W3C - Products

We have recently added some products but also removed 3 weapons and one type of ammunition.

We expect some more new products and some variations on current products that will be produced on Tiny Atlas,
We may also decide to remove some we have and find out if more reductions are possible.

The aim is to increase the veriaty and introduce high potential industries without a substantial increase in the total number of products.

we will look at the possibility to make an offensive weapon also function as a defensive one and then remove one of the two.

Example: anti aircraft missiles could function as defensive and offensive.
Currently we have two different ones.

I like the idea of certain weapons/ammos being consolidated!

Reduce clutter and make production cycles easier

.

On the one hand: streamlining military products would reduce complexity and possibly make the economics game a little easier for newer players to understand.
Might also reduce update downtime and make formatting better due to smaller menus.

On the other hand: You've made it very clear that offensive weapons are intended to be more expensive to build, operate, and maintain than defensive weapons.
That may be harder to do if one weapon system is taking up both roles unless you're giving a "defensive bonus" to the defending side in combat rolls.

I'd suggest starting with the Navy units, simply because there are fewer of them.
Therefore it might be easier to do the initial streamlining and testing to make sure that defense and offense work the way you intend.
Once you have the navy working like you want, then expand to air and ground forces.

You are right.

when we combine the defensive and offensive capabilities of a weapon, the price must be adjusted, and/or the defensive function could be improved so that the numbers needed will become smaller.

There are several ways to compensate.

We will test a possible combined weapon ahead of time, to see the price/performance, then introduce one such weapon.
No large scale changes.

Combining weapon functionalities was requested by players for a long time.
we had many issues with it, including the ones you mention.

but the complexity, and new weapons we now introduced, convinced us to
try and decrease the total number of weapon systems.

I can see the combination being only some weapons, like: tanks, destroyers, Artillery, etc... But keeping certain weapons special to each, making unit composition more important.

Destroyers are often used offensively more to defend the capital ships than to attack the actual target, tanks / artillery often go both ways depending on how the fighting happens, anti aircraft batteries are used in offense as a defense to the primary attacking units not an actual attack.

We do not plan to involve all weapons in this consolidation.

Many will remain as they are.

shortening the list by a bit will already make a difference.

I like this idea personally.
It makes a lot of sense, would simplify the current structure, and make planning easier.

From what I can see the only weapons that could be "merged" with limited issues are the following weapons and ammos:

Offensive and Defensive Anti Air
Heavy and Light Tanks
Heavy and Light Artillery
Attack Destroyers and Destroyers

Doing just those would greatly the number of needed corps

I believe that if Andy can resolve the issues with Off. and Def. AA to the satisfaction of himself and the playerbase, he can also in time resolve any issues with eventually combine most of them.

Navy Fighters and Navy Interceptors
Offensive and Defensive Bases
Offensive and Defensive Airports
Long Range and Radar Planes
Heavy and Armored Vehicles
Attack Heli, Navy Heli, and Helicopters could be a three-fer
Fighters and Interceptors

And there might be others.

I think combining weapons makes sense. John Galt proposed this some years ago. Simplification is often great, and I think it'd be great here.

I would think though that combining weapons and making space fighters impacts few players. I'm not sure what percentage of the player base engages in war or prepares for it regularly, but it has to be quite small outside of the 5-10 established players on FB. Ever since war levels came in the war game in general has faded. Players have a choice to avoid it entirely and most do. I'd like to see changes to the war game in general (different outcomes besides just conquest, for example), to encourage more interest in the concept.

I'd also really like to see improvements to common markets and federations. Having player interaction again would feel great, and changes to those systems would impact more players. Hopefully we can hear some ideas about that soon as well. War has been my

Space weapons are a completely different issue.
these will, if implemented, not be usable on the worlds but rather in space.

Proposals for consolidation are as old as the game.
we have always explained the disadvantages and the cost issue was mentioned here recently.

a partial consolidation is OK with us.
this is a U turn resulting from other possible features that might complicate things if we leave all these many many types of missiles, defensive and offensive, in place as it is now.

Hi Andy!

Yes, the requests to consolidate weapon systems has been around since forever.

Yes, there may disadvantages to doing so with regards to cost.

However, I'm not certain that those top-level cost issues can't be dealt with by a tweak to the combat calculations.
Significant testing and statistical analysis would need to be done to see if modifying the combat code could create the combat scaling that you're looking for.
If it can be done, that combat engine change would need to be plainly documented so that the player base understands and is aware of it.
Start with a bare handful of systems as an experiment.

If those initial weapon systems can be successfully consolidated, I think there would be benefits to both war engine and the economic engine.
First, you'd have the flexibility to add additional units into the game.
Second, it would allow new players to more easily grasp the

Good thoughts. good ideas.
we have already suggested that changing the probability of defense weapons hitting their targets could compensate for a change in the cost.

doubling the probability they hit a target and the price could probably double too.

We have counted more than 100 places in the code that will have to be updated.
so don't hold your breath.
we will investigate it for a little while before we start tweaking.

will also keep everybody informed.