A simple fix for a big problem

You may be right gormach. For this to work, the price caps would have to be left off long enough to see an effect, at least a few months. It will take time for miners to begin producing again.

I would also suggest altering the stats of the miners to prevent them from being tax miners. Part of the problem we have right now is that it is usually more profitable to be a tax miner than a mineral or CG producer. It is much harder to drive prices out of controll when you don`t have a cushy tax income to fall back on.

An interesting thought gormach. The main advantage to removing price caps though is that it only requires a minimal change to the existing game code. Stephen is busy enough as it is so the simpler the solution me can come up with the better. As for more fighting, it is my understanding that at very high power, most of the players are not fighting anyway. It would definitely increase activity at lower powers since people would actually have enough minerals for ships.

I thought of that Gormach. In my original post I said that A miners should not be taxed, or if they are, make it a much lower tax.

It would not kill the game. In the same way that you normally don`t maintain massively expensive fleets unless you have a target or are attempting a UW, players would only be able to maintain large stockpiles of minerals over brief time periods when the minerals were needed.

Like I said, Put a tax on minerals and ore. For example, if you had 150 mill rutile, you would pay a 15 mil per turn tax.

Thread creator option: This is the answer
"Removing the price caps would probably help reduce the shortage, but it`d also make minerals way too expensive for newbies / people who can`t spend much time on the game.
Other solutions can be found easily (most minerals list + arti to destroy minerals, tax on large market buys, lower caps on minerals, adjustements on a.miners, etc.). Stephen just needs to sit down 15 minutes and think about it; but that can only be achieved if he starts to actually care about GC and its problems again."

First of all, this is not a UC thread. Please don`t spam it up with UC suggestions. So far Baley is the only really logical response I`ve seen here. And to answer his concerns, the price cap was intended to help the newbies, but all it really does is create shortages for everyone. If I`m a newbie, I would much rather be able to pay higher prices for that last little bit of resource I need than to wait around for ours or days waiting to catch a lucky post. As for the tax on large purchases, that could be circumvented simply by making many smaller buys. If the tax is based on the amount of resources they own it could not be avoided. It would also eliminate the need for caps on minerals since most players would reach a point where it simply becomes too expensive to keep any more resources in stock than what they have.

In response to removing the rich list, I fail to see what purpose that could serve. Generally, those who manage to get on the list have worked very hard to get there and deserve some reconittion. Instead of removing the dineros, perhaps make another artifact that can be used to protect your empire from their effects.