The idea:
Governors would have the option of setting workforce pay, which is set independently for each tier of workers (Pio, Set, Tech, Eng, Sci) on a scale from 0 - 100.
The pay would work exactly like taxation - except instead of going toward the governing corporation, it goes to the pockets of the workers. This would provide a happiness boon to that workforce based on the pay amount. Low to zero amounts would be a slight penalty to happiness, but not significant. The tax and the salary would show separately on the production order queue so that players can have visibility to the costs. The other way this would vary from taxation is that instead of scaling only based on the duration of the recipe, it would also have a factor based on the number of active workers at that building.
The big thing that pay effects is population immigration - A rolling 7 day average of pay amount is used during the calculation of population growth during the weekly planet population tick. 7 day average pay would become a small factor in pop happiness, in addition to the populous buildings, where 0 pay would provide some small negative penalty. Higher 7 day average pay versus the galaxy average would provide a significant modifier to population growth for the pop tier in question - with an even BIGGER bonus to pop growth if there are open jobs there. Lower 7 day average pay versus the galaxy average would provide a modifier to population reductions, with an even bigger reduction if unemployment is greater than say, 30% or 40%. Balance TBD.
WHY
This idea accomplishes a few things:
1). Governorship would get some very real choices to make about salaries vs. Populous goods vs. profits that have a very real impact on all the players and perhaps election policies.
2). A new reason to want to build ADMs
- ADMs could then be useful, or even necessary, to promote immigration and grow MUCH more quickly the populations of higher tier pops.
-Settling new planets may be significantly easier to quickly jumpstart pops with an ADM in place for this policy - helps later game more than early games in new universes. Right now, there is little reason to build an ADM on a low pop planet. This could completely change that.
3). This idea does not penalize the newbie for high-tier play. High-tier industry would pay for (some, populous still matters!) of the population attraction without making the “little guy” who only has pioneers pay for the richer players expansions. Currently, the primary way to finance populous goods is through taxation which is universal, regardless of whether the player wants those higher tier pops.
NOTE - this idea is NOT meant to be a way around providing population goods from populous - if workforces are not satisfied and are very unhappy then no amount of pay should increase immigration. Although this idea does add SOME happiness to the pop tier, it shouldn’t be able to dominate.
HOW COULD THIS BE BUILT UPON - (unnecessary complications at this time - but ideas for the future)
- Population salary could contribute to a planetary economic indicator. This economic indicator could drive a planetary market for luxury goods, paid for by the planet population NOT players, based on a supply/demand curve. Richer populations have more available to spend than the poorer ones. More pop=more demand. One new luxury good for each tier of pops (pio, set, tech, eng, sci)
- Populations that have their demands satisfied on this new market could get a scaling bonus to satisfaction based on how well the demands are met - perhaps a sliding exponential scale that could be as much as a 10% boost for a rich population getting its demands fully satisfied on this planet-based-market, which would stack with CoGC bonuses. The amount of goods demanded would scale based on population size. The amount the pop pays per good would vary per good sold on the supply demand curve up to the point where the pop runs out of money - therefore, paying your populations well would be a requirement in order to even have a shot at the bonus… so long as the players sell to the market!
- Different tiers of pops would demand different goods, so that this bonus effects those pops specifically that get their demands met (easier to meet pio demanded goods than scientist)
-Populations that are poor and not getting their demands met could have a penalty to satisfaction, as much as 10 or 20% if we want it to be asymmetric to the downside… obviously a lot of thought would go into balancing this. This would mean not paying your population, or paying them poorly, could have significant downside effects