The secret life of Hungarian tanks - I asked, they answered [Translation]

Day 3,709, 10:53 Published in Hungary Hungary by aimeisan

The original article: A magyar Tankok titkos élete - én kérdeztem, ők válaszoltak by Murlockij



1. Introduction

It interested me a long time ago, why do the greats of our eHomeland still play, ten years after the beginning of the game. It interested me, how can they maintain their continuously high activity for years. Recently I have seen that regularly governmental opposite side CO was needed to keep up the (in my opinion harmful and counterproductive) system of TP battles, and I hypothesized, the main reason for this is that the vanguards of the active players are not playing personally, manually anymore, but they gather the easiest revenue coming from the True Patriot medals with the help of automatisms, scripts and/or programs.







2. The Experiment

I have chosen arbitrarily twenty, mostly Hungarian players who are playing eRepublik until this day with great dedication. Although the sample was arbitrarily selected, I strived to survey the most experienced active characters with the highest military rank. In my opinion the surveyed twenty characters adequately represent the most dominant military elite of the community.

I have sent two letters, in the first I worded vaguely, it took more letters to make clear what I mean, so I quote only my second letter. The second letter was sent to those (next day after the first one) who didn't answer. This can be for several reasons, they couldn't or didn't want to answer, or maybe didn't even read my letter.


Hi!


Sorry for bothering you, I know I have been looking for you yesterday, but unfortunately I didn't get an answer, maybe you missed it, so I try again, I hope you don't take it as a harrassment.

So;
I have surveyed arbitrarily chosen, mostly Hungarian players, tanks about the extent they automated the daily operation of their characters. By which I mean the daily tasks are done by a human, or a program/script.
By Daily Tasks I mean work, upgrades, travel, hitting down the wellness and hunting medals (BH, SH).
My question is how do you do this? I for example automated the activity of my character to an extent of 25%, I have stuff, but only daytime, I don't use anything else, and I fight only by myself. This is approximately 25%.
By 100% I mean that someone logs in once a day, or even less, to read wall, letters and the like.

The majority of the surveyed players have answered, I think your opinion could also be interesting as you are an experienced player.
Of course I won't publish anything with names, I just would like to make statistics, and with permission I would quote parts from the letter, if it's interesting.

Best regards:

Murlockij






3. The results


Surprisingly many players answered, I sent twenty letters, received 18 answers, one player didn't want to understand my question, which I considered having no intention to answer. So I received 17 player's meaningful answer. One player is in full 2click, inactive, only trains, although reads letters.
With some players I exchanged many letters to explain what I mean by automation, what are its degrees and features, and again, I divided the answers arbitrarily into five groups:

0% those, who don't use any scripts, do everything by themselves, as they did originally at the beginning of the game.

25% those, who daytime use the eating script, predominantly the stuff, nighttime it's turned off, and its purpose is only not to let the energy recovery overflow.

50% those, who use it nighttime too, or use other tools besides auto-eating. I don't go into the details what are these.

75% those, who work in companies, hit, go for BH, SH medals, travel and work with tools, day and night, but reserve a part of the control for themselves, they control and hit manually at campaigns, or when they feel like.

100% full automation; everything is done by machine, every functions and tasks are performed independently instead of the owner.





4. Evaluation

It seems the vast majority of the tanks are automated, play in more or less automated robot-mode, five players admitted to be completely self-propelled, and three take back the control only sometimes, at campaigns or events, and almost everyone use the convenience features provided by the scripts.

Of course the results are based on self-declaration, but it was interesting that one of the tanks in the letters specifically wrote that at night his character "rests" in automatic mode at another specifically named tank, and he himself plays only daytime. While the "other" simultaneously surveyed tank admitted only the use of stuff, about characterserver, restpark where others rest their characters in automatic mode wasn't even a word.

Some claimed many characters (typically smaller, not too strong and experienced characters) don't have owner a long ago, they are kept in the restpark only because of the old memories, or because of the owner of the character may want to return to the game someday. Allegedly the server owners "in the past" used the collected idle characters to influence politics, this was the source of many political turbulence, and it is until this day.

In addition many players mentioned that they used to run their characters fully automated one-two years ago, but changes and the introduction of new packs made this partially unnecessary, ie the max wellness has increased with the new packs to the extent that they can recover all night without overflowing, so full automation has been downgraded to a lesser degree. Instead of the old (usually homemade or purchased) programs they use only stuff.

In the light of the foregoing, I would warn every decisionmaker against underestimating the automatisms, or making big plans in which the big tanks and their activity plays role.

And - although I have surveyed only the active and most experienced tanks - I am sure the other active, but not top characters have a similar degree of automation, even if to a lesser extent. So I am sure this is the main reason why opposite side CO is necessary to keep up the TP battles.


5. Further curiosities, bonus content

The correspondence I had with the players showed them surprisingly open and honest, I received real answers from almost everyone, moreover, interesting conversations evolved where opinions, advices and stories were telled, even unrelated to the specific question.

There was also a strong polarization, everyone knows everyone, and many people don't like many others. Much envy, dumping on each other. Although this animosity has faded nowadays as we are in the twilight of the game, in my opinion the old conflicts are still present at the strongest, most experienced players.

The game melted away around them, but they still stick not only to the game, but to their old conflicts as well.

Here are some quotes from the correspondence. I changed some sentences to preserve the anonimity, but the essence didn't change in my opinion.


The frustration:

"I don't know, I never asked what is the occupation of the others, when the game interested me the friends and the community goals motivated me, so this aspect never even came to my mind, and since they destroyed the community part of the game, I don't give a sh.t. Fortunately I don't have to get my living this way, so I feel sorry for XXX, because maybe he was the one who boasted with this (his programming knowledge) once. In my opinion the worst part of the game is that it ties to the chair, if this could be eliminated without any scripts, only setting the server to hit the half-wellness into the DO battles automatically, the game would be much more attractive for many people, because they wouldn't need stuff or anything else to do this, or they wouldn't have to sit on the enter key while they could do more meaningful things. If they would bring back V1 as an alternative with limited daily hit, the game was not about this, everybody would be much more happy, because they don't lag behind in the technical race, but they have chances similar to the other's."



The supertank even gave specific advice, how to remain among the top players


"First I should tell that my budget assumes that I don't spend euro on the game, only if it's absolutely necessray of course.
I write it in steps:
1. I have to catch the epic Tuesday morning, because if I don't hit myself up to min 8000PP, than there will be no wellness and no TP and BH.
2. I am waiting the Tuesday morning with full energy, possibly when leveling up, and than out of ca 200-250 bars I can make 7000-8000 PP.
3. Packs: PowerPack 300 gold, Maverick+BlitzKrieg 1000gold, WarStash+CombatStash 600 gold. So here we can see what is the problem, we need monthly 1800 gold, the rest returns from the packs.
4. Daily 50 gold from BH is the minimum, I go for it in D3, D2 and D4. It's easy to collect, because on average I exceed this limit by 15 BH. This is the most important part of the game because I pay the packs from this. If one day I don't collect the 50 golds, next day I push more.
5. I cover my CC need from TP medals, my 1 hit is almost xxxx so I easily get 10000cc a day, of course if there is a TP battle. If there isn't, I try to get aerial CO and I sell some Q7 weapons I produced.
6. I have Q7 weapon factory, because I wouldn't have money for this, and I produce 80% of the raw material for myself.
7. I have a Q5 house factory too, sometimes I buy house from the market, but only 1 a month, negligible.
8. I produce food too, but not enough, so I usually buy from the market, the TP must cover this.
Roughly this is the scheme, in the morning I look at how many gold I have, in the evening it must be 60 more, and than it's OK. Without packs there is no improvement, I wouldn't be already here.
And also there's the money coming from work, I work 8-10 times a day, that is +3000cc this covers the cost of my workers."



The wrathful:


"In my opinion if somebody is completely into this xxx than he is halfwit, not normal in RL. He improves his program that he wrote years ago for himself and doesn't share it with anybody, we can use the crappy Romanian one, envious and selfish little @@@. Only me, me, me. He isn't the only one, did you notice that every top characters are programmers in RL? How interesting, many super characters, and the owners all can write programs. But YY, the meddler of the nation, 100x Ferenc Deák, is a lawyer, you can see his character is zero, a joke. What did he achieve? Nothing."



The croesus:


"LOL he has fifty thousand golds, they are spreading that picture and he is posing. Big thing. Some years ago we made a competition with friends, when the new boxes were introduced, who reaches hundred-million CC faster. We were hitting, laughing at others when they failed. There were many insider info before changes, so we made big money on the markets, those who had a little brain could make it not just the Romanians. Now, at the tenth anniversary you could see what will happen, those who bought few hundred-thousand weapons earned very well, and we didn't even talk about food. They are whining because of the state treasury, few millions, haha, instead of watching what is happening on the markets.
(...) finally I didn't reach the hundred-million, just not long ago, but others did. I have seen how much is in the treasury. Twenty millions? 25? And we have that multiple times. Miserables. And where are the Romanians, I am sure you have seen their orgs too. That is wealth. Roman NE, hahaha."





6. Ending

I hope I could give you an insight into the wonderful life of the Tanks, the Highlife, the circles of the better life.

Thank you for your patience and understanding reading. If you have any questions, I am pleased to answer in letter, or in the comments below. Originally I didn't want an article, only I was surprised so much at the quantity and the quality of the answers, and the honest, willing attitude, that I changed my mind.