Fwurg

[Patrick]

Hello everybody,

I'm having some trouble reaching the "expected" 600 tax starting guideline per turn. The best i can do right now is 500 and tuppence by making mass transit cargo freighters, which will probably drop in pice a littile when multiple nations produce them...

Could someone who is better at this kind of puzzeling stuff help me out that i wont have the slowest system ever?

I was thinking about producing either tax 3 and 4 or tax 6, but I cant see this system making more than 300 tax max this way...

[Mercury]

Using the Natural Life feature, a proper atmosphere and relevant features, you should be able to get about 200 raw materials per primary zone, or 2400 raw materials in total over 12 zones. Using your secondary zones, you should be able to produce about 1200 products (200 capacity * 6 = 1200 capacity, with 2400 raw materials for 1200 products).

Tax Set #6 has a 6 products to 3 return so the expected return would be about (1200 / 6) * 3 = 600 . That's before trading (with trading, you can actually get a lot higher, provided you have a willing trading partner).

Are you sure you added all your production bonuses together?

If you give me an example of what you are building, I can point out what's going on.

Pro-tip: Try to find a few people to trade with before finishing your system - it can give you an edge!

[The Lifebringer Clans]

Hey Piening, congrats on joining, etc. I'll have a look at your system and stuff. Here's generic advice:

Most common opening strategy has been to produce either tax set 5 or tax set 6, and trade with another player that builds the opposite set. 2 pairs of players have done this.

The other pair of players has started with tax set 1+2 and tax set 3+4, also trading for tax set 7.

I'm really interested in how an early MTCF-based strategy will perform, but MTCF prices are not as stable as tax sets, so it might not be the safest of strategies. At current prices, however, this is superior to constructing tax set 7, and it remains so as long as you're selling at >400 ish tax. You do need to make deals with other players on a turn-by-turn basis, though, making your economy much more high-maintenance than a tax-based setup. I haven't seen the Terraforming rules yet, but I expect a similar build will be possible using Terraforming Modules instead of MTCF.

I suggest you populate your system with the zones for one of these strategies, and then tweak climates/etc to get higher numbers. Other people can then look at your system and offer more concrete advice.

...on the other hand, this is supposed to be a roleplaying game. Since you're apparently not a number-puzzling type of person yourself, it's a perfectly valid strategy to just build for tax set 5 or 6, keep your economy low-maintenance, ignore the rat race for higher numbers, and focus on the RP part. Judging by the background you've been writing, you are an RP type of person.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

What admin says is true. You can combine things like natural life, oceans, etc. to get a nice income going. It is advisable to have some income of your own instead of relying on the fickle selling of MTCFs.

Also, I disagree with Lifebringer Clans on has assesment of the price of MTCFs. But I just heard that Chriz will explain this in some more detail.

[Praetorian Empire]

If you compare MTCF with tax set #7 they are worth 450 for every 100 MTCF.

Why?

tax set #7 consists of 12 products and gives 9 . Every product is worth 6/8 then.
Every product consists of 2 raw materials. This would be 3/8 for each raw material.
MTCF = 4 + 4 = 4 * 6/8 + 4 * 3/8 = 4,5 for every MTCF

And as mentioned above they are high-maintenance to trade. Combined with the fact that you need to transport them by trade fleet the price of 500 for 100 MTCF is actually quitte reasonable.

Ofcourse you can buy them from the open market for 500 as well. But this means that you as buyer have to assign a complete tradefleet to the open market. While this tradefleet is probably better used constructing tax set #7.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

The MTCF price per good is high, so you need far fewer trade fleets compared to the strategy for swapping tax sets. Moreover, you don't pay taxes over them as you would over producing a tax set 7. All this means they are still a superior strategy to producing tax set 7 below the 450 mark.

I think. I haven't done the exact math including the updated Union taxation rules.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

While I still have some things to say about this subject (for example about the Open Markt value of MTCFs, which have some impact as well, and the stability of Tax Set #7 versus MTCF trade). Let's not discuss the actual economic models in this thread, they are way off-topic

I advice Patrick to take a look at the suggestions by admin, and determine further plans on the IC interaction with other factions -- instead of relying on what we discussed here.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

Problem found, forgot to take the free Improved Production upgrade on certain starting zones into account.