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Some insight into my resource fanaticism


Magicman657

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Some of you may have noticed that I've been gone from Cyber Nations for quite some time. Many of you probably didn't. And of the former, a few of you might wonder why it is that upon my return to the game, I've spent nearly all my time lobbying for changes in the way resources are generated. I mean, for someone who supposedly doesn't care about his nation, I sure complain a lot, right?

Well, here's the deal. As it stands now, I am not playing this game because I want to. I specifically refuse to do so until the resource issue gets addressed. I have zero interest in a game where critical aspects of it are broken and ignored by the developers. If it gets addressed, I might be more inclined to actually care about CN again, but not a moment sooner. I am playing the game for the sole purpose of helping out a RL friend of mine, Herooftime55, with United Equestria. I am very much a brony and a loyal friend, so it is only natural for me to want to assist him in this effort. Still, that doesn't explain why I have such contempt for what others might trivialize as an insignificant issue. So, sit back and I'll tell you the tale of Magi Nation and perhaps you might start to understand why it is I feel the way I do.

I started playing Cyber Nations at the request of Herooftime55 back in the days of the Nintendo Outsider Alliance, 'gtfoutsider.com' (I actually had to look up the name because it's been so long :unsure: ). While I can't claim to remember every single step I took in the last 4 and a half years, I do remember that Outsider had very little idea what they were doing and at no point did anyone ever bother to explain the full details of the resource system. After what had to have been somewhere between a few months to a year, I ended up joining the League of Small Superpowers, aka LoSS. I had gotten particularly interested in nation development at that point and made it a goal to research as much as possibly could about nation optimization. I spent quite some time with LoSS, it was and I imagine it still is an amazing group of people and I will never forget all the amazing times I was there for. During my time there, I made some very excellent progress on my optimization research, becoming particularly interested in all the subtleties of each resource and bonus resource. I eventually gained & adopted the unofficial nickname of Trade Guildmaster and offered my expertise to anyone interested. It was around this time I first realized I'd need to work pretty hard to play around my nation's resources, as Rubber wasn't a 3BR resource and Silver wasn't a popular choice for 5BR. (Later on I would carry dual membership with LoSS and Herooftime55's new project, 64Digits, though eventually I was forced to make the full transition over to 64Digits.) I did my best for the year or so that followed trying to keep a working trade circle of 5BR with Silver, and I had varying levels of success. Ultimately, I realized that my resources were just becoming a ridiculous pain to me. It was especially bad during times of war when I needed Uranium and couldn't swap out Silver for it. At one point I was replacing trades every two to three days, and I finally got to the point where I just stopped trying. This was well after I had broken 12,000 infra, so it's not like I hadn't been trying to deal with it. When the next war rolled around, I just quit bothering with my trades, letting them fall out as they inevitably would (with the exception of one or two kind souls). I started logging in every 2-3 weeks purely to keep my nation alive and after many months of doing this, I ended up amassing nearly 2 billion dollars. I had one war after that, where I dropped about 500 mil over the course of three weeks, and I've been just sending out money and tech at Herooftime55's request since then, not even bothering to fully repair Magi Nation. As a nation over 4 years old, I've bought literally every single wonder I can possibly own at this point. I still have over 1 billion dollars left and no intention of bothering to do anything with it besides send it out in aid every 10 days. I've drained out all my tech and just buy it 300 at a time for the benefit of my alliance.

It's taken quite some time but what I've come to accept is that as long as I am forced to stick with Rubber and Silver, which I've come to utterly despise, I will never be able to have reliable trades or be as financially powerful as nations with better resources than myself, so I don't see the point in even trying. I've tried pushing the issue for resource reform before, but it always went ignored by admin and the problem persisted. I really WANT it to be fixed. Not just because it would benefit me though, but because the current system is horrible. As a programmer, it offends me that such a terrible system for resource generation has existed for this long without any sort of reform. From a design perspective, the system is set up in such a way that it actually encourages the precious few new players CN gets to NOT play the game for however long it takes them to get a good set of resources, and completely screws over those not lucky enough to know about the resource system when they made their nations.

That's why I really want to see this get addressed. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't partially for my personal satisfaction, but really it's something that should be changed for the benefit of everyone - new players, old players, and even admin (more new players = more potential donations). So with that in mind, I hope you will forgive me for the overzealous protesting, but please, click below and help put an end to this atrocity of a resource generation issue. I've made a very clean and easy proposal that I'd love to get support on so that just maybe admin will actually do something about it.

http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=92255&view=findpost&p=2783681

And if you've actually bothered to read through this entire rant, you have my personal thanks.

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I only read part of your rant and didn't even bother with your suggestion, but in TE resources are changable every seven days. I think that works out well and should be implemented ASAP to SE. As someone who has spent a massive amount of hours on trade circles in the past, I can honestly say that trades constantly !@#$@#$ up are one of the many reasons people get pissed off and quit CN.

I'm for any system that allows you to change your resources, whether it's once a month, once a week, at an expense, whatever.

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If you had better control of your resources, ideally, how would you look? I mean hell, you looking purdy good. now.

Just looked at your profile, I assume you would want the GG1 Improvement, -1 day in trade slot age. :awesome:

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If you had better control of your resources, ideally, how would you look? I mean hell, you looking purdy good. now.Just looked at your profile, I assume you would want the GG1 Improvement, -1 day in trade slot age. :awesome:

At my peak I was running a modified 5BR set with over 14,000 infra, proven by the fact that I own a Scientific Development Center. To be honest, I've never even considered what resources I would select for myself. Likely Uranium (since I'm one of the few people in my alliance that can have nukes, it'd be necessary to have a constant supply to make up for it) and one of the 3BR/5BR crossover resources. I'd set myself up for infra buying till I hit like 8k+ or so, then switch over to an income set and start banking all kinds of mad cash.

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You're so right here, Magicman, and I endorsed your proposal. Jerdge has a good one too.

I think the most sleek way of doing it would be assigning every nation 4 resources when they start and allowing them to pick any 2 as "in-use". You can change your "in-use" resources once every 3 days, like religion and government. The improvement and wonder Jerdge proposed should also add 1 resource slot to each nation. That would give each nation 6 resources (but still only able to use two) and allow groups of nations to actively organize their own trade circles. A group of 5 nations can, theoretically, organize their trades perfectly for maximum growth.

It doesn't make sense that a very developed nation that spans thousands of miles should only have native access to two resources. The larger the nation is, the more likely it is to contain more than two natural resources. The more advanced it is, the more likely it is to be able to take advantage of those resources. Active players who organize their trades with others will be rewarded by this, while those who choose to ignore trades will stagnate in comparison. That's a huge improvement from the currently random system.

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If you had better control of your resources, ideally, how would you look? I mean hell, you looking purdy good. now.Just looked at your profile, I assume you would want the GG1 Improvement, -1 day in trade slot age. :awesome:
At my peak I was running a modified 5BR set with over 14,000 infra, proven by the fact that I own a Scientific Development Center. To be honest, I've never even considered what resources I would select for myself. Likely Uranium (since I'm one of the few people in my alliance that can have nukes, it'd be necessary to have a constant supply to make up for it) and one of the 3BR/5BR crossover resources. I'd set myself up for infra buying till I hit like 8k+ or so, then switch over to an income set and start banking all kinds of mad cash.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

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