One widely noticed problem with our current Shiny system is that they
tend to accumulate in the hands of players, because there's not much
reason to spend them. Finding more things to spend them on is one fix
that we should definitely be looking at long-term. However, I think
there's scope here to make /not/ spending them more interesting.
I care about being able to accumulate economic assets long-term and
eventually use them for a win. However, that doesn't necessarily mean
that I care that doing so is easy; working to hold onto what I have is
currently trivial, but taking effort will likely lead to a better game
long-term. I also had an idea I really like for it.
So here's the proto-proposal (which would work best at AI 1.2, I
believe):
{{{{
Amend rule 2482 ("Payday") to read as follows, then retitle it to "The
Financial Month", then increase its power to 1.2:
{{{
Payrate is an office switch, tracked by the ADoP, with a
default value of 10 and possible values of positive integers.
At the start of each month, the following steps occur in order:
a) Each player pays Agora 20% of their Shinies, rounded down.
b) Each Organization pays Agora 20% of its Shinies, rounded
down, unless that Organization is a Tax Haven.
c) Each Organization's Tax Status is flipped to its default
value.
d) Agora pays each player 10 Shinies, unless its Balance is
0 or lower.
e) Agora pays each office, in ascending order of Payrate
(breaking ties alphabetically by the name of the office),
a number of Shinies equal to its Payrate. However, any such
payment which would be made while Agora's Balance is 0 or
lower is skipped and does not occur.
}}}
Create a new rule, "Tax Havens", at power 1.2:
{{{
Tax Status is an Organization switch, tracked by the
Secretary, with possible values "taxable" (the default), and
"nontaxable". A nontaxable Organization is known as a Tax
Haven.
In a timely manner after the start of each month, the
Secretary SHALL randomly choose two distinct Organizations
(or as many as possible if fewer than two exist), with the
probability of each Organization being chosen being
proportional to its Income, and CAN and SHALL then make
those Organizations into Tax Havens.
}}}
}}}}
The basic idea here is that there's a tax rate which helps prevent
inactive players accumulating too many Shinies just for existing, but
which can be dodged entirely with some effort. We have a fairly diverse
set of Organizations out there already; I imagine that if an
Organization were randomly selected to be a Tax Haven, its members
would at least consider amending it to work as a Shiny store in a way
that fit the spirit of that Organization as a whole (and other players
would consider joining it). So, people who want to accumulate economic
power long term might well have to jump from Organization to
Organization (and fund Organizations that aligned with their goals
long-term in the hope of increasing the chance that they're selected as
a Tax Haven).
Of course, this is likely to lead to a lot of Shinies stockpiled in one
place, and I don't want this to become some sort of standard grind in
which every Organization puts some generic "you can store Shinies here"
boilerplate in and leaves it at that. So as a companion proposal, let's
do something that's a) going to leave a bunch of people missing Shinies
and b) actually gives an incentive to play the economy game:
{{{{
Create a new rule, "Medals":
{{{
Medal Ownership is an Organization switch, whose possible
values are the non-negative integers, defaulting to 0.
If at any time more than half the Shinies owned by entities
other than Agora are owned by a single Organization, it pays
half its Shinies to Agora, and its Medal Ownership is increased
by 1.
When a person Claims a Medal from an Organization, as described
in other rules, that person wins the game.
}}}
In rule 2460 ("Organizational Restructuring"), replace
{{{
Budget or Charter switch
}}}
with
{{{
Budget, Charter, or Medal Ownership switch
}}}
and append the following to the lettered list at the end:
{{{
d) A member of an Organization CAN Claim a Medal from that
Organization, if doing so is Appropriate and the Organization's
Medal Ownership is nonzero. Doing so decreases the
Organization's Medal Ownership by 1.
}}}
}}}}
--
ais523
