Small server struggle to pay territory upkeep tax

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2

Try being on a 150 pop (and decreasing) fresh start server…
890g Payroll, 55k gold upkeep…

Why oh why does the upkeep not scale with average server population?
~2000 average players = 100% upkeep
~1500 average players = 75% upkeep
~1000 average players = 50% upkeep
~750 average players = 37.5% upkeep
(so in the case of the OP’s server they would see a weekly payroll of ~193,000g and upkeep would be 71,250g, putting them in line with a populated server, netting 120k/week for owning Windsward)
~500 average players = 25% upkeep
~250 average players = 12.5% upkeep
~100 average players = 5% upkeep (in our case over on Cybele with ~100-150 players this would make the upkeep on our Tier 15 Windsward ~2,500g with a payroll currently sitting at 800g)

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A scaling against player population is the only way these fixed rates are going to work… otherwise you are gold sinking players’ gold on low pop servers and generating gold for the big companies on the high pop servers.

3

this looks more like missmanagment of town owners to me than anything else.

4

They’ve said in the past that anything under 1,000 players is a candidate for merges. I doubt they would add any modifiers this low, as those servers realistically should be merged together, rather than incentivized to keep going.

1 Like
5

Yeh. Low pop servers can’t be doing crafting hubs unless you want to barely break even or even lose some gold. Gotta spread it out that’s just how it is rn

6

also, 190k with that few upgrades, fort is going to be built up quite a lot, so why upgrading fort when you don’t want to spend the money you don’t have for it.

we had better built towns with less upgrades and reasonable upkeep.

2 Likes
7

That is not that bad honestly, just have the company members drop 3-4k a week for dues(about 30ish min worth of PvE work). I don’t think that AGS even wanted territory ownership to turn into the cash cow that it did.

8

Cant determine if this is a troll response, if not, what would you have them do in terms of management?

With regards our server (Cybele ~100-150 average population)
All 3 faction lead companies have had to collaborate and divide the cost of upkeep on our small population server to even stand a chance to get to tier 5 crafting/refining stations.

None of us can afford to upgrade the territory defenses, we are passing the hat around our companies in order to pay the upkeep as the revenue is less than 1% of the cost of upkeep.

As I understand it the Returning to Aeternium patch included the Territory Management Changes?
The new tax distribution system set everything in a linear scale for upkeep vs the town level (# upgrades) This is a fine balance on high population servers with healthy trade & house ownership… but terrible on low population servers.
The new costs and tax revenue share (remembering the tax revenue is now pooled across the map, not territory specific)

Upgrades vs cost of upkeep vs tax revenue share:

1 9,500 (WW/EF = 11,875) Tax revenue share = 0.5% (0.63% for WW/EF)
5 28,500 (WW/EF = 35,625) Tax revenue share = 1.5% (1.88% for WW/EF)
10 52,250 (WW/EF = 65,300) Tax revenue share = 2.75% (3.44% for WW/EF)
15 76,000 (WW/EF = 95,000) Tax revenue share = 4% (5% for WW/EF)
20 99,750 (WW/EF = ~125,000) Tax revenue share = 5.25% (6.56% for WW/EF)
25 123,500 (WW/EF = ~155,000) Tax revenue share = 6.50% (7.50% for WW/EF)
30 147,250 (WW/EF = ~184,000) Tax revenue share = 7.75% (9.69% for WW/EF)
35 171,000 (WW/EF = ~214,000) Tax revenue share = 9% (11.25% for WW/EF)
39 190,000 (WW/EF = 237,500) Tax revenue share = 10% (12.50% for WW/EF)

Amazon Games devs have determined that the average tax revenue on a healthy server is 1,900,000 (1.9Mil) and the upkeep and share of tax for each region is based on that… a low population server will never come close to 1.9m per week in taxes (remembering that housing = 1% flat, trade = 2.5% flat, crafting = 0.5% flat & refining = 0.5% flat)

Flat upkeep costs cannot be maintained on servers with populations sub 700 and as the OP has illustrated even with a 750 average population server they will barely break even.

It needs to be scaled to population or any servers with less than 1000 average players will need to be merged.

9

The Brimstone Sands patch added the tax changes. The details are included here:

This is the most likely option. It is a MMO after all and sub 500 player servers doesn’t seem very massive.

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10

Then they need to get a wriggle on with the merges.

11

I imagine they will. They already started with the older servers last week.

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12

That was 2 weeks in the making right?

So we have at least 4 weeks before any server merges for the Fresh Start servers and currently 8 fresh start servers that are quite literally dead in the water.

13

I doubt it, but probably not.

I imagine we are much closer than 4 weeks away from merges in Fresh Start.

1 Like
14

This is so true. We have the same Problem on our Server with peaks of 1.1k Players.

15

4 days of silence re the fresh starts and 19 days of silence from AGS regards the OP’s post…

I think my ballpark was accurate (if there are any merges at all for the Fresh Start, and I still have my doubts there)

16

Why wouldn’t there be? They don’t want dead servers. That helps no one.

I’m not entirely sure what you’d want them to say regarding this post. Those tax features are “working as intended”. There’s sadly no “bug” here. I obviously think it should be adjusted as well.

It was Thanksgiving in America today, likely a holiday for everyone who works at AGS. Again, I sincerely doubt it will take 4 weeks.

17

They said there are no plans for FSS merges in close future, FSS players will be able to transfer to legacy servers soon.

18

They never said that.

That part is true, but they’ve never ruled out fresh start to fresh start, it’s just not immediately coming right now.

19

Both are true, one of CMs announced that few days ago. Dont remember topic name, looking for this on phone is chore so I will not quote this now maybe later, after work.

20

I can help you with the one that is true.

And the recent merges, nowhere do they say Fresh Starts won’t be included. That wouldn’t even make sense.

21

Ohh sorry my bad they said they will not for transfer fss-> fss in that post. You are right. Sorry again.