Joking_Phantom
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Joined: 5/28/2014
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Honestly if you think about it, forcing the private sector to have all these expenses and responsibilities is really just a dressed up tax itself. Like someone said in an earlier post, redesigning ships and stations basically mandates that the private sector retrofit and pay the state (you) money to do so. It's another form of the player spending money towards an objective, except the private sector is the one forking over the cash directly instead of paying it to the middleman government to do so. So instead of the government levying huge taxes to pay for state healthcare, education, defense and transportation in a socialistic society, the government mandates private companies do it all. Also the government happens to own all the physical resources to do so, so private companies must pay the government to do all the construction work and then have to pay upkeep once its done (note that this is totally unrealistic but its part of DW since it assumes that the empire is driven by a central authority and not private citizens). While the capacity to provide fake power and control keeps some people somewhat happy in real life in many situations, it is not sufficient to satisfy the entire populace by saying "you gotta do all this stuff, but we aren't taxing you so you have the money to do it." Some people are going to be mad that they have to follow so many rules and regulations, and a few will realize that the "small no tax" government is in fact, a farce (not a comment on big vs. small, just a statement that in fact its not small at all).
There is no physical difference in having a central authority ask for money to do stuff and having a central authority telling other people to do stuff with their money because its good for them. Both situations achieve the same end result, but the latter tends to make populations happier because they feel more in control. But again, its not an end all be all situation to getting a society to do stuff. It's not in real life, and it shouldn't be in DW.
This is arguably an exploit that allows players to directly bypass the taxation mechanic entirely and ensure huge population growth. In fact, it is. I ran a very hard difficulty, prewarp test game where I followed one simple policy after the first year: 0% taxes for all until max population, no matter what. I set design upgrades and retrofits to manual, well all I could anyways. Scanners, energy-fuel converters, labs, weapons, and shields went on all the private sector facilities and ships. The economy flourished and I smashed the AI with tricked out defensive bases disguised as mining stations and resupply stations that looked like resort bases. My empire balance sheet had all the maintenance figures on the private sector side, and my initial taxation revenues were zero. But it was more than made up for by “space port income” and the power of the private sector to blow some things up for me. Also I hear that you can turn freighters into moving batteries of doom with super area weapons, but I didn't try that since I had already won the game at that point. This is a totally broken exploit that puts the AI at a huge disadvantage if the player uses it. It may be fun at first to win in a scenario with all the difficulty dials turned to max with this exploit among others, but it gets old fast. It's micromanagement to make the game easier, negating the point of playing on a higher difficulty. For me, its far more rewarding if I avoid unrealistic exploits like this. Why go through all this work and waste time just so I have a resources advantage to counter the very hard difficulty penalties, when I can not micromanage and play on normal or hard difficulty? But its understandable that the allure to do so is there. Micromanagement intensive exploits are the most abused exploits since their very presence tempts players to use them, and their use does not immediately destroy the enjoyment of the game. While they break game balance and let players steamroll over the opposition without significant strategic planning or intelligence, they also force the player to do nontrivial amounts of clicking and tactical thinking that make cheesing the game not boring, at least initially.
There is no such thing as a free lunch in reality, and there shouldn't be in a space empire simulator. But ultimately it's up to the players discretion to play the game however they want. Just understand that the 0% tax exploit is not indicative of a simple "taxes are broken" problem that can be easily fixed. 0% taxes in new colonies should trigger growth and migration to that colony. But 0% taxes everywhere, including the homeworld until max population and high development should never ever work. But it does. The problem is that shifting the financial burden of state activities onto the private sector without an appropriate growth in dissatisfaction, corruption and protests especially from upper class citizens and the super rich is silly. I suppose the game designer(s) (am I correct in my impression that this is a one man operation? There's been sparse mention of who and how this game was developed so I'm probably be wrong) could impose further restrictions on private sector designs, happiness/ corruption penalties for sky rocketing maintenance costs, shift the ownership of physical resources towards the private sector, or something else. But all other things being equal, the zero taxation policy creating huge private sector and population growth is not the problem.
I could elaborate on other silly abusable game mechanics and exploits that create needless management and burden without actually creating gameplay or entertainment, like the poor AI ship design, the very existence of research labs, pirate protection, exploration mechanics, but that'll have to wait until I have more time. This isn't to mention flat out balance breaking things as well, like energy to fuel converters. Seriously, those things generate plenty of caslon and hydrogen and their upkeep costs are trivial. You can ignore fuel limitations on fleets and generate free revenue by spamming those, since colonies consume them as well. Technology theft from the Ancient Guardians makes getting these early a game ender, among other technologies. This game has a lot of potential, and the things it does right it really does them right. But it's too full of imbalance. With a great deal of polish or even extensive overhauls of what I think are outdated or irrational systems, this game could be great. And even if it doesn't happen, one can still have good time if they ignore the lame portions of micromanagement and instead focus on the big picture. This game reminds me a lot of the Paradox Interactive games, namely Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis and Victoria. They have excellent gameplay mechanics and polish in some areas, but in other areas a lot more work is needed. Work, time and effort that a company may not be willing to or able to spend, and it's only on occasion where a few fans with great skill in programming and game design volunteers their time to suss out the problems with unofficial patches, if they get access to previously closed or particularly complex portions of the code.
tl;dr: Making private sector stuff do state stuff is taxes without the happiness penalty. Want a harder game? Don't do that.
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