Civilian Industry and expanded economic model!

[Paul M]

Well I'm not sure why you expect some utopia.  Even if we manage to get through the technical hurdles that remain and fusion power becomes commercial why do you imagine the price of electricity will drop to 0?  The fusion reactor costs money, the operation of it costs money, etc.  It is unlikely that a banana republic will be getting one soon so there will be no free power to everyone....just like now there is no push to give every village in africa its own wind turbine (personally I think that is a better use of wind turbines then what I see when I look out the train window) or water source.

The fact that in aurora you can move 10,000 tonne ships, jump to other stars and reprogram your genetic code doesn't mean that a communist (not a marxist-leninsit type) situation exists where everyones needs are looked after, any more than our progress since the 1800's has resulted in the betterment of more than small fraction of the populations lives.  My feeling based on my military leadership training is that communism won't work since it seems to be based on the absrud assumption that leaders will not form.

I don't expect a disatopia but "Star Trek" I doubt ever will form...Gene Roddenberry had some rather odd ideas.  Though I must admit I had a lot of fun with the Klingon suplement for Star Trek The Role Playing Game (by FASA)...the Klingon's view of the Federation was priceless.  It was the "Earth Empire."  What I saw on the second abomination was just too much to take.  But then replicators in the orginal series were far from the things you saw there...and they apparently didn't realize they had the font of youth (save the transporter buffer).  But my mind boggles on any economic system that could provide for the wants of everyone.  The needs yes, the wants no.  And largely it is the wants that drive our economy.

Auroras races eat themselves out of house and home, constantly searching for new minerals to feed their need for them.  The NCC has 3 minearls on the watch list now: Venderite, Boronide, and Gallicite.  All three are low though the Gallicite production is now so ramped up that the stock pile grows.  Boronide being low has meant no new terraformers, or refiners in the last several years.  Vernerite has been historically low but the demand is low so the production-use has been balanced.  But it is a constant balancing act to keep minerals flowing in, not in Sol production is also ramping up (slowly admittely) yet the minerals flowing in from Alpha C are a good part of the total production now...Biforst sent in load of 5x1000 units of various minerals and the posibility of inter colony trade is there now between Arboria and Forge.  Still the source of all of this is the CMC.  Just like the growth of the colonies in Sol was due to the civillian freighters moving people and goods.  When the NCC finds out jump gates are possible I forsee at least a few being built to open up Alpha C to the civillian trade...it has industries producing goods in high demand in Sol.

Ultimately taxes will remain taxes.  Governments need money to work, that is something that has been true since governments were formed and I don't see how that can change.  Even discussions about the new energy market, more or less can't avoid the fact that "someone" has to pay for the new power distribution system.  And power companies barely want to invest in the current system (understandably so)...not to mention the other costs associated with renewable energies.  Then there is the social net...the cost of that is a major part of government spending.  I don't see that going away.  And someone has to maintain all the infrastructure, plus regulate it (remember Adam Smith said more than "let the market alone" he also said "but watch the people who play in it").  All this costs money.

Inevitably I think in Aurora you will end up with the weathy wandering around in smart suits, eating off duranium plates, being chaufered around in grav cars while the masses live somewhat less splenditly.  But probably much better off than we are now.  The crimson world books may be of interest to people as they deal with the disporia situation...unfortunately with a Earth government that sets my teeth on edge.  I am starting to despise the whole "government is evil" schlock.  In the case of the crimson worlds I am finding it hard to believe the intellegence service can wield so much power--but that is a matter of taste.

[Jorgen_CAB (OP)]

I could not agree more... I also understand why there is such fear of Federal state control in the US and conspiracy theories keep overshadowing each other at every turn. In Europe there are much less of that even if the EU to some extent invoke similar feelings in some countries. Luckily I live in a country where people in general feel their government is part of society and not someone to compete against...

When it comes to the state you just need to reduce corruption and increase transparency and eventually people will come to rely and think positive on it, it is after all run by people who are as dependent on it as anyone else in society.

Aurora are definitely about managing resources and scarcity is part of it. If you are running huge surpluses of resources you have just mismanaged your economy and not taken advantage of the opportunity. For me it is rare not to have problems someplace in some way.

Expanding some on the civilian as well as governmental side of economics could be a good thing even if it increase micromanagement to some extent, just make some of it an option to use.

[Paul M]

I should point out that I believe the overall the standard of living of a large fraction of the plantary population has increased since 1800, but there is still a non-tiny fraction of the population that lives below the poverty line.

I would be rather skeptical of defining a priori Aurora as a post-scarcity economy.  My feeling is that there will be the standard spectrum of obscenely wealth to wretchedly poor.  If you are talking Firefly or Babylon 5 I think is up to the player.

I also agree that more economic details should be optional if that is possible.  The problem is that sometimes it isn't possible (for programming reasons) to make them so.   I'm also not really sure how to go about changing things in a way that doesn't make an already fragile economic balancing act tip into an unmanagable mess. 

One idea might be to allow the player to subsidize the formation of CMC on specific locations.  A calculation would then be made and compared to a random roll and you get "we will set up" or "we will not set up."  If not set up then the player could increase the subsidy and another check would be made.  Or maybe make mining companies more like freighter companies in that there is specific existing companies with money to invest and they are modeled more like the shipping firms.  The player could then invest in companies the way you can invest in shipping firms.

[Jorgen_CAB (OP)]

when it comes to Wealth I would like if we could never store it. Instead you set a level at each planet what they will keep and how much go towards the imperial or inter galactic state treasury.

Wealth that is dedicated to the planet that is positive will have a positive effect on population growth, industrial production and trade.

Wealth on the positive side in state coffers could increase efficiency of research, academy recruits and other more centralized functions.

Deficits on a planet would turn into negative effects.

Obviously Wealth would need to tie into civilian economy and unemployed people should become a liability. This would not need too much micromanagement and you could eventually tie the whole mineral system into all facets of the economy and not just into the state economy.

There should also be more ways to subsidize specific areas.

Planets that don't get enough ships to trade their goods should do something about it or at least it should effect them negatively and ultimately increase political unrest. This means there is a price to pay for a government that highjack the civilian fleet with governmental contracts if there is not enough ships to manage civilian trade, other than the price for the contract.

This way you would need think about the imperial as well as planetary economy... part of it should be optional for people that don't like to bother about economics and mainly focusing on building ships.

[Paul M]

I like the suggestions on using wealth as modifier.

Just to point out that the real benifit that I saw from +20% wealth increase technology was not in wealth production but in the fact that infrastructure and trade goods increased by 20% as well.  That had a more substantial impact then the increase in wealth that isn't really being used.  The increase in infrastructure is a significant boost to Sol colonization, but the increase in trade good production is a very noticable income increase for the civillian lines (good or bad that).

At the moment the only real value to wealth is that it facilitates the formation of CMCs, assuming you can afford your empire (at least for me that seems to be easily managable).  Having freighters, and the like cost wealth rather than require maintenance makes sense to me.  Increasing the cost to use the civillians would also make sense, I deal with government contracts to private industry all the time and I can assure you they don't give us "deals." 

The real questions for me on this sort of change are how do set the management level for the player?  What degree of management is fun?  At what point does it become un-fun fiddle-faddle?  I would prefer a more complex system that is "under the hood" where I have different inputs rather than one that is constantly nagging at me to adjust the slider by 0.0001 or something.  But I would also not like to see something like Victoria's market economic model, which to me is quite often counter-intuitive and outright gamey or poorly balanced.   

I would also like to see financial buildings have a more profound effect, right now they seem to be trivial. 

[Jorgen_CAB (OP)]

Another thing that often bothered me is how technology seem to inflate resource cost in a way I think seem unrealistic and also how wealth is tied with usage of resources.

I rather think that production lines be them in industry or ships should increase efficiency with time. That way new stuff is more expensive time wise than things you have great experience producing. Then you would decouple wealth expenditure with resource expenditure and make wealth a combination of refining and time. We all heard the phrase "time is money"...
Retooling of shipyards is many times not enough to symbolize this aspect of productivity.

When you for example build a ship it has a cost in resources which should be roughly the same in resources despite technology level but you also spend some resources on the time spent building. Wealth is the same, the difference is that 80% of the resource spending is in the actual item and about 20% on time while 80% of the Wealth is on time and 20% on the actual item. I don't see a huge problem that you need increasing amount of Newtonian material as technology advances, I just don't see the need to tie resources into production capacity in general.

I don't see any particular problem with increasing the industrial production cost of more complex and technologically advanced equipment. It is logical that we need more advanced and efficient industry to produce more advanced equipment. But I see no direct immediate connection of resource use in relation to industrial construction capacity, these could easily be separated numbers. I also don't see why different levels of technology could not require different resources or rather different ratio of those resources. For example different engine technology could each have its own requirement of resources, some could differ vastly in what they need. I do understand that balancing the resources will be more difficult this way so it might not be worth investing time into.

If we take technology enhancement today and compare with historical similarities and the cost of building them you can easily see how the total cost will roughly be equal in relative terms today as in history. The cost is research and development and building up the infrastructure to build stuff and quantity also means things become cheap over time. There are very few mechanics in the game that really reflects this properly.
Taker a modern US infantry soldier and compare that with a medieval heavy infantry soldier. They mostly wear the same amount of equipment and probably cost about the same for society to train and maintain. The difference is in the technology of their respective equipment and the industry required to refine the minerals and materials as well as constructing the equipment. It might be roughly the same man hours in total but very different in quality and lethality in those two soldiers. The amount of resources needed to equip these two are roughly the same, just very different.

I know that Newtonian resources are not the only resources that is used in the production of stuff but the inflationary cost in resources are not really that necessary. Production capacity to build more advanced stuff on the other hand is necessary as is wealth cost since it is tied into time. The most efficient way to reduce cost in Wealth would be to increase production capacity and/or increase efficiency through large quantities of equipment.

The next point would then be no automatic spread of new technology. There could perhaps be a difference between theoretical and practical technology. Each building on a planet has a tech level, or rather you measure it as one value per building type and colony. You can for example have Industry level 1.14. Level one give you 100BP per factory and level 2 give you 120BP and thus level 1.14 give you 103BP per factory. When you move a factory from one planet to the next you recalculate the level based on the level of the factory you just moved, it would be quite simple.
Once you develop new technology you can either give the player the ability to add a project to upgrade or it is done automatically. This will initially cost some wealth, resources and capacity.

There should perhaps also be slightly less linear effects of things and most things should work more like population growths on worlds. We all know that smaller organizations always work more efficient than large ones. It might not be hugely popular to over encourage spreading out industry and research, but it would make sense from a realistic point of view and leaders with bonuses will still make centralization effective in many ways.
This would give smaller empires some advantages over larger ones since they are more efficient and can integrate technology faster into their societies.

[Paul M]

Just a point about your spread of technology, this hits a computing issue.  The way it is now you can have the following:
  construction_capacity_planetA = tech_level_multiplier*govenor_effect*call_find_number_of(planetA,construction_factories)

For your suggestion:
 Production_capacity_planetA = govenor_effect*(do N=1,number_of_factories (Temp_prod_cap++ = get_tech_level_mulitplier (tech_level_effect (N,list_of_factories))))

For every race in the game, I need to track what the tech level of the factory is indvidually.  I need to do this for 3 types of factories, and two types of mines, plus refineries, construction ships, asteroid miners, terraformers and refinery ships.

I have substantially increased the database size.  I have substantially increased the complexity of the calculation.  I'm not sure if I have slowed the program down substantially or not.  But I'm making far more calls to the database.

[Jorgen_CAB (OP)]

Just a point about your spread of technology, this hits a computing issue.  The way it is now you can have the following:
  construction_capacity_planetA = tech_level_multiplier*govenor_effect*call_find_number_of(planetA,construction_factories)

For your suggestion:
 Production_capacity_planetA = govenor_effect*(do N=1,number_of_factories (Temp_prod_cap++ = get_tech_level_mulitplier (tech_level_effect (N,list_of_factories))))

For every race in the game, I need to track what the tech level of the factory is indvidually.  I need to do this for 3 types of factories, and two types of mines, plus refineries, construction ships, asteroid miners, terraformers and refinery ships.

I have substantially increased the database size.  I have substantially increased the complexity of the calculation.  I'm not sure if I have slowed the program down substantially or not.  But I'm making far more calls to the database.

I work with database oriented programing pretty much every day. You only need to add the values for tech level in the same colony table you get number of factories. For ships and components it is just another value in the table. It would not be a substantial increase of the database.

For example... in the DB there is a table called Population which holds all relevant values such as number of facilities, one is ConstructionFactories. The only thing you need is a new value called ConstructioFactoriesTL or some such that tracks its tech level for that population. Then you have tables for ship components and ships which all could add the relevant values you need to keep track on.

It would certainly not make the game run slower in any way. Its the same SQL call just with one extra parameter.

[Paul M]

Ah ok, I thought you wanted each factory to possibly have its own tech level.  If it is a constant that is body specific it doesn't add the same level of overhead.  When you said each building on a planet I thought you meant each individual factory not individual type of factory.

[Jorgen_CAB (OP)]

No that would not be very useful or user friendly and the player would never see individual buildings anyway.

One value for each building type on each colony or ship component. It would even work the same on a freighter. If you loaded up two mines from two different worlds on a freighter they would combine their tech level, this work equally well for partial load of facilities. This would be for simplicity sake.

[Theodidactus]

I should point out that I believe the overall the standard of living of a large fraction of the plantary population has increased since 1800, but there is still a non-tiny fraction of the population that lives below the poverty line.

I would be rather skeptical of defining a priori Aurora as a post-scarcity economy.  My feeling is that there will be the standard spectrum of obscenely wealth to wretchedly poor.  If you are talking Firefly or Babylon 5 I think is up to the player.

exactly how much inequality an open democracy can tolerate is an area of academic concern at the present, the short answer is "a lot, apparently" provided certain basic needs are met. Wretched poverty has a hard time existing unless you engage in a heck of a lot of imagining, a good example/thought experiment involves apples. If you have some magic way to grow apples in an otherwise barren environment, eventually you need to either give apples away  or hire people to protect them...the trouble is, the more barren the environment, the more you need to incentivize guards and disincentivize apple thieves. Eventually, you're paying so much to protect your apples that it's not worth keeping them. When you consider the titanic energy costs inherent in say, creating an atmosphere on an otherwise barren planet, "Feeding and housing three billion people" becomes almost trivial by comparison. One can imagine a scenario where it would occur, but it's unlikely to match what a typical aurora world looks like.

I would appreciate a more robust economic system precisely because my setting is very much like firefly, with a small number of highly developed worlds and a large number of marginal worlds that are minimally developed, and I think the trade inherent in that would be very interesting.

Frankly though, I sometimes want to blow up every civilian spaceship in orbit cause they clog up the game so much.

[Jorgen_CAB (OP)]

I would agree that if we had more or less unlimited access to extremely cheap energy then poverty as we know it today would most likely be wiped out. But it does not mean there will be economical equality in any way... it might just be the opposite. Even if we could raise the standard of the majority of the worlds poor population to a healthy standard does not mean the gap between those on the bottom and those on top can not widen. You could end up with a sizable part of the population living like billionaires do to day and billionaires of today would have the universe as their playground.

The way I see it Aurora is about resource scarcity and there are not unlimited amount of energy although I would imagine much cheaper than in todays world

[Paul M]

Yeah, not user friendly...but I was a bit rushed and misunderstood what you meant.  I thought you wanted to track the objects individually and have upgrade costs and times.

"unlimited access to cheap energy" is not possible.  To produce the devices that produce the energy plus to distribute it and regulate it all costs money.  It might reduce the cost of electricity but that does not instantly translate into nearly free steel or diamonds for everyone.  So long as you have to do "something" to produce the energy there is an associated cost to it.  Fusion reactors have construction, operation, and decommissioning/radioactive storage costs.  Solar power sats have construction, and operation costs, plus the cost of the reciever station associated conversion equipment and so on.  Renewable energy has the costs of the plant (whatever it is), a complex power distribution grid, storage facilities, auxiallary power plants, and operation of plant (maintenance or what-have-you). 

And all of this must run at a profit or no one will invest in it, and the parts which no one wants to invest in since they don't run at a profit the government will have to provide.  All this creates a situation which is much like what we have today.  Where the technology is present life is good, but even within those places there is a spectrum of wealth.  Currently the "middle class" in most developed countries is considered to be in decline.  Wealth is concentrated more and more in the hands of a small number of individuals.  Those that get in early to the TN boom are likely to be in the same situation as steel barons in the 18th century.  And with wealth comes political power either directly or indirectly.  Democracies can tolerate extremes because people only care about things like voting and political issues when they have their basic needs covered (and their families).  So you can have a large part of the population that is scrabbling to make ends meet, who are not going to be significantly involved in the political process but still a part of the society.   There is also manipulation via advertising and so on that can influence this.

I'm sure there is more to it than that mind you, but the basic level of this stuff is covered in military leadership training.  "Armies march on their stomach" is something they have understood for thousands of years.  And that statement impacts on a lot more than just ensuring you have fed soldiers to keep them falling over from hunger on a route march.  I don't follow your thought experiment at all...I am fairly sure there is some basic assumption that is clear to you that I am not seeing.

[Jorgen_CAB (OP)]

When it comes to energy it all depends. If all you need is a single more or less maintenance free house hold power cell that runs on Sorium fuel and last for ten years for the average household, most of the cost associated with energy cost would vanish including the distribution net (more or less). When the powercell is spent you just drive down to Walmart and buy a new one for $1000 which now last for twelve years since it is a more efficient model.
Even industry would run their own power grid for a very low cost.

If you imagine such a world you might get very close to almost limitless cheap energy with very little cost associated with it.

Otherwise I agree, maintaining a large power grid and power plant facilities are very expensive and is a major part of the energy cost even today.

[Paul M]

Yeah, in an ideal world all things are possible.   But still the powercell isn't going to be made for free.  The sorium has a cost.  The device has a cost.  The reseller must make a profit.  There must be certifications and inspections (on a yearly or more often basis).  Then you have to dispose of the old one.  You need back up power in the advent the thing fails.  Also how big is this thing?  Can you go down to wallmart and get it or does it have to be delievered by truck?  All of this costs money, even if the power is relatively cheap on a per kWh basis. 

Basically entropy always increases, there is no free lunch and perpetual motion machines aren't possible.