Politician Archive
Thread: Big problems... looking for solutions
Page 1 of 1
Renescent
Thu Mar 18, 2004 12:24 am
#1
I had a serious wake up call in my city last week and even worse today.
History: We have a level 4 city on Rori, 77 residents, 158 structures.
We have been paying approximately 500k per week in maintenance since the beginning of January.
To this point, 1500 income tax, 10% Property Tax, 10% sales tax and a 100 credit travel cost has been more than enough to meet this weekly maintenance schedule.
Last week, approximately 74 residents, same number of structures... I notice that we're 125k short in weekly revenue. I pay the difference to the city and enforce the 'Declared Residency' rule.
Tonight, I log in to approximately 20 emails... all of our decorations have been destroyed, all of the terminals and trainers have been destroyed and all city structures are at 70%.
Doing some work, I know that our weekly maintenance was 506k... ok, that hasn't changed.
Last week it was 506k as well and we were 125k short.... tonight, we were 251k short and I was unable to get in to add cash to make up the difference.
Something is seriously wrong here.
So I do a little math... tonight, we did pay 255k in weekly maintenance leaving a balance of 17k.... so for the entire week, our city only generated 272k in revenue... Remember that 3 weeks ago, we generated enough to meet the 500k maintenance need.
77 declared residents @ 1500/week = 115,500
158 structures - More difficult to compute as maintenance costs vary, doing structure count and knowing various costs, I computed an average of 5cr/hr. 158 structures x 5cr/hr x 24 hours x 7 days = 132,720
Sales Tax revenue = Unknown
Travel Tax revenue = Unknown
What I do know is that with the Income tax of 1500 and a 10% property tax, we generate 248,220 in revenue.
Knowing that we've been able to generate 500k per week to meet the needs of the city, for a couple of months, with less people, I'm finding it very difficult to believe thatthis week, we only generated 23-24k in sales tax and shuttle revenue..... And we live on Rori... we have to travel to get anywhere!
Does this make any sense? Are other cities seeing anything like this? Can we get on our Correspondent List of things to do a detailed report weekly that identifies all the revenue centers? How about an email telling the Mayor... Hey, your city is going to implode, go put money in it... you've got 24 hours?
I'm really frustrated and I'd hate to see this percieved as bitching but I really feel that there is some serious issues here... at least a better explaination of how our revenue is calculated and spent.
Renescent
Flynn_Nomad
Thu Mar 18, 2004 6:28 am
#2
Isn't one of the taxes dependent on the citizens personal savings account? ie. if a guy is broke, he can't pay you?
Also sales tax is dependent on sales, how are your sales?
It just sounds wrong for you to assume the weekly income of the city is a constant when I think there are a few variables you are forgetting.
(I just re read and saw you thought about sales)
Did you specialize in something and forget about that?
Check and re check your variables.
Message Edited by Flynn_Nomad on 03-18-2004 08:29 AM
Arrya
Thu Mar 18, 2004 8:44 am
#3
Ack Ren 
From what it sounds like, there are some bugs with the sales tax not being generated correctly for the past couple weeks. Sometimes it is being given to the merchant instead, and other times it is just dissappearing. I've had it turned off recently because of these bugs, but that was our city's main source of income.
Bottom line though, I would turn off sales tax for now and try to find an alternate means of income.
Also, for the property tax, because the way things are rounded - you are probably bringing in a lot less than you think. When I did my test for property taxes at 10%, it seemed like it was bringing in about 15k per day - and we have over 275 structures in the city.
Jaspor
Thu Mar 18, 2004 9:01 am
#4
Taxes have been buggy for weeks.
My town has not received a dime of Income Tax for over a month, and sales tax has been erratic. (We often test the sales tax by having someone watch the treasury level while someone else buys a few things in town... sometimes we get the money, more often, it disappears into thin air.)
I've been in touch with the CSRs several times, and they FINALLY acknowledged that there seems to be an issue with taxes, and passed along the info to the Devs so they can investigate. They refused to reimburse us though since it's impossible for them to tell exactly how much we've lost.
My suggestion: File an in-game CSR ticket and keep hounding them until they either reimburse you or have acknowledged the problem and sent your info along to the Devs. Don't let them blow you off with a "Sorry, taxes seem to be working fine for me!" message, keep bugging them until you get a CSR that actually cares.
Also, encourage your citizens to file CSR tickets. The more complaints, the sooner we'll get this fixed.
JediKozel
Thu Mar 18, 2004 9:06 am
#5
not sure about this, but doesn't a Player has to be signed on in order to pay the income tax? if a Player doesn't sign on for whole week, what happens?
Bajeezus
Thu Mar 18, 2004 9:57 am
#6
Financial reports for cities is in the pipeline, and has been stated to be on the way "soon", although no firm time commitment or publish number was made. I know I will be looking anxiously at the Test Center notes when the next publish goes to testing and hoping for this feature which would make all of our lives easier.
Sojourner
Thu Mar 18, 2004 10:05 am
#7
Bajeezus wrote:
Financial reports for cities is in the pipeline, and has been stated to be on the way "soon", although no firm time commitment or publish number was made. I know I will be looking anxiously at the Test Center notes when the next publish goes to testing and hoping for this feature which would make all of our lives easier.
Maybe they should higher Will Wright (creator of the SimCity series) as a consultant, or a someone with experience as a city clerk, or a get an accounting intern....
Renescent
Thu Mar 18, 2004 7:16 pm
#8
Thanks for the feedback everyone.
Because we are on Rori, we don't even try to generate business there... Our guild has 'Malls' outside Theed and Coronet. The small number of our sales within the city are primarily for guildies and are significantly discounted for their consumption. (Although we do have some outside sales, they're minimal)
I believe that our primary revenue is hinged on travel, as we're in the middle of nowhere, it's required to do anything outside the city.
I think we can postulate all we want and it's probably a collection of things but to cut revenue in half, during a growth period, is suspicious at best.
Olepi
Fri Mar 19, 2004 10:11 am
#9
Sojourner wrote:
Bajeezus wrote:
Financial reports for cities is in the pipeline, and has been stated to be on the way "soon", although no firm time commitment or publish number was made. I know I will be looking anxiously at the Test Center notes when the next publish goes to testing and hoping for this feature which would make all of our lives easier.
Maybe they should higher Will Wright (creator of the SimCity series) as a consultant, or a someone with experience as a city clerk, or a get an accounting intern....
That won't happen what they need is to hire alan Greenspan to talk to them about the economy.
Page 1 of 1