I have some ideas for giving information to players about how taxes and price balancing works. This will be especially necessary as these mechanics will become more and more complex. For this specific case, I may implement a mid-season letter that gives you the current tax percentages and what you owe at that point.
As long as you're not dead broke at the end of the month, taxes should not completely destroy you. If you want examples, my longevity test run results are on r/stardewvalley.
Yes, I've been keeping notes of your play-through. The hardest part is finding a balance between slower and faster players such as yourself. I will be creating a better method of scaling (for taxes) that is more realistic and has good impact at all stages of the game life. (Income tax will help this) (Buildings will also have a much higher tax rate) I will also prevent players from removing capital/sprinklers on day 28 to avoid taxes. (Tax accumulation per day as opposed to single calculation at the end of the month) The future goal is to have losing conditions. With diminishing returns and crop failure (natural disaster effects). This causes the player to be more conservative with money, and further plan a strategy. (Going into debt will also have consequences; tax penalties/interest accumulation) I have some other secrets tucked away, however, these ideas are quite complex both mathematically and in code; no promises to any of those at this time.
The way it was described, the more money you have at hand, the harder the taxes will hit you. How much of your held gold is taxed anyway?
Held money is not taxed. Capital (Kegs, Bee houses, etc) + Fixed Taxes (On house size) + Buildings (Some buildings have more or less tax costs) Player income (income from that month to prevent taxing on the same gold multiple times) will be added in next update.
Shouldn't taxes regarding sprinklers be added first thing in the morning? That way if they are removed to avoid taxes they won't be able to water the crops.
Yes! And that was the original plan, however, I needed a way to accumulate and saves those values when the game was reloaded. (Without creating an external file to store information) Good news is that I found a nice/simple way to do so.
loved the ideas, definitly gonna try it when my monitor arrives, this will make the game alot more interesting
Another update from me. In regards to the wild plum jelly showing a value of 1. After installing Smapi 1.4 the issue is no longer.I was on Smapi 1.3 (didn't know Smapi updated Monday) so just letting you know. Edit: Ignore what I said , I had a brain fart and forgot it was the wine not the jelly that was the issue. Wine stil at 1gold.
Yes I have the issue solved, but due to it being the only (pesky fruit/forage hybrids) item under issue, I would like to wait a bit before sending out a new version. (I have the first test of "Dynamic NPC Clothing" coming soon; so it will likely be paired with that). And now, I have to check out this new SMAPI mod since I don't recall ever updating mine!
Progress Update For v1.3: 1) - Diminishing Returns: The most significant addition to this update, diminishing returns will gradually lower the profits received from items based on the number of those items sold. The math on this is not fully decided on or final, but it will require the player to diversify their crops (Profits can become a loss if a crop is over sold). Artisan goods are paired with the item that created them (selling a blueberry affects the return on blueberry jelly/wine). Currently, diminishing returns will take affect at the beginning of each day (when prices are set and updated). (This means a player could sell everything on one day to avoid diminishing returns, however, if diminished enough, these lower returns can last into next selling year) Also, holding crops to the end of the month can be a high and unfavorable opportunity cost [not reinvesting that current money into new crops]. 2) - Income Tax: 1.3 will introduce a more effective scaling tax to slow down faster players and weaken the exponential profit growth of the game; income tax. It will be a progressive tax system (the more you make, the more you pay). Income = total money the player made for the current month. Two messages will display to the player, their current tax costs [not charged]. This is to allow the player time to prepare and plan ahead. These messages will appear on every 14th and 24th. If the player over buys and doesn't account for taxes, they may go into debt. Debt Penalty: Before, debt would only prevent the player from making purchases (acting as if the player was at $0). If the player goes into debt, a debt fee will be imposed on the player. (1 time per month as a percentage of their current debt). 3) - General Improvements: Price influencers slightly nerfed. (Players could obtain higher than anticipated profits when using late game influencers with out of season bonuses and lucky random highs). I will be scaling down the increase from skills as well as slightly lowering the out of season increase. "Casks" were not being added to capital (fixed); Capital tax calculation will be changed to fit with income tax. Water tax will be calculated daily to prevent avoiding taxes (costs will still be charged at the end of the month). Increased tax on Buildings (part of capital tax). Small price balance changes 4) - Dynamic NPC Clothing: Dynamic NPC Clothing will be introduced in 1.3. It will be fully functional with what artwork has been completed. Any new artwork will be added with each future update. Everything (including Dynamic NPC Clothing) will be optional within the configuration. What is left, and when will it be completed? Adjusting calculations Testing for potential bugs Cleaning code (it got crazier than expected with these last few mechanics) I would like to have this completed by the upcoming weekend (6-7 days from this post) After the release of v1.3, I will go over the next WIP features. I welcome your feedback!
I have so many thoughts, heh. I am using a bunch of custom sprites so this will be a lot of cut and paste for me. Any dynamic clothing for the male bachelors will probably not work at all since I am using the genderbend mod that turns them into girls. Such is life. How much of a particular crop are we talking about regarding shipping? Because it is easy to get to 999 of a particular crop in one season, or multiple even. And it lasting into the next year, that should be possible since crops actually decay and go bad over the seasons so shipping 50,000 parsnips in spring 2 should not really matter regarding their prices in spring 3 since parsnips definitely wouldn't last that long. Each crop probably has their own decaying point (pumpkin goes bad fast, beans can be preserved very long and so can corn, resulting in slower decay of overselling factors) Metal bars should have a very high threshold for diminishing returns since we are at war and the war needs metal. Fish doesn't last very long either and has an insane consume level, so that should not have very long lasting diminishing returns either. In general, yes, that sounds like a lot of detail work but it would make the mod so much more realistic. If you already go this way, how about the opposite as well? Not shipping something creates a shortage and lowers the prices for the seeds but since you are encouraged to plant only that, the prices for all other seeds goes way up and the sell price for all other crops goes down, independently of their existing diminishing profit. If a melon shortage exists, pierre will want you to fix that, so he sells you melon seeds at basically no profit but doubles or triple the prices of everything else as a not so subtle "BUY THESE, FARMER" And that shortage will stay until you shipped the melons because creating a shortage at all should not be without consequence. Of course, you need to have a check for available seeds so you don't get shortages of crops in year 1 that are year 2 only. An example way of doing this, (to illustrate how I am imagining this) would be to see "normal selling point" as exactly 0.00 standard. Diminishing return would increase, depending on the crop, by -0.01 for every X crop (adjusted for how much of it is actually consumed. Parsnips are apparently popular so they would be consumed a fair deal more than Pumpkins, which has barely any demand outside of halloween) and further adjusted by base price (very cheap crops would get diminishing returns much slower than expensive ones) Princes would basically go down by this factor as well. (At -1.00 it would mean they are worth nothing, so let's cap that at like -0.80, please. PLEASE.) For the shortage, similarly, this same value could go up every X days you don't ship the crop but it doesn't actually make the crop more valuable. Since this is not intended to be exploited, profits would still cap at 0.00, i.e. full price base game, no matter how much the value changes. If you keep ignoring a shortage, you will be buying your seeds are hyperinflated prices (that just go up exponentially until you can't ignore it anymore) Of course you would need to actually make sure that only the shop price is inflated and not the selling price for seeds as you could turn crops into seeds and sell those hyperinflated seeds to make insane money. I believe this would not only add longevity but also make farming much more interesting. You could even have a very small chance to create a sudden shortage because something happened, or an equally small change to cut prices for crops because they just didn't sell. Real farmers have to deal with this too. With the debt fee being a percentage, diminishing returns and the income tax, I see a few people walking into a scenario where they are so deep in debt that just through the debt fee and the inability to buy seeds due to 0 money they will remain in debt permanently. More on that below. Income tax being a percentage makes sense (around 19% seems in line with real world taxes. So a fifth of your profits goes poof.) However. If all your "income" goes to settling debt, no income tax should be applied as well since we don't have all the tools of reality in the game. But similar to the real world, if you go into debt too much, just pull the emergency stop. I don't know if you can forcefully take away animals and buildings through SMAPI to erase debt but that is basically what should happen if you stay in debt for an entire year and your debt actually becomes bigger, not smaller. Water bills should actually be normal in spring and fall and 1.5x as much in summer because of the heat. I haven't paid attention to this ingame, but when it rains, the mod should check for the weather and just skip water costs that day if it rains. Although it would still need to calculate the water inside the greenhouse. And lastly, this is probably a far stretch that is pointless, maybe have it calculate the cost based on tiles watered, not the number of sprinklers. A lot of people use the customized sprinkler mod actually and one Iridium sprinkler covers 15x15 if it is maxed out.
I have to admit, I am a little too lazy to read (and understand) very long english textblocks. But I have a suggestion, that fits in general: what about making a few more parts of "Livin' off the land", that explains the farmer the important changes of this mod? And give tips how to live with it in "Livin' off the land"-style.
@TenkoKuugen Thank you for the lengthy feedback! I can say that Longevity had its desired effect in prior versions; that desired effect, however, did not scale as well as I intended. This update is to help address that scaling. Diminishing returns is, and has been a pretty complicated implementation. While I would love to have it more immersive and realistic, I have to first make sure it does its job on a simpler level. In the future, I plan to make all of these mechanics more dynamic as development continues. These returns will diminish at an equal rate for all items. Your notes to realism are not wrong, but those ideas would require more thought on mechanics other than diminishing returns. (Price balancing and other mechanics I've yet to implement). Your math ideas are more closely aligned with what I've already done than you may think. Surpluses will cause lower prices (these are affected by over selling an item) Shortages [I'll talk more about after the release of this version] Water billing does not charge players of rainy days. Utilities are constant, but may become more diverse in the future. "I see a few people walking into a scenario where they are so deep in debt that just through the debt fee and the inability to buy seeds due to 0 money they will remain in debt permanently." Good! My direction for this mod is to present opportunities to at the very least, cause struggle. I plan to have methods to notify and explain these mechanics to the player throughout the game.
I've been holding off on downloading this because I want to wait til most of the things you're planning are implemented. I must say tho, I'm really excited to try this out once it's completely finished.
Will there be a function in the config file that will allow dynamic clothing to be turned on and off like the rest of the mods?
About building taxes, you can basically divide them into winter, forest+fall and summer Utility should be lowest in summer(0.85x), while water should be 1.5x or 2x in water. A simple season check could do that In winter, you obviously have no water bill but you will be heating your buildings so utility could be between 2x and 4x actually. Spring gets warmer, fall gets colder, but both are temperate seasons, so keeping utility normal would be fine. And like I said, diminishing returns should take recover factor into account. Stuff with low demand would recover slower from diminished returns while high demand items like fish would recover much faster. Of course it will be a gigantic pain to set a recover factor for the diminished return value for every item but you can probably work with a lot of copy and paste there, especially for metals, common fish and common crops and general items (wood, stone, fiber, hardwood, sap, animal products, etc) But it would create a very intricate economy system that feels alive and encourages planning what you plant, hoard and sell.
From what I read I like what I read. The income tax additions/changes look sound to me. However I have to ask, will the various machines (sprinklers,casks,etc) have their own set value that gets calculated into the tax? Reason also I ask is not all the time does a person use the machines and having to remove them when not using them so they do not affect the tax would be annoying to me. Would it be able to tax only the machines in use or the total number of produced items from the artisan machines?
@TenkoKuugen : Real life fluctuations in utilities often offset themselves (Electric higher in the summer for A/C; Gas higher in winter for heating). While realism is something I would like to further implement, I must first think about the mod's intended goal. Diminishing returns will release as stated. The game does not have special or different treatment for items, doing so now for this mechanic would cause some imbalance. Also, my current implementation makes it complicated and difficult to save many separate values. I have plenty of room and time to make mechanics more in-depth, a simple base is the current focus as I want an efficient platform to build upon. @General Chaos : I've taken this into account. I will use a relationship between monthly income and total player capital to soften the overall tax burden from capital.
