Changes to Towny Taxes

[Oplegoman]

Towny Economy Reforms

Dear SentinelCraft community!

We have not forgotten about towny and have spent some time looking at other ways in which we can improve the towny gameplay and make it different from it just being survival with friends. In our previous reforms, we looked at making town and nation upkeep more dynamic than the default linear system. We feel like this change went well and added a new dynamic towny.
We understand that that change was rather small, and we hope that the following set of changes will cover more, compared to before.

Tax Changes

At the moment many towns have set their plot taxes for their residents to zero. While this is great for the residents, this is unfortunately not really how towns or cities work. By doing this, we are removing a massive feature of what the towny plugin can offer us. With this update, we encourages town owners to set taxes for the use of the plots. The changes we have decided to implement are the following;

1 - Increased plot upkeep from $2 to $5.
2 - Set a minimum tax to be a town to be $20 per resident per day.
3 - Added further levels on the multiplier to currently cap out at 58 residents with a 3.0 multiplier, increased from 42 and the 2.2 multipliers.

These changes will result in doubling or even tripling the upkeep of a town, hitting Gotham the hardest. The reason for these changes are to get towns to use the tax system with residents. Moreover, towns to have to think about their next expansion, recruitment and overall claimed area. Tax changes that are going to be handed down to the player are;

1 - A minimum tax of $20 a day per player, but a recommended tax of $25 or more is a good starting point for towns, towns should look at setting their taxes to help manage their town upkeep. This is up to the mayor' decision.

2 - Recommended/default plot taxes for new towns:
      o   Default tax - $25
      o   Shop Plots - $50
      o   Embassy Plots - $100
      o   Normal Plots - $20

These values should be treated as a starting point for how towns manage their funds. This is a way for town members to contribute to it automatically. It is to be expected that these values are likely to be increased in towns.

Examples!

You will have 7 days to look over these changes to see the implications for your town and pull together a taxation policy if your town wishes. These changes are none negotiable

Outposts

To help give back to towns instead of just adding more negatives, we have decided to give towns outposts. These outposts can act as an extension to the original town away from the actual town. As we are wanting to use this feature, blatant plot bridges to claim other areas will be dealt with. Blatant in this case is where towns have claimed areas outside of their vicinity. Towns should use outposts going forward for these. Any plot bridges will be dealt with, and is up to Senior Staff judgement. We have highlighted some towns "guilty" of this and we shall be discussing it with them.

Key aspects for outposts are the following stats;
1 - The minimum distance from other towns is 10 plots
2 - The minimum distance from your town is 5 plots
3 - The maximum distance from your town plots is 50 plots
4 - Towns with 10 residents can have 1 outpost
5 - Towns with 28 residents can have 2 outposts
6 - Towns with 50+ residents can have 3 outposts
7 - The cost to make an outpost is $25,000

To allow outposts to something which could be worthwhile, we have changed the number of town blocks you get from each citizen from 16 to 18. This means that you will be able to claim 2 more plots per active resident. Be careful if your town shrinks, you do not want to be hit with the overclaimed upkeep!

TLDR;
1 - Strong Recommendation for setting up taxes for plot owners.
2 - Plots that towns have overclaimed have an upkeep of $10.
3 - Further expanded the scale for the multipliers to 58 residents capping out at a 3.0 multiplier.
4 - Allowing towns to have an outpost away from the main town.
5 - Plots a town gets for each resident changed from 16 to 18.
6 - You will have 7 days after this post before the tax changes get implemented

[Remiaw]

Good to hear these news regarding Towny <3 Now, if you let me some comments on them...

At the moment many towns have set their plot taxes for their residents to zero. While this is great for the residents, this is unfortunately not really how towns or cities work. By doing this, we are removing a massive feature of what the towny plugin can offer us. With this update, we encourages town owners to set taxes for the use of the plots.

Asides from the fact that I'm defender of the idea that taxation is theft, I'm really glad to hear this as, in my experience, had to set taxes to zero due to competition with other towns that lowered their taxes too, and also to not have to deal with newcomers who didn't raise enough to keep their plot for even a couple days (not that I don't like to, it's just that I'm less active nowadays). For sure, you can't break even a town if a) your residents move to other towns or b) your residents live in your town for free.

These changes will result in doubling or even tripling the upkeep of a town, hitting Gotham the hardest.

Such consideration for Gotham lmao I wonder whether the calculations were done after or before defining the new policies *cof* *cof* (just kidding).

Outposts

YASS! Just by reading the title it was a big yes to me. tytytytyty <3

As we are wanting to use this feature, blatant plot bridges to claim other areas will be dealt with. Blatant in this case is where towns have claimed areas outside of their vicinity. Towns should use outposts going forward for these. Any plot bridges will be dealt with, and is up to Senior Staff judgement. We have highlighted some towns "guilty" of this and we shall be discussing it with them.

I guess, if there were people already managing a way to get their outposts, then just implement the function. It is better for the database than having a lot of claiming and unclaiming of plots from that method, if I'm not wrong.

Key aspects for outposts are the following stats;
[...]
3 - The maximum distance from your town plots is 50 plots

Back in the day when I had a neighboring town very close to mine, I noticed there were parts of my town where I couldn't move my spawn. By checking where I could, I reached a value for minimum distance between towns of ~80 chunks (the only way to confirm this is if our senior admins are so generous to check this against server config files). What I mean with this is that there's huge amounts of Kattalox land that becomes unusable because it's too far for most towns to claim it, but too near to them for other towns to claim it. I understand there's towns with policies such as "no want anyone to build closer than 1 km from my town" (ahem, Tranquila) and that's ok, but also I had an experience where a bunch of guys made a wonderful castle at just 25 chunks from my town and couldn't claim it so had to go away and start over, and another similar experience with long time fellows of this server starting (a castle again) in a plain north of Cherry Town, but this occasion being more prudent (having just a wall done) to check if they could claim it (obviously, if I'm telling this, they couldn't). This last time there was no dynmap, so I relied on memory to guide them to a place I knew was far enough from any town. Third example I can think of is the town of Arcadia, when I found they couldn't claim their base, I managed to find for them the nearest spot, a couple chunks off a shore to the west -- eventually they made a pier to connect the spawn to their base.

So, this is a piece of data that can save frustation to so much people. I say there should be an easy way to check distance to nearby towns and possibility of claiming at any determined point in Kattalox, before planning to build or raising the money for it. Current ones are a) Check the dynmap, do math using the Pythagorean theorem, b) do /t list to check every town for its spawn location, again using the Pythagorean theorem, and hoping there are not 'not public' towns nearby as they don't reveal their location in /t <name>. Both methods need to know this value, ~80 chunks radius from any town homeblock (and I neither know how exact is that amount). c) is having $10k to do /t new <name>, but by that time, most people will have their bases already built there, having to abandon them if the command throws error.

Apart from this I requested, I think it'll be fine to lower the minimum distance between towns, as there's still a wide margin before problems between towns can arise, or to push the maximum distance for outposts up to the limit. Surely it will be interesting to even see agreements for shared spaces between neighboring towns (nvm already exists one: Gotham and Faygo Dreams have a bridge that connect both yay! But currently it is unclaimed. I'll be writing about the claiming rule in a moment).

To allow outposts to something which could be worthwhile, we have changed the number of town blocks you get from each citizen from 16 to 18. This means that you will be able to claim 2 more plots per active resident. Be careful if your town shrinks, you do not want to be hit with the overclaimed upkeep!

TLDR;
[...]
2 - Plots that towns have overclaimed have an upkeep of $10.

Welp... I totally have a lot of plots overclaimed in my town, and with so few residents with me it's a situation I'll be in for long time. Except, I do some cleaning and get rid of all plots I have unused or those I consider not so worth of keeping. Priorities for keeping are I) resident plots in use, II) Valued buildings from former residents, III) Assets that must be protected against griefing (spawners, chests, etc.) and IV) Empty plots for new people that joins. I could enter in more detail about it, but what I want to make clear is that in my situation to break even I'll have to unclaim some built plots which then according to server rules, "1 c. You must claim things that you want protected." and "1 g. If you have the ability to claim, do so. We won't handle every grief case because you were too lazy to claim." those plots would get unprotected against anti-griefing rules, so what I'm asking is if I have some sort of guarantee that I won't be received with a no for response if any grefing event occurred on those plots, given my inability for claiming them again. Because, I still have to keep the priority parts of the town protected, and if the whole town falls to ruin, that won't even be possible.

(By the way, as I had to search for a copy of the full rules on the forum -https://sentinelcraft.net/forum/index.php?topic=256- and didn't want to open Minecraft only for that, I'd like for them to be accesible also in the site, I guess I remember it used to be that way. I don't even know if they're up to date.)

When I started to write this comment I expected it to be a fun little reaction to news which I feel go well with me and that I know are for the better of the gameplay, and then I ended up realizing details which raised some concern in me so I finished issuing demands that I hope are not too much.  As always, I'll be hearing your comments on this.

[Nick The Builder]

It's a very good thing to finally have real taxes being done in towny, the zero tax on residence has always feels like wasting a system for me. But I must say, I also think that it really kinda discourage small and new towns. With the new inflated upkeep of towns, it's going to be very costly trying to build facilities and venues for residents before adding the residents to your town. I'm very afraid that I will need to unfortunately close my town Coari because most of the town claim is spent on it's facilities which are not even completed yet, unless I deconstruct the whole 2 years of work and make the town super compact, I just don't think I will be able to afford it anymore.

But I'm sure I can manage.

[Oplegoman]

Thank you both for the intrest in the changes and replying here about them. I shall handle Remiaw's comments first and give answers as best as I can.

As for taxation, in general, is a way for a society to care for itself with upkeep on roads, social care and security. This is something we are trying to simulate here with these changes and I believe these do a good job. As for towns rising and falling, this is rather a natural thing to occur its been happening with our towns since the start. If the town staff make their town more intresting for people to join with town only facilities, it could be worthwhile to join such towns and with these changes residents are not able to live there for free unless they are a VIP.

These changes were made before looking at the change in cost, the gotham figures have gone down now that inactive residents now get removed after 60 days.

As for claiming outside of their general area this will be dealt with with the town mayor, no need to make it public for all to see.

Minimum distance between towns as of the moment are the defaults and I cannot comment on how it was before. I can only comment on how thing are going forward. As for such policies towns hold it should be reported if you feel it breaks the rules as we are unable to know what is going on all the time with towns, we like to leave them to their own devices. As for looking for land we now have dynmap which is more user friendly than trying to create functions within towny (I do believe there are some functions within towny to see how close towns are though). These stats are for outposts and not towns.

As for overclaiming it should be expected that if your town loses 'power' the cost to maintain it will go up, this means there is always an insentive to keep town memebers happy and within your town. This is also slightly negated by the change of plots given per resident from 16 to 18. As these plots its for your town to decide if they are worth the extra cost to keep protected or if they can be unclaimed. As for grief, we will handle these matters and punish the player but as per the rules we would not role them back.


Nick, I am sorry to hear that you feel this way about the changes, We did only display larger towns in which the changes would be more noticeable. If we take a look at your town and what would happen with the upkeep, it would rise but only rise to around 600. This is also an incentive to get people to join your town or forge an aliance with other towns!

If you feel this is hitting smaller towns hard and other smaller towns believe it does, I can take a look at seeing what can be done to help smaller towns. No change is perfect first time around and taxes for the majority is never a nice thing.

[GEORGE15]

YAY TAXES...(send help)