Game Development Discussion: Update & Feedback

[Keegoz]

Hey all,

Just wanted to give some updates regarding development at the moment. Firstly I want to note that if you wish to give feedback about any future design team suggestions, that there will now be a thread in the community feedback section of the P&W server. This will ensure we are more likely to read your feedback than if you were to post about it in other popular servers.

Secondly, I just want to inform you all that the Project & Commerce Rework has begun being coded. I understand many of you want an exact timeframe for this proposal but it is still likely too early to tell. Quite honestly it could be out within months or it might not be out for half a year. It all depends on how much time the coders have and how many bugs we run in to when they are added to the test server. You will however know they are close when they are added to the test server and ideally we can have them live approx. 1 month from that point.

Generals is still going through feedback at the moment and will be the next major update to the game. We're hoping to have it finalised by the end of the month to hand over to be coded.

There are therefore a few things we need to discuss after this point about what the design team focuses its discussions on post-generals.

Thirdly, I am going to ask for feedback for two late game project ideas that have been discussed by the design team.

Project Proposals

Nuclear Launch Facility

Project Requirements: Nuclear Research Facility, Missile Launch Pad & Space Program.

Project Cost: $750m, 50k Uranium, 50k Gasoline, 50k Aluminium.

Project Effect: Allows for the purchase of 1 extra nuke per day.

 

Guiding Satellite

Project Requirements: Nuclear Research Facility, Missile Launch Pad & Space Program.

Project Cost: $200m, 40k aluminium, 20k steel, 40k gasoline, 40k munitions, 40k uranium

Project Effect: Increase infrastructure damage dealt by nukes and missiles by 20% & Destroy 1 extra improvement.

 

These are both aimed at being whale projects. Nukes & Missiles scale off as time continues and nations grow, they will likely need further adjustments in the future but given current coding restraints this is the easiest way to fix the issue temporarily.

 

Future Discussion

There are a few things in this game that need updates or additions to, as to maximise player satisfaction I have added a poll as to which area of the game we should focus upon.

The areas that I believe need improvements/additions:

• Alliance & National Decisions - Alliance decisions would range from military & economic buffs but with a downside. National decisions would be repeatable temporary buffs that would have a scaling resources cost (based on city count).
• Colour Blocs - A complete redesign of how colour's are calculated & potentially more political aspects such as a colour council. Ideally removing the incentive to force new alliances & players off the colour bloc.
• Perks revamped - A simplified perks system with choices between 2 branches (Economic or Military)
• Other - Obviously if the community wants a different area focus upon, then please leave a comment below (or upvote anyone with a similar suggestion to your own)

 

 

Edited February 11 by Keegoz
Feedback on GS being too expensive. Slight reduction in cost given.

[darkblade]

1 hour ago, Keegoz said:

Nuclear Launch Facility

Project Requirements: Nuclear Research Facility, Missile Launch Pad & Space Program.

Project Cost: $750m, 50k Uranium, 50k Gasoline, 50k Aluminium.

Project Effect: Allows for the purchase of 1 extra nuke per day.

The cost of this project seems too high for the value it's given. Sure if you're getting 30m nukes, that's great and all. But I don't think that many people will end up buying this project based on the current price, especially whales (unless your name is Hatebi). This just seems like a massive cash sink with no benefit to match.

1 hour ago, Keegoz said:

Guiding Satellite

Project Requirements: Nuclear Research Facility, Missile Launch Pad & Space Program.

Project Cost: $200m, 50k aluminium, 20k steel, 50k gasoline, 50k munitions, 50k uranium

Project Effect: Increase infrastructure damage dealt by nukes and missiles by 20% & Destroy 1 extra improvement.

 

These are both aimed at being whale projects. Nukes & Missiles scale off as time continues and nations grow, they will likely need further adjustments in the future but given current coding restraints this is the easiest way to fix the issue temporarily.

I like this project a lot actually. My only complaint is that it's slightly overpowered for it's price. I would either raise the price a bit, lower the percentage to 10-15%, or remove the extra improvement. Do one of those and you'll have a very solid project for losing wars. Turns out I'm blind and I didn't see all the resources required for this project. This shit is expensive as hell lmfao.

 

1 hour ago, Keegoz said:

Future Discussion

There are a few things in this game that need updates or additions to, as to maximise player satisfaction I have added a poll as to which area of the game we should focus upon.

The areas that I believe need improvements/additions:

• Alliance & National Decisions - Alliance decisions would range from military & economic buffs but with a downside. National decisions would be repeatable temporary buffs that would have a scaling resources cost (based on city count).
• Colour Blocs - A complete redesign of how colour's are calculated & potentially more political aspects such as a colour council. Ideally removing the incentive to force new alliances & players off the colour bloc.
• Perks revamped - A simplified perks system with choices between 2 branches (Economic or Military)
• Other - Obviously if the community wants a different area focus upon, then please leave a comment below (or upvote anyone with a similar suggestion to your own)

Alliance & National Decisions: This sounds great on paper, but can easily become a boring feature of the game. My good friend and 2ic @Abaddon made a good point when I brought up a similar system from other games. The most likely situation is that players/alliances will just mid max it and have all the results saved so they can always pick the best choices. This will just result in repetitive gameplay where you just log on and pick whichever option is best based on the question presented to you on that day. I think there is a way to implement this correctly. But it will require a great deal of balancing during and after development so that players need to consider which options are best for their nation/alliance.

Colour Blocs: If I remember correctly the idea of the color bloc system was to encourage alliances to go to war over it (just like treasures). However nowadays that isn't the case anymore. The color bloc bonus has been mid maxed so hard that it's honestly a worthless feature in my opinion. Right now it's just extra revenue for the big alliances who control the blocs while the little guys either have to find a that will let them join their bloc, or join one of the shitty blocs. Sure you could increase it to $150,000 (I'm looking at you @Alex). But all that does is 1. Increase the wealth disparity amongst the blocs. And 2. Promote more color bloc policing. At the end of the day, the big alliances profit from a color bloc increase while the little guys lose out. I don't have a exact idea on how to fix this issue. But a new system should be put in place where both small and big alliances can profit if they cooperate.

Perks revamped: You're opening a can of worms with this one. Even if it's simplified.

That's all I have to say for now. But I appreciate @Keegoz and everyone in the design team for their work. And I'm excited to see what y'all bring in the future.

Edited February 9 by darkblade

[Danzek]

15 minutes ago, darkblade said:

I like this project a lot actually. My only complaint is that it's slightly overpowered for it's price. I would either raise the price a bit, lower the percentage to 10-15%, or remove the extra improvement. Do one of those and you'll have a very solid project for losing wars.

If it destroys 20% more infra, that's not actually 20% more damage. Infra cost is exponential, and it's the higher level infra that's most valuable, which gets destroyed regardless. You're actually damaging the cheapest infra with the 20%. Missiles will get more out of that 20% bonus simply because they do less infra damage (and thus are less affected by infra cost being exponential), whereas a 20% boost to nukes infra damage could be closer to like 4% infra value. (depends on city infra level, and war type/war policy)

Also keep in mind the project costs 800m (current market prices), so will take multiple losing wars to ROI. 

Edited February 9 by Danzek

[Keegoz]

11 minutes ago, darkblade said:

The cost of this project seems too high for the value it's given. Sure if you're getting 30m nukes, that's great and all. But I don't think that many people will end up buying this project based on the current price, especially whales (unless your name is Hatebi). This just seems like a massive cash sink with no benefit to match.

It's aimed at being a whale project where long ROI times are a thing. You can hit 25-30m nukes in the upper tiers, meaning you could feasibly be doing 50-60m of damage per day. Most wars go for a month so over 30 days you could have 1.5 billion in damage dealt (obviously VDS will block quite a few though but the ROI should be doable over a few wars).

15 minutes ago, darkblade said:

I like this project a lot actually. My only complaint is that it's slightly overpowered for it's price. I would either raise the price a bit, lower the percentage to 10-15%, or remove the extra improvement. Do one of those and you'll have a very solid project for losing wars.

This is actually the project that is probably overpriced & harder to ROI on.

16 minutes ago, darkblade said:

Alliance & National Decisions: This sounds great on paper, but can easily become a boring feature of the game. My good friend and 2ic @Abaddon made a good point when I brought up a similar system from other games. The most likely situation is that players/alliances will just mid max it and have all the results saved so they can always pick the best choices. This will just result in repetitive gameplay where you just log on and pick whichever option is best based on the question presented to you on that day. I think there is a way to implement this correctly. But it will require a great deal of balancing during and after development so that players need to consider which options are best for their nation/alliance.

I am not proposing random events as decisions. The decisions will always be the same and merely have a cooldown affect.

 

22 minutes ago, darkblade said:

Colour Blocs: If I remember correctly the idea of the color bloc system was to encourage alliances to go to war over it (just like treasures). However nowadays that isn't the case anymore. The color bloc bonus has been mid maxed so hard that it's honestly a worthless feature in my opinion. Right now it's just extra revenue for the big alliances who control the blocs while the little guys either have to find a that will let them join their bloc, or join one of the shitty blocs. Sure you could increase it to $150,000 (I'm looking at you @Alex). But all that does is 1. Increase the wealth disparity amongst the blocs. And 2. Promote more color bloc policing. At the end of the day, the big alliances profit from a color bloc increase while the little guys lose out. I don't have a exact idea on how to fix this issue. But a new system should be put in place where both small and big alliances can profit if they cooperate.

This proposal would basically be in 2 parts, the first part may happen regardless of the vote. Part 1 rework how the colour blocs are calculated and Part 2 put some more political stuff into it via colour councils.

[Altheus]

I'd actually like to see the opposite of what's currently happening with colour spheres, with the incentive being to attract new alliances to your colour rather than push them off. However it can't be a straight forward biggest sphere gets a economic bonus otherwise they'll be a congregation of alliances all onto one sphere.

One subtler answer might be that only the three (or however many) alliances on a sphere benefit from an economic bonus, creating a dynamic that they would be looking for reasons to attract smaller alliances to their sphere, giving the smaller alliances an extra political tool to trade for protection, support, cash incentives etc. They'd be some movement with mid-sized alliances changing sphere to grab themselves a top three position but I'm not sure it'd be a bad thing as a culture might develop between loyalists (who stay on a sphere not matter what) and nomads (who jump spheres frequently depending on personal benefit), with potential fault lines between the two. You could imagine wars being fought over such a thing.

One downside would be promoting further growth for the biggest alliances so I'd caution against limiting the number of alliances that receive an economic bonus to too small a number. You'd probably be wanting to include any alliances that typically would be too big to be a protectorate (training alliance aside) so top 3 (i.e. 3*14 colours spheres= 42 alliances getting a bonus) would be about right

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

So, two whale focused projects, I am a whale, I guess we can consider this a market survey of the intended customer.

 

$1,207,200,000 for the first project.

$833,750,000 for the second.

About 2b in total. More or less city 40 for me. 

 

Yeah no I'll take the city. You can just keep these tbh, nuke turreting isn't enjoyable (and never was), the part where someone on the losing side of wars could do anything more interesting or enjoyable than login once a day are long, long gone. I mostly don't even bother. Hell, I don't even remember to have to decide not to bother to begin with, because it's just so goddamn boring. Might as well just lock my account for a month, same level of activity just about lol.

[Bolby Ballinger]

Trade works better the more participants there are. Therefore the Color Blocs should have their bonus be decided by how many different alliances are in it. The more the better (with an upper limit on the bonus).

To prevent a bunch of single nation alliances from being made to abuse that make a minimum number of nations an alliance needs to count toward improving the bonus.

To promote political competition among the trade blocs (rather than consolidation in a few) set a limit on the number of alliances that can be on that color. This will obviously require the creation of a colorless trade bloc with no limit on alliance numbers to catch anyone that's left out should every color bloc get maxed out. Should also provide a bonus, but a noticeably smaller one than a proper color bloc. That will encourage smaller alliances to compete for spots on a color bloc.

Balancing it can then be done by just adjusting the maximum number of alliances allowed on a color bloc. Ideally there's not enough alliances to fill out every color bloc letting the colorless just be an emergency measure/ catch-all.

Another color bloc plan would be to have each color bloc provide different levels of bonuses. This bonus is predetermined and not affected by anything. It's set where it is and that's where it stays. 

Then set a maximum number of nations that can be on a color bloc with the lowest bonus one having no limit.

This would encourage the big alliances to have their own spheres rather than being teamed up as now their bonuses aren't the same and who has what color is an inherent point of contention. Basically, more smaller speres, less big spheres. Also means those spheres are defined by the color they're on more than they are now.

[Keegoz]

33 minutes ago, Zei-Sakura Alsainn said:

So, two whale focused projects, I am a whale, I guess we can consider this a market survey of the intended customer.

 

$1,207,200,000 for the first project.

$833,750,000 for the second.

About 2b in total. More or less city 40 for me. 

 

Yeah no I'll take the city. You can just keep these tbh, nuke turreting isn't enjoyable (and never was), the part where someone on the losing side of wars could do anything more interesting or enjoyable than login once a day are long, long gone. I mostly don't even bother. Hell, I don't even remember to have to decide not to bother to begin with, because it's just so goddamn boring. Might as well just lock my account for a month, same level of activity just about lol.

Given c40 is now at best the starting point of being a whale. That probably is a good thing, as for the rest not everyone has the same gameplay style.

[lightside]

I am very much agasint the nuke projects. We need changes to push the meta away from nuke turreting. Having every global war end up with 1 side nuke turreting after 1 round is just flat out boring. We shouldn't add things thats just going to encourage that more.

[Chad]

4 minutes ago, lightside said:

I am very much agasint the nuke projects. We need changes to push the meta away from nuke turreting. Having every global war end up with 1 side nuke turreting after 1 round is just flat out boring. We shouldn't add things thats just going to encourage that more.

To ask a simple question to replace it with what?

[Raphael]

#LetPerksDie

 

I'd like to see anything that adds more interaction between players in the game, so I voted for color blocs. The alliance/nation decisions are cool too though. Projects look cool.

 

Maybe rework nuke damage to be a percentage of infra instead of flat numerical amounts.

[Shiho Nishizumi]

Further buffing nukes and missiles seems unnecessary (even if by means of fairly pricey projects). Missiles in particular have already gotten several buffs over the years, and both benefitted greatly from the updeclare range increase.

Nukes and missiles have always destroyed a fixed amount of infrastructure in contrast to conventional militaries' always scaling infra destroyed (which I presume is what they're being contrasted to). I don't see the particular relevance of this given that they don't compete with each other in this regard; you use missiles and nukes exclusively when you're losing, while tanks/planes/ships either get used when you're winning (nukes/missiles wouldn't even be considered), or as suicide when you're losing (they'd either be followed up with nukes and missiles, or you would use the ones you recently built on the wars which you can't touch conventionally), or alternatively, flashing (you usually have a separate target for nukes/missiles, both due to how flashing works, and because MAP's would get tight if your flash target was also your nuke/missile target).

Fixed amount of infra destroyed doesn't mean fixed damage either. It depends on how tall your target's infra is. It was already the case that larger nations would have better targets than smaller nations by virtue of who they could reach (simply put, it scaled to some extent), but the updeclare range increase made it possible to hit targets with even taller infra which were otherwise inaccessible.

In other words, that formula change already addressed any potential scaling off, by virtue of letting you hit targets which were previously unreachable, with these not being people that you would be hitting with a conventional military anyways.

With that said, the other suggested changes do seem interesting; changing how color blocs work would probably be the easiest one to code with a more immediate impact on things, although nation/alliance decisions could be a neat little addition to change things a bit.

On perks: Would it be you either pick military or econ perks, or would it be a matter of mutually exclusive picks within those separate branches (as an example, Integrated vs Dispersed Fire Support, and Concentrated vs Dispersed industry in HoI4).

[im317]

#LetPerksDie

 

whale here, c47

that is super expensive for 1 extra nuke per day in a drawn out war. i will just go to 30+ nukes on hand instead.

the other project is more interesting to me if im reading it right. it gives you the chance to try and use a missile to destroy 2 targeted improvements? being able to have a chance to take out 2 military improvements in 1 shot seems like it could be valuable. the issue is the cost and the high odds of having the missile shot down. how about we make it something actually worth it and give a second roll if the missile/nuke is shot down. let it have a chance to do half infra damage and take out just 1 improvement if the second chance roll hits

Edited February 9 by im317

[The Titan]

I am actually against this in general. We shouldn't really be buffing the "loser" weapons, if anything we should be nerfing them. Perhaps a balance if this update is rolled out:

• You cannot build nukes or missiles while blockaded
• You cannot launch a nuke while another nation has air superiority over your nation

Also, I think we should raise both the upkeep costs and construction costs of nukes. Right now, they're just lobbed at enemies when they're losing, which is both unrealistic and discouraging fighting even more. If an alliance is winning, they shouldn't be getting nuked off the face of the earth, it doesn't make sense. 

And, if these projects are created, I think we should be able to kill more nukes/missiles with spies.

[Rageproject]

33 minutes ago, The Titan said:

I am actually against this in general. We shouldn't really be buffing the "loser" weapons, if anything we should be nerfing them. Perhaps a balance if this update is rolled out:

• You cannot build nukes or missiles while blockaded
• You cannot launch a nuke while another nation has air superiority over your nation

Also, I think we should raise both the upkeep costs and construction costs of nukes. Right now, they're just lobbed at enemies when they're losing, which is both unrealistic and discouraging fighting even more. If an alliance is winning, they shouldn't be getting nuked off the face of the earth, it doesn't make sense. 

And, if these projects are created, I think we should be able to kill more nukes/missiles with spies.

Honestly one thing that should be considered is the barrier to entry on Missiles and Nukes. You should have to reach a certain city tier before being capable. And probably have basic projects. I agree with the fact it’s too easy to just lob missiles/nukes simply to be disruptive. 

[Paralaxus]

All are great ideas. Looking forward to the development, hopefully sooner than later. 

 

[BlueDippy]

Heya thought I’d drop this here I think it’s a good idea to this day

 

 

[Rainforest]

guiding satelite looks like a good idea, wish it 'mini version' be available for non-whale 

[Krampus]

21 hours ago, lightside said:

I am very much agasint the nuke projects. We need changes to push the meta away from nuke turreting. Having every global war end up with 1 side nuke turreting after 1 round is just flat out boring. We shouldn't add things thats just going to encourage that more.

Thats also a reason why the price is relatively high insofar project prices go. It is clear cut intended to be an expensive, that only a fraction of people will buy. 

Consider this: what you are proposing will not be implemented in this decade. You're asking for a big, meta changing update, whereas the most we can do is wait months to code some light commerce / project rework in. However, it is true that due to the "R1-and-done" nature of wars you mentioned, the biggest whales get out of wars with very little damage received, on the winning side. The war score change went some way in terms of fixing this (as seen in the last global), but when you account for inflation, it's more like a band-aid fix and not a real long term fix to the core problem. Speaking bluntly, this nuke project is also basically a band-aid. We can't fix the core gameplay mechanics, so this is the best we will get. 

In my view, this is the best middle-ground. The project won't be cheap enough where people mass buy it (like NRF) while also allowing increased damage for the losing side of a conflict. 1bn for a project is on the expensive side, such that not even alliances will be able to mass buy it. 

[lightside]

2 hours ago, Krampus said:

Thats also a reason why the price is relatively high insofar project prices go. It is clear cut intended to be an expensive, that only a fraction of people will buy. 

Consider this: what you are proposing will not be implemented in this decade. You're asking for a big, meta changing update, whereas the most we can do is wait months to code some light commerce / project rework in. However, it is true that due to the "R1-and-done" nature of wars you mentioned, the biggest whales get out of wars with very little damage received, on the winning side. The war score change went some way in terms of fixing this (as seen in the last global), but when you account for inflation, it's more like a band-aid fix and not a real long term fix to the core problem. Speaking bluntly, this nuke project is also basically a band-aid. We can't fix the core gameplay mechanics, so this is the best we will get. 

In my view, this is the best middle-ground. The project won't be cheap enough where people mass buy it (like NRF) while also allowing increased damage for the losing side of a conflict. 1bn for a project is on the expensive side, such that not even alliances will be able to mass buy it. 

It wouldn't take decades. While I would like a major war revamp I do agree we probably wont get one as it will be hard to get the community to agree. That doesn't mean we should add more things to encourage nuke turreting, it also doesn't mean we can't make small changes to the war system to encourage fighting back more rather then just nuke turreting.

To give an easy example, just look at how the war system handles RNG and casualty's. While I don't know how the code handles it, from what I can tell the game handles RNG and then from that hands out either immense victory's, normal victory's,  or failures. Those victory's then effect the causality rate. The problem with this is discourages come backs, as once someone is winning a war and always getting immense victory's it means they 1. Have a larger military and 2. Are getting the bonus causality's that comes with immense victory's. This double effect discourages come backs. A better way to handle this would be to remove the causality effect from the victory type and just add it back into the initial RNG. This would be mean that the initial battles at the start of a war would play out exactly the same with little change, however when one side is losing they would have a slightly better ability to come back, this is because while they would be taking more loses as they have a smaller army, they wouldn't be getting directly punished by the rng system like how it currently works with the victory types.

[Keegoz]

17 hours ago, lightside said:

It wouldn't take decades. While I would like a major war revamp I do agree we probably wont get one as it will be hard to get the community to agree. That doesn't mean we should add more things to encourage nuke turreting, it also doesn't mean we can't make small changes to the war system to encourage fighting back more rather then just nuke turreting.

To give an easy example, just look at how the war system handles RNG and casualty's. While I don't know how the code handles it, from what I can tell the game handles RNG and then from that hands out either immense victory's, normal victory's,  or failures. Those victory's then effect the causality rate. The problem with this is discourages come backs, as once someone is winning a war and always getting immense victory's it means they 1. Have a larger military and 2. Are getting the bonus causality's that comes with immense victory's. This double effect discourages come backs. A better way to handle this would be to remove the causality effect from the victory type and just add it back into the initial RNG. This would be mean that the initial battles at the start of a war would play out exactly the same with little change, however when one side is losing they would have a slightly better ability to come back, this is because while they would be taking more loses as they have a smaller army, they wouldn't be getting directly punished by the rng system like how it currently works with the victory types.

We've been through this plenty of times. All of them have hit dead ends.

We don't have the manpower either to overhaul the war system. We're probably pushing it with the current proposals as is.

[Krampus]

On 2/9/2024 at 7:15 PM, im317 said:

that is super expensive for 1 extra nuke per day in a drawn out war

Not at all. If you are getting rolled, considering the average global war takes around a month, an extra nuke per day doubles your potential damages. if you are nuking anything above 2.25k, you'd get your roi in the first global. It's a 100% increase in the damage you deal while being rolled. For that, 1bn might even be on the cheap side for a "drawn out war" as you said, assuming that lasts longer than the average global.

Edited February 11 by Krampus

[lightside]

On 2/11/2024 at 2:15 AM, Keegoz said:

We've been through this plenty of times. All of them have hit dead ends.

We don't have the manpower either to overhaul the war system. We're probably pushing it with the current proposals as is.

Ya as I said above I doubt we will ever do a complete war rework and that's fine I guess. Though as I mentioned above small changes like I suggested would hardly be time consuming and would be possible. In any case if time is an issue then that is even more of a reason to not waste time on adding projects/changes that encourage nuke turtling. 

[Indger]

Cost too high for Nuclear Launch Facility

[Jesus Prime]

I like the colour council and what it can possibly do. Such as example each turn all alliance leaders on the colour(or members) can vote on various actions like embargoing another colour completely or having a tariff on another colours resource. Additionally maybe there could be different events that increase resource production at the cost of increased pollution in those in the colour or increased money for additional raws consumption.

 

However, the biggest problem with the council is the voting aspect.