[Zardoz]

I suggested this in a different thread with mulitple ideas, and got this response as a private message:

Thanks for your recent war suggestions in the suggestion box, they have at this time been rejected however. Trouble with submitting lots of ideas in one thread is that good ones get rejected with bad ones, and the cheaper infrastructure rebuilding idea might be worth discussing. So if you wanted you could re-submit that one to see if it gets through on its own?

Taking the suggestion at face value, here it goes.

Make rebuilding infrastructure cheaper than buying it for the first time.
Consider what would happen if you had 4000 Infrastructure and found out your alliance is on the wrong side of the meta game, and now your on the fast track to Zero Infrastructure. If you are brought back down to zero, you basically have a few options. Rebuilding may be an option, but if the war is protracted, you may not get very far once you leave peace mode. It also takes a very long time to build up your infrastructure to a particularly high level. This in turn leads to very long periods of doing nothing but buying infra, some tech, and the occasional improvement. After a particularly crushing loss, there is a real temptation to just walk away from the game.

I suggest we implement a 'high water mark' for Infrastructure. If a nation had built up to 4000 Infrastructure, rebuilding up to that point should be cheaper. This would reward longtime players of the game, and it would make players less hesitant to get involved in wars. It also takes some of the sting out of being busted down to Zero Infra. I would make it up to 50% cheaper to rebuild infrastructure. This may be tied to an improvement (FEMA / Refugee camp?), at 10% per improvement. It should only apply to infrastructure levels below the high water mark.

END COMMUNICATION

[EvenStar]

I'm curious to see what the community thinks of this one. How would this affect game aspects such as sentencing people to ZI?

[jackyseto123]

Although I somewhat would enjoy this with me being a Bank Manager and having to direct money to bigger nations to rebuild their nations is extremely difficult because it would usually cost over $100,000,000 to rebuild all of their Infrastructure. But I also don't agree with this because when I ZI someone, I would like to keep it that way for as long as the war lasts, and it would be hard to keep my ZIee that way.

Maybe like it would only be 25% cheaper if you were at war with someone?

[PorkPotPie]

Either one, they both sound good. Raiders(I'm speaking for the lower nations here) are a problem for some of us >.> . Sure the amount of loss isn't that great, but it still hurts the younger nations. I think that the 50% should be for the nations above X NS or X infra level. The 25% might come in handy for the smaller nations because while it is cheaper when you are younger, it still takes a chunk out of our income.

[danizduhman]

jackyseto123, on Aug 29 2008, 05:34 PM, said:

Although I somewhat would enjoy this with me being a Bank Manager and having to direct money to bigger nations to rebuild their nations is extremely difficult because it would usually cost over $100,000,000 to rebuild all of their Infrastructure. But I also don't agree with this because when I ZI someone, I would like to keep it that way for as long as the war lasts, and it would be hard to keep my ZIee that way.

Maybe like it would only be 25% cheaper if you were at war with someone?

This.

4000 infra is quite an achievement for most players, once they make the 3999.99 infra jump, more improvements become available, or, a wonder could be made.

During war time, to keep the ZI, it is only lowered by 25%. But in times of peace, and peace mode, 50%.

[Kielmog]

The idea of infrastructure is that it entails, the highways, buildings, and overall developments of a nation's internal systems. It should be easier to repair and rebuild than to develop and layout for the first time. I like the idea of recording th maximum and making rebuilding cost less than venturing out into new infrastructure frontiers. It's still simple and makes the overall game more realistic as a political nation simulator.

[Janquel]

My sentiment is that, for the most part, it already is. As you buy infrastructure, you open up financial improvements/wonders, which increase your comparative income the second time around, allowing you to make more with less and rebuild faster. Mind you, this is more noticable at the lower ranges compared to the upper ones, where financial bonuses are fewer and further in between.

That being said, I don't really have anything against this explicitly.

[o ya baby]

Great idea. But make sure to use the figures from before the great curbstomping, so I ca get my 8k infra back ;D

[Zardoz]

If the rebuilding were tied to an improvement, it would handily address the desire of making the rate different for more developed nations. Younger nations would be better off simply building Factories, which affect all infrastructure purchases. Older nations would be able to buy as many of the improvement as they saw prudent.

I like danizduhman's suggestion that the rebuild cost modifier only be applied outside of wars. It makes sense from a simulation perspective, and it prevents massively powerful nations from easily negating the damage inflicted by their opponents.

The primary intention of the suggestion is that it makes the game a great deal less stagnant. The greatest benefit would be for nations that are at threat from Nuclear weapons when they lack such weapons themselves. If you spend a year and a half playing this game, get to the point where your almost ready to attain Nukes, and then get busted down hard, there is a real temptation to simply walk away from the game. One side effect is that it would allow the advanced features of the game to become more accessible in general. This is a good thing, since if your going to put a feature of the game, you would probably want as many people as possible to be able to use it.

This kind of change would be the most beneficial to long time players of the game who actively engage in wars, or want to engage in wars.

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[Andy Rooney]

Getting hurt is a reality and were the game based on reality then rebuilding would have inflation factored into it and rebuilding would be more expensive and not less expensive. Part of the reason to avoid war and engage in diplomacy is the cost of rebuilding and I think it adds to the game. And if this were implemented then a lot of alliances would respond by making zi sentences last longer so I don't think the change would really help anyone nor would it make the game more realistic.

[jackyseto123]

danizduhman, on Aug 29 2008, 11:01 PM, said:

This.

4000 infra is quite an achievement for most players, once they make the 3999.99 infra jump, more improvements become available, or, a wonder could be made.

During war time, to keep the ZI, it is only lowered by 25%. But in times of peace, and peace mode, 50%.

It's not much of an achievement for me Lol.
I'm at around 3500 Infrastructure and would jump past 4,000 once I start buying Infrastructure again.
Also, passing 4,000 Infrastructure isn't much of an achievement here because we have a program that jumps us from 1,000 Infrastructure to 3,500 Infrastructure in 20 days so that means that if we can do it, everybody can do it. So maybe 4,500 - 5,000 Infrastructure to have a reduction?

Also, again I disagree, I believe Hippies shouldn't receive the same bonuses.
If you are in a war - 25% decrease
Peace time - 50% Decrease
Peace Mode - 10% decrease

[KingSuck]

This is a great suggestion; at the moment i think that nations are far too easy to destroy when compared to how hard they are to build up.

[Zardoz]

Andy Rooney, on Aug 29 2008, 07:33 PM, said:

Getting hurt is a reality and were the game based on reality then rebuilding would have inflation factored into it and rebuilding would be more expensive and not less expensive. Part of the reason to avoid war and engage in diplomacy is the cost of rebuilding and I think it adds to the game. And if this were implemented then a lot of alliances would respond by making zi sentences last longer so I don't think the change would really help anyone nor would it make the game more realistic.

The simulation side of things could be argued either for or against my suggestion. The meta game aspects of alliances choosing to extend the duration of a ZI sentence do not really concern me, though they are worth discussing.

I say the biggest argument in favor of the idea is the game play benefit. Building up to a decently high level of Infrastructure takes a long time, and the fear of being busted downward in a failed attack is a disincentive to actually play the game in what I believe to be the intended manner; building a nation to kick the asses of other nations. Regardless of realism, I am convinced that any change to the game that could make nations more active is a good thing. You are entitled to the opinion that trying to avoid war and using diplomacy to avoid the cost associated with a serious military defeat is part of the appeal of the game. I happen to emphatically disagree.

Once you get to the point of being a mid level power, the game gets very stagnant, since all you do is just buy Infrastructure and twiddle your thumbs until someone kicks of a game wide world war. And many players try very hard to prevent such a war simply because they are afraid of having to spend months of real time rebuilding lost infrastructure when they were just weeks away from Nukes, or whatever Wonder they were building up to. This proposed feature will be of great benefit to any players who want to engage in wars but do not care much for the forum and alliance based meta game.

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[Andy Rooney]

KingSuck, on Aug 29 2008, 06:05 PM, said:

This is a great suggestion; at the moment i think that nations are far too easy to destroy when compared to how hard they are to build up.

Which is very realistic. RL Nations take generations to build and can be destroyed in an afternoon anymore.

Nagasaki before and after getting nuked.

[ender land]

I would be a fan of having the game remember your highest infra level and making all infra costs below that -25%.

That would be a great way to increase the gameplay element of this game.

[PorkPotPie]

Yeah, but how much memory would that take on the servers and memory blocks?

[Doctor Wily]

I think that this is an excellent suggestion.
As it is, players can literally spend years building their nations and lose it all in a matter of weeks, if not days. It is very demoralizing to spend so much time building something just to lose it. I think the game loses many players because of this.
I don't see how the ZI game would change much at all. Few people are sentenced to ZI to begin with, and even fewer are actually reduced all the way to zero infrastructure. Sentencing someone to ZI is more of a declaration that they are a life-long enemy of the alliance, than anything else. And still, a 25% reduction to infra cost isn't gonna stop three nations twice the size of their target from grinding it into dust.
I'm thinking that the actual infra cost reduction should be greater, the greater one's peak infrastructure was. For instance, if someone was in the 4K range they may receive a 25% reduction, while someone that was in the 5K range may receive a 30% reduction, while someone that was the 14K range may receive a reduction of 50% or more.

[Zardoz]

PorkPotPie, on Aug 29 2008, 11:19 PM, said:

Yeah, but how much memory would that take on the servers and memory blocks?

A single 32 bit value for each nation. Based on the unsorted nation rankings, there are currently 3716 nations. That would mean taking an extra 14864 bytes, or an extra 14 kilobytes.

Implementation of the change should not be too hard either. You only need to add a bit of extra code to the part of the game responsible for buying infrastructure.

But, while I am a programmer, I am not well informed on the specifics for how Cybernations is written and maintained.

END COMMUNICATION

[Amoshi]

Andy Rooney, on Aug 29 2008, 07:33 PM, said:

Getting hurt is a reality and were the game based on reality then rebuilding would have inflation factored into it and rebuilding would be more expensive and not less expensive.

Not to mention demolition costs, if the building/highway is beyond repair. What is saved on an architect becomes the cost of a bulldozer.

I'm all for the suggestion, though.

[JoshuaR]

This is probably a good suggestion, just to keep people playing.