Join the new world

Disclaimer:
This was writen originally by Croy on the eUS forum.

I commented that he should post this ingame in a article but CRoy didn't want to because he thought it would be deleted anyway and thus thought it better to be just posted on the forum. He gave me permission to post this ingame.



eRep just sucks at explaining it.

[Forgive any grammatical errors in this. I'm not going to bother editing unless there are big mistakes.]

Many thought org removal would kill off militias and the ability to run businesses. In fact, org removal will be the culmination of a large series of moves designed to 1) make the game more communal (economically and militarily) and 2) Decrease the prevalence of multis

I'll explain

How large scale multi'ing works

This comes purely from heresay. I wish I was smart enough to pull off a giant multi ring. I am not.

The essential part of any multibot ring is the money laundering. One has to donate the gold made in ways that avoids detection or at least provides some plausible deniability for those doing it. Basically, run the gold through the money market a few times through many different people, donate some side gold to legitimate places like the national treasury or high profile citizens, perhaps transfer large amounts through the purchase of companies, transfer it between many semi-anonymous organizations, ect. In the end, if done right, you could be sitting on a big pile of free gold. It's been rumored that some multi rings in the Balkan area have been able to produce 1000 gold a day in the past by doing this.

How the admins attempted to combat this

The first actual "change" that came was the ability to have citizens hold their own companies. This is the cornerstone of preventing multi-ing. Why? Because if all of your companies are on your citizen you are much less likely to do something that will cause your citizen and all of your companies along with it to be permabanned. But this is just a first step.

Second came the 10G donation limit. This weakened the ability of multi-ringleaders from using the MM to launder their gold. It also will force black market gold purchasers to buy directly from eRepublik. This, while it sucks for some people, will also decrease the demand for black market gold which presumably comes in some portion from multi-gold.

Today came unified inventory. This is more important in the segment about communal systems, but it also sets up the next step. Unified did one important thing to companies- it removed the ability of a company to "hold" anything. Why does this matter? The last way to launder/donate large amounts of money was by buying/selling companies.

Next, a cap will be placed on how much you can buy and sell companies for. If a company cannot hold any goods, it would be reasonable to assume that there is no reason to sell it for more than its base price. Will that be the limit? I don't know. But a limit will be put into place, because there really is no reason to over pay for a company other than to gain the employees that work in it.

Lastly will be the full removal of non-government orgs. This removes anonymous donating, money marketing, and company purchasing fully from the equation. With unified inventory in place, I don't think we'll be missing orgs. Some other changes (see below) may be coming to help with this further.

Essentially the admins took a massive gamble to help "clean" the game of the demand of multis. The gamble was that if citizens cannot hide behind orgs, they will be less likely to try multiing because of fear of losing their main account (and companies). They additionally added ways to reduce demand for black market gold. But. All along they way they didn't really communicate this that well. People like Jewitt left early once org removal was announced, fearing that the admins were simply screwing around to screw around. This does not appear to be the case.

No matter what the admins do, there will always be small scale multiing. Only a camera installed in the room of ever eRepper could help combat that. Ew. But, and I bet they have stats on this, probably 80% of the gold created from multi accounts comes from a bunch of coordinated multi rings. The best thing about all of this? For a long time, the eUS has been virtually clean of multi gold. Back in the old days, HR and Uncle Sam and the others used to do it when it was easier. But today, we do not, and even if it does go on it is nothing on the scale of the rubots, the Lazos, or {insert multiing group here}. We also have plenty of gold purchasers. In the large picture of things, these changes with strengthen our nation above those who cheated their way into prosperity (and subsequently fell once the spigot ran dry).

How this all ties together well with a communal economic/military system

The last piece of this puzzle is Military Units. Right now they do nothing. In the future, they will have some use. During all of these changes it has been clear that eRep is moving towards a communal system. Expanded storage means that I can donate 100 food to someone at a time, rather than donate little by little each day. This basically means that anyone with enough money can easily set up a militia and not have to be online all day to help supply people.

It has been rumored that this will be connected with military units (MUs) in a way that will allow the units to act like dispensaries. Companies could possibly be connected to MUs and the MU leader could set a "max food limit" for each soldier. Soldiers could then log in and grab 100 wellness of food from the MU and go off to fight.

No one knows how something like this will be implemented. It could be a long time before anything is added. It could be around the corner. It could look very different from this. It could be exactly like I laid out. I believe the 50 person unit will be lifted or be upgradable as well.

What is clear is that the eUS military needs to prepare for this. In my opinion, the future of eRep lies in militia groups with strong personality traits, with people choosing the one that suits them best. People will join MUs for the guaranteed food/guns, rather than the "military" that involves forms and OPSEC and months and months of sitting around in order to be promoted. QMing already is no longer what is used to be, with the ability to donate hundreds of food at a time, rather than 20. I also believe that a system of many militias encourages friendly competition and the purchasing of more gold (to push to be the best group in the country/world). In the long term, this is good for our country.

Perhaps I'm over reacting. Perhaps not. But we need to take a long hard look at our military structure in relation to potential damage output and figure out how to move forward. Many of the Eastern European nations already have militia based militaries. If this proves to be the best way forward, they will be a step ahead of us.

Ending