How the Q7 Weapon Ruined This Game

Day 2,554, 18:00 Published in USA USA by Gnilraps

Just The Right Bullets (Mandatory listening)
Day 2554 of the New World
17 November, 2014




How the Q7 Weapon Contributed eRepublik’s Demise
Or…
Q6, We Hardly Knew Ya’

It was in late July, I believe it was day 1712, when Plato unleashed a master stroke of destruction on his game. It was called the Q7 weapon. And it was a move that was blatantly obvious in how damaging it would be.

The Q6 weapon was a perfect test case for how the economical dynamics would play out. That weapon was unveiled just 7 months prior to the Q7, and so we’ll start our story there.



It took eRepublik a while to mature its military economy. For a long time the lower weapons qualities (Q1-Q4) were heavily populated with robust market activity. It was a time when you only had so much money, you only had so much “health” to fight with, and in order to maximize your output it was often wise to fight with a lower Q weapon. But as Plato added candy bars, increased the daily health consumption, and devalued Gold, the Q5 weapon – at the time the highest available – became reasonably available for anyone to be able to beg, borrow, or commune for. By sometime around day 1000, if you weren’t fighting with a Q5 weapon you were doing it totally wrong.


Top-of-the-line, circa day 1000

And because the Q5 became the absolute standard for battle, the market for Q1-Q4 weapons crashed. There were no rocket factories then, so there was literally no use for them. To fight with a lower Q weapon was to waste your potential. Every decent MU was supplying Q5, governments were handing them out… you HAD to fight with one.

And the economics of the Q5 were quite nice. A Q5 weapon requires 1000 raw materials and fires 5 times. So each “fight” of a Q5 “costs” 200 WRM. As it turns out (and without getting into a ton of math), it was the perfect combination to facilitate the creation of “communes”. At that time, it was possible to employ Military Unit members in Q5 weapons companies and after selling off enough of their tank production to pay for the Raw Materials, a worker would produce roughly 12 tanks for use that day. With various tricks and tweaks, and when market conditions were just right, you could get that number up as high as 16.

16 top shelf tanks, in an era when the “health bar” topped out at about 200 was PLENTY.

What I am saying is that even though Plato had managed to destroy the Q1-Q4 markets, at least the viability of the Q5 market created a situation wherein citizens had to work together to succeed in this game. Communes were an incredibly important social dynamic in eRepublik. And this is a “Social Browser Game”, right?




Now let’s examine what happened around Day 1512 when the Q6 was introduced.


The all-new BEAST, Plato’s Q6

In designing the Q6, Plato did not create anything new at all. Q6 was just a scaled up version of the Q5. The weapon shot 6 times for 1200 WRM, so again the cost was just 200 Raw Materials per fight click.

So other than the economics of acquiring the Gold to buy the new factories, nothing really changed. Q5 was the new Q4. In other words the bottom dropped out of the Q5 market and Q1-Q5 were suddenly useless as the movers and shakers in the game quickly got their factories upgraded to Q6. There was no discernable change in the demand for Weapons Raw Materials after the initial bump, people just bought a few more Saltpeter companies (or whatever) and the game kept on trucking.

Communes were still running exactly the same as always. Which is to say they were awesome.

As an aside, I will point out that with the advent of the Q6, Plato had made himself the storyline yet again. It wasn’t so much that a new industry was born out of the internal dynamics of the game. Instead it was that Plato just decided that by establishing a new top-end industry he could rake in the cash, so he just changed the game. Plato making Plato the primary headlines in this game is very obviously one of the main reasons the game has died. But I digress.

The point I want to make most clearly about the introduction of the Q6 is that the community proved it would rapidly adapt to the most powerful available weapon and utterly eschew all other weapons. Q5 Factories were toilet paper after the Q6 came around.




And that brings us to the fateful day, Day 1712. It was on that day that Plato didn’t just destroy the Q6 weapons factory, he destroyed the community that the weapons industry had created. The Q7 weapon destroyed the commune.

(Now I know that there are still some communes in operation, almost exclusively among the USAF. In brief, the only reason these communes are possible is due to an influx of cash provided by tax revenue. I will provide some hard figures below which will prove that communes are no longer prudent. I also don't want this to be interpreted as a slam against anyone continuing to try to use communes. All I'm saying is that all thing being equal, the commune is not the wisest choice.)

The Q7 weapon is an entirely different animal from an economic standpoint. And once you understand that, combined with what we know about how the Q6 killed the Q5, it was instantly obvious to anyone who was paying attention that the Q7 was a disaster.

Of course the Q7 packs a great damage punch. But what does it cost? A Q7 tank fires 10 shots and costs 4,000 WRM to build. In other words, at 400 WRM, the cost per shot is twice as high as every other weapon.

Meanwhile, Plato was still steadily increasing the number of fights available per day, so the demand for the Q6 became urgent.

Now let me display as simply as possible why the Q7 weapon cannot be viably supplied to a Military Unit by the commune structure.

Q7 Commune Math
20 tanks are produced by 1 worker.
1 worker consumes $80 worth of Weapons Raw Materials, plus costs $1 in salary.
20 tanks cost $81 to produce.
Roughly 14.5 of those tanks must be sold to recoup the $81.
1 worker produces just 5.5 Q7 tanks, worth 55 food fights.

Compare this to what a citizen can “produce” via a market wage job.

Q7 Market Wage Math
After Work Tax, current wage is $44.88
Current Q7 cost is $5.85
1 worker produces 7.67 tanks with a market wage job, worth 76 food fights.
(It is worth mentioning that the same worker can spend roughly $37/day on a Q1 house, work twice, thus increasing his income to about $56.45/day or 9.64 tanks worth 96 food fights. A commune has no way of capitalizing on this dynamic.)

So unless your commune is receiving tax revenue (or unless it is receiving a steady supply of donated WRM from some sekrit source), communing – and the community dynamics that go with it – are dead.


You piece of sh*t





The Q7 weapons factory has done a great deal to devalue the benefits of developing a strong social culture in this game. And Plato easily should have seen this coming. During the Q5-Q6 days, there were all kinds of ways for players to immerse themselves in a diverse social network. The Q7 weapon has destroyed much of that.

tl;dr
After the Q6 weapon destroyed the Q5 market, and seeing how the economics of the Q7 weapon would make it nearly impossible to produce communally (without significant and constantly donated resources), Plato knowingly sold out the community aspect of this game in favor of making a quick cash grab from Q6-Q7 upgrades.



You may now return to your regularly scheduled clicking