yica: forum

yica [2575327] Level 92 SMTH - Bright Summit BSU Hall Master

Forum posts (Torn's count): 122 observed 2 Sep 2026
Archived posts: 117
Threads started (archived): 8

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From the 117 newest archived posts.

Company Recruitment 58 posts
General Discussion 30 posts
Trading Post 13 posts
Faction Discussion 6 posts
Company Discussion 4 posts
Bugs & Issues 3 posts
Graveyard 2 posts
Faction Recruitment 1 post

Threads started

[Hiring] 7* Mining corp Company Recruitment · 21 Jan · 1 reply · 8 views
8* Mine hiring Company Recruitment · 11 Jan 2025 · 0 replies · 8 views
yellow 103%q powerful sig 552 - 200m obo Trading Post · 7 Apr 2024 · 0 replies · 11 views
8* Mining corp - pay up to 3.5m Company Recruitment · 16 Sep 2023 · 31 replies · 249 views
Forum Post History: No posts were found Bugs & Issues · 15 Sep 2023 · 3 replies · 41 views
6* Meat Warehouse Company Discussion · 1 Aug 2023 · 0 replies · 37 views
6* Meat Warehouse Hiring Company Recruitment · 5 Jun 2023 · 22 replies · 174 views
Message not loading 550 error Bugs & Issues · 22 May 2023 · 4 replies · 51 views

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Looking for a faction; post details here · 18 Mar 2023 · 3 likes

~~Looking for faction, 0.8b bs, active in west coast time, able to hop on discord if needed for ranked war.~~

update: thanks yall for the dms! sorry if I can't reply to every one of you, cheers

Fedded Archives · 12 Apr 2023 · 16 likes

Hello Torn community, I summarized a SMTH Q&A from my answers in past days, hopefully it helps answering common questions and let's stay on topic of this post. Will update this if I see more questions.

Q: Why are SMTH's new players so active and all wake up at same time like a bot farm?
A: This is a complicated question and I'd like to break it down to a few common scenarios:

[background color=var(--bbc-body-bg-color)]Time Zone: due to demographics of faction members, we are based in the same time zone. To follow 3 Xan routine, player may all start their day around 8am - 9am at local time zone.[/background]
Survival Bias: we have three casual factions: main, trisolary and hoyoverse and 4 warring factions. New member usually join faction on their torn's day 1 and active players will be promoted to more active factions. We regularly have afk players in the casual factions and, as Meow mentioned, retention is likely 5% ~10% in general.
Trader/Mugger: There can be cases that 1 player being buy-mugged, by multiple SMTH member in a short time. We have active channel for trader and mugger, which may share this intels.
War time: We typically have ~40 - 50 active players during war time. There's tactics for coordinated attacks when high BS players are available and low BS players will be notified to participate.

Q: Why are they playing like a pro to take 3 Xans/day, build glass cannon and having resource to like opening psf?
[background color=var(--bbc-body-bg-color)]A
[background color=var(--bbc-body-bg-color)]: [/background]
[background color=var(--bbc-body-bg-color)]To be honest, I don't have a good answer to this topic, there's two potential hypothesis off the top of my head.[/background]
[/background]
[background color=var(--bbc-body-bg-color)]

[background color=var(--bbc-body-bg-color)]There can be survival bias as mentioned above: casual player will be advised to join non-waring factions once they reach lv15,[/background]
[background color=var(--bbc-body-bg-color)]Also there can be implicit bias caused by language. Most our internal docs are tranlated version of most upvoted guides from forum. If new players have further questions, they reached out on internal faction chat and often be advised with optimal build/routines.[/background]

[/background]

Q: Why does your loan project work? If don't make sense there ain't any major vault hack in recent years.
A: There's a small amount of kick-start fund and complimentary drugs for users under lv15. Once reaching lv15, member will be pivoted to non-warring and warring factions. If they are interested in loan project, they need to follow application and interview process, which requires verification on equivolent app of whatsApp. In case player afk without any ill will, leader can reach out via same app and ask whether they can pay loan or whatever is owed in full. This process also requires disclosure of current netsworth and a co-signer is required if loan officer determine there's substantial risk.

Q: I'd like to also join and apply for your loan lol! How does SMTH recruit new players if your above statement is true?
A: We recruit majority of members from our recruit thread on a chinese gaming forum. We build a dedicated sub for torn on same forum to give introduction to this game as well.

Q: Why are yall so defensive against confirmed cheater?
A: Unfortunatelly there's deep distrust between faction and staff team due to past events. I admit I am not aware of all the context for the conflicts. It can be due to bad communication or network setup going in and out of China. The general internal stance of faction leadership is to support staff's decision if any member indeed proved as a cheater, I am sorry if staff team doesn't feel that way. The internal faction investigation are typically based on player's own words, which is not a reliable source of way to prove innocence and lead to big time screw-up in the past.

Q: You member shall be able to comprehend and respond in English in case a staff reaches out for TOS violation
A: In general I agree that player shall be investigated individually, without any help from other parties. Though member often reach out in case they are worried they didn't explain situation in full context without any potential misinterpretation. I don't have a good answer and hopefully leader can address it with staff team.

Q: What actions does SMTH leader take to address ongoing streak of TOS violation?
A: The first rule in our recruitment sub and faction channel is don't multi and talk to GM if you want to refer dormmate to this game. It's crystal clear internally that faction never encourages any TOS action, and if that happens, the ban is well deserved.

Q: Are you denying accusation of any wrongdoing from SMTH factions?
A: No, I disagree that there's collective cheating promoted and defended by faction, we prohibit discussion of such actions or anything that may breach community rules; Can there be such behavior circulating among faction members? Possible; Can leader be negligent to address those issues or give offender benefit of doubt when they shouldn't be? Maybe.

Q: I don't trust you after all, there's clear evidence of multi and staff team does not take any actions.
A: Okay Buddy.

Fedded Archives · 11 Apr 2023 · 14 likes

Could you please describe how you reach out to find new players in real life

A: We post recruiting thread on a chinese gaming forum which originated from early WOW players, that's 99% where the new players come from.

you inform us that you have prepared a document that specifically tells every new player that joins your factions that they need to cash out if they want to quit. And what exactly does this mean?

A: It means literally nothing lmao. It's just a line in newbie guides that says if you quit, please pay your faction loan in full or pay back whatever loaned armor/weapon from faction. A "big if" that player quit without any ill will and still appreciates faction, doesn't prevent any vault hack whatsoever.

What I find interesting, is in a game with the entire goal of an individual amassing higher numbers than others in all aspects, what purpose does it serve to simply give away the rewards of the game to someone on day one before any work is accomplished?

A: It's no that complicated. The goal is to build a chinese speaking torn faction/community that can go toe to toe with HOF factions, or at least hold ground when the next "Vinerri Gang Raid" hit. TBF majority of faction member have victim mentality due to various reasons, which I found it understandable but kinda set up wrong mindset when it comes down to serious matters like fedding.

Can you please share the complete unedited rules and payout system for your faction right here in this thread? And how enforcement and consequences are handled? Post a copy so we can see them before we join so we can know if we want to. I mean, really, if it's that great, show me and I'm a pretty active player, I may just sign up!

A: There are a few payout system:

Newbie-targeted rewards that compensate Xans if you OD'ed most in past month. Also there's rewards if you contribute to recruiting thread and additional rewards if you are actively guiding newbie on IM app.
RW payout: this can be breakdown to 3 pillars: 1) newbie-oriented payout: based on e consumption in last week/month. 2) history contribution: based on RW contribution in past month 3) current war contribution: based on hits/respect loss in current RW. Most SMTH factions wars every week and that e based compensation can be a hefty amount for newbies.
Faction loans: This is basically a duke loan with lower interest rate (3%). This is typically use to fast track most profitable stock BB, get first 2b bank saving, or starting company if they know what they are doing. The loan limit is 2-3b for veterans and 500m for newbie. If the newbie is active enough in faction chat, exception can be made. There's an interview that requires screenshot of current networth and add leader as contact on chinese whatsapp equivolent app, which is linked to IRL cell phone number. In case of any hack/vault related events, leader can reach out via that app.

In the long run, the loan program works great, rarely any hack happens in past a few years. I also think this loan project set up player for success and reduce the need for cheating to gain additional resource. New player progressing faster contributes to RW payout and it create a positive feedback loop.

Disclaimer: above comment is based on my experiences in good ole days, please take with a grain of salt as payout/rewards can be higher now after RW patch.

Fedded Archives · 11 Apr 2023 · 5 likes

maybe it's because we don't recruit weirdo from discord lmao?

on a serious note: I am just an average joe, not a banker and dunno exact number. Yeah I do think there's a few cases that player abandoned the game. Typically leader reach out via IM app and probably in half of the case they end up logging back 3 days later and return whatever is owed.

It just didn't become a huge headache yet and If I'd guess why:

casual player and scammer don't bother the whole process of applying loans and expose Wechat account (Chinese Whatsapp equivolent app) which can dox yourself.
there's no incentive to running with money and join another faction as SMTH is the only chinese speaking community and our Engilish are poorer than a 3rd grader lmao.

SMTH - hyper-competitive or cheating? · 15 Apr 2023 · 2 likes

Totally fair. I think leadership are taking reactive actions for fed reports. Like the recent script fed, internal annoucement is made to re-iterate rules and some closet cleaning is done. Proactive actions may be lacking, usually depends on member reporting from anecedotes. Like Good [2545616] was reported by fellow members and got booted. I don't know whether leader can automate those investigation and review it on regular basis. I will let ig_chen comment on that.