6/17/2024 - devlog
This week Michi talks about how governments will get some additional means to get to cash.
Michi (molp)
A while ago I started a topic on the forums that summarizes how governments will work after the parliaments update. We received a lot of constructive feedback and learned a thing or two how players run their governments at the moment.
While we think that governments should be able to fund their programs via the taxes and fees they receive, there are some edge cases where raising fees is not feasible or wanted.
For example, a governor of a small colony might want to kickstart its population via immigration programs. Right now the governor would pay that out of his own pocket. That will not be possible in the future, as we separate the company / corporation accounting from the government accounting. The only way to increase the cash for the government is to increase production or other fees. On a small planet that can take quite a while to add up.
We decided to add a new donation motion that allows a government to accept a donation in form of a payment condition embedded in a contract. It is the counterpart of the payout motion that we added earlier.
Another edge case occurs on planets with a highly specialized population, say of engineers and scientists. These workforces are expensive to get via immigration programs and even more so to keep happy via the population infrastructure. A new company joining that planet can be very costly for the existing players. To be able to account for that we are introducing a base establishment tax.
The base establishment tax is a one-time fee that everyone has to pay in order to be able to found a new base on a planet. The tax is part of the local rules and can be changed via a governmental motion. Starting planets will be exempted and planets in faction spaces will have an upper limit to not limit the growth of new and upcoming players.
I am currently in the middle of implementing the base establishment tax and will hopefully be able to show some screenshots next week.
We hope that these two new options will add variance in the way governments handle their earnings.
As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!
Happy trading!