Industry Percentage Quandary

[Maltay (OP)]

I am working on background for a game setup based on real world statistics.  I have a quandary.  I am using the following to calculate the number of Conventional Industry (CI) for each faction.

CI = Nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) / 25,000,000,000.  To say the least, the United States (U.S.) and European Union (EU) based factions are the strongest with about 800 CI each.

I also decided to look at the Wealth and Industry Percentages to model efficiency.  The most "efficient" faction is based on Japan, where Population / CI provides the lowest ratio.  I decided that would represent 100% Wealth Percentage.

Ergo, I could then do something like (U.S. Population / CI) / (Japan Population / CI) = U.S. Wealth Percentage, which was about 75%.  So far, so good, the average U.S. citizen brings in less wealth via taxes than the average Japanese citizen.  This extrapolated well to the other factions as well.  For example, though the China based faction has almost three times the population of the U.S. based faction, it no longer earns almost three times the wealth via taxes.  Instead, it earns about 40% of what the U.S. based faction does as wealth via taxes.

I am now wondering about Industry Percentage.  I could effectively do the same thing, and just use the same percentage for Industry Percentage.  However, that would destroy the CI effectiveness of everyone but the U.S., EU, and Japan.  This strikes me as inaccurate just looking at world manufacturing.  For example, electronics in the Pearl River Delta of China and petrochemicals in the Persian Gulf for the Gulf Cooperation Cartel (GCC) nations.  I imagine these strengths should translate in some fashion to CI and Industry Percentage in-game.  I suspect using Nominal GDP as a basis is flawed as Nominal GDP more greatly rewards the end of the supply chain, like Apple retail stores, automobile and aerospace manufacturers, etc.  Of course, if my perception about world economic strength in terms of manufacturing is flawed, please let me know your argument.

Still, all that said, does anyone have any suggestions for calculating Industry Percentage in a realistic fashion, yet such that it does not economically cripple every other faction?  This assumes that Industry Percentage effects CI or Construction Factory (CF) output efficiency.  I am still not sure of the in-game mathematics for this functionality.

[Nathan_]

I'd say leave industry percentage alone. 800 isn't a lot(and everyone else having less is already horridly painful), and aren't you already accounting for it, in a roundabout way via the CI calculation as is?

[Zook]

Wouldn't you have to break up GDP by sector first? Subtract agriculture and services first. Then assign the appropriate Aurora facilities to each nation. For example, the US GDP share of financial services is about 8% now. Give them Finance Centers instead of factories. Likewise, give OPEC nations Fuel Factories. Give major weapons manufacturers ordnance factories, shipyards and fighter factories.

Still, this is a major task and in the end, you'll probably have to introduce an arbitrary fudge factor anyway.

[Maltay (OP)]

I'd say leave industry percentage alone. 800 isn't a lot(and everyone else having less is already horridly painful), and aren't you already accounting for it, in a roundabout way via the CI calculation as is?

You are correct.  I do account for it somewhat based on my Conventional Industry (CI) calculation.

[Maltay (OP)]

Wouldn't you have to break up GDP by sector first? Subtract agriculture and services first. Then assign the appropriate Aurora facilities to each nation. For example, the US GDP share of financial services is about 8% now. Give them Finance Centers instead of factories. Likewise, give OPEC nations Fuel Factories. Give major weapons manufacturers ordnance factories, shipyards and fighter factories.

Still, this is a major task and in the end, you'll probably have to introduce an arbitrary fudge factor anyway.

That is why I went with Conventional Industry (CI) and a pre-Trans-Newtonian start based on Nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  Trying to calculate appropriate percentages for Construction Factories (CF), Fuel Refineries, etc. was too much effort.

[swarm_sadist]

Remember that if you weaken China's economy through the wealth percentage, they will forever be "the poor race" of 'Chinese citizens' in your campaign. They will be poorer than the other races and NPR, no matter how much you try to 'fix' the economy through tech and financial centres. Somewhat of a drag but the economy has not yet been expanded on or fleshed out.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Bear in mind that you can interpret Aurora population numbers as employment totals rather than total population. This lets you count the 'Aurora populations' of countries lower if you so desire.

Or you can futz the populations of low gdp countries to be lower.  This is very relevant in the case of China;  compared to the US or the Euro countries China has enormous agricultural employment- 40% according to the world bank, compared to 2-3% for the US and 5% for the EU nations as a whole.   It is not too far to say that you can safely discount 500 million people or more from China's population for Aurora wealth generation.

I would agree with Zook's suggestion on finance centers - it might be a far better way of simulating real-world financial advantage than futzing the wealth percentages. 

If you apply these suggestions it might look something like this.

For example, though the China based faction has almost three times the population of the U.S. based faction, it no longer earns almost three times the wealth via taxes.  Instead, it earns about 40% of what the U.S. based faction does as wealth via taxes.

base: 1.3 billion Chinese, 311 million Americans, 332 Euro-Areans.

--> 800 million, 300 million, 300 million nonfarm employment.

(Doing a faction with only 300 million people of base industry kind of sucks, by the way!

Hmmmmmm...  You can fit 120-130% conventional start industry plus 300 financial centers in 300 million people.  Do 50% industry for China (or less!) and you get reasonably fair starts.

Give the US and Euro a level of free Wealth Tech and it should even out in terms of wealth. 

Really, unfortunately, to balance China without fiddling with wealth % (and the problems that causes down the line) you probably have to reduce the pop even further. Or the industry even further, though that still gives China a lot of wealth.  I would reduce everyones wealth % to 80% or so in this scenario.

Sidenote: Chinese GDP has been radically increasing in terms of USD. In 2007 it was 3.5 trillion, now it's 7.3 trillion.  So if this set up is near future at all you can feel free to futz their wealth income.

[Maltay (OP)]

Remember that if you weaken China's economy through the wealth percentage, they will forever be "the poor race" of 'Chinese citizens' in your campaign. They will be poorer than the other races and NPR, no matter how much you try to 'fix' the economy through tech and financial centres. Somewhat of a drag but the economy has not yet been expanded on or fleshed out.

I thought that if I researched Expand Civilian Economy by 20% it would improve Wealth Percentage and that I could eventually get China equal to the U.S. with enough research.  Granted, China would need to invest a lot of wealth and probably not catch up, but if the U.S. were spending its wealth elsewhere, China could close the gap.  This feels fair to me as realistically the U.S. has devoted enormous amounts of money to industrial research.  Am I misunderstanding the Expand Civilian Economy by 20% research?  Further, the Research Point (RP) cost of Expand Civilian Economy by 20% doubles with every level.  The Aurora Wiki only shows nine levels, but I recall a post from Steve stating that it can be researched forever if you really feel like paying the geometric cost progression.  Do I remember incorrectly?

[Maltay (OP)]

Really, unfortunately, to balance China without fiddling with wealth % (and the problems that causes down the line) you probably have to reduce the pop even further. Or the industry even further, though that still gives China a lot of wealth.  I would reduce everyones wealth % to 80% or so in this scenario.

What problems does it cause down the line?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

As per what Swarm_Sadist said.

Remember that if you weaken China's economy through the wealth percentage, they will forever be "the poor race" of 'Chinese citizens' in your campaign. They will be poorer than the other races and NPR, no matter how much you try to 'fix' the economy through tech and financial centres. Somewhat of a drag but the economy has not yet been expanded on or fleshed out.

i.e. a 100 million pop Chinese colony will only ever be worth a fraction of a US or Euro colony in terms of wealth.

leading into...

thought that if I researched Expand Civilian Economy by 20% it would improve Wealth Percentage and that I could eventually get China equal to the U.S. with enough research.  Granted, China would need to invest a lot of wealth and probably not catch up, but if the U.S. were spending its wealth elsewhere,

You arn't misunderstanding how it works, but the wealth percentage is seperate from the wealth techs. And precisely because of that RP progression theres no way for China to meaningfully catch up. Even doing the first 2-3 levels of wealth tech is an enormous investment of RP in a conventional start.

Though I seem to remember some sort of 'ur-wealth' tech RP adjustment - I do not remember how it works though and I can't find it through search.

[Brian Neumann]

Though I seem to remember some sort of 'ur-wealth' tech RP adjustment - I do not remember how it works though and I can't find it through search.

When you create a race their is a racial wealth percentage that by default is set to 100%.  If you change this it will multiply all wealth that that race ever generates by the number you set it to.  For instance setting it to 150% will effectively increase how much wealth your race generates by half.  This is a modifier to the base wealth generation number and all other modifiers that apply are taken from the new base.  Conversely setting it to 50% would halve all racial wealth.  For the idea you are working on you might want to leave China at 100% and instead of lowering them raise the US and EU to 120% or so.  This would give them a better wealth income while still allowing them to research the improved wealth tech tree without to much of a handicap.

Brian