Faucets, sinks, taxes and balancing an unbalanced Economy

[Pascal_Mage]

Ever hop into a shower and overcorrect the hot and cold faucet too much, NQ are doing this time and time again. 

 

NQ's logic behind introducing tile taxation is to reduce proliferation of using all tiles on any given world, considering the only tax haven will be sanctuary and space (this is rumoured to change) is there any consideration given to when this is inevitably full or that cluttered, performance becomes an extreme issue? For this to ever work and scale, inflation will continue as more desirable areas fill, scarcity will set in, inflation of t3, t4 an t5 ore and products will skyrocket, and yet more adjustments will be inbound after the damage is done. Wouldn't a more balanced taxation system be a tiered system based on the tiles properties, ore possibly mined and infrastructure on the tile? For example there are 300 Titanium tiles in existence (this is hypothetical number), the taxation cost would be based on the amount of these 300 owned, scaling accordingly. As for tier 1 and 2 as they are common, the same principal, albeit starting with an extremely low figure. You could even throw in added metrics if owned by one entity and if the tile has mining units, indy etc. This system would allow all play types, without killer taxation that defies logic and forces oversupply of the ore markets as they need to sell to make ends meat. In a nutshell, just like normal property, the less stock there is, the greater the cost, initial and ongoing (land rates etc).

 

Taxes are great for reducing quanta in circulation by creating a sink, but why not look at the one area that generates the imbalance and excess Q in circulation by means of the faucet, missions!

I can  currently load 14+ Toons on one ship, do a trip semi afk, rinse and repeat. Since inception, missions have caused inflation to rise and will eventually need to be rebalanced to an instance system to prevent this surely unintended use. Will this happen post beta if no changes happen? probably. Over time we have seen gamers show levels of dedication beyond developers expectations.  I believe this coupled with the taxation adjustment will balance the economy back out, not overcrowd sanctuary, reduce imbalance and allow for just about any play style, single miner or property mogul. Don't get me wrong, we need more types of ways to make quanta, missions are a step in the right direction, just needs to be developed  more. Eve onlines missions are a good test case example. 

 

Other Faucets of income generation that could be added could include:

• Bank of NQ - Give players to invest in a particular planet, the output per capita by comparison to others determines gains (low risk, low reward)
• Player and NPC bounties - No brainer, PVP zone only
• Contract market for broken parts
• Recycle parts back to refined ore/materials
• More efficient means to bring goods to markets, they are too cluttered and broken, full of scripters and overall not pleasant. Have a shuttle courier for goods, charge a fee based on distance, players can take this contract or can be a non NPC in game flow, bring markets to life, the quanta will flow
• Introduce the tile and construct sub letting options discussed in dev chats

 

I'm open to discussion here, I think this all makes sense and it works elsewhere. No one wants to grind, we all want the same thing, to mine, design, build and destroy. Please listen to logic, see what those before you have done and learn from those mistakes. 

 

 

[CptLoRes]

The main issue with tax is that it is in direct conflict with one of the foundations of this game. Player created persistent content..

[Warlander]

This system could work if it came with a login bonus that added 1L per hour every consecutive day you logged in to all ore pools in a tile.

 

This system could work if NQ had the forethought to totally remove the Element HP Talent Tree, add a prospecting tree, or Clone Talent System and add it as a tab for collective organization research and added a Prospecting Tree which had every single ore by tier and multiple branches for output per hour, lower the L per hour timer to a half hour, or any number of things that required millions of exp collectively where the exp is bound to the player but adds to the org collective for various aspects of the game like an RTS.

 

They could have made it so that the gains got better the longer you were able to keep the tiles to make it actually worth sitting on tiles as it adds to the value to make up the difference of taxes lost.

 

They could have made it so that "Ore wasnt "rarer than before or more sparsely populated" with keeping scans valid post Demeter so that the reduced ore types arent monopolized and anyone could progress and added higher tiers the longer you were there as hidden ore types that are unlocked as you go again like an RTS by your progress.

 

They could have made tax based on whats actually in the tile as the price tag to buy the tile as im sure the tax should be a lot higher by the tiers of ore that are in it since 1 mil per week for new players learning to play seems more counter productive than anything.

 

They could have had a minimal tax like 100k per tile and brought back in destrible elements or useage based mainenence that requires some repairs by how much you are doing. Use a door, switch, industry unit, mining unit, atmo/space engine, etc it take hp off slowly and loses efficiency doing the same thing as mining units efficiency mini game does but uses scrap rather than some artifical output sink you can just overcome by adding an additional mining unit down to overcome to always have 100% efficiency without ever having to waste charges on T1 Ore via Mining Units.

 

There are tons of ways they could have played this that does not kill the game. Flat Tax is not the way to go vs property value playing into how much tax and what you do. It makes no sense that tiles with multiple cores full of industry elements costs the same as a new player with an XS shack with nothing in it.

 

They could have made the tile grid so that as soon as you buy up a cluster it unlocks some kind of RNG based higher tier ore that unlocks. Seeing as it now costs 16 mil to transfer a tile or if you want to abandon it someone could come claim it it could work. Or if you buy up 7 clusters it unlocks RNG hased T3 ores. up and up so that you could potentially get some kind of random T5 ore anywhere and its not so one sided.

[xxAmonxx]

6 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

The main issue with tax is that it is in direct conflict with one of the foundations of this game. Player created persistent content..

This type of system would address this. In addition an option to deduct from daily login ( understanding this is a temp feature although).