Politician Archive

I haven't yet, but now that I'm feeling a skill point squeeze, I would definitely like to sell back my skills for skill points and keep all the parts of my city functioning. There simply is not enough in the profession to warrant the extremely high cost of it. One thing that would really help is if they made it an elite profession and reduced the initial cost of novice politician to 6. With the way it is a "novice" profession sure they made it more available to everyone, but I must ask why did they make it more available? It still has a large apprenticeship xp cost to get, and since it is not elite they are only encouraging people to get a second "dummy" account just to have a politician character run the city. How hard would it be anyway, to make it elite and run off the business skill in artisan? Now that it's already in there though, I'm sure they can't change it, since they have never changed the prerequisites for smuggler either.

Anyway, if they ever did create some code that made stuff stop working if the current mayor drops the skill or doesn't have it, I will probably retire from politician. One big reason why I think they won't implement such a change is because what happens if some other novice politician wins the election? Your whole city immediately erupts into chaos? All services stop and civic buildings disappear? That would not be fun at all.

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ToranTT wrote:

When I lost the election, my old metropolis moved me from mayor to citizen... only... I have no residence... my residence was the city hall and I never had a house. So it really shouldn't have given me citizenship status. It should have kicked me out of the city completely. Nor did I redeclare residence in my old city. So... there is a bit of a mixup between me and the city.

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I can testify to the fact that you can go so far as to drop novice politican and have NO politician skills whatsoever and still continue to be mayor, continue to grant zoning priveledges as mayor, and continue to not only win elections but build up politician xp.

There really does need to be an option to step down and allow others to become mayor without an election process. For literally 3 weeks I've been trying to step down as mayor and let someone else take over. I've already established the city as a Research Center and built it up with a well laid out city design and all this guy has to do is listen to all the citizens requests for little things here and there and rack in the xp but I can't get him in as mayor due to many people not getting on as frequently as they used to. I dropped novice politian in hopes that it would by default throw me out as mayor and put this other guy in but no dice there...so to asnwer your question...yes you can drop the skills and everything will remain.

Well this is my first post on this forum as that our city has just been founded. I am the proud mayor of the city of Imperia on the planet of Dantooine. We founded our city 1 week ago and as of tonight we have 24 citizens. So tomorrow evening we will be (hopefully) promoted to a level 2 city. Our city was founded on the basis of a decision that the previous city our PA - Immortal Legion was associated with, was not progressing beyond its present point. So in a few hours of searching we located the perfect location. Now everyone is very excited about our location and the formation of the city. You can feel the energy in the air.

Well I hope this gives some incite to other players and if your on Dantooine come give us a visit were just 2km from the Imperial Outpost.

D'mascus Flyinglighter

Mayor of Imperia

Chilastra Server

Hi Baj,

I've been holding back on posting on this issue and observing the thoughts of others, but here are my thoughts (those of a professional Politician!) on what we need to keep the profession alive.

I'm still hanging on to Master Politician and working around it in the hope thatthe Dev team will deliver something great for us - this is the sort of stuff I would like to see.

Master Politician Perks
Here, like with most professions, there needs to be a tangible reason for people to keep it. I believe that politician is one of the most challenging but important roles in the game when done properly, and people getting this far should be rewarded. I would propose the following:

1. Garages should only be placed by Master Politicians - the presence of a garage will stimulate a city enormously and would be a good short-term reward.

2. Starports should only be placed by Master Politicians - the presence of a starport will stimulate a city enormously and would be a good long-term reward.

3. Master Politicians should be able to get a discount on civic maintenance (like Master Merchant does) so that running a city becomes a little cheaper for a Master. Naturally, they would use their superior political skills to negotiate better rates for things like maintenance. And it would sure encourage people to keep the skill. (NOTE: Devs, you can just drop the Master Merchant code in here - it works great!)

4. They need to bring back multiple city specialisations soon!

5. I think that the things in the Master box should only be available when the Mayor is a master. When dropped, these benefits should be lost.

Career Development & GCW
In MMORPG terms, Politician is very, very important and this should be recognised by the availability of other professions built on top of it.

For example, in the Space Expansion I hope to see an Elite profession based on Politician that is only available to Master Politicians and gives unique abilities - such as the ability to establish an outpost to their city on another planet (my citizens are asking for this a lot!) and perhaps membership of a galactic council of some sort, or the potential to become a Regional Governor with strong Imperial support, or a Rebel Ambassador with strong Rebel support.

Personally, this would be the biggest boost to the profession for me - making Player Cities forces to be reckoned with!

Also, I think that Politicians should be able to get more involved in the GCW - the link between politics and war is incontrovertible, and it is current missing... For example, surely a politician should beable to use their links to buy faction points in a way similar to the way a Smuggler does?

Finally, I think that there should be a combat support role for Politicians (especially when in their cities) building on the militia defence bonus a Warmaster gets. This would also contribute to the GCW massively, and make Master Politician a profession to be proud of.

Interested to get everyone's thoughts on this - in the meantime, I'm keeping the faith and continuing to believe that Politician has a bright future.

Yours,

Message Edited by Korrack on 02-05-2004 11:26 AM

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Bajeezus wrote:

I'd like to hear from the community, and this is something that I will communicate back to Thunderheart and the dev responsible for our profession: Have you sold back politician skills related to city benefits or features that your city continues to utilize?

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The honest answer, sir, is "not yet." I will Master first. So by my personal deadline, the Powers That Be have about a month or so left to give us a reason to hold skill points towards Master Politician. Not that I am knocking the profession; I just have others I want to try to invest my time into.

This last week brought me up to 4/4/2/2, and since we expanded to a rank 4 city we were able to finally place our Shuttleport.So I will never have to hear "that question" again.

This week was otherwise dissapointing. The folks I had assigned to positions responsible for running weekly events in the town did not do so. And I logged in after my election to find that the town's Citizen taxes had not been paid by a large number of players, which resulted in the destruction of all of the city's decorations and the removal of the skill trainers, as well as reducing all of the civic buildings except the City Hall down to 70% condition. I should have monitored the funds better - even so, I am frustrated that I may have to institue a Sales Tax because players are optioning out of paying the Citizen Tax. Moreover, I'm having difficulty locating documentation on how those buildings can be brought back to full condition. I have replaced the skill trainers and the mission terminals, but I still have the nagging problem of the taxes in town.

I've been kicking a few thoughts on taxes around in my head for weeks now, and given current events in my little corner of Talus I will spill them out here.

The tax system as currently implemented appears to be constructed in such a way that no one tax is really enough to pay for the town, with the possible exception of a hefty sales tax. This may be by design to place Politicians in the position of having to enact multiple taxes, though to what end this serves game play I do not know. The citizen tax caps out at 2000cr - about half of what would be required for each citizen to make a fair and equal contribution to the city. The structure tax is likewise insufficient to match the demands of maintenance of the city, and has the additional risk of leaving the homes of casual players at risk of being destroyed due to maintenance money being removed at a faster than expected rate. The shuttle tax is bugged, but even if it did work setting it high enough to essentially pay for itself would be impossible without exceeding the cost of starport tickets off planet.

Which leaves us with the Sales Tax, and all of its issues and implications. This tax is capable of generating considerable revenue in many cities, and at a cost to those purchasing goods... which is all good on the surface. The downside is that there are inherent issues to attracting customers to go to any planet other than the core three - they need to pay more (and more importantly to the wealthier players, spend time) to travel out to our location. Making our goods more expensive further detracts from the appeal of traveling to our city to purchase those goods. This leaves crafters in the position of lowering their prices so as to remain competitive with core world markets.

All of the above can be rationalized though,provided it is for the common good.What I am having problems rationalizing is the idea that a few players are shouldering the weight of the economic responsibilites of the whole city. My original intent was to create equal, fair, and equitable taxes for the population. A flat tax across the board seemed to be the best way, as you would just take the sum of the city maintenance and divide it equally among the residents (perhaps with a bit extra to cover non-contributions by inactive players). Now I am left with thepossibility that with aSales Taxthat some of the wealthiest players (such as die hard hunters and miners, who make up a large portion of the population) are going to get by with paying 2000cr each, while the folks with vendors (some wealthy, but many struggling to get their businesses off the ground, and in the minority) are having to reduce their profitability to remain competitive with core world vendors. All the while the crafters know that some folks just will not make the trip to Talus even when they have better products at lower prices.

I myself have a hybrid crafting/combat character, and I have a perspective that allows me to see both ends of this issue. There is a perception that those with vendors make a load of cash for little work. There is the other perception that those folks who are selling 8k units of hide at 8cr per unit by hawking at starports (or any number of other harvesting examples) are making a killing without being taxed accordingly. The simplest way to resolve this is an equitable flat tax that can meet the needs of the city on its own, or failing that an income tax designed on a curve (similar to what we have in the USA).

Is anyone else perceiving this as an issue, or am I unjustified in thinking each citizen should pay an equal share?

- Acroyear

Message Edited by Riis on 02-05-2004 04:57 PM