Politician Archive

To me this seems like a bug, I mean we should be able to balance a budget without external sources. So, for people that don't believe me here are some numbers...

Alright I don't see how it can be done, I mean you should be able to balance the budget without external sources, so I attempted for the extreme case that was mentioned. I believe QAville has 64 citizens and a over 1 million credit expense side of the budget, which I properly rounded down to one million.

Alright here are the assumptions for a city to get max profit, without pa halls:

1) Only large houses.
2) Max out all taxes, and shuttle fee.

So with QAville, it would earn 64k in income tax, and if maintenance is 60 cr/hr on large(sorry don't know actual rate) it would also earn 322,560 credits in property tax per week. Then comes shuttles, say everyone rides the shuttle twice a day, everyday, that is 448,000 credits. This comes to a grand total of 834,560 credits. The rest is dependent on sales tax, which is 20%(max), so 1,000,000 - 834,560 credits is 165,440 credits left to compensate, we take that and divide by the 20% tax to get the actual sale we have to make per week to get a balanced budget for QAville... 165,440 / .2 is 827,200 credits. So the city as a whole would have to sell 827,200 credits worth of goods through vendors.

I just don't see how it is possible to balance a budget without external sources, and it most definitely should be!

*APPLAUSE*APPLAUSE* Wow I never looked at it like that, i think it is either a bug or miscalaculation but you are 100% right and i think that that should be fixed.

Wouldn't be that hard to sell that amount of stuff through vendors. I do that amount about every 2 days right now. That's one person. In a town of 50 people (for one large enough to have a shuttleport) you'll almost certainly have more than one merchant going.

with taxes maxed, that town be a ghost town

anyways, I doubt any budgets will get over 1,000,000 CR....

We have entered the Sim City stage of SWG...if you cant support, dont build

You sell 800k plus worth of goods every two days?

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Trean wrote:

if maintenance is 60 cr/hr on large(sorry don't know actual rate) it would also earn 322,560 credits in property tax per week.

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When I was caculating this for my city a scary thought occured to me. Since maintenance rates are caculated hourly I would assume proprity tax is caculated hourly.

With server resets (assuming a 2hr down time per day) were loosing 14 hrs of maintenance a week. Also what if there was a large server crash and its down for a few extra hours.... we might be missing a whole day of proprity tax on a given week.

Nostradamus Smyth

I sell 1-2 million credits worth of products a week from my vendors. Med supplies and resources are my main source of sales.

Our guild Armorsmith probably does a million a week now and that is steadily climbing. Most architects I know,sell that in a week.

Taxes like you mentioned would haveus running to a cheaper town fast - 5% sales tax is reasonable.

Balancing the budget of a 50 person Metropolis should be cake. Just take care of your merchants so they don't leave.

Alrighty that confirms that a city can sell millions in a week, so I will redo the budget a little and post back here in a bit, taking down taxes and stuff. See if we can balance that huge pile of garbage.

Alright so with recent information, you can definitely balance your budget and keep the taxes pretty low, well the sales tax, and then adjust other accordingly.

Assumptions:
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64 citizens
1 million credit per week expense rate
all large houses for residency, 1 house per resident
23 million in sales per week(recent posts make this seem possible by 64 citizens)

Income tax set to max of 1000 credits per person yields 64,000.
Property tax set to max of 50% yields 268,800.
Shuttle fee set to max 500 credits yields 448,000 for 2 trips per day per citizen.
Sales Tax 1% (max 20%) yields 230,000.

Total income, 1,010,800 credits per week.

Therefore the mayor has 10,800 to distribute back to the citizens somehow to achieve a truly balanced budget. Yes it has been done, the QAville budget has been balanced(given some assumptions ).

I dispute the assertions of the merchant up there. A player city 5 km from the nearest shuttleport will notice that they won't sell much of anything for a month until they get their shuttleport. And the maximum taxes then for a basic city covers a little more than a third of the costs.

Are you, as a merchant, prepared to help drop 2/3 of the costs of a city every week for a few weeks?

RbT

A growing city's maintenance costs will not be that high. You will be stuck with just the 100k City Hall for the entire first week. As week 2 begins, the city is promoted to rank 2, and now your Politician might be able to place a couple decorations and a bank. Maintenance costs will still be low. It's not until your city reaches ranks 3 and 4 that you actually have the ability to place all the high-priced buildings, like the shuttleport, and at that time, the merchants will begin doing regular business again.

The budget thing is not that serious.

I thought a city hall was going to cost 50k a week and that on TC it was raised to 100k a week beacause the speed up time to achive a metropolis before it went live.

I caculated my present city's taxes and assuming the 50k budget with a 20% proprity tax and a 1000k income tax it seems balanceable without having to resourt to sales tax. Becaue my city is 5k from the nearest shuttleport i doubt we be doing much outside sales anyway.

Nostradamus Smyth

Can any architects build a toxic waste dump or a casino?

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Joshie wrote:
A growing city's maintenance costs will not be that high. You will be stuck with just the 100k City Hall for the entire first week. As week 2 begins, the city is promoted to rank 2, and now your Politician might be able to place a couple decorations and a bank. Maintenance costs will still be low. It's not until your city reaches ranks 3 and 4 that you actually have the ability to place all the high-priced buildings, like the shuttleport, and at that time, the merchants will begin doing regular business again.

The budget thing is not that serious.

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Observe:

The current tax structure on Test Center allows for the following taxes:

1. Income Tax: 0-1000cr per week
2. Property Tax: 0-50% per hour
3. Sales Tax: 0-20% per sale
4. Shuttle fee: 0-500cr per ticket


At launch, you need 100k per week, and let's say you stuff 20 people in a city 5km from the nearest NPC city...

1) 1000 per week for these is 20000. (20 x 1000)

2) 50% property tax for20 small houses is something like 2400 credits a day, or 16800. (20x2400)

3) Sales taxes will be maybe 2 or 3k a week, because who wants to run 5km to shop? (10-15kx.20)

4) No shuttles fora month. This is not even a funny joke. (0x0)

Sooo, your potential taxes, jacked ALL THE WAY UP is....39800 or so. So YOU, the MAYOR, gets to make up the other 60200 in taxes...every week!

This is just a City Hall, no amenities, no extras, nothing to make your city special. And if I am paying 60k out of my pocket a week (well, probably fundraising and voluntary levies), I sure am not thinking "gardens, mission terminals and amenities," I'll be thinking, "Man, I had to give up all my combat skills for this job, so I have to run delivery missions for six hours a week to keep it."

I apologize for reposting this here, but I am giving hard numbers to prove that you cannot balance the budget with taxes even from the start. The example above is with a city with 4 times the required number of citizens at start.

It cannot be done. The developers are hopefully watching and will modify the numbers so it CAN be done.

RbT