On Solar Rails And The Taxing Thereof

[ImperiusAiE]

A lot of people seem to think taxes on Solar Rails are the end of the world and that tax free is the way to go. I've seen so many people decry Eclipse as evil because they have the audacity to tax the rails that they own, and a lot of the Dark Sector conflicts seem to take that as justification. My personal opinion is that taxes are good, great even, for a multitude of reasons. I've been pretty angry over the Dark Sectors for quite a while now and most of the time I just thought it was DE being incompetent. Though now I'm starting to think that the problem lies with the players, not the game.

Have you stopped to ask yourself just WHY nobody seems to participate in the Solar Rail conflicts, leading to a two day wait time in between Dark Sectors? It's because there isn't any incentive. Now yes, the enemies in the conflicts don't drop anything of value, but that's not the real problem. It's up to the players to dole out the rewards via battle pay. The reason there isn't any incentive is because we aren't GIVING ourselves any incentive. From what I've seen most battle pays average at about a thousand credits. Some only offer a hundred, many don't offer battle pay at all. I've seen one or two at five thousand and in one instance ten thousand. None of these are worth it in my honest opinion. I could just grab my Loki and sprint through a few missions for the reward, but I could also just take my Loki into the Void and run a few T3 captures just as fast, each one of which giving me significantly more than the clans seem to be willing to pay. Now who's to blame for this? Certainly not DE. The fault lies with us, the players. People don't fight for free, they'll go off and do something more profitable while they wait out the conflict. Personally my loyalty will always lie with the person paying me the most, and I know a fair amount of players are of a like mind. Clans need to give us incentive to fight for them, and to do that they need to up their battle pay. Not five thousand, not ten thousand, though twenty-five thousand is a good place to start; that's what the Corpus and Grineer offer when they don't offer resources.

But how could a clan possibly afford to pay so many Tenno so many credits? The answer: taxes. The higher the taxes the more they can afford to pay. The more they pay the more people participate in the battles, the more people participating the faster the conflicts will go by. And so by extension the higher the taxes the shorter the conflict. And ultimately the credits you lose in taxes come right back to you, possibly even with interest, when you fight for that clan. It's really that simple.

And on another note, are any of us really so desperate for credits and resources that we'd rather wait two full days for the conflict to end itself rather than give up a few nano spores? I know I can't speak for the majority, but seven times out of ten when I buy a blueprint I can build the item immediately. Better that those resources go to the clan with rails to look after rather than gather dust in my inventory.
/twocents

[Zhoyzu]

i want to fight infested. but the rails keep interfering,

 

dead content is dead

[Wallace24]

that's a very good point. aside from the fact that rails require money for repairs after said conflicts, alliances need money to incentivize people to use their rail. I think credit taxes are fine, and I wouldn't mind credit taxes upwards of 50% on dark sector missions. I do them for the affinity bonus, and maybe the resources

 

but the rails that have resource taxes are just greedy. I can understand that the purpose of owning a dark sector would be to gain some of the resources from that planet. but even skimming 1% off the top seems sneaky. I play(ed) the dark sectors for the affinity bonuses, and the easy-access to infested on maps other than the orokin derelict (which is pretty nice, I must say). not necessarily the resources.

 

I can understand resource taxes, and if the dark sector gives you +20% resource drops anyway, if the alliance takes 5% of that, you're still coming out on top. but I think we should be fighting for lower resource taxes rather than lower credit taxes. 0% tax rails are nice, sure, but once those come under fire (after 24 hours), that alliance/clan won't have anything to give players who fight for them

 

also, if alliances were able to give more battlepay/reward, maybe these conflicts wouldn't last the full 48 hours. in the first round of conflicts, at least, some alliances conceded defeat after they were only down like 2%. and they were both still in the upper 90's in rail integrity. so it's great that you gave the other side the victory, good for them, but you've still locked everyone out of that dark sector for the next 45 hours. it's a hollow victory. ideally, the other rail has to be taken down to 0 before those 48 hours are up. but of course, then someone else will deploy a rail immediately after the conflict ends. why? simply because they can. and if you don't do it, someone else will. what are all those solar rails for, anyway?

 

but seriously, there are only 26 dark sectors, and hundreds of alliances, with thousands upon thousands of clans comprising those alliances. there is no way out of all of them, a dark sector won't be contested again immediately after the previous conflict ends

 

the 24/48 split is awful. it should be even, if anything. 24 hours on, 24 hours off. until the players start to take out rails quicker and actually finish them off, instead of simply gapping the opponent in rail integrity, 24 hours on, 48 hours off is terrible

[Lost_Cartographer]

After 5 invasion runs THEN we get our 25000 credits, and we typically have to burn through 500+ bad guys to get them.

 

Solar rails offering 25000 credits for a run that could take 2 minutes tops?  Practically legalized robbery.

 

I do ask to be given a fair amount of credits for a run, as I'm not motivated to fight for free, but every clan/alliance would go bankrupt within the hour at 25000 credits per completion.  What's even more f***ed up however is that users who whom accept the mission when the vault has creds but end it after the vault is dry get screwed out of their reward, and the paying clan/alliance still reaps the benefits.

[2ply]

It appears that Eclipse is Raising the Battle Pay after each new tax period ends. Thus showing us that trickle down economics WORKS in warframe.

 

They are simply taking some credits from the masses (the least attractive aspect of dark sectors in many opinions) THEN they are turning those tax dollars they gained into INCENTIVE in the form of battle pay that can make grinding those rails a viable way to stack up the credits fast.

 

TAX goes UP....Battle Pay should also GO UP!

 

You get all the resources with 0% tax, and all those mods and dark sector stuff

 

You do get taxed on the credits...but that will pay off for you later when the node is contested because of such high battle pay due to the taxes.

 

In the case you happen to run a mission and the battle pay tickets run out before you complete the run you will get 0 battle pay because the battle pay needs to be restocked with more tickets, many have complained about this, and to that I have to say 1 thing...the contested rails should only take you 3-5 minutes to complete with a fast frame.

 

I was able to get a run complete in 1 minute......1 minute and some of those battle pays hit 10k per run...1 minute run!!!

 

Granted I was running with a couple members of the MOST elite competitive clan in Warframe, (no names) But you guys have all my respect...your competition results will never be questioned by me.

 

TLDR

 

I AGREE with the OP...it is not a problem with the systems in place...

 

The community at large needs to come to realize HOW well the rails can pay in tax dollars, and how to properly accept and impliment that aspect of this new economy.

Edited April 18, 2014 by 2ply

[2ply]

-please remove-

 

Accidental post.
 

Edited April 18, 2014 by 2ply

[ImperiusAiE]

the 24/48 split is awful. it should be even, if anything. 24 hours on, 24 hours off. until the players start to take out rails quicker and actually finish them off, instead of simply gapping the opponent in rail integrity, 24 hours on, 48 hours off is terrible

 

It's only awful if we have to wait the full 48 hours. With high enough battle pay to motivate enough players we might eventually reach a point where the conflicts end within the day that they're started, possibly even within hours. Granted a two day duration is a bit excessive, one day should be more than enough.

[canikizu]

It's only awful if we have to wait the full 48 hours. With high enough battle pay to motivate enough players we might eventually reach a point where the conflicts end within the day that they're started, possibly even within hours. Granted a two day duration is a bit excessive, one day should be more than enough.

The problem is if there's only one day duration, people will not able to farm as much as they can, and the tax collected got cut in half. So either:

- Clan/Alliance has to reduce the amount of battle pay to afford the current tax rate.

- They have to charge more tax than now.