What powers will an elected government actually have over the actions of a city's inhabitants? I.E. if, say, I was running a city, and wanted to be able to choose who was permitted to build there, or tax inhabitants, would that be possible?
hmmm.. i dont know... but i think you could if you have authorities behind you.. like a police force or something....
Its very tricky ground - this type of scenario. If Wraiths suggestion of Police backup was pushed further, you could probably control and tax others with a bunch of mercenaries or worse, an organised crime syndicate. I'm not trying to put you off I mean, it could go the other way too and the people may rely on you for funds n things so its difficult to say. It really depends on the type of player you are I suppose and how much greif you can take from the imperials!
well you could have done this... IF you can completely trust the people who want to.... but.. if you cant... how are you going to make sure they wont break the law
Originally posted by Wings_SWmud
What powers will an elected government actually have over the actions of a city's inhabitants? I.E. if, say, I was running a city, and wanted to be able to choose who was permitted to build there, or tax inhabitants, would that be possible?
Hmm Im sure there has been more mentioned, but one power I remember reading about is a town can have a mayor, and the mayor can move or rebuild buildings within the town. So if anything, at least you have the power to be a zoning comissioner.
Thats called Emminent Domain [check the spelling on that].
Presumably the mainstay of your Police/Security force could be made up of NPC characters, and only lead by a real player.
As for tax, taxing real players would be bad news. I could imagine taxing for NPC's although I'm sure there won't be that many.
Maybe just a payment for using facilities, such as cloning stations and other municipal buildings, goes to the funding of the town.
One sort of taxes I can see working is taxing any stores in the city. For instance, if you buy a blaster for 500 creds, 5 creds goes to the town fund. That would not hurt any player that badly, and could quickly turn into a lot of people in a busy trading town.
Heh...what I had in mind was more or less that...the idea my PA's currently developing is that (once we get around to starting up a settlement) the city council will operate a vaguely communistic system - we take most of the cash that members have, use it to start a business, take cash from that, put a player in charge, start another business, rinse + repeat. Of course, this might change, either due to the game itself or the opinions of members...but I'm hoping to work it this way.