Roy upping system tax way too high

[Smithy]

wish there was a button 'shoot this planet's Roy' for doing <x> action, to make an example out of him for all the other roys in your empire.

playing 1.2.5 updated and with several of bhruic's and gerra's patches that *shouldnt* directly affect economy, i'm mainly only using the bugfix ones. i havent modded anything related to economy.

anyway, i'm playing a psilon game, just messing around to see if i like playing with them. i have a fairly large empire now, and am not really at war with anyone. i'm not microing my MPQs for once, and hating it because roy loves building the wrong stuff (384729372938472938 carriers and no escorts) or nothing at all (wtf 1500 industry and the MPQ is empty), but gonna finish the game anway. so, i've got my dev plans to go for research primary and industry second, my policy is limited war and balanced, taxes are at 4% system and 10% empire. i'm putting a decent bit into the research and grants sliders, some into military and a bit into unrest. round about turn 150-160, my roys start waxing my planets with 25+% system tax, the greedy buggers. needless to say, the people aint happy about it. every round or two i get more planets pissed off about taxes and i hafta lower the systax to 10-12%, rather annoying.

why the heck is roy doing this, and what can i do to slap him and make him stop...or at least set my policies to make him not do that?

[Tarhalindur]

#1a... check for Piracy and/or lower the Oppressometer
#1b... Make more Government/Military/Recreation DEA's/DEA improvements so that your population will take the tax burden quietly.*
#2... What Government do you have? If you're running a Hive, you might want to switch to Unification for a while, and Constitutional Monarchies are also very tax-tolerant. Also, remember not to play as a Democracy.
#3... Lower the Empire and System taxes (5% Empire, 2% System seems to work fairly well). Planetary taxes are the most efficient of the lot.
#4... Look for new overdriving, CorrCap (Government DEA economic improvements), Recreation techs, or Spaceport techs (overdriving techs = Holistic Planning, Polyfabric Building Materials, Harmonic Construction Techniques, Science Guilds, Database Standardization, and Experiment Replicators)... then hope that Roy notices the increased cash flow (CorrCap, Recreation, and/or Spaceport techs) or decreased expenditures (overdriving techs) and adjusts taxes accordingly... :rolleyes:
#5a... Make cheaper starships, if necessary...
#5b... If all else fails... turn off the Planetary AI and control the taxes yourself. (Note: this may become aggravating)

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* = Improvements are preferred... look for techs that say Government DEA Unrest Capacity, Recreation DEA Efficiency/Capacity, or Military DEA Capacity...

[Smithy]

1a: its not piracy, as most of these systems have 'protector' ships guarding against the one-legged bandits. the ones that dont have system frigates galore, the AI went build-happy on em before i upgraded them.

1b: i suppose i could create more unrest DEAs, but i hate wasting the spots that could go to industry/research, especially since its Roy thats creating the problem. after all, sometimes he's jacking it up to a whopping 30%. i'd be throwing molotov cocktails into my local mayor's office too if they dropped a 30% income tax on me plus whatever state and federal taxes i had already. course its already close to that, but anyway...

2: i'm running unification if i'm not mistaken, although it could be hive. <3 collectivist

3: yeah i could lower my empire taxes, but then i have a whole lot less to put into research, grants, and military spending. the people are generally fine w/ my taxes when roy isnt jacking them around. are there any benefits to lowering the taxes other than less unrest? ie, do you gain that money back somewhere else in the background?

4: i have the creative pick, so i'm getting lotsa nice techs to help with empire efficiency.

5a: how will making cheaper starships help? unfortunately many of these planets arent making ANYTHING, or just troops (i'm trying not to micro the MPQ this game, to see how it goes. not very well rite now, stupid AI)

5b: well, since my empire is now close to 300 planets, controlling the taxes on each one would get real old real fast. i'm trying to do as little micro as possible this game, instead of my usual 'must have everything going at 100% efficiency'. turns take like 20 mins when i do that :(

would it have something to do with the fact that my economic policy is limited war when in fact i'm at peace w/ my neighbors right now?

[Happy Chemical]

Look at your System Capitals and see if they are doing anything that would cause Roy to dump money on them. I always dropped system taxes to 0% and never found Roy messing with them. The only problems I had with taxes is that I could manualy up the total tax level 5% or so without any unrest at all.

As to the Roy building only one ship type thing, alot of people use one all purpose ship type to get around that problem.

[MisterPlow]

Why struggle with it? Just micro.

[Laryllan]

You can find help by reading this (http://farcaster.net/imod/moo3/iModders_Guide_to_Master_of_Orion_3.pdf) .
Try chapter 5.3.1.

[pedxing]

Originally posted by Smithy
5a: how will making cheaper starships help? unfortunately many of these planets arent making ANYTHING, or just troops (i'm trying not to micro the MPQ this game, to see how it goes. not very well rite now, stupid AI)'Roy is probably building troops/nothing on some worlds becasue the least expensive ship is too high a multiple of the planet's PP... so 'Roy figures it would take too long to build anything, so why bother?

if you have only one ship design that is barely affordable, then all those planets will jump on it, and you'll get 384729372938472938 of them.

if you don't micro the MBQs, you need to have a wide selection of affordable designs for 'Roy to feel good about building. you also need to monitor your Fleets tab, and when you see something being over-produced, obsolete it and redesign one hull larger...

...or if you find that after doing that you are back to troops/nothing again, then redesign everything one or two hull sizes smaller and start the monitor/obsolete/redesign cycle over again.

also make sure to have some big designs for your high PP worlds to produce. there's no micro-shame in locking the top 4 to 8 worlds, to produce the right mix of Big Boys. ;)

and yeah, this will not help your taxes at all, but it will help with the other frustration you expressed.

now, for taxes, try reducing System tax (on the Finance screen, not the Planetary tax on the individual Planets), if you don't want to reduce what you have available to spend at the Empire level.

System tax is only really useful if your systems tend to have lots of planets, and their System Seats on high Industry/Research worlds.

also, check your Oppressometer... if it's cranked, pulling it back a few notches might help provide more headroom for the tax-related unrest to fit into!

[Raion]

I just play differently. I have reduced System Taxes on the Empire Screen always to 0%. The System Seat in the Star System, justs gets too much money, and does not need it, while the other planets in the star system -- do not!

I also reduce Empire wide taxes to the minimum, and usually only run about 4%. Thus I do change the taxes on individual planets or leave them for Roy to figure out.

Some planets will except a higher tax, and some will not, depending on having perhaps Development Plans, include Infrastructure and Morale so people may be happier. But, then I still am learning and I just take time to think about it a little.

Bascially the Emperor feels small in the game!