Upgrading buildings, auto-heisting, and heading towards passive income while battles remain deactivated......

It's now been about 8 days since @drugwars notified their players that battles had been disabled, citing 'abuse' and 'unfairness to players' as the main reasons for doing so. Whilst these reasons are likely part of the decision, the fact that this part of the game was clearly unfinished and buggy as hell has to be included there too. Troops were often going missing in a 'blackhole' during (or returning) from a battle with the recovered goods, and I wondered at times if this was a feature. Why would you go back to base with a bag full of goodies when you could sell the lot and live free from danger on a desert island for the rest of your years?

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So with battles, and the risk of getting your stash jacked, the past week has been a good time to focus on 'home' by upgrading those buildings. Annoyingly, for the first couple of days I was worried about battles being reactivated during my sleep time and waking up to find another 130 overnight raids, and so I was producing units and heisting all of my drugs. Then I heard that there would be a 24/48 hour advance notification of battles coming back to life and decided to switch focus towards leveling up a few buildings.

In the beginning I spent STEEM on some of the lower producing buildings. If I had the chance to start again (spins up another alt.), I would focus on the more expensive buildings from the start- there is a much better bang for your buck there. Oh well, at least now I have a chance to level up in this department, and hopefully it will be without spending more STEEM. In approximately 11 hours, I'll have enough resources to upgrades my Pharmaceutical Lab to level 4, for 'free'. This upgrade will bump up the daily drug production of this facility by something like 24000 drugs - something like a 15% increase on my overall daily production. If you wish to do this without the required resources it will set you back around 52 STEEM, and as I've spent over 350 already, I'm keen to not buy much more at present until I see how the game is progressing.

With the help of @holger80's !bookkeeping function, that you can put in a comment anywhere on the chain, i can see that I'm currently 231 STEEM in the hole. So yeah, 'free' upgrades are sounding good right now.

By the way, you can also add the likes of magicdice, steemmonsters, and steemslotgames, etc to the command above and get a full listing (of how much you are currently in debt).

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There are of course much bigger players than me and here are a few of those accounts, along with the daily amounts of STEEM being sent to the Drugwars dealer:

I can't imagine any of the accounts above being close to profit just yet, but they are likely to be earning double figures each day. For the biggest spenders, I think the re-introduction of battles will help with clawing back investment. There are likely to be some pretty sizable squads being amassed who could well trample all over the most of the smaller squads.

It depends what battles look like - will there be a cool-down period, will it still be possible for the top dog to smash the freemium account? And will it still be possible to blindly send your squad via script repeated down the full list of players until there is nothing left to kill or take?

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Not really, if bots are allowed to dominate. At least you can visit the stash for help staying awake to 'heist' 😛

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I've been watching the daily amounts of STEEM being sent into the game quite closely since the 'pre-release' was advertised. Honestly, the new STEEM coming in each day is surprising me, although I'm happy that this is case. Some have mentioned 'Ponzi', and new money is exactly what's required in that case.

Today, 22nd February, looks a bit low on sends thus far, although there are still 11 hours left (based on my data source) and the East is yet to wake up. I'm also hearing reports that there is some big money about to land (honest!), and so hopefully, we'll all still be in business for a little while longer at least!

For those that like numbers, @jacekw.dev is updating a comment on this post each day: https://steemit.com/drugwars/@jacekw.dev/drugwars-who-spent-the-most-who-received-the-most-who-earned-the-highest-profit-who-got-the-best-roi-what-was-steem-spent-on-for

Some impressive ROI going on in places, and it's mostly the smaller accounts showing up in that table. Can you say 'ALT Fest!'?

Cool. Approximately 10 hours now until I can upgrade. @hightouch, you can re-open the battlegrounds tomorrow :) I'll be waiting for you to drop by.

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Have a good weekend all!

Asher

Oh, and if you aren't signed up yet or wondering where to start, 11.5 STEEM will get you a level 1 Cocina, Pharma, Training Facility, Operations Center, and a Bouncer. Income today (likely falling a little tomorrow) will be about 1.1 STEEM from production, and I estimate (not financial advice) this would give break-even in 12 days. Tempted?