130 replies to this topic

[admin]

This was posted in the infras/land screen changes thread, thought I would move it over to its own thread.

Well,
since you're in the mood to improve many things: how about raising the
aid cap from 3M/4.5M to something around 4.5M/6M or, even unlimited
(that's a bit of a stretch, I am aware). It'd also be helpful if tech
could be raised from the current aiding rates.

 

Can't blame me for trying.

I'm going to predict that no one will object to this one?

[Avakael]

Eh... devils advocate time. Increasing them increases the expansion of NS ranges. These ranges really need to be contracted, not expanded. This current war is such a dumb affair because one group of people are winning in one NS range, and the other group of people are winning in the other, and there's exactly nothing that either side can do to change that. It's all too spread out- to the point of ridiculousness. I'd be all for completely doubling the size of FA packages, but I'd want to see the actual size (and maximum warchest sizes) of nations cut down to a maximum of something that a new player could be in fighting range of within a year (probably within 6 months if we double FA package sizes), and be properly tweaked out for(IE most of the war wonders) within 18-24 months. The figures I had in my head were 5k infra, 3k tech, 500m in cash and 5k land. Of course, that'd be it's own suggestion again, and if we actually looked at such a drastic change, we'd be reviewing those figures anyway.

Edited by Avakael, 11 March 2013 - 08:05 AM.

[killjoy123]

Unlimited? Thats a bit far.I say just double the amount. Makes rebuilding easier, tech deals go faster, and CN can grow again after this war blows everyone into oblivion.

[Instr]

4.5m/6m/100 is probably a safe quantity.

The problem with increasing aid limits is that you threaten to reduce the population of tech sellers, potentially crashing the tech market. If tech sellers make too much money off tech deals, they can get out of tech seller status too quickly, reduce the supply of tech sellers, and add to demand for tech sellers.

The trick is that after a certain infra point, tech deals become far less important as a way of obtaining income. For example, a 3m/50 deal yields an approximate 2.25-2.5m profit or 12.5m via . Over 20 days, a nation at 1k would make about, maybe 10 million (500k per day after bills), so such a nation would make more than half their income from tech selling.

 

A nation at 3k, however, which is the infra point with the best income for the amount of money invested, would make about 1.5m a day post bills and about 30m over 20 days, so only ~25% of income would come from selling tech. So you don't want to get players to build-up too quickly if you're concerned about the tech market.

 

Avakael's view is also not valid, because with an increase in tech transfer rates, you decrease the effective value of tech in high-tier nations, because then the time required to obtain that tech quantity is halved; Dulra's tech value is currently about 55,000 tech, which takes about 60 months to build up via donation deals. Changing the tech transfer rate to 100 means that it would only take 30 months to build up to his/her present value. Certain people might view this as not fair, but it helps to contribute to the leveling out of tech quantities.

Edited by Instr, 11 March 2013 - 08:48 AM.

[killjoy123]

4.5m/6m/100 is probably a safe quantity.

The problem with increasing aid limits is that you threaten to reduce the population of tech sellers, potentially crashing the tech market. If tech sellers make too much money off tech deals, they can get out of tech seller status too quickly, reduce the supply of tech sellers, and add to demand for tech sellers.

 

If someone gave me 6 mil Im going to give them 100 tech. Only difference between now and in the possible future is time.

[Samus]

If someone gave me 6 mil Im going to give them 100 tech. Only difference between now and in the possible future is time.

What happened to 3mil/100 tech deals :S

[Auctor]

Doing this in the middle of the war would really screw people up.

[killjoy123]

What happened to 3mil/100 tech deals :S

Tech sellers are going away. You want tech you play by there rules. And the rule is 3/50. I have only done 3/100 deals my nations span and that was for allies who needed tech

[Tom Marvolo Riddle]

Well, I would agree the cap needs to be raised. To me, the question is to where. Here is what I would suggest:

 

12 Million/200 Tech. The reason? Well, the current cash flow cannot halp a upper tier or middle nation. Although to that Higher tier, 12 mil is still not that much, it is enough to do minor purchases and will substantially help lower tier nations.

[Instr]

The problem with 12m/200 deals is that shifting the tech income for nations from 300 per 30 days to 600 per 30 days is already a big deal. You're basically proposing it so that with a sufficient or willing supply of sellers, I can reach 36,000 tech in 1 year.

[the rebel]

4.5m/6m/100 is probably a safe quantity.

The problem with increasing aid limits is that you threaten to reduce the population of tech sellers, potentially crashing the tech market. If tech sellers make too much money off tech deals, they can get out of tech seller status too quickly, reduce the supply of tech sellers, and add to demand for tech sellers.

 

Agree with the bold, though the rest of your post is just scaremongering as it will happen sooner or later regardless of the slight increase in the aid cap and then we will all just have to go back to using the intended "Technology" option on our own nations....

 

Doing this in the middle of the war would really screw people up.

 

Seconded...

[Instr]

The Rebel: we're already transitioning to a post-tech market system. in alliances have quite a few community members or friends who have effectively retired from the game, and these players just send tech upwards to their actual fighting nations. The problem with any major change, though, is that you risk changing the game in unpredictable ways; for example, if the entire game were to transition to a post-tech market system, how would this affect gameplay? If mass alliances could no longer rely on their new nations as sellers, would mass alliances still be interested in recruiting members? Would mass alliances successfully develop a surrogate system for tech selling?

GOONS and Umb, for instance, have tried alternative tech-trade systems, but the GOONs-UMB deals didn't work so well, because with new GOONS nations, they typically didn't hang around long enough to be productive for extended-duration deals and tended to go inactive randomly.

[Hereno]

The more tech that can be sent at once, the faster teching up becomes, but tech prices increase making tech dealing less profitable for smaller nations. Also, people don't like to waste aid slots by not sending the max amount. I don't see why we would simply multiply the arbitrary 3 or 50; it would be smarter, in my opinion, to go to an even 10 million and 100 tech. The reason being that most tech buying nations don't really have to worry about the increase in cost, however, 200 tech for 10 million is roughly in the middle of the current disputed 3m/50 and 3m/100 rates, leaving tech dealing approximately as profitable for sellers now, but also making rebuilding faster because of the larger amount of money that can be sent in any one aid package. Plus, the larger amount of initial cash means nations get bigger and make more money faster, which is fun for a new nation and makes them more likely to want to sell tech.

[ChairmanHal]

6 mill/9 mill, 4,000 troops, 100 tech (basically double what you can do now).  If you go any higher than that the economics people around here will have seizures.  Some in this thread are already verging on that.  

 

Now, if you are looking for a coding challenge...

 

Allow the aiding of aircraft (up to 50) and tanks (up to 400).  There are plenty of RL examples of nations using higher tech aircraft than they can possibly build with local resources, and nations that have tanks (well AFVs of all sorts) that they do not have the local tech/infrastructure/both to build.  Yes it would make fighting between small nations much more vicious.  Isn't it IRL?

Edited by ChairmanHal, 11 March 2013 - 10:05 AM.

[Diego18]

Increasing the cap will make bigger and smaller nations happier. The game is really slow right now, thats why people dont play much.

 

Also, as someone said before, what about adding planes and tanks?

[Banned]

Another viable option might be roughly doubling the number of available aid slots from 4/5/6 to 8/9/10. 

 

Doing so might encourage activity amongst newer players and older players alike with the need to find twice as many deals, and accomplishes the same end goal, which is allowing for ~ 2x the amount of aid to be processed.

[Prodigal Moon]

I think Hereno's 10 mil/100 tech (or even just 10 mil/50 tech) would be best. We're already seeing a weird situation where war in the upper tier involves getting ZI'd multiple times and rebuying thousands of infra. If the tech dealing process becomes much less restricted by aid slots then warfare is going to become even more goofy - basically just nuking each other's tech...which seems far removed from any sense of realism.

 

If you increase the cash limit alone then you naturally increase the efficiency of tech dealing.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Another viable option might be roughly doubling the number of available aid slots from 4/5/6 to 8/9/10. 

 

Doing so might encourage activity amongst newer players and older players alike with the need to find twice as many deals, and accomplishes the same end goal, which is allowing for ~ 2x the amount of aid to be processed.

 

This is a viable alternative to larger slots. There are some different ways, or a combination of ways this could be done:

 

Set aid as a function of money reserve. Minimum is 3 mil, but gradually increase the multiplier (as an example, 0.2) as cash reserves exceed a certain value (for example 10 mil). Then a nation that has 10 mil would be able to send 3.6 mil, and 100mil send 9 mil. The caps would be "unlimited" in the sense that you'd need to have unlimited money to send unlimited aid.

 

Set number of outgoing slots, and possibly incoming slots, as a function of money reserve (1 slot per 50mil, for example). Then a nation with a base of 6 slots and 300mil could send 12 aid packages.

 

Set number of slots or aid cap as a function of NS. High-NS nations that need cash aid can easily lose 3mil between the couch cushions. As of now, the aid system doesn't serve them at all outside of tech buying.

 

Moderately increade the aid cap. This is easiest to do, but could be kicking the can down the road as the top-NS bracket keeps moving up, making the increase less and less useful.

 

Uncap/dramatically raise aid and let the money flow free. This could lead to faster growth for lower-NS nations, obviously with diminishing returns at higher levels. Tech sellers may demand more, but it would be more likely that they just build up out of selling range.

 

Uncap aid slot usage. The NS-gap could widen as richer nations buy more tech, while the tech market gets a slight boost in profits. "Aid waterfalls" seen after GW1 would return, and alliances with good bank nations could fully rebuild from a war in under a month.

[Instr]

Doubling aid slots, I think, might be too complex a deal. For example, there are many active players who simply can't be arsed to buy even half their designated amount of tech.

 

And for the seller, using minimal tech exploits to minimize the amount of tech they have to send out, buying having to support 5 different buyers already requires a substantial amount of activity. Back when I was doing tech, I had the misfortune of having to remind 6k/10 days worth of tech sellers to buy up to 50 and I assure you, this wasn't particularly fun.

 

====

 

I think we basically have 3 numbers that pop up. I'm very conservative and would like to see 4.5/6/100 as a tech quantity, but Chairman Hal would like 6/9/100 instead. Hereno and others would like even more aggressive numbers at 10m/100.

 

What we can do is to do this in stages. Change the aid quantity to either 4.5/6/100 or 6/9/100, and then observe the changes that result from the modified aid system. If the gameplay changes are positive, and it appears that further adjustments alongside the same lines would be even more positive, change the aid system to 6/9/100 or 10m/100. If the changes seem to be just right, or it appears that further extending the aid system would result in deleterious effects, then keep the aid quantity at 4.5/6/100 or 6/9/100.

 

You don't have to do everything at once, you can be incremental and experimental.

[Geerland]

I would agree with inst in that 4.5m/6m/100 is about the right number.