Feedback on changes to war engine.

I went to WL13 last weekend. I noticed the mobile conventional units were a real bitch when targets were in range of them. Air defense went normally and as expected, I didn't kill the shells of the mobiles and they raised the cost of two levels to ~80K mrmb and ~35k OAAB. I went up 2 levels and made 215 gold. All in all worth the cost.

I did notice the changes to creating a unit. I prefer a single weapon divison or wing and being penalized by not being able to fill a unit seems silly.

Anyway I plan on pushing to WL 21 to beat John Galt and will post any other observations.

Thanks Andy.

When building military units, automatic orders were issued to purchase everything you need.

In some cases, when numbers were large, it caused very large orders to be issued and resulted in very large scale spending.

Some time ago, we were accused of stealing money from an account because the player did not have a clue about the large orders he issued to purchase all that was needed for many units he was setting up.

Even when we explained to him what he did to himself, accusations from this player, and some others, continued.

We concluded that these automatic orders are potentially disruptive and are now requiring the player to make sure all needed materials are ordered and received ahead of time.

In this new situation, everyone is aware of what they are ordering.

Hi Andy.

What I was refering to was for example I create a long range division of offensive anti air. The maximum weapons that can be placed in a LRD is 1,380. The maximum in an attack is 1,000 The current setup only allows 938 batteries per divison.

This creates a situtation where it requires dismantling and reforming the divisions multiple times for each war.

Just an observation.

You mean that you want to have a long range division with only one type of weapon.

You can have multiple types of weapons in the division with a max of 1380 and use up to 1000 in an attack.

we think that 938 of one type is in fact too many.
a division is a unit existing of many types of weapons, defensive ones too.

If we start assuming that only one type of weapon is used, we probably need to multiply the power of the defense 4 fold.
If we do, all divisions will have to be formed out of a single weapon or they will be destroyed quickly by the defense.

having only one type makes the division into a force that is too large and devastating. it forces us to increase the power of the defense to be able to defend against such a unit.

Understood. Not a complaint, just an observation on how the engine is working. I don't need defensive weapons for C3 war.

C3 wars at higher war levels:

you need defensive weapons. C3 countries use automatic counter attacks.

Greetings I plan moving up on war lv Currently in War Lv 6, After my last C3 War I discovered that most of the C3 Equipment disappeared after the War tho I carefully didn't destroy any military Base, this wasn't not so after my first war. In Real Life when you Conquer a Country you get to Seize or gain access to all military equipment in the country, Or is there something I'm not doing right..

thanks..

When you win a C3 war you receive an award in gold coins and there is cash in the country, corporations etc.

The weapons that are placed in the country, depending on the C3 war level, come from nowhere.
letting the winner get them adds weapons to the game that were never produced properly.

They came out of nowhere and they go back there.

The problem with having mixed units Andy is that most of the weapons are useless. You are forcing people to put useless weapons in their divisions. I really think a complete redo of the war engine is required for it to make sense. I've posted many times about ideas like ending the duplicate offensive and defensive weapon systems and just having them as a single weapon that can do both. That alone would go a long way to having mixed units be viable.

Other suggestions: ammo and maintenance cost should be extremely cheap. Weapon cost should be much much higher than it is now. Unit sizes need to be many times larger also in order to reduce the micromanagement of war. By increasing unit size we will have fewer units, and by increasing weapon cost we will have fewer weapons, and by decreasing ammo and maintenance cost it will be affordable for nations to maintain standing armies. When standing armies are possible, you can add all sorts of other thin

I like this game but the war engine has always been the weakest link in this game.

In the past you needed to click HUNDREDS of times to take over a small country let alone fight at a slightly higher war lvl or pvp. Thousands of clicks was nothing!. This was not a good game play experience. It used to be so bad that I had to use a freaking auto clicker.

Nowadays you need to mix in lots of filler crap with each division you make. Why?!? My divisions are now weaker and i need do do even more clicking. Do you get paid to give people RSI?!

If you are going to force me to fill my divisions with crap at least increase the size of each division by a lot. Like 10x in ordor to reduce the fricking clicks per second.

I still like the game (I came back after all) but it is sad to see a bad thing made even worse.

very much agree with John's post, that is a minimal requirement.

The single weapon type idea is a good one Andy.

Having units with only one type of weapon is based on the assumption that while using the unit, you will never have a counter attack on that same unit.
so why would you need any defensive weapons if you are never attacked.

And then, most wars are C3 wars and counter attacks are at a higher level and you know where these are directed at.

Maybe this is where the problem is.

If your attacking unit will be counter attacked efficiently and will be destroyed if not protected, the mix of weapons will make more sense.

I agree on one major issue.

The war engine should be less predictable.
An attacking force should not be safe of anything and the defense should be much more unpredictable and more efficient in really countering attacks. we need to add many random functions to make all attacks and counter attacks different.

The talk here was, for a long time, about not being able to wage war because the war

Andy, if weapons are so cheap who cares what you lose, if they would be 100x more expensive i would care, only then mixing would make sense.

solution is so simple, weapons need to be expensive, ammunition and maintenance very cheap.

just remember how people in the past were using navy fleets, never alone, always with batteries to protect.

it does not matter size of units if you balance the price and weapons power.

I agree.

in recent changes, we have reduced the cost of the defense, both weapons and ammo
and also offensive ammo, much less offensive weapons.

Nuke became much more expensive.

The idea of changes to the war engine I fully agree with.

It will require a lot more testing from John and I which is always fun.

Good work.

Andy allowing FB to become a war world was 100% the right decision and I thank you for doing that. Now that war is allowed on FB and many of us have engaged in PVP wars already, some of the other issues of the war engine have become much more apparent. The war engine is brilliant. The way units are deployed and moved around on the map is really cool. I'm not asking for that to be changed. I am just talking about the content of the war engine. You have been applying bandaid fixes for so long that the entire content of the war engine is broken and unbalanced. You need to hit the reset button and start from the beginning. The best place to start in my opinion is to merge offensive and defensive weapons. There should not be offensive anti aircraft batteries and defensive anti aircraft batteries. Just make them one weapon. Other examples: interceptors and fighter planes, attack helicopters and defence helicopters, etc... Merge these weapons for the love of g

The idea of merging the weapon systems is quite old and repeated many times.

The problem with it, as has always been the case, is that it will increase the cost of the defense.

Someone who is just interested in defending a country, will have to purchase weapons that are much more expensive.

defending should cost a fraction of the cost of offensive weapons.

The only way to do that is to have defensive weapons and ammo.

I think that some players are not so interested in defense as they hardly face any attacks. merging the weapons will make any defense they are faced with, much more expensive.

I think we need to keep reducing the cost of the defense.
We have probably done most of it, but just a little more is needed.

I see another problem.

many wars are fought mainly by the air force.
Destroying this and that from the air. The discussion is about which ones first and how to reduce

In other games on the interwebs there is this thing called defense % modifier. If you build x buildings/tech/ruller type etc your army becomes a little bit cheaper to maintain and your defense gets a little boost.

It would not be that difficult to imagine that having multiple military bases, forts and garrisons gives a defending player a bonus/boost during a war. Maybe a defending player even gets a boost based on pop size, there are a LOT of very easy ways to give a defending player a realistic and workable boost without the current system of having to maintain 2 completely different armies.

Will this increase the costs? No not at all. It would even reduce the cost significantly!

Right now if I want to go to war vs a player I need 2 armies. One to slow the other player down (the defensive units) and 1 to beat him (the offensive units).

No player that wants to win has only defensive troops. That is just

Andy the solution is extremely simple. Making units that are being attacked have a defensive bonus. So if your fighter plane attacks my fighter plane, mine will be a certain percentage stronger than yours. Therefore I would need fewer fighter planes to defend. Problem solved. Much simpler than the current system.

Yes yes YES!

Sometimes life is really that simple...

I usually stay out of any conversation about wars but if I could add these thoughts about merging.

What could be cheaper than using the army that just conquered a country to defend it.
Someone that is interested only in defending only needs to stay below WL3, or move off of FB.
Players will find the simplest solution to victory. Instead of forcing them to use weapons they don't need maybe those weapons should be done away with.
This has been discussed many times, so maybe it's something that players really want.

Yes yes YES!

Another smart John!!