Fwurg

[Brend]

@Mercury: I am truly sorry for the grief I am going to cause you with this post. I know the time pressure you feel, and it is not a nice feeling. However, as I started this small note at the end of one of my posts, it blew up on me while writing. Again, sorry.

In the context of Re: [ Senate ] Senator Nehket Announces candidacy for Turn 80 Elections

It occurred to me that we still have little to no clue where the enormous heap-load of tax income of the Union is actually going...

Did I OOCly miss some information? I found: Union Budget on the wiki, an old (turn 28) thread on the Union budget, and the newer turn 40 elections budget notes. If that (the turn 40) budget still holds, I completely fail to see the issue of funding, as each ministry has upwards of 700 tax of freely spendable money, and very little actual projects are completed each turn (or we get zero information on those...)

Now I am fully aware of the 'Mercury has no time to detail such things' argument, and I feel his pain. But if NPCs start arguing with others (read PCs) because 'But money does not magically appear just because you want it to', I can't help but feel a little handicapped in my arguments; because with the information available to me, money magically disappears without any attached benefits or projects! (To nuance that statement: the two projects by PCs have presumably been completed, and we got at least the Echani Reverse Engineering tech out of it, so something is happening, but that's just 10k -- where's the rest?)

So, to conclude: if this is all the info I have, I look forward to the campaigning and the elections, but I hold no hope of actually being a useful chancellor, I just can't reason based on facts, so any argument will be ungrounded and easily countered (not saying that this will happen, but it's how I feel!).

When I am elected, I will be a blind king in the land of the seeing. Getting whacked by all kinds of budget problems, while I think I see a reserve of cash at least 1000 tax / turn just sitting there. Or I should just go ahead and propose to fix our budget problems by cutting into these magic reserves...

I don't know a good solution to this problem, and I know that Mercury's time is limited. So I do not expect more information. I just wanted to get this of my chest.

[Elmer]

I think this is a good issue for a write-a-ton, but that might be a little late to be useful for now.

As some of the NPC's are distributed, I think it is partially the responsibility of those people, (me as well), to check upon these taxes. So I should make a budget plan the minister of justice have followed during her period as minister, and the people with NPC's should discuss a simple setup of trade routes for these NPC's. Next to that, it would be logical if NPC's experience a growth every once in a while, and that they file a request for technology from time to time.

We already have a outdated list of what every faction earns, I propose to update the list, and make an update every election. Where the update is something like: 2% growth, or any other number what would be logical.

[Brend]

That would indeed be extremely nice, but the issue is that even a simple set of trade routes would already take a lot of work to be made into something sensible.

In fact, by defining them, you are inviting more questions, and interaction with NPCs, which would again be constrained by available time. As I said: I understand that there is not enough time to do such things, but it makes it hard to actually argue based on facts.

Though I would really like the idea that ministers come up with some simple plans... I even put that in my campaigning posts, with the 'provide transparency as to where their hard-earned tax is spent' -- I intend to make these projects publicly available in a kind of end-of-term report. I'm also predicting a trend of more PC ministers, so that would offload some of the work (just like the NPC transfer already did).

[Mercury]

You lot are in luck - in anticipation of a PC taking over as Chancellor, I have re-written some rules for Chancellors and Ministers to make things interesting without making them too overpowered. Being busy doesn't mean I'm doing nothing ^_^

My plan was to hand these over as soon as the elections were completed and a PC Chancellor was actually chosen, but I can make them available now.

Union money expenditure is divided into three basic streams:

• Regular Expenses
• Operational Expenses
• Contingency Expenses

Regular expenses are those expenses that cannot be avoided and that are the same every turn. These include salaries, hyperspace route maintenance, government charity, interest payments on loans, depreciation of assets, electricity, transportation, etc. In general you can't touch the regular expenses.

Game-wise, regular expenses are money that is siphoned out of the economy and to limit the power of the Ministers and Chancellor to more manageable levels.

Operational Expenses are expenses generated by laws. They include such things as subsidies, tax breaks for technologies and the 'offer of aid' funds. You can modify operational expenses by modifying the law. If you add a subsidy, operational expenses rise if you cut a subsidy, operational expenses drop.

Operational expenses carry over - you inherit the operational expenses of your predecessor and are obligated to continue paying them unless you change the law.

What Senator Anselim is proposing is a cut in Operational Expenses.

Contingency Expenses are "free money" to be spent by the ministers and chancellors on pet projects, to deal with emergencies, etc. Contingency expenses are yours to spend and then they're gone. You can use them once and it doesn't affect the next minister or chancellor. If you give the money away to your own faction, there are very strong political consequences.

Contingency Expenses cannot be simply converted to Operational Expenses - you cannot spend the money of your post-decessor.

Now what you all want to hear is "how much money do I actually get?"

In my turn 40 budget, the taxes listed were about 750 per turn per minister. In practice this turns out to be way too much. As pointed out, you have no idea where this money actually goes.

My original assessment was to make the spending money for a minister a little less than an average (turn 40) player. This was a mistake. The reason it was a mistake is that ministries don't have to pay taxes, don't have to build zones and don't generally suffer from the same problems that nations do in terms of cost / benefit analysis.

Now, having re-evaluated this, based on the amount of activity of the average PC minister, I am reducing the amount of Contingency Expenses to 250 per turn. This can be paid out as one-time subsidies, used on ministry appropriate research or be used to purchase new Union fleets, expand the Bozzy Spine or whatever. The Chancellor gets 500 per turn to assist his ministers with or to do their own thing.

A note: special story-lines such as a sudden influx of refugees, an aid program or an enemy attack may eat up these resources.

Operational Expenses are set at this time. This means if you want to make new operational expenses, you need to cut other operational expenses.

One exception. You can purchase 1 in operational expenses from the contingency expenses at a price of 25 - this means you pay 25 one time from your contingency expenses budget and gain 1 per turn to spend on a permanent subsidy.

For example, say you want to introduce a tax break of 1 in bracket 1. And say this affects 20 members. That means you create a new operational expense of 20 per turn. You can cut another subsidy to pay for this or use your Contingency expenses and pay 20 * 25 = 500 once to set up a fund that handles the associated operational expenses.

The ratio of 1:25 is based on a simple zone and its production, and is deliberately a little more than the actual cost of paying only for your own electoral period of 20 turns. The idea is the money is invested in safe (but not too profitable) bonds and the revenue is used to pay the operational expenses.

A warning: not all subsidies are easy to predict. For example, if you put a subsidy on you may expect it to cost X but in reality it may not be very popular and only cost Y. This is called "Bureaucracy" and the funds are lost. By contrast, it may be more popular and cost Z. In that case you'll get to pay for it. This is called "Unfair" and you need to overspend.

If you have a plan, you should make a calculation as to the cost. If it is reasonable, a Storyteller will approve it. If not, they will point to hidden cost or may remove certain cost as not being applicable. They are also responsible for informing you if you go over (but not if you go under) budget. If you hear nothing, all is good.

A final note: certain ratio's and values may be affected by galactic events. A full scale war will effect economic down-turn which may lead to having less money to spend. By contrast, economic boom times may result in more money being available. This is storyteller privilege and may be used as a balancing act as well.

I understand this is not a perfect system and I understand the amount of money available is less than it appeared to be before, but I think this is a fair way of allowing more than just occasional spending on an overpriced tech.

Please feel free to discuss but I think this framework should give enough basis to work with.

[Brend]

Some people have asked me whether I could make smaller posts. I replied that I could only do that if I left out some of the argumentation, and dropped a few issues to be done in later posts. In this post I have tried to do so -- and I seem to have failed. It's just like portal: "Long post goes in, long post comes out."

First off: I like the framework itself, and I am glad that you still have time for such things. I like the fact that a ministry does not have spendable income overshadowing that of a member.

I propose to use the terms 'regular expenses', 'operational expenses' and 'contingency expenses' as Mercury defined them. I propose to use the extra terms 'regular budget', 'operational budget' and 'contingency budget' to indicate the difference between allocated taxes and expenditures. This way, we can actually talk about having free operational budget, which means that we can allocate this tax to other operational expenses.

Issues I see with the framework:

• You give the example of expanding the Bozzy Spine. However, with the lowered level of contingency expenses this will never be possible. We know an expansion costs 50.000 . Even if all ministries combine all their contingency expenses the combined contingency value is (4*250+500)*20 = 30000 . Unless ministries can save money, we will never see another project on the scale of the Bozzy Spine extension.
• If the 25 contingency for 1 operational expense holds, investing half of the chancellor's contingency budget into the operational budget would mean an increase in the operational budget of 200 . Investing half of all contingency budgets would increase the Union's operational budget by 600 . There can not really be any talk of a deficit, unless the Union has been horribly mismanaged from turn 1.
• How does the system handle lowered or increased tax rates? You say Anselim is advocating a cut in operational expenses, but the operational budget can only increase under this framework. How come the framework doesn't allow for the lowering of taxes? On that same topic: How does this system take into account growing Union income? Surely when the Union starts to receive more tax income, both operational budget and contingency budget increase?
• Some of the current operational expenses (such as fleet housing costs ~300/turn, research subsidies apparently ~100/turn, or MTCF subsidies ~150/turn, hyperspace lane upkeep subsidies ~4400/turn) can not really be explained by this framework because they are very large when compared to the ability to actually increase the operational budget. They could have never be created in the first place. This is not an issue, as we do not need justification for actions in the past; but such expenses will also never be created again, as this framework makes it very difficult to actually create expenses of this scale... How would that work?

Information that is missing to use the framework:

• How high are the current Operational Expenses, and what are they spent on? (As the Union income is set through the tax brackets, and we know the Contingency budget, knowing the Operational budget gives us the full budget.)

Nitpickery:
I have a large problem with your assesment of "based on the amount of activity of the average PC minister"!

When playing as a minister, I (OOCly) do little to spend the budget, because it seems that what I tried to do last time had no actual results. Except for the Echani Reverse Engineering and the report on the position of the Mandalor, no other projects seems to have had impact or results as far as I am aware. The same goes for Chriz, who did not hear anything on the succes or impact of the projects his minister ordered.

Together with the fact that we hear no other news from any ministry on such projects, I assumed that the 750 per turn was just not having an impact -- which is why I did not spend time determining what I should spend it on during Bolv'ar's term of office. I know that we don't hear anything because for Mercury, this eats up time like there's no tomorrow, but I can't help but note that my OOC time would be wasted as well then. So I did not spend the budget, purely for OOC reasons.

A second problem I have with this observation is that, up till now, a PC minister's only impact was this 750 per turn, and the occasional opening of a law. We don't know what the other options are, so we tend to spend little time on it, unless we need to react to something. As I currently see it, being a minister is basically being an Inner World without a vote.

So, just maybe, it might not be the best idea to model the income based on the 'level of activity of PC ministers', as that might be a skewed observation.

TL;DR or Executive summary:
I think that the contingency budget should be increased, and the rate of contingency to operational investment should be lowered. If not, there won't be any large projects as taxes can not be saved, and the only rational course of action is investing anywhere from a third to half of the contingency budget to gain massive returns on the operational budet.

If you agree with me, don't repeat me; just wait for Mercury to clarify and explain! (Otherwise the other points will be ignored).

EDIT: fixed the ommision of the investigation into the status of the Mandalor. Added an extra issue.

[Mercury]

To clarify - Contingency Funds don't have to be spent in the same way that regular does. You don't have to spend every week and can in fact save up money and spend future money (within your electoral period). Think of it as if your ministerial turn report is due only once per electoral period instead of every turn.

Additionally, it is possible to set up a fund with an express purpose, such as expanding the Bozzy Spine. This is your money, and a postdecessor cannot spend it on anything but what it was earmarked for (but they don't have to - in that case it just sits there catching dust). This does mean multiple electoral periods (either under the same or a different Chancellor) can work together to make huge expenses such as a Bozzy Spine expansion. Thus, even though a single electoral period is not enough to expand the Bozzy Spine over multiple electoral periods, enough money can be saved for this.

I understand the budget rules are inconsistent with the idea of a budget deficit - you may presume the deficit is handled in the regular expenses. If you feel it still isn't logically justified, consider - the Union spent over 100.000 giving free money and tax cuts to new worlds as the 'offer of aid' program and even more in restoring the Bozzy Spine. Regular expenses include interest payments on that.

Cutting operational expenses is easy - if you remove a subsidy, the funds for that subsidy become available once again in the operational expenses budget. That means you can lower taxes by the same amount - likewise, you can spend contingency money to gain operational money which you can then use to lower taxes. See the 1 tax break for an example but apply it to the entire union.

Likewise, increasing tax rates brings in money, which can be used for operational expenses and which can be transferred to contingency funds: this goes at a rate of 1 for 1 . For example, you could increase the tax rate for bracket 1 by 10% to gain 1000 per turn (50 x 22 members, minus a fraction for additional collection cost and not all members paying bracket 1 in full). You can then increase the contingency budgets of each ministry by 200 (meaning the Chancellor would have 700 and the other ministries 450).

Before you enthusiastically start ending subsidies, increasing taxes and generally moving money about, do remember such things require a vote.

Some indication of current operational expenses for current laws is listed in Senator Anselim's electoral program. A major exception to this is the 'offer of aid program'. This program was introduced as a storyteller ruling to fix the weak position of starting economies. I'm afraid that means you can't touch it as its there as a game balancer.

As for the level of activity - I understand but I want to try it with these numbers. If it turns out to be unworkable weak, I'm open to fixing this, but I'd rather err on the side of caution - with these numbers and rules you can more easily make things like subsidies and laws that have benefits to you and your friends without needing a storyteller to do a lot of work - this in turn means more of them will be coming about and more money transferred from the Union to its members. I want to see where that goes before I open the money crane.

The system of Core Worlds not getting a vote will likely balance things out by a lot already.

Now, that leaves one question unanswered as to new members joining and old members leaving. Because this can be somewhat chaotic, I've deliberately not made rules for that - instead, I'll let storytelling deal with that. A single member joining or leaving shouldn't affect things regardless.

PS: Chancellor Bolv'ar did not have access to these game rules and thus cannot be blamed for not using them. Unfortunately I feel I have to make a special note of that T_T

[Brend]

After a first overview, this looks sound and usable.

I look forward to trying this system, and I hope that I can find some time to propose a rough budget.

[Stuiter]

Mercury maybe it is good to make a clear overview of how the situation is now, so we have a good reference point.
I do not know if you we now already have some funds (for bozzy spine, as it was claimed that we could have another extension sometime).

[Brend]

Mercury maybe it is good to make a clear overview of how the situation is now, so we have a good reference point.

While that would indeed be immensely helpful, I have heard from a reputable source that Mercury does not have the time for such a detailed budget.

I do not know if you we now already have some funds (for bozzy spine, as it was claimed that we could have another extension sometime).

Which is why I will try to come up with such a budget this weekend, which I will post in a new thread for comments by other players.