Updating Documentation vis a vis Game News

This is an ongoing issue I've had with SimCountry every time I've played. When game changes are implemented it really needs to be reflected in the Documentation.

I was about to report losing game levels as a problem.

From the Game Documentation:

6. Game levels change when a country is added to the empire

excerpt:

To prevent the sudden decline in the game level, we are now ignoring newly acquired or conquered countries in the first week after their inclusion in the empire. The game level is computed without taking the new countries into account and it will not decline after the war ended or after the country was acquired.

The delay will give everyone the opportunity to improve the new country and start bringing it up to the level of the other countries. One week later, the country will be part of the average and if nothing is done, the game level may drop. If the country was improved to the average or close to it, the game level will not drop or the effect may be reduced.


As we know, that is not the case. It begins making the game changes in the following parsing phase. Using the newly accquired country as part of the averages required for game levels.

Going through game news I found this: from 2013.

231. Game Levels [ top ]

It is now possible for countries at higher game levels to drop to lower game levels down to game level 1. previously the decline stopped at a higher level which was unfair to players in lower levels as the game level has a major influence on the score of countries and the potential awards they can win.

This is the only reference I've found to any change in the way the game levels have been computed.

So it is either a problem to be reported, or a game feature that never made it into documentation. Any advice on whether this should be reported or not as a problem is appreciated.

MNey

We have a backlog on the documentation and we intend to improve.
We had a round of improvements last year but more is needed.

keep shouting at us please.

Do you need any help in updating documentation?

We probably do.
What do you have in mind?

That's great. You tell me. I am willing to help out any way I can.

I am very knowledgeable of game updates found in game news and could find discrepancies with current docs quickly. I am willing to write a series of recommended changes to current docs for modest compensation to my paypal account. I have written for textbroker.com in the past and still have my 4 star author account with them.

Thank you Aries.
we are very interested.

We just need to discuss here the format of files we exchange.

We have a format that translates during "compilation" into HTML.

What do you think of it?
you cannot update pages live on the site so we need to agree on a format.

I am open. What are my options?

Game docs are currently organized under one or two headers. I plan to work within the current layout and update or add to the needed sections.

Would a simple text document work where I specify the location of the addition? Such as:

"War Documents

Building the Army

7. The economic effect of having a large army

(new text...)"

Could I simply email the gm email account with the subject "Documentation Update" and attach the text document?

Aries,

Lets try your suggestion first.
Yoy can mail the gamemaster a new text and we will add to the documentation.

As you have seen, the documents are kept structurally simple. We use when writing:

[text]
Paragraph


[text]
Paragraph

and very little html in between.
During compilation, it is translated into HTML.

If you want to use more HTML, or you want to integrate pictures, I will have to mail you more details.
Any pictures you may want to add must be added to our cloud setting at Amazon. We have a secured site and it causes some limitations as to where materials come from.

I hope this is clear, we can move this conversation to mail.

The weapons document is automatically generated. Changes there must be discussed ahead of time.

We are working on a generated version of a corporations document that will contain info on each product, taken from our internal game data structures.