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What's on admin's mind


admin

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Since this is going to be a game development blog I'm going to try to frequent this as much as possible to let everyone know what I'm working on and what's to come for the game. This isn't to be taken as a place where I will make important announcements about the game, but rather just a friendly chat so don't hold me to what I post here.

- I'm currently reviewing options for a change to the war declaration range. I agree with just about everyone else that the war range needs to be narrowed down. The 50K+ rule is also outdated and I'm tired of having to review that setting every few months so I'm looking into options that will address that problem as well.

- Today I added some backend code that will start storing the global radiation level each day to later put into a chart. Not only will it be interesting to look at the daily changes in GRL but it will also help players to gauge trends for back tax collections. This idea was originally suggested by Hegemom Rob here.

- I'm thinking about changing the "Active in Last 60 Minutes" to an actual "User Online" indicator. The "Active in Last 60 Minutes" just shows when a person last collected and that isn't really helpful if you want to know if someone is actually online or not. My only reservation about this is that it might make players think that the 20 day inactivity rule for tax collections has changed which I AM NOT CHANGING. If I move forward with this I'm going to have to be sure to communicate clearly that the 20 day inactivity rule for tax collections is still in effect.

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In terms of the "User Online" idea, if what you are saying is that it will always say when someone is online, and when they are offline, I can see it having an effect on the timing of attacks. When launching an attack, it's difficult to tell if they are prepared for your attacks, and are sitting there waiting to re-buy soldiers. With this feature, rulers can time their attacks easier because they will be able to execute them when the other ruler is offline.

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It all sounds good to me :). The Online thing will perhaps make it too easy to surprise strike people, we will see. Perhaps there should be an improvement/wonder to hide your status. It certainly makes more sense than the current 'activity' though – presumably we will have a 'last active' and a 'last collected taxes' field.

And yes, there needs to be a big red warning that you must collect every 20 days!

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Eww, you all are right about the Online Status update. That would make things harder for the defender. Such an update would probably also cause more stress on the server as players try to keep their status active as much as possible so as to prevent attacks. Glad to have aired that out here, that's why this blog feature was a good idea.

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the obvious solution is to have a setting "hide online status". where the status would normally be would be replaced with "user has hidden online status" as not to make an attacker think the defender is simply not online.

i like the grl chart a lot.

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I think that the online indicator would be a negative change due to the difficulty it places on the defender.

Aside from that, I think the above changes are good ideas, and I look forward to seeing where they go.

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I was actually thinking about the war declaration thing the other day. I'm wondering whether basing it off of NS, it's based off of your relative rank in the game. Make it something like "You can only declare war on nations that are ranked +/- 5% of where you are." ie. If your nation was ranked at 10%, you could only declare (and be declared on) by nations between 5% and 15%. As with all ideas, I admit there's some problems with this one as well - (in regards to fluctuating nation numbers and large differences in the upper ranks).

Alternatively, perhaps the war range could also be narrowed to avoid large nations attacking excessively smaller ones. Instead of the current 50%/200% setup, it could be changed so you can declare on nations between 80% and 200% of your NS. This would allow a 10k nation to declare on any other nation between 8k NS and 20k NS, while the same nation could be attacked by any nation between 5k NS and 12.5k NS. This might address a recurring issue with a nation getting attacked by three nations that are double their size - far from a winable scenario.

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I like the idea, however I think allowing an attacker to see when you are online is just another advantage to the person who declares the war / is attacking. I think it would be a smart idea to have this new feature turned off when a nation is in war to keep some sort of unknown in the system or whatever. I honestly find it more fun to be attacking and then "AWW, DAMN, HE'S ONLINE!!!"

EDIT: Didn't see admin's response to this, however I think what I said is still valid.

In regards to what Gopher said, I like the percent rank idea, as well as making the lower bound a smaller range than the upper bound. Maybe a 3% below 5% above kind of a thing.

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Just create a big red warning (similar to the Change Password one I've been ignoring for over a year) immediately after logging in at 15 days or more inactivity that says --

"Any nation showing 20 days inactivity is liable to be deleted at any time. Please ensure you take the proper measures to collect taxes before reaching 20 days inactive or you will be deleted."

the little "inactive, collect taxes" thing that shows up at 10 days doesn't cut it

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Anyway you could add a feature of putting a nation into limbo after going 20 days inactive?

so like 10 days, where you can't collect taxes for, but don't have to pay bills

I've seen too many people just miss 20 days, and leave the game because they don't want to start over

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Any nation showing 20 days inactivity is liable to be deleted at any time. Please ensure you take the proper measures to collect taxes before reaching 20 days inactive or you will be deleted."

the little "inactive, collect taxes" thing that shows up at 10 days doesn't cut it

I agree with this. We don't need people Bama'ing

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Anyway you could add a feature of putting a nation into limbo after going 20 days inactive?

so like 10 days, where you can't collect taxes for, but don't have to pay bills

I've seen too many people just miss 20 days, and leave the game because they don't want to start over

I like that Idea, at day 20 your nation will be "freezed", an email to the registered account will be send telling the ruler you have "X days" until your nation will be finally deleted.

Freezing means when you log in again after X days your nation is 100% the same like at day 19, you have to pay bills for 19, tax collection for 19 etc. You won´t gain anything from your freezed time.

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How would you handle trades then?

I guess your nation's trading partners could still cancel/offer trades. But then, people who had trade drops on day 19, if they could have a few extra days to search for trades, probably would.

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As a developmental suggestion could you consider adding a new facet to the war system? We have tanks, planes, soldiers, ships, spies, and missiles. But we don't have artillery.

Artillery, the King of the Battlefield, could be bought much like aircraft and used to affect soldiers and tanks, unless they are under 20 percent and then it starts smashing infrastructure and tech.

K?

thanks.

think about it at least.

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What about a "fee based system" for reclaiming your nation after the 20 days. Between days 20-22, you can have your nation re-activated for a $10 fee/donation. At 23-30 days, a $20 fee/donation. Beyond 30 days, your nation is lost. Unlike traditional donations, there would be no inf/tech/land bonus, the user would simply get their nation back and not have to start from scratch (also, drop taxes to zero or the 19-day level).

This would be a win-win for both parties. CN would make money and the user would get their nation back. Afterall, there would be work involved in un-deleting a nation, so no reason not collect a small fee.

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