NC Part 10: January 2046 - December 2046

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

11th January 2046
Research into the J7500 Jump Drive has been completed. We will now be able to build jump-capable ships up to 7500 tons, although the construction of such a ship will have to wait until the Gallicite shortage is addressed. Our scientists turn their attention to the challenge of improving the production rate of our supply factories

16th January 2046
The three Kongos enter Piraeus to begin a geological survey. The Perseus class ships are working on a geological survey of Plataea, adjacent to Syracuse.

22nd January 2046
The Fast Colony Fleet returns to Earth after its second trip to Thebes and begins loading colonists and infrastructure for the next trip.

2nd February 2046
Three Themistocles freighters complete their refit to the Themistocles II design. As the Fast Colony Fleet only left a few days ago it is ordered to wait while the three freighters load up automated mines and catch up.

23rd February 2046
The gravitational survey of Ionia, adjacent to Syracuse, is completed. No new jump points are found.

12th March 2046
The gravitational survey of Piraeus is finally completed. Due to the high mass of the star and the correspondingly large survey area, it has taken six months for five survey ships, one of which is equipped with advanced gravitational sensors. Three new jump points are located, all of which are closer to the primary than the entry point from Tegea. Bacchus heads in-system from the Tegea jump point to investigate one of the new jump points while the ships of the First Survey Squadron head for another.

14th March 2046
The geological survey of Plataea, adjacent to Syracuse and two jumps from Thebes, is completed. Several system bodies have mineral deposits, including an extremely valuable discovery on the fifth moon of the innermost gas giant. The moon, an airless chunk of rock 3000 kilometers in diameter, contains substantial deposits of all eleven trans-newtonian minerals and all deposits have accessibilities of at least 0.5. This is the best location the Commonwealth has ever found for automated mines. Plataea is six jumps from Sol, and three from Thebes, so it is a long journey, but the mineral wealth of the moon is well worth it. As soon as any freighters can be spared, we will start moving automated mines into Plataea.

22nd March 2046
The slower colony fleet, comprising Mayflower, Solon, Kresta and a Themistocles class freighter, returns to Earth. The Themistocles enters the shipyards for refitting to a Themistocles II and Kresta is detached for mineral collection from Toronto and Vancouver. Mayflower has served well but with three Artemis class ships in service and a fourth due in May 2046, it is time for her retirement. For now, she will be mothballed in case she is needed in an emergency.

A new Themistocles II is completed by the Commonwealth shipyards. She will remain at Earth until the Fast Colony Fleet returns.

23rd March 2046
Menelaus transits one of the three unexplored jump points in Piraeus and finds a very unusual system. Although the primary is a G6-V, one of the most common star types, there are eleven rocky planets and not a single gas giant. The first planet is 63m kilometers from the star and the outermost is an amazing 476 billion kilometers away. It would take our fastest ship over four years to reach it. Only one planet has an atmosphere and even that is Nitrogen

[miketr]

Interesting update Steve.  It occurs to me that if there is such a tight mineral crunch now very strong consideration might be given to just wrapping up current exploration and then mothballing the survey fleet and the linked Jump Carriers.  It sounds like good deposits of minerals have been found whats needed is to get them into production.

What the Chinese are going to do I have no clue as with their fleet in ruins and their own warp point in enemy hands I would think they are in a lot of trouble.

[Father Tim]

I expect the Chinese fleet will head to the (inner) asteroid belt, drop  their speed (and hence their enginge signature) quite low, change directions and try to sneak up on the Gitanyow picket at the warp point.

[MWadwell]

28th November 2046
The Fast Colony Fleet arrives at Thebes and unloads its cargo, taking the population of Thebes-III  to 1,514,000 and the number of construction factories to sixteen. This makes use of all available workers and should be sufficient, for the moment, to allow Thebes to build its own infrastructure. Future trips from Earth will likely carry automated mines.

30th December 2046
The Fast Colony Fleet returns to Earth and is joined by the two recently overhauled colony ships, taking its strength to seven freighters and four colony ships. After resupplying and loading new cargo, the fleet sets off for Thebes with 200,000 colonists and seven automated mines.

Unfortunately, carrying only 200K colonist per round trip, this only adds up to 1.2M colonists per year - or approx 53M colonists until Nemesis arrives. It might be an idea to "delay" the arrival of Nemesis for a few more years......

Also, why are you only shipping automated mines - you could ship a mix of automated and manned (at almost half-half ratio), which would allow you to keep using the automated mines in Sol for a little while longer.

Also, Thebes now has 16 construction factories, each producing 12/14 build points/points of infrastructure a year. Exactly how many people can be supported by a single point of infrastructure?

18th December 2046
An Artemis II is overhauled on Earth. Our shipyards now stand completely empty and Gallicite supplies are less than 100 tons.

As seen (above), the number of colonists being "exported" per year is pretty small - and the biggest bottleneck is the shortage of raw materials.

How are the other nations going w.r.t. raw materials? (As they wouldn't have access to the colonies like Thebes.)

[vergeraiders]

[Unfortunately, carrying only 200K colonist per round trip, this only adds up to 1.2M colonists per year -

Or worse, whats the current growth rate of the commonweath? Is 1.2 Mil a year even breaking even?

Mike S.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Interesting update Steve.  It occurs to me that if there is such a tight mineral crunch now very strong consideration might be given to just wrapping up current exploration and then mothballing the survey fleet and the linked Jump Carriers.  It sounds like good deposits of minerals have been found whats needed is to get them into production.

What the Chinese are going to do I have no clue as with their fleet in ruins and their own warp point in enemy hands I would think they are in a lot of trouble.

That's a good idea. I might let the grav surveys continue though and just mothball the geo survey ships

With regard to the Chinese, the jump point isn't in Gitanyow hands as the Gitanyow don't know where it is and don't have any grav survey ships. They have their own resource problems at the moment and their focus is till on defence.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Unfortunately, carrying only 200K colonist per round trip, this only adds up to 1.2M colonists per year - or approx 53M colonists until Nemesis arrives. It might be an idea to "delay" the arrival of Nemesis for a few more years......

Also, why are you only shipping automated mines - you could ship a mix of automated and manned (at almost half-half ratio), which would allow you to keep using the automated mines in Sol for a little while longer.

Also, Thebes now has 16 construction factories, each producing 12/14 build points/points of infrastructure a year. Exactly how many people can be supported by a single point of infrastructure?

18th December 2046
An Artemis II is overhauled on Earth. Our shipyards now stand completely empty and Gallicite supplies are less than 100 tons.

As seen (above), the number of colonists being "exported" per year is pretty small - and the biggest bottleneck is the shortage of raw materials.

How are the other nations going w.r.t. raw materials? (As they wouldn't have access to the colonies like Thebes.)

Nemesis will arrive on time. I expect the Commonwealth will start to increase the number of colony ships once the supply of Gallicite resumes. Also don't forget that the population of Thebes will also grow naturally over time so it won't just be those colonists transported from Earth.

With regard to the automated mines, I am shipping those from the Vancouver mining colony as that is only mining Duranium and Corbomite anyway. The twenty mines on Toronto will remain in place for now. I  want to retain the available population on Thebes because I also want to ship over some supply factories and more construction factories and also start building a shipyard. Over the next few years, the hub of overhaul and resupply needs to be Thebes rather than Sol.

Each point of infrastructure costs 2 BP to build and will support 10,000 colonists.

With regard to other nations and minerals:

The Chinese are short on Boronide but they now have twenty automated mines on an asteroid mining Boronide and intend to build more. They are also running into a Gallicite shortage but that is more of a problem for them as there are only 71 tons of Gallicite left in the Sol system. They are going to have get lucky next time against the Gitanyow, come to an agreement with another race for supplies or attack someone.

The Islamic Alliance has their fleet mothballed while they research jump drives so they won't be doing much until 2049.

The Terran Union has corrected its Uridium shortage through establishing a couple of mining colonies with their 35 automated mines. However they too are running out of Gallicite and are establishing a new mining colony in the Knossos system to mine Gallicite. The problem for everyone is that the Sol system was very short on Gallicite and has now pretty much run out.

The Gitanyow are short on Duranium and it is crippling their expansion. However, they can't mothball ships unless the Chinese return. Their military has expanded those as a third missile ship has been built and they have repaired and converted the captured Yinchuan and Trinkat II

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Or worse, whats the current growth rate of the commonweath? Is 1.2 Mil a year even breaking even?

Mike S.

The Commonwealth population isn't growing because they are not building any new infrastructure. In fact, it has shrunk slightly as infrastructure has been moved to Thebes.

Steve

[Kurt]

Or worse, whats the current growth rate of the commonweath? Is 1.2 Mil a year even breaking even?

Mike S.

The Commonwealth population isn't growing because they are not building any new infrastructure. In fact, it has shrunk slightly as infrastructure has been moved to Thebes.

Steve

I think it would be more realistic to force population growth whether or not there is infrastructure to support it.  Of course, then you would have to change the way infrastructure is handled.  Perhaps, if the population is larger than the associated infrastructure, the productivity of the population goes down.  

In other words, factories and mines on that planet would be progressively less productive as the population increases.  This is not entirely accurate, because I think over-population would likely increase discontent within a society rather than lower production, but you haven't modeled discontent.

Kurt

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

The Commonwealth population isn't growing because they are not building any new infrastructure. In fact, it has shrunk slightly as infrastructure has been moved to Thebes.

Steve

I think it would be more realistic to force population growth whether or not there is infrastructure to support it.  Of course, then you would have to change the way infrastructure is handled.  Perhaps, if the population is larger than the associated infrastructure, the productivity of the population goes down.  

In other words, factories and mines on that planet would be progressively less productive as the population increases.  This is not entirely accurate, because I think over-population would likely increase discontent within a society rather than lower production, but you haven't modeled discontent.

Kurt

Lower productivity is already included for those situations when the available manufacturing sector is not enough to man all the factories. shipyards, etc.

I think the idea of discontent due to overcrowding is a good idea though. It would make infrastructure a measure of how well the government treats the population in terms of consumer/domestic spending as opposed to military spending.

However, there are a couple of problems. Firstly, the population probably wouldn't physically be able to grow beyond the infrastructure on hostile environment planets. Secondly, once you reach a certain point on an ideal world I am not sure if the construction factories and available resources could keep up with the population growth.

Steve

[Kurt]

Steve -

I read the current turn's post yesterday, and then an idea occured to me this moring while driving in to work.  This may have been covered before, but given the current circumstances within the campaign it bears bringing up again if it was.

Seeing as all of the Earth based nations are facing severe shortages of critical materials, trading between them would almost certainly be taking place.  Not in materials that they were all short of, of course, but there would certainly be some mechanism (a world market) where the relative prices of goods could be determined and they would be able to find out if the other nations were willing to trade some of their materials.  

Given the way Aurora is set up trading should be fairly easy.  Each nation would have to decide for itself what the value is on its material stock, of course.  For instance, the Commonwealth might go to the Islamic nation and ask to trade Duranium for Gallacite, and offer 20 tons of D. for 1 ton of G..  The Islamics could then accept or decline, or make a counter-offer of their own.  This could either be a one time deal or a monthly exchange at the agreed upon rate.  

I realize that in the current situation in your campaign the Commonwealth is unlikely to find relief from its current shortage of Gallacite by trading with the other Earth nations.  They all have a common resource base and are likely to suffer from similar shortages.  But they might try the Gitanyow.  They could send a freighter under the cover of removing the last of the colonists.  The freighter could be loaded with something the Commonwealth has a lot of, Duranium or whatever, or a mix of materials, and they could offer them to the Gitanyow in trade for Gallacite.  Regular trade is probably out of the question, but a one time trade for a couple of hundred tons of Gallacite might ease the Confederation's short term problems until its out-system mines begin producing.  

At any rate my point is that trade would be inevitable, and could be very helpful.  In addition, given the economic system in Aurora, trade offers a lot of possibilities that the generic trade in Starfire didn't.  A race with access to a lot of materials and mines, but which has a relative few factories, might be able to trade their surplus to other nations for finished ships, factories, or tech, making "Trading" races much more possible than they were in Starfire.  

Kurt

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

The whole mineral trading idea is one I have been thinking about a lot because I wanted to have a system that allowed player races to ask for mineral trades with NPRs by using Diplomatic Teams but without disadvantaging the NPRs too much. The other problem is that how do I decide what minerals an NPR would be prepared to trade.

Your idea helps a lot. I think I might go one stage further though, although it involves some SM assistance for the NPRs. I will create a planetary stock market for each planet where two races have populations. This will be either a major population or just a trading post similar to the one established by the Commonwealth on Gitanyow. A race will be able to setup a potential trade on this market by specifying what mineral they are either offering to sell or offering to buy and what other minerals they would accept in exchange at a given rate. A race will be able to view all trades offered by other races on the same planet and decide whether to accept a trade or use their diplomatic team to try and improve the exchange rate (or maybe I create a separate Mineral Trading Team)

The exchange will take place immediately so the minerals will have to be in place on the planet. This could lead to interstellar trading hubs where races bring their minerals for sale. Also as races see the trades being offered by other races, they may adjust their own trades, resulting in the market finding a level for each mineral based on supply and demand.

How does that sound?

Steve

[miketr]

Why even continue doing Geo Survey?  What does it get them for the expense of paying upkeep on the ships?  Minerals have been found, several worlds to colonize have been found, many open warp points I agree but whats needed is to get new production on line.  Continued exploration does nothing for that goal and is a negative to it as it diverts resources from the objective.

I stronly suspect you have made minerals too rare.  Whats going to happen in the late game when you have ships taking over a year to bring in loads of minerals?  You will have the production / population in mined out systems huge distances from raw materials.  Materials that will burn in upkeep a ships build cost to go out to get them and then to haul them home.

Mike

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

"That's a good idea. I might let the grav surveys continue though and just mothball the geo survey ships

Why even continue doing Geo Survey?  What does it get them for the expense of paying upkeep on the ships?  Minerals have been found, several worlds to colonize have been found, many open warp points I agree but whats needed is to get new production on line.  Continued exploration does nothing for that goal and is a negative to it as it diverts resources from the objective.

I stronly suspect you have made minerals too rare.  Whats going to happen in the late game when you have ships taking over a year to bring in loads of minerals?  You will have the production / population in mined out systems huge distances from raw materials.  Materials that will burn in upkeep a ships build cost to go out to get them and then to haul them home.Mike

As I said I intend to mothball the geo ships for now but I will continue doing grav survey because I might find faster ways to get places or a route into Terran space or the Delphi system

With regard to minerals, I am concerned I may not have made them rare enough given some recent finds.  As for it taking a long time to get to minerals, the minerals within easy reach of Thebes will last for a very long time, decades at least. In any event, don't forget that ship speeds will increase over time as well so even though minerals may come from further away, it may not take any longer. It will be more of a case of finding local supplies for each populated world than a general shortage. The Gallicite problem is local to Sol and is a short term problem with a solution requiring some effort, which from a game design perspective is ideal.

For example, there are twelve million tons of Gallicite on Thebes. If the Commonwealth had all six hundred mines on Thebes it would take about one thousand years to use up that deposit and 2000 years to mine out the 27 million tons of Duranium.

Steve

[Kurt]

Lower productivity is already included for those situations when the available manufacturing sector is not enough to man all the factories. shipyards, etc.

I think the idea of discontent due to overcrowding is a good idea though. It would make infrastructure a measure of how well the government treats the population in terms of consumer/domestic spending as opposed to military spending.

However, there are a couple of problems. Firstly, the population probably wouldn't physically be able to grow beyond the infrastructure on hostile environment planets. Secondly, once you reach a certain point on an ideal world I am not sure if the construction factories and available resources could keep up with the population growth.

Steve[/quote]

Well, how about this.  It does make sense that in hostile environments the population wouldn't be able to grow beyond a certain point, but perhaps there should be an "over-crowding" zone.  For example, infrastructure is rated for how much population it will support.  0-100% of that rating is optimum.  101 to 110% is over crowded, with a relative minor production decrease, 111-120 is severe crowding, with a higher decrease, and so on.  

For hostile environment planets this could max out at 110% of infrastructure, leading to decreased production but no further increase, and habitable planets could have population maximums beyond which the population could still increase, but would not be productive.  

Hmmm...perhaps bonuses for having extra infrastructure?  

As for the problem of the population out-growing the infrastructure on habitable planets, this is a common problem with poorer countries.  They are not that productive, because they have little infrastructure and their population is increasing at a faster rate than the infrastructure they do have, so they tend to spiral downward.  Both China and India have faced this problem in the past, and the jury is still out on whether they can get past it in the future.  

Kurt