Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
Definitely not too late to send orders but you might want to wait for me to publish the new stats. The current deadline is Aug 5-ish.
-Prethread- NCNESIOT: Blackened Skies
- Thread starter Nuka-sama
- Start date
Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
X-posted from MAIN THREAD for Great Justice
Hello everyone! No doubt changes in recent months have left some of you a little lost and confused as to how to proceed. It used to be so simple, yeah? You spent some EP, got some stuff, and the game just sort of kept going. Except not, because you never had a good idea of what stuff cost, and feedback on projects was thoroughly unreliable.
No longer! Now we have replaced several of the problems in the old model. The new system is robust and will delectably explain many of what was hidden before. So, let's try to keep things simple. A quick-start guide that EVERYONE can use to get started playing Blackened Skies!
MAKING THINGS HAPPEN
Action Potential and How to Use It
The main currency of action in this game is Action Potential, points that are automatically generated based on your government type. Whenever you want to order anything, as a government, you use AP to do it.
There are two kinds of actions you can order:
Edict - A one-time proclamation, command, or order, something as simple as a command to all soldiers to take "Not one step back!" or something as important and moving as an address at Gettysburg to your tired and triumphant armies. Edicts represent a change in momentum, a usage of political influence to enforce your will.
Edicts do not require any cash backing to help increase or change their effectiveness. They're an announcement by the guy on top: pretty cheap overhead, at least no more than your lawfully-elected benevolent dictator's per diem. However, in each nation there is a natural resistance to all change: the effectiveness of an Edict is reduced in direct proportion to the amount of Inertia in your nation - the innate resistance to social change.
Policy - A long-term government objective codified as a set of commands, colloquially known as a "policy," this is your primary method of exercising your authority. Policies are initiatives that require ongoing care and upkeep, and span an enormous variety of categories from social welfare to secret weapons development.
There are four kinds of government policies: Political, Economic, Socialist, and Classified. You can find a list of sample policies in the link below.
Policies are enacted by spending 1 AP as upkeep, and apportioning IC to the policy as you desire. Each policy will produce increasing effects the more IC are apportioned to them, with a cap on their maximum effectiveness. The short list below shows off many of the extant policies, the IC cost for the base effect (generally, 1 IC produces 1 unit of "effect"), and other details you may need to know.
As an example of how this works, suppose you want to guarantee suffrage. In the link below, Guaranteed Suffrage is a policy for this exact purpose. It improves your Unity by +5% for every 1 IC assigned to the policy. So, to achieve the maximum effect of +50%, you can order the Policy for 1 AP yearly upkeep, which means your government will use 10 IC to put the Policy into effect.
How does your government get IC? All IC costs money, and the base cost of using an IC is given in your government information. Your government has yearly funds, indicated by your Revenue stat. It can use these to cover the costs of buying IC, or using and operating it, for the purpose of funding its Policies.
So, suppose, in our example, your nation has a Base Cost of 0.5 EP per IC. So our policy will cost 5 EP (10 IC * 0.5 EP/IC = 5 EP) in yearly upkeep.
All of the information of how much your policies end up costing, and their projected effects, will be given in the Government Activities Audit at the end of every update. This will save the need for overmuch bookkeeping by players.
RESOURCES, INDUSTRY, AND ECONOMY
Money and stuff
Each nation will have usually a non-zero amount of Industrial Capacity[/bb], frequently abbreviated IC. IC represents the presence of factories, advanced infrastructure, and manufacturing centers that convert "raw" resources into special goods, like steel, consumer electronics, guns, and canned food. In this time, IC is the main engine of wealth creation, and the expansion of IC has been responsible for immense economic growth across the world.
However, IC is not free, and in fact IC cannot turn nothing into something. IC is hungry, both for capital investment - EP - and raw goods - resources.
Each country has, within its borders, Resources that it has access to and gathers each year. There are a number of non-renewable resources as well as renewable resources.
The non-renewable resource are extracted from the ground, and tend to be rare. They are:
Oil. Used in combustion engines. IC naturally demands some oil, as do more developed economies, and oil helps create Energy.
Tungsten. Used as a steel-hardening agent. Helpful in weapons development as well as bolstering the effectiveness of steel alloys.
Chromium. Used to treat steel and make it resistant to corrosion. Useful in industry and infrastructure and any applications where robustness against weather is a concern.
Rubber. Tough and flexible, useful in creating tires and for myriad other industrial uses.
Aluminum. Highly malleable, aluminum is lightweight and easy to work with, making it invaluable in airframe construction.
Iron. Basic iron ore, iron is necessary for smelting steel.
Steel. The essential building block of all industry. Steel is used for building new industry and in all infrastructure projects.
There are also renewable resources, which are generated as-needed by available workers automatically. They are:
Food. Catch-all for all agricultural goods, is quite simply necessary for everyone and everything. Food shortages will hurt.
Coal. Although technically not renewable, it is considered plentiful worldwide, or capable of being replaced with renewable alternatives such as charcoal. Coal creates Energy when Oil is not available to do a better job.
Energy. Automatically used by IC, each IC costs 1 Energy. 1 Oil generates 13 Energy and 1 Coal generates 1 Energy. Energy shortages drive up the cost of IC without a guaranteed increase in IC's value!
Each country generates supply and demand of resources: supply indicating what they produce, and demand indicating their consumption capacity. Supply and demand is localized for certain difficult-to-transport goods (food, energy, etc.), but otherwise is "shared" automatically among Trade Groups, where it is assumed natural market forces, plus a little good old-fashioned government arm-twisting, put resources where they need to be. Richer nations get first pick of resources when it comes to satisfying their demand, meaning a shortage for the entire trade group may not be as bad for the richer members (although they will still feel it).
Your trade balances will impact your spending and acquisitions. The balance is shown in your Resource stat, though you should also consider your Trade Group. Except for Reserves, Resources list how much of that resource you produce per turn, the flow of that resource through your economy, and the +/- value besides it indicates whether you are getting enough of it (+) and can export the rest, or you need to import some to make the difference (-) and sometimes that import isnt always available (check your trade group).
All micro-purchase are automatically arranged, so you shouldn't have to worry about counting any beans. What matters is the big picture: What do I need? Do I have enough? Can I get more?
DEBT?
Really?
Yes! Your nation can naturally support a certain amount of debt equal to the overhead imposed by its professional class. Hence in your Resources stat, where you "want" Debt, is the Debt you can naturally support thanks to your civil society. 1 Debt = 1 EP spent beyond your spending. You can "sell" debt, or buy it out, at 1 Debt per 1 EP but with the potential of being charged additional interest rates by the strongest banks in the Trade Group.
Going over your natural Debt support will start to see government spending contract. While this won't cripple you immediately, money spent supporting debt is money NOT spent promoting investment or consumption, and so will probably result in shrinkage of the entire economy.
The minus -Number in Debt indicates how much more debt you can acquire before you start to see problems. So, a Debt: 0 (-1433) would indicate the market can support 1433 EP lending. Natch!
ARMIES, NAVIES, AND AIR FORCES
Toy soldiers and toy boats
I've given this spiel before and there's no need to go over it again. The MILITARY: how you intimidate or kill people until they do what you want. Or, how you defend yourself against evil. Both great options.
The land forces are represented in the Deployment and Army stats. Under Deployment, the percentage amount of reserves currently mobilized is listed. For convenience, the actual number of active combat divisions is also displayed here. As always, more soldiers is usually better. Each division is staffed by about 10,000 men on average.
The force composition of those divisions is given in the Army stat, where six categories are listed. These represent your government's doctrine, or theory of land combat, that instructs the way your army expects to fight battles. There is no right or wrong doctrine: there is only good or bad policy. Does your doctrine do what you need your army to do?
Each Army point is maintained by 1 AP/turn, like a Social Policy. Decreasing Army points will increase your available AP; increasing Army points will decrease your available AP.
The six Army stats are:
MASS: This represents a government focus on build-up, and increasing the "mass" of the army. Each point reduces build-up cost by 10% and increases build-up speed by 10%.
FIREPOWER: This represents a focus on weaponry; its development, usage, and deployment. More firepower indicates more shooting, and each point increases army damage by 10%. (Increases Tungsten usage)
MOVEMENT: This represents a focus on maneuver and maneuverable units like trucks, tanks, and motorized infantry. Each point increases army maneuver by 10%, allowing them to enter and withdraw from combat more easily. (Increases Oil and Rubber usage)
INTEGRATION: This represents a focus on overall quality improvement by integrating different areas of the military. Each point will increase the bonuses received from Firepower, Support, and Air Support by 10%. Each point in excess of the amount of Support points will also increase upkeep cost by 10%. (Reliant on Electric XP)
SUPPORT: This represents a focus on support divisions, like medical divisions, maintenance, combat engineers, signal corps, and others. They keep things working. Each point will increase upkeep and build-up cost by 10%, and improve army damage, army resilience, and maneuver by 10% each. (Reliant on Army XP)
DISCIPLINE: This represents a focus on enforcing obedience in the ranks, and ensuring soldiers follow orders. Each point increases resilience by 10% and improves their Military Police efficiency by 10% also. (Reliant on Paying Soldiers)
That leaves the Navy and the Wings. Navy are boats. You build more of them and you command the seas. Naval forces have been simplified to four stats, each amounting to a count of naval resources:
SCREENS: Basic navy vessels, like destroyers and light cruisers. These are the basic elements of a navy, and consist of the core mass of the navy. Without the screens, the rest of the fleet is sure to perish.
CAPITAL SHIPS: Large navy vessels, like battleships and heavy cruisers. These mount large guns and help give a navy extra damage, but are dependent on Electric and Navy XP for true effectiveness, and by themselves don't last very long.
CARRIERS: These vessels serves as floating airbases for deploying light aircraft and bombers. They can help bring air forces to bear in a fight.
SUBMARINES: These undersea vessels are sneaky and devastating against undefended targets, such as civilian shipping, but don't add much in a stand-up fight.
Wings, or Air Forces, are flying machines with guns or bomb bays. They have also been simplified to four stats:
TAC. BOMBERS: Small or medium bombers that drop bombs. Most inexpensive airframes, can perform close air-support with good integration, and more general bombing otherwise.
STG. BOMBERS: Very large bombers, the most expensive airframes capable of climbing to high altitudes and dropping lots of ordnance. Strong and difficult to intercept by enemies with inferior Air XP, they can lay waste to industrial centers when left undisturbed.
LT-FIGHTERS: Lightweight airframes with machine guns. Usually metal unibodies though sometimes made of wood and canvas. Low-range, but good pilots can take advantage of their maneuverability.
HV-FIGHTERS: Heavy airframes with bigger machine guns. Always metal unibodies with long-range capabilities. Can escort bombers or fight for air superiority.
To build these, you create a special Project rather like a Policy. The IC and resource cost of these projects, and their yield per year, are given in the Social Policies list too.
EXPERTISE
The knowledge of a people
The mechanic known as Expertise, sometimes abbreviated XP, refers to the total industrial, technical, and scientific learning and aggregate knowledge in your nation. For each XP type, you have a Global Share, representing roughly how much of the total knowledge you have, and the XP gained over the past year. XP decays automatically at a fixed rate (2% of total) that goes down with increasing Inertia, however Inertia will also decrease the amount of XP gained each year.
XP feeds directly into the market model to determine the value of IC in your nation. In addition to being useful for processing raw resources, IC can produced finished manufactured goods, whose final value is dependent on how competitive your manufacturer is in some field or area. Competitive (higher) XP values will greatly increase the value, allowing for growth to occur. Weaker competition (lower) XP values will not increase the value, and may even decrease the value if the XP is low enough.
The Government Activities Audit at the end of each turn will list the XPs gained and the expected value due to using them with IC. In your Exp. stat, you will see your Competence-rating at each XP. Positive numbers means you're more competent than the global average - yay! - negative numbers mean you've got some catching up to do.
Whenever an IC creates a finished product using XP for any reason, be it to sell back to the economy for consumption or to sell to the government to fulfill weapons contracts, that value is counted in determining your yearly GDP. The sum of all such transactions will be listed in the Market Log, a list of every Trade Group's trade balances. High SND values (Supply 'N' Demand) mean that resource is in high supply, so it's cheaper to acquire, but also worth less. Low SND values, under 1, mean that resource is scarce, or in shortage, making it a more expensive commodity.
You will note most Trade Groups have very very high demand for IC. That is normal, as demand for IC will drive entities to build more factories to seek to satisfy that demand.
Bottom Line: Resources, industry, and expertise will all contribute to increasing the value of your economy. Keeping your industries supplied with the resources they need, and ensuring that they keep developing their expertise to remain competitive, will go a long way to making your industry functional.
REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI)
Or: the most important thing to know
This quick-start guide is not meant to explain every bit and detail of the Blackened Skies game system - it's only meant to initiate you into the idea of the game and explain some of the core mechanics. It's perfectly natural to still have some questions, or to want to know more in the context of the game.
Those of you who have maintained regular correspondence with Nuke and I throughout the course of the game can probably attest to the usefulness of keeping regular contact with us. As the GMs, we are your cipher to the world. This is a feature we feel helps make Blackened Skies more fun and engaging, and it's also fun for us to role-play as your advisers.
For all information pertaining to the world, or questions existing completely within the context of the narrative, inquiries should take the form of Requests for Information, or RFI. RFI is just a fancy word for "a private message you send us asking for info."
RFIs are in-character actions that do not cost action points but pose a question for your advisers. They can be as simple as "How many troops do I have in Egypt?" or as complex as "How viable would a complete nationalization of the steel industry be?" Or, as involved as "What would be the cost of a project to build more drydocks?" We will reply with in-character replies from your advisers helping to guide your decision-making and provide additional insight.
In order to send an RFI, send us a PM (preferably with "RFI" in the subject line). Be as detailed as you feel is necessary. And we will be able to provide projections and make estimates about the impacts of your proposed policies.
Other questions, pertaining to rule mechanics or other OOC info, does not have to be framed as an RFI, and shouldn't. In fact it's more helpful if you ask those questions in the Pre-Thread. RFI is for IC-information only.
SUMMARY
That wraps up this Quick-Start guide! I hope you found this guide helpful, and if you're a long-time player or short-time player, I also hope you're as excited about the future of Blackened Skies as I am!
Resources List (reference)
Government activities last year
Pre-Patch Stats (reference)
*Some of the XP stats may seem a bit off, but overall they should still be accurate. If they change at all, it will only be in absolute terms, not proportional terms, so you should still keep an apparent advantage if you have it.
**This is a nominal projection to next year sans any policies or actual growth or investment.
Blackened Skies
QUICK-START GUIDE
QUICK-START GUIDE
Hello everyone! No doubt changes in recent months have left some of you a little lost and confused as to how to proceed. It used to be so simple, yeah? You spent some EP, got some stuff, and the game just sort of kept going. Except not, because you never had a good idea of what stuff cost, and feedback on projects was thoroughly unreliable.
No longer! Now we have replaced several of the problems in the old model. The new system is robust and will delectably explain many of what was hidden before. So, let's try to keep things simple. A quick-start guide that EVERYONE can use to get started playing Blackened Skies!
MAKING THINGS HAPPEN
Action Potential and How to Use It
The main currency of action in this game is Action Potential, points that are automatically generated based on your government type. Whenever you want to order anything, as a government, you use AP to do it.
There are two kinds of actions you can order:
Edict - A one-time proclamation, command, or order, something as simple as a command to all soldiers to take "Not one step back!" or something as important and moving as an address at Gettysburg to your tired and triumphant armies. Edicts represent a change in momentum, a usage of political influence to enforce your will.
Edicts do not require any cash backing to help increase or change their effectiveness. They're an announcement by the guy on top: pretty cheap overhead, at least no more than your lawfully-elected benevolent dictator's per diem. However, in each nation there is a natural resistance to all change: the effectiveness of an Edict is reduced in direct proportion to the amount of Inertia in your nation - the innate resistance to social change.
Policy - A long-term government objective codified as a set of commands, colloquially known as a "policy," this is your primary method of exercising your authority. Policies are initiatives that require ongoing care and upkeep, and span an enormous variety of categories from social welfare to secret weapons development.
There are four kinds of government policies: Political, Economic, Socialist, and Classified. You can find a list of sample policies in the link below.
Policies are enacted by spending 1 AP as upkeep, and apportioning IC to the policy as you desire. Each policy will produce increasing effects the more IC are apportioned to them, with a cap on their maximum effectiveness. The short list below shows off many of the extant policies, the IC cost for the base effect (generally, 1 IC produces 1 unit of "effect"), and other details you may need to know.
As an example of how this works, suppose you want to guarantee suffrage. In the link below, Guaranteed Suffrage is a policy for this exact purpose. It improves your Unity by +5% for every 1 IC assigned to the policy. So, to achieve the maximum effect of +50%, you can order the Policy for 1 AP yearly upkeep, which means your government will use 10 IC to put the Policy into effect.
How does your government get IC? All IC costs money, and the base cost of using an IC is given in your government information. Your government has yearly funds, indicated by your Revenue stat. It can use these to cover the costs of buying IC, or using and operating it, for the purpose of funding its Policies.
So, suppose, in our example, your nation has a Base Cost of 0.5 EP per IC. So our policy will cost 5 EP (10 IC * 0.5 EP/IC = 5 EP) in yearly upkeep.
All of the information of how much your policies end up costing, and their projected effects, will be given in the Government Activities Audit at the end of every update. This will save the need for overmuch bookkeeping by players.
RESOURCES, INDUSTRY, AND ECONOMY
Money and stuff
Each nation will have usually a non-zero amount of Industrial Capacity[/bb], frequently abbreviated IC. IC represents the presence of factories, advanced infrastructure, and manufacturing centers that convert "raw" resources into special goods, like steel, consumer electronics, guns, and canned food. In this time, IC is the main engine of wealth creation, and the expansion of IC has been responsible for immense economic growth across the world.
However, IC is not free, and in fact IC cannot turn nothing into something. IC is hungry, both for capital investment - EP - and raw goods - resources.
Each country has, within its borders, Resources that it has access to and gathers each year. There are a number of non-renewable resources as well as renewable resources.
The non-renewable resource are extracted from the ground, and tend to be rare. They are:
Oil. Used in combustion engines. IC naturally demands some oil, as do more developed economies, and oil helps create Energy.
Tungsten. Used as a steel-hardening agent. Helpful in weapons development as well as bolstering the effectiveness of steel alloys.
Chromium. Used to treat steel and make it resistant to corrosion. Useful in industry and infrastructure and any applications where robustness against weather is a concern.
Rubber. Tough and flexible, useful in creating tires and for myriad other industrial uses.
Aluminum. Highly malleable, aluminum is lightweight and easy to work with, making it invaluable in airframe construction.
Iron. Basic iron ore, iron is necessary for smelting steel.
Steel. The essential building block of all industry. Steel is used for building new industry and in all infrastructure projects.
There are also renewable resources, which are generated as-needed by available workers automatically. They are:
Food. Catch-all for all agricultural goods, is quite simply necessary for everyone and everything. Food shortages will hurt.
Coal. Although technically not renewable, it is considered plentiful worldwide, or capable of being replaced with renewable alternatives such as charcoal. Coal creates Energy when Oil is not available to do a better job.
Energy. Automatically used by IC, each IC costs 1 Energy. 1 Oil generates 13 Energy and 1 Coal generates 1 Energy. Energy shortages drive up the cost of IC without a guaranteed increase in IC's value!
Each country generates supply and demand of resources: supply indicating what they produce, and demand indicating their consumption capacity. Supply and demand is localized for certain difficult-to-transport goods (food, energy, etc.), but otherwise is "shared" automatically among Trade Groups, where it is assumed natural market forces, plus a little good old-fashioned government arm-twisting, put resources where they need to be. Richer nations get first pick of resources when it comes to satisfying their demand, meaning a shortage for the entire trade group may not be as bad for the richer members (although they will still feel it).
Your trade balances will impact your spending and acquisitions. The balance is shown in your Resource stat, though you should also consider your Trade Group. Except for Reserves, Resources list how much of that resource you produce per turn, the flow of that resource through your economy, and the +/- value besides it indicates whether you are getting enough of it (+) and can export the rest, or you need to import some to make the difference (-) and sometimes that import isnt always available (check your trade group).
All micro-purchase are automatically arranged, so you shouldn't have to worry about counting any beans. What matters is the big picture: What do I need? Do I have enough? Can I get more?
DEBT?
Really?
Yes! Your nation can naturally support a certain amount of debt equal to the overhead imposed by its professional class. Hence in your Resources stat, where you "want" Debt, is the Debt you can naturally support thanks to your civil society. 1 Debt = 1 EP spent beyond your spending. You can "sell" debt, or buy it out, at 1 Debt per 1 EP but with the potential of being charged additional interest rates by the strongest banks in the Trade Group.
Going over your natural Debt support will start to see government spending contract. While this won't cripple you immediately, money spent supporting debt is money NOT spent promoting investment or consumption, and so will probably result in shrinkage of the entire economy.
The minus -Number in Debt indicates how much more debt you can acquire before you start to see problems. So, a Debt: 0 (-1433) would indicate the market can support 1433 EP lending. Natch!
ARMIES, NAVIES, AND AIR FORCES
Toy soldiers and toy boats
I've given this spiel before and there's no need to go over it again. The MILITARY: how you intimidate or kill people until they do what you want. Or, how you defend yourself against evil. Both great options.
The land forces are represented in the Deployment and Army stats. Under Deployment, the percentage amount of reserves currently mobilized is listed. For convenience, the actual number of active combat divisions is also displayed here. As always, more soldiers is usually better. Each division is staffed by about 10,000 men on average.
The force composition of those divisions is given in the Army stat, where six categories are listed. These represent your government's doctrine, or theory of land combat, that instructs the way your army expects to fight battles. There is no right or wrong doctrine: there is only good or bad policy. Does your doctrine do what you need your army to do?
Each Army point is maintained by 1 AP/turn, like a Social Policy. Decreasing Army points will increase your available AP; increasing Army points will decrease your available AP.
The six Army stats are:
MASS: This represents a government focus on build-up, and increasing the "mass" of the army. Each point reduces build-up cost by 10% and increases build-up speed by 10%.
FIREPOWER: This represents a focus on weaponry; its development, usage, and deployment. More firepower indicates more shooting, and each point increases army damage by 10%. (Increases Tungsten usage)
MOVEMENT: This represents a focus on maneuver and maneuverable units like trucks, tanks, and motorized infantry. Each point increases army maneuver by 10%, allowing them to enter and withdraw from combat more easily. (Increases Oil and Rubber usage)
INTEGRATION: This represents a focus on overall quality improvement by integrating different areas of the military. Each point will increase the bonuses received from Firepower, Support, and Air Support by 10%. Each point in excess of the amount of Support points will also increase upkeep cost by 10%. (Reliant on Electric XP)
SUPPORT: This represents a focus on support divisions, like medical divisions, maintenance, combat engineers, signal corps, and others. They keep things working. Each point will increase upkeep and build-up cost by 10%, and improve army damage, army resilience, and maneuver by 10% each. (Reliant on Army XP)
DISCIPLINE: This represents a focus on enforcing obedience in the ranks, and ensuring soldiers follow orders. Each point increases resilience by 10% and improves their Military Police efficiency by 10% also. (Reliant on Paying Soldiers)
That leaves the Navy and the Wings. Navy are boats. You build more of them and you command the seas. Naval forces have been simplified to four stats, each amounting to a count of naval resources:
SCREENS: Basic navy vessels, like destroyers and light cruisers. These are the basic elements of a navy, and consist of the core mass of the navy. Without the screens, the rest of the fleet is sure to perish.
CAPITAL SHIPS: Large navy vessels, like battleships and heavy cruisers. These mount large guns and help give a navy extra damage, but are dependent on Electric and Navy XP for true effectiveness, and by themselves don't last very long.
CARRIERS: These vessels serves as floating airbases for deploying light aircraft and bombers. They can help bring air forces to bear in a fight.
SUBMARINES: These undersea vessels are sneaky and devastating against undefended targets, such as civilian shipping, but don't add much in a stand-up fight.
Wings, or Air Forces, are flying machines with guns or bomb bays. They have also been simplified to four stats:
TAC. BOMBERS: Small or medium bombers that drop bombs. Most inexpensive airframes, can perform close air-support with good integration, and more general bombing otherwise.
STG. BOMBERS: Very large bombers, the most expensive airframes capable of climbing to high altitudes and dropping lots of ordnance. Strong and difficult to intercept by enemies with inferior Air XP, they can lay waste to industrial centers when left undisturbed.
LT-FIGHTERS: Lightweight airframes with machine guns. Usually metal unibodies though sometimes made of wood and canvas. Low-range, but good pilots can take advantage of their maneuverability.
HV-FIGHTERS: Heavy airframes with bigger machine guns. Always metal unibodies with long-range capabilities. Can escort bombers or fight for air superiority.
To build these, you create a special Project rather like a Policy. The IC and resource cost of these projects, and their yield per year, are given in the Social Policies list too.
EXPERTISE
The knowledge of a people
The mechanic known as Expertise, sometimes abbreviated XP, refers to the total industrial, technical, and scientific learning and aggregate knowledge in your nation. For each XP type, you have a Global Share, representing roughly how much of the total knowledge you have, and the XP gained over the past year. XP decays automatically at a fixed rate (2% of total) that goes down with increasing Inertia, however Inertia will also decrease the amount of XP gained each year.
XP feeds directly into the market model to determine the value of IC in your nation. In addition to being useful for processing raw resources, IC can produced finished manufactured goods, whose final value is dependent on how competitive your manufacturer is in some field or area. Competitive (higher) XP values will greatly increase the value, allowing for growth to occur. Weaker competition (lower) XP values will not increase the value, and may even decrease the value if the XP is low enough.
The Government Activities Audit at the end of each turn will list the XPs gained and the expected value due to using them with IC. In your Exp. stat, you will see your Competence-rating at each XP. Positive numbers means you're more competent than the global average - yay! - negative numbers mean you've got some catching up to do.
Whenever an IC creates a finished product using XP for any reason, be it to sell back to the economy for consumption or to sell to the government to fulfill weapons contracts, that value is counted in determining your yearly GDP. The sum of all such transactions will be listed in the Market Log, a list of every Trade Group's trade balances. High SND values (Supply 'N' Demand) mean that resource is in high supply, so it's cheaper to acquire, but also worth less. Low SND values, under 1, mean that resource is scarce, or in shortage, making it a more expensive commodity.
You will note most Trade Groups have very very high demand for IC. That is normal, as demand for IC will drive entities to build more factories to seek to satisfy that demand.
Bottom Line: Resources, industry, and expertise will all contribute to increasing the value of your economy. Keeping your industries supplied with the resources they need, and ensuring that they keep developing their expertise to remain competitive, will go a long way to making your industry functional.
REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI)
Or: the most important thing to know
This quick-start guide is not meant to explain every bit and detail of the Blackened Skies game system - it's only meant to initiate you into the idea of the game and explain some of the core mechanics. It's perfectly natural to still have some questions, or to want to know more in the context of the game.
Those of you who have maintained regular correspondence with Nuke and I throughout the course of the game can probably attest to the usefulness of keeping regular contact with us. As the GMs, we are your cipher to the world. This is a feature we feel helps make Blackened Skies more fun and engaging, and it's also fun for us to role-play as your advisers.
For all information pertaining to the world, or questions existing completely within the context of the narrative, inquiries should take the form of Requests for Information, or RFI. RFI is just a fancy word for "a private message you send us asking for info."
RFIs are in-character actions that do not cost action points but pose a question for your advisers. They can be as simple as "How many troops do I have in Egypt?" or as complex as "How viable would a complete nationalization of the steel industry be?" Or, as involved as "What would be the cost of a project to build more drydocks?" We will reply with in-character replies from your advisers helping to guide your decision-making and provide additional insight.
In order to send an RFI, send us a PM (preferably with "RFI" in the subject line). Be as detailed as you feel is necessary. And we will be able to provide projections and make estimates about the impacts of your proposed policies.
Other questions, pertaining to rule mechanics or other OOC info, does not have to be framed as an RFI, and shouldn't. In fact it's more helpful if you ask those questions in the Pre-Thread. RFI is for IC-information only.
SUMMARY
That wraps up this Quick-Start guide! I hope you found this guide helpful, and if you're a long-time player or short-time player, I also hope you're as excited about the future of Blackened Skies as I am!
Resources List (reference)
Government activities last year
Pre-Patch Stats (reference)
*Some of the XP stats may seem a bit off, but overall they should still be accurate. If they change at all, it will only be in absolute terms, not proportional terms, so you should still keep an apparent advantage if you have it.
**This is a nominal projection to next year sans any policies or actual growth or investment.
New rules are awesome.
However... Why do I have a negative revenue? A week ago I had 61 division, now I have 58, but my army maintenance has grown from 61 EP/turn to 740 EP/turn. And my tax power is back to 12 points (again). I see that the Ruhr has lost tax power as well.
My private sector has also shrunk three times since the update (compare the Private-to-Public IC values).
Negative revenue combined with 325 Debt (+148) means that every turn my economy is supposed to be shrinking, while I have no way to lower my debt, and instead I'm forced to borrow. What's crippling me so much and so suddenly? Just last week, my economy looked quite healthy, and suddenly I'm having a total Venezuela here, if not Zimbabwe. Other SocIntern countries don't seem to be impacted by this crisis, so it's not my trade group and not the war effort (the Ruhr has been at war with Italy for just as long). I'm lost at this.
EDIT: Market logs indicate "Mobilizing -2 Divisions and maintaining 65 Divisions", but that doesn't match the number of divisions I currently have. The Matrix is crumbling.
However... Why do I have a negative revenue? A week ago I had 61 division, now I have 58, but my army maintenance has grown from 61 EP/turn to 740 EP/turn. And my tax power is back to 12 points (again). I see that the Ruhr has lost tax power as well.
My private sector has also shrunk three times since the update (compare the Private-to-Public IC values).
Negative revenue combined with 325 Debt (+148) means that every turn my economy is supposed to be shrinking, while I have no way to lower my debt, and instead I'm forced to borrow. What's crippling me so much and so suddenly? Just last week, my economy looked quite healthy, and suddenly I'm having a total Venezuela here, if not Zimbabwe. Other SocIntern countries don't seem to be impacted by this crisis, so it's not my trade group and not the war effort (the Ruhr has been at war with Italy for just as long). I'm lost at this.
EDIT: Market logs indicate "Mobilizing -2 Divisions and maintaining 65 Divisions", but that doesn't match the number of divisions I currently have. The Matrix is crumbling.
Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
Originally government ownership was set too low; across the board you will now see a consistent public/private ownership with the mobilization rate.
Also, the Tax Power increase only triggers when the Policies are cycled, and currently they are not being cycled. That's inconvenient, true, but it should only be a problem this once and you can submit a request for a 1-year projection as an RFI.*
Anyway, Debt was converted from a stat that measured previous aggregate spending, so i think 200% debt is a generous assumption (especially when that is in fact a rather small proportion of your total GDP) given you have in fact been spending rather aggressively. But, it's not hopeless. You have two rich allies with plenty of credit and the means to lend you some extra cash.
I'm going to make a quick adjustment so that Tax Rate is displayed instead of Tax Power. TxP is now an efficiency stat, with all starting at 20% Tax across the board.
*Send me a PM titled "RFI: 1-Year Projection if I increase Tax Rate to 40%?" etc.
Also, the Tax Power increase only triggers when the Policies are cycled, and currently they are not being cycled. That's inconvenient, true, but it should only be a problem this once and you can submit a request for a 1-year projection as an RFI.*
Anyway, Debt was converted from a stat that measured previous aggregate spending, so i think 200% debt is a generous assumption (especially when that is in fact a rather small proportion of your total GDP) given you have in fact been spending rather aggressively. But, it's not hopeless. You have two rich allies with plenty of credit and the means to lend you some extra cash.
I'm going to make a quick adjustment so that Tax Rate is displayed instead of Tax Power. TxP is now an efficiency stat, with all starting at 20% Tax across the board.
*Send me a PM titled "RFI: 1-Year Projection if I increase Tax Rate to 40%?" etc.
With all respect, I'm not sure I'm satisfied with this explanation. I tuned my nation for one set of rules (I even ran equations to approximate how much I can afford to build and maintain each turn while still growing my available EP) and now I'm seeing a nation in a deep economic crisis under a completely different set of rules. Deficit spending is okay if you choose to purchase something you need more than a long-term economic security (which is what I did). Before this turn, I had 100+ divisions, 45 of them being purchased last turn (again, I ran equations to see how many cheap infantry divisions I could approximately afford). Now I have 58 divisions, get charged for maintaining 65 (more than I have), and their maintenance cost is 10+ times bigger under new mobilization rules. (EDIT: and their quality is also worse, because I used to have Excellent Leadership/Training/Equipment and advanced doctrine, and now nations with slightly lower stats have same army size and better doctrine by total number of points spent).
All in all, I understand the purpose of the rules change, and I like this new rule set. But I feel like I'm playing a nation with almost no continuity. Half of the assets and perks I purchased previously are gone, and their cost has grown multiple times. I'm probably not the only player impacted by this, but I'll let others speak up if they want. You're the game master, no questions. But as a player, I'm losing the connection between cause and effect.
Frankly, I don't know what to suggest here. Going back to the old rule set is probably not an option. I need a few more days to run some math and see how I can rescue the situation without losing all the fun from the game. Competing against other players is cool; competing against changing game rules is not. It's not a resignation announcement, just a statement of a fact.
P.S. I will absolutely bombard you with RFIs shortly.
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
I have 58 EPs to spend on ICs and all those nice projects are screaming at me
send help
send help
America (the USA) has zero debt. 1042 debt belongs to the USSA (commie America) played by Ogane. I think they've surpassed their debt limit in one turn by 25 EP. It's gonna get worse for them from now on (they're gonna have 2000+ debt next turn).
Sorry for double posting, but I think I've figured out what screwed my nation so much.
Basically, I don't even need a PFI for this. My deficit is a result of too high mobilization and too low tax power (resources also play a role here, but there's nothing I could change short term to fix that). Basically, the problem is I built a big army under the old rules, by going into some debt. Then I raised my mobilization also under old rules (when the number of divisions didn't depend on the mobilization rate, and army maintenance cost was relatively low). Then rules changed very sharply, I lost half of my divisions, most of my quality superiority, and my high mobilization became crippling, and my Tax Power became too low (I still don't understand your explanation as to why it's 12 TxP, while it has to be 11+2=13 TxP; if the social policy wasn't in effect, I'd be back to 11 TxP, which is not the case). Now, if I demobilize down to 50%, I'll lose what little army I have left. So, all of my previous 8 turns were wasted on building up an army I lost due to the rule change, and the only legacy I have from those 8 turns is a crippling debt. I would've been better off investing nothing into my military up until now.
Basically, I don't even need a PFI for this. My deficit is a result of too high mobilization and too low tax power (resources also play a role here, but there's nothing I could change short term to fix that). Basically, the problem is I built a big army under the old rules, by going into some debt. Then I raised my mobilization also under old rules (when the number of divisions didn't depend on the mobilization rate, and army maintenance cost was relatively low). Then rules changed very sharply, I lost half of my divisions, most of my quality superiority, and my high mobilization became crippling, and my Tax Power became too low (I still don't understand your explanation as to why it's 12 TxP, while it has to be 11+2=13 TxP; if the social policy wasn't in effect, I'd be back to 11 TxP, which is not the case). Now, if I demobilize down to 50%, I'll lose what little army I have left. So, all of my previous 8 turns were wasted on building up an army I lost due to the rule change, and the only legacy I have from those 8 turns is a crippling debt. I would've been better off investing nothing into my military up until now.
Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
That makes sense. The Tax Power being apparently Base 12 is because your government type's Tax Power improved. The fact this isn't super-obvious is something I'm working on (tax power and tax efficiency should just both be percentages).
I had experimented with reducing the sizes of reserves pools but that doesn't seem to be working as intended and I think I scaled the GFA down unfairly. Thanks for the sanity check; I've tweaked GFA's stats so they seem a little less hopeless & to be more in line with your previous policies.
I had experimented with reducing the sizes of reserves pools but that doesn't seem to be working as intended and I think I scaled the GFA down unfairly. Thanks for the sanity check; I've tweaked GFA's stats so they seem a little less hopeless & to be more in line with your previous policies.
I don't know by how much my military got reduced but it is extremely worrying that I had a greater war potential than Han because of my higher income (in spite of my lower reserves) and now I really don't have much of an advantage.
Thank you for the tweak, I really appreciate it.
Hate to be the bringer of bad news, but some other bugs are starting to show now. Population is changing wildly across the board (particularly after your tweak). The Ruhr just lost ~20 mil. people, GFA lost 2 mil. people, the Han gained 5 mil. people, the Zhao lost 15 mil. people. Even if the rules change, I don't think population was supposed to be impacted.
The Matrix is crumbling on! The One is coming!
Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
Actually you observed an intended change. None of those countries lost any core pops; they only lost access to conquered pops. (Zhao had Thai in the stats then they pulled out). Dunno what happened in Han though.
No, you didn't lose 15 mil. people after the game update. You lost them literally an hour ago. 15 million people just disappeared. I feel disturbance in the Force.
EDIT: Crezth has explained everything. That's much less intriguing.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
Oh, goodie! Now I feel like I have a decent chance at winning this war!
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
that doesn't sound balanced
giggle I've gone from mobilising 70 divisions to only 49 this turn.
Is there any reason my IC fell?
I'm sort of in a different boat to the Gfa heading in the same direction since my chief advantage - making stuff cheap (and bulk civil wars) - went down the toilet. The Brits are in the same boat as me, but we keep our distance because cooties or something. I kind of feel like my economy shrunk relative to everyone else by quite a lot in most cases. I just used EP / BC as an indicator of purchasing power.
(I dunno how to reconcile this either since I don't think the bc ratios made much sense, but my industrial stats were/are laughably small. That was made up with the magic of bc. So I dunno shrugged or something and left it alone).
Actually, I've got the same military issues as the GFA since I paid bulk cash to modernise and a host of other countries that didn't are sort of/kind of better than me. Not that I liked the previous method much.
Also, not sure about EXP. I think it has, ah, problems since it assumes everyone started off from the same base. That's not true and it annoys me a lot since it doesn't make sense. The Germans are good at military stuff not because they invade people all the time (that's true) but because I assume they have stuff like a good officer Corp, general staff, awesome NCOs and the like. That's the work of decades of good work and not something you can hope to gain in even a short period of time from a cold start. I'm good at sea because I've been operating a blue water navy since independence or thereabouts. There's a whole lot of learnings implied in there. It's arguably even harder to do this from a cold start than the army stuff. Ditto with industrial. And well anything. Like maybe time will prove all this but like ehhhhh.
Is there any reason my IC fell?
I'm sort of in a different boat to the Gfa heading in the same direction since my chief advantage - making stuff cheap (and bulk civil wars) - went down the toilet. The Brits are in the same boat as me, but we keep our distance because cooties or something. I kind of feel like my economy shrunk relative to everyone else by quite a lot in most cases. I just used EP / BC as an indicator of purchasing power.
(I dunno how to reconcile this either since I don't think the bc ratios made much sense, but my industrial stats were/are laughably small. That was made up with the magic of bc. So I dunno shrugged or something and left it alone).
Actually, I've got the same military issues as the GFA since I paid bulk cash to modernise and a host of other countries that didn't are sort of/kind of better than me. Not that I liked the previous method much.
Also, not sure about EXP. I think it has, ah, problems since it assumes everyone started off from the same base. That's not true and it annoys me a lot since it doesn't make sense. The Germans are good at military stuff not because they invade people all the time (that's true) but because I assume they have stuff like a good officer Corp, general staff, awesome NCOs and the like. That's the work of decades of good work and not something you can hope to gain in even a short period of time from a cold start. I'm good at sea because I've been operating a blue water navy since independence or thereabouts. There's a whole lot of learnings implied in there. It's arguably even harder to do this from a cold start than the army stuff. Ditto with industrial. And well anything. Like maybe time will prove all this but like ehhhhh.
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