Aileron

The difference is that in this round buying too many mercs hampers one's ability to stockpile weapons. I'd also venture to say that it is impossible to buy *all* of the mercs. BeEf Masta flex is certainly trying, but he's barely put a dent in the merc pop. The mercenary growth rate is 1000ph per type. Somebody can only be 50% merc without going into the negative. If one goes into the negative, while you can still buy mercs, its extremely difficult and impossible to do in a scale large enough to buy all of the mercs. There is a total of 3000 mercs being produced every hour. To support those you need a group of players with total UP 3000. That means 20 players would all have to have a mind to buy all the mercs if everyone stopped at 150 UP (which I highly doubt as this round's UP price rate is quadratic rather than exponential). Suffice to say that for an individual its impossible, and its so costly for a group to do it that they would be better off just trying to win straight up.

Granted though that people do max them out too early. They will be more expensive next month.

The story is now that Russia has offered to help build the missile shield. I wonder when people are going to learn to stop underestimating Bush. The entire motivation for all of this is to get Russia to support our policy regarding Iran. Now, they have to build a radar base that will need to have some sort of budget that they would rather spend on something else every year. As I've said in my posts regarding weapons control. Security is a need, and when you monopolize a need you can almost name any price. If the US builds a missile shield in east Europe alone, then in the quite likely event of Iran going hostile, the US would monopolize security and could name the price of withdrawing all political support for Russia. East Europe is too important, so Russia can't let the US create such a monopoly. Thus, they have no choice but to help the US build the missile shield. The true greatness of this plan is that the US could hypothetically replace the tracking system with satellite tracking as well as set up radar of our own. This gives the US a lever to controll the quality of the Russian radar system, giving the US the ability to set the yearly budget of the radar facility. Now, all Bush has to do is set a quality standards to create a budget high enough that Russia would support agressive measures towards Iran, but low enough that they won't write off Eastern Europe.

He's not the only one according to the logs. I would like to remind everyone that exploiting negative points clearly falls into the realm of "bug exploitation" and is illegal according to the rules. If anyone's stats suddenly skyrocket after hitting someone for negative points, you will be reset. BMF, I would also like to know if you are able to buy more mercs at this time and if so how.

Its in the FAQs

Nope. There isn't bank income this round. Yes people can still stockpile. However, if that stockpile is instead devoted to UP, it returns a profit fairly quickly. In this case, the higher level upgrades still return a financial profit within a couple weeks. In this round, the stockpilers will simply come up short. The strategy for winning this round involves getting as high a UP as early as possible.

I said I would for UP upgrades.

The most important point Hoch made is this though: Lawyers cost more than the camera. The customer couldn't open the box prior to purchase, because that would be shoplifting, or atleast if a store employee saw him opening the box in the store he would interpret it as an act of shoplifting. This is poor customer service in any case. Few products are more valueble than a customer. If you give them a refund, the customer continues to shop at your store. If you don't he goes somewhere else. In the end, the loss of business costs more than a camera.

You act like Iran is a liberal country. It isn't. It is a fundimentalist theocracy. Generally, they want the whole world to be states which force Islam on their people. Ofcourse, they know they can't reach those goals at the moment, so they just do what they can. If they believed they could force Europe to convert to Islam by firing missiles at them, they would do so. Apparently the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic agree with me.

Yeah, abusing the arcade and posting for points has a huge impact on the game, for about the first two days. After that it means next to nothing. Admittingly in round 2 I abused the arcade for the first night. (And only one night...the other 11 hours I logged in the arcade was actually using it.) My game of choice was Tetris. Set it on level 7, get one tetris, suicide, and repeat. Pacman worked good too. The Super Mario cape glide also *could* work if your connection speed is godly. (Yes, you die quickly in that game, but you do gain points quickly which is all that matters.) BMF has bought a crazy amount of mercs...about one for every soldier. His UP is only 70 however. With that number of mercs, he should have almost no income. His money must be coming from attacks then. If he can every get enough money to arm them all his stats would be pretty powerfull, though he's gonna get shafted if he screws up a few attacks. (BTW, I determined all of this with a recon.)

The US has ICBMs. Frankly, if the US wanted to nuke Russia, we could do so from a base in Kansas. As far as the government is concerned, there are too many nuclear weapons drifting around outside our borders as it is and the last thing we want to do is set up some of our own in a foreign country where they could potentially get lost. So, from a cost/benefit standpoint the US has no reason to secretly set up offensive bases in these places. Besides, the Russians certainly have enough intelligence capability in these areas to know what missiles are at these bases, and they are smart enough to know that a Patriot missile isn't nearly big enough to mount any kind of offensive warhead. All they would need to do to determine this would be to hand some farmers cameras with a telescopic lenses and get them to take pictures of the bases. As far as I know, missles at these locations can't intercept an Iranian missle bound for the US, even if the Iranians had ICBM technology, which by the way they are decades away from. ICBMs literally go out into space, orbit the Earth, and then re-enter the atmopshere, much like the 60s-70s era spacecraft which by the way were the same design. While they are in orbit, they can't be intercepted. Space has no atmosphere. No atmosphere means that rudders and ailerons won't work, so the interceptor missile can't turn in order to hone in on the target. An ICBM can only be intercepted after they re-enter the atmosphere. Setting up a missile defense shield in East Europe will only protect East Europe from ICBMs. However, Iran probably isn't too far away from cruise missile technology if they don't already have it. Cruise missiles stay within the atmosphere, usually at low al!@#$%^&*udes, and simply fly to their targets. They could be intercepted at any point along their flight path...though you don't necessarily need a missile defense system to do it. Conventional anti-aircraft tactics will work, though an explicit missile-defense system is better. As far as I know, its impossible to reach inter-continental ranges with a cruise missile, and if you could, an ICBM would be cheaper. So, if Iran fired a cruise missile, the shield would protect all of Europe from them. This is mostly a political game. If Iran plays it peacefull, these bases will be a waste of money and be an embarr!@#$%^&*ment. If Iran does go hostile, the US will look like the hero to most of Eastern Europe. Russia has on the other hand been being very nice to Iran, and thus would be the heros if Iran stayed peacefull and would look like idealistic buffoons Iran went hostile. Now, if the US didn't construct the bases and Iran went hostile, then no one would look like heros or buffoons. Basically, prior to this action by the US, the Russians had a win/tie situation regarding Iran. The odds of Iran being peacefull are low, but they would've lost nothing if Iran does hostile. Now, they have a win/lose situation. In the likely event Iran goes hostile, Eastern Europeans will ask the Russians why they didn't build defenses for that contigency. What the US has done here is force the Russians to really use every tool they have to make sure the situation doesn't escalate into war. If it does, Russian loses all of their support in Eastern Europe. Previously Iran used oil as leverage on Russia. Now the US has applied greater leverage. Russia doesn't like this because first off they are about to lose a lot of oil access, though more importantly because nobody likes their hand being forced. As for the moral ramifications of this...these missiles have virtually no offensive capability whatsoever. In a violent world all they can do is help and in a perfect world they can't really do any harm. If Poland and the Czech Republic want them, Russia has no business arguing.

JDS is right, my defense isn't that strong, though it seems to suffice. This turn rate is actually pretty standard for the long-term MMORPGs, though up until now we've been playing this sort of like a speed round. Speed rounds are just imcompatible with summer. The students are working and the workers are going on vacation. With fewer turns, you have to be more judicious with using them. Generally, you should never attack somebody unless you can directly see their defensive strength in a recon, especially if the target is ranked higher than you. There are times where you can estimate defense from various factors: weapons, army size, rank, memory, previous attacks, and even the very fact that you can't recon them can be used. (The last one is the most risky estimation technique I've tried. The logic goes that "If their rank is low, but their sentry is obscenely high, all of their other stats must suck or else the player would have a better rank. It works 1 out of 3 times.) Also recognise that due to luck, you could strike with as little as 75% of your attack strength, so attacking someone as strong as you are is risky. There is always the one-turn attack if you wish to test their defenses, but even if you don't intend to sab, you should always pay attention to covert just so you can save turns.

Well, now it is...the last top priority was fixing the economies...the bank, the UP, and turns. If these three things are fixed, then its possible to worry about the ships. I doubt people are choosing terrier because I said so. I'd bet mostly that all those Nightwasp pilots noticed that the 50% deduction bonus was a powerfull thing. But the turns is probably the most relevent to this topic. The rate is really low now, so by previous standards this round is probably going to be more boring. But, people won't need to log on every couple hours. Thus people can enjoy the summer rather than sit at home and play this, and still do as well as the obsessive.

As I posted two posts ago...we'll consider trying two months after we can go one month without something screwy happening.

Its getting boring because people are getting smarter. wub has a point, but we'll have to wait until we can pull off one month without something screwy happening before we can debate about lengthening the rounds. In other news, it seems a lot of players chose the Terrier, implying that next month I'm will have to change the ships a little. In unbalanced ships the worst problem, then we truly don't have any problems because unbalanced ships are always a problem depending upon who you ask.

According to my screens its zero. I suggest creating a new bank account and transferring the money to the new account if its bugged. Watch the profanity people.

The bank is still around because you can always buy and sell weapons. Other than a reduced sell rate and the fact that weapons are visible, it isn't any different. I'd venture without the interest banks will take a backseat to getting UP sooner anyway. Yes, players can hide their wealth and thus play the low ranks until the last day, but all the while their high-ranked compe!@#$%^&*ion will buy UP, have more soldiers, have higher income, and generally so much more money that even the element of suprise won't be enough. And yes Ani, I would take that bet if A: It wasn't irresponsible, and B: You put your own anti into the pot. If it was a *real* bet in which I was venturing my property and I would actually gain something provided you lose, I would. As it stands this position is not truly mine to bet, and you aren't in any position to be making demands or challenges. If you want though I'd be willing to bet $20 that I won't have to change the settings this month, with some exceptions. The first exception would be scheduled events like the adding of the Nightwasp, which though scheduled would be technically a settings change. I'd also not cover the things that though not scheduled were announced would change mid-round depending upon event. Those are (A: The adding of additional UP upgrade options if and when players max out UP.), (B. The adding of mercs to the merc pool if and when people buy all of them.) or (C: Correcting bugs) Other than that though, I'd be happy to put money on it.

Yeah, I think you are going to have to reset if you haven't bought UP yet. Oh, and anyone who's planning on buying infinite items with negative points, first off I don't think that's going to work. Secondly, I'll reset anyone who does it if it does. If its a problem, Levi and Weasel might be changed next round.

Actually it was possible to sab practically all of their weapons, provided you got lucky. Realistically you could get 60-% of them. It still didn't mean much...replacement weapons are cheap. I think the formula is that you can take out your total spy strength divided by the strength of the weapons you are trying to take out, until you reach a point of 1/10th of their weapons, in which case that's how many you can take out. Still, its free to attempt, so sab is worth attempting if it gets ANY result. Thus, I'll err on the side of nerfing it too much.

Its hard to use recon to keep tabs on people when you aren't in the game. But there are also some things that cannot be determined from looking up everyone's stats. Your memory seems to be messed up. As I recall, when I showed up in the middle of the April round, the game was riddled with cheaters and transfer was king. Thus, the primary change for May was to remove transfer, which is why many other things that were broken yet undetectible before came out of the woodwork. I made a change mid-round because there was a massively broken problem and the game would not have survived until June had I not done something immeadiately. I'd also venture that waiting until after your clan did the tactic but changing it before competing clans starting doing reprisals helped your clan if any. Neither can I give full trust in a vote here. There is a difference between a democracy and a pluracracy. But, this is all in the past anyway. It is unlikely that there will be any further changes in the settings, certainly not mid-round. I don't forsee any unforseen problems that may arise. As humerous as that is, its true. I'm fairly certain that I tied down all the problems that poped up after transfer was removed.

Ani, I'm not disputing the fact that you have experience. I'm just saying that you don't have the mindset of someone who can actually solve problems. Take this thread for example. You haven't made a positive suggestion, and having a couple players boycott isn't going to solve any problems. Most of the problems are with the core itself, which can only be fixed by the core designers who don't even go to these forums. All you are doing is worsening an already bad situation. Now the different suggestion by LiDDiS that I don't play is actually constructive. However, first off I know that if I quit playing, then the accusation will be made by those losing that I'm favoring whoever's winning. More importantly, if I wasn't playing I wouldn't have a clue how bad sabotage actually is, or how often people have to log on, or what things are being abused. Its a lose-lose situation. However, I will mention that I could have solved a couple problems starting the May round had I played the April round. I can say that I'm not keeping any secrets - all changes for this round have been announced, and the stats for the weapons are posted. Also, Ani does have about as much "inner knowledge" as I do, enough that he can form a competant battle plan.

Point 1: It takes more than two people to make a boycot. Point 2: Rare, don't complain about me...it was your buddies Animate Dreams and Suicide Run who made the suggestion to do something about the bank...actually to remove it outright, though that was a radical suggestion. I personally didn't care what tactics people used, but they were upset so I capitulated halfway and made the ending the way it was. Point 3: Who else then? Polix has more important things to do. I have six months experience in Army-Core RPGs and another six months in other text based ones. That's not great but enough. Animate Dreams is the only other player who has enough experience, but frankly he is a whiner who can only criticise and call people names. He's certainly not responsible enough to be given a moderator position, let alone an admin role. To sum up his character, two weeks into last round he complained that I nerfed sabotage and a week later he complained that I made it too powerfull.

Q: How is rank determined? A: Each catagory has its own ranking system. These ranks are added together into an invisible number. For example if your four ranks are 1, 2, 3, and 4, your number is 10. Rank is then determined based upon who has the lowest number. There is a tie-breaker system that is much more complicated and won't be mentioned here. Q: What does the 'casualies' bonus mean? A: This bonus is applied to the casualties your enemies recieve when you fight them. Q: Shouldn't it be 'casualties' instead of 'casualies' A: Yes. Whoever made the core didn't put in a feature that would correct that spelling error. Q: What is vacation mode and what does it do? A: Vacation mode freezes your account for a set number of days. During this time you cannot attack or be attacked and you do not earn income or soldiers. Q: What's the deal with officers/commanders? A: They do nothing on this system except to show who you have respect for. You can make someone your commander by clicking on their name on the rankings page, and selecting the option. Q: I can't see my UP upgrade button. Is it a bug? A: No, it actually it is not. All menus have a blue bar that when clicked activates/deactivates it. Click on the blue bar that says "Upgrade Unit Production" to make it re-appear. Q: Why are some weapons more cost effective than others? A: Weaker weapons in general have higher cost effectiveness. Generally it is !@#$%^&*umed that you will run out of soldiers and will want to invest in bigger weapons. Q: But there are still weapons about the same strength but at different prices? A: The have different repair costs. The more expensive weapon is cheaper to repair. Q: My income is negative! What's going on? A: This round, mercenaries have a per turn income deduction. If you have more mercs than soldiers, you will actually lose money. Unfortunately, mercs cannot be sold, only killed, so watch how many you buy. Q: I just started, but I have absolutely no resources and can't grow! Why not? A: This is a rather annoying security feature to counter possible abuse of chronic resetting. New accounts start with nothing, and you are expected to post once in order to get 10,000 points. Once you have the money, you should buy the first UP upgrade, which will get your economy started.

Alright, I'll make it 2. Seriously though, you shouldn't need to log on that often. A lot of people have gotten frustrated by being tied to their computers and have gotten set off by every little thing that happens. A well defended, well-sentried player shoul at very least be able to get eight hours of sleep or do eight hours of work plus two hours of commute without getting slammed.

June Round is beginning soon. This is a list of times that will occur for next month. I promise, there will be no suprises, as I'm confident I've got all the details pinned down. May 31st, 11:00 PM EST Round Begins. Attacks are Closed June 3rd, 11:00 PM EST Attacks Open June 10th, 11:00 PM EST Nightwasp Introduced June 30th, 11:00 AM EST Attacks close June 30th, 12:00 PM EST Banks locked. Attacks re-open. Homestretch Begins June 30th, 8:00 PM EST Round Ends Changes for this round: -Mercenaries now deplete your income at a rate of 200 points per hour. Don't buy them unless you need them. -UP price is now affordable -Bank has no income -Turn rate is 1 per hour. -Covert weapons are doubled in strength, but the max covert level is now 7. Overall effect is that sabotage should be 1/4th as effective. Just to make sure however, covert phase limit is now 6. -Repair costs fixed. Gun class weapons cost 1 per point. Bombs cost 2 per point. -Javelin special weapon now is a 12,500 point weapon Things that may change mid-round: Obvious bugs. Good news by the way...it turns out that I can fix weapons mid-round without resetting them. UP upgrades will be added as needed. (PM me if you ever max out your UP) Mercenaries will be added to the pool as needed. In the event of chronic depletion of the merc pool, merc rate will increase. And finally, if sabotage STILL isn't nerfed after I've nerfed it three different ways including last round's nerfing, it may be FURTHER nerfed mid-round. Generally though, I won't count it as overpowered if some Spider with 10,000 spies can pull off major damage. I'll count it as overpowered if some Warbird who has focused on defense with a couple thousand spies can. Keep in mind that the security system is still in effect. You must post for the first 10,000 points needed for the first upgrade. Good luck to all players.