the bomb banks spy op should be seen as an admin's tool to force cash stockers to engage in market activity to hide their cash stockpile. In express a strong bomb banks op would work hand in hand with the $2B bug to prevent cash hoarding, in primary it would be the only safeguard.

if cash stockers become concerned that a significant amount of their cash is at risk they will have to spend that cash to hide it from spies

as it is now, cash stockers just leave their stash unprotected and do not worry about a piddling $6M loss here or there

a classic example in express last set was torpedo who had $1.7B and no spies. he just let people bomb banks until he was in spy DR after 20 ops and his zero spies were defeating players who had SPALs in excess of 1000. he ended up losing a paltry sum and did not have to engage in economic activity to protect his stockpile
there are at least five primary players now carrying cash stockpiles in excess of $1.5B who do not care about small amounts of cash leaving their vaults

if bomb banks were a legitimate threat then these cash stockpiles would have to be spent so they could not be stolen

the current yield is 0.4% so the loss to a large stock of cash is never more than about $7M


compare that to smaller primary stockpiles of

tech which can yield over $12M an op
food which can yield over $15M an op
oil which can yield over $20M an op

if you bump bomb banks up to 1.0% yield per op then that will spur economic activity which is good for the entire site and consistent with the yields from the similarly situated stockpiles

you should also consider weakening spy DR
to offset the weakened spy DR you could impose a max number of ops per country on another country
i.e. A can only spy on B 25 times in a 24 hour period

thanks again for your efforts and consideration

i don't think we understood you the last 14 times you posted about this.

maybe the 15th time is the charm! i have to admit, your persistence is incredible.

It is just dementia, not persistence.

fordy is not the target audience

this is meant for those thoughtful decision makers who have made so many changes in the last nine months
including changes to spy ops

No, its a way for you to get ABd to the ground for doing multiple harmful spy ops on another country.

hmmm

i meant that the admins should use bomb banks as a means to increase market activity for the economic vitality of the site


i have never had anyone react that badly to bombed banks because the damage is so minimal
people go crazy over stolen tech
slagpit once killed me for stealing tens of millions in oil
and when you steal millions of bushels people can come unhinged

but bomb banks? no not enough damage

What about Demo's who have large amounts of cash on hand??

Not everyone with 1.5 bil cash in primary is just stocking it

warster, it is true that not everyone with cash is stocking it
bear in mind that my comment originally was just for cash stockers, i did not imply in any way that everyone who has cash was hoarding it

but let us follow your line to its conclusion

let us look at an oil speculator who starts with $1.5B
he is vulnerable to losses of $6M an op to BB
he buys the oil and becomes vulnerable to $12M an op
what is the justification in that?

he puts the oil on the market and no longer has any vulnerability to spies but he runs the risk the oil will not sell
if the oil does not sell, he would have been better off to just lose the paltry worst case scenario of $100M on the off chance that someone bombed his banks up until DR made it impossible to get through
but assume our speculator is successful and now has a stash he is sitting on
why is he not churning it into more oil sales and benefitting the whole community?
if BB were stronger he would have an incentive to make sure he churned his profits back into the market

let us look at a D purveyor of fine foods who also starts with $1.5B
his risk to BB is $6M an op
he buys the food and his risk of loss immediately rises to $10M an op
what is the justification for that??
he puts the food on the market
if it does not sell, he has to dump it on his private market at $29
he could lose $11 a bushel if he bought at $40
again he is better off to run the risk that no one will BB since the risk of that happening is so small and the losses minimal
assuming he was successful why is he not doing it again rather than letting his cash sit dormant?

so we have now seen two types of D resellers who are not engaging in economic activity that would benefit the server just because they have no fear of BB

the same holds true for tech resellers
run a test right now in primary
you can steal 7000 tech points from any number of techers right now which comes out to over $10M an op but a BB after they have sold the return is $7M an op

if BB were strengthened there would be more economic activity on the servers with the new spy ops
warster's point does once again bring up the oft repeated suggestion about Democracies
we want resellers churning the market we want action
the current turn bonus system acts as a disincentive to democracies logging in very often
let us award Ds the turn bonus regardless of how often they have logged in. let us give Ds six turns every night at 0:00 even if they have logged in many times to market goods
if we do this, there will be much more market activity

this idea is not original with me so those of you who can not stomach an idea just because i thought of it can rest easy


in response to fordy's comment that is just obdurate persistence

no

when slagpit announced he was changing the spy ops in response to my suggestion he made it clear that the %s would be examined as we gained experience with the new ops

we now have that experience and it has become clear that the BB percentage is too small by at least half

this thread is not obstinance, it is evolution

You really think that boosting spy ops will make people not keep cash on hand? Bomb airbases is extremely powerful, do people therefore not keep jets around?

Fact is, harmful spy op usage is rather rare, except when 2 countries are engaged in war. Countries that are not warring each other will not be doing harmful spy ops on each other, so strengthening bomb banks will only affect people who wish to stockpile huge sums of cash while warring (i.e. no one at all).

This thread isn't evolution, its someone who has no clue how the game works making a suggestion and being totally clueless as to the results of that suggestion.

Lol lincoln, what about a demo farmer - food clearer,

Your idea may have a place in express but it has no place in primary,
Plus in primary 1.5 bil is not a huge stockpile, in a lot of cases its one days sales

yes i think that if hoarders lose $14M an op, they will stop hoarding
if they log back in and they are down $280M then perhaps they will change their behavior
you claim they will not

i can tell you that few people on express still keep millions of bushels of food on hand or millions of barrels of oil
they have learned to hide those caches
i can also tell you that techers with no spies start selling tech pretty quick when it disappears from their labs
given that food hoarders, oil hoarders and tech hoarders have all learned to change their behavior, i believe cash hoarders can do the same thing
but perhaps you are right perhaps they would just let $280M disappear day after day after day
i think you are wrong about that

Rockman's point about jets is interesting
people do not rid themselves of jets because of the remote possibility of bomb airbases but once they have had their airbases bombed once or twice in a set then yes they do change their behavior
the remote possibility does not change conduct but the actual concrete experience of bombed bases changes tactics pronto

a suggestion has been made to let spies steal jets but so far this suggestion has not been adopted
while the remote possibility of bomb air bases does not cause people to hide jets, once one has had their airbases bombed in a set they certainly do change their behavior
i know if an opponent has bombed my airbases even once in a set, i do all i can to hide the jets through sale or unremitting PS
i do not know why this concept eludes rockman

rockman also fails to grasp the distinction between the harmful spy ops like bomb airbases and acquisitive spy ops like bomb banks, raid food stores, raid oil and espionage

harmful spy ops are done only to hurt an opponent with no direct benefit to the spy country. one bombs airbases to deplete the opponent's strengths and indirectly benefit therefrom

acquisitive spy ops on the other hand are done to benefit the spying country with no malice toward the opponent. That is why they are now called acquisitve ops as opposed to the archaic classification as a harmful spy op

one steals tech, food, oil, and cash not to harm the opponent but to help one's own country
it is much more common on express than rockman seems to realize
and espionage has been on primary since swirve days.

acquisitive spy ops are done against hoarders with whom one has no interest in warring
just because a country has enriched itself with $50M or even $100M in tech on any particular day does mean that the country wants a war with its target
it simply means that the country wanted $50M more tech

viva la evolucion

warster,

thanks for acknowledging its place on express since that is really all i care about.

to your point about D clearers.
a demo food clearer who does not hide his stash on the market will lose far more than a casher with $1.9B
in primary this set an F was carrying 23M bushels without hiding them on the market, after two days of losing 20 x `400k bushels, he soon changed his behavior
while it is true that $1.5B is a small sum on primary, that explains the existence of "the bug". The $2B bug was put in to prevent hoarders from removing too much cash from circulation. The existence of the bug shows that the admins grasp the adverse effects of cash hoarding and are taking steps to prevent it. Strengthening bomb banks will just augment the beneficial effects of the $2B bug. The bug and a strong bomb banks spy op would work hand in hand to accomplish the admin's goal of preventing cash hoarding. Just as qz hates the idea of land leaving the server, so to cash disappearing forever into one country's bank harms the whole server.

thanks, warster.

Lincoln "the bug" was a coding issue in the old game, the main reason it was coded into the new game was to keep the game the same, as resets when on it was decided to remove " the bug" on some servers

As to bomb banks, just like this reset if someone does more then 5 BB's on me they will log in to a parking lot

I'd love a spy war in clan 1a. All-spy and grabbing only is much better than just grabbing... or just war.

if i find anyone with $12B on any server with the new GDI i am going to BB until my fingers bleed

Maybe I'm different than most players, but if someone does 20 harmful spy ops on me, and I've still got 1 billion cash on hand, I'm hitting them ... hard.

I've never played express, but I have played team, alliance, FFA, and primary. And if someone does 20 harmful spy ops on me there, I'm ABing or BRing them. It doesn't matter whether they are harmful ops, or 'acquisitive' ops. Either way, they hurt my country 20 times, so I'm going to screw their country up real bad.

Search tutuwarrior on primary, ill be waiting

i first need to espionage to 2M tech points and hope to find a big oilerm if not maybe some farmer is asleep

if all else fails then maybe i will bomb a few banks

At first I agreed that a rebalancing of the fluffty spy ops needed to be done.

After your incessant fluffing about it, however, I just don't really care one way or the other anymore.

pfffft

i can not believe warster tricked me into wasting a valuable op to look at his country

good job warster

i am not allowed to disclose the results of a spy op but lets just say i have more money than that in real life

this topic has been discussed enough and I'm not going to comment on it again.

i'd like to not see another thread on this for quite some time please.

You will have to ban Gregg then

he won't give up

well I hope he'll understand that we're not touching how this single op works unless it's part of other overarching changes to a basket of game mechanics

HA lincoln if you have soooo much money why dont u donate a chunk of it to the game

if u have more money then my country - Money: $1,056,291,855

then 100k should be pocket change :)

it was slightly more when i checked,
what happened to the other $240M?

that is only $4.2M an op, i can not run my country with that as an average return

spies are expensive

as to donating to the site, the admins are still working on a way to make that possible

we would absolutely change the way bomb banks works for $100,000 to help the game :D

we can do a lot of stuff with that $100k, blowing up fake cash is a small price to pay for lots of real cash!

See lincoln, all u have to do to get things changed is to pay off pang LOL

As for that 200 mil lincoln I spent it on more tanks as I had to replace the ones I lost abing a person who stole money

ironic that this thread dovetailed with ingame events :p

on a semi-related topic, if there are any millionaires or billionaires around who would like to send some money to the game, please let me know!

Funny that tho annoying, the bomb banks ops did get me to spend money and use the market, tho only with tanks lol

I thought i responded to this thread

maybe i responded to a NEARLY IDENTICAL ONE... grr

the only response i could find was that you were considering it

fantastic

since so many people are in favor of it as shown by that thread you mentioned and i bumped

not happening.

lincoln, stop trying to spin bugs and suggestion threads and cluttering up our boards with the same topics all the time.

also, expect the bomb banks op to not actually be strengthened in the future, but instead work in a different way.
it will never be a suicide friendly op :p

the new bomb banks has absolutely nothing to do with suiciding

that was the old bomb banks


since the change on express some time ago it has been used solely to enhance the spier's NW and for nothing else

it has nothing nothing nothing to do with suiciding

that is my last comment on the issue

...

just drop it.

since you're going to go back and edit your post I will too:
I know you only care about 1 server, but I care about all of them.

when I think of changes, I think about how it impacts everyone. this is a ridiculous discussion that I hope isn't brought up again until we are actually spending time looking at spyops.

the more we keep muddling around making changes like this, the farther we are from getting the game finished. and I feel we already spend FAR FAR FAR too much time catering to the existing community compared to moving the game forward.