Earning Money

There are a number of ways to earn money, be it either for the empire's treasury or your personal wallet.

Minting

The first step in earning government money, is making the currency.

The currency is gold bullion cronodollars and they are made at a machine shop or bank using metal, magmium, or vulcium.

All the produced bullion goes into the citizen accounts. This distinction is important, citizen money belongs to the city.

It can be argued that a lot of minting isn't required, but it is better to have a surplus in the citizen accounts than letting them go broke.

Government money is then earned through taxation of the citizen accounts.

Taxation

The main way for an empire to make money is through taxation.

Trading between cities is considered wholesale, and as such is not taxed.

Income Tax

Every city report cycle all citizens are payed 25¢. This pay is then taxed by the income tax.

However, when a citizen is about to start a manufacturing process, there is a chance that it will not start the process that tick. Meaning that an income tax of 50% would essentially cut all production in half throughout the whole empire.

It can be advantageous to set the income tax to 100% for a hour and then change it back.

Sales Tax

The wage left after income taxation is spent by the citizen population based on the sales tax. This is also done at the city report cycle.

The optimal sales tax is 50%, that is where citizen spending and taxing is most profitable. But other avatars in the empire and company spacecraft are also affected by sales tax, so a high sales tax can be undesired.

Fleet Tax

Fleet tax is a special sales tax that only apply to fleet spacecraft, this tax has no other purpose then taxing trade transactions made by fleet spacecraft.

The tax goes into the fleet spacecraft's tax account. Whenever a fleet spacecraft hails an empire city, the money in the tax account is transferred to the government account of that city.

Setting a high fleet tax is beneficial when using fleet spacecraft to accumulate income, since it minimizes the need to board the spacecraft and manually empty the ship account. Even a fleet tax of 100% can be useful for fleet harvester ships, but make it would make all fleet trader ships go broke.

Spacecraft Income

It is possible to increase the government account income with the use of spacecraft. They can be automated using an officer, making it a good alternative to taxation.

Do note that fleet tax may make this harder or easier depending on method chosen.

Passenger Transport

Using a spacecraft to transport passengers between solar systems is static income. It also moves citizen money from one city to another as the passengers bring along their belongings.

The passenger capacity of a spacecraft is limited by its quality level, making it not all that profitable at the lower quality levels.

Cryo-berth passengers do not have any money, so there is no money to be earned transporting them.

Passenger fares:

	Third Class	Second Class	First Class
Same city	0¢	0¢	0¢
Same world	3¢	6¢	9¢
Same system	30¢	60¢	90¢
Other system	300¢	600¢	900¢

Trading

It can be profitable to automate a spacecraft to run trade runs between cities.

Buying low and selling high is key for it to work, but this only works if the city uses the commodities quickly so the storage is never full.

It is possible to intentionally cause short supply of some commodities in order to drive the price up. Caution should be taken though, doing so with critical commodities can lead to problems in the cities.

Harvester

Setting up automated spacecraft with harvester bays can be very profitable. Making them harvest resources and sell them to cities.

Especially profitable for advanced and rare resources.

Personal Wallet

Filling your personal wallet is required in order to trade with cities and other empire.

Mayor's Money

Being in control of a city allows you to withdraw money from the city's government account directly into your own pocket.

Worker Pay

An empire can set rewards for certain actions, such as exploration and fighting enemies.

A small pay is also issued for doing construction labor and running manufacturing processes.

The rewards and pay accumulate as government debt, which can then be redeemed at a bank.

Jobs

Owning a spacecraft allows you to perform jobs given by citizens.

Jobs pay extra for transporting commodities and passengers to other cities, along with other types of jobs such as bounty hunting and pirate elimination.

For more information, see the Jobs page.

Loan

It is possible to take a loan at a bank.

The loan is taken from the city's citizen account and does not need to be paid off, this makes it a wonderful way to get some starting cash.