update: taxes, social security, city budget allocation, jail, law points, and newscasters
so there's 3 kinds of taxes that the mayor can change:
- income tax: citizens have to pay this tax when they receive their paycheck. how much money they have earned from selling items/food is also factored into this tax.
- sales tax: citizens have to pay this tax when they purchase stuff. its just like sales tax in the real world.
- death tax: citizens pay this tax when they die. when citizens die, they drop 10% of the money on the ground that is in their bank, and that 10% is taxed. (you cannot see death tax in the image because social security is currently selected which is incompatible with death tax)
the little information buttons on the tax gui swatches display the same information i just posted here. we'll be adding more of those information buttons to more of the gui stuff so you don't have to use /help to figure out what is going on. the above images of the mayor gui are not final because they still need more information buttons.
death tax is special because you can turn off death tax completely in favor for social security, which is the exact opposite of the death tax. instead of citizens being taxed when they die, the government pays a percentage of the money lost from a killed player's bank account. the poor cutoff in the gui is the point at which the government pays all the money the player lost upon death. for instance, if the cutoff was 1000 dollars and a player lost 500 dollars on death, no matter what the social security percentage is at they will have all their money covered. if they lose 1500 dollars then the amount they're paid is based off of the percentage. there'll be a default poor cutoff set at either 100 or 150 so that when new players join they aren't immediately forgeted over from being killed by a murderer a whole bunch of times. the money max is the max amount of money that the government will pay for social security. for instance, if the max is set to 1000 and the player loses 1500, the government will pay at most 1000 dollars even if the social security percentage is set to 100%.
you can't have death tax and social security turned on at the same time because that wouldn't make any sense.
the mayor is in charge of giving out money to various institutions in suburbia, being the police department and the church. the gui shown to the right is not representative of what suburbia will be in the end, because we plan that the mayor will be able to give the institutions money based on a percentage of city income per tick. this is so that the government doesn't go bankrupt when a forgetful mayor doesn't reduce a set amount of money for the institutions' budget. in the budget gui you will see two more additions: budget history for the city and a take government money option. the budget history shows how much money the government has made off of taxes and how much money they have spent. this will let mayors adjust their budgets more easily. the take government money option is a corruption feature, as the mayor can take how much money they would like from the government (note: the 40 million dollars shown on the gui will probably not be possible in the real game, so the mayor won't be able to become a millionaire incredibly easily like that).
miscellaneous updates:
i'm not sure if i've posted about this already so i'll just post it here. laws are purchased with law points now as well as taxes. a change in one tax will cost one law point. laws also cost one law point. one law point is generated once per minute which means the mayor is always able to do things but he's just restricted to not making a huge amount of changes quickly.
i'm not sure if i have mentioned this before either but there's radio news for god events when they occur. there's multiple newscasters all with different reactions and the mayor can choose which newscaster to hire as seen in the gui images above.
the jail has been coded. here's what the jail is for suburbia and why it is better than a normal city rpg jail:
we've thought of a new good idea for jail which is just not have a jail at all. once people are arrested, they turn into 'prisoners' but they can still walk around the map like anyone else and they are unable to do any illegal activity. they wouldn't be able to buy/craft/pick up guns until they're released from 'jail'. this is the best idea for jail ever because it isn't jail at all. 'prisoners' will be able to build and do anything else normal except they just can't kill or harvest drugs or buy drugs or do any other illegal activities. the game will not let the profit off of illegal activities so if they harvest drugs or grind corpses or whatever they won't get any resources from it. 'prisoners' will receive a prison uniform though and will not be able to take it off until their jail time is up. this is the next generation of city rpg jails because it isn't absolute boring bullstuff like all the other kinds of jail.
for people interested for how much progress we're making i've started and finished all of this except the law points and newscasters in the past day. the only reason why suburbia hasn't been receiving a lot of updates is because of my laziness and homework. except a lot more progress in the next three weeks because of winter break and me being a lot more motivated to work on this than usual.
the to-do list that i've made says that i have 21 out of 29 things done which is 72%. if i finish up the laws the mayor can enact over the next three weeks then there won't be a lot of suburbia left to work on.
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