@Requiem - i don't remember anyone suggesting a new spy op for stealing land - and my first reaction is that this might be a good way to go ... perhaps scale the results to between10% of an SS and 10% of a PS, with regular spy op losses and chances of success or failure. Call the op "political annexation." Perhaps add a potential bad effect on failure as per biotterrorism, maybe yielding land or other assets to the target.

It might change many things, from the value of spy tech to the nature of land kills.

But mostly, implementaion should be straightforward, which is a big plus.

Anybody else like the idea?

*Bonus*

I think 1 comprhensive message will suffice, delivered on the second attack screen, from which you press the attack button ... you need the warnings and explanations delivered while you stare at the button before pressing it

Is that clear?

Basically, i give it +1

Nearly everyone steps in gdi holes early. The gdi differences between servers and their practical implications for game play are difficult to get right and remember. - i don't play express regularly and have twisted my ankle in the same gdi hole ungolino describes.

It would be great if someone wrote up a "gdi differenecs" help page with big warnings on the typical "mistakes" players make on the different servers. Then add some coding logic on the attack page that can remind players that on this particular server in your current situation, you are about to take an irrevocable gdi path by making an attack. On servers where you can make gdi changes after time and behavior constraints, warn the player how long and under what conditions you can reverse gdi choices. And put a link to the new gdi differences help page with these warning messages.

:)

Up down?

You mean with the proposal?

Definitely "down" - imo, all suggestions must be supported by transparent, rationale discussion about what the suggestion will accomplish and why that is better for the game as a whole.

Your suggestion has not been supported, either because you can't manage it, or you do not want to reveal your true intentions.

So, thumbs down.

I agree that the limited bonus points and limited usefulness of those few bonus points you do get on express is completely disproportionate to the other servers.

But i tend to see that as an advanage for express.

On the other servers, you pretty much have to get the bonus points and apply them well to be competitive. I thiink express is the one server where you can kinda ignore the bonus system and still manage to play a pretty solid set.

And since express is often the (re)introductery server, it seems ok to me that you don't need to master the bonus system to play well on express - time enough for that after you are hooked again

;)

Allways problems with these guys

I say again, the solution is to dump them

Admins, please give us some details about what the community would loose if this site were dumped - how many new players and how much ad revenue? My feelingvis zero new players and less than $10 a year.

Please please show us that anything at all worthwhile comes from all the grief we suffer keeping this blight.

- someday i will quit over this stupidity -

:(

I guess if you were on the huge side of things by mid or 2/3rds of the set, and had been takiing only corruption bonuses, then maybe one switch at that point might become feasable that is currently pretty much networth suicide. But again, this is about adjusting netting strats and their end games. On a war footiing, i don't see it as meaningful except maybe for a late set surprise first strike - posturing as netters and switching to stike mode.

Would those be good changes to the status qua?

:D
Keeping a minimum 14% would stop my pathological switching example above - and yes i am for some minimum - but other than changing the end game for netters, what does it do?

I get your suggestion - maybe just take the decay bonus % as a cost diiscount to the current switch fee. But i was asking what you think this would do for the game? Because i'm not able to see how this would improve anythiing. As you get closer to a no cost switch, you could run turns as a rep, switch to theo to buy units and switch to dict for security while you were away from the game. Is this the kiind of thiing you are lookiing for? If yes, why is this good? If not, what are you looking to do with this change and why is ithat good?

Thanks!

:)

Crippler, could you outline what this change might accomplish that would be generally positive? I only see that it would twist de-stocking strategies, potentially changing the end game for netters. What am i missing?

I've heard stories of giant mud trolls, which are related to the north american sasquarch, aka bigfoot. These creatures tend toward boggey river deltas and swamps, but have been reported in isolated small rivers and even large creeks. I would think that thieir natural abilities would preclude them actually getting stuck in mud like a stick, but i suppose anythiing is possible. They are reputed to be slow moving and more stubborn than a mule of similar age.

;)

Perhaps more troll than stick?

As far as i know, our game planet is defined only by inference. We infer that there is land because we grow food and have troops and tanks; we infer an atmosphere because we have citizens and jets. But we could imagine a fantastical world without an atmosphere and the jets use stabalized thrusters. Since earth isn't objectively defined anywhere and clearly permits physical impossibilites (like having a million tanks on one acre of land), i see no reason to argue that naval, space or cyber units should be deemed impossible because they are somehow constrained by the real earth's physical laws that obviously do not apply to our game planet.

Extending the game to include different mil units may cause us to infer new properties for our imaginary game planet,, but since the planet as such exerts no influence on the game itself, how can it possibly matter? We could change the labels on mil units to apples, pears, bannanas and pineapples and we could use sea shells for cash - all that matters are the properties attached to the objects, like it takes 2 apples to defend equally against 1 bannana.

In summary, our game planet is imaginary, is defined nowhere, and exerts no impact on game play, neither by constraints or shared effects (my earthquakes never hit another country, nor do plagues cross borders, nor fallout from using missiles.) Therefore, to argue as if our game planet is in any way analogous to a real planet is a total waste of bandwidth.

My 2 cents for my *bonus*

:)

I think this could be an epic suggestion and certainly worthy of it's own thread - it has implications for game mechanics as well as strategy and tactics for every thing that quickly comes to mind. The in game partial precedent is the limitation on missiles based on acres, but i think currently, that if you are at your missile limit and loose acres, i don't thiink you loose any missiles. But if all your non tech assets were always and immediately limited by acres held (any over the limit assests would vanish with the lost acres) then that changes everything from kills to destocking,

Seems worth talking about to me.

Cheers!

Plonk

Poke

Bad bad site - always more problems - please drop them forever - it is a purposeless blight on the game

Thank you for your consideration

:)

1012 - don't forget

Plink

Touch

My experience tends towards marshal's, sometimes with many puzzles, taking 5 to 10 mins of my life, occasionally failing completely.

The bonus system was more or less tuned at one point, but as getting and using the bonus points is required to be competitive, when the bonus system fails, it just creates bad feelings for the players that are trying hardest.

In my opinion, this is a legacy issue that has become a nuisance and a blight on the game, an ugly wart in want of removal.

What makes it painful for me is that as far as i know, nobody associated with the game gets anything worthwhile from us jumping thru this hoop every day, and i do not belive we get any new players from this bonus site.

Please make this situation better.

Drop this bonus site and put all 8 points on the one site that has almost never been down and just works.

Thank you for your consideration.

I agree.

Please consider dtopping these guys.

Thanks!

Hunter,

If you are unwilling or unable to articulate the purpose of the missile market, no one is going to care.

To me, you are starting to look like a low skill player that wants to make it easier for low skill players to stick it to high skill vets, that is, a suicider type personality, who now wants to troll the boards.

I am waiting for your considered arguments in favor of your proposal.

Hunter, (et al)

I mean no disrepect to you or any missile market advocate - indeed, i can imagine myself as an advocate if other game balance issues could be addressed, but please explain why you, individually, are an advocate. What do you personally want to accomplish via a missile market? Can you describe scenarios where you are a buyer or seller? Can you say how you expect the average player's experiece playing earth will be improved?

What exactly do you want to do with a missile market such that most players will enjoy earth more?

Was that a spy or a mil spy? The general spy shows units that are owned and not on market, that is, it includes units that are in recovery from being used in a ps. The mil spy shows the status of all units not on market.

So maybe almost all his tanks were used in ps attacks?

But if there were missiles for sale on the missile market at the time you make the hit (perhaps one waits to make the hit until missiles do show up on the market), then you'd spend cash and shoot missiles until you ran out of cash or turns ... in practice, i think you could probably pass missilies between players using the market. So should missles be available for FA? If you can buy them (and maybe pass them) why not FA them?

I think the balance point is that if you are a big country and want to max missiles, then you need a ton of warfare tech first and then need to run bunches of turns to get those miissiles. Any version of the missile market will tip this over. 4000 acre rainbow countries with max warefare would just make and sell missiles.

Fwiw, the advice i give is to use bunus points for turns during your "developmentt." As a producer strat, like commie indy, at the point where growing much bigger looks difficult or dangerous, use bonus points for booms.

For tourney, follow this advice until you are confident of regularly finishing above $20m nw.

At that point, you should have enough data and experience to see how using bonus points for expenses or other long term bonus choices can help you twist and tweak you strat toward $30+m nw.

If you choose to work this out on your own, cultivate patience, as it will likely take a year or more.

Good luck!

I'm not suggesting a perfect fit as is, but supporting the "tag to go oop" rule seems possible with minimal coding changes and admin support ... the real question is whether makiing both bots and humans without a well established tag conspicuous, so as to make potential troublemakers stand out, would that actually make for less overall trouble.

I think maybe it would ... or at least change the nature and style of the trouble troublemakers make.

LoL ... but i am drawn to the possibility that Marshall could bs qz's schitzy alter ego ...

But back to the idea of requiriing a tag to get oop ... while it is true that any player can create a tag and wear it to get oop, they would be the only player with that tag, so any unknown alliance with one member is suspect. The change would be to force players to stay tagged - no dropping out or tag switchiing. If the "bad actors" choose to make a public alliance, well, that seems ok to me. If bots are not subject to the tag to go oop rule, they will be obvious as the untagged players that are oop.

Could have been that many slots, but players were many and most didn't really stay in for the long term ... there was a lot of churn - but because you had to kerp the same name in tourney to progress up the ladder, you would see familar names over and over in the A and B-C levels. If you did particularly well in lower levels, you could jump more than one level. Anyway, the way i remember it, about half the players in the top 2 tiers were consistent regulars. And maybe that many again scattered in the lower levels. That would still have been less than 1000. Then, there were many who played up thru the levels for a year or so and then disappeard. So my impression as a a regular was that there were hundreds of other good players involved as well as a big group of motivated newbies, swimming in a sea of transient poor players. So staying in gameA became something of an accomplishment, but vets commonly doublle jumped the early levels to reach A-B-C in only 2 or 3 months.

So i stick with my estimate of perhaps the regulars and motivated newbies together numbered 1000 +/- .... the rest were little better than bots, but sometimes provided big comic relief, which bots never ever do.

LoL ... yes ... there has been drift in this thread ... caddy shack was a special film during my youth ... most people enjoyed it, but some people really 'got it!" ...

But the earth player, aka Assasiin, the 15-20 year frame fits my memory ...tourney had allies in those days ... and 5 levels in the ladder hierachy .... something like a 1000 active players ...

*inhales a deep draught of nostalgia*

;)

I feel old,, but 40 years seems way too long ... 20 years? Maybe ... perhaps probably, but i think not 25 years ... anyone else?

Bushwood Couuntry Club riings a bell for me - yep - a danger danger claxxon - go there with eyes open kinda vibe ...

How long ago was that?

Cheers!

:)

The 20 acre bonus has a wrinkle exclusive to the tourney server ... i will not reveal what i know aboutt how it works, but i will confirm that on most days, you can trigger the bonus twice. (I also know it is sometimes possible to tirigger it 3 times on day 1.)

The 3 or 6 turn bonus derives from the early days when players were encouraged by this bonus to stay logged out for 12 or 18 consecutive hours to get the bonus. This requirement was dropped years ago, but the bonuses remain and are awarded automatically. The schedule is less than intuitive, but is regular and explained in some thread somewhere on these boards. But basically you maximize your turn bonuses today by keeping your counties active.

Many threads over the years have proposed and debated the idea of a missile market.

Pretty much everyone agrees it would destabalize what game balance there is left on earth.

That said, it is fun to talk about a missile market.

One idea i had was to make bought missiles different from self produced missiles. I was thinking the bought missiles would do less damage AND that damage would be duplicated on the sender. That way, munchkin countries could buy some missiles to whack a giant, but would get obliterated in the process. Giant countries could buy a big bag of missiles and smash or kill a munchkin while takiing only modest damage. This might limit soome excesses.

Fun to consider, but it will never happen.

Cheers!

:)

Everything appears to be workiing - i am pretty sure that your fix worked ... thanks

:)

Existing SOs are not executing and new ones are not activated.

Goods are not being returned from market.

Been like this for hours.

:(

No it is not. Previous set had relatively high bushel prices and some outages, but not this kind of sustained high prices.

It would be difficult to manipulate things this way for so long unless farmers are on strike or maybe there just aren't any biggish farmers this set.

As it is, i am holding larger bushels than normal and snapping at anything under $70 - and i reckon others are doing the same, which makes the situation worse.

But yes, the tourney market is always thin because there are so few players. So manipulation is not only possible, market manipulation is part of the tactics and central to some strats on tourney.

Who would be feeding them?

How so?

And my suggestion is that after sending FA to an in tag restart (duriing its first 24 hours) that the countdown timer to next FA be set at 6 hours rather than 24 hours ( i thought it was 22 hours, but it has been years since i sent FA)

:)

The other aspect of FA is the cycle time before next FA package can be sent.

If the intention is to faccilitate a tag's pulling it's restarts back into the game faster, reducing the cycle time for FA sent to a same tag restart during first hours of a restart's new life might work. Pick your numbers, but i was thinking 6 hour cycle during first 24 hours of restart.

By getting the restarts going faster, an organiized tag makes suiciding it's members relatively less attractive and malicious out of tag FA relatively less effective.

Wouldn't it? And probably not too difficult to hack in.

*Bonus*

Shoes for industry!

+1

We could also give the new EM an improved chance of success

If they were a flat +10% or +20%, they would have a real chance of getting thru on a max sdi target (you know, tiny target close to the ground is more difficult to intercept.) With better damage, greater readiness penalty and improved chance to hit, they would be much more attractive - maybe still not worth a CM generally, but way better than the throw away items they are now.

I don"t disagree that formula changes are easiest technically ... and an easier political sell as well

But i was wantiing to be at least as happy to get a new EM as i currently am to get a CM or NM ... and i think i would need a pretty large increase in mil unit damage to get the same kind of happy ... so large that i don't see how to make it work practically ... that's why adding other damage elements makes the new EM somewhat useful in more situations and keeps them from being devastating. If you can see potential in this idea, it is only a matter of choosing which damage elements to add and how much damage to do.

:)

Another consideration, possibly small, possibly funny, possibly too subtle, maybe too radical ...

Remove EM strikes from any and all DR calculations on the target,
Always give EMs the chances as though target had no current DR

I really don't know the consequences or technical challenges this would create, but wanted to post it for completeness

In cpncert with the other buffing, this might be too much

Cheers!