DEVBLOG: TERRITORY UPKEEP - Discussion Thread

[Novoca1n3]

As a relatively new player (4 weeks) I'm already finding it extremely difficult to make enough Quanta do do/buy anything. Adding an additional 1m to my outgoings every week for every tile I'd like to purchase/mine is ridiculous. This on top of an initial 500,000 per tile basically makes it impossible for me to get anywhere or do anything in the game. I don't want to play a game where all I do is missions and sell ore so I can pay taxes.

BTW, if I don't have enough Quanta to buy/build mining units how will I ever get to a position where I can extract enough ore to pay my taxes? You need Quanta to buy/make units but need units to make Quanta.  And I guess there'll be another 30 or so Talents that take months to get just so I can use the mining units (or use them efficiently). Thinking it may be time to cancel my 12 month subscription.

[SlapNuts]

So as a player i can claim 5 titles across 5 different plants and make them my headquarters,  what I want to know is there an option for me to decide to not pay taxes on 4 of the 5 plots and only online them if I am at that planet and using them.

 

 

Claiming tiles for myself and not one of my orgs,

 

I want an option to claim 5 tiles as my HQ .

I want to be able to have an option to not pay taxes on these tiles,

I will not loose ownership if I do not pay taxes on these titles, so they can never be looted

I want to be able to online any of my offline tiles if I pay taxes for them one week.

 

 

sounds about right....

[Novean-61657]

I have a couple of questions:

 

#1 Can we tokenize tiles without access to the TU? I might have burried mine and after the reset I need to dig new holes, something we both do not want me to do. Can we raise all the TUs to the surface after the reset if access is required? An alternative would be ta access them through the tax system or map system.

 

#2 Can we have a way to quickly give all or a bunch of selected tiles x amount of millions pulled from our wallet? If I have hundreds of tiles, I really do not want to weekly assign quanta to each tile manually.

[Bobbie]

.

[LosNopales]

11 minutes ago, Novoca1ne said:

As a relatively new player (4 weeks) I'm already finding it extremely difficult to make enough Quanta do do/buy anything. Adding an additional 1m to my outgoings every week for every tile I'd like to purchase/mine is ridiculous. This on top of an initial 500,000 per tile basically makes it impossible for me to get anywhere or do anything in the game. I don't want to play a game where all I do is missions and sell ore so I can pay taxes.

BTW, if I don't have enough Quanta to buy/build mining units how will I ever get to a position where I can extract enough ore to pay my taxes? You need Quanta to buy/make units but need units to make Quanta.  And I guess there'll be another 30 or so Talents that take months to get just so I can use the mining units (or use them efficiently). Thinking it may be time to cancel my 12 month subscription.

Keep in mind that the mining mini game will result in a small amount of minerals that can be picked up on the surface that will give you a little mineral bump.  If done properly it could result in enough coin to be at least 1/4 of the fee for your tile.   At least that's what I experienced during my testing.   Obviously all depends on price of minerals.   

[willolake]

29 minutes ago, Novoca1ne said:

As a relatively new player (4 weeks) I'm already finding it extremely difficult to make enough Quanta do do/buy anything. Adding an additional 1m to my outgoings every week for every tile I'd like to purchase/mine is ridiculous. This on top of an initial 500,000 per tile basically makes it impossible for me to get anywhere or do anything in the game. I don't want to play a game where all I do is missions and sell ore so I can pay taxes.

BTW, if I don't have enough Quanta to buy/build mining units how will I ever get to a position where I can extract enough ore to pay my taxes? You need Quanta to buy/make units but need units to make Quanta.  And I guess there'll be another 30 or so Talents that take months to get just so I can use the mining units (or use them efficiently). Thinking it may be time to cancel my 12 month subscription.

A small mining unit can be crafted in your nano from surface harvest-able materials. You can run multiple of those to bootstrap your mining operation. You can run around an harvest surface ores from any unclaimed territory.

 

I think basic large mining units will only end up costing no more than $500k quanta; so the daily monies alone will give people the opportunity to bootstrap a larger operation quickly.

I think something we're all going to need to adjust to is that "being a land owner" is not a given outside of sanctuary anymore. I honestly hope this makes sanctuary useful. As an early player that saw sanctuary put in at the last minute, I was completely confused why a safe zone was _also_ added. The point was sanctuary was safe, everything else was not. Because of the safe zone, no one had a reason to stay in sanctuary. Now there will be pressures that make sanctuary useful.

 

[FryingDoom]

With the 5 HQ territories for individuals, I am happy with the cost per week. This means everyone can gain a reasonable income at no overhead cost and only those who want to earn more must pay more.

Gets my vote.

[Ravenskysong]

thank you for headquarter tiles, that removes most of my worries.

 

my only suggestion is to allow a high talent point needed skill that lets us store more money in the territory wallet. that way if you have subscribed and played for a long time you can also leave the game for longer if something happens. like oh this talent takes 6 months, but gets me x amount of extra months of wallet stashing
beucase the money is still leaving the economy 

 

also please make sure that people / guests can contribute to the tax directly. so organization members can interact with the territory and help pay taxes

with a log

or an ability to script a log

maybe one day be able to script taxes paid x amount can be a trigger for lua/dispensers/ signs etc

 

you know?

so like you could have a message board showing like Territory taxes: unit 1 13 mill full unit 2 11 mill full unit 3 etc
and then people could vr over to those units and top them up for their org

[antanox]

1.000.000 per tile per week is just to much for me.

besides the daily 150k i´m making almost no money in this game.

the ore i mined ist used for building and makig fuel

the money i make is used to set up the industry

 

it would be nice to see some acutal calculations from nq on this. what ore prices did they calculate with ( i thought bots are on their way out)

 

the whole concept of tax is ok to me, its just the numbers that look wrong for the single building casual player....

 

although repeating myself i dont want to feel like working in this game just to keep up my territories that i want to build on.

login regular to get daily money = work ( expecting it to be removed anyway)

login regular to care for the mining units to even generate money = work

 

yes we do not have the "tedious" mining anymore, the advantage this had was the we where independent of tile ownership and schedules to generate material and money.

 

demeter removes that independency and makes this a daily login game to "get your reward" -> bad mechanic.

 

i dont see the point in the calibration running out it doesnt generate interactive gameplay -> remove it and have the player only calibrate when change the ore on the unit or it stops for whatever reason.

i dont see the point in having charges for the calibration it also does not generate interactive gameplay but introduces work like schedules with no value to the game

 

if you want us to mange mining units and not have them running for ever unattended make them consume fuel or energy or something else that we can craft so we can control the time they are running without interaction.

you could make it so the the fuel limit is a hard cap to total unattended mining unit runtime

in order to make mining not more expensive with this the tax has to be adjusted accordingly. if possible even with regard to the maximum output of ore/h and tier.

[antanox]

if you want to keep the mining unit charges and scheduled calibration it could also be a nice idea to be able to generate missions for this for other players

 

+ generates interactive mission gameplay aside from transport from a to b

+ payment based on calibration result

+ players with exces charges could make money from that

+ partial specialisation in mining skill just for calibration

 

- rdms would need to be set up for this

- dev time

 

--------

 

a similar solution generating missions and trade could be to have a physical object ingame that takes money for the tile tax.

 

the idea is to sell ore from that tax through a dispenser that puts the money generated directly on the tile account.

 

+ generates interactive mission gameplay aside from transport from a to b

+ players without management access to a tile could support the upkeep

+ lots of small trading and collecting spots for people to bring ore to markets

 

[Grimscale]

You actually trying to force existing players to keep playing, in order to keep the work they have put in.

1,000,000 a week, so not only do you want to force players to spend time in the game, you want to drive out anyone who cant put allot of time into the game in order to keep what they have. To be able to afford the upkeep.

 

Nice business model, keep paying the subscription and spend time in the game or loos everything. no option the take a long break from the game, go on holiday or just don't have the time due to work commitments to play all the time.

 

As I understand there is a HQ territory that's free of taxes, iv seen above that some think that will be five territories.

I have only seen one territory mentioned any ware.

[CoyoteNZ]

5 hours ago, vylqun said:

so, basically the tax system killed the DU racing league and only a few selected tracks will remain, is it really your wish to reduce the already lacking content of DU even further?

how many hexs do the racing league have?

[CoyoteNZ]

4 hours ago, Novoca1ne said:

As a relatively new player (4 weeks) I'm already finding it extremely difficult to make enough Quanta do do/buy anything. Adding an additional 1m to my outgoings every week for every tile I'd like to purchase/mine is ridiculous. This on top of an initial 500,000 per tile basically makes it impossible for me to get anywhere or do anything in the game. I don't want to play a game where all I do is missions and sell ore so I can pay taxes.

BTW, if I don't have enough Quanta to buy/build mining units how will I ever get to a position where I can extract enough ore to pay my taxes? You need Quanta to buy/make units but need units to make Quanta.  And I guess there'll be another 30 or so Talents that take months to get just so I can use the mining units (or use them efficiently). Thinking it may be time to cancel my 12 month subscription.

Hi Novoca1ne,

 

A couple of things,

 

- firstly you don't pay tax on your Sanctuary title. So instead of the regular get off of Sanctuary as fast as you can gameplay, now it is better to stay there for a while and use it as your initial industry base until there is a good reason to leave.

- Secondly The first mining unit, the only small one, can be made in your nanopack with a little surface gathering to get the materials required. So you can quickly make a few of these and set them up on your free title to start bringing in T1 ore from Sanctuary to either sell or start making things with.

 

I foresee new players will set up and stay on Sanctuary longer. When they go to the other planets it won't be to make huge bases, it will be to make mining outposts with mining units and refiners; dragging the material back personally, through orgs, or missions to either their base to use or to market to sell.

 

It will only be the people who want big projects which will be going out and claiming hexs off world which won't be bringing in more income than they are costing.

 

  

[iceman8706]

A million a week is too much! In the Q&A video you said a million a month (https://youtu.be/rhoz6ynOKBQ?t=2802), which I thought was fair and doable. I think we all understand the need for a decay system plus the added game play of finding tiles and structures that have been abandoned and claiming them.  The cost is insanely high, add in the fluctuations of ore prices and that the prices will absolutely dive bomb because of the amount of t1 ore flooding the markets so players can pay that tax. It becomes an unreasonable demand on players to meet. Stick to the 1 month tax and scale back if you need to, to find the right balance. To go from one month in the Q&A video to every week is to much of a swing. It pretty much makes the video pointless and a waste of time. 

 

[Novoca1n3]

1 hour ago, CoyoteNZ said:

Hi Novoca1ne,

 

A couple of things,

 

- firstly you don't pay tax on your Sanctuary title. So instead of the regular get off of Sanctuary as fast as you can gameplay, now it is better to stay there for a while and use it as your initial industry base until there is a good reason to leave.

- Secondly The first mining unit, the only small one, can be made in your nanopack with a little surface gathering to get the materials required. So you can quickly make a few of these and set them up on your free title to start bringing in T1 ore from Sanctuary to either sell or start making things with.

 

I foresee new players will set up and stay on Sanctuary longer. When they go to the other planets it won't be to make huge bases, it will be to make mining outposts with mining units and refiners; dragging the material back personally, through orgs, or missions to either their base to use or to market to sell.

 

It will only be the people who want big projects which will be going out and claiming hexs off world which won't be bringing in more income than they are costing.

 

  

Sanctuary is already lag city and I don't believe these changes will fix that. Being restricted to mining on 1 hex only is also not fun. There's a ton of planets out there and being forced to stay on one planet due to insanely high taxes makes the game worthless, unenjoyable and boring. Why be forced into building your base and infrastructure on Sanctuary when it can never be moved to a better planet? I can guarantee that the tiny free unit will bring in less than 1/10 of the cost of owning a hex off of Sanctuary meaning people will be stuck there forever unless they create 10+ alts to milk missions   

 

This change is being introduced not to make the game more fun or stable. It's being introduced to save NQ money and to force people into playing longer (ie more revenue through subscriptions)

 

[Celestis]

2 hours ago, Grimscale said:

You actually trying to force existing players to keep playing, in order to keep the work they have put in.

Looks like NQ is actually forcing casual players out of the game.

[Aviator1280]

3 minutes ago, Novoca1ne said:

Sanctuary is already lag city and I don't believe these changes will fix that. Being restricted to mining on 1 hex only is also not fun. There's a ton of planets out there and being forced to stay on one planet due to insanely high taxes makes the game worthless. Why be forced into building your base and infrastructure on Sanctuary when it can never be moved to a better planet? I can guarantee that the tiny free unit will bring in less than 1/10 of the cost of owning a hex off of Sanctuary meaning people will be stuck there forever unless they create 10+ alts to milk missions   

This is a bit too pessimistic. Performances yes, I don't think for the players will be a big change while for sure NQ reduce their cost a lot with less data to share. For example if you are on Alioth and you mine 300+m under the ground I didn't find much difference from mining an asteroid because you actually render very small things. Surface instead has constructs and terra forming that is actually what make the performances bad and this will be the same with Demeter and may be a bit improved when they will reduce the voxels complexity.

Taxes are not pleasant for sure but on Sanctuary you don't pay them and you can have up to 5 HQ where you may not pay them if you don't need to make industries or mine. Well if you need it means you have to earn from them so you can pay the taxes.

What for sure I don't appreciate is a non progressive taxation and that players can lose their stuff if for a while they want to take a pause from the game.

[Kibolt]

2 Quick points:

 

1) 1m per week per tile is WAAAAAY too much

 

2) When introduced, Headquarter Tiles were touted as being Org related. Now they are personal use. I would strongly suggest they need a different name more aligned with their function to avoid confusion such as Residence Tile, or Personal Tile, Estate Tile.

 

PS:

While on the subject of renaming maybe the patch should be renamed:

"Make Sanctuary Great Again!"

 

 

Edited November 19, 2021 by Kibolt
adding a n additional though

[Celestis]

Will we be able to Build on HQ tiles that we don't pay taxes on?

Will we be able to use the containers and doors etc. on them?

 

I get that we won't be able to mine on them, that makes sense.

 

[Aviator1280]

To me it is evident they want to push the hamsters (players) on pvp may be to test it and improve it but honestly I'm not going to pvp in DU I'm against it's dynamic 

[Celestis]

14 minutes ago, Aviator1280 said:

To me it is evident they want to push the hamsters (players) on pvp may be to test it and improve it but honestly I'm not going to pvp in DU I'm against it's dynamic 

Pvp would have been an ok way to lose tiles on the outer planets.

 

I was expecting us to get to that point and I wouldn't have minded losing tiles to other players that way... at least the tiles would be lost by playing the game!

Losing tiles because of exorbitant taxes is the worst way to lose tiles.

[willolake]

32 minutes ago, Celestis said:

Losing tiles because of exorbitant taxes is the worst way to lose tiles.

While we've yet to see just how painful the taxes are, I must second this sentiment. As a KS backer, I'm incredibly saddened that DU made it into "beta" with zero territory warfare mechanics. I really hope we hear something about this Soon®. I too would much rather be stressing about defending my land from players than the Interstellar Revenue Service.

[Kanamechan]

Guys,

 

1m per week is nothing !!!!

you earn 150 k/ day => 1.05 m/ week

with a price of 65 l/q of T1, you just need 15.5 kl pour earn 1m.

1 MU = 230 L/h (max), but we can estimate 70 % of efficience (calibration decrease) on average which give you 161 L/h.

1 MU = 3 864 L/day => 27 000 L/h / weeks !

1 MU give you enought ore to sell to the market to pay your tax for almost 2 tile. But you will not have 1 MU on your tile, maybe 4 or 5 MU.

You don't want use MU ?

OK use mission

 

Alioth => thades = 950 000 q

thades => madis = 670 000 q

madis => alioth = 900 000 q

time to travel with landing : 3h

Total = 2.5 m /3h

2 run / weeks = 5 m = 5 tiles

 

And i dont talk about mission in pvp zone, like create of sand and territory parts. this 9.5 and 8.9 m per run.

Many organisation do the travel for you for 50 % of the rewards. That's enought for 10 min VR to pay 2 months per tile per run.

 

you don't want mission ?

 

HQ = no tax = no industry/MU but no loss of property

Sanctuary = free tax =  free MU = free ore = free quanta.

 

another easy solution :

You don't want use MU but some people want use MU and they will don't have enought calibration charge

they will pay to you to use VR and calibrate their MU. you have 5 charges without talent. 

Imagine that you sell your 5 calibrations charges for 2m/weeks. 

Free quanta for 10 min / VR each 48/72/96 H.

 

if you are a designer, builder, or made lua you can sell your work to earn quanta.

There are so many others solutions.... just search the solution for you for your play style

 

 

[Aviator1280]

And need also to consider the investment to buy or produce mining units... they will be easy to buy? Big question mark. The bot that will buy the ores (that at this point can't almost use anymore to produce anything if they go away in taxes) will have what price? So NQ is dictating the market? I thought they didn't want.............

[Novean-32184]

9 hours ago, Bobbie said:

Their stated intention was to prevent infinite free tiles by infinitely nesting orgs.

Yes, and unless they exclude orgs from getting access rights set on HQ tiles, what NQ says they wanted to prevent is precisely what will happen.

 

 

9 hours ago, Bobbie said:

After the backlash against tile taxes, I find it hilarious that everyone is now suddenly concerned about too many tax-free tiles.

I think that it's not so much a backlash against taxing on tiles but more the way NQ implemented it. And there is no tax free tiles here, HQ tiles still require tax to be paid to be "active", the difference is that if you do not pay taxes, the tile still goes inactive but you will not lose ownership.