Jump to content

Nuclear Power Plant Meltdowns


Alex
 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Administrators

This is a suggestion that has been floated previously, but I think that given the late-stage of the game it would really add something.

In a nutshell, my proposal is that every turn, there is some (very small) chance that any given Nuclear Power Plant will experience an accident, causing a meltdown and resulting in the uninhabitability of the city. (I.E. The city is destroyed/removed.)

Right now there are 0 mechanics that can reduce someone's city count. Because there is effectively no cap on nation growth, some players are just really far ahead of others and will always be farther ahead. Adding a meltdown mechanic will add a small limiting factor and at the least reduce the growth rate of very high-city nations.

Yes, I know, you could just not use Nuclear Power Plants, and I would expect that some players would switch to Wind Power. Which, in my opinion is fine, as that does take up a lot more improvement slots and ultimately still accomplishes the same goal of reducing the growth rate of players at the high end.

Here are some numbers I've calculated using a 0.0004% chance of a meltdown happening per Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) per turn.

image.png

For smaller nations, the likelihood of experiencing a meltdown is lower because smaller nations either have no or significantly less NPPs. It's also important to recognize that the cost of rebuilding, say, City #10 is significantly less than rebuilding City #40.

It would be a relatively insignificant change for most players, but it would up-the-ante so to speak for using Nuclear Power Plants, and IMO it's a fun mechanic - it allows a player's risk-tolerance to enter into their decision making when deciding how to build their cities.

This change would of course be thoroughly tested on the Test Server for bugs, and probably wouldn't be implemented until late January at the very earliest. So, in the mean-time, I'm throwing it up here to get some feedback. The numbers could be tweaked, of course, but I think that this is a reasonable balance. Let me know what you think.

  • Like 1
  • Upvote 4
  • Downvote 28

Is there a bug? Report It | Not understanding game mechanics? Ask About It | Got a good idea? Suggest It

Forums Rules | Game Link

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Alex said:

This is a suggestion that has been floated previously, but I think that given the late-stage of the game it would really add something.

In a nutshell, my proposal is that every turn, there is some (very small) chance that any given Nuclear Power Plant will experience an accident, causing a meltdown and resulting in the uninhabitability of the city. (I.E. The city is destroyed/removed.)

Right now there are 0 mechanics that can reduce someone's city count. Because there is effectively no cap on nation growth, some players are just really far ahead of others and will always be farther ahead. Adding a meltdown mechanic will add a small limiting factor and at the least reduce the growth rate of very high-city nations.

Yes, I know, you could just not use Nuclear Power Plants, and I would expect that some players would switch to Wind Power. Which, in my opinion is fine, as that does take up a lot more improvement slots and ultimately still accomplishes the same goal of reducing the growth rate of players at the high end.

2

Good in premise, but this should be accompanied by a whole slew of possible nation events that have both negative and positive effects.  WE SHOULD NOT MAKE THE ONLY NATION EVENT IN THE GAME A MAJOR NEGATIVE.  This should be a launching of an expanded list of nation events, how about using some that are included in the Nation Events Thread?  Again, this a good first step but it needs to be one nation event within many.  

 

Another note: this could create a project called: Universal Education that brings up the education levels of your country and thus lowers the chances of meltdown(oh boy, I just thought of a really cool mechanic...  This needs expanding).

1 hour ago, Ripper said:

As a theme/mechanic per se, it would be useless but also a little fun. Having things like natural disasters (and player vs game mechanics) is an idea that could spice things up.

 

What he said is basically what I said, I was just later...

Edited by Balish
  • Upvote 1

Listen to J Kell's new single: 

 

About The Author

 An early member of Roz Wei in 2015, J Kell went on to stay within the paperless world of Empyrea before signing with Soup Kitchen while scoring a record deal in 2019. J Kell went on to release multiple Orbis Top 40 hits. In 2020, J Kell took a break from Orbis. He's back.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would prefer it to be something controlled by player actions and not a random event, for example if a city with nuclear power is under 100 infra has a small chance to have a nuclear meltdown for every enemy attack

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The goal is to inconvenience and slow down whale growth. The effect is that you slow down everyone below whale tier who doesn't build whale levels of infra. A 30 city nation with 3.5k per city and a 16 with 2.5-3.2, something i saw recently, will both have less problems just straight up avoiding this at the cost of a minor annoyance, than myself at 19, who stays at 2k. 

Because when i get a new manu project and do two manu resources again, i just do not have slots for anything else. Which means id have to scale back to one manu to get coal/oil plants, and also buy coal/oil to fuel them, a hit fare more noticeable to me than the other two nations i described, on whom the impact would be much less severe. They don't have to cut half their economy off, then buy the thousands of raws to keep their power on with half the economy they previously had.

But i would. It would slow me down, by no ones definitions a whale or a pixel hugger, but will it ever so mildly inconvenience people who are whales and pixel huggers. 

The issue with your solutions to these problems is they frequently do more to impede the people who aren't part of the problem, than they do the people who are part of the problem. It's like trying to reduce wealth disparity in America by introducing a new flat income tax on every citizen. That is precisely what would not happen.

  • Like 1
  • Downvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like the idea of the nuclear meltdown destroying all infra and improvements and perhaps disabling the city from being interacted with for (x) amount of days. I don't think it should completely destroy cities for reasons mentioned above but, I also wanted to add that the population boost on old cities is really valuable so even if, say, you could just instantly rebuild the nuked city, the population boost would be something you could never get back. Ultimately, I don't think it's necessary to pseudo-nerf one mechanic (Age = more population) as an exchange for this mechanic to be implemented. Rather see them coexist instead of one hindering the other.

Edited by Parachotic
I have no idea what I'm doing but that doesn't stop me from doing it.

pfp_maybe_1_15.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Alex said:

 

 it's a fun mechanic

Deja Vu! I've just been in this place before.

On top of what Akuryo said, RNG mechanics like these don't really add any fun into the game. All they create is a pick your poison scenario, where you either: A) Run nuclear and accept that you'll get fricked by a meltdown sooner or later because 'lulz'. B} Run coal/oil power and get fricked by pollution. C) Run wind and effectively have only 800 usable infra per 1k you build (in fact, less if you consider minimum military requirements and the likes).

The notion that this would somehow affect whales (the ones at 3k) the most, is a fallacy, because at that high infra levels they end up having production slots to spare if they're running commerce oriented builds (the only reason you'd build that high to begin with, other than to run farms or get infra for projects), since they can't fill those out with industry because the pollution would kill their monetary income. As such, this update would end up jeopardizing the 2k< infra people the most simply because they have less slots to work with than whales.

If your intent is to curtail 30+ cities growth, then you'd be better served coming up with something aimed specifically at them, and leave the rest of the playerbase alone.

Edited by Shiho Nishizumi
Grammar and such.
  • Upvote 1
 
G3.gif.d8066d8dc749ad2d0835fe69095fa73b.gif
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Way to make it even more fun: after your city has a nuclear meltdown, you can now train mutants as soldiers. These are soldiers with anti-tank powers who can also take down planes and ships with their minds. You are capped on mutant-training by the number of cities you've had exploded by nuclear meltdowns, adding a bit more city-building strategy (how many mutants should I have?), as well as making low-tier nations really imbalanced because a ton of them deliberately blew up their cities for mutants.

Edited by Inst
  • Downvote 1

.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is one of the worse ideas I've heard, I would agree to like full destruction of a city, infra nad improvements but a full city to disappear is ridiculous at those percentages, it doesn't open much in dnyamics. I see someone using this to break the game and go for 0 citys

Overall this seems dumb

Edited by Bluedart
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Alex this is one of thoes, dont tell us changes, because you will have every upper city nation yelling AHHH NOOOO DONNNNT DO IT. 

 

But basically as long as u limit it, to like one meltdown per x time frame with a low chance, sure why not. Also mab not a full destroy, mab like "pay x amount for environmental clean up" and then that makes it reusable. The more i think i can see someone at 32 cities and it getting lost, would really suck 

Edited by Pestilence
  • Like 1
  • Downvote 1

0b3897cd640f95254329f7a2d45d8c77b1c120e.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

59 minutes ago, Pestilence said:

@Alex this is one of thoes, dont tell us changes, because you will have every upper city nation yelling AHHH NOOOO DONNNNT DO IT. 

 

But basically as long as u limit it, to like one meltdown per x time frame with a low chance, sure why not. Also mab not a full destroy, mab like "pay x amount for environmental clean up" and then that makes it reusable. The more i think i can see someone at 32 cities and it getting lost, would really suck 

Thing is. Atm, its moreof the people who arent whales that will get affected by this. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Pestilence said:

@Alex this is one of thoes, dont tell us changes, because you will have every upper city nation yelling AHHH NOOOO DONNNNT DO IT. 

 

But basically as long as u limit it, to like one meltdown per x time frame with a low chance, sure why not. Also mab not a full destroy, mab like "pay x amount for environmental clean up" and then that makes it reusable. The more i think i can see someone at 32 cities and it getting lost, would really suck 

Read my post please. It's not whales who are upset.

  • Downvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just hard cap cities at 40.

Should have done it before people went over 30.

Or alternatively, delete all cities over 30 and refund them. That would piss people off tho, but thats never stopped you before lol.

  • Upvote 5
  • Downvote 3

XLL3z4T.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's called Endgame. People want to grow to 30 cities or above, or there's nothing to do. They can just pool warchest indefinitely or make money indefinitely, but there's nothing left to build, and eventually they get bored and quit.

 

A better way would be to add inflaton effects to cities, i.e, the cost of cities continuously decreases, so it becomes easier to reach 38 cities, but also easier to reach 40 or 50 cities.

.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why do you think being a whale is a problem? Just because you're not a whale?

I don't understand why the admin should try to find a way to damage players that basically did everything right

If you are a whale you played the game a lot, you managed your economy well, you won wars or avoided wars with good politics, isn't this the point of the game?

Imagine being a player that buyed 10 credits per month every month and used them to become a whale faster and now the admin, the one that gets your money, is thinking a way to remove the advantage you have thanks to those credits

If you think a nation is too big just hit them, literally happening right now, hire mercenaries to nuke them, put bounties on their nation, convince them to play keno, there are so many things players can do

At best you can make city 40 cost 5B, city 41 cost 10B, city 42 cost 15B, etc. in this way even if you are a whale with super high infra you need a lot of time to buy a new city and other players can get close to you

  • Like 2
  • Upvote 4
  • Downvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and the Guidelines of the game and community.