300T worth of defense and I started it within an hour of the dec coming in. The mobilization of everything took about 4 real life days, longer than the waiting period for war to begin. I learned from that event that ammo takes a very long time to move, especially huge numbers. I no longer store ammo in the enterprise but in the countries themselves.

Second, I have an empire of FB and LU. My FB empire is one of war and I have a very large military presence. My LU empire is one of peace and has only minimal military assets. I mostly maintain an offensive army for C3 raiding on LU. I certainly don't think it would be fair to block my defense on FB from coming to LU if I were attacked. I also don't think I should be able to drop in 500T in defensive weapons at the drop of a hat. Of course, again moving all the ammo would take a very long time. My mobile units could be moved much more quickly and I have a large contingent of those. I am not sure if the current speed is right or not. I definitely don't think it should be limited by spending limits. That would be unworkable and would make it unusable. I could probably get behind the idea that only mobile units could be moved during wartime. It would change how I play on LU of course, but that's okay. The game changes and we adapt. I would not want that restriction during non-war times. I make purchases on LU when prices are low and would want to move those to FB if I felt the need. I see no reason to stop me from doing that normally.

Finally, I have commented before the war college idea and like it. Zen and I have considered doing something like this with our fed just to learn ourselves about different pvp tactics. I would like my fedmates to be know these things as well. I believe the game is enhanced when more people know about war and pvp wars.

Aries

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 08:56 am Click here to edit this post
Wendy: You were the one spitting up her coffee at the idea of a new player striving to achieve something in the game. You pictured them as struggling with econ, let alone being prepared to make interstellar empires and being prepared to fight a top player. I gave an example of two players that managed to survive and win a war a few months after starting their accounts. Yes, I think in the context of what you wrote earlier, you might have been in another state of shock.

Which of my suggestions strengthens my position and how does it do so? My suggestions are clear at the top of this thread and nothing you have typed would give me a hint that you ready any of them.

On space, you started with "Without imposing limits and being too intrusive, why not just limit space transfers to empire to empire on the same world?". Really? Without bring too intrusive? Now, you say tweaks. Well, how? I actually posted real data on the current limits of space transfers. I have actually tested them? Have you?

Beyond that, you go on to be pretty ridiculous. My guides are an option for any player and if they don't need them that is fine. In a situation where I am told something is difficult or impossible, of course I am going to mention if I have a relevant guide. Johanas saying that there is no free way to grow an empire is demonstrably false. You can approach it by saying the game has somehow wronged him and needs changes but I see others that are new players in this environment and they do just fine or even great.

Finally, who do you think you are appealing to? You have never been a team player that I know of. You pretend you have some type of support. You don't.

So far, I am not impressed by your return. Your council on FB seems to include one player other than yourself. You whine about a game change the GM made. You want to remove space because you are insecure in your skills. Finally, you try to attack the one player that most other players in the last two years would agree has worked to help them and improve the game.

Currently, you are on a path to whine, whine, and whine a little more and then flicker out of the game again. There is a real question whether you can hang around and compete in the current game. If you folly out, at least it will prove to some of the recent players that they have what it takes and these legends of Wendy stories are a real bore. Talk yourself up but lets soon see that if you are any more than talk and whine.

Psycho_Honey

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 08:59 am Click here to edit this post

Quote:

I am not impressed by your return.




mmmm so? Yu liek pie?

Aries

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 09:02 am Click here to edit this post
Zentrino: Careful about considering a limitation of moving weapons and ammo tied to "wartime". Remember that the attacker has the advantage of the where and whens and much of the conditions of the coming war. The attacker will certainly have their forces ready. A wartime limitation could seriously hinder the ability of a defender to defend them-self.

As you said, the picture Wendy paints of the speed of current space transfers as being piles of forces at a drop of the hat is simply false. It is difficult to be taken seriously from the get-go in that condition.

Thanks for your comments on the War College! I find many players support it, just not many are fans in posting to this forum.

Psycho_Honey

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 09:05 am Click here to edit this post

Quote:

I find many players support it, just not many are fans in posting to this forum.




Kind of odd being as though this would be the perfect place to support it. Where dey at doe?


Quote:

the picture Wendy paints of the speed of current space transfers as being piles of forces at a drop of the hat is simply false.




Lies... Okay I admit. It isn't a picture it is reality. And in this reality transfer occurs slightly longer than it takes to drop the hat. Satisfied?

Zentrino

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 06:46 pm Click here to edit this post
Maybe defensive weapons should move faster via shuttle than offensive weapons?
In full disclosure, I have far more defensive weapons than offensive so this helps me.

Psycho_Honey

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 06:50 pm Click here to edit this post
lol.

Aries

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 06:53 pm Click here to edit this post
You are in luck. It already works that way. Defensive items do move faster than offensive. I have posted actual data on this thread on this, twice.

Psycho_Honey

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 07:33 pm Click here to edit this post
The point is it all happens too fast. The military aspect really hampers interpersonal relationships. If one can simply transport the majority of their military assets to another planet so instantly, there is no need to engage in the politics of said world. Success on a single world is too easily transferable as it is. I can have another player set up a country or more and super-power military strength can be projected anywhere instantaneously. All without player 2 actually putting in time and work to earn that prestige on the world organically. A glaring example is given above. In other examples where friends sell each other countries to support their empires or federations in a time of war, it is true this is the way it happened in the past, but the assets did not just appear, they were cultivated and purchased, in-world. The mere possibility that so much can be transferred with such a degree of limitlessness is an imbalance itself the needs to be addressed. This is also the line of reasoning used when ending c3 raiding. The money should not appear so effortlessly. What else do we imagine the money from raiding was being spent on, trains? No it was weapons and ammo. In a sense we have traded apples for apples, better still oranges in the example cited.

Aries

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 08:25 pm Click here to edit this post
If you could simply move the majority of your military instantly/instantaneously (other any other word you want to use that seems you can move stuff at the drop of a hat), there would be a problem. However, it simply doesn't work that way. I just can't take you seriously while you seriously mischaracterize speed of space transfers. Why don't you try it and come back with some actual test data? I bet you don't because you aren't serious about this.

This has no relation to the "follow simple guide for megabux" that c3 raiding used to be. Moved assets are still earned by the player and are not gained by fake wars against the computer. This means that players actually did put "time and work" into earning their assets and, if you buy what Johanas is selling, it must have been pretty darn impressive that they did so.

Psycho_Honey

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 08:54 pm Click here to edit this post
It actually does work that way. Quit pretending to be the only who has done it. I moved over 200K interceptors and Helos with nearly 10M of each ammo very quickly. As in nearly instantaneously, not in the blink of an eye, but near to that. It's not that hard to do with a fleet of 400+ shuttles and something like 200 of them performing each operation.

Since you know so much, post your time frame for movement of that much hardware and ammo, and explain why it should be possible. I'll wait.

Aries

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 09:31 pm Click here to edit this post
Now, those are defensive weapons, so they move much faster than offensive, but I would still bet those 5600 shuttle trips would take around 14-16 hours or more. Similar offensive numbers would take double that. Assuming you have adequate shuttle maintenance, you will also use up the equivalent of 2-3 shuttles (more if not enough maintenance).

OMG real data below. (Cover your eyes)

200 is the total that can be moving things at one time. The cap for "each operation" is 20 shuttles. Each shuttle carries 250 helis, 250 ints, or 5000 missiles. 400k weapons would take 1600 shuttle trips and 20M ammo would take another 4000 trips.

So, the question is, what is your definition of "very quickly" and "blink of an eye"? 14-16 hours or more? That is 4 months of moving the defensive stuff you mentioned, let alone trying similar numbers of offensive weapons and ammo. Go ahead, test and come back with real data that shows it is possible to do it instantly.

Psycho_Honey

Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 10:45 pm Click here to edit this post
20 shuttles per action? This was in game news where since I left? When I played, I am sure you also noticed the trains of scores of shuttles moving to complete a task? I have never once experienced only 20 shuttle moving any large task. Perhaps there was a change announced while I was gone? Any citation for that bit of information?

Also, 5600 shuttle trips takes 16 hours, You Bet?

Why are you still guessing? Is there any documentation explaining this. Guessing has never been reliable. That is not real data. That's real assumption.

On the topic of assumption, I assume 20 shuttle trips for weapons of any kind per game month is reasonable yet still horrifically unrealistic. That is based on Real Data. You know the kind that shows what can and can't be lifted into space destined for the nearest object in the solar system. Nevermind interstellar travel.

If you are going to present 'data' you should not post what you bet, and what you think. We need clear facts here, not assumptions based on your best guess.

Aries

Friday, October 21, 2016 - 07:40 am Click here to edit this post
The Docs!

4. Max Number of Cargo Shuttles per Mission [ top ]

The maximum number of cargo shuttles that can be used in a single mission is 20. Multiple transports can be started at the same time. Cargo shuttles will be assigned more easily to execute these transports at the same time instead of waiting for one transport to end before starting the next one.

Anything else I can school you on? Maybe you should figure out how stuff works before you suggest to change it.. I have supplied sufficient facts for someone that hasn't supposed that things with space transport needs changed and made outlandish claims about how it works. Again, you just aren't serious when you don't even bother to check the Docs.

Further, what is unrealistic? Simcountry scale tends to be 10 times the real world, or more, especially when it comes to comparing military. Is it really necessary to point out all that is "unrealistic" in Simcountry? The important thing is that whatever system works for the game. Space transfers works fine and is far from "instant/drop at the hat". Test it yourself.

Psycho_Honey

Friday, October 21, 2016 - 08:05 am Click here to edit this post
This was never and I repeat never the case when I stopped playing. Stop pretending to not know this. At some point this may have been made the case, but it certainly wasn't when I shuttled those items in those quantities. I could visually count 50 or more by eye. So could anyone else looking at convoys moving in space at the time. If this was a game news update, I still see no date.

You couldn't school me on jack in this game. I know you enjoy petting n00bs who follow your guides, but I never had to glance at one to profit an SC$ ever. I made a name before you ever appeared and my name will outlast you and your guides for the weak minds of simcountry.

Simcountry Scale 'tends' to be 10 times the scale of the real world. Is this another attempt to make any sense whatsoever?

Shuttles from Nasa or any of the major space programs have shuttles that leave the planet what 10 times a year combined(Big Maybe) A YEAR! The amount of cargo compared to the shuttle size is what, without question below 1 ton. How many tons does a fighter or tank weigh? Imagine 100+ going into a single shuttle and moving to another star system in minutes... It doesn't matter if it were an hour. The amount of mass moved by a single shuttle some distance ungodly greater than 100 times that of the Earth to the moon is just.... No need to finish that. Were you making a point in mentioning 10 times greater thingy. Nah, did't think so.

I have tested moving many weapons and many millions of ammo in single commands at the same time for the same purpose. Here's a news flash, I bet if the GM's kept good logs they could verify I moved those figures and it happened nearly at the drop of a hat, and nowhere close to some magical 14 hours or 3-4 game months. Maybe now *if* that 20 shuttle thing is actually imposed but it certainly did not then, and even so is too exaggerated now.

The way you are acting so butthurt about it, I'd say you definitely feel a little pressure of that proposed change. It is, after-all a 'suggestion'. You're so touchy. Wait until they all see with their own eyes what a fraud you are. You are already half way there. Keep going.

Aries

Friday, October 21, 2016 - 09:01 am Click here to edit this post
That is right. At least 10 times. Much moreso with military. Glad I clear up where you are clearly confused.

Earth has a population 7.4 Billion
Simcountry has a population 336.5 BILLION citizens. An average of over 67 BILLION per world.

The US Air Force has about 5000 aircraft.
Top Simcountry players have an air force of 500,000 aircraft or more.

The Annual GDP of the United States is about $18.5 Trillion.
Top Simcountry Empires can top $200 Trillion.

It is impracticable to impose "realism" on one game system without considering the scale of the rest of the game.

No, shuttles don't make their rounds in "minutes". In Simcountry time, it takes days for a trip and months for an operation to finish.

As far as your "suggestion", you haven't moved beyond the craziest newb suggestion phase which would mean you demonstrate some basic knowledge of how the feature currently works. So far, your descriptions do not remind players with recent experience in using the feature of how it actually works. Why don't you test some stuff yourself if your little country can ever rub two cents together?

Psycho_Honey

Friday, October 21, 2016 - 09:27 am Click here to edit this post

Quote:

you haven't moved beyond the craziest newb suggestion phase which would mean you demonstrate some basic knowledge of how the feature currently works


~Who



Quote:

As a returning player I haven't found any new possibilities with the new changes Aries pushed for. In fact in the six years since I left the game has stagnated.




~An actual game legend...



Quote:

Sad that the days of great world wars are gone, the fact that federations are basically useless, and player interaction is so low.




~Same actual game legend...

My Sims have wiped their behinds with more SC$ than your entire career has generated about 10 times over. (understatement of the year too.)

I don't test things, I'm busy playing in my free time. Testing is for the devs, and people with nothing better to do. Kind of weird when what you find time to do when you are playing all by yourself.

There is something in that last line for you, perhaps you should wake up.

Psycho_Honey

Friday, October 21, 2016 - 09:31 am Click here to edit this post
*** Yawns *** Night Y'all


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