Fwurg

[Brend]

The military fleet upkeep rules (as discussed during the write-a-thon and in Military Rules: Fleet Upkeep) will change as follows:

• Military Fleet upkeep will be changed to:
  
  • Base upkeep: 75 per
    
  • Upgrades 1,2,3: +25 per
    
  • Upgrades 4,5,6: +50 per
    
  • Upgrades 7,8,9: +100 per
• Combat Ability: The bonus of this characteristic is reduced to +●
• Armies: Army upkeep is increased to 25 per
• Piracy Patrol & Piracy are added as new concepts

These changes will go into effect in 154.

Please post any retroactive changes you want to execute due to this rules change in this thread (note that not noting down any changes does not afford you the leeway to not start paying increased upkeep starting 154!).

[Brend]

I would like to keep my fleets in their current configuration.

I would like to change my fleets by moving one upgrade from Veolian Imperial Fleet (currently at 5 upgrades) to the First Shebi Fleet (currently at 2 upgrades).

I will change the Veolian armies as follows to comply with the rules:

• Veolian Imperial Guard lose 1 middle ring offensive
• Shebi Vyuha Legion lose 1 middle ring defensive

[Chriz]

Since this update was specifically aimed at ending the Military fleet upgrades inflation I would like to change my fleets.

I would like to change:

Praetorian Primary Fleet from 8 upgrades to 3 upgrades.

Praetorian Secondary Fleet from 9 upgrades to 3 upgrades.

How do we handle this?

[Brend]

That is a good question. A quick calculation points out that you are dropping roughly 20k-25k of upgrades (based on dropping the most expensive upgrades, and a price of 3.0-4.0 per ).

I feel that 3.0 is a good estimate of lost costs as it is between 6-set and 9-set value; 4.0 is between 9-set and 12-set value; both expressed in amount of labour needed. Chris (standing next to me) favours the 4.0 , as he estimates that the labour could've been used to create more 9-sets and some 12-sets.

Note: taking 3.5 per (which we can both agree to :P) Chris loses 23 350 in upgrades.

I don't really have a problem with the amount. I have a problem with the fact that it is a completely unlimited blorb of . My own tax refund is limited to technology-only items. Obviously, we can't limit Chris to military-only items, as that would be counter-productive.


Me and Chris' are probably the only two parties with big refunds in the pipeline (though we're also getting hit the hardest with the taxation changes ~_~); maybe we should look for some other way to reimburse the Praetorians and the Veolians. Maybe we should look into a gradual payout, or direct converstion to some other good (i.e. Chris might want to convert to ).

To be clear: my main problem is with an immediately available 20k , not with the amount...

[Chriz]

I agree that immediately available floating is a bit iffy. This is why I propose to sink the complete refund of 23350 into an Outpost cluster as I already planned to do anyway.

This would be an Outpost cluster using the new rules in 13 -8.

The calculation using the value of 3.5 for since I am not buying them but only use a direct conversion from .

• Scanning = 750 * 4 = 3000
• First Cluster Tax = 10000
• First Cluster = 800 * 3,5 = 2800
• First 3 zones = 6000
• Second Cluster = 600 * 3,5 = 2100

For a Total of 23900 which would mean paying 550 in 154 for the difference for me.

[Brend]

Sounds reasonable to me.

I think one or two other players need to check this and stamp approval as well though... Other people! Please react before the end of the turn!

I'd like to note that the new upkeep becomes active in this turn; and not having approval for your retroactive change should (in my opinion) not be a reason to delay updating your bookkeeping and upkeep to the new level. Everyone knew that this announcement was coming for at least two weeks before it was made -- and we shouldn't encourage people to delay their retroactive changes just to keep lower upkeeps.

[Chriz]

The fact that I was allowed to scale down my military fleets was a given when these new rules were invented. The only point in question here is if my proposal for refunding the spend resources is approved.

I will update my military fleets to the new levels these turn and give other people some more time to look at the refunding proposal.

[Elmer]

The upkeep of fleets are increased, so even though the Praetorian Empire have spend less money on upgrades, they have spend more on upkeep (the same goes for the Veolian Commonwealth btw, but Brend doesn't claim any money here). How do you propose to handle this (and for the other fleets for that matter?)

I'm currently against calculating 3.5 for the , as the default for calculations with special products always is 4.5 . By lowering this to 3.5 because Chriz and Brend use 3.5 for gives Chris a lot more than the price for this product initially was intended. The problem is that the were made by the Praetorian Empire self, but the need to be purchased from the Astai Republic.

Also, I was under the impression that some kind of event would happen instead of a blatant 'all fleets are weaker now, and always were'.

[Brend]

For starters, Chriz doesn't get more superstructure components than if both are calculated on 4.5... He just swaps a number of capital ships for components on a 1:1 ratio. Do you mean that he should get back 4.5 for all his ? (I think that's wayyyyy too much)

I'm not against an event, but knowing how fast we are going to get that on the road, I've gone ahead and changed things already. Furthermore, the first event idea was "The Union buys fleet upgrades" but that doesn't work as the Union is dropping fleets like it's nobodies business. Any further event would only be for Chriz, since apparently no one else is going to reduce their fleets... I'm open to ideas on an event -- but I don't think its good to let everyone wait another 4 weeks because we haven't yet come up with an event; there's just no good way to explain the massive fleet drain if the Union's military is also shrinking.

[Elmer]

No I prose to calculate how much money Chriz got from his using the 3.5 and then use this amount of money to buy for a price of 4.5 per product.

I like to retroactively remove the 5th upgrade from the Asim-Caltro fleet from the Teprogrenaian Consensus. I will also cancel the 6th upgrade currently under construction. I don't need payment for the used, as the production of these products haven't affected my economy anyway. That leaves me with 500 I spend on the upgrade, of which I'm also fine if I don't get it back. But still appreciate though ;).

[Brend]

@price of : Ah, now I see what you mean. I agree that that is a good point, especially since Chriz seems to have squeezed in as much 1:1 conversion (i.e. cheap special goods) as possible by taking only for the second upgrade.

It's logical to do the special goods first during the construction of an Outpost, since that is most likely the constraining factor -- but due to the refund effectively being 4.5 per (which is 1.0 higher than the agreed upon 3.5 due to the 1:1 buying of ), it does seem gamey.

Chriz, would you have a problem with first converting everything and then spending it on ? The whole trick of suddenly getting is already very advantageous for you since you don't have to wait for them to be built (which is not a small benefit in the current economical situation for those special goods)...


@your change: If Chriz gets back 3.5 per , then so should you. That would bring your refund to 500 + 1400 = 1900 .

[Chriz]

The reason why Brend and me agreed on a 3.5 value per was that if I would have used the labour in products for sets it would have been reasonable to say that I would not have been able to use it all in 12-sets. This value is based on 9-sets which is reasonable.

Since the complete rules of the military system are nerfed and extremely expensive now it is reasonable to say that I am not going to put the refund into another military project.

I believe it is reasonable to say that I am able to convert the into 1:1 since I would have been able to produce them just as effectively.

Why do I have to lower the value while Brend is allowed to invest his whole research refund into new research as well with a 1:1 ratio? Or should all refunds be worth a lot less than the original investment to make sure that everybody is screwed when the rules change in the future?

I am fine with getting the outpost in like 10 or something if you don't want it to be sudden, but to be honest to me it doesn't really make much sense to wait.

[Elmer]

I agree that only be able to put this money in military projects is very counter productive.

The reason why I have no problems with Brend 1:1 ratio, is because he converts 1 to 1 . Chriz, your proposal converts one special product to another special product. The problem with products is that they don't have a fixed value. The value of a for you is different that the value of a for you. To illustrate: If I am allowed to convert all the I have created and could have created, than I would get 0 from it as I cannot put the products for in my tax sets. So this means that I can claim for 0 per . Or better, I can claim 1 for every 1 . Suddenly the of which I now have to pay 4.5 for to get, are available to me for 0 , while I don't even own a zone.

After a little thinking, I also think that converting to in any ratio is a little mean towards Fedor. He invested in this marked and now he is missing on 1400 .

Therefore I have reached the following conclusion:

I think that Chriz should be allowed to use the refund from his fleets to be put into Outposts. However, since outposts have quite the interaction with other players (you need materials, you take up space, you need to scan), I think we will miss a lot on roleplay and important economic interaction if Chriz magically have outposts now. To be clear, I am not against Chriz having outposts, I am against him having outposts while skipping the normal IC interactions with other players. Therefore I propose that Chriz can put the money in his Outpost budget, just like Brend put his research money into a research budget. This budget might be very large for Chriz, but outposts are confined by the rules of completion anyway, so he is still limited in the speed he can spend it. All the will be converted to by the predetermined ratio of 3.5 per , to prevent issues with the pricing of products.

This budget can be used for outposts and .

[Brend]

The reason why Brend and me agreed on a 3.5 value per was that if I would have used the labour in products for sets it would have been reasonable to say that I would not have been able to use it all in 12-sets. This value is based on 9-sets which is reasonable.

I would like to remark that this is not what I find reasonable. I agreed to it because it was the average of our two opinions, and as I stated "I feel that 3.0 is a good estimate of lost costs as it is between 6-set and 9-set value". I foresaw a lot of negotiations to and fro, and therefore agreed with taking the average in that estimation, and not in principle for all calculation following from it.

Since the complete rules of the military system are nerfed and extremely expensive now it is reasonable to say that I am not going to put the refund into another military project.

Agreed.

I believe it is reasonable to say that I am able to convert the into 1:1 since I would have been able to produce them just as effectively.

I disagree. Under that reasoning anything that 'could have been done' is suddenly a valid argument for using a retroactive change to get it. To use my situation for example: I request slightly over 16 000 . If I use the 'could have been done' reasoning, I would have been able to invest all of that in zones. Those zones could have given me 9-set value for their labour. So, I should now get a lot more taxes (at least 4000 more), because I missed out on those!

I don't like that line of reasoning because interaction with other players makes it impossible to actually predict what would have been done 'if it was always like this'.

Why do I have to lower the value while Brend is allowed to invest his whole research refund into new research as well with a 1:1 ratio?

I think Elmer puts the reason for this into words rather elegantly. Especially the impact towards the one person that produces

Furthermore, I have a lowered value as well. I have made a very conservative estimate of the amount of that is lost due to technologies becoming cheaper. I could trace down every last research project, and request a much larger sum of .

Or should all refunds be worth a lot less than the original investment to make sure that everybody is screwed when the rules change in the future?

I think that this question takes the whole retroactive change rules out of context and is, in my opinion, phrased in way that suggests that players of FWURG are specifically using OOC means to negatively affect one another.


@Chriz: Right now, it feels as if you are just trying to get as much economic advantage out of this change as possible. I do not think that this is in the spirit of the meta rules. Since I feel I can't be unbiased due to my own tech refund being dragged into this, I'll refrain from further posting.

[Elmer]

I had a talk with Chriz, and the issue became clear: It is an issue of time, not tax. If Chriz has to wait now, he has no need for the tax refund as he cannot spend it anyway. So his proposal says: 'I want to use the time I invested in my military to invest in outposts.' Because that way he can continue with his economy without having a budget of 20 000 laying around of which he has no decent way to spend.

To make things easier, we can say that he refurbished the zones he used for the into zones for , and then they refurbished them to what he has now. That way it is logical that he has the for a price of 3.5 per product, and Chriz has not the problem of throwing away the time he has invested.

Chriz, can you calculate what your refurbishment costs would have been approximately?

The only problem with this is that retroactively Chriz started to build before anybody else could have done as the rules simply didn't existed in that time.

[Chriz]

Since I would only have need of 100 / I would have had to refurbish 3 zones since I already had the metals available on my large moons in hot orbit. I only refurbished these metals zone to products recently since I am not using them anymore.

This would mean I would have need of 2 zones on my homeplanet and a unupgraded zone which would total at 1250 - 1500 . This is why on second thought the refund of 3.5 / and buying of at 4.5 is kinda reasonable since the difference is 1400 between the 3.5 and 4.5 price for the 1400 .

Because of the previous reasoning I have accepted the price of 4.5 / .

Furthermore I would like to say that after talking with Brend I came to the conclusion that the only reason that I am keeping my military fleets is that I want to protect my trade and do piracy patrol for my outpost. However for piracy patrol I would only really need a 1/1/1 fleet and the piracy patrol is already expensive enough by itself. This is why I decided to rescale my Praetorian Primary Fleet to 3 upgrades and my Praetorian Secondary Fleet to 0 upgrades.

The change:
Praetorian Primary Fleet from 8 upgrades to 3 upgrades.
Praetorian Secondary Fleet from 9 upgrades to 0 upgrades.

The calculations:
With the price of 3.5 / upgrade I would lose 27475 .
Furthermore there is 937 left from: research cost changes
This is in total: 28412 .

The Outpost in 13 -8:
Scanning = 750 * 4 = 3000
First Cluster Tax = 10000
First Cluster = 800 * 4,5 = 3600
First 3 zones = 6000
Second Cluster = 600 * 4,5 = 2700
Second Cluster 3112 (it is now at 3112 /8000 )

[Fedor]

The only point of contention I see is that you could argue that the price change of from 3.5 to 4.5 is not related to the cost of refurbishing which is between 1250 - 1500 and as such both should be paid, and not just the price change.

But from Elmer's previous post, arguing that you could have done instead of capital ships I would agree that you would could just pay the refurbishing costs. Here instead of paying the refurbishing costs you say that they are equal to changing the price of from 3.5 to 4.5 , which I agree with. Therefore you wouldn't have to pay both, and I agree with your calculation.

[Fedor]

For the processing of turns, I think everyone who wants to gets to downgrade their fleets and pay less upkeep already, this is not in contention. This being especially Chriz who would pay quite a lot of upkeep for fleets he wants to remove.

Furthermore I think Elmer and Brend's changes as they are now are good and could be processed. I do however think that Elmer could claim more than he is currently, 500 tax for the upgrade being discarded as well as for the 200 capital ships being lost in the current upgrade and the 400 in last one he should get a total of 600*3.5+500=2600 refunded.

[Brend]

I have updated my fleets and armies.

[Elmer]

Well, I would never be against it if I can claim taxes for my of course ^^.

I agree with Fedor that people (including me) who want to downscale their fleets should be able to do so to prevent issues with wasting taxes and retroactively wanting the too much payed taxes back as of the retroactive change of the downscaled fleets.

[Chriz]

I agree that since we introduce the new taxes now that we change the amount of upgrades directly to the new state while the refunds for the upgrades come later, probably next .

Brend already changed his fleets and I will do this today as well.

[Mercury]

I was asked to provide my point of view on this topic. However, reading the last few posts suggests to me that the matter has already been resolved to the satisfaction of all involved.

I have read the topic and now have an opinion, but if the matter is indeed - as I suspect - resolved, then I don't see the benefit of extensively posting my personal views which I don't think deviate too far from views already posted.

Can anyone confirm if the problem is indeed resolved and if not, reiterate the nature of the disagreement?

[Brend]

Personally, I am satisfied by the final calculations presented by Chriz. I still think that just spawning is a bit mean to the one player actually investing in them, but that's just the nature of retroactive changes, I'm afraid.

[Chriz]

I have made the price changes using the advice of Brend and Elmer and we have come to an agreement that it should not be a pool of but a retroactive change that will go into effect immediately. A pool of would only mean a larger spendable income that we would have trouble with spending due to completion limits.

I will create the outpost in 155.

[Elmer]

Then we only have my refund left to discuss.

My idea is to spend 2000 in a zone and 600 in a zone, as these are the zones which I am increasing. (Especially the zone, as that zone had been laying around for several turns due to limitations in my spendable income.) The vehicles zone is logical as well, as I would have finished my zone sooner and therefore sooner could have begun my next zone.

I was planning to let his be retroactively active in 155.