Change Log for 6.00 discussion

[Scandinavian]

I was aware of that, yes.  Doesn't change the fact that even the relatively prosperous parts of Europe were lagging India and China during this period.

[Nathan_]

Why isn't GDP per capita a reasonable measure of productivity? Didn't we innovate precisely because of the labor crunch we had(particularly post the black death)? And doesn't this take us back to the original point, that there are fewer, but more highly paid, American software developers than there are Chinese assembly line workers?

[Scandinavian]

Economic historians tend to use total factor productivity, because it is more reliably measured.  GDP pro capita can be increased by increasing hours worked pro capita, for instance, which is a policy decision rather than a productivity improvement.

The notion that remuneration has to do with productivity or the scarcity of applicants for a job is trivially dispelled by even a casual examination of the remuneration gap between an advertising man (who usually has negative productivity, in the sense that humanity has more unfulfilled wants after he has done his job than before) and an assembly line worker.  You can construct a more detailed argument by considering the marginal value of an additional customer to the firm vs.  the increase in aggregate consumer and producer surplus by the marginal consumer switching firms, but we are already veering pretty far off-topic.

Suffice it to say that if you think you can offshore manufacturing and maintain the R&D and political control functions at home, then you're kidding yourself.

[Theokrat]

Economic historians tend to use total factor productivity, because it is more reliably measured.  GDP pro capita can be increased by increasing hours worked pro capita, for instance, which is a policy decision rather than a productivity improvement.

The notion that remuneration has to do with productivity or the scarcity of applicants for a job is trivially dispelled by even a casual examination of the remuneration gap between an advertising man (who usually has negative productivity, in the sense that humanity has more unfulfilled wants after he has done his job than before) and an assembly line worker.  You can construct a more detailed argument by considering the marginal value of an additional customer to the firm vs.  the increase in aggregate consumer and producer surplus by the marginal consumer switching firms, but we are already veering pretty far off-topic.

Suffice it to say that if you think you can offshore manufacturing and maintain the R&D and political control functions at home, then you're kidding yourself.

Yeah, let's just say that this is rather detached from main stream economics that I would rather not see it in the game. And frankly, your private thoughts on economic drivers are more of an off-topic discussion, rather than a reference to the 5.7 changes.

[Scandinavian]

I don't think you'll find any great controversy in the empirical and organization theory literature that remuneration tracks productivity extremely poorly.

The RatEx, DSGE and Real Business Cycle crowds would disagree, but they have (to put it very kindly) problems with matching their theory to empirical reality.

[Nathan_]

Yeah, let's just say that this is rather detached from main stream economics that I would rather not see it in the game. And frankly, your private thoughts on economic drivers are more of an off-topic discussion, rather than a reference to the 5.7 changes.

I started us down this road actually, and I found it interesting atleast.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

noone said it was uninteresting.  but it is definitely OT. 

Yes, that's the difference between an instantaneous and an intertemporal budget constraint.  That is a non-trivial difference to your budgeting.

Swapping out wealth for energy supply and energy demand would solve the aesthetic issue, no?

I don't really see the practical gameplay difference, unless you completely reworked how wealth worked.  Also, 'Wealth' has an obvious interaction with the civilian sector while 'Energy' does not.  i.e. it makes no sense whatsoever that luxury liners generate energy.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Personally I think that the current wealth system would just work better if you could not store the wealth for a rainy day. Wealth should just be a measure of an economies total productivity and that you can't really store. If you run a deficit you would eventually start getting other negative effects such as lower factory output, unrest etc..

[Haji]

Somewhat off-topic.

The 5.7 is supposed to have ability to disable sensors system-wide via SM mode. Since the 5.7 itself is likely not coming anytime soon, is there possibility of having this option in a smaller patch? I don't know about others, but right now I'm playing six-sides campaign (all on Earth) and I have extremly long time increments, on the order of several minutes. Since I'm pretty sure this is due to constant sensor checks, the ability to disable them would be God-sent for me.

[Garfunkel]

Probably not possible, as Steve has already implemented all the changes for 5.7 and is currently running a test campaign. So he would have to roll back the other changes and to enable only that change.

[Nathan_]

What you could do, is either take away all of their Deep space tracking stations, or give them all 40 DSTS each. It might short circuit the sensor sweeps, and it will just be up to you to make sure that each "side" doesn't know more than it should.

[Haji]

That's an interesting idea. And it could work. However, won't there still be sensor checks for my ships? I know they have only strenght 1 EM/TM sensor, but that's still a sensor and I have, by now, quite few ships running around the Sol system.

[Nathan_]

It depends on how its programmed, but hopefully if all contacts are accounted for it shouldn't run any more sensor checks for suggestion two atleast. On the other hand with suggestion one, each DSTS you've got is running a check on every ship, and precipitating its own check from every other ship if they are on their own colony.

Another idea, if your problem is a bunch of freighters/colonies running everywhere, is to scrap them all, and fast OOB megafreighters/colonies of equal tonnage, but as just 1 ship, which should reduce some, or a great deal of the sensor checks being run.

[metalax]

Are civilian fuel harvesters going to be subject to the shiping lines scrapping old ships that is being implemented in the new version? It would make sense for them to be excluded as they have no need to update their tech while they are harvesting. Possibly have a check to see if their engine tech is outdated when the sorium in the gas giant they are harvesting runs out, which would enable obsolete ones to be removed. Although there should probably be an event notice and a time delay before they are actually scrapped to allow for tankers to get there to aquire their last load of fuel.

Also will they just remain idle when they have filled their fuel tanks?

[UnLimiTeD]

I sure hope they sell their fuel for taxes if they are scrapped. Maybe even if full.
I guess they won't be scrapped as long as they are harvesting, because they still have a job?