W3C - Game News Jan. 30

Yes Pazuzu. I too have seen the quality drop in corps.

Be nice if we were told this might happen, or told why after the event. But no... no communication about it at all.

I still don't understand why leave 2001 weapon garrisons, and large air defense wings, while reducing the numbers of new units dramatically.

It is really off balance when you a 260 fighter MAX wing going against 3 air wings and possibly stealth units on top of that. Same with the new land unit numbers versus a 2001 weapon garrison.

Why not reduce the size of all existing units and return the excess to their stockpiles? This seems to be the most fair thing to do. Going against those odds are not very good and is certainly going to mean huge losses and a more expensive war.

I took a c3 today and I had 260 fighter wings at about 230+ quality attacking the c3 air defense and I was losing anywhere from 40-70 fighters each attack. And that is with only a single wing response, and no stealth units. You guys should probably eliminate this imbalance.

Ok. Just thought i was seeing things.

SweetPea,

I agree. The drop in size of units in the past months was in total quite serious and may create an imbalance (although C3 countries are updated immediately).

I will check if we can start patching existing units, in small steps to the new size, returning weapons and ammo to base if the units use smaller numbers.

The changes should be small to prevent major shifts.

There was a tiny update of the production process in corporations. It caused a small drop in quality of the output probably less than 0.5 point.

There were many, repeated drops in the fixed cost in corporations and in the maintenance cost of corporations in the past months.

nobody mentioned it.

The profitability of corporations in the game model is one of the main parameters that is carefully watched.

Several trends in the game engine have brought the quality of output products closer to the optimal quality of raw materials that makes sense for corporations to purchase.

A year ago, the best Q for raw materials in corporations was 150-170.
Now it is 170-195.

Thanks Andy. I'm actually surprised I won't have to go down the road kicking and screaming lol.

To be honest I'm surprised Pazuzu mentioned the Q drop. I notice most of these changes, but dont post about them because I have learned that no one else seems to see them or at least no one else replies.

May I request that when the size of old existing units is reduced, any weapons returned to bases be returned in the inactive status. Imagine 100 def int wings, and say 50 are removed from each, thats 5000 ints just appearing as active in your stocks, taking a while to deactivate or transfer or sell. You know it will create large surpluses in the weapons market again, even though I am sure you will do it in small increments.

And when the gms see the extra weapons/ammo in our countries, they will take them away because they wonder where all that stuff came from.

my question exactly keto +1

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There was a tiny update of the production process in corporations. It caused a small drop in quality of the output probably less than 0.5 point.
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Probably more like 5% in reality. Quite a large amount in corp income for me at 85% profit transfer. Maybe 10% drop in income, around there.

yep, I think you may be right crafty. I observed around a 20 point drop in output quality across public, state and enterprise corps in the same game month - roughly 5-10%
Some of that may have been exaggerated because I've been using CM orientated ASQ lately, so I have set up a few "test corps" to determine how much higher supply quality needs to be to get the same output as pre-update.

My guess is add 10-15 points to ASQ. I hope I'm wrong!

I've added 10, see where it goes from there.

I added 17 points estimate.

Argh, its 309.6 quality output. There was no need to add anymore quality ASQ.

@pazuzu, then you had your supply quality set too high to start with
8-P

Keto,

If you have any problem with very large numbers of ammunition that have disappeared, please mail the gamemaster.

We did not wonder even one second about where the ammo came from.

The tuning of quality caused it to go down by 0.2 points per 100 points of quality (max. 0.5 points), twice in the past two weeks.

If your quality dropped more, check the fluctuations in the average quality of your raw materials.

Ok. I know small numbers shouldnt affect anything, its not quite big deal. I have adjusted the ASQ down again, i hope it wont hurt the p/e, it should only hurt the cost.

Thanks for the reply.

@Andy, it seems we are talking about 2 differant game changes. Max quality output of corps has indeed reduced by around 0.5points recently as you say. The required ASQ to get there seems to have increased.

For example, I used to use supply quality of 180ish to get a max quality of 275.6. Prelim tests have shown I now need to use ASQ of 195ish to get a Max output of 275.2.

Are you saying this increased requirement is unintentional? Or that it happened in an earlier update and I didn't notice?

oh, and it seems both changes of max output reducing by 0.2 occured in the same game month - for me at least.

Arccuk,

A good short question. You got yourself the long answer.

The changes in the corporation model have various results.
In general, the main goal we want to achieve here is that raw materials requirements will come closer to the output quality of corporations so that trading will become easier with no need for compromises.

As the difference becomes smaller, the compromise made at time of sale is also smaller and you end up getting the same amount for your output.

Not 100% the same. It can increase a bit or decline but not much.

At the same time, the cost of the corporation, both in terms of raw materials (quantities declined a bit) and maintenance cost + fixed cost, all declined.

The profit of the corporations should remain at the same level or increase (if the corporation is unchanged).

When you look at the country income and cost, the ratio of taxes to corporate earnings shows (long term) an increase in income from corporations and a small decline in income from taxes. The cost of the country keeps declining.

This process is in fact going on for a long time, reducing numbers as we announced many times in the past year or longer while stabilizing country income.

The changes in the model are close to the target. We are not there yet but most of the shifting has already taken place, country and corporate turnover are lower, the exchange rate too and it is now easier than before to keep your country profitable.

we intend to make the profitability of countries even easier. The harder part is to make countries extremely profitable. This might be harder than before and of course, the amounts involved are smaller.

another target was to make war cheaper and that too has come a long way but not done yet.

Thanks Andy, I understand fully the reason for the changes and the goals you have set. I fully agree that eliminating any adjustment to pricing at the POS is desirable and will eventually make trades more predictable.

From that point of view it makes perfect sense to increase the required supply quality by around 10 points at this time. It also may make sense to increase it more in the future, after supply quantity drops a few more times. I only post these items to inform and discuss changes, not to confuse or complain. (usually!)

Although there seem to be a period of adjustment for the markets to settle, it also appears that corp profitability has not changed much in the last few updates, although the set-up to achieve the same level of profitability may have done.

I do have a suggestion that relates to several of your targets so post it here:-

With weapon and ammo max upgrade quality now topping 600, is it feasible to allow these corps to produce a greater range of quality output, dependent on supply quality/corp type?

The side effect of this move should be that higher quality supplies would be demanded by the market and adjustments to pricing at POS would reduce as a result.(assuming that high quality weapons/ammo will still be in demand)
Another effect would be that higher quality weapons would be easier to attain with less upgrades required. Both of these effects should decrease the cost of war vs c3's.

Maybe I didnt understand the 0.2 points per 100 of quality. To me, that means 0.2%. If I produce say 250, then I should have seen a 0.5% drop in quality. No, I saw at least a 10% drop in output quality, 20 times what you say Andy. You are welcome to go back through the history and see for yourself. The graphs have overrun that time periodd now so I cant personally show you.

An increase in input Q has fixed this, and I only post to make you aware that what you think will happen, or what you think has happened, is, infact, quite far from what did happen.

Andy seems to have been referring to the max output of corps decreasing by 0.4 points rather than the total drop in quality output that we have experienced due to the increased supply quality requirement that was being discussed ;)

Damn, I promised myself not to bang my head on this wall again!

If there was a 10% drop in output quality in tandem with a change to bring REAL sale price to match the formula (Quality * Market Price), the drop in revenue shouldn't be more than 2-3% given previous observations.