[COs] Paying the soldier makes him no soldier at all.
The Mike
Dear readership,
thank you for the interest shown in the previous article of mine. It was very nice to have more pure votes than purchased ones! Today's article will present you with the issue of COs (Combat Orders). For five years military strategists and commanders managed to organise and lead armies of steel. Combat Orders were presented to us, the players, more than half a year ago and nowadays they play a very contradictory role - on the one side they are extremely expensive, on another side they can be uniquely helpful and crucial and on further side they can be totally devastating for both sides. I will finish off with how do COs affect soldiers' mentality and what threads do COs present themselves to be for military strategists.
I am publishing the current article on 15.March 2014 and enjoy 886 newspaper subscriptions as of moment of writing. The last article I wrote was guilty for bringing in 21 new subscribers.
The game launched back in late 2008. The first military module lived for pretty much two years, then it was replaced with another one, known as "v2", not as successfully which in its turn was replaced in several months time. Since 2011 the only major change to the military module has been the divisional distribution of soldiers that has occurred on two occasions so far, summer 2012 and early 2014.
For 5 years military strategists have been finding different ways to organise their militias:
- IRC rooms
- IRC bots
- Skype
- TeamSpeak
- other instant messaging programs
- Google Spreadsheets/Docs
- Websites
- Browser scripts
Creativity at its best! People would always find the way to operate at the highest efficiency allowed. The admins, however, would take their time and would first implement the Military Unit feature (with a very contradictional rule of captains being able to override commanders' orders) and Campaign of the Day feature which would allow for easier damage coordination, a year after they would add political titles and implement alliances in the game (all of which don't influence mechanics in any way) and finally we would get the Combat Orders that allow commanders to fund their soldiers for their damage contribution.
What exactly are Combat Orders?
Any Commander of a Military Unit is allowed to set COs. They can set it only for their own MU, for citizen of their own state, or for all eRepublik players. COs must be specified for a specific campaign, side and division. COs are given a specific budget, an amount of cc per a million of damage dealt to be distributed after each hit, while the wall is below a specified percentage. This is how the CO settings panel looks like:
After a CO has been set, the commander can pause it (there is a cool down time of 15 minutes, before you can start it again), stop it or edit its budget or price per 1 Mio. damage.
All a citizen has to do is tick the box and start hitting, when the wall is below the said percentage
😛They will be given the money after every kill, proportionate to the amount of damage they've done. It is also very easy to identify campaigns that offer COs. Just open the wars page (Ctrl + C) and look for this symbol:
There are two Combat Order offers for the side of Hungary in this RW.
There is set CO for USA in this campaign
Quite a nice gadget to have, isn't it?
Yes, it is nice. Soldiers get paid directly, Commanders don't wonder if soldiers are using the weapons they've received in the correct battles (or if they are using them at all..), everybody is happy. Also, MoDs don't have to mass-call and slap everyone in dozens of IRC channels twice each minute in order to get people to fight. They just have to increase their offer
😛By using COs, military strategists can direct damage quite quickly and effortlessly. Difficult campaigns can be won simply by putting a Combat Order in the end of a battle - people now have an incentive to spend their EBs
😉And to win the campaign for you, of course
😁
So, what kind of disadvantages could this thing have? It does look pretty awesome indeed..
To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.
So, we've seen how cool this option is, this can only mean that it can be just as bad. The first thing that comes into my mind are costs. Noone can really predict how much a single CO could cost. There are simply too many variables:
- division
- average q7 hit
- cost of tanks, needed to make 1 Mio. damage
- amount of soldiers on both sides
- other COs in other campaigns or set COs on the other side of the same campaign
- total damage dealt in the battle on both sides also influences the budget to be set. It on its part varies based on the importance of the campaign; the result of the other battles in the same campaign; time of the day and day in the week/month/year and others.
The best way to estimate the "right" amount of price per Mio. damage and budget for COs is to have a feeling for that. Above I outlined the main factors that may influence it. And as you could see, if a battle is about to need hundreds of thousands of currency, there is nothing you can do about it - you either spend the money, or lose the battle. No negotiations, no middle ground. Some empires put CO on each RW in order to keep their territories. Then they don't spend more than a four-digit sum on the whole campaign. In other scenarios the resistance puts a larger than usual CO in order to attract mercenaries to move and fight for them. Here the sum is larger, especially if the occupiers aren't happy with letting the region go. Even some MPP campaigns may cost less - when the outcome is pretty much predictable and you put a CO in order to just make sure you don't get surprised, for example. But what about a MPP campaign, in its final, 15th battle, in which the CH Top5 has more than a dozen of billion damage in it? They tend to go in the 6-digit price tags per battle and, if there is enough cash to support the whole campaign - at least a 7-digit for the campaign itself.
But cash isn't all of it, is it? Yes, there is one more disadvantage to using global COs. They don't simply cost a lot in cash, but they also addict. With time, they take away "free" damage and bring it under the CO cap, thus making it even more expensive. If a country is known to be often putting COs on its campaigns, so it is more and more likely that people won't fight (for this country), until the country puts a CO. So, first, the country loses from damage that it would normally receive for free and, second, the country needs to pay for that damage that until now has been for free. And third, soldiers may refrain from hitting, believing a country will put COs on, and in this way lose food fights. In this way the soldier's country loses in total damage output as well.
All in all, COs were introduced into the game in order to take off some of the pressure from military commanders in organising their armies. They brought in some decent advantages, making it possible for campaigns to be won with the use of igm features, instead of purely meta as we were used to. Another advantage I didn't outline in the article was that cash went flowing around in the economy - leaving countries and entering citizen accounts. On the other hand, there are some serious disadvantages too: (1) as COs awards soldiers for real damage done, its costs are very real too - cost of a CO-supported campaign could vary from $10,000 to even $1,000,000; and (2) making people used to fighting under CO offers leads to diminishing returns of the CO. And this is what exactly the title means - under the influence of this powerful motivator, soldiers "forget" to do what they do best - fight.
Thank you for your attention!
The Mike
P.S. If you are new to eUSA, make sure to read Gnilraps' 10-step guide in
HOW TO SUCCEED IN USA: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
You can find more guides on the DoE's website and in DoE's newspaper.
886
Comments
Great analysis, very nice insight into this module and the implication of game-changes on the way how it's played. Good stuff!
WIRED
o7
vote😛)
COs around the clock 😉
WIRED
Didn't read lol.
But I've read the title and It explains all. 😛 😛
Agree with cha buddy.
Great analyzing, voted and shouted.
One thing that comes to my mind when thinking about the implementation of CO's, is their effect on mercenary activity. Prior to CO's, it was normal for organized large Mercenary MU's to get even 200cc / million in divison 4. I was part of a big, glorious mercenary unit in Finland, called "Mossad". We were active for 8 months before the update, and had constantly bigger revenue than the state of Finland. One could make several hundred bucks with only fighting his food fights.
After the implementation of CO's, it was all gone. No one would again pay such prices for damage, as it would be much cheaper to put moderate CO's. Effectively this update killed the active mercenary business, which was a major blow for the activity of certain players - at least in Finland.
Another thing I came across is that the recent change in division limits afaik raised the CO subsidies for lower divisions, as there is now much more strenght than before the recent update. Now one can put hundreds of thousands of CC into D3-4, perhaps into D2 battles as well. Before the limit update, it was practically division 4 eating the most of CO-money.
Once again, good article. Keep it up 🙂
Well, those Mercenary MUs were selling themselves quite well too. It costed them 50-60cc per Mio. and they would rarely take below 1g per Mio. But we also had a lot of cash incoming from taxes in the countries, so it was fine.
The new divisional distribution is very good for older players, but totally devastating for new players.
Thank you for the observations!! And for reading it all ^_~
o/
Exactly...
v + s
o7
nice artical 😃
Good analyses!
Cheers! (:
good read v+s
Unfortunately COs are not to blame for damage wh**es, who have existed long before this was added. They have made it easier for this to happen, but the same unprincipled people have always played the game, interested only in their own price tags.
tbh, I'm also a damage whore 😛 I find it totally normal to wait and see if a CO will come, if I know that there is an 80% chance for Croatia to start one after t100. However, if I don't have the feeling that you may be putting a CO, I will hit as early as t65, for instance.
So, it's all up to the perception. You are correct that COs have made it easier for "mercenaries" as individuals, so commanders have just to be more careful in their general behaviour 😛
voted
war requires cash. always has, always will.
The truth noone wants to face 😁
\0/
great article
Cheers buddy!
v+s
amazing work! and thanks for the infos..
I think the advantages outweight the disadvantages greatly, specifically when you talk about money returning to citizens, instead of just sitting there at the government.
I typically take a loss when fighting with a CO. There's a threshold of damage that if you are below for any given CO amount, you lose money by fighting.
v and subs 😁 great job
o7
Lazokrasi will save us all
WIRED
Great article, interesting read. I love CO mechanics, they're the only tactical thing left in the game.
Re budgets, just an indicator, 4-5k can easily be spent in 60 seconds on an evenly-matched div3 close. Blind-siding is also useful, though not for long 😉
good article...
vs
Voted
WIRED
Doesn't paying a soldier make him a Soldier of Fortune? Or better yet, it makes him a regular soldier because most soldiers receive payment for what they do unless there militia.
A soldier is a defender of a cause. So, it doesn't make him any soldier of fortune, but simply dependant on money. He stops defending the cause and starts obeying the wallet (:
But the main point was something else ;p
A soldier is a person serving in a Army not a defender of a cause. A defender of a cause would be a crusader or marauder.
And the army is responsible for the provision of food, weapons and shelter.
Along with the wages that they earn from their job
I make a difference between wages per time and wages per piece of job done.
Because they receive payment for jobs done instead of time there soldiers of fortune (Mercenaries).
voted
V& S Intelligent CO is an art that is in it's infancy.
Great article man. Voted
INSURGIO~
Nice article. ^.^
INSURGIO~
Nice reading. Sub.
Voted
Excellent article, Mike. Voted.
I do believe that COs were a positive addition to the game, but to a point, they seem to me to be symptomatic of a long-running trend where game mechanics have moved the power for decision-making and delegation from meta government and player-created bodies to individuals and MU commanders. Such a trend has both good and bad points, but I can't help but feel like these changes are slowly neutering the social strategy aspects of eRep.
Good analysis either way though.
~INSURGIO
Thanks for the comment mate! I concur 😁
It ruined MU supplied damage in a big way.
Well, what it really did was increase supply and lower demand right? So damage prices got lower which hurt you guys financially?
Honestly, I can imagine how much that sucked, and I feel for ST6 and other similar independent outfits, but hey, that's the admins for you. We all have to change and adapt with the times.
Prices seemed to get lower (they did per million) but the total damage purchased (above and beyond what would be there naturally) may have gone down, as mentioned in the article. Often fighters wait for a CO to fight at all. Current CO prices rarely cover the cost of the damage at all. It's weird.