Soulnemesis

Between sanctuary and hq tiles players have 6 tiles they can keep tax free indefinitely (though only the sanc is long term for sure). We also have space which is tax free. I think this will result in two types of players, those that avoid tax by sticking to their Tax free tiles and space, and those who use mining or enterprise to expand their empire to more tiles and/or use their tiles for mining. If you pay tax on a tile, there should be intent to maintain this tile somehow, its a choice you would work out beforehand. I don't like the idea of tax in general but since HQ tiles were announced I realised I probably don't ever have to pay it unless I want to. I think I'm ok with that. It will clean up tiles from inactive players, which is good, though its likely that will make players who took a long break and were planning to come back not want to. I am still concerned that HQ tiles can be exploited by big organisations to prevent access to the best tiles, territory warfare is needed to prevent this, but that will also make HQ tiles only as safe as their defences. I dont really see a way around this except making HQ tiles un-minable. Also, if tiles pay for themselves they don't create a money sink. Its only a sink if people are paying for tiles and don't mine them. Besides as others have mentioned, tax is not a fun mechanic, who enjoys paying their taxes? The whole thing is reminiscent of mobile games that make you log in every day to get your benefit. I would avoid that association at all costs. You could rename taxes to mining/industry permits for a start?

This really resonates with me. I am mostly a solo player (was part of a small org at one point but they have all left). I haven't felt the need to speak up on any updates in the past, but I do feel quite troubled by a few of the changes in demeter. I have claimed a few tiles on almost every planet because the first ones were cheap. Built a few small bases so I can mine on different planets and store and transport things. As soon as demeter was announced I panicked: Meganodes I spent ages trying to find so that I could lessen the grind somewhat, I now had to rush to mine (still haven't done them all because yeah, its boring as hell after a while - and I only had a couple). I started packing up all my stuff and moving it to sanc so I don't have to pay insane quanta a week just to keep my tiles and those of my org which, if any of them ever come back, will probably have to start from scratch, so just another reason not to. 1 million a week, managable maybe, but 20+ tiles, one player. Forget it, I am not sitting on billions of quanta like the orgs who exploited to get it, and I don't want to spend all my free time playing a mining minigame, on tiles which will most likely be suboptimal anyway. I prefer to just build things, and ships. I used to like making factories too but let's not go there. The HQ tiles idea, I like it would give me something to hold onto, and somewhere I could build a base or a shop and it might actually stay there, but I am concerned this will get exploited too. I think you should disable mining on these tiles. Otherwise once again the best tiles will get locked into player accounts forever (or until you introduce some other mechanism to unlock it). Though I still feel there are better suggestions on this thread (e.g. deactivated accounts lead to loss, incremental taxes). But I guess the biggest problem with demeter is I am not really sure what this game is anymore. Do you want a persistent world full up with player creativity? Because it feels like demeter will sap creativity from the game and will just end up as a big war between orgs with no real place for solo players who just want to make stuff. Also keeping scan data just exacerbates the problem, big orgs, with large numbers of scans (if not now, then by the time demeter launches) will go straight to the rare tiles and lock them in, at least if you wipe the scans there will be a bit of a gold rush, with the possibility for solo players to strike gold. Even then the big orgs will still have a huge advantage.