Before this change, countries did not lose PM units if they dropped land. This could be abused in the following way:

A theo buys a small amount of military tech and stays logged out for the last 450 turns on the express server. It logs in during the final five minutes (so there isn't any additional PM decay) and plays nearly all of its turns. On its final few turns it builds military bases. It then drops all land but the military bases. The country can now purchase 450 turns worth of units at full TMBR prices for very little cost. The only cost is the minimal amount of military tech and the destruction costs of the buildings.

The severity of potential abuse was dependent on the length of the round and whether or not the two billion bug is in place. In ffa, it was possible for it to be exploited very heavily. To my knowledge, it was not. However, because we consider this to be an exploit, it was patched immediately on all servers. From now on, if you drop acres your private market immediately shrinks proportionally.

I'd like to extend a big thank you to the player who reported this to us.

Muahaha, fools! Now I shall use this information to go back in time with my personal Wayback machine, and rule the game!

heh thats a pretty big bug=)

AoS: I believe you and I will have some sort of Timecop situation going on here shortly!

good explanation Slagpit :)

hm interesting

I knew the PM size didn't shrink but I didn't really think of any obvious ways to exploit it...

Congrats to the person that used it in express last set :)

Very, very clever!

Totally deserved the win, especially since they thought it up, executed(tested), and then gave it to the developers to fix.

omg...

yeah the PM shrank in 2025 if you dropped land...

i can't believe you guys didn't originally code that in.

that would have had a huge effect on suiciders, except that you can't drop land you've grabbed now

So that's how enshula was getting 25 million in express. :-p

thats how any country got 25M in express. CCCP, Enshula, Soyuz Soviet. Any country that had like 500acres and 20M+ NW

I would not however call it a bug, I used it in express, I would consider it using the formula's to the players advantage. It was the turns gained at login = 450 that blew up the market. It does however start to shrink with each turn that is gained after the initial login. It was able to login, buy up 2B, and get a few resells done before it ran out of stuff. I know from experience

:-)

I don't think I'd consider it a bug, more of an oversight....

good stuff, figured that it was imposible to get that kind of net in EE is why i said FA but bug abuse works too heh

fluff!

i think navisis thought of it

its something id tried every now and then in the old days but not recently

the main reason i thought it should mainly be changed was because it really distorted express making casher easier and better

in other servers its not as bad unless 2b bug was removed but i was considering dumping 1b or however much food in FFA, waiting a week (buying some turrets first) then getting very cheap private on a lot of turns

express is the only server where you can use all turns and get a big private

i think i got up to 23m without doing this, so 25m isnt a big differance

i think 25 could still be possible

when i complained to slagpit about this two express sets ago and he said no the only reason H's go down at set end to 350 acres is to avoid missile attacks, i thought he was just making one of his cryptic remarks. I never dreamed he did not know it. so i figured it was just one more advantage for theos. glad to know the admins did not do this on purpose.

you could have done it with demos as well and got almost as much since full mil tech was cheap

g=) i'd wondered how you did that.