In-Game Contract Payments, Taxes, and Fees

[this3ndup]

This may all fall under the potential applications of the RDMS, but I couldn't confirm that from what I read.  If this would all be possible under that system, these suggestions are redundant, but I wanted to put them out there independently for discussion.  The following options would (in my opinion) bolster the player-driven economy by facilitating new incentives and potential sources of revenue.  If the goal is a truly emergent experience, these options should be considered for inclusion as integrated features.  While these ideas could always be arranged informally between players, in many cases these mechanics would be very hard to track or enforce without some sort of in-game system for handling these types of transactions, especially on a large scale.

 

Contract Payments

 

Players or organizations should be able to set up in-game payments for other players or organizations in exchange for fulfilling certain pre-determined requirements.  This means that players or organizations could actually employ other players or organizations for certain tasks.  While these things could certainly be done anyway as a sort of handshake agreement between players, introducing this as an actual game mechanic could allow for a degree of automation for large organizations (or players with many tasks and payees).  This would lend some legitimacy and stability to "employment" in the game world.  Some tasks would still need to be arranged informally by players, but activities that could be objectively tracked by the game--such as mining, trading, or even killing certain players or players of a certain faction--could have pre-determined payments attached to them that would be automatically transferred from one entity to another upon completion.  Practically, this would probably look like some sort of player-generated quest system.

 

Taxes

 

Organizations should be able to impose recurring taxes on members in order to fund the organization, which would be binding and enforced by the in-game taxation mechanic unless the member left the group.  For example, an organization could impose a flat rate (essentially membership dues), or it could demand a certain percentage of each member's income.  Since such taxation options would otherwise be difficult to keep track of or downright impossible to enforce, this would be a good candidate for a built-in game mechanic.  Like contract payments, this would allow the game to simply continue extracting payments as long as the condition of membership is met.  If a player wants to stop paying, they can leave the group.  This would encourage organizations hoping to sustain themselves through taxation to treat their members well and provide benefits worth the requisite cost.  This could also open the door to some legitimate nation-building with tax-paying citizens.  This might be a feature limited to organizations of a certain size, and not individual players or small guilds; for accountability, perhaps any official in-game taxation would require allowing all members to have access to some sort of balance sheet for the organization showing its income, balance, and where it's spending that money.

 

Fees

 

This could also be considered another form of taxation, but one based on access, not membership.  One of the most significant applications I could see for this is the option of imposing an automated access fee for players entering an independent safe zone.  Players would be notified of the amount required to enter the zone, and could either choose to pay it or be restricted from entering in some way.  Of course this would be optional, but it could also encourage enterprising players to find strategic locations to establish new safe zones (where safety itself might be worth paying for) or build up infrastructure to provide valuable facilities and/or resources that other players would pay to access.  Another option might be a transaction fee on trades or purchases made in that safe zone.  Like taxes, there could be options, such as a flat rate or a percentage rate based on a ship's weight or cargo.  This would make the development and administration of colonies, stations, and outposts a viable pursuit in its own right, and add a new layer of economic competition to the game world.  In addition, exemptions could be made by the owner of the safe zone for members of a particular group as a potential incentive for membership.

 

In my opinion, the combination of these various mechanics would add a lot of depth to the economic model beyond trading resources and buying and selling constructs.  Crucial to these sorts of options would probably be some form of universal currency, as depending on payment in raw resources that players might not have would be problematic.  I'd be curious to hear your thoughts!

[yamamushi]

Welcome to the forums this3ndup!

 

As far as taxation goes, I'd like to have the ability to levy a property tax on people who are living in our nation/faction/etc. territory.

 

I'd also like the ability to levy a tariff on imports and exports, as that may open up a smuggling mechanic as well. 

[bdole92]

I would be really surprised if all of these forms of player to player payments didn't find their way into the game. Courier contracts in particular will, in my opinion, probably end up being one of the most common. The way they described the market system, far flung outposts might have to rely really heavily on traders in order to get regular shipments of anything they can't manufacture for themselves, which is a fantastic way of driving player interactions

[Calitar]

What about warp gate fees? Once those are discovered, are users going to be able to build them or will they just exist? If we can build them and choose where to place them, can we place a fee/tax on ships using it? I like the ideas this3ndup proposed as well.