Problem with indy in long servers is the expenses formula. Just change the way expenses scale with NW either to a higher divisor(2 minute effort) or make expenses inversely affected to by the log of NW or some such thing(might take 20 minutes).

-50% expenses as bonus don't really matter when expenses increase per unit increase 200-300% while jumping. It not only screws netting indy but it also ruins non-oil destocks in high turn servers, and punishes you for building a good country in war lol. :)

Current: Expenses ~ (1+NW/(2*10^8)), made sense I guess when NWs were lower.

Quick fix: Expenses ~ (1+NW/(5*10^8)) OR even (1+NW/(2*10^9)), would be a quick fix that more or less doesn't affect any server other than FFA and alliance(slightly primary, but it affects strats equally there).

Good fix: Expenses ~ 1/(0.2+ln(NW+1)/20), this would make expenses slightly higher than now below 5.3m NW and lower above that, which makes total sense at this point. Reward people for playing well, and don't punish them so hard for defending themselves.

Played around with that formula for a second and I think it makes perfect sense. Would increase viability of public and mbr based destocks, and would fix the upper nw indy problems.

+1

Does anyone know the initial reason for making military expenses scale with NW?

Mehul might know lol. :)

I have not seen an expenses formula that does not include that hmm.

it was to counter NW gains as to make it harder to brute force an indy..

But that time is long gone.. and now its about making more than one strat viable into the future..

you could give different governments a multiplier on different bonus' maybe

or just plain give commie expenses reduction, perhaps even just for jets or turrets

keep in mind the formula used to be a lot harsher, was more like 30m than 80m, also i dont think the formula was edited when nw values got halved for almost everything

basically there used to be an 'oh no nw's are too high' lobby and a similar one for too much land

it had a lot more effect when you could only dump 2b cash at a time so you ended up taking days to destock and the escalating expenses meant you had to stop running turns at some point

now it only applies to indy, and maybe casher sometimes

but it also has an impact on wars since as big countries you get a lot lower $/acre net income and contributes to the dropping land war meta

if you wanted to check whether its too high or not id look at comparing warring nw's, CI nw's and finishing nw's compared to years ago and prior changesets, compensating for when it was a lower

It used to be 40m in the divisor but NWs were like 1/5th of now because no bots and 3k turns in 1a instead of 5k turns.

If turns are taken back down no one can make kills except maybe in the FS so thats a bad idea.

And the reason it doesn't affect casher now is because cashers jump with oil destock nowadays, but if this formula were changed there could possibly be a shift to some cashers jumping normally again.