I would like to (again) advocate for populous to buy upkeep from the governor or governing corporation. This would greatly incentivize the governing corporation to build infrastructure as an investment, source a diverse range of upkeep materials from other players, inject currency into the economy while removing a large variety of products from circulation. Ultimately this would make being governor a much more rewarding and interactive experience, and encourage players to develop planets and setup supply chains.
The current donation system is really not fun, and there seems to be very little incentive to build population infrastructure at all right now.
Why this is different than adding MM buys to inject currency:
- Items are bought in limited quantities so players can’t just farm the “optimal” resource to the MM
- Encourage complicated and diversified supply chains to create currency, where the production chains for these items already exist and don’t directly affect in game goods
- Provide a real market for populous upkeep items.
- Convert an existing system that is both frustrating and underutilized into something that players want to interact with.
- Make elections matter, and encourage cooperation among players to secure the governorship of a planet for long term development instead of turning into a hot potato that nobody really wants except for prestige or to leech tax dollars while returning nothing to the planet.