Inactivity Mode and Bills

[Jason8]

I was reading through the About Page of CyberNations and noticed something curious:

https://www.cybernations.net/about_topics.asp#Inactivity_Mode

Quote

Inactivity Mode - Starting 2/7/2014 nations that do not login for 30 days will be placed into inactivity mode:

• Nations will be removed from all aspects of the game at 30 days inactivity and will be placed into inactivity mode. Activity is measured by logging into the game No one will be able to interact with the inactive nation or view it.
• Once a player logs back into the game their nation will be automatically restored for them back to a mostly last seen state.
• Wonders, improvements, land, infrastructure, technology, etc.. will remain as the player left it. (If your moon/mars wonders expire while you are gone, they'll just expire)
• Bills will be adjusted to omit the days that your nation was inactive. (You won't be charged for the days that you are inactive)
• Taxes get reset to the same date that your nation was restored. (No back collecting)
• All existing trades, wars, foreign aid, and spy operations will be deleted when you enter inactivity mode.
• Last wonder purchase date gets reset to the date that the player exits inactivity mode.
• No new offensive wars (defensive wars can be declared on you immediately) and no foreign aid (sending or receiving) for 7 days after exiting inactivity mode.
• Nations may not exit war mode for 10 days after exiting inactivity mode.
• Alliance managers and any other powers that were granted to you within your alliance will be automatically revoked. Nations return to the game as regular alliance members.
• All nations that were deleted due to inactivity on or before the inactivity mode was implemented on 1/14/2014 will not be restored.
• If a player does not wish to request a nation sitter or if they will be gone for an extended time they may request a member of the moderation team to place them into inactivity mode manually. Logging into your nation after inactivity mode has been set will put your nation back into an active state.
• Any penalties and settings for inactivity mode are subject to change while your nation is in an inactive state.

The bold line states that bills do not accrue while the nation is inactive.  Talking with players that have been inactive for extended periods of time, the amount of bills add up to billions of dollars (see this topic: https://forums.cybernations.net/topic/134147-unable-to-collect-taxes-and-get-out-of-nation-debt/ ) and end up not being able to pay their bills.

Perhaps some wordsmithing is needed in the About page or the mechanism needs to be adjusted.

[admin]

As Onion said in the post that you linked, he was inactive for 2-3 years. His last bill payment is shown as last paid 170 days ago. That means when he went inactive he was already 170 days behind on his bills and upon his return, the game auto adjusted his last payment date to put him right back to 170 days behind.

 

If the game didn't adjust then he'd be 1095 days (if he was away for 3 years) + 170 days that he was already behind = 1265 days behind. 

[jerdge]

I'll add: if the system automatically set bills at 20 days when returning from inactivity, a nation months behind could exploit it to basically reset their bills at no cost.

Now that I think of it, having the system do exactly this when the nation has been inactive for really a long time (say, six months, one year, or...) could actually make sense to encourage old players to come back to the game.

(Assuming that them old players coming back does make sense...)

[JadenStar10]

29 minutes ago, jerdge said:

I'll add: if the system automatically set bills at 20 days when returning from inactivity, a nation months behind could exploit it to basically reset their bills at no cost.

Now that I think of it, having the system do exactly this when the nation has been inactive for really a long time (say, six months, one year, or...) could actually make sense to encourage old players to come back to the game.

(Assuming that them old players coming back does make sense...)

This is a very good point. I would say a nation that has been inactive for around 6 months should have their bills set to 20 days. Mostly so old people with old nations dont come back to a nation that cant dig itself out of debt without most of your infra or donating to pay bills.

Edited July 3, 2021 by Suyash Adhikari