Suggestions for erepublik, serious article, please share your opinion.

Day 974, 10:15 • Published in Romania Romania • by NOSHADEZS
Oh, and I consider applying again for a job at erep, regardless of payment 😛 (almost)

I like to invent things that makes sense, and give them a stylish, serious looking design.
My problem is that I'm not a media mogul, and I don't have the resources to advertise my articles,
therefore not many people get to read them.... I'm sorry.

// THANKS to QueenOfTheDamned for advertising my article.
THANKS TO EVERYONE who read and voted my wall of text.

I didn't put my suggestions about the damage formula and how to fix it, I dedicated an entire article for it here: Article but it didn't get that much attention.
Suggestions :

The 70 wellness rule:
In my humble opinion this mechanism doesn't fit eRepublik and doesn't make a lot of sense.
The old method of getting wellness from food, houses, hospitals and wellness packs makes a lot more sense.

//In addition to that, if you have food or a house, after fighting, and getting hurt.
you STILL get to 70 wellness and nothing above. Which also makes no sense.
(Later edit: behavior changed according to UPDATE 1: Day 975, eRepublik time: 03:08 from Erepublik Insider) The rule in itself still doesn't make sense.

The hospital functionality:
If the admins from their point of view, thought that, hospitals should be buildings with low strategic value, and they have a very low strategic value just because their costs are enormous and benefits extremely low THEN probably this will eventually lead to a massive non-combat.. which we all know where it leads to: many players that enjoyed the military part of the game will leave.

Resolve: drastically increase the functionality of the hospital in terms of usage/durability.


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Enemy overrun situation:

If a squad of soldiers from a military unit decide to attack a tile where only one or just a few enemies hold position absolutely all of the attacking side loses 10 wellness, even if they don't all get the chance to fight. Which is retarded IMHO..

#IF YOU DON'T FIGHT, YOU SHOULDN'T LOSE ANY WELLNESS!
Applying this fix to all situations, whether the attack is on the same target or is berserk will make the game logical and enjoyable.

#Another fix to this could be the damage sharing, a situation where the squad count's as a single entity and if it is attacking the same target, to count the defending side as a single entity also.
And at the end of the fight to share the damage received, to lower the wellness for all the combatants.


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Communication on the battlefiel😛
That part is O.K, you have in-game chat, in game messages, shouts, forum
everything. On this chapter admins rule.
( *readers note: communications aren't exactly perfect but It could be hard to make a system with
VoIP for a massive multiplayer environment, a module that would allow communication between small groups might be handy, though we have skype teamspeak ventrilo or even Ymess to fix that)

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Making gold more useful and less mandatory:
While my suggestions decrease the necessity of wellness packs thus the need for gold,
I propose to make gold more useful:

Make custom options available like:

# Premium service (15 gold recommended price):
Extra feature on market: cheapest finished product on the international market (with taxes)
Extra storage, 50 slots for players, 100 slots for ORGS.
Email notifications for Work, Train, High resource region under attack, Capital under attack. Presidential elections.
+5% damage in all battles. ( *readers note: unbalanced option)
Exclamations marks for all tiles on the war module when a squad bigger then 5 players is in
the fire range and you're in trouble.
Double experience gain (skill, rank and general xp). // Idea by Tudor_Corneliu

# Vacation mode: wellness and happiness don't drop, but you can only spectate the game as org
for a certain amount of time.

#5 Conversion between Skills
would make the game more enjoyable if it would be always available.

I know a ton of players that simply hate the fact that they were wrong about their migration both in economic and military carrier. Because of that many of them left the game or they are selling their account. And trust me, they are actually selling the account, two of them are colleagues from work.

How could it work: conversion from skill A to skill B is done at rate of 50% (without gold)
ex: An engineer with skill 10 can convert to a fitter with skill 5.
or conversion done at rate of 5% - 10% with a gold charge. (Do you get my point? gold spent in a way that will actually make the player happy. This should be the no1 idea in everything)

I thought of suggesting to put an information box like the one when you buy WP in beta for skill conversion, asking the player:
"Are you sure you want to convert your skill? this will permanently reduce your ability."
Y/N

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This part was suggestion no4 in my personal analysis in beta, many players enjoyed these concepts so along with no10 I'm putting them here too:

#4 For the war module, you could introduce a simple section where players with not much time to spend on erep could access to simply gain 10 xp (or less, 8-6-4-2), a certain small amount of rank-points and lose wellness according to the hospital on that e-region/ Or maybe not lose wellness at all.
example:
gain 10 xp for a Q5 hospital and barehanded dmg points.
gain 08 xp for a Q4 hospital and barehanded dmg points.
suggested name: "Military support and logistics" with 1 simple button.
Just push the button, and do whatever else you need to do.

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#10 Maps could contain quotas for buildings according to the industrialization in-game.
example: Muntenia, Liaoning and Asturias would have maps with more tiles occupied by cities (artillery bonus) near the capital on the map.

Quota mechanics:
small industrialized e-regions contains little to no tiles occupied by cities.
medium industrialized e-regions contains 15-20 tiles occupied by cities.
heavy industrialized e-regions contains 30-50 tiles occupied by cities.

(this is because right now, artillery is regarded as something between tank and helicopter,
most of the guys II talked, choose either tank or helicopter, and almost all of them thought
artillery sucks because its terrain bonus is extremely rare)

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The part where the turns are "processed" forever in firefox, Chrome, and Opera but works fine in Internet Explorer is....................
I don't even wanna try to be rude to your programmers, because I don't know more then
2 cents about programming.
And the resource consumption is extremely high, It was reported by others too, graphics always are re-downloaded.
Personal question: Why use flash for time-management#scene1 ? Why not a standard simple s-c-r-i-p-t and .GIF that will be cached? But maybe its just my computer or I simply don't know everything about this matter.

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This is a social simulator BUT incomplete
It only simulates one system of government: Democracy,
For a true social simulator elected players and parties should have in-game mechanisms that will
facilitate Fascism, Communism, Monarchy, Utopia(quit the money system, one unique pocket, a single real national goal for everyone to achieve).


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Differences to climate and location:
Whether you are in eCanada, eIran, eRomania, eVenezuela, eNorway
you will see the same page layout.
Making players really feel they moved in a different location in the virtual world would be nice,
but not mandatory.
Suggestion for this: Add different Layouts (or Ambient image) for countries with different climate and
political regime. (or region under attack, region in a resistance war, etc)


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House durability
A presidential mandate lasts 1 month, and it's equivalent with 4 years in real life.
A Q 5 house in Erepublik can last 3 months maximum ?. This makes no sense, it should last at least for 10 presidential mandates because we don't leave in cardboard houses and waste so much raw materials.. (which leads to the next suggestion to fix the game philosophy)

Decrease raw consumption
(imagine its*1000 actually, and the government in real life Romania cut the last 4 zeroes just so it can be easier to calculate and maneuver)

(*readers note / Tudor_Corneliu: this time it's possible that I (Noshadezs) misunderstood the admin, raw consumption could be lowered, but only by ~20 percents to increase interest for high productivity regions, government attention to this matter, and the construction market)
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WHAT DO YOU THINK??? YES YOU! THE PLAYER!
Please leave a comment, pro or cons, and eventually a suggestion if you have.