(I am assuming I can still reward loyalty up to 5k) for the first scenario and 3rd Scenario
Scenario 1: if I am a tax miner and all I care about is exploring, using retals when needed, and gordoing. The amount of loyalty bonus would be minimal as potentially loyalty would decrease for each battle lost. Without being specific on a loyalty floor or how much loyalty you lose, I don`t see specifically the balance of this and is rewarding those who are attack crazy and hit careful or win from 2x most of the time. You also rewarding the more active players with a loyalty bonus/income bonus which is fine, but should be capped
Scenario 2: If we are no longer allowed to reward, the potential income strategies for certain empires would be harmful to the races economy if they could have 5k loyalty. For instance, if you took guardians loyalty income away through battles since they can`t reward. You are forcing guards to have to gordo as their income is purely based on their tax mod with 0 or negative loyalty.
Scenario 3: if I can reward, but also increase my loyalty greater than 5K for over a period of time, how is this economy balanced in scale. A higher loyalty for tax miner goes way farther than a loyalty reward for tax viral or guard. Sure there are different ships, upkeep to take into consideration, but the loyalty calculation would need to be complex to resolve the racial bonus income/loyalty balance.
The simpler way is have empires rely less on loyalty for their base income and their bonus income be only related to empire happiness/loyalty that only lasts after X turns before resetting to 0. I get the idea and do think it is a good one, but I need more specifics before it makes sense to me to be for/against it. There a quite a few empires who only play defensively or never attack or have a fleet for defense and I do fear they would get the short end of the stick with this suggestion.
Maybe I am overthinking this, but I think Ren is looking at this too.