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Following the recent introduction of the equipment module, I thought about posting some suggestions about ways it could be better implemented into the e-sim mechanics so that all players can benefit accordingly. My personal take on the issue is that the module should be welcomed as a concept but altered in some crucial aspects and that one of the reasons why people are uneasy about it is because they fear that Railman may have just splashed onto us out of the blue and then leave us deal with it (which concerns me too but I prefer to hope it’s not true). The module has an appeal that by dealing different damage in combat, people would find it somehow harder to BH hunt or be over-confident that having a bit more strength would get them a model over another player. In other words, similar to the special items/boosts, a high strength player could also not just rely on strength alone in order to get a battle hero.

Make items expire
As a player, I am shooting myself in the foot for suggesting this but having things permanently is a time bomb that can harm the future of the game. Items should rather be more easily obtainable but impermanent so that there is a degree of constant demand and supply.

Make items available from a similar source
Getting torso equipment only via invitation of players is ridiculous especially considering the circumstances with having 2 servers available(not to mention it might encourage newer players to make multies naively thinking they won’t get caught). Now, when saying “source”, I do not necessarily mean through fighting although this can be one of the ways (its quite realistic to assume that generated equipment would be like spoils of war). This somehow relates to my point above because items could drop more often (hence making fighting more exciting than when it just drops once in X thousand hits) but there is a possible benefit to another neglected aspect of the game – the economy module, hence, my next point...

Producing the equipment
Items could be produced just as weapons or food! Why is that exciting? Because balance in raw materials could be tweaked in a way that equipment could require a mix of certain raw so that wood and stone could be slightly more used than iron (I know it sounds counter-intuitive when it comes to modern military equipment but it’s a sacrifice of reality worth making). Obviously, a new resource could just as easily be introduced but it’s probably worth making a better use of the current ones.

Companies from q1 to q5 could exist where production between head, torso etc and their benefits could be random or equally divided (I can’t say which would be better right now though I’m slightly more in favour of them being equal). There is also a scope for giving some countries a bonus region in producing more and better equipment at the expense of not having a high raw resource region since we already ended up having way too many countries which creates the situation where a strong country can just lay its hands on its less populous neighbors and not bother in fighting stronger opponents over scarce resources.

Remove the misses
It’s rather disheartening to have 0 damage but losing the health and resources used for the hit. Instead, just have something like a “weak” hit that does half damage. I would have suggested removing this and critical hits altogether but, seen objectively, I do believe that dealing varying damage per hit can have an appeal to the game by adding this tricky element of uncertainty.

Benefiting new players
There could be a number of ways to do this but one somehow viable way would be to have different drop rate for items in combat depending on the strength level. That way new players would not just have a better chance in getting their hands/using items but would also trade/sell the spare ones for other goods they may need. Obviously, there is the danger that some more established player decides to be clever and make multies for the generation of equipment through combat but this would be pretty much the same as having a multi farm and it’s therefore where GOs intervene.

Another possibility is that drop rate for them is the same but the benefits that items provide depends on player level/strength.

Adding a variety of item benefits
This one last area for suggestion is not the most pressing at the moment and is a rather wide one where people can offer a lot of suggestions but I thought it might spice things up over time. Examples include boost of damage in RW, +X number of hits for the day, even non-combat related ones like maybe a % bonus in work production(if the item could not be removed but has to be fully consumed first) or, say, losing 10 health less when using a Q1 to Q4 ticket for travel.

This is not an exhaustive list and that some of those things could have easily been suggested by others (after all, there are a lot of review/complain articles on the issue already). It also will be very much a trial and error situation about the balance because getting the right one can be tricky to achieve right away but that's ok as long as admin indeed has the will to address problems accordingly in time. For example, putting too much emphasis on wood or stone can suddenly make them too valuable compared other so again going into another extreme. But considering the recent deletion of the article by Speedy for allegedly not being constructive in his criticism, I wanted to try the other route i.e. just concentrate on ways that the current status quo can be improved with the vague hope that we(the e-sim player community) is still taken into consideration.


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