On March 5, you said you were stepping back from the game. Are you sticking around? Did something change?

It's still true. I'm continuing to play but I am reducing activity temporarily because life is taking more time 🙂

I'm just busy and have been doing too much, frankly. Gateways, my 25 bases at peak, upkeep and fuel for all gates, ISDB. So reducing my base count is an easy way to reduce the stress. I have 27 ships and it requires over 1.5 hours to send out ships per day at max load.

Background

How did you learn about PrUn?

I found out about PrUn from a sponsored ad in a ImKibitz Cities Skylines 2 video

What are your long-term goals? Would you care to share anything about your real-life background/profession?

Long-term, I wish to grow ISDB to a valuation of 1 billion CIS eventually. Mid-term, I want to see the inter-CX gates, Benten ↔ Insitor gates, and Benten ↔ Arclight gates completed. I will be privately funding the efforts from my company and also through ISDB loans to those interested. However, this will happen after I step down from the Gateway Coordinator position very soon.

I am a mid-level gameplay programmer IRL.

What does your nickname and company name mean?

Stella Foundation (previously Stella Inc.) is the name of an imaginary megacorp set in the EVE Online universe. When I started playing PrUn I decided Stella Inc. was a good name for my company as I plan to become a megacorp.

I changed my Stella Inc. name to Stella Foundation at some point to reflect the increasingly charitable actions of the company.

Why did you decide to run?

I decided to run to help out the "Regional Development First" faction. (That's not the official name; no one has given it a name. I'm just using it to describe the group.) I strongly believe in using taxes for development of other planets and important regional infrastructure.

What do you think is the most important issue in this round of elections?

The most important issue is definitely whether the government should allocate tax revenue toward regional development. I'd like a sufficiently large portion of the tax collected to be put to that use. I believe the other factions/parties seem to want very low or no portion of the taxes to be put to such use.

Policy

Why is your program better than the program of the other party?

Establishing long-term regional institutions by leveraging public funding removes the uncertainty and inconsistency of private funding. Surely, the projects being developed cannot be entirely funded by public taxes. However, a stable baseline collection from a large tax base can augment private donations to the cause.

It also spreads the costs way more equitably: those using more advanced workforces pay more taxes. These players are also the most likely to benefit from the regional development. They may not benefit from every project but they will benefit from the economy-stimulating effects of this infrastructure which will strengthen the CX over time.

What regional infrastructure should Benten develop?

Benten has run out of triple-green starter planet plots. Benten should develop new player base options to give new players options to expand in their choice of industry. This can involve developing entirely new planets where needed and providing existing small planets with required POPI and warehouse upgrades. The gateways also continue to require huge amounts of funding to be built.

Polling

Is there anything Benten should do differently for future elections?

I don't think so. The government has feedback forms out, the discussions are happening openly in the planetary chat, and participants are being interviewed. I believe this is how elections should be. There haven't been any strawman attacks; there's no bad blood from my side and I don't think there's any from other parties either.

Anything else readers should know?

I think people ought to understand that taxes charged are an extremely low hit to players' revenue and profits. However, when these small taxes are collected from a large tax base over a period of time, it becomes a large amount which can be effectively used for regional development.

The net impact on the individuals is almost to the magnitude of a rounding error. People don't even consider taxes of planets when building bases. Also, a good time to mention that starter planets have low tax ceilings so the governments cannot impose unbearable taxes in the first place.