But that's kinda the point - you have an option to buy all the TN elements depriving the civilian sectors of them. But whether or not any TN minerals end up in civilian hands the money generation (per capita income) is the same. Which means that the civilian sector is not using TN elements.

That's a problem with per capita income, and does not mean that civilians aren't using TN resources. Also, buying TN resources is more expensive than simply taxing the civilian extraction. +150 compared to -250 I believe.

But that was kinda my point. A small recap: The original poster wants to implement the unemployment mechanic. Someone points out that the societies in Aurora are post-scarcity. This is countered by claiming that TN elements make the economy a scarcity based one.

Except currently civilian ships just "spawn" without any resources. The civilian sector is not using TN resources because the game does not track civilian TN resources. It doesn't mean that civilians would not have a use for large scale applications of TN resources.

What I tried to do was to point out that TN elements are being used only in very specific industries, relating mainly to military and space travel. However the larger civilian economy is either not using them (which was the first point, about being able to deprive civilians of TN minerals) or using them in such a small amounts that the scarcity is artificial. And if the elements were being used in "minute (grams to micrograms) weight" then having planets with millions of tonnes of them, coupled with recycling, would remove the scarcity. Ergo, existence of TN elements does not prevent societies in Aurora from being post-scarcity ones.

Again, there being no consequences to starving a civilian market of TN resources is because there is no mechanic to simulate this. My suggestion was adding a consequence. Also, rare earth metals are used in minute sizes in EVERYTHING, requiring several thousands of tonnes to be processed and used every year by perhaps only half of the planets current population. Having a material that defies the laws of physics would be sought after in everything.

But that's the thing - Aurora is already simulating that. Currently all people on a planet are part of one of three industries.

Agriculture and Environmental - feeds and houses people. The percentage of people employed in this sector increases with colony cost of a planet. For Earth it's five percent. For a planet with colony cost 2.0 it's 15%. The only exception are orbital habitats which have 0% dedicated to this sector.
Services Industries - The self-regulating, self-supplying civilian sector such as banking, household goods manufacturing, transport, entertainment and other services. The percentage of people employed in this sector rises with the population size and caps at 75% (I don't remember at which point).
Manufacturing - People employed by you or not employed at all. This is the least important part of the economy and as such only people who are not employed in the previous two go here. That means it's entirely possible to have a planet with no one working in manufacturing (for example a large planet with colony cost 5.0 would have well over 25% people in agriculture, the rest in services and no one in manufacturing).

20% of the population free for manufacturing is not the same as 20% unemployment. Also, a single "factory" employs millions of people, and that is just the TN factories. There are still factories that are (implied) making trade goods and regular conventional goods.

All of the above means that on a well developed, habitable planet you'll have 20% people who are employed by either you or not at all. Which means the larger the population, the more difficult it will be to provide enough buildings/complexes to find them work and more of the new, proposed social structures to appease the poor. Which means that the larger the population, the less viable it will be. Which is why I'm saying that it has to be balanced and why I'm saying that no one is addressing this problem.

Well uncapping the service industry or have conventional factories pop up and pump out trade goods would be one suggestion to fix this problem. There is no solution to this problem, because this problem does not exist in the current game, ergo, no reason to have a fix for this problem.

This also means that non-habitable planets produce less poverty as larger numbers of people are automatically employed in agriculture and services. Which is counter-intuitive as running infrastructure (keeping everyone alive in a hostile environment) should cost money.

Good suggestion, have undeveloped colonies cost wealth. Just because it's not in the game, doesn't mean it will never be.

I don't know about you but I'm running into red in my games quite often, even with relatively large populations (over two and a half billion people). As such I'm in no hurry to add more money sinks.

I've found that research is the primary money sink for me, with ship construction and facility construction being far behind. Everything else is basically non-existent. If I run into financial trouble, I just leave a couple of research labs idle until I'm a billion in the green.

All TN elements are mined or can be bought by you. Ergo no TN elements are ever going into the civilian sector. So how can household items be made of the stuff?

The civilian mining companies will give you the option to buy their goods, although anything you do not buy ends up (apparently) in the civilian marketplace.

Also, let's look at the tonnages. A full scale factory, of which there are only a thousand or so on a whole planet, needs only one hundred and twenty tonnes of TN elements. As such those elements are almost certainly used in only trace quantities for special hardware used in very special circumstances. The only things that seem to be using TN elements in bulk are vehicles (including missiles). As such civilian economy can very well be a post-scarcity one even if national (and very specialized industries) are not.

Rare earth metals, as well as some platinum group metals such as osmium and iridium are found in very limited quantities on Earth.  In all their applications they are used in minute (grams to micrograms) weight. However, they are so effective in their function that they are highly sought after in both military and civilian applications. It is not so bizarre to think that a material that can defy the laws of newton would not find demand in a civilian marketplace. Sorium by itself would be sought after everywhere.

As far as poverty (due to unemployment) goes my answer is: no. My doubts about balancing the stuff has still not been addressed and as such I continue to believe that such a system would severely limit possible starting conditions. For example, let's say the poverty is balanced for a standard start with five hundred million people and a thousand conventional factories. What happens when I want to start a conventional game with a planet of nine billion people but only one thousand factories? In such a situation I would be crippled due to constant unemployment rate of over twenty percent. Ergo, such a start would not be feasible.

While this is very gamy, I would say that the unemployed people in a highly developed nation (with a well developed service sector) would be able to find work in the service sector with ease. A nation that relies on industry (or worse yet resource extraction) for most of it's GDP would be hard hit from unemployment. A planet with 9 billion people would have a large amount of people outside the TN industry, but there would be plenty of people in the wealth and trade menu making trade goods.

In any case, wealth does not do enough in game so 50% unemployment would not affect the nation in a noticeable way. Maybe if there was social assistance or entertainment funds (like Masters of Orion) that improves happiness, or any government expenditures.

My biggest problem with the idea is that Aurora seems to use a simplified economy with elements of both communism and capitalism (the state builds the factories, and seems to pay the workers, but there's also a civilian side economy on the side with civilian shipping). And that's simply because it's much more fun to use an intuitive and simple economic model, while modern day capitalism certainly is neither.

The second is that trying to define the economy just by the player's actions is kind of silly. If a planet can support itself with 20% of the population working service and agriculture jobs while 80% work in the shipyards, it can support itself just as well with 20% of the population working service and agriculture jobs and 80% playing golf. Obviously this is an oversimplification of the situation; it might be better to have a different 20% work each weekday, but the point stands. Trying to model poverty in Aurora would be trying to impose present day issues on a hypothetical situation that has almost nothing in common with the present.

Also, wealth needs to have more uses than simply paying for research, 1-1 for resources used, corporate subsidies and ground force maintenance.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Wealth doesn't do enough given the vast game resources that go into calculating it. Its frustrating when you have all these civilian lines clogging up your sky for only minimal purpose.

I would just like to point out that aurora is NOT a post scarcity economy. When you say you can build a robot to take care of all your needs, this robot is not made from regular materials, but Duranium.

I disagree with this though. There's no compelling case why anything domestic would need to be made out of duranium. Could be plastic, really. SHIPS and MINES and LABS and STATIONS need to be made of these awesome science materials to have tolerances to sustain digging into the earth or whipping around at 5000kps or seeing distant objects instantly through graviton flux other awesome science things. A home care robot is a home care robot. It needs to fetch bannanas and clean things.

When you say your nation has Fusion power, it's actually Sorium power. Instead of an economy based on the supply and demand of metals and rare earth metals, the economy is based on trans-Newtonian elements.

THIS is more on point, however, what to call it is a bit cosmetic. To give an example that's more pertinent to what post-scarcity means for most science fiction: I have a hard time imagining a future where my United Nation of Earth are capable of adding whole atmospheres to planets light-years away, but still struggling to build public housing for a large percentage of the population (~15%+) back home. It's not only the case that this is weird to think about materially...it's weird to think about transpiring in any democracy that could fairly call itself a democracy. 15% of people in abject poverty is a huge and visible and readily predictable voting block. (it's about 5% in the united states, and the problem is so severe we allocate roughly a 4th of all our resources to fighting it). Regardless of what miraculous science brings it about, it's difficult to imagine a situation where humanity has itself straightened out enough to create whole worlds out of lifeless rock in a few years, but not enough to feed a third of its population.

I CAN imagine this sort of thing happening, of course, but it would require setting-specific concerns that are rather different from what I have seen in nearly all aurora fiction...but maybe we want that.



Before Aurora I played a lot of GalCiv and I really did like how it made me feel when I was at the wheelhead of a big economy, one that whimsically operated more like a "real" economy. The thing to keep in mind though is that poverty/scarcity considerations like this open the doors to a lot of stuff that could be good or bad (I would welcome it, but that's not the best indicator of its friendliness  ). Basically, you're going to want some kind of government system to go with it (IE one where you get to pick whether you're a democracy, a corporate-lead directorship of some kind, a star empire lead by a tyrannical dude in a black cape, ect) since the challenges posed by this kind of scarcity virtually demand different responses that different players will want to play: "Send them to the slave pits" vs. "Everyone has a job in this bright new future which looks a lot like star trek" vs. "To the tenement houses and dole lines for you". Galciv had a fairly cool government model which allowed for elections, and a taxation system that had a built-in laffer curve.
I've tinkered with building involved political systems for aurora but abandoned them because I felt it was too specific to how I played, and most people would find it burdensome...


...but let's ask, since the simplest way to imagine a government is a collective insurance policy against the very thing this thread is talking about (Unemployment/Poverty/Crime) do you think we should try to create a system that incorporates this stuff, my factional system, and possibly some simple mechanisms simulating elections/totalitarian leadership? or is that just silly.

[...] but of course we're able to imagine basically any scenario we want for the future, so projecting forward isn't the best idea. [...]

The military oppressors could be more effective, sure, but how about a change in society in general. Even in school we already discussed a model in economics classes, that the progressing automation might eventually lead to pure labor jobs becoming pretty much obsolete, and remaining are only a limited supply of intellectual occupations. A new working morale for this future might be to only work for around 3 months a year straight, while some specialist might do it steadily, and other even abandon it all. If rising education manages to finally put a bar on continuous population growth, and we reach a point where all of this stagnant number of humans can be fully provided with all necessities even with thanks to automation low employment rate, it might just work and come to this.
There is also a star trek tng episode where they find a cryo capsule of 20th century people who have difficulties understanding the origin of working morale in a future that provides shelter, food and anything basically to a quite luxury standard without having to earn it. But the captain explains that schooling your knowledge and expanding understanding is a drive on its own, as well as finding your sense in life by discovering your talent (might even just be art). I still have some problems understanding why some would under these conditions assign as enlisted in the military, but then again I have no idea of this mind set at all ( - a friend in school wanted to join the trade marine, basically leaving anything and anyone behind him despite having good enough grades to study nearly anything.... I don't get it).

I would vote that in a future of high technization it is perfectly possible to have a huge percentage of people just dedicated to whatever their humanistic business is - art, superfluous work just for the sake of fulfillment, or education, or nothing. Shuffling positions might make appear unemployment higher than it really is too, just because there aren't as much available.
It is certainly not as efficient as if everyone was using resource to the fullest "in the service of the empire", but it might just be that freedom from non fulfilling labor need that pushes happiness of a population, so unemployment could be a sign of wealth and content at this age.

Utopian, but I found it absolutely worth the thought.

What I was trying to say earlier is that this scenario you're describing fits virtually none of the campaigns i've actually seen on the forum. I think most players would find it bothersome, rather than cool. I personally would love it, but it doesn't jive well with either a "united planets" scenario or a "country X themed scenario" which is what most of the fiction I've seen really is.

True, very true. The point being that the suggestion above drew a response that basically said "too difficult", that it would be difficult if not impossible to model, and my suggestion was that it might be more feasible than that.

I like have the option for additional complexity. After all, Aurora by far is much more complex than any of the extant 4x games on the market by a wide margin. It also has a resultant steep learning curve, and a commensurate large number of fairly smart adherents as a result.

I would love to see the politics and diplomacy expanded. Any additional features added to the AI subroutines would also be great. The current discussion around limiting NPR surveying was a pretty cool, as that resulted in the NPRs being channeled toward the players, picking up the games activity early rather than later and preventing NPR sprawl and slowdowns.

A system that helps explain the "why" of the interstellar aims of a PC race would be neat fluff, and great for additional RP. Since Steve is actively interested in such systems, its not a bad idea to kick it around and see what may show up in game at some point.

As far as the unemployment numbers, I agree and the examples you gave are quite good. Arguably, the PC race in Aurora would be a "superpower" since they dont really have any competition, or other powers to contend or ally with (in a basic non-mult-faction start). The effects of long term unemployment are corrosive socially, and thats one of the challenges presented when you start looking at long term effects of either repression (making folks mad long enough = some form of revolution) or compensation (buying off the unemployed via social welfare/the Dole) both end up equally ineffective in the long run.

This isnt new by any stretch. Various historical empires struggled with this issue repeated. The phrase "bread and circuses" was coined as a direct result of the Roman Senate, and later Emperors, buying off the populace with subsidized or free grain and entertainment. It eventually corrupted large portions of the economy, and eventually led to serious economic decline in conjunction with the devaluation of the Roman denarii, as the Roman government lessened the amount of silver in their currency by adding higher quantities of base metals in order to print more coins (sound familiar? ).

The challenge from a game perspective is that it could provide and interesting dynamic for the player to work around. In addition to the cost of fleets/trade/exploration/colonization, the underlying economy would have to be monitored. A lot of 4x games do this already.

If the player isn't interested, it could be a toggle just like the spoiler race, so you could select spoilers, political systems, and advanced economics, for example, or none at all.

Skipping the politics, which is a no no here, the underlying idea has some merit.

Actually some of that could be modeled with the current "political stability" factor, by modifying that.

A lot of dystopian sci-fi focuses on exactly that scenario, a massive socialist system straining under poor management, huge social welfare costs, and thowing people off of the homeworld for just about any excuse to cut down the massive overpopulation problem (Christoper Nuttal's stuff comes to mind). All of those factors could be modelled into an adjustment of the political stability factor. As stability decreases, production, wealth generation, and control all decrease.

This happens right now with colonies. If you have too much overpopulation, or not-enough protection, than the stability starts to decrease. Thats corrected by either solving the underlying cause, or dropping military units on the colony to stop the decay.

Same effect could be done with the current system, merely by adding causality that would cause it to drop.

Massive unemployment? Stability starts to decline.
Racial wealth goes negative? Stability starts to decline.
Crime would be harder to model, except say as a an additional item that when stability drops, and stays depressed, crime can be generated. That in turn acts as a brake on stability increases, making it harder to correct in the short term.

Quick fixes would be ye old repression, as modeled currently, fixing the underlying issue (time and money), and possibly some new leader stats.

Throw in Theodidactus's political system idea, and you could have a pretty interesting RP setup for WHY the humans/betas/bug-eyed monster player races are scouting and colonizing the stars.

I could provide a bit of a rebuttal there, but unfortunately it would derail a bit of the thread, so if you'd like to discuss it, we should probably go to the off topic section.