This is how we get our city for RBL, Part 2

[Aslan]

 Managing the City

    The cities in SWG require maintenance and upkeep to run. Each structure, amenity, or specialization added to a city incurs additional maintenance costs for the city. Some are extremely high (shuttle ports, for example, add an additional 125000 to the base weekly city maintenance). A metropolis which has a full array of services and the maximum number of mission terminals, skill trainers, and city decorations can easily have weekly maintenance costs that exceed 500000 credits. If there is insufficient money in the treasury each week to cover maintenance costs, structures within the city will start to decay and need additional funds for repair.

    Mayors have two choices when it comes to funding the city. You can set taxes once you reach Village level, or you can depend on donations. Donations can be made directly to the city by anyone, via the city management terminal. Taxes can only be set and adjusted by the mayor.

    There are three types of taxes. Property taxes add costs to maintenance of player owned structures. The amount taxed is transferred to the city treasury. For example, a small house with a daily maintenance of 384 credits and a tax of 10% would cost 422 credits per day to maintain. Sales tax adds to the cost of items purchased within the city. If your city has a 10% sales tax and you place an item on your vendor marked at 1000 credits, it will actually cost 1100 credits to purchase. Citizen taxes are a tax that is applied to each declared citizen within the city. The tax is deducted from the citizen's bank account at each weekly city update.

    Travel fees are a surcharge that is added to the ticket price for those cities which have shuttle ports.

    City maintenance is collected weekly; at the time your city is eligible to advance. The Galactic Authority assesses your city at this time, and validates it for the week. If you've lost citizens and dropped below the minimum required for your current city rank, the rank will drop. The city radius contracts and civic structures associated with that rank that are outside the radius will be destroyed. Civic structures inside the new radius will be marked as "Invalid", the mayor is notified, and you are given one week to regain rank. If you fail to regain it, those structures are destroyed at the next city update.

    If the city advances a rank, the radius of the city expands and the abilities associated with that rank are unlocked. You can find out your advancement time by checking the city hall terminal (server downtimes affect the actual time this is set for each week).

    The mayor also receives the accumulated experience points for the week during the city update. Mayors receive 100 xp per citizen in the city. There tends to be some lag time between scheduled city updates and the xp being granted, but Mayors receive an email when it occurs.

    The militia is also managed via the city hall terminal. This skill is unlocked when the mayor trains Martial Planning I. To add someone to the militia, they must be standing with the mayor, within 10m of the management terminal. Militia members gain the ability to grant zoning rights, ban and pardon people within the city limits, and warn people within the city limits. Due to a huge number of complaints about the misuse of the warn command, it's slated for removal in the near future.

    City Specialization

    Cities who have mayors with certain skills trained can declare a city specialization. Each city can only have one specialization declared at any given time. There is a fee associated with each specialization:

  # Cloning Lab; Martial Policy II; 80K credits weekly; reduces clone insurance 20%.
  # Manufacturing Center; Fiscal Policy III; 50K credits weekly; adds a 10% bonus to assembly results.
  # Stronghold; Martial Policy III; 150K credits weekly; grants a 50 point defense bonus to militia members against opposing players within the city limits.
  # Medical Center; Civic Policy III; 80K credits weekly; healing in the Medical Center is 10% more effective.
  # Entertainment Center; Civic Policy III; 80K credits weekly; Entertainer healing is 10% more effective in Cantinas and Theatres.
  # Research Center; Fiscal Policy IV; 125K credits weekly; adds a 15% bonus to the experimentation when crafting.
  # Improved Job Market; Civic Policy IV; 80K credits weekly; 20% increase in from missions taken within the city.
  # Sample Rich; Civic Policy IV; 70K credits weekly; gain a 20% bonus of resources gathered while sampling and gain a 10% chance of finding resources.
  # Industrial Society; Master Politician; 200K credits weekly; grants the city the combined bonuses from both Manufacturing Center and Research center.

    City Elections

    Elections are held weekly. If no one challenges the mayor for the job, the mayor is automatically reelected. If there is opposition, the mayor receives an email informing them of the fact. Voters who do not cast a ballot have their ballots automatically cast for the incumbent mayor. In the case of a tie vote, the mayor retains their position. If the incumbent mayor loses, all mayoral powers are automatically transferred to the new mayor. If the new mayor has no skills trained, structures placed by the former mayor will remain, but additional structures cannot be placed by the new mayor until they have gained the requisite skill.

Lastly What shalll we name our outpost?? We can have a contest for the name if you want. Also as stated earlier we are going to need $$ to keep up the buildings and all can help  I hope. This sounds like alot of fun but we probably need to make sure we have the resources.

**End of Transmission**
      Admiral Aslan

[Snoopy]

Welp, methinks you have your work cut out for you in the recruiting department Aslan.  (Wish I had read this earlier today B4 I finished my 1st bank (Correlian natch - Need a bank Simon?  ) Not to worry, now that I know what I need, they aren't that hard to build.
I also built my 1st medium harvester today (more to come). I'll make some available through Sparky(my RBL vender) as I get chance to build them. They're actually MORE complicated to build than I'd thought. I'll know soon as I get a chance to USE this 1 how big an inprovement it ACTUALLY is to the personalized version.
As for houses, there are 3 theme types can build that we SHOULD be able to place at RBL. Tattoinne, Naboo and I believe a 3rd they're calling generic. Currently, I can build small versions of each in several variations, INCLUDING second floor options for some of them. These are best for starter homes for newer players anyway, as the maintenance requirements are lower. I'll add the skill to build larger versions as I get chance.
I'm working on building up my skill level for buildings, but the city hall is still a couple of levels away. I've been held back by a lack of raw materials(so far I've depended on my OWN resources for supply) I'm going to start BUYING raw materials as needed, so anyone that's been harvesting that's interested in selling, check with me. Credits or trades of goods.
Vehicles, buildings and harvesters I'll be making available through Sparky at subsidized prices(ie. below cost) Any specific requests, catch me online or leave a note here on the RBL site.
Just a thought Aslan, but once we DO get the city hall in place, are we going to evenly TAX everyone or vary it depending on building sizes? (some may have an easier time than others) Or are we going to try to maintain it through donations? (starting to sound like RL - ahhhh, the headaches of being MAYOR. )

[M1A2Tanker]

lol, the headaches indeed. 

I tossed some ideas for names out in-game a few days ago.  ReBeLopolis, ReBeLton...something that included the RBL part. 

Course we could just call it "The RBL City." 

[Snoopy]

Drop the 'the' and just call it 'RBL City'.  Short and sweet.      BTW Tank, you WILL like the new breed of harvesters I'm building. My prototypes up and runing, and it's LEAGUES ahead of the personal version. 

[M1A2Tanker]

If I can keep in game long enough to do anything.  Was booted yet again!

[Snoopy]

2 suggestions. Solution #1 - You may have same trouble I had, ie. overheating - cool the sucker down. Heh, that's fairly simple, take the case side off and set up a house fan beside the tower...works like a charm on mine.
Solution #2 - Check and see if you need a defrag.

All else fails, reinstall - painfully time consuming though. Hopefully it doesn't come to that. 

[M1A2Tanker]

Nah, the problem was that Galaxies was eating up all the virtual memory that was allotted.  So I had to do some adjusting.  I'll see if that fixes it tomorrow.

[Holmes]

Nah, the problem was that Galaxies was eating up all the virtual memory that was allotted.  So I had to do some adjusting.  I'll see if that fixes it tomorrow.

Thats a common problem in XP for any apps including the OS itself... the default setting is just not enough to handle xp's poor memory management

[M1A2Tanker]

Well I have over a gig of RAM now, and I shut off the virtual paging memory (which was set to 735 MB prior to that).  Galaxies worked fine prior to me shutting it off. 

Afterwards, it didn't.  So I turned it back on.  Maybe Longhorn will do a better job.

[Snoopy]

Holmes, that kitty looks like it means BUSINESS!  You been cutting back on it's kitty treats again?   

[Holmes]

Well I have over a gig of RAM now, and I shut off the virtual paging memory (which was set to 735 MB prior to that).  Galaxies worked fine prior to me shutting it off. 

Afterwards, it didn't.  So I turned it back on.  Maybe Longhorn will do a better job.

Yea, XP does not like a swapless setup.. setting the swap to about 1500 should do you even better as the 735 setting is the default and is not enough. I had the same issues on mine with the OS itself until I bumped it up to 1500. A friend of mine owns a computer store, he tells me this is a flaw in XP... so go figure I guess.

Holmes, that kitty looks like it means BUSINESS! You been cutting back on it's kitty treats again?

I think it finally had enough of the pigeon tormenting him 

[Snoopy]

Ok, Aslan, I have the skill level needed to build a city hall fer ya...assuming I can find or build a few 'extra' items needed to build it by the time your rdy. (The droid shouldn't be a problem, once Simon gets back from his exams(yes, that IS a component for the beast - a specific type at that. I already checked what he was still offering in stock...didn't have 1 ) Anyone know where I can get supplies in factory crates?  There are a number of specific types I'm looking for, but dang if I know where to look for them. You wouldn't BELIEVE the # of components for THIS one)  Ah, well, it's DOUBLE xp right now......

[M1A2Tanker]

This'll be pretty cool.  ^_^

[Snoopy]

City Hall update. Got the last technical problems dealt with over the weekend. At present I had enough supplies for about 1/2 the complex. I've got 5 extractors working overtime to get sufficient quantities of minerals to finish off the balance.  Probably will have it rdy by Friday. 1 question though...do we want our city hall (and other buildings for that matter..in the Naboo style or the Tatoinne style? We can use EITHER at the RBL site, but NOT the Correllian version.) I'll need to know before I complete the project. *Goes back to his construction work singing (to the tune of Johnny Cash's '1 piece at a time')

"I built it 1 piece at a time, and I did it on Aslan's dime, gonna have the only one there is around. I'm gonna build RBL up in style, we'll drive the imperials WILD, cause the abandoned ReBeL base is back for a while...."

 

[Aslan]

 ;DCooolieooooo!! I vote naboo!!! I wonder tough if we have 10 peeps that have their holmes here yet?