Fwurg

[Brend]

During the recent Write-a-Thon, we discussed the handling of shared colonies. These are the notes from that discussion. This is a more-or-less complete idea, which is placed here for review.

Space Habitats and Outposts were deemed to small to make rules for sharing them. Therefore, the rules for these will stay the same: they can not be shared.

Shared ownership of Settlements is done through splitting ownership of planets/moons. Shared ownership of Settlements is declared up front during the OOC design phase of the settlement (that is, the owner of each world is declared). Survey, setup and independence costs are then paid to the ratio of the zones a faction will get control over. For example, if Jedi and Sith are sharing a new Settlement with Jedi controlling 40 zones and Sith controlling 50 zones, Jedi has to pay 4/9th of the costs, and Sith has to pay 5/9th of the costs.

Sharing worlds in a system impacts several other aspects of the game:

• A shared system does not grant Sovereignty.
• System-wide projects can be veto'd by any party that controls a world in the system. To build a project, the builder must satisfy all requirements, and the builder must pay the full upkeep. Regardless of who pays upkeep or built the porject, system-wide benefits are granted system-wide.
• Population is loyal to a single faction, and resides and grants bonusses on worlds of that faction.
• It is possible to trade goods between factions in the same system, doing so does not require a Trade Fleet.

On a related note, transfer control and ownership of worlds is should now be possible. The proposed rules-wise cost for such a transfer is 500 per zone.

[Chriz]

I believe the population part has nothing to do with this. Furthermore I am pretty sure it was not discussed on the write-a-thon.

Furthermore the population is transferred with Interstellar migration which is a separate matter from the settlement.

Is there a specific reason why you included this? If there is a specific type of abuse you want to prevent, please share this with us.

[Brend]

I can not remember an explicit discussion, but I do have some recollection of noting that population must be on the planet of the faction they're loyal to. I think there's no way to logically claim that a planet is under control of faction B if population of faction A is actually living there... We might not have discussed it as explicitly as the other points.

Regardless, I think that having one faction's population on another faction's world goes against the whole idea of creating clarity about shared settlements with these rules. Furthermore, tax sets are technically turned into through population (hence the tax set per population limit). And what about population growth cost?

I would say that if you move your population to a world controlled by someone else with a migration technology that they are no longer "your" population.

I welcome additional opinions on the matter from players with less of a stake in the matter (i.e., both me, Chriz and Gerben have settlements)

[Fedor]

If I am reading this correctly , both of you are coming at this from very different angles. Chris is thinking about how this rule is not necessary because there are no abuse cases that it fixes, it does not prevent min maxing and so is an unnecessary restriction on players. Brend is arguing that from an in character perspective you can't switch the allegiance of a billion people, and they still belong to the original faction of the population.

I agree that having the population of for example the Sundarians housed on a world that is owned by the Praetorians is problematic in that it goes against the clarity of the shared ownership proposal. In the case of praetorians and sundarians living on a single world they would have to fall under the rule and dominion of the faction owning that world. Then they would count towards their tax set limit and the faction owning the world has to pay population growth cost.

[Chriz]

"The total amount of taxes that can be generated is limited by the Population size. You can create 250 Tax sets per 1 billion inhabitants total in your system. Note that this is a limit on the number of sets, not the total amount of taxes!"
Tax sets is per system

Population growth is per planet

These things seem pretty clear to me. So the settlement can generate tax sets for all the available population and the growth cost is paid by the owner of the world.

Rule-wise you might say that the owner of the planet is the owner of the population. That is since we decided to split the settlement assets OOC. I am fine with that.

However the intention of this project is to share a project and work on it together. The matter of population sharing a world and there allegiance to there original faction is completely in-character.

[Brend]

I did not want to imply that population tax set limits were per planet.

My point is that we discussed how tax sets were going to be assigned. The outcome, as I remember it, is that tax sets are created for the faction to which the he population is loyal.

So, faction A cannot make tax sets if only faction B has population in the system.


On top of that, but less relevant to me, is the fact that if you want to have a significant amount of population on the world of another faction, you ought to research the "invasion" technology. I feel that the abstraction of population segments should not, in its current form, support mixed allegiance in population -- that would mean that we should also discuss how fleets based on that world work, and armies, as they are drawn form the population on that world.

[Mercury]

I agree with Chriz that population was not discussed during the write-a-thon. Personally I presumed that since population is always on a specific planet (rather than in a system generically) and always provides benefits for it (or for a player) specifically, they are therefore always owned by a singular player, namely the owner of said planet, who is always the one gaining the benefits of the population.

If there are system-side benefits to population (and apparently there is one: tax sets), this poses the problem of "who gets to decide". For example, if Gerben wishes to use all the tax sets in the system and Chriz wishes to use some as well, who gets the final deciding vote on how this is used? Brend's proposal would solve this, but I am open to alternative solutions as well, because that one may be unnecessarily harsh. I can see a 50/50 split as a valid option, for example, but other options may also be possible. How would you handle this Chriz?

From an IC perspective, I have no issue with roleplaying the two races intermingling within the system even if OOCly they are registered on one planet.

Chriz, beyond the ones mentioned, are there specific problems that arises from Brends proposal, limits you feel now applies that did not apply before? Perhaps we can address those explicitly.

[Chriz]

For me only the population is iffy, the rest is as discussed and agreed upon in the Write-a-thon.

In my opinion the tax set limit has never been a problem so far. In this case it is just as with other system wide benefits and penalties you share the benefits and the burden. However I guess that rules-wise the owner of the planet that contains the population could get the final vote when it ever comes to it.

In our case Gerben controls all of our 2.0 population and could decide to block me from creating tax sets on the settlement. However it will never have to come to such measures since these things can be completely handled In character.

[Elmer]

I have the feeling that there are two aspects: The population and the planet.

I believe the allegiance of people is an IC thing and therefore don't have to be set in the rules. If a billion people decides that the other faction is cooler and decide to move, they would do so.
The planet is owned by a faction rules wise to create clarity and stability.

Therefore in my opinion the situation ruleswise should be as follows: The population on a planet X belong to the faction of planet X. This does not mean that only the population of faction X can inhabit the planet. So in case of Chriz and Gerben: The Praetorians who live on a planet owned by Gerben are population from the Sundarian Empire. Sundarians who live on a planet owned by Chriz belong to the Praetorian Empire.

[Gerben]

I believe that we have now reached a consensus in how population should be handled (at least rules wise).
As such I will pay all costs associated with growth cost and the likes for both the Sundarian and Praetorian population on the settlement since I own the planet they are housed on.

Chris and I will handle the creation of the tax sets and other matters pertaining to alliance IC. For now however, I forsee no problems since the settlement will simply trade all the goods produced and not create any sets.

[Mercury]

When I took control of the Holonet Relays of the Astrian Colonial Authority, I had to make new rules as well as pay additional costs to make it possible for me to control those relays, and that was for an object for which it was already possible to share it in its entirety, and ownership was merely a formality.

I don't think I support the idea that players can give away their population by moving it to another players planet without some sort of new rule and associated cost.

[Gerben]

@Mercury: That is a fair point, which means that we now need to determine how much or other products I need to pay in this case.

[Chriz]

Since we already agreed upon this proposal during the write-a-thon and the discussion ended two weeks ago I have added the new rules on the wiki under settlement.

Shared Settlement rules

I changed the original line proposed by Brend on population to:
"The system wide benefit of population (the tax sets limit) is controlled by the owner of the planet that the population is housed on. This faction can grant other factions in the system the use of this benefit with an IC agreement."

I believe this clarifies rule wise ownership and allows for the IC solution.

Furthermore the special cost of the Praetorian population on the Sundarian controlled world should be handled as a separate case just as the holonet transfer was handled. We will not use the benefit of the Praetorian populations racial characteristics until this matter has been resolved.

We plan to divide the planets according to the approved proposal in Nashira Mira System creation topic at the completion of the Independence project since this is a logical milestone, however doing it directly would have the same effect.

[Brend]

I strongly disagree with these actions. Even if the discussion has been standing around for 2 weeks (which is almost nothing compared to other rules discussions.)

Unilaterally declaring a rule "accepted" and updating the wiki while the discussion is ongoing is not the way to handle this.

[Stuiter]

I agree with Brend, some discussion take long and there can be a break.
Could you all with Mercury discuss the matter this matter.
This question is now holding up the turn reports.

[Chriz]

I am sorry for being so blunt, Brend and I have that effect on each other.

However I still believe that we have two separate matters here and should handle them accordingly.

First of all we have the matter with shared ownership of the settlement based on the factions that own the zones in the system. Lets use this topic to finish that discussion and determine the effects that this has on the rules. I believe that discussion is basically finished, that is why I added them to the wiki in this form.

Second of all we have the matter of transfering population to another faction. In this case the population of the Sundarian Federation is currently on a Praetorian controlled planet. However with the new division of control the planet will be moved to Sundarian Federation control. We should continue this discussion here: Topic on transfering population

[Brend]

I am sorry for being so blunt, Brend and I have that effect on each other.

I can not see how my interaction with you here has somehow produced a situation where it would be fine to start putting rules on the wiki without actually announcing that you intend to do so. In all other discussion, I have always announced my intention of putting rules on the wiki with a "If there are no objections, I will place these rules on the wiki in the weekend of the Xth.". If you would have done so, I and others could have clearly voiced our objections to this course of action.

The fact that Gerben states:

I believe that we have now reached a consensus in how population should be handled (at least rules wise).

Does not actually create consensus (Especially not if he does so after only two people gave their opinion and within 4 days time. As 4 days is commonly known to be a very short time in FWURG discussion terms.)

I would like to reiterate my point that I do not think that this discussion is over, nor do I think that consensus has been reached in any form or shape: I still do not agree with the idea that the Tax Set Limit are a system-wide effect. In my opinion the Tax Set Limit is a per faction system wide effect -- which is why it is relevant to which faction the population belongs.


But even so, if we assume Chriz's proposal that it is possible to share some of a populations Tax Set Limit with someone else as then it should be possible to do this on any System. Because an independent Settlement is no different from any other System. And even if we restrict these rules to only working on independent Settlements, the following two things will still work by using a settlement as the base system (instead of Smi-Halek) for which to pull this trick.

For example, this would mean that the Veolians could share some of their (enormous) Tax Set Limit of my Smi-Halek system with another faction F that creates less tax sets and therefore pays less taxes. The Veolians would then trade a number of their tax sets to faction F in the Smi-Halek System, which faction F would use to make tax sets, pay a low amount of taxes to the Union and trade back the generated taxes (minus maybe small fee) to the Veolians... In effect this requires no actual trade capacity -- only a big amount of population and a lot of goods.

We can even improve upon the previous exploit: faction F could have a lot of other worlds simply deliver their goods to the Smi-Halek system, which is conveniently located in the center of the Union. If the Veolians then share some Tax Set Limit, faction F doesn't even have to receive any of the actual goods -- it's all handled by the Veolians who share their population's Tax Set Limit (maybe for a small fee?)

I think this situation is undesirable because it creates both complexity instead simplifying shared ownership, and because it effectively means that making tax sets is not something you actually do in your own system, you simply do it where your stuff is most easily shippable and where somehow has some Tax Set Limit left over.

[Gerben]

First off, I feel that a tax set limit is an inherent property of Population, which is therefore limited to the amount of population of a certain Faction, within a system. I must therefore conclude that Tax Set Limits are not be considered a System wide effect, in the rules sense, but rather that they are depended upon population, which is controlled by a faction.

@all, in this post I'll only go into the things regarding the rules for the settlements in which I disregard the population aspect of the discussion, which I will discuss in the separate topic.

While it is true that the current way the Praetorian and Sundarian turnreports are not in line with the current set of rules as is, ( a fact that is easily adjusted by fixing our reports in adherence with the current rules, since we clearly went too fast) I do believe that several aspects of the rules as proposed were already discussed at the writaton.

An abbreviation of the discussed rule change can be found in the very first post of this topic, but ill quote them again for convience

During the recent Write-a-Thon, we discussed the handling of shared colonies. These are the notes from that discussion. This is a more-or-less complete idea, which is placed here for review.

Space Habitats and Outposts were deemed to small to make rules for sharing them. Therefore, the rules for these will stay the same: they can not be shared.

Shared ownership of Settlements is done through splitting ownership of planets/moons. Shared ownership of Settlements is declared up front during the OOC design phase of the settlement (that is, the owner of each world is declared). Survey, setup and independence costs are then paid to the ratio of the zones a faction will get control over. For example, if Jedi and Sith are sharing a new Settlement with Jedi controlling 40 zones and Sith controlling 50 zones, Jedi has to pay 4/9th of the costs, and Sith has to pay 5/9th of the costs.

Sharing worlds in a system impacts several other aspects of the game:

• A shared system does not grant Sovereignty.
• System-wide projects can be veto'd by any party that controls a world in the system. To build a project, the builder must satisfy all requirements, and the builder must pay the full upkeep. Regardless of who pays upkeep or built the porject, system-wide benefits are granted system-wide.
• Population is loyal to a single faction, and resides and grants bonusses on worlds of that faction.
• It is possible to trade goods between factions in the same system, doing so does not require a Trade Fleet.

On a related note, transfer control and ownership of worlds is should now be possible. The proposed rules-wise cost for such a transfer is 500 per zone.

In this overview as presented by Brend all the parts have been discussed except the bullet about population which has been added later. We did not go in the aspects of population during the writaton, and I believe that that was an oversight, given the discussion we now a have as a result.

Disregarding the population, I feel that the discussion we had was good and provided us with a useful set of new rules which AFTER some further discussion on the Forum could then be added to rules.

So, again disregarding the points about population, I feel that we have at least found a set of rules by which we can divide and handle shared settlements ( as presented in the aforementioned proposal). So I would like to know who has further points to raise about the things discussed?

For example:
* Should we make similar rules to handle outposts, or do we indeed confirm them to be too small ?

As far as I am concerned the rules could also apply to outposts, however I believe that the outpost are indeed to small to warrant such a solution simply because the outposts don't have the same impact as a whole new system (yet).

* Should a shared system grant sovereignty?

I feel it shouldn't since a single entity cannot decide for the entire system.

* Population is loyal to a single faction, and resides and grants bonusses on worlds of that faction.

YES, See separate topic

[Brend]

I would like to add:

* Is the Tax Set Limit a system-wide effect, or is the Tax Set Limit is a system wide effect per faction. That is, can only the faction to which the population belongs use the Tax Set Limit created by that population.

I think that it should be the second interpretation. Otherwise funky strangeness ensues with using other faction's Tax Set Limits on any system; which in effect turns that system into a trade hub. Furthermore, why should Tax Set Limit be the only "system wide" benefit of population that is shared, while we have racial characteristics like Coordinated, which is also a bonus related to the whole system...

[Gerben]

I changed the original line proposed by Brend on population to:
"The system wide benefit of population (the tax sets limit) is controlled by the owner of the planet that the population is housed on. This faction can grant other factions in the system the use of this benefit with an IC agreement." "

I disagree.

I feel that a tax set limit is an inherent property of Population, which is therefore limited to the amount of population of a certain Faction, within a system. I must therefore conclude that Tax Set Limits are not be considered a System wide effect, in the rules sense, but rather that they are depended upon population, which is controlled by a faction. As far as I am concerned Population benefits are NOT trade-able, nor should they be.

Furthermore, as far as Im concerned I would ONLY like the opportunity to create a mixed (hybrid) species, I do not care about the tax set problems nor the fact to which faction the population belongs or on which planet it resides.

[Chriz]

After a good night of sleep and a long shower to reorder my thoughts I now understand the current situation.

First of all let me apologize for overreacting. It was kind of frustrating for me to have our turn reports "failed" when the concept was approved the turn before. This is mostly because the reason I feel the rules were not approved on has nothing to do with splitting the settlement and everything to do with transferring population between factions which should have been a problem 20 turns ago and not now specifically. That being said I thank Brend for continuing with our current turn reports and finishing the discussion in parallel.

With that out of my head, back to business.
I now agree with Brend and Gerben that sharing the tax set limit benefit between factions would make things iffy. So scratch that part.

However I believe that there are still two solutions for the current matter that could influence the way 'shared' population is handled on the long run.

Control vs Loyalty

We could change the line:
"The system wide benefit of population (the tax sets limit) is controlled by the owner of the planet that the population is housed on. This faction can grant other factions in the system the use of this benefit with an IC agreement."

To 1) The tax set limit benefit of population is granted to the faction that controls the planet that the population is housed on.

Or 2) The tax set limit benefit of population is granted to the faction that controls the population.

The first situation would mean that transferring population to a planet of another faction would transfer control of the population. In this case also giving all benefits to the new owner.
The second situation would mean that transferring population to a planet of another faction does NOT transfer control of the population based on loyalty the population will stay loyal to its original faction.

Both situations could work, however they have a different effect and both could be manipulated by techs. I am currently leaning towards the first option since this makes things simple, however option 2 might in most cases be more logical since population does not shift allegiance that easily.

In both situations it is should still be possible to share population on a settlement, however the details could vary. Thoughts?

[Stuiter]

In our current situation we have a bit of option 2 situation when Brend took in Twi'lek refugees.

[Brend]

@Chriz: Before I set out my arguments, I have a point of clarififcation: in option (1), you mean that the population rules-wise transfers to the owner of the planet? That is, they reside on the planet, and their Faction field is updated to be the same as the Faction field of the planet?

@All: I also have a point of definition, which might trip up the discussion, so I put it out there already to prevent "speaking past each other". The way I see Taxes as being generated by Tax Sets is as follows:

Taxes are revenue by your government which is generated by tax paying individuals being capable of paying higher taxes due to higher welfare and prosperity created by the availability of a diversity of products.

I do not wish to start a whole discussion on the exact definition of Tax Sets and how they generated , but I wanted to put this out there so that it is at least clear where I'm coming from.

Once I have clarification, I will post my thoughts on both proposals.

[Chriz]

Yes, I mean the actual transfer of ownership on the population with option 1.

[Brend]

After thinking it over, I think that Option 1) "The tax set limit benefit of population is granted to the faction that controls the planet that the population is housed on." is the better of the the two.

My reasoning for this is that, looking from a rules-as-abstraction perspective, the first option makes a weaker assumption about how the IC internal laws of a faction work.

If the ability to collect tax is the measure of control of a government (and I think it is, looking at human history), the first option only states: "Population pays taxes to the government that controls the place they live in." The second option effectively states: "Population pays taxes to the government they themselves have selected, regardless of where they live."

Looking at the possible options of IC laws, and the fact that the rules ought to be an abstraction that allows a broad set op IC possibilities, I agree with Chriz that the first option makes things simple.

Reasoning about the two options... Click to open...

Option 1 allows people to fluff their world's laws as they want without having to justify why a chunk of the population is exempt from their tax collection. Normally, population does not migrate with billions at a time. Under Option 1 even the factions that have a tax regime of "you pay tax if you have our nationality, regardless of where you are" are possible, as long as it is accepted by all that normal migration is about insignificant amounts of population.

Option 2 effectively declares (by virtue of making it a rule of the FWURG universe) that IC laws will always take into account that people pay tax to nation they are a citizen of, regardless of where they are. And if you feel that your world would not agree with that, it becomes impossible to cooperate in a shared settlement unless you are willing to set aside your world's tax laws.

With all that said, having looked at the exact effects of Option 1 I think we are better off wording it as:

• Population is controlled by a single faction, and resides and grants bonuses on worlds of that faction. System wide benefits from population apply as usual, with the faction to which the population belongs having the final say on any choices regarding these benefits.

In addition, we should make a note on the Taxes page to clarify the scope of the Tax Set Limit.

That effectively captures everything about transferring and the Tax Set Limit, and any other effects that need to be captured -- while allowing system wide benefits to continue. Furthermore, I think these rules should go either on a separated page "Sharing of System" as an Extra Options rule, or they should go on the System page itself -- these rules are not restricted to Settlements, since so-called independent settlements are simply Systems.

What do others think of this option?


I also strongly agree with Chriz that Technologies are the way to go to have special or exceptional handling of these rules. I would even go so far as to state that it will eventually pan out better if the Praetorian and Sundarian population in the shared system is on different planets -- I see no problem with having a small follow-up tech on Xeno-Obstetrics that allows the creation of a hybrid species from two species in the system, as opposed to two species on the same planet. Other technologies could affect other aspects of the shared-ness of the system. For a small project cost, of course ;) Incidentally, it would also save the population "transfer" cost...