Remove Exact Monetary Figures from Awards Page

[Nick GhostWolf]

Most players prefer to keep their warchest information a secret.  However, there's a problem with this, affecting anyone who tends to be good at building.  This is from the awards screen as of about 5:45AM CST (server time).  This

 

From this, the warchests of individuals can be precisely determined in real time, provided that individual is in both of these award categories.  While this may not affect ALL players, anyone who is running a high dollar nation (think top 10% players - the core of this game) could inadvertantly have their exact cast on hand calculated by anyone smart enough to pay attention.  For example, from the results as of right now, by subtracting the value from the "money spent" field from the "money earned" field for nations present in BOTH record categories we can determine the following:

 

Freedom Nation has $91,305,361 in cash reserves.

The Last Squirrel has $4,291,168 in cash reserves.

ragnar has $49,826,204 in cash reserves.

 

Additionally, this can be used to set upper and lower limits for warchests of anyone else in these award categories.

 

Nations whose names appear in the "most money earned" category can have the lower limit for their warchest calculated.  As an example, Glanton Gang is listed as having earned $658,933,386.  Since the nation is NOT listed on the "most money spent", by taking the lowest value present in the other field and subtracting 1 (this is arbitrary, but in any kind of practice a few cents doesn't matter a bit), and then subtracting that number from Glanton Gang's known money earned, we can establish that the nation MUST have at least $157,475,905 in cash reserves.  The same formula applied to Krypton yields a lower limit of $141,397,319.

 

The reverse can be applied to find the upper limits in cash reserves of nations who appear in the "most money spent" record but not the "most money earned" record.  By taking the lowest (#5 ranked) value present in the "most money spent" field, subtracting 1 (again arbitrary, but again cents don't really matter here), we can determine that Union Algo's warchest CANNOT be higher than $94,445,738 and that Wolverine CANNOT be higher than $103,036,514.

 

This strikes me as unfair, as any nation who ends up on these two top 5 lists can have information about their warchest inadvertently revealed through simple subtraction.  A basic nuy close estimate can be done in anyone who is paying attention's head in about 5 seconds, provided they know how to subtract.

THEREFORE

I propose that the exact numeric figures for cash earned, cash spent, and any other "cash specific" prizes be made invisible for the purpose of the Current Round Awards feeds, by default.  Optionally, a feature could be added that would allow a player to "opt in" to the exact amount being shared; otherwise, the value should not be given, in the interest of warchest confidentiality.  There is precedent for this, in that some elements of the "nation activity" feature in SE were made visible only to the nation's owner due to the possibility that warchest information could be accidentally revealed.

Edited October 18, 2015 by Nick GhostWolf

[DevilDog]

I agree with you 100% on this Nick.

Scary part is for anyone on both lists when they do their build and collect cycle as that is when they are the most vulnerable to attacks.

Which is well shown by your observations and numbers above.

 

The names could still be published but losing the dollar amounts would be a great idea.

 

I even usually joke while at war if someone tries the "gather intel" mission on me that they could have saved the money and have just looked at the awards page if they were curious as to my war chest.  :P

[Staccs]

I've been doing this for rounds. Darn you nick. :P

[skaullin]

Me too! I've been getting info off this list for a couple of rounds as well.  Nick!!!!!!! lol