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C# Mechanics / Re: Potential Changes to Shipping Lines
« Last post by Zap0 on Yesterday at 01:55:55 PM »Instead of reducing the growth rate of shipping lines, I'd impose a cap on their size and number. Be it a soft or hard cap. I've made the experience in long games that civilian shipping can grow to massive proportions and obsolete the player economy with the wealth generated via taxes.
Suggestion: Lines pay a minimal amount of dividends/maintenance until they make up 10% of yearly income, and then the maintenance increases exponentially. Say they give up half their income in maintenance and only pay half their taxes if shipping line income makes up 30% of your yearly income, halving again if it reaches 50% etc.
In this scheme all lines would have the same maintenance rate. I don't really see much point in multiple lines (besides flavor), and have also observed that there ends up being a few massive lines and a lot of tiny ones. So I'd just impose a hard cap on the number of lines per race.
That doesn't solve the issue that planet-moon shipping lines are obscenely profitable. Tying the income to distance traveled sounds good. Perhaps with a small fixed component, say 10% of current income, so that these kinds of lines also don't become worthless. Maybe tie it to travel time instead, including loading and unloading?
Suggestion: Lines pay a minimal amount of dividends/maintenance until they make up 10% of yearly income, and then the maintenance increases exponentially. Say they give up half their income in maintenance and only pay half their taxes if shipping line income makes up 30% of your yearly income, halving again if it reaches 50% etc.
In this scheme all lines would have the same maintenance rate. I don't really see much point in multiple lines (besides flavor), and have also observed that there ends up being a few massive lines and a lot of tiny ones. So I'd just impose a hard cap on the number of lines per race.
That doesn't solve the issue that planet-moon shipping lines are obscenely profitable. Tying the income to distance traveled sounds good. Perhaps with a small fixed component, say 10% of current income, so that these kinds of lines also don't become worthless. Maybe tie it to travel time instead, including loading and unloading?