Game Development - October

[Zim]

21 hours ago, Prefontaine said:

Spies

• Spy Casualties reduced by 60% from spy attacks. Losses from failing an offensive spy op are also reduced by 50%
• Spy Satellite only increases damages from spy vs spy attacks by 20% instead of the base 50%.
• Spy vs spy attacks are 5% more difficult. If your odds of success were 75%, they are now 70%
• Spy vs spy attacks are 5% more likely to have the identify of the attacker identified. If your odds of being identified were 70% they are now 75%

I would say this is all around great changes to the spy game. Spies do really die to darm quickly compared to the time it take to build them up.
Now it might actually be worth it for raiders to keep more then 1-2 spies around, then constantly have them reduced to zero after a few weeks of trying to build them up. 
 

22 hours ago, Prefontaine said:

Soldiers

• 5% increase is casualties from soldiers fighting soldiers. (combine with tank bonus later)
• 33% reduction in tanks killed by soldiers.
  • Soldier only attacks/defends kill too many tanks.

Tanks

• Tanks ability to kill planes after gaining ground superiority reduced by 40%
• 15% increase in casualties to soldiers by tanks
• 5% increase in casualties to tanks by tanks.

Planes

• 40% 25% increase in tanks killed by bombing runs.
• 10% increase in soldiers killed by bombing runs.
• 10% increase in ships killed by bombing runs.

Ships

• 10% increase in ships killed by other ships.

I have a less pleasant opinion of this however. Soldiers already dies like flies, i have honestly never heard a complaint about their staying power, it mostly their lag of staying power i get complaints about, specially against air strikes. 
Even thought i see this as being fairly fair, because of the higher expenses required to airstrike, compared to the price of soldiers. 
Honestly all this nerfing of soldiers, just seem like another set of target nerf against raiders. And while we have gotten used to the fact that every war update seem to be a nerf for us raiders specifically, it somehow dosen't make this less annoying to deal with the fact, that this game seem to be pushing farmer as the only relevant playstyle. 
I honestly would beg you to leave soldiers well enough alone, if you at all can remember your test days. 

As for tanks, while i have seen form distance the damage max tanks stacks can do to planes in the "global" war 15, as a raider i have had bit different experience with their use. The double buy or tanks flashes at day change as they see most use by us, is tanks damages to planes is frankly underwhelming compared to the old system of grounding 33% of enemy planes. 

Even thought it have been very nice for my stats that planes now can be touched by tanks, it haven't been to nice to my wallet. 
For the air buffs, i am mostly fine with it, planes really should be the top dog of warfare as it take the longest to build up. Even thought a 25% increase might to big of change.

To be frank the better solution might be to split planes into bomber and fighters. 

And for navy i agree that for damamge need to be done, to many battle the lose just love 1-2 more ships then what the winner loses, even if there is over 20 ships different in strenght. 

22 hours ago, Prefontaine said:

•  

Treasures

• Treasures can be directly traded between players.
  • Treasures cannot be traded while either nation has an active offensive or defensive war.
  • A nation with a treasure already in it cannot trade for another treasure. 

Yeah this have been needed, since old way of trading treasure became basely illegal. Even thought they do need a slight buff in value, if alex still want us to go to war over them. 
Arrgh haven't been hired to steal treasure since before NPO last time. 

22 hours ago, Prefontaine said:

New Project

Someone give a good name for this project

• Effect: This project provides two project slots.
• Cost:
  • Cash: $50,000,000
  • Food: 100,000
  • Aluminum: 5,000

This project seem extremely pointless, is this just something for whales to waste money on? Either this need to give an extra project slot, or it need to also reduce the cost of future projects beside the extra slot. 
So it actually worth getting, but that will probably also mean an increase in price. 

But all around a mixed bag of an update, even thought the soldiers nerf pushes this a bit to much into the bad and why i choose  to downvote this. 



 

[Shiho Nishizumi]

29 minutes ago, Roberts said:

1. Soldiers don't win wars.

You can achieve effective ground control on people relying mostly on soldiers very easily with a single daily rebuy or doublebuy of soldiers & tanks. I know this as a pirate, most people know it as counters. It takes very minimal coordination to ruin someone's ground control, the only barrier is tank cost (which literally just got cut in half in the last update.) and cost is a part of war. That's called a strategic decision - spend the resources to flip the ground war or save the steel. That is a good piece of gameplay. Leading me to...

If you hit someone whose single buy is enough to offset it, chances are either you hit an AA with a ground MMR on the higher end (admittedly, more common now due to ground's greater importance), couldn't declare that much lower for xyz reasons, or airstrikes were used to bring the soldier count low enough to where it'd make a substantial difference.

If you're going with a double buy to offset it, the defending party would be exposed to as much as six GA's until that went in (assuming you either dec'd right before or after a reset, assuming standard), which can then be potentially translated into 60 res damage, which in turn makes gunning for a beige much easier. It'd obviously depend on the other means by which you could shave off the remaining 40, but it's still a consideration.

Ground of your own is less effective at removing soldiers than air, and arguably less efficient if no cash is looted. It's a very good deterrent/shut-down to keep you from being GA'd further, but the soldier casualties, which is what you were concerned with and is what I was addressing, aren't actually that high.
 

37 minutes ago, Roberts said:

2. Wars should be a resource sink.

As unpleasant as it sounds, resource efficiency is not the first consideration in war balancing. Airplanes should have a cost to use, wars shouldn't be exceedingly cheap. The economy of the game already struggles with resource/cash sinks as-is. We can agree to disagree on economics but the bottom line is that military units, casualty rates, and warfare needs to be balanced within itself as a priority. Resource efficiency is a secondary thought, at best.

Wars should be a resource sink. (Counter) raiding, however, isn't war (at least, not conventional one). Raiding and war are fundamentally different practices, with fundamentally different priorities and goals Cue soldiers being much better for raiding than war, and beiging someone being a priority in raiding but something to be avoided in war. Resource efficiency is one of those parameters which are more relevant for countering than for full-blown wars.

The game has far more resource sinks now than it's had, due to the ultra expensive projects which are both desirable relatively early on (A/UP) and for whales (Telecom) and in between (SP/SS). The market has only now crashed after a period of very high costs, and that can be attributed to people liquidating stocks as war is not expected for a while.

Resource cost shouldn't be a secondary thought. For example, it's a main contributing factor for which ships are garbage at actually killing ships, and their lack of use other than as a last resort or for blockading (or racing beige, but for that resources used doesn't usually matter since it's often done with one ship). The other reason being that they're also, in terms of total units killed, worse at it than planes, provided a sizeable enough plane advantage exists.

Those sorts of costs should be adjusted at least to some degree relative to the reduction in casualties so to at least make it easier to make these attacks cost effective, and making it an incentivizer for carrying these out in the first place.
 

56 minutes ago, Roberts said:

3. These changes disproportionately target raiders.

Soldiers aren't a very "meta" unit. They're primarily utilized to bolster tanks in normal warfare. Tank count and plane count, even arguably ship count, are all much more important in warfare than soldier count. These changes seem to be actively targeting raiders because people are upset planes-only isn't enough to defend themselves with. See point 1 for why this isn't even true. Soldiers already net-die quickly enough to zero someone in a single round of wars, just like any other unit right now. It's disingenuous to try and mask an attack on raiders as an argument for better resource efficiency or worry about soldiers somehow being too strong when the same people are literally calling them "meat shield units."

Soldiers are more relevant than ships, so far conventional controls go. Ships become an argument once you factor in blockade (which mainly matter for securing loot; a proper alliance won't have someone run out of resources R1 due to a blockade), beige and loot. The issue being that beiging the other guy is not something that you want to be doing in proper war in the first place. At least, not indiscriminately so. So it becomes far murkier and complicated a conversation than presented it as being.

I don't know if raiders are being targeted directly by it (though yes, a party which makes a higher/more predominant use of soldiers is going to be affected more by it); however, the argument that people suggesting it because they are upset that plane-only isn't enough to deal with it (and it'd never be, because if they sat with 0 ground then the raider could just get a fraction of a single buy in and GA to burn resistance) is contradicted by part of the suggestion being to increase casualties taken from other ground units as well. In fact, the suggestion is for tanks to have it increased by 15%, in contrast to planes' 10%.

If I had to guess, people took a look at soldiers' casualty rates compared to their recruitment rate and expense, and thought that they were a bit too tanky relative to that. They're certainly much tankier now than they used to be, both due to the direct reduction in casualties taken, and due to the max hangar capacity being reduced to 15 instead of 18, which was an indirect (and frankly, unintended because Alex certainly didn't think that far ahead) nerf to their gross killing potential simply because the current max is only 83% of what it used to be.

[Dreadnought]

Going only based off the OP...

The only thing I dislike about the spy system is the fact that it is virtually impossible to be caught. Everyone targets spies first, once those are gone, you basically don't get caught 9.9 times out of 10. Doing the equation on the wiki, 60 vs 60 spies, arcane vs covert, max sneaky, you have a 28% chance of failing and 28% chance of being caught. Let that sink in...less then a third of a chance of being seen while at max spies. To me, that is simply too low, not a little low, very low.

The defending force has an invading force that can kill upwards to half of the defending force's spies in one shot (without the Spy Sat Project) and the odds are all in the invading force's favor. There is absolutely no real defense in the spy system, which is just bad in my opinion. Even if we keep the level of success in the system, which I understand is needed, because if it wasn't successful, no one would do it, but jack up the getting caught percentage by way more then simply 28%.

For the spy sat, it was expensive, because it does added damage. I only got it really for the extra spy buy. Why not simply lower the damages against the board for normal spy operations, so to compensate for the spy sat? Making the spy sat more understandable to get. If the spy sat were to get nerfed or lowered in cost, yea, I would be upset and like a refund of something.

Other thing, planes, ground control doesn't do much of anything, if the other side has air control. I thought originally, when the tanks attacking planes came in, it would be simply base. If planes target tanks, tanks can fire back, plain and simple, I guess I misunderstood something. As for planes against ships, unless ships have AA capabilities, then planes don't need to be able to do even more damage to a target that simply can't defend itself. I personally don't think any unit should be able to attack another unit without that unit being able to defend itself and planes are the only unit that can attack other units. Other units that realistically, are able to defend against planes.

New project is understandable and people have given many great names.

Treasure trading/selling, is also nice.

Alternate times will simply speed up building of things in general, which I suppose its ok, don't matter either way to me.

That's all I really care from the OP. Everything else, I don't quite pay attention, because I guess I just don't notice or see it as broken or what have you. So quick recap...

Jack up the getting caught rate for spy vs spy, decease the damage from spy vs spy (should never able able to simply wipe an entire force in one day or even two). 
Lower damage across the board to accommodate the spy sat?
Added defenses are needed against planes for ground and sea.

Edited September 27, 2020 by Dreadnought

[Alladalah Lincoln]

On 9/25/2020 at 4:34 PM, Prefontaine said:

 

New Project

Someone give a good name for this project

• Effect: This project provides two project slots.
• Cost:
  • Cash: $50,000,000
  • Food: 100,000
  • Aluminum: 5,000

 

Project Management Initiative

[Dryad]

As someone who gave some of the feedback to Prefontaine (through Vein, who got approached by Pre) I will provide some reasoning for some of the numbers we gave him.

Though before I do that: One argument against these changes is that the current system hasn't even been tested for longer amounts of time. And while this is true I don't agree that months of testing is necessary for every little thing. A lot of imbalances you can instantly recognise; what's harder is to find the optimal solution, because there is multiple ways to do it. And with that said I will begin with one example:

First Speaker cctmsp13 of Ligertopia ordered an airstrike upon the nation of Dryad and eliminated 12 Resistance. The attack was an immense triumph. First Speaker cctmsp13's forces lost 77 aircraft, while MasterBlaster Dryad's defenders lost 166 aircraft. The attack destroyed 46.96 infrastructure in the city of Monster and 1,621 tanks.
-------- VS ----------
Pirate Lord im317 of im317 ordered a ground attack upon the nation of Dryad led by MasterBlaster Dryad and eliminated 10 Resistance. The attack was an immense triumph. Pirate Lord im317's forces lost 14,968 soldiers and 1,134 tanks, while MasterBlaster Dryad's defenders lost 53,449 soldiers and 4,310 tanks. The attack destroyed 525.00 infrastructure in the city of Resolve and 0 improvements. Pirate Lordim317 stole $0.00 in the attack.

The airstrike was done with max planes and the ground battle was done with max tanks, cctmsp13 at c31 and im317 at c34. What you can see is that tanks die a lot more to ground battles with a lot of tanks than they die to airstrikes targetted at them. For each MAP the airstrike killed 405 tanks, while the ground battle killed 1436 tanks. To me this just striked out as a clear case of something that should be evened out somewhat and that's where our feedback to Prefontaine came from that stated airstrikes on tanks can be buffed by at least 50% while he proposed 15% himself originally and ended up proposing 40% in the OP which was now lowered to 25%.

Then there is the soldier changes which we mostly just agreed to. They are very sturdy atm and it makes complete sense to increase their casualty rate and I say this as someone who raids and definitely doesnt profit from such a change. Likewise they also kill a lot of tanks for a unit that doesnt cost much.

The most important change by far is the one to tanks killing 40% less planes and it's the one I'm most uncertain about, but I do think it's very clear that right now they kill too many and that ground is now very dominant. Akuryo suggested to buff kills by dogfights instead of nerfing tanks to plane kill rates but I think that any buff in casualty rates will lead to the aggressor advantage becoming more extreme and that right now the defenders already get completely wiped. So I feel like the thing needed here is a nerf to the dominant attack type and not a buff to the minor one. But yeah, we suggested 40% for this. Pre wanted 50%, Vein wanted 50%, I wanted 30% 😛

And yeah, ships don't kill a lot of ships right now.

Also, all my raider friends crying about raiding getting nerfed to the ground are biased, because factually raiding is not weak but overpowered and by far the best way for an active individual to grow. I believe the actual reasons raiding alliances are a rarity are 1. that it's a lot more effort than farming and 2. that it's not something mass-member alliances can work with. You would have to provide targets to all of your members, accept an FA disaster that gets you into permanent conflict etc etc etc, also someone needs to produce raidable stuff. The issue is most definitely not that raiding cant provide a good source of income.

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

@Dryad The problem with the claim of increasing the aggressor advantage is that to anyone whose ever actually milcom it does the exact opposite. When you blitz you're leading either ground or air, and the defender will take up whatever you don't hit with because they're dead even with my suggestion.

And frankly a well done blitz not into ludicrously bigger numbers should put you on your ass anyway. Instead of being concerned that water is wet, try implementing a beige system that doesn't decide wars within the first round or two. 

Refusing to implement a near perfect balance because another mechanic is broken is an absolutely sophomoric notion. Especially since that mechanic is supposed to be getting reworked anyway.

[Raphael]

17 hours ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

If you hit someone whose single buy is enough to offset it, chances are either you hit an AA with a ground MMR on the higher end (admittedly, more common now due to ground's greater importance), couldn't declare that much lower for xyz reasons, or airstrikes were used to bring the soldier count low enough to where it'd make a substantial difference.

If you're going with a double buy to offset it, the defending party would be exposed to as much as six GA's until that went in (assuming you either dec'd right before or after a reset, assuming standard), which can then be potentially translated into 60 res damage, which in turn makes gunning for a beige much easier. It'd obviously depend on the other means by which you could shave off the remaining 40, but it's still a consideration.

With recent score changes, people are sitting in a "tighter" range. Lower city counts in your war range often have very high military. High city counts in your range often have less (but can out-buy you). There really isn't the presence of the old "golden range" of people who have low military AND are lower city count than you anymore. So no, a single buy offsetting it has very little to do with MMR or bad luck these days. With score ranges being so much tighter with the recent update, you're almost always fighting someone with the capability to fight back. The combination of buying a full compliment of soldiers/tanks for the day is almost always enough to flip a raid in my experience. It's simply the cost of doing so that presents the harder choice. That is a good gameplay element called a strategic tradeoff. Sit back and get raided or spend resources for military. Double-buying has its own strategic tradeoffs for a higher payout.

 

17 hours ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

Those sorts of costs should be adjusted at least to some degree relative to the reduction in casualties so to at least make it easier to make these attacks cost effective, and making it an incentivizer for carrying these out in the first place.

I'm not sure how to word this properly so don't roast me if I get this wrong: I agree resource costs should be balanced like any other mechanical part of the game, nothing should be prohibitively expensive or "not worth it"... I think you're taking it too far to call it an incentive though. I agree raiding and "real" warfare is different though, a point I'm trying to make here with these changes to soldiers.

 

17 hours ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

If I had to guess, people took a look at soldiers' casualty rates compared to their recruitment rate and expense, and thought that they were a bit too tanky relative to that. They're certainly much tankier now than they used to be

Staying power in soldiers is a good thing, for the reasons I've listed above and in other posts. There is no one launching global wars thinking about the soldiers on the other nations. They are a supplemental unit, at best, to tanks for most people. They are a vital unit for raiding. Nerfing soldiers will hurt a subset of the game's population without benefiting balance or other players experience.

 

Edited September 27, 2020 by Roberts

[Shiho Nishizumi]

28 minutes ago, Roberts said:

With recent score changes, people are sitting in a "tighter" range. Lower city counts in your war range often have very high military. High city counts in your range often have less (but can out-buy you). There really isn't the presence of the old "golden range" of people who have low military AND are lower city count than you anymore. So no, a single buy offsetting it has very little to do with MMR or bad luck these days. With score ranges being so much tighter with the recent update, you're almost always fighting someone with the capability to fight back. The combination of buying a full compliment of soldiers/tanks for the day is almost always enough to flip a raid in my experience. It's simply the cost of doing so that presents the harder choice. That is a good gameplay element called a strategic tradeoff. Sit back and get raided or spend resources for military. Double-buying has its own strategic tradeoffs for a higher payout.

Meh. I've seen C37's hit down to as low as C23 with current scores. And I'm sure that they could reach lower for the smaller guys who like to stack taller infra than it makes sense to do at that given city count.

Perhaps it's not to the extent of 2:1 as it used to be pre-changes, but the recent increase to military score made smaller guys more reachable. And also, bearing in mind that pre-changes the soldiers were dying a lot more quickly (or at the very least, with less effort involved for the defender). And no, max soldiers on that specific 37cv23c instance just cleaves through the rather normal 2 factory MMR.

34 minutes ago, Roberts said:

I'm not sure how to word this properly so don't roast me if I get this wrong: I agree resource costs should be balanced like any other mechanical part of the game, nothing should be prohibitively expensive or "not worth it"... I think you're taking it too far to call it an incentive though. I agree raiding and "real" warfare is different though, a point I'm trying to make here with these changes to soldiers.

Carrying out an attack that costs you more than it does your opponent is economically unsound. The severity thereof may vary, with planes vs soldiers being the most extreme and one which will never be economically sound to do (short of being able to roughly wipe out the totality of that count with a single airstrike, which would be obviously dumb to try to gun for). How much this matters vary from person to person. NPO didn't care (among the cost of others of their practices), which is why they nearly went broke just two months in and had to cheat to keep afloat. Just an example of how much it actually matters.

If a war's being waged for economic reasons, then this matters substantially more and it becomes counterproductive to that war's reason to perform that attack in the first place.
 

40 minutes ago, Roberts said:

Staying power in soldiers is a good thing, for the reasons I've listed above and in other posts. There is no one launching global wars thinking about the soldiers on the other nations. They are a supplemental unit, at best, to tanks for most people. They are a vital unit for raiding. Nerfing soldiers will hurt a subset of the game's population without benefiting balance or other players experience.

Staying power is a thing. However, at the end of the day, they're still a meatshield unit which is expected to be recruited and to die quickly. Which is why they max out in three days, as opposed to five. A certain degree of turnover is expected from them. And this, alongside what I had said earlier, is why I can see why people would care to tweak the casualties rates a bit. This tweaking isn't actually that significant in practice either, since it's not 10% flat out (as in, going from 25% to 35%), but 10% modifying another %. So it ends up being an increase from 25% to 27.5% as Ava's post illustrated. A practical 2.5% increase won't spell the death of soldiers as a raiding unit.

Them dying a bit more quickly isn't something that I personally care much for. The main thing I'm interested in (and would like to see go through) is them killing a few less tanks, which I find to be a more proper change for an ostensibly meatshield unit, and because they do kill a fair bit of tanks as it stands.

[Zim]

28 minutes ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

Meh. I've seen C37's hit down to as low as C23 with current scores. And I'm sure that they could reach lower for the smaller guys who like to stack taller infra than it makes sense to do at that given city count.

Perhaps it's not to the extent of 2:1 as it used to be pre-changes, but the recent increase to military score made smaller guys more reachable. And also, bearing in mind that pre-changes the soldiers were dying a lot more quickly (or at the very least, with less effort involved for the defender). And no, max soldiers on that specific 37cv23c instance just cleaves through the rather normal 2 factory MMR.

The point of the score system is there s to limit the number of nations one can go to war with, to does nation that is able to put up a fight with you nation in it's current state. 
In "it's current state" is something you seem to be ignorering, destroyed nations need to have a lower score then built up nations, so they have a chance to build up agian without the risk of being sat on by nations they unable to even touch. 
That was the reality before the last score change for a rather breif time. If anyone had sat on an alliance doing that time, it would be like NPO last time turned up to 11. 
And i don't think anyone would like a repeat of experience as it is. 

Raiders out of a need, take advantage of this because of the long rebuild time and cost of other units raiders are dependent on infrantry to turn a weekly profit. 
Without infrantry raiding will die out.

And i would also say that nation score depending on ones military build is one of few things that give this war system some flavour. 15-20 citied nations that have built every unit to the max, defiently need to be able to be drunked on by people that have 5 citied advantage, so the war system dosen't just turn into who have the biggest stack automatically wins. 
Yes nations with 30 cities can technical declare on cities as low as 15 of what i have seen. But the 30 citied nations infra is at or bellow 500, they have no units not even soldiers. Meanwhile the 15 citied nation have 2000 infra or over in every city, they have maxed out tanks at close to 19.000, max planes at near 1100 and max ships at 225.

This scenario can happen, but will it? no because it would be stupid for the bigger nation to do so. A double buy from 30 citied nation can produce 15.000 tanks, 900 planes and 90 ships. It fall short on standing military of the 15 citied guy, who wouldn't even have brought units for the day. Units take time to build up and just one day change of brought units will bring the 30 citied guy out of range of the 15 citied guy again. 

I say the score system is near as well balanced as it can get.

Just an extra comment, who have just two factories? tanks is only usefull when you have them in numbers, i thought it was common knowledge that if you want to invest in tank, you need to do so heavily. And how infra did the 23 citied nation have if he wasen't maxed out military? Because it does get to a point where it really is the smaller guy who is at fault. 

1 hour ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

Carrying out an attack that costs you more than it does your opponent is economically unsound. The severity thereof may vary, with planes vs soldiers being the most extreme and one which will never be economically sound to do (short of being able to roughly wipe out the totality of that count with a single airstrike, which would be obviously dumb to try to gun for). How much this matters vary from person to person. NPO didn't care (among the cost of others of their practices), which is why they nearly went broke just two months in and had to cheat to keep afloat. Just an example of how much it actually matters.

If a war's being waged for economic reasons, then this matters substantially more and it becomes counterproductive to that war's reason to perform that attack in the first place.

Carrying out attack of that nature might be economically unsound if you still going lose the war, but if the enemy have the advantage of ground then airstriking it would be solid tactic, if what ressource and infra lost by defeat is worse then cost of munitions and gasoline in airstriking is doing. 
And TKR is recent anti-pirate tactic is literally to target infantry, even the opponest have other units that more economically sound in attacking. But TKR isen't going to try lose less then their opponest, which is already lost fight when fighting Arrgh. 
But rather it an attempt to lower the income we pirate get from other raids, or atleast that is the idea. 
As for NPO it was really not that much of drain on to airstricking soldiers, specially when by the third month after they joined, the majority of alliance on our side stopped putting up much of a fight around then. 
War for economic reason is normally also fairly short, with atleast one side trying to end it after the first blitz, so it hardly goin be drain in does wars. 
The longer wars, the more expensive ones is nearly always because something personal have happened, the politics part of the game. 

1 hour ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

Staying power is a thing. However, at the end of the day, they're still a meatshield unit which is expected to be recruited and to die quickly. Which is why they max out in three days, as opposed to five. A certain degree of turnover is expected from them. And this, alongside what I had said earlier, is why I can see why people would care to tweak the casualties rates a bit. This tweaking isn't actually that significant in practice either, since it's not 10% flat out (as in, going from 25% to 35%), but 10% modifying another %. So it ends up being an increase from 25% to 27.5% as Ava's post illustrated. A practical 2.5% increase won't spell the death of soldiers as a raiding unit.

Them dying a bit more quickly isn't something that I personally care much for. The main thing I'm interested in (and would like to see go through) is them killing a few less tanks, which I find to be a more proper change for an ostensibly meatshield unit, and because they do kill a fair bit of tanks as it stands.

It because you don't care abount infrantry is the problem, do you know who cares? Raiders! this nerf target raiders specifically, no one else care as much as us about soldiers! And we get nothing in return for yet another nerf. 

Raiding have constantly been nerfed since the Purple Spy War in 2016!
Do you know that doing Arrgh dark age there was only 9 people left, does was basely only keeping on the lights. And there have been more then one moment where Arrgh was the only raiding alliance left in this game. 
Constantly being screwed over by the game it self, does create some very strong and extremely adaptive players, but it have also killed 5 times as many players. I gething freaking tried that after every new war update is a wave goodbye to so many new people. 

With every update becomming a question of how many are we going lose this time, rather then questions about the changes themselves. 

 

[Shiho Nishizumi]

1 hour ago, Zim said:

The point of the score system is there s to limit the number of nations one can go to war with, to does nation that is able to put up a fight with you nation in it's current state. 
In "it's current state" is something you seem to be ignorering, destroyed nations need to have a lower score then built up nations, so they have a chance to build up agian without the risk of being sat on by nations they unable to even touch. 
That was the reality before the last score change for a rather breif time. If anyone had sat on an alliance doing that time, it would be like NPO last time turned up to 11. 
And i don't think anyone would like a repeat of experience as it is. 

Raiders out of a need, take advantage of this because of the long rebuild time and cost of other units raiders are dependent on infrantry to turn a weekly profit. 
Without infrantry raiding will die out.

And i would also say that nation score depending on ones military build is one of few things that give this war system some flavour. 15-20 citied nations that have built every unit to the max, defiently need to be able to be drunked on by people that have 5 citied advantage, so the war system dosen't just turn into who have the biggest stack automatically wins. 
Yes nations with 30 cities can technical declare on cities as low as 15 of what i have seen. But the 30 citied nations infra is at or bellow 500, they have no units not even soldiers. Meanwhile the 15 citied nation have 2000 infra or over in every city, they have maxed out tanks at close to 19.000, max planes at near 1100 and max ships at 225.

This scenario can happen, but will it? no because it would be stupid for the bigger nation to do so. A double buy from 30 citied nation can produce 15.000 tanks, 900 planes and 90 ships. It fall short on standing military of the 15 citied guy, who wouldn't even have brought units for the day. Units take time to build up and just one day change of brought units will bring the 30 citied guy out of range of the 15 citied guy again. 

I say the score system is near as well balanced as it can get.

Just an extra comment, who have just two factories? tanks is only usefull when you have them in numbers, i thought it was common knowledge that if you want to invest in tank, you need to do so heavily. And how infra did the 23 citied nation have if he wasen't maxed out military? Because it does get to a point where it really is the smaller guy who is at fault. 

My post was a response to Roberts stating that you can not get onto a lower city count and low mil guy anymore. The point of it was to state that you can. I merely cited a extreme case to get the point across. If you dig through my posts, you'll find me criticizing the original NS changes that came with the casualty ones. I also supported the mil NS changes as suggested via DM's, before they went live. Because yes, having a fully milled nation be able to hit on a ZM'd one the same size without issues was not good.

And because that's an MMR, not a 5553 build.

1 hour ago, Zim said:

Carrying out attack of that nature might be economically unsound if you still going lose the war, but if the enemy have the advantage of ground then airstriking it would be solid tactic, if what ressource and infra lost by defeat is worse then cost of munitions and gasoline in airstriking is doing. 
And TKR is recent anti-pirate tactic is literally to target infantry, even the opponest have other units that more economically sound in attacking. But TKR isen't going to try lose less then their opponest, which is already lost fight when fighting Arrgh. 
But rather it an attempt to lower the income we pirate get from other raids, or atleast that is the idea. 
As for NPO it was really not that much of drain on to airstricking soldiers, specially when by the third month after they joined, the majority of alliance on our side stopped putting up much of a fight around then. 
War for economic reason is normally also fairly short, with atleast one side trying to end it after the first blitz, so it hardly goin be drain in does wars. 
The longer wars, the more expensive ones is nearly always because something personal have happened, the politics part of the game. 

I presume you meant win. And yes, between a beige and airstriking soldiers, it should go without saying that the latter is preferable, and it's the reason why people airstrike soldiers. But it becomes an argument of the lesser evil at that point. The preferable route is just to build your own soldiers if that's viable.

Eh, it 100% adds up over the period of time and extent they did it. There are many wars which I netted 8 digits largely because of that. And as I had said, it wasn't the only thing that burned through their stockpiles (constantly selling to 300 infra also did, for example), but just one of many which contributed towards it.

Nobody would end a war for econ reasons after R1 because that'd be too short for grinding down the other side's infra, especially if you're trying to actually secure it instead of dishing out beiges for maximum upfront damage (and if you're just beiging out, you're handing the other guy rebuild time to hit back). There's a reason why people tend to open with raid nowadays on a war. It's because infra will invariably be ground down, and the priority is to have the other guy be as high NS as possible to make it easier to reach him for subsequent rounds.

The long wars are the ones where inefficiencies make themselves the most felt because of the amount of times they occur compounded by lower output due to swapped slots. And are the ones where stuff such as opportunity costs often come up as a factor.

1 hour ago, Zim said:

It because you don't care abount infrantry is the problem, do you know who cares? Raiders! this nerf target raiders specifically, no one else care as much as us about soldiers! And we get nothing in return for yet another nerf. 

Raiding have constantly been nerfed since the Purple Spy War in 2016!
Do you know that doing Arrgh dark age there was only 9 people left, does was basely only keeping on the lights. And there have been more then one moment where Arrgh was the only raiding alliance left in this game. 
Constantly being screwed over by the game it self, does create some very strong and extremely adaptive players, but it have also killed 5 times as many players. I gething freaking tried that after every new war update is a wave goodbye to so many new people. 

With every update becomming a question of how many are we going lose this time, rather then questions about the changes themselves. 

To be frank, it's Prefontaine we're talking about. I'd not be surprised if he threw soldiers in to pad the list so to make it more impressive on his CV.

As for the rest... soldiers becoming tankier is more useful for raiders. Fortifying while it still provided resistance was better for raiders, as it meant not being beiged and getting looted in turn. It obviously got changed, but it was nonetheless a thing for some time. Higher unlootable cash minimum is more useful for raiders as it means that you lose less to being GA'd or having to spend less to avoid it bleeding. It also guarantees that you'll have sufficient cash at hand to recruit more soldiers. It's true that raiding has taken a few hits over time, but it's also benefited from additions which happened throughout time.

Edited September 27, 2020 by Shiho Nishizumi
Punctuation.

[Ripper]

Honestly, I find discussions about changes in mechanics pointless and they kinda kill the fun.
I want to play the games, not to "optimize" them or discuss how they should be played.

In a game you get some rules and adapt accordingly.
Sure, some of them may suck for a specific playstyle.
Just don't pick that playstyle then or deal with it.

Discussing every 3 months about changes in THE core mechanic of the game (war) is becoming ridiculous. The game is 5 years old already.

The best thing we could do is just leave everything as it is.
It doesn't matter anyway. No matter the war mechanics, alliances will just use FA to get more power to balance whatever weaknesses may appear.

Edited September 27, 2020 by Ripper

[Jangles]

On 9/26/2020 at 1:15 PM, Hime-sama said:

Game balance should not be centered around realism either, but even as a counter point: The AC-130 gunships "Angel of Death" are fantastic at destroying enemy soldiers

I honestly don't think you have a clue what you're talking about; "Aircraft are currently the best unit in game to destroy infra with and it should stay that way." This is simply wrong, firstly because naval units do the most infrastructure damage as mentioned earlier in the thread, and secondly because the primary use of aircraft in this game has never been to destroy infrastructure. Aircraft destroy units, always have, and although they have since been nerfed in that regard, they still serve that purpose, and should continue to serve that purpose, you would be an idiot to think otherwise.

Aircraft are not a jack of all trades unit anymore, ground forces kill tanks and aircraft better and faster than aircraft kill tanks and aircraft as mentioned earlier in the thread. Additionally, a buff to soldier casualties would hardly tip the scales to make planes unbalanced because soldiers serve the purpose of being a cost-effective, fast-conscription unit, and are not all that powerful when it comes to winning conventional warfare which is what matters.

 

There are times when you have to airstrike soldiers, that's what happens when pirates do harsh downdeclares at max soldier capacity. However yes, you don't rely on airstrikes to zero soldiers, but the soldier casualties from tanks should be increased to make airstriking them less necessary 😛

Just want to point out, naval bombings on average may destroy about 15% more infra value than airstrikes do, assuming you used all your MAPs bombing infra. But naval bombing costs twice as much as airstrikes do, and ships aren't as versatile as aircraft are. The difference in the value of infra destroyed isn't substantial, and the versatility of aircraft means that they're much more practical to use to bomb infra with than ships are. Also, that's assuming you have maxed out ships. I've been playing for 4 years and I don't think I've ever had my ships maxed out. My aircraft were always maxed out when I was farming.

 

That being said, game balance should follow realism as a general guide. Aircraft are not optimal for providing fire support. They carry a limited supply of ammo, costs tens of thousands to keep in the air, and are vulnerable to AA. Whereas infantry can simply spread out and hide. Aircraft are not the jack of all trades unit they used to be, but if these suggestions were rolled out the meta would simply go back to straight planes. Planes should destroy more tanks than they currently do, more soldiers should die from ground fights, and soldiers should kill less tanks. But aircraft should not destroy more soldiers because that would neither be balanced nor realistic.

[Prefontaine]

Polling thread closed, 10% increase from bombing soldiers has been removed from the OP. The vote was about 55% yes 45% no with 93 votes. This thread will stay open til Sunday/Monday before I push it over to Alex for final approval and to move forward to the coding phase of things. 

[Benfro]

1 hour ago, Prefontaine said:

Polling thread closed, 10% increase from bombing soldiers has been removed from the OP. The vote was about 55% yes 45% no with 93 votes. This thread will stay open til Sunday/Monday before I push it over to Alex for final approval and to move forward to the coding phase of things. 

I was unaware of a poll, but with 27,000 nations currently in the game, is 93 votes really statistically significant?

[Ketya]

@Prefontaine have you guys considered a monthly in game message that has few questions (whatever become hot topics) in poll format to get a broader pulse?

[Prefontaine]

9 hours ago, Ketya said:

@Prefontaine have you guys considered a monthly in game message that has few questions (whatever become hot topics) in poll format to get a broader pulse?

I was posting the thread link a couple times a day in discord while it was open. People who are on discord have at least taken the extra step with regards to involvement in the game. Pushing a list of topics to everyone will result in a plethora of uniformed opinions. I'd rather deal with the people who care enough to find this section of the forums, even when it's out of being pissed of. People are more likely to complain when they're unhappy versus participate when their content after all.

To your point however in conjunction with mine I believe having Alex provide an announcement a couple times a year directing players to this section of the forum is a solid idea, would you agree?

[Malakai]

On 10/1/2020 at 5:17 PM, Benfro said:

I was unaware of a poll, but with 27,000 nations currently in the game, is 93 votes really statistically significant?

@Prefontaine

This is a fair point. You are moving forward with major changes with the votes of .0034% of the populous weighing in. Something of this magnitude should have been broadwaved to the entire game. 

Additionally

Quote

I'd rather deal with the people who care enough to find this section of the forums, even when it's out of being pissed of. People are more likely to complain when they're unhappy versus participate when their content after all.

serves only to alienate the people you are claiming to serve. In effect you are saying that only those who have the inclination to change or improve the game should be or will be given a voice. Most of the time when something is posted in this area its met with scorn, derision, or random comments calling the suggestions junk. The fact that you've gotten so much response (a lot of it positive) indicates to me you should be willing to deal with the masses instead of a specific demographic.

Edited October 3, 2020 by Optima

[Zed]

On 10/1/2020 at 3:17 PM, Benfro said:

I was unaware of a poll, but with 27,000 nations currently in the game, is 93 votes really statistically significant?

 

You know I was a little curious, so I had a look-see at the color trade blocs; using them as a proxy for the number of active nations. The Helpful tools color bloc link indicates 14,771 nations, which is a large discrepancy from the nations page which lists 27k. I am much more willing to trust the helpful tools link myself.

Of those 14k nations on the helpful tools chart, over 9,000 (insert Vegeta.gif here) are Gray; if you go by the 27k total nations figure, then 21k are Gray. There are 3,170 on any active color, and 2,283 on Beige. For the sake of argument, let us just assume that all of the colors and Beige are active nations. That is a sum total of under 5,500 nations in-game.

While 93 votes isn't a very high number compared to 5,500, it sure is a lot closer than 27k or even 14k. This isn't to say that mods and admins should just make changes on a whim because they feel like it, or have some unfortunate situation in-game happen to them while they were not able to deal with it. But, considering the people who did vote, I would argue that it is probably a fairly representative sample of the active and involved players in game, if still a little small (10% would be a much more ideal target).

[Sir Scarfalot]

Hol up, if the project that gives you a project slot requires a project slot but gives two project slots... then it's a wash? 2 - 1 = 1, which is exactly how many slots you'd get by not building the project in the first place?

[Guest Zephyr]

9 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

Hol up, if the project that gives you a project slot requires a project slot but gives two project slots... then it's a wash? 2 - 1 = 1, which is exactly how many slots you'd get by not building the project in the first place?

Quote

Effect: This project provides two project slots.

It gives you 2 slots after purchase. So if you have 1 project slot open, proceed to purchase the project, you have now filled your original open project slot with the project purchase but opened another 2 project slots with its benefit. The net benefit is an additional project slot at the same infrastructure level.

[Sir Scarfalot]

1 hour ago, Zephyr said:

It gives you 2 slots after purchase. So if you have 1 project slot open, proceed to purchase the project, you have now filled your original open project slot with the project purchase but opened another 2 project slots with its benefit. The net benefit is an additional project slot at the same infrastructure level.

So, it would in fact provide three project slots, including itself?

[AwesomeNova]

6 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

So, it would in fact provide three project slots, including itself?

It takes up one slot and adds two empty slots, giving you a net gain of one empty slot. It’s nothing to shake at, but at the same time, it’s very useful for nations with 15-25 cities.

I would recommend the price to be the cost to get a city from 10 infra to 2500 infra either once or twice over, about $32-62.5 mil. I’m leaning towards the lower end because you’re getting a net gain of one slot and it would let nations with lower city counts to pick it up, but the staff can adjust it however they want (for better or worse).

[Prefontaine]

22 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

Hol up, if the project that gives you a project slot requires a project slot but gives two project slots... then it's a wash? 2 - 1 = 1, which is exactly how many slots you'd get by not building the project in the first place?

 

10 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

So, it would in fact provide three project slots, including itself?

It provides two project slots, not three. This might make it make more sense, I see the mistake you're making. You have 1 free project slot. You buy Propaganda Bureau. Or instead with your one free project slot you buy this project and now you have two project slots to use, you buy Propaganda Bureau and Missile Launching pad. 

[namukara]

Can we have a quality of life update I've been asking for for over a year please?

A confirmation box on accept peace offer. When you're using exclusively keyboard to navigate it can get a bit jumpy if you leave your finger on key for slightly too long. It doesn't take too long for it to jump from airstrike to accept peace offer.

[stringbean.47]

With alliance banks, have the options of seeing transactions for each individual member instead of only the transactions of everyone in the alliance.