kbommer

That's what everyone is already doing - alliances require raiding until you can go to c20, and alliance helps with grants/loans. As far as I can agree that it may hurt player retention, it's worth keeping in mind that PnW is not Call of Duty, it's not flashy shooter, one would impartially call it boring, so if someone doesn't enjoy going through raiding phase, which is probably the most involving mechanic that new player can understand then it's likely not type of game that person would play in long term either way. But test server doesn't really allow to test such change, almost all nations sit at c10 and are either 0'ed or still have max units, almost nothing in between. It only changes raiding on test server in current shape.

Yeah, I agree. IMHO if it costed 1 credit it could be completely fine to start city timer at c15, maybe even c10, but if it's 3 credits it shouldn't apply nowhere near c20. It would be nicer if it went sth like this: 1-15 cities: no timer 16-20 cities: 5 days/1 credit 21-25 cities: 10 days/2 credits 26+ cities: 15 days/3 credits Already new nations rely in huge part on passive income: first 60 days it's 4 mln/day from daily login + 1 mln/day from AC. On the other hand raiding revenues were cut by ~40% for most people, and everyone can see that raiding activity decreased significantly, I literally remember all nations who used to beige sniping pre-GW28 after inactive purge, and now there's literally only 2 other players than me, and I don't even beige snipe this much now because real life became busier. New project was supposed to improve situation (Advanced Pirate Economy), but it costs >200 mln and offers +5% loot from GA, +10% beige loot and 7th offensive slot. Additional offensive slot is some +2 mln/day (it's already almost never possible to keep 6 good targets, and it's impossible to keep cycling 6 good targets at all times; additional slot only gives some weak 5-7 mln worth target), +5% GA loot for c3 with no tanks is up to 400k/day and up to ~1 mln/day with tanks, but most likely it's somewhere between 50-75% of these value (200-750k/day) and +10% loot from beige is some additional 1-2 mln/day based on how good targets are. This adds to up to additional ~3-4,5 mln/day depending on how good targets are used, so it's 45-70 days ROI, and since you need 100 wars finished it takes minimum 40-45 days if you raid anything with 0 MAPs lost, which leads to low avg daily earnings which is worse compared to raiding with beige sniping which would require 50-55 days. Since most players raid either ~1-1,5 billions and quit raiding and some raid until 3-4,5 billions, it means you would have troubles to manage to break even on APE before quitting raiding.

Imho new UI is better once you get used to it, but I'm new player so I'm not super used to previous UI and that was quick for me to adjust to new one

You miss the point. Slot filling as a rule was made in order to prevent using friends to fill your defensive slots so noone can attack you. Making the changes suggested here gives us new threat, declaring on anyone - said nation that would be declared doesn't have to be friend and cooperate with you in any way, they just have to be uncapable of causing same damage that alliance you're at war with would otherwise, and even more, it's enough if they're just inactive, that way not only you may literally fight them and win so any slot filling/no intention to fight doesn't apply to you, you still get far more beige than reasonable and what suggested changes intend to do, because this way you can change 7,5 days of beige into 12,5 days of beige (-1 turn change). Said change would bring new threats of unfair behavior that couldn't even be punished with current rules and it's hard to make rule that would punish such behavior without collateral damage to people who actually played fair.

How wouldn't longer beige times have no influence on how long good targets are unavailable? If now I can have 25% reasonable targets and 75% of ones that don't give much but are better than nothing I can keep my daily earnings higher compared to having 15-20% reasonable targets and 80-85% of targets that barely give anything. It wouldn't be even 7,5 days of beige for them because almost always at least 1 raider takes longer to finish his raid so these targets would spend far longer in beige compared to now. It doesn't change much that few nations can keep single nations pinned down currently since it would be the case only for nations that aren't part of alliance, and in current state of game they're generally irrelevant and suggested beige changes wouldn't make it any different, and in alliance wars when single side has significant advantage - and that not only wouldn't be fixed by these changes since stronger side will still be stronger, but it would also de facto lead to only having wars that are one sided since blitz wouldn't give any advantage to weaker side so wars would happen only if their result would be decided before war even begins. On top of that if beige timer doesn't count untill last war doesn't end it means that someone may abuse that and in cooperation with other nation make his beige last almost 14 days instead of 7,5 days: 3x 2,5 days from lost def, but soon before loosing he declares on a friend who makes single winning attack on him and keeps his beige timer locked for 5 days until war expires and 1,5 days from loosing offensive wars, that's 7,5+5+1,5 days - 1TC which results in 2 weeks of beige if someone wants to skip huge part of global war to save his infra. And it's not matter of if but of how much would it be abused, especially since such person may declare on someone who actually can't beat him but isn't in any way related to them and that wouldn't even be against the rules!

There's so many problems with that, not only taking away point of tactics in wars so alliances don't fight at all and resource accumulation goes through the roof, allowing to keep any nation permamently in war and stack their beige timer infinitely if there's enough coordinated attacks, but it's also another thing that would make raiders' life miserable - earnings are already 3x lower than they used to be for new nations, how far can it be taken before people don't even try to raid their way to c20 and just quit?