Right now we have nations deleted from inactivity at 20 days idle. This is on the surface a good idea, but gameplay elements evolved to make this not an optimal condition anymore. Tieing it to tax collection was also fairly logical to start with.

On the surface inactivity deletions are pretty straight forward, you don't want a million dead accounts taking up sever space (and hogging names) however backcollecting is a nearly universal growth strategy now, Nations who are very much active don't collect taxes as a deliberate build up strategy, and as the strategy becomes more effective the longer you do it, most of us flirt with the deadline as closely as possible to get the maximum benefit. This unfortunately gives us a side effect. Active players are losing very old nations accidentally. All it takes is one minor problem out of your control (net goes down, power outage, work or family emergency, ect) anything that prevents you from logging on and collecting and suddenly years of work can vanish.

Simply extending the idle time is not the answer, since a longer time just means bigger back collections we'd always be riding the limit to get the most out of our back collections, and of course it'd change the game dynamics anyway.

The solution would therefor be limiting tax collections to 20 days at most (new days stop accruing after 20) to prevent any changes to actual game mechanics, and then tying activity to something else. Someones last login would be fairly straight forward, an extra option in your nation, a link you click to reset your idle time is another.

The idea is to get a way for people to back collect without also risking accidental deletion.

I've been thinking about this issue quite a bit lately and I would love to find some kind of solution to this age old problem. The issue that I see with your suggestion is that a player who's not really interested in playing CN could setup multiple trade agreements and then leave their nation sitting idle indefinitely while their friends or multis reap the trade benefits. They could login to update their last activity but they'd never have to actually play the game. (Though I guess by them doing nothing but collecting taxes they could do the same thing now.) Then there's the issue of having the game filled with mostly inactive players. At least with the current setup you know that every nation in the game is going to be active and therefore get your messages, trade offers, aid agreements, etc.. within at least the next 20 days.

Needs more discussion.

Perhaps make it so that both paying bills and collecting taxes can reset your idle time. That way if you're back collecting, you could pay bills so that people are aware that you're active and so that you don't risk deletion, and then collect taxes later on. And if you're in bill lock and can't pay your bills, you can collect taxes to stay active.

I would think that bills could be a good tie to activity. 20 days without paying bills. When back-collecting, it's not uncommon to log in every day to pay bills, and for those who don't, well, it wouldn't be very hard to convince them to if this change was made. So you could be sitting at a 20 day tax collection with only 5 days since your last bill payment. Even if you can't log in that day, you're still covered. If you've really left the game alone for 20 days, the bills would reflect that, and it wouldn't really affect back-collecting.

You could tie it to tax collections OR bills. Both actions could reset the inactivity timer. I don't see a problem with having people back-collect for several months if they choose.



This would mean you could force others into deletion by bill-locking them. Bad.

Activity currently determines ability to loot or destroy, to make certain types of purchases, and other things I am sure.

This would act as a patch which would mean you have two timers: one for amount of days to collect (20) and another for days since last bill payment, which is already tracked when you go to your bill payment screen and it tells you how many days you have not paid bills. If you change activity to be based on the last bill payment, would all the other things that rely on "last activity" have to be changed as well, I would assume so.

What about removing the incentive to risk deletion by running out the activity clock until the last (19th) day?

Edit - I realized that changing the activity to be based on last bill payment would not affect bill lock (because it would remove bill lock).

Clearly its advantageous to back collect as long as possible or there wouldn't be the issue of nations getting deleted at 20 days inactivity when they really intended to back collect and continue playing. Allowing players to back collect indefinitely would surely create problems.

On the other hand, if tax collections are limited to 20 days then there would be the problem of bills continuing to stack up creating big bill lock issues.

Just make it 20 days from the last login.

Well, imagine having 100 days of taxes saved up, and then someone switches your tax rate, DEFCON level and threat level.

Sh*t!

You could tie saved up tax collections to spy defenses (The longer it has been since you collected taxes, the weaker your defense) to make it even more interesting.

That doesn't address any of my concerns.

And that potentially creates new problems as I seem to recall concerns that if activity was based on your last login and that was displayed on your nation display screen, as it would need to be in order to find active trade partners, then it would allow other players to more easily target those who are offline for raids.

If someone did that while you were 19 days inactive it would still be very punishing yet players still back collect for maximum gain.

Not nearly as punishing as 100 days. There's a point where it becomes too risky. All it takes is 1 rogue. And if spy defenses are reduced with each day of uncollected taxes, that rogue could go around spying on people that have been back collecting a ton for quite a while before he gets caught.

The fact that these types of changes are now unable to be changed back until your next tax collection is new (well Defcon can be changed, so I find it odd that it was mentioned here), so this type of thing hasn't really occurred yet.

Anyway, can someone explain to me why back collecting for 100 days would be beneficial? I mean, first of all you'd have to save up enough money to pay 100 days of bills (not difficult, I know), and even if you did that, you would only gain a couple million from the fact that you didn't have to drop/buy improvements as often. If your nation is at at a point where a couple million would make a large difference, instead of back collecting for 100 days, you might as well back collect for 20 while spending the 80 days of bills you saved up on infra and collecting.

Here's what I'd do.

Make nations detete if they don't collect for 25 days, but make it so you can't stack more than 20 days taxes.

People can still go for the optimum stacks, but now there's less risk because if something goes wrong or you forget on day 20, you have 5 days to remember/organize something.

There's no real disruption to years of gameplay, as there's no incentive to stack past 20 days, you would lose money by going past 20, but offers a little window before the nations get deleted

You could pay lower bills for 100 days, spend the rest of your money on infra, then collect the taxes with your new infra.

This would probably solve the problem and would require very minimal code changes. Just cap collections at 20 days and change the update script to delete at 25 days instead of 20. Are there any concerns about this?

Would the inactivity looting rule change from 13 days inactivity to 18 days inactivity? Potentially this increases the number of days people back collect from a "safe" 19 days to what was always considered a risk before of 20 days, just adding that one extra day of back collecting.

Edit: would also require you to update all the information index and such, and would the warnings that pop up at 10 days inactivity and 18 days inactivity be changed?

I came into this topic very skeptical but I think that is a viable solution that will work, for whatever my opinion is worth.

Yeah, I didn't think it first.

Very good suggestion.

Edit: Wow, my idea was said Earlier!

I support 20 day collections and 25 day deletions!

I like this too, and I really can't see any problems.

I like that idea, seem like a good solution...

Lets say you lose a trade on the 20th day of back collecting. Could you try to find a new trade during those 5 days, or would your tax collection be locked at what it was without the trade?

I would suspect that the value itself can still change in the 20-25 day game period (as a result of trades, wonders, etc); however the amount of days themselves will not increase beyond 20.

yes to 20 day capped collections with a 25 day deletion timer.

What do you say about this idea?
just have buttom that it say: click for being active.
and you can save your taxe for 25 or 20 or more.

sounds like a neat way to skip out on a nuke anarchy collection.

Good concern.


The idea

is good in principle.

I don´t know how much coding it would need to freeze the nation at day 19 and reopen it after you collected taxes.
Similiar to the 2 days paid bills rule, you login at day 24 and you can´t buy and change any setting before you haven´t collected. After collecting you will be inactive for 5 days and can buy and change anything.
This way any penalty that was active at day 19 due to military/navy or spy operation will still be active at day 24.

If that suggestion is to much coding maybe just cap the tax collection at day 19 and run the deletion script at day 21. This way any nuke anarchied nations gets 2 extra days to ride it out but everybody will adapt to that and 2 days arn´t that much but still enough for people to take action.

Personally, I'd say the penalty for having those days past 20 effectively being $0 income is enough hurt. And if you're concerned with someone coming out of nuclear anarchy on, say, day 23, nuke him on day 23 so he stays there. Anarchy maintained, plus he's had 3 days of $0 tax revenue.

I do like the 25-day idea for deletion, to be honest.

This, however, will have a second impact--a positive one to most folks, tho. This would mean a slight extension on a trade, in cases where a nation really was abandoned. Think this would be unbalancing?

This.

No need to overcomplicate a simple idea. The only difference between a guy waiting till day 24 to escape nuclear anarchy to a guy now waiting to day 19 to escape nuclear anarchy is if he escapes on day 24 he's lost 4 days taxes as opposed to losing nothing on day 19.

Uhmm, there must be a misunderstanding. I thought you won´t "loose" the 5 days, i thought after you collected you are inactive for 5 days.
Well then if you really loose 5days of taxes it´s a sort of penatly, yes but it´s not even close to collected taxes in nuclear anarchy. I would happily exchange those 5 days loss against the option to collect out of anarchy.

Anyway, as Jack Shepard stated


The result will be you need to nuke a guy now at 19/20 instead of 13/14 to make sure he has to collect in anarchy plus the 5days loss in taxes. I can life with that.

I support Jack Shepard's idea, although paying bills should also make you active again (althoug there would still be a 20 day limit on back-collecting).

Typo

I see no concerns but I would like to know how badly it hurts your nation after 20 days? how bad would 21 days be vs. 24?


General DRU ZOD

Your nation isn't hurt, but you just don't get any benefits during that time.

Edit: Sorry double post.

The difference is how many days of taxes you lose--one versus four. And Steelrat, aside from the latest one, how often do wars go on until day 20? I'm asking since I've only been in one genuine slugfest.

How about if you are up to date on bills you can remain at 20 days inactive theoretically for as long as it takes, until you run out of money for bills, but you don't get more days of collection out of it?

This seems fairly ideal, current back collecting mechanics remain the same, the risk of accidental deletion is greatly lessened and there really isnt much room to abuse the changes. I could see this drastically lowering the number of accidental deletions.

up to 20 days of back collecting, and 3-5 more of inactivity in case something comes up.

I like it

I suppose it would fix the problem, though I guess the game could comprise of more inactive people. But what Im really concerned of is the limits. This might be too thorough, but it seems people are getting too complacent with their backcollecting days and everything. There might be a time hypothetically when people will be getting deleted from the proposed times and start asking for more.

If the issue is for players that wait too long to get optimal collections, then cut collections to 15 days inactivity and deletion at 20. Any players that would get deleted have no excuse besides their inactivity for waiting too long, and it would even cut inflation some CN-wide.
And as I mentioned before, it wouldnt allow people to get used to even more inactivity time in CN.

I strongly support this suggested change. Please?

Only thing is that this disrupts years of gameplay. People who regularly stack past 15 days will have to change their schedule, and some may miss the change and lose days of money. 20 day maximum is good IMO, it lines up evenly with the 10days for aid slots.

No concerns, this is a good idea.

I like this idea quite a bit

Bill lock issues would only affect those in a losing war or those who are absolutely terrible at maintaining their nation. Even war-torn nations could receive aid to get out of bill lock if that's the situation they find themselves in after 20 days. Tax collection should be capped at 20 days, but nation deletion due to inactivity could be extended at least 5 days, creating a state of limbo which would hopefully be adequate time for an individual to find a way online to collect taxes. Bills would still mount during this time, but as long as they're not in Anarchy, ZI'd or whatever could affect their collection, they ought to be fine. Especially nations who hold warchests of at least 30 days of bills.


Edit: Looks like this was already suggested earlier in the thread. My bad for not reading through it all.

I like this idea a lot and don't have any concerns.

This thread is sad. I did suggest something like this. Exactly like this about 6 months ago and was rejected even after I tried talking to a few mods.

Implement this sooner and my friends won't get deleted. many of them quit.

sad.

But I like the changes though. If it were to happen.

Another solution might be to end the exploit that spawned back collecting. It's just a design flaw that allows you not to pay for your improvements.

Credit costs and collections each day. Then there's no more 'back collecting' and no more worries about running close to the line.

Focus game development on developing real strategic choices.

The whole concept of back collecting encourages a player not to interact with his game token (nation) and in some cases to the point where it is lost.

A five day grace period is a great idea. A hundred things can happen on your day 20 collection; Internet goes out, electricity goes out, tiger attacks, whatever. But cutting down the idea on the off chance that someone tries to fix their trades seems like an odd complaint. It's not a common occurence and the potential penalty is deletion, so it seems to be fair to me.