The upcoming Demeter update for Dual Universe will bring an overhaul of mining and a geometry reset, but it will also bring something else: territory upkeep fees.
The dev team's goals in putting in territory upkeep include preventing players from just grabbing as much land as possible and as a resource sink to make sure the economy doesn’t get out of control.
As far as plans go, claiming a territory will cost you 500,000 quanta. After the update launches, that territory will be tax-free for five days. When you access the territory interface in the wallet menu, you’ll see your territories and their funds. Every week 1 million quanta will be withdrawn as taxes. If your territory does not pay taxes, it will go offline until you add funds. If a territory is offline for two tax cycles, or two weeks, you lose ownership to your territory and it is considered abandoned.
There is a way you can prevent this, though, if you flag your territory as your headquarters, even if they go offline and you don’t pay taxes for longer than the two weeks allotted. This only applies to a player owned territory and not an organization owned one. The team will keep an eye on this and see how it goes. One thing they’re exploring is whether unsubscribing from the game will cost you your ownership in the future, sometime after Demeter.
You can also transfer territory ownership to other players or organizations by generating a territory token. If your territory is in token status, you won’t be able to start any new building, but mining and industry will continue working as long as the taxes are paid.
Since these systems are new, and the game is under development, things are subject to change. You can read the full proposed territory upkeep details here on the Dual Universe blog.
