A tax system should have the ability to opt-in (or opt-out) of paying the tax.

The system should also allow you to set different rates to different affiliations (or even different politicals, or positions) to help your allies pay lower taxes (otherwise its a choice of either paying nothing by opting out or paying the full tax).

What about the ability to set negative amounts (rebates) so that the owner of the planet/system could use it as a means of paying others to help defend the area?

Merchant tax wouldnt draw tax from Production bases with only factories and little/no merchant, but these still need protection.

Im against any direct charge on shipping, so Im against the Harbour and the Trade taxes as it can only serve to keep people away from your base and pretty much forces you to charge your taxes to those visiting your base.

I like the Standing Tax method best; its simple and allows the person paying the tax to cover the bill however they wish.


Mark

Would it be possible to set different taxes for different affiliations? For example the CNF may want to set preferable rates for BHD/CIA and the IMP for GTT/FET over other affiliations.

In terms of harbour taxes - how would that work for a ship? Would there be a checkbox for each enter orbit order, would there be a standing order to say which affiliations you are willing to pay, or would there be an 'invoice' section on political positions (and ships where the owner has no pol) quoting all the taxes to be paid - and a due date for the position to pay up by? It could be funny if one cost of entering orbit to attack a starbase is that your pol position has a chunk of cash taken of him/her for taxes!

I thought this would be the one that could wipe the others off the map. Might makes right.

This puts a whole new perspective on the issue; With those Missile Launchers just in from Kastor, and those cheap FGZ gatling lasers still in stock, wheras the IMPs must be running through a few every time they have a pop at Straddle... it could be me...

OK, Simms, cough up

Hi,

I am very much with Geoff on this one and whilst the idea is interesting I am largely against the idea of taxes for this, that and the other. Theres already too much leaning on stellars and finance in my opinion and we really dont need another layer of taxes and finance

The idea of paying to carry enemies on an enemy list sounds truly horrible, I really hope this does not make it into phoenix. Within the confederacy there really is not a "merchent" aff anymore and this is being mirrored across the board as people have and are developing a wide mix of stuff rather than just trading.

Cheers,

Ewan
CNF PD.

Hopefully Mica will confirm this on Monday, but I believe that paying to carry enemy lists will replace paying to have posted positions and paying for ship ranks, rather than being an additional cost. If so, then I am in favour of the change.

Richard
AFT

No, you still have to give out "ranks" to ships. This gives the affiliation some control over their players as only trusted players will get Admiral ships. I feel it is right to deny gung-ho newbies the possibility to go out, attack somebody and drag their affiliation into a war.

The point is that ship ranks do not incur costs anymore. Instead, the costs of warfare are now dependant on what you actually carry on your enemy lists.
Not perfect, but better than what we have now imho.

To cover what was mentioned in the first post

Why whats up with trade ? I know there are issues with selling to planets but anything that requries an ! mark ?

One thing that seems to have been ommitted was the defend list business. An option to pay taxes on a planetary basis. To collect taxes from the SB's on the planet the controling SB would have to defend them. Hence protection for a fee.

Erm they will be optional so its just a mechanic, not something that forces anything on ppl. It was more a post to decide the best mechanic than to impose taxes on anyone.

Without the ability to ignore it at certain places/times/situations etc, the plan sucks like a camel
With that choice, it's a great idea. Guess I'll be getting the Cheque Book ready...

And there's the ultimate question: How much do I trust those aliens with all the guns?? Will the BSB (Back Stabbing Barstuards) actually defend me when the time comes? Or will they take the back-hander and remove me from their Defend Lists a day before the stike?

that's all part of the fun of the game - and it is no different to the current situation

Dan

It will depend on the risk, so it will most likely be the number of positions on the posted lists that determines the wages of a position (that carries that posted list).

Then they are not thinking The ships they use for trading are not the same they use as a fast response ship. Besides planning a trade route takes more time than "move to system 161, quad delta 5", which is what the military aff's use. And it doesnt take 30 ships to respond to 1 or 2 PIR attacking a freighter.

What the miltary aff's should be complaining about is that the SPEND so much of their time moving 70-80 ships around fighting eachother that they don't have time to do the orders for trading. Its a matter of priorites really.

Any, or all the merchant aff's have decent warfleets, some that even rival or exceed that of the military affiliations. The complaint doesn't make sense as any decent merchant aff will look after its own.

I agree, but the realities of the game is that this is not how it works.

How about letting each affiliation declare itself as either a merchant aff, a military aff, or a nation. The merchant aff's can get a +10-20% bonus on trade, but a corresponding penalty to firepower. The military aff's can have it reversed and the nation aff's stay the same as they are now without any bonus.



This would make us all different and make the game something other than a tech race. If you did something like this I'd say the tax could work because the stellar loss from it would be offset by the merchant bonus. It would also make the aff's specialists in their chosen fields.

Cool can't wait for it.

Gordon

Thats not necessarily a bad thing. It is an often talked about subject on mIRC, mainly how we are all the same now, the only difference being technology and names.

The aff's are much too uniform now

I was more looking at something that would permit and support a tax system, in a balanced way. If you gave all aff's the choice for each of their ships we are back to where we were. the merchant aff's not being dependent on the military aff's simply because they have the option of doing both things, while the military aff's would only use the war bonus because "they are much too busy to trade"


Gord

There is a fundamental flaw in trade at the moment. You are indeed totally and utterly correct.
Take this starbase for example:

Sell Qty --- Price --- Item
69476 --- 0.75 --- Falconian Woodcrafts (30310)
48340 --- 6.50 --- Falconian Goose (681)

Value of items at source:

Falconian Woodcrafts (30310) $0.1
Falconian Goose (681) $0.5

Who in their right mind would actually buy these items? The mark-up is truly ridiculous. They would have to be taken to another galaxy to get even a few pennies!
A real world analogy is a tin of beans being sold at £2.30 in England because it can be sold for £2.40 in the Antarctic!

Yes, trade is largely screwed simply because players have unreal expectations of what other players are prepared to do even though they will not do it themselves.

Nothing that we implement will sort this problem out.

So, I take it is this a vote in favour of reducing the income from merchandising. Excellent

That would really hurt the military aff's

By all means do this

With regards to complexes, prices are regulated by supply and demand.

I will happily pay 200 per modules because that is also what the GM run bases charge . They are the only bulk suppliers in the game. In other words, the GM bases are participating in driving up the prices. Sell at lower prices, on the open market and people wont have to charge as much to fund their bases

Gord

I prefer the diminshing markets idea. I.e. Something lowers in value the more you sell it. Whilst it doesn't force trade, it does encourage it.

Reducing merchandising, just forces trade. There are some out there who would not want to bother with trade. It would therefore seem logical to encourage not force.

Even less incentive to sell to other people, even less trade.
This is is the fundamental issue:

Players want others to sell to their starbase.

Players want to sell their own goods to their own starbases.

Players do not want to sell goods to other player's starbases.

Players want to sell goods at prices close to destination prices even at the origin.

Distance is a modifier and in truth makes little difference to the above attitudes. If players do not sell at source now, why would they if we change the distance modifier? The argument for this change does not hold water.

I am becoming more of the opinion that two things should be implemented:
Making standing generation of stellars harder to generate.
Making the repetitive dumping of unique goods profitless.

This should produce the following:
Running successful trading fleets becomes as skilled as running successful warfleets.
Open markets due to desperation to sell simply to get the stellars in.

This is achieved through:
Reducings local merchandising incomes.
Increasing trade goods demands by populations.
Calculating in to all 'sell to local population' modified values for the specific item sold in the past.

Please debate this, I'm enjoying the responses.

GM markets are stupidly inflated so that players easily undercut them, not so that they are used as the market baseline.

In Phoenix, it is possible to produce a module for under $60. Why pay $200?

The only reason I can see is that stellars are too easy to generate, i.e. it requires substantially less than $1 to generate $1 so inflation spirals.

Yet another reason to reduce stellar generation.

I would agree - on some planets (those in Yank for example), the merchandising return is so high its not worth bothering with trade items. Looking for trade goods, getting their TMs and setting a competitive market takes a lot of time and generates very few stellars compared to simply letting the complexes automatically bring in the cash.

Similarly, with modules being so in demand, you have a choice between building an extra merchant complex or building a special resource to get trade goods. For me, the merchant complex always won, as there were few special resources that produce enough to match the guaranteed income from merchandising.

If some of the auto-cash generatoring merchant complexes were reduced then the amount of goods a planets population would buy needs to be reviewed, as well as the quantity some of the resource complexes produce.

For me, I never used my ships for buying/selling trade goods as a) there are never enough on sale to ensure there would be some for me to pick up after I crossed half a galaxy to get there, my local population never had high enough demand to satisfy even one ship load a week and c) its far more profitable to bring in infrastructure cargo (modules, etc) to boost my bases.

however, if i didnt have the merchant complexes producing cash, then the base would not be worth it...the lack of valuable commodities to produce for resale and the low demand by the locals for goods make it not worthwhile. The best I could hope for would be to set up my own outposts on other planets and produce the goods myself.....which defeats the purposes of revising the trade rules, if i still just end up doing it all myself.

If outposts could no longer produce trade items (only starbases), now that would shake trade up I think!

ICM's and BCM's are only required when there is massive expansion.

There can only be massive expansion when stellars are excessively available (wages).

Yet another reason to reduce stellar generation.

This is not the issue as they do not produce stellars. In fact this allows players to generate goods and drag them to their own nearby starbases for more general sale.

The issue is that people can totally avoid trade as long as they have local stellar generation.

I agree completely. Thoug it hurts to say so

It is easier to generate steller than produce modules. Also, there isn't much to spend those stellers on apart from research, and buying more modules.

I'm not in agreement with anything that would force trade to become a fact of life. I like changes that would make trade a stronger commoditiy.

To force trade on players would make them play a game they may not wish to.

Hmmm, a fairly good idea.

Rather than limit basic merchandisng why not add a substrate requirment. As said it would provide a use for those low valued goods, food, etc.

Ooh guddy, somebody in favour of taxes. Well said that man.

I'm all for the introduction of tax... But then I'm in a large militant aff.

Why would you take the goods to a nearby base and then sell them on the open market? Its far more profitable to sell them at your own base. So if you have a base already established, you look farther afield to set up outposts so that you can get a high modifier when you sell them to your own base. You can totally avoid trade and still get high cash generation.

With no large auto-cash making machines, then it comes down to whether it is more profitable to produce the goods yourself (via an outpost far, far away), use your own ships to transport from someone else, or whether you can pay someone else to ship it for you (eg public markets).

The big problem is there are no guarantees with getting goods when trading - no one might buy/sell to you, or if you are using your own ships, then the base you went to could be sold out. The public market is always the last resort, because its the least profitable and makes no guarantees to getting a regular sale. Players will either do it all themselves (from outpost to sale) or else set up private deals.

Apart from this, players will, generally, seek to only buy/sell trade items with allies, to keep the whole profit internal (of course, if youve got no allies thats different<g>). With reduced cash, will this not be more common?

Oddly enough the Goose market has collapsed several times at valhalla... and if it wasnt for the huge stockpile of around 300,000mu i started with, i'd have bugger all left. hence the large price. since some people are buying them and selling them on for 16+... there is a market for them.

Any transaction taxes on market buys and sells can be easily added by the phoenix program so would not require any calculation on the traders behalf.

ie Market Sell 100 Trade good at 5 gives a price showing on the market of 5.5 if the taxes are 0.5 per MU.

Only for pick ups and deliveries would you need to know what the taxes actually were and the involved players would easily be able to sort out who pays what.

The current system already charges a "tax" on employees/troops transactions so the programming tools must already be in place.

If a local tax system was put in place then a section of the turn would need to state what the local taxes actually are for the system you are in. A standing order could be added so that you don't complete a transaction if the taxes are above a certain price.

All taxes would need to be paid in to a central pot with no visibility of what position is paying what otherwise it would be like extra intelligence for nothing.

aren't you forgetting the cost of the ores? Not every ore is cheap to obtain....

But I agree that modules are in general overpriced - hence the proce for structurals at Antioch

Dan

I don't like the idea of being forced to trade - I have a lot of other players who do like it and I prefer to leave things to them. As I effectively own a few systems on the FEL's behalf, I would like to see taxes as an option within the game - but certainly not a necessity...

In fact I could see the war-aff/merch aff within the Felini as we do have several players that specialise one way or the other

Reducing merch. income on planets would leave me with two options: force me into trade (which is forcing me away from the administrative and diplomatic side of the game, which is the part I like), or force me to effectively tax my players just to survive financially.

While it's not perfect, I would rather that the reason for the tax came from the "protection money" argument as Mica originally proposed... if an aff can't give decent protection to it's tenants then t should set a lower level of tax accordingly (or perhaps have a limit on the tax it can levy based on the relative sizes of the starbases?)

Dan

I think a lot of what has been posted here by Mica (to pick on the poor GM as he's the decision making guy) is just plain wrong.

A number of points.

At conversion, affiliations were made to be balanced financially (with the worthy exception of the DTR ;-))

In BSE, it didn't cost to have x crew sitting round on their bums all day doing nothing. But on conversion, this did cost an upkeep, and so on conversion affiliations were balanced with having these x crew sitting around doing nothing. So affiliations build ships to utilise the crew so at least they have a chance of earning their keep.

At conversion, the balancing meant that colonies were given merchandising complexes to cover expenses and on worlds with decent incomes. But this was far from optimised and it's a bit late to complain when people start to get the most out of optimising a planets resources (at least with originally present starbases).

In BSE, people had 5 or even 10 years exploiting a resource. Since trade didn't work, then there were vast excesses of trade goods sitting around doing nothing. These could be converted in some cases to planetary specific luxuries. Thus affiliations have been selling off 5-10 years worth of luxuries over a year. If you look at the amount of luxuries now compared to a year ago, it will have dropped significantly. Thus there is not the amount of luxuries to sell off now to make up for short falls in merchandising income.

In BSE, a number of affiliations had many millions of stellars in the bank, which can be used to cover losses in Phoenix over a year or two. But this money will run out eventually.

Yes, affiliations have grown a lot but this should have been expected at conversion. This growth is unsustainable and will slow down over time, with some affiliations no doubt getting burnt badly by over expanding. But this is not something for the GM to meddle with. It is the PDs/affiliations fault if he over expands and the affiliation crashes.

Some of suggestions of tampering with income from merchandising complexes are just plain wrong. In a way this is easy money, but this whole idea was the fundamental basis for bringing in wages at conversion to pay for everything. There was no selling of luxuries at this point in time. This aspect of the game was there so that affiliations could expand and again goes back to the point above regarding the selling of luxuries vs. their current income. You cannot simply tinker with it here and there in a hope to shape the game since you don't like where it is heading.

Thus changing the fundamental basis of merchandising income (i.e. how income was at conversion) will over a year or so lead to collapse of the game. This will be exasperated by the smaller amount of luxuries to sell as well as the fact that you have to find new markets for your luxuries on a constant basis.

Your suggestion, quote ‘Should we decrease local values for merchandising on planets, thereby forcing players to look to trade at any level in order to bring in income? This is actually a serious point.
It would ensure that revenue from merchandising would not support multiple starbases unless heavy use of selling is instigated.
Obviously we would implement this incrementally (reduction of 5% every month for a year or so).?’ will destroy the game. Look at the major Starbase planets in Yank, Solo, Venice, Capella, Darkfold. These planets give out a large chunk of an affiliations income. If you suddenly instigate it so that planets do not support multiple starbases, then all large affiliations are screwed. This is absolutely unavoidable.

The problem is not with the conversion values. The problem is with building lots of new starbases on garden worlds, which already have a number of very big starbases present. This is what needs to be stopped so that growth is moderated or expansion comes by the forcible expulsion of another party from a system.

Any program modifications should therefore be based on the number of Starbases on the planet at conversion. This is the base merchandising value, any new ones then have reduced income from merchandising meaning that it is quickly pointless to have more merchandising starbases here. This is how to limit growth, not by the crude manor suggested.

Finally, I do agree that selling the game luxuries to the population is wrong since it does stop trade. But as the game stands, more ability needs to be set up to sell luxuries to a planet at a general price and also buy/sell it to traders. I don’t want each week to go through my Starbase and send in 30 sell to local population orders to sell 30MU of this, that ad the other. Likewise if I was a trader, I don’t want to frantically search the market pages each day desperately trying to sell something most people haven’t heard of before.

I want a system whereby I state what mark-up I want to buy an item at and have this based on the distance this item has travelled. The sell to local population routine has the system/planet mark-up value. So when buying a good on the open market, I want to take this value, times it by 0.6-0.7 (my mark-up value), times this by the local value of the item and then buy up to 10k of goods, max 500Mu of each item per week. Thus there is no actual value stated for each luxury item. Just a mark-up value. I get ca. 35% of the items value, the seller from the original colony gets a similar amount and the trader gets a similar amount.
This then helps remove the turning up and finding no market for item bit as well as the Starbase desperately trying to have every single trade good on it’s market report.
The same can then be done with the sell to local population order, thus automating this area.

Long mail, rant over, hope it makes sense.

Nik

It does

I am curious what your views on taxes are though.

Gord

er.... the above is a wage multiplier

Don't know how you calculate this.

Complexes require 50 employees, research 250 employees, to run. Each merchandising can then afford to run 1 research, less as the drop takes effect.

Note also that perhaps you haven't found all the luxuries available on the planet. A Starbase on a reasonable garden world can bring in 40k stellars from merchandising complexes. On the same world, I can also sell items to the local population for 40k stellars. The latter will not happen forever, but it can be kept going for a while.

Finally, you can turn your argument round and then state this is exactly why you need to have merchandising as the main source of income since luxuries on planets are so variable - at least with merchandising you know what is there pretty quickly.

Nik

Yes, I'd go allong with starbase specific modifiers, on top. More of a reason for having those recreation complexes. Not affiliation-wide though.

If you want a difference between merchant affs and military affs.. how about a wage differencial between employees and troops? A warehouse supervisor, a research technician and a veteran startrooper in a combat zone, on the same wage? I think not...


TonyH

Before we move onto other topics (maybe an idea to create a new topic for this), I'd like some comments on my mail Mica. I'm not totally against these suggestions, but likewise you cannot just cut affiliations incomes off at the knees. If you base modifications around conversion values then things would not be so bad. Only you can see the decline in the number of trade items throughout the game, but I know in the DTR the amount has drop significantly and this can also be seen looking at public markets. Thus expansion will come to an end at it's own accord without the need for change provided that new Starbases do not have the same local income as conversion ones on the same planet. It really is as simple as that to fix. Nothing fancy is required.

If affiliations expand too rapidly then crash and burn, that is not the GMs problem and it shouldn't be a reason to change the program. In general, turning off research complexes would stop this quite quickly so it's not really going to happen in the end.

If you want competition/difference between trade/military affiliations, then specialisation is the way to go, based on a captains experience.

Taxes on trade could work if implemented properly - need to think about this more.

Nik

Nik, your maths is crummy.

Complexes require 500 employee hours, each employee gives 50 hours QED 10 employees, Research costs 2500 employee hours or 50 employees.

Nic

I think that the original idea behind Phoenix was that uniques and standard luxuries would be sold in combination. Currently no one builds any large quantities of standard lux because there is no need. No one transports the standard luxs because there is huge money to be made in moving modules and uniques.

For example, my colony described earlier is two peripheries away from the main DTR manufacturing colonies. If the economy was working correctly I would pickup modules in Venice, ship to my colony then pick up lux and uniques to ship back. However all my modules go into merchandising so I have nothing for the return journey.

The stockpiles of luxuries would be bigger if people were actually building resource complexes.

I recently found this resource

Product: 60 Clothings (30152)
10 % Drop: 1000 Complexes
Quantity: 774017
Weekly Change: 107520


This is actually a very good standard luxury that could generate tens of thousands of stellars. It will never be exploited because I will never have the BCMs to build up the complexes because I can generate more stellars from merchandising.

The original probably was not clear enough.

Each and every single positions effectively has a modifier. The modifier is calculated by the program. It figures all that various things - aff, planet, lists, wealth etc.

This comes out as a base wage unique to a position. You don't need to know the complexity behind how the figure is generated only that it is done fairly.
All you set is the percentage you intend to pay of this basic wage.

Example
FET Blackpool Mining Outpost
Basic Wage: $0.5
Wage paid: 100%

FET Ritz Shagfest Pleasure Starbase
Basic Wage: $7.2
Wage paid: 100%

If this was implemented then the fair thing to do would be to ensure each aff was stellar neutral ie not unfairly impacted by this change. In effect this would be another conversion.

In a way it makes sense and pushes the affs towards specialisation ie mining / factory complexes on balls of rock with high mineral yields versus overpopulated garden worlds with potential higher wages.

One point I would make though is that there are very few worlds in the game that are by any means overpopulated. A good garden world has up to 5 million people which is nothing on a large world. The capacity on a large world must be something like 400+ million. With fast transports the population can spread out and therefore the cost of living will be less. We are out in the peripheries not in the over populated Inner Empire so I would not expect large wage costs as there is the land to expand easily.

Andy

I agree. And if you were going to do this the it would be better to start the game afresh so that there would be total balance in the game. In the short/medium term, the game will not be balanced no matter how much tinkering is done.

I also agree with the population levels. 5 million vs. 5 billion isn't in the same ball park even if 1 employee may not actually _be_ 1 employee. No game planet is remotely populated compared to the world we live in, thus there is more than enough space on any planet for a population expansion.

Nik

Don't take this personally. We are not stupid. Mostly

Why not have the EEM issue Galactic Wealth figures each month, showing total number of employees in the Galaxy, total wealth in the Galaxy and from this the Average wage is calculated as some percentage. By being Galactic based (ie everyone) it could add a political element, as you are influenced by your competitors/enemies. Wages could further be modified, if desired, based on risk (location, military presence at the base, etc) and even race - do the HVE desire lower wages as they are drones? Do the FGZ/DEN desire higher wages as they are psychic (all linked...like a big union).

Increase the amount of trade goods that can be produced at resource complexes as well as increase the amount being bought by planetary populations. Perhaps combine this with a change to what populations buy eg. Your planet will not buy products it can produce itself, over-supply of the same item reduces buying price, etc.

Make markets easier. There are so many unique goods out there its impossible to create a viable market to buy them all - and if you did, your market report is so huge you cant find anything on it! Simplify how markets work - there are various ways this could work. You could allow bases to buy "all trade items" with a price linked to the distance its travelled. To buy them at a percentage of the sale price (so if the population buy it from you at 10 stellars and you say buy at 80%, your market says 8 stellars).

Market prices for manufactured goods are irrelevant - this is simply players selling to players and economic demand will set this.

If certain worlds have too high a merchant complex income, then surely this is a game mechanic/balance requirement to sort out those individual planets and dont need an overall change in trade rules.

In game terms, the more cash coming into the game universe (planetary sales/merchandising), the more cash leaving the game universe (wage bill). Everything else is who has the money - which is just another power play. Where it comes to money, Merchant Affiliations should always be stronger - taxes and affiliation-only wage bills simply take cash from merchants and give it to Military, for no benefit to the Merchants.

The problem is cash is essentially outside the game universe as the politicals have it all - you attack a ship, you dont get any cash from it. Unless you want to assassinate people as a means to financing your affiliation :-) And cargo dumping rarely (if ever) occurs. So perhaps destroying an enemy ship gives you some of their wealth(justified by some in-game reason)? This gives Military affiliations the ability to generate cash in their field without having to be traders.

Mark

Im concerned about how this would affect the number of paying positions a player would have to have. Could you expand on the below scenarios for me?

I have one starbase, on a rich garden world, that has all my factories, all my merchant complexes too - I run everything from the one paying position. It has 10,000 employees.

Or

I have two starbases - one on the Garden World, with only merchant complexes and 5000 employees. The other has all my factories and is on a barren moon, also with 5000 employees. For all other respects (location, size, risk, etc) they are identical.

Will the combined wage bill for the two scenarios be identical? Both scenarios have the same risks, same no. of employees, just split differently. Only one costs me twice as much to play as the other.

Mark

Sorry, having to pay more just because I've got more attacks the very core of my in-game being. Are you sure space opera is the place for your proto-communist leanings, Mica?

Er... dunno.

This is why it is still a discussion.

Until, in principle, dynamic wages are the alternative players want, there ain't much point working out details. Nope, nada, nosireebob.

i realise its still a discussion

I wasnt really after specifics, but rather the assurance that any of these changes would only gather in-game benefits and that any side-effects forcing players to spend more money would be taken into account.

So the answer I really wanted was, "dunno, but we will make sure any change wont affect the number of paying positions you have to run"

That has to be a given

Yup, the aim is to strike the balance between the extremes of economics and military. There is absolutely no point in implementing something that is fundamentally flawed.

Yeah I think Ewan has hit the nail right on the head here...

Merchant aff's will have more freighters and therefore have the ability to generate more income through trading.

Military aff's have more warships and more expenses, and therefore do not have as much money.

Big aff's with huge starbases have large production capabilities, but huge starbase expenses.

It all levels out eventually. As the merchant aff's seem to be using their income to buy produced items from the big affs, who use the stellers to pay their defecits. The miltary aff's attempt to generate cash to deal with their defecit via minor trading, and the possible sale of ships.

I know Mica is trying to avoid one of either the exteme's, but I'm not too sure the system is wrong as it is i.e. no need for change. Sure trade needs to be tweaked, but rather than making major game changes (which no matter how well planned, will probably end up in generating one of the major extremes), tweak trade so that is more 'desirable' rather than a 'neccesity'.

We are not going to tinker with induvidual locations, we are going to implement a mechanic that generates a wage demand based on location and situation every week. The wages would have both long term and short term threads so that we would not have to account for starbases with excesses of luxuries when its implemented (because it is long term). Short term effects would be generated due to enemy list changes etc.

The idea would be to keep the game balanced on a per employee basis in the long term. Large affiliations or small ones would be equally affected.

Does it all level out though? Only KJC can tell us, but I assume this thread was started because it doesnt ie there is far more stellars being added to the game each week (merchandising) than is being taken out (wages).

If a wage dynamic is brought in I would far prefer the calculation to be a simple one, rather than include stockpiles, etc. it needs to be something that players can see how their average wage has been calculated so that they could do things differently to reduce it.

I don't think military operations with ships will be dramatically effected. It will mainly be starbases that carry enemy list that will cause the cost. This can be migrated away by placeing the enemies on the platforms, etc. or building more bunkers for employees etc.

For adding to lists a one off payment to the crew may well be better than an increased wage - also storing what the current payment is for transfers of crews (to ensure they get payed danger money as well). The crew wages could then be modifed by casulties take in the last x weeks or something.

Really the intension is to place a elastic band around the stellars in the game, so that you have to continually push if you want to work outside the envolope. We basically want to make stellars meaningful not pointless to the extent that you stock pile 500k of a trade good and don't put it on your markets.

Dan, is this due to you buying produced goods?

It will most likely be calcualted per player and per aff to avoid this - the effect will just be most noticable on the starbase since it has more ppl in it. We can also add something to do with location of the wealth...

If 1 mu of lux increased the wage bill that much very quickly then surely the whole thing would be stupid ? Also its value that i would be interested in not mass. The intent is not to make lux etc a liablity but to make hording them counter productive.

And since i said it would not occur all at once you would be a muggins to dump them. I was thinking that long term factors rev up over 6 months to 1 year.

What's to stop a player using a friendly IND position for stellars and luxuries? One that does not have a political?

Something to be aware about

I like the idea of taxing the net profit being made, but I would suggest that the "KJC Tax" (which is just cash being taken out of the game) should come straight from the politicals accounts, rather than via the affiliation. This is because the affiliation gets money by taxing wages - so those who make no profit, but have high wages will pay even more.

Wages being based on Total stockpiled wealth (cash and luxuries) simply cannot work. It will fuel expansion rather than control it - everybody will be seeking to get rid of their cash and luxuries as fast as they can, to control wages. The only replacement for that wealth is infrastructure items (modules, etc) - if you use your cash to buy luxuries, your stockpiled "wealth" remains the same. So the value of produced goods goes up and bases get bigger, faster. Which is one of things the wage system is trying to stop.

Stockpiled wealth stagnates/controls an economy and this is being penalised.

I also doubt whether the need to shift stockpiled luxuries will benefit trade. In the short term, yes, as everyone will be seeking to change their luxuries into cash (and then into infrastructure items), but once stocks are gone, what then? A base needs a stockpile of luxuries to attract a reasonable number of traders, who want to get a ship full of goods, but also dont want to waste their time going somewhere and find the stocks have all been sold. So the best items to stockpile are the cheap ones (clothing, food, etc) as their value is low, so the effect on your wage is low. but then the profit is minimal and has so many unknowns (just how much is it costing me in wages have all those clothes sitting around??) that it encourages the "why bother" attitude. The alernative is to have a small amount of high cost luxuries - its value is the same, so your wage bill would be just as affected, but you will get few traders coming for just a handful of goods. And if you still got traders, great...but the overall affect on the game is that trade ships need only be very very small as there are no large qty of luxuries to haul. So trade, in quantity, is still tiny.

Surely it is the weekly net surplus in wealth that needs to be controlled, regardless of stockpiles?

Well, as long as we are discussing trading instead of taxes.

At this moment, I am shutteling some goods within an system, with some small margins, earning some 300-400 stellars a turn. Not much, but with an investment of 1800 stellars its a nice gain. I have been looking at other oppertunities, but sadly, most of them are two jumps or more away. It would increase my margin with about some 600-900 but still I can make more staying there, where I am now. I don't think that more experienced players (with more ships) would bother to do so.. Problem is, there are simply not enough goods to continue to do so.

The sad part of this trade is, that I am going to run out of places to buy real soon. Most of the bases don't sell stuff. So can anyone explain where the goods which are produced are staying??

Mica has been talking that Traders make too much money, and that they should pay to maintain Warlike fleets. But looking at the market reports (with the many "we are only buying" remarks written all over on it). it does seems that a lot of starbases keep their goodies for themselves or trade among themselves.

Can anyone explain my why I as an trader should pay taxes when the taxing empires aren't willing to keep their goods on the open market??

Whatever changes, the new extra rules should benefit those who are willing to sell their goods on the open market.

Well, I switched from CNF to FCN to be able to trade almost everywhere...
But I have been looking at my little warship.

This is what he is carrying. Sell Buy
60 Human Crew (505) -
90 Human Marine (506) 9.34
385 Missile (209) - 3.85 3.59
23 Phalanx Missiles (212) - 2.50 3.00
15 Torpedo (220) - 30.00
If I am was able to sell this, it would generate (not counting the Human Crew) some 2800 stellars.
Looking at my ship equipment I would waste that in 15 salvo's in missles and only 3 salves for
point defense. If I needed to replace this it would cost me some 2500 stellars on the open market.
So it looks like that missile weapons are fairly expensive.

Even looking at those figures, it looks like that waging war is an pretty expensive thing to do.
But is it really?? Are the warlike nations not producing those goods in high quantity??
If we look at real life, the USA (and allies) spend an awfully amount of money on their latest war in Iraq. How did the USA was able to afford this?? Because they got an enourmess inside economy. So, basic economy would tell us, that ANY affl will need to be an mixture between Trade and War-abilities.

Maybe the bigger warlike affls should get their own traders, which would generate some needed cash. Or they try to get an reduction on smaller battles.. which wouldn't eat away the hard needed cash. The easiest way would be to open up your own markets for foreign traders, which would bring in those highly exotic goods.

The best way is to give goods from far away a better selling price to the local population and reduce the profit on the local goods. Just look at the RL (especially in the past). There was a time that exotic things like spice or silk was an very valued item in Europe. But was pretty worthless in the region it was produced. The number of jump would be the decisive factor in the equation and ofcourse things like quantity sold... So, that an huge influx of spice would reduce the market price considerable.

Changes like this will mean that starbases will be a collection point of special goods, which will be delivered by the Traders. Starbases will make money by selling to the natives and merchants will make money by selling to Starbases (or the open market).

You do have an point.

At this moment the smaller affl are having problems, and will get more if the taxes thing is introduced. At the moment taxes are introduced, it won't take long untill one after the other affl starts claiming it. Especially after they had an big war.. The current outcry from the IMP/CONfed sounds nice, but (sorry to say so) this is NOW.

An possible solution would be to introduce an Primary Trait for the affl. Some, like the AFT, seems to be concentrated on trading, while others are mainly warlike.

An IMP or CONFED should have something something to gain, for offering small Starbases on their turf. Trading Posts should generate more stellars for everyone. Not only for the owner but also for the planet it is on.

What?? I don't really know.

I hope that is the case....but then, if it is, whats the point in including such stockpiles in a calculation? It'll have very minor effects on trade, costs or anything. If its effects are going to negligible it only serves to makes what could be a straight forward calculation overly complicated, to such a degree that no one could work out how its calculated and so no base owner could work out how to change their assets to lower their wage bills. It may as well be an arbitary figure - a one off event that changes average wages from 1 stellar to 2, or whatever is wanted.

The problem is that people make way much more money either transporting to sell internally, or taking to other bases.

If traders were to reduce the amount they demand to come to your base and buy you uniques I think you would see more uniques going onto the market, to encourage traders to come visit them.

The way it stands at the moment, alot players don't want to trade but do because they would make much more in doing so (with their own uniques). On the other hand, alot of players want to trade, but can't because nothing is going on the markets.

Soultion make less profit on each trade deal, but do more deals. Everyone is happy.

Yep, Rich has hit the nail firmly on the head.

This is the direction trade needs to take, and I think most would agree.

I don't see what that has to do with wages so much. You just pay your wage rate at transfer - the explot requires you to shift them in and out.

It would most likely be both. and be per position (may be better served just being starbases that have increased wages). Having increased wages will not increase explansion in the game, because having more money in the short term does not equate to more production being availiable in the game as a whole. Cash in the affiliatiion/politicals would have less of an effect on wage inflation cos its less apparent.

It doesn't and you can not.

Yup deman needs to be for value and not mass and that sorts it.

Negligiable in the short term. There would also have to be an order to audit the wage demands and give you details of what is causeing the current trend in wages gains/loses.

So far i can not see anything against wage changes except the complication however since not all positions would be effected by it (if they are operationg in the normal envelope) that is less of a consideration.

not me.

Why does an aff have to be classed as either 'military' ot 'trading'.

Being self-sufficient and thus having fewer weaknesses requires both.

I guess that the Association of Free Traders by definition is going to always be a trading aff, and the Confederate Naval Forces speaks volumes about their role.

But most affs represent whole races / states (FCN, KRL, FEL, DTR, WMB. FLG, DOM, DEN etc) so have no need to define themselves one way or the other.

If trade suddenly starts producing more stellars than merchandising then those affs are not suddenly going to consider sub-contracting to the AFT/FET/SSL/RIP etc without looking to see what they can manage themselves first.

What an aff can achieve is largely based on players hours I think, if you have the players to take care of trade routes, as well as the player to do military stuff then with the free-cost of running ships you should be able to achive at least the same as two smaller specialist affs?

If for example the accepting position has wage rate of 1 stellar and the supplying affiliation has a wage rate of 5 stellars then there is a lot of money to be saved if you use a intermediate to pick up and deliver (2x1 stellar) than a direct transfer (5 stellars).

I think maybe what Rich is saying applies to both aff and player. If you want to spend time running traders you get rewarded, if you don't so be it.

Personally I like the idea where you can generate reasonable income via static (buying and selling on markets) or hauling means.

I guess the real greedy buggers could do both ;-)

well, the good news is that Mica's proposals on variable wages will help this, not hinder it - they are intended to curb large stellar variances, both positive AND negative

But if you're losing that many stellars, shouldn't you have expanded your holdings with a little more concern for your stellars?

Dan

Would it not be more entertaining to kill off local income and have even more global factors.

Thus, a large starbase or two will compete for merchandising rights (coke/pepsi?)
rather than 234235342534 per sector on the garden planets each making big bucks from the planetary population.

Also, maybe the local populations should only have a finite amount to spend in starbases on their planet per-week / month? (including on trade goods, as well as merchandising complexes).

I know that this is sort of reflected in the way you can over supply a planet and the value per MU drops, but would be sort of cool if your merchandising was so good that the planet became too poor and had no stellars left (for 6mths or somthing) so that they could then be contacted via special action and exchange complexes could come into play?


just a thought.

But the way they do this is so... I disappove of.

Taxes... OK, I can live with opt-in. But making it cheaper to run things for people who cant be bothered with stellar generation, but more expensive for those with more money just because they've got more money, is wrong. And, if it's going to be so delecately crafted that it will have negligable effect, why bother?

The way to go is to encourage those who dont want to trade to sell stuff through their starbase markets, and buy stuff in to 'sell to population' at a price that encourages those that do want to trade to supply their markets, with a profit to both buyer and seller.

I'm getting the impression that these changes are further on than 'issues for discussion' and it's already been decided. Maybe even part coded?

I'm also concious that it's the same old people (myself as prime candidate) who is spouting off on this. No more from me.

Can we have a poll? One that reflects the range of proposals discussed - maybe more than one, covering tax/trade/other?

TonyH

I think the suggested changes to planetary merchandising is to rebalance the local and global factors, so that bases will still get roughly the income they get now, but limiting excessive growth of merchandising complexes on the planet. Currently a large world with high local merchandising could be the home to large numbers of 'merchandising bases' for very little in-game cost, upsetting the stellar flow into and out of the game. Perhaps this would be enough of a balance without having to introduce variable wages?

Taxes; I'm not pro-taxes, but if they're opt-in (to apply and to pay) then I'm not against them either.

The upcoming infrastructure update (and adjustments to distance/value multipliers for unique trade goods?) could potentially iron out most/all of the current issues with trade.

The idea of starbases being able to purchase trade goods in a generic fashion is a good one, but could prove frustrating once the infrastructure update is added and you're constantly sold the same items. Definitely a step in the right direction though.

well said