Fwurg

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I tried my hand at a tax calculator to reduce some of the admin's tedious work of checking the turn reports.

The calculator can be found at http://tempest.student.utwente.nl/~brend/fwurg-tax/. It roughly works by extracting information from the wiki in a semi-structured way.

I have checked it for all systems and found the following things:
* The actual query is quitte slow, please allow up to 10 seconds of processing time after selecting the system.

* Nobody (except me) has any trade information on the wiki. This was to be expected, since there is no official way to do this yet. For now the required format is used in http://83.163.184.178:81/dokuwiki/user:brend:trade_a. Just a from and to (on system base) and the fully written product name paired with an amount.

* The 'Rha-Saava-Haas System' is not accepted by the tool due to the System_ref fields of related zones having the value 'Rha System'. The tool does not understand this kind of renaming, and fails -> A work-around has been employed allowing the system to be loaded.
* The 'Rha System' does not contain any production zones. After checking this appears to be due to the owner of this system removing the zone information from the Type_rule fields in all zones -- please do not do this; any zones not ending with the word 'Zone' are ignored on grounds of being special (things like 'Planetary Shield' and such).

* The 'ShasKar System' is not accepted by the tool due to the System_ref fields of related zones have the value 'ShasKar'. The tool does not understand this, and fails -> A work-around has been employed allowing the system to be loaded.
* Several zones in the 'ShasKar' system are ignored, this is due to the Type_rule field containing an invalid zone type -> The tool will warn about any invalid Type_rule values once the 'ShasKar' system is loaded.

I'm open to any comments or remarks about the tool, or interesting functionality.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

I've been using a spreadsheet for this, but extracting the information directly from the wiki means it's always synchronised, which is very nice. Also, it looks a whole lot better.

I recently changed my zone types for the sake of getting the links to work. I'll revert this. My question is, do we need wiki pages for zones when we have pages for the materials/products they produce?

Also, I've seen a lot of data templates under development recently, but was holding off on using them until they were no longer WIP. Is the trade template fixed enough to start using? (well, I guess it is if it's used in a tool now.)

Is there functionality for correctly processing Special Goods? Currently, Chriz (Lumo Duo) is producing MTCF. He could produce more by cutting into his tax set 7 production. He probably doesn't want to do this, but if he'd instead be cutting into tax set 1-4 production by doing this, it might not be such a bad idea. Somehow, either on the wiki or in the tool, it should be possible to set the number of special goods produced, so this can be taken into account for tax generation.

Lastly, I noticed a small typo in the header of your calculator. It's FWURG, not FWURF.

It could also do with a 'go back' button, so you don't need to refresh the page to look at other systems.

EDIT: I fixed my system, added trades, and the calculator works just fine for my system now. Nice.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I fixed some small things (i.e. typo's, back button).

The current trade data template that is used was drawn up mainly for the benefit of automation. It is not yet set in stone and might see some changes over time as the tool matures and we deteremine what kind of information should be put into the database. For now the simple trade template will work.

Special goods (and other priority targets) are currently not really supported. This will likely change to allow the player of the system to set production preferences as a form of a project -- like a trade in that it takes place in a single system, but it's not shipped to anywhere else, it just has to be produced. For now I just made the tool produce all possible special goods after taxes have been produced.

I changed the order of the sections and added a 'Production Overview' section. The production overview sections offers a view of all produced goods at the end of the turn. This includes Taxes and Negtaxes. Negtaxes are a work-around for a conceptual problem of the tool. They represent taxes being consumed by a process (such as a trade) in a way that allows the tool to handle them as if they were produced. The 'Tax Breakdown' section will correctly display the negtaxes as being deducted.

EDIT: The Production Overview sections lists taxes BEFORE deducting Negtaxes, so this overview should not be used to determine the amount of taxes available. For the determination of available taxes, use the Tax Breakdown. (This is due to the Production Overview displaying the complete inventory at the turn's end.)

[Mercury]

I already used the tax tool today, and found it very helpful. So thank you very much Brend!

PS: to everyone, please enter your trade deals on the wiki, for great toolage!

[RemcoSwenker]

It seems that the tax calculator is very kind to me and allows me to build Mass Transit Cargo Ferries per turn I do not have the zone for this. I think there is still a bug or something I don't know about.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I'll look into the phantom MTCF production immediately.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

A similar problem seems to affect the Guaire System, which is producing Hyperspace Lanes out of nowhere.

I have another feature request: It is possible specialized goods will be produced in the coming turns. In that case, the tool should be able to handle them.

I have to say, this is a great tool. I find it's also useful for spotting business opportunities. (sadly, the opportunity I spotted was related to those phantom MCTF )

[Veolian Commonwealth]

Ok. The phantom production of MTCFs, hyperspace lanes and holonet relays has been remedied.

The Specialised goods bring a complete set of their own problems, as they can be recombined in multiple ways (as has been discussed shortly in at least one IC thread). The specialised goods are just that, specialised goods, which will probably add their own type of product to the list (this means that each corporation adds a single type of goods to the listing, not a big deal IMHO). The recombination of these goods into their 'base' good will most likely not be handled automatically.

At this moment I'm thinking about using an 'Economic Directives' page that contains the economic directives (special projects, specialised good recombination formulas, etc.) for a single system. This anyone have any ideas or comments on this?

[RemcoSwenker]

to accommodate brends fancy tool I have replaced 'ShasKar' in the wiki with 'ShasKar System' apparently I oopsed on that during creation.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

What are your opinions on including 'upkeep' entries in the tax tool? Currently we know of three sources of upkeep/maintenance: Holonet Relays, Hyperspace lanes and Trade fleets. The data entries for each of these things contain the upkeep class and have a failed for the amount of upkeep, so the integration into the tool should not be difficult.

Also, if people can give me an estimate of when the first special goods will hit the market, I can anticipate their introduction in the tool.

[Mercury]

and have a failed for the amount of upkeep

QFT

Regarding the special goods / tax tool, I think it'll be good if we talk in the world with the big blue hub-room regarding the Open Market and include special goods in there.

I'm good for including upkeep entries in the tax tool! If that works, we might even be able to eliminate it from the turn report - less reporting means less work.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

and have a failed for the amount of upkeep

QFT

Damn, no denying it now.

Regarding the special goods / tax tool, I think it'll be good if we talk in the world with the big blue hub-room regarding the Open Market and include special goods in there..

I have some thoughts on how to handle special goods. But I completely forgot about the Open Market.

[Mercury]

Is it possible to list the faction owning the system in the dropdown? I think the information should be relatively easy to retrieve from the query and that would make it much easier to find the system by faction. Perhaps something like instead of the system name the entries could list "faction name (system name)" or "system name (faction name)" or something?

I think the tax tool should be able to handle the Open Market in a manner very similar to how it currently handles the trade routes. Shouldn't be too much of a problem.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

Starting this turn, I'm producing specialized . How should I note this on the wiki? I've set the 'specialized by' reference. Currently, the tax tool processes it as normal information.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

@Revenant: I'm sorry, but specialized goods have not yet been implemented due to time constraints. I will look into this when I have thought about the representation of this data. At this moment it's not possible to enter specialized goods in a trade either.

I will get back to this when I have a clear answer. (For now you could just change the Type_rule from Information Zone to Specialized Information Zone, it's just a work-around to get things working again and can be undone once we know how to do it properly?)

@admin: I added the faction information.

@all: I sped up the tool by about 6 seconds. It appears that the SQL interaction isn't the slow part, it's the output and postprocessing of the data that takes ages. For now the tax tool should take about 1.5 seconds to display the data.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

Whoa, tax tool is fast now. Nice. This gives me a lot more hope for things that could be done with the map tool.

Updated zone type thingie, works fine for now.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

Added upkeep to the tax-tool. It works for now, but don't go and get an extra System for your faction -- that will take a lot more time to implement

[Veolian Commonwealth]

If have been working on the tax tool a bit, in preparation of bigger changes. I changed the 'Production Overview' into an 'Acquired Goods Overview' -- it no longer lists misleading tax amounts, and it contains ALL products available to the system after all economic targets have been processed. I also added categories to all targets. This is mostly in anticipation of later changes.

There are a few issues with tax tool at this moment:

1) The tool does not know the distinction between faction and system. This wasn't an issue until I added upkeep. For now this should not be a problem, but in the far future this might require some changes. For now I will ignore this issue.

2) Regarding the income from sources different than Tax sets: Most things can be simulated by a fake trade route. For now this work-around can be used to determine the amount of income provided by corporations and specialized zones (just create a trade route into your system that imports the required amount of Tax.) The necessity of these fake trade routes will be removed later, when the calculator properly understands specialized zones and custom economic processes.

3) Specialised goods are still a problem (both the production and the trade of the specialised goods). I do have a proposal on how to handle them though:

In effect specialized goods are a completely different kind of product, for example KnowDisc Information is completely different from Gnosis Information. They are both products like all the others, and they need to be handled as distinct products until they are combined in a specific configuration.

I propose we handle specialized goods as different products. This means that we will have a 'KnowDisc Information Zone' zone type and 'KnowDisc Information' as a product. This makes it easy to handle the different specialized goods, as both the calculator and the wiki plugins understand this distinction. Since corporations are not founded easily the amount of work involved in adding the specific specialized product to the calculator and the wiki (both as a zone page, and in the query) should not be too big.

With regard to the recombination of specialized goods into normal goods: This can be handled by allowing factions to define a set of economic directives for their system. (This will be done in much the same way is trade routes are currently done.)

There is one thing to be taken into account when using this approach. The product name can not be determined automatically, so some sort of 'trademark' register has to be maintained -- I do not think this will be a problem.

I'm interested in your opinions about my solution to the specialized goods problem. If no one has any objections or a different (feasible) solution, I will implement this solution during the coming week.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

Your proposed solutions all sound like very good ideas. Should work.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I updated the tax calculator to use an icon display method (overlays and all) analog to the wiki.

I hope to update the tax tool with specialised goods during next week.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

Can the tax tool be included as a link in the sitebar? I'm not sure how often other people reference it, but I use it a lot in the planning stages of a turn, and I keep having to find the link on the forum.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I do not consider the tax-tool anywhere near finished at this moment. It is not even past the alpha stage. The current version of the tool grew from my frustrations with having to use a spreadsheet to determine the correct tax production of my own faction. Starting from there I defined a set of economic processes that covered my own situation. I'm currently thinking about rewriting some of the internals of the tax tool to allow for a more generic approach of the economics of FWURG.

Since the tax-tool is written by a human (me) it is not infallible, and it should not be used as an authoritative source of information on the FWURG world. It can be used in an advisory capacity, and I strongly recommend calculating things by hand once in a while to check the tool output. I hope to focus part of my rewriting efforts on documentation and if necessary a short explanation of the tool's approach to the FWURG economic rules, so one can check the validity of the tool output for oneself (and hopefully get admin to sanction the tool as outputting official statistics).


That being said, I'm not opposed to a link in the site bar and although I have the ability to edit the official site, this should be decided on by admin.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

Another small feature idea: a refresh button next to the back button. Often, I find myself going back and forth between the tax tool and the wiki, adapting trade figures until the tax tool gives me the result I want.

For example, adjusting export to the aid mission until I'm exporting all my excess goods. First, I check the tax tool to see how much I have to spare. Then I change settings on the wiki. Then I want to refresh the tax tool to see if I'm at 0 excess.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

Since I have to rewrite parts of the tax tool I can fit that in as well

EDIT: New version announced in Tax Collector β2.