About the changes
There have been a few change suggestions posted by players. I'm trying to listen to all suggestions and make those changes that will improve player experience or the game as a whole. I also try to respond to every request and explain what it could mean and my reasoning behind the decision to either implement it in the game (with or without modfications to the original request) or not. Since some requests could potentially break the core game experience and others may conflict with eachother, it's not possible to make everyone completely happy, but I do my best to try as far as it ios possible.
Changes to software generally need to be thoroughly tested to make sure that they don't introduce any bugs (put a semicolon in the wrong place in the code and it could cause anything from unexpected behaviour to completely crashing the software). This, of course is a problem when you want to release updates responding to player requests quickly and frequently - especially when you don't have access to an army of beta testers.
So what I'm going to do is that I'll release those changes that are mainly concerned with UI modifications and visual representations separate from those that actually affect the core game system. It's a fairly good compromise between being able to respnd to requests with quick changes and not taking too great risks.
In the case of this particular update, it means that I've pulled out the upcoming AI system, since it really needs to be tested before release, and left the things that do not really affect the core system but just deals with different representations of already existing data.
Overriding measures indication
As you hover over a measure in the Country Management Panel, any other measures that it would override will be indicated by a red box and the text "Overrides".
More details on countermeasures
It's been suggested that each measure should come with more information on how it would affect the infection rate, number of deaths and the economy. In the request discussions forum, I've tried to explain why this would actually cause more confusion, since the effect och individual measures are influenced by what other measures are active, meaning that you would have to revisit each active measure each time another measure was activated or deactivated, to see the actual effect.
Instead, I've expanded the description on each of the countermeasures, to give a better understanding on what it means and what it doeas, as well as an indicaton of the general effect it should have. But in a describing text instead of constantly changing numbers and percentages.
Development over time
A graph has been added to the Country Management Panel, giving a visual representation of the number of new (known) infected each day ove the last few weeks in-game. This will hopefully give a better feel for in what direction things are going. Just keep in mind that you can only see the number of known infected, not the ones that carry the virus but are not yet detected.
Mouseover flags
A request was made to hide the mouseover flags and replace them with just an outline of the country over which the mouse is hovering. Since I have also had comments from players that like that "mouseover flag" effect, I've created a compromise. There's now an option to turn that effect on/off, in the same way as turning the diplay of air/land traffig and major ait traffic hubs on or off.
Messy on-map objects
The airplanes and arrows indication air and land travel have been somewhat simplified. The "ring cones" representing major ait traffic hubs remain for now, but will likely be replaced by less annoying icons or objects shortly.
Parmaceutical research
Pharmaceutical research percentage is now the daily chance of discovering a new vaccine/antiviral, where before it was just a matter of working up to 100%. This also means that vaccines and antivirals will be discovered more frequently. To balance the effect of this, the pharmaceuticals have been given a somewhat lesser chance of being "good for everyone", meaning that the player will have to take a bit more care in chosing the right drug to prescribe, particularily when it comes to vacccines.
That's it for now! Hope you enjoy the updates, and if you have any request of your own don't hesitate to let me know by posting on the discussions board!
Have fun, stay safe and avoid crowding! :)
/Mathias