Introduction
This document describes the in game Arcadian Senate, how it functions, who can join it and what benefits it could have.
The senate works by having members vote on motions proposed by other members.
Purpose
The purpose of the senate is to allow players a degree of self regulation and power over an aspect of the server's functioning. Additionally, it can serve as an influence in upcoming economic features.
The current purpose of this document is to serve as an early outline of the Senate concept and provide ideas for its utilization.
Senate powers
This section describes the powers held by the senate, and what members of the senate can vote on. All topics that can be voted on require a simple majority to pass. Abstentions count as votes against a motion.
Evictions
Members of the senate can select a shop owner and vote to have them evicted. To start the vote, one of these reasons must be chosen:
- Too few shops
- Unprofitable (Doesn't produce enough taxable income)
- Inactive owner
- Unstocked shops
Taxation
Members can select a shop and vote whether to raise it's tax rate, lower it, or suspend taxation of it for a pre-set duration. This includes player shops owned by members of the senate.
There will be a hard limit of 3 shops where taxation can completely cut.
Note: Yes, the corruption that can bring about is intended. If players start bribing senators to slash taxes, that's litty.
Rent
Exactly the same as the last section, but in regards to player shop rents.
Undo Emperor's Order
Related to the last 2 sections. Members of the senate can vote to undo rent and tax changes instituted by the current Emperor. If the a vote to undo the emperor's order goes through, the emperor will not able to modify the tax rate or rent of the shop which had it's change undone.
Undo Automatic or staff eviction
Members of the senate can vote to undo an eviction if it was done by a member of staff or by the automatic eviction system. This can only be used on shops that were evicted less than a week from the moment of the vote's start.
When this vote goes through, the shop is granted back to its original owner and the insides are restored.
Note: This would require storing not only a clean version of a player's shop, but also a back up of the shop before the eviction to restore it. This isn't too difficult, but still something to note.
Joining
To be able to join the senate, it is required that a player be valuable enough to warrant joining. As such, players must fulfill one of the following criteria for joining.
- Age
- Not actual age, mind you. But rather, accounts that have been on the server for a minimum of a year (Or more, if too many people qualify), and have a minimum of 350 hours played (around an hour a day)
- Player shop ownership
- Similar to the previous point, except it requires less time. If a player has owned a player shop in Latium for longer than 5 months, or if their shop has generated more than 1,000,000 Denarii in profit, they are entitled to join the senate.
- Wealth
- Players with more than 5,000,000 Denarii (Or more, if too many players qualify) are automatically entitled to join the senate.
- Support for the server (?)
- Donators (Tier 2 and up) are automatically entitled to join the senate.
This one feels iffy, but it might be unfair to those that support the server to leave them out of benefits that could apply to them for their support for the server.
When a player becomes eligible to join the senate, they can do so freely (Unless a set member limit has been reached).
These qualifications would be validated once a day, and if a player fails to meet them 3 times in a row, they will be automatically removed from the senate.
Other features
This section describes other, miscellaneous, features of the senate system, and features to support the senate system.
Discord Support
This includes special "Senate" text and voice channels on discord for members of the senate to talk in. Additionally, Discord's API can be used to make it possible to vote (and maybe start votes) over Discord.
Access to the behind the scenes of the server
I don't know, just sharing screenshots and news of stuff the staff is working on for the server that regular players won't see.