Defining a new economic system for future versions

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loki1950
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Post by loki1950 »

Nice find Fade Economics 101 in comic form 8)

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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Priceless! :D
I'm reading his BIG BANG comic now too.
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Post by Breakable »

The Economicon was really interesting.
They are trying to represent the Economic system as a plumbing system, in which capital is flowing inside the tubes. The capital (LOLLI) is made of value (ERGON - non compresable) and inflation (AIR BUBLES - compresable ).

While its a leaky abstraction, it allows to understand how the capital flow affects the economy.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

I think Ergol represents real value, and the bubbles are currency. Ergol would be an abstraction of value that flows, like money, in the opposite direction of goods, so that it and the bubbles flow together.

What I wish the author had added to the comic was the great invention of 18th Century England, where something was done that had never been done before...

In every prior economic system, it was always the king or government that put money into circulation. All such systems eventually led to inflation. But in England, then, for the first time, monopoli over minting of money and control of the money supply was given over to a group of private bankers who founded the Central Bank of England. And what these bankers did was they ***LOANED*** the new cash into circulation. The King received half of it and agreed to pay 8% interest. The rest was loaned to smaller banks, and through them to entrepreneurs.

This most clever trick ensured that money's value could be controlled via the money supply. It made money intrinsically desirable because everybody needs it regardless of whether there's anything they want to purchase: They now need money also in order to service their debts. This finally made money into a commodity, with an intrinsic "value"; it made it desirable as a drug or medicine you need to take regularly to prevent a catastrophic attack called "bankruptcy".

Debt is guaranteed, in present economic systems, by the fact that every bill and coin has an invisible rubber band attached to it from the day it was created: the fact that it has to be returned to the Central Bank eventually, plus interest. Profit and growth are no longer luxuries, but necessities. (Now environmental concerns would call for zero or negative growth, but this is simply not possible the way modern economies are structured. Positive growth is a requirement for the Ergol to keep flowing.)

That's why I laugh when people talk about the gold standard. It indeed didn't work. Even when coins were made of gold, inflation happened anyways, and people ended up melting their coins when the face value of the coin became much less than the value of the gold in it. But even the most fiat of fiat moneys can be pretty much stabilized forever by lending it into circulation and adjusting interest rate. This is what most people, even economists, don't often get.



What development later trampled this clever system was the meta-currency created by governments in the form of government bonds/treasury bills. It subverted the whole thing by mixing oil droplets full of bubbles with the Ergol. Like saying to the public "don't trust the Central Bank dollars, full of inflation; trust our promisory notes, instead; which pay interest to compensate inflation (they capture extra bubbles over time)." But the problem that some day, sooner or later, those promisory notes would become un-payable is a problem that the Central Bank would have to deal with, even though they didn't create it, and didn't have any control over its supply. The situation is, at some point, when government runs out of money, it runs out of money. No one to blame and to make pay for the mistake. The ball is back in the Central Bank's court. "Deal with it."

Detergent! Oh nooo!

And the thing is, for the US, about a decade ago that day came and went and nobody noticed, because someone was taking the oil droplets out of the system elsewhere: Japan. Japan was filtering and storing the oil. Then later China started to do the same. China is now the biggest holder of oil droplets, and to let them turn into detergent would officially bankrupt their biggest trading partner. They accepted the loss of being at the butt-end of the oil injections, and to function as livers for the US circulatory system, for the sake of keeping the thing alive; but how long can they keep doing that? And when the oil begins to turn into degergent, it will be like a chain reaction, and all those bubbles it traps will be released back into the ergol like an overnight quadrupling of the money supply (read that as "print money to pay those bonds").

Well, it depends which way it goes: The Central Bank could say (and probably said, in closed quarters) "let the government go bankrupt and default on those bonds, and for bond holders to learn a lesson about trusting governments more than they trust the bank". But then government could say (and probably said in closed quarters) "to hell with that, you bail us out or we impail you".

That's what I think the real story behind 911 was all about: government (pentagon, cia) telling the (international, really) central banking cabal: "you think you guys are so powerful? All you really got is computers and big buildings, ya know? Here's a little demo of what we could do... err... terrorists could do... ta yer big buildings...". Back in those days, China was threatening to dump their US bond holdings. They needed some reassurance, and they got it.

(And before you ask what did these wall street towers got to do with the cabal, note that the cabal kept only a little bit of its gold reserve where it was supposed to be, just for show; but a lot of it they kept in other (more secure?) places. Down blow those towers was one of those key places, and it WAS removed afterwards; and certainly NOT by its previous owners... And my guess would be that at least part of it got shipped to China and Japan, as a proof of concept.)

((And where does Bin Laden figure in all this? Well, he became a cia operative back in the late 70's and remained so through early 2000. Nauf said. I doubt he is, any longer; --probably never got paid for the last job, and the idea was that Saddam was going to get bombed, not Tora Bora base, so I guess the once fake enemies are now real ones.))

But I'm getting side-tracked... :D

So, anyone cares to volunteer a breakdown of business sectors?
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Post by Breakable »

Why would you need a breakdown of Business sectors? Basically they all have the same function. Transform some type of good(s) and/or service(s) into different type of good(s) and/or service(s), and of course using up some of them on the way.

Could be possible to group/breakdown sectors to:
Utility
Manufacturing
Support (Consulting)
Intelectual property production
Logistics
Protection
Management

I heard that in USA money are also lended by the central bank. I dont fully understand how the bank can lend money with interest, and in the end not own everything. Basically if you need to repay your dept with interest, then it means someone wont be able to repay all of their debt in the end.
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Post by loki1950 »

Central banks only lend to there subordinate banks(ones that they licence) usually at reduced rate so that the smaller banks still have some margin to work with.

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Post by rivalin »

Breakable wrote: I heard that in USA money are also lended by the central bank. I dont fully understand how the bank can lend money with interest, and in the end not own everything. Basically if you need to repay your dept with interest, then it means someone wont be able to repay all of their debt in the end.
America has a "special" system with the Federal Reserve where a bunch of private banks act as the central bank while trying to trick joe public into thinking that they're just like any other countries' government owned central bank.. So the US isn't really a textbook example of how most nations' central banks operate. :)
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Post by Deus Siddis »

chuck_starchaser wrote:Debt is guaranteed, in present economic systems, by the fact that every bill and coin has an invisible rubber band attached to it from the day it was created: the fact that it has to be returned to the Central Bank eventually, plus interest. Profit and growth are no longer luxuries, but necessities. (Now environmental concerns would call for zero or negative growth, but this is simply not possible the way modern economies are structured. Positive growth is a requirement for the Ergol to keep flowing.)
Actually, constant positive growth was a survival requirement that began all the way back with the neolithic and has been picking up speed exponentially ever since. It's about the triumvirate of technological-numerical-social evolution out competing and beating out anyone who doesn't keep up with it. Once it began, no one could stop it, they could only slow it down until it crushed them or their stubborness and moved forward.

You have to have close to the best technology that sustains the greatest population and offers the best weapons and a societal structure that best organizes and focuses in the right direction your necessarily huge population as well as promoting the protection of its huge numbers from diseases and other population reducers and promotes its continued growth as fast as possible. If you don't, you'd better get them fast, otherwise you and you're people (however you define them) are history one way or another. So you adapt to a more advanced and larger system where everyone is yet an even smaller and less powerful and in-control part. And then when something new is invented, you do it again. Because that's how you survive hyper-evolution for the longest time possible.

Progress forever and ever or until the food supply collapses the increasingly large and interdependent system past the point where it can be rebuilt or we hit the singularity or whatever and are replaced by machines whose abilities to output have all far surpassed ours and that can evolve so much, much faster we can never hope to keep up or (fill in the blank next unbelieveably immense change), etc.
And the thing is, for the US, about a decade ago that day came and went and nobody noticed, because someone was taking the oil droplets out of the system elsewhere: Japan. Japan was filtering and storing the oil. Then later China started to do the same. China is now the biggest holder of oil droplets, and to let them turn into detergent would officially bankrupt their biggest trading partner. They accepted the loss of being at the butt-end of the oil injections, and to function as livers for the US circulatory system, for the sake of keeping the thing alive; but how long can they keep doing that?
Well that's the trillion dollar question, when will they no longer be able to or just decide to pull the plug. 5, 10, 20 years? And who will be left standing the strongest economically and militarily when the shit does hit.
That's what I think the real story behind 911 was all about: government (pentagon, cia) telling the (international, really) central banking cabal: "you think you guys are so powerful? All you really got is computers and big buildings, ya know?
Well some say its the government(s), others say the banking community, still others corporations. I don't think anyone can ever agree on who actually runs the freeworld. My personal guess from most influential to least is- corporations (large business), banks and then government. In a country like China about the opposite would be true.
(And before you ask what did these wall street towers got to do with the cabal, note that the cabal kept only a little bit of its gold reserve where it was supposed to be, just for show; but a lot of it they kept in other (more secure?) places. Down blow those towers was one of those key places, and it WAS removed afterwards; and certainly NOT by its previous owners... And my guess would be that at least part of it got shipped to China and Japan, as a proof of concept.)
Well that's a new one, but it still has a number of other 911 theories to compete with regarding the controverial gold stores.
So, anyone cares to volunteer a breakdown of business sectors?
You might need to be more specific about how small to go in breaking down business sectors?
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Deus Siddis wrote:
chuck_starchaser wrote:That's what I think the real story behind 911 was all about: government (pentagon, cia) telling the (international, really) central banking cabal: "you think you guys are so powerful? All you really got is computers and big buildings, ya know?
Well some say its the government(s), others say the banking community, still others corporations. I don't think anyone can ever agree on who actually runs the freeworld.
One thing you can be sure of: Huge conspiracies DO exist.
When I was younger I used to read a lot of stuff about conspiracies. One name that came up often was Carrol Quigly (if I'm spelling it right) who wrote the first book (a huge one) about the history of the (international) central banking cabal. Then, when Bill Clinton was running for president, some magazine, maybe it was Time, asked him about his favorite writers, and my my whole body hair stood on end when I read the name Carrol Quigly as one of his favorite authors. Why would he be saying that publicly, even if it was? Did it mean he was an insider in the cabal, or did he consider them the enemy? Seems to me now it was the latter. Hell, Clinton gave the Panama Canal to China, basically; and I'm sure he didn't do so happily. I think there must have been a lot of pressure mounting about government debt, and he probably was aware that America's powers that be were going to sooner or later have a showdown with the banking cabal.
But anyways, a lot of... MOST of the conspiracy theory stuff out there is just so crazy I came to the conclusion early on that the real conspiracies were probably funding any crazy guy that came up with any crazy theories, as a smoke screen; --to discredit conspiracy theories in general. I was once living in Western Canada and met an ex-military guy, paper pusher rather than soldier type; and I told him my theory and he was shocked. He said I was much righter than I even imagined; that he was in fact privy to allocations of such types of funds, but that he could not say more; and that he was glad to meet someone for the first time who had figured out that much. And that's in Canada...
A lot of the conspiracy stuff is run by conspiracies. Take the case of all those movements out there that talk about banking cabals, and fiat money, the sky is falling, and advocate that people should buy gold, gold and more gold; --cassete tapes, videos... Well, I used to hear of them all over the place, years ago. The last couple of years they all seem to have gone silent... When they were making noise about gold, gold's price kept falling. Since gold's been on the up-swing you don't hear about them anymore... Isn't that odd?
The truth of it is, though, whenever you hear about some conspiracy theory that talks about ONE conspiracy controlling everything, THAT is garbage; there are gazillions of them, some in cooperation, some in competition, some in cooperatrition. Not that a single megaconspiracy isn't a future possibility; but it's just not the case factually. IOW, as to the question "who runs the free world", there's no one correct answer. Large organizations, like the cia, one would think, probably have many competing conspiracies within them. Hell, there's like seven conspiracies in the company I work for, with only 20.5 employees.
So, anyone cares to volunteer a breakdown of business sectors?
You might need to be more specific about how small to go in breaking down business sectors?
Something along the lines of Breakable's first draft. The important thing, I think, is to come up with a limited, and hopefully low number of sectors that account for most businesses, and which have different dynamics. I'm not an economist, but I'm sure there must be such classifications already.
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Post by Deus Siddis »

chuck_starchaser wrote:One thing you can be sure of: Huge conspiracies DO exist.
Depends on how you define huge. If you mean things that would shock most folks of that time and place in history, then sure. Conspiracies that shock people outside of those microcosms are entirely or almost entirely made up though.

So if we found conclusive evidence today that Queen Elizabeth of Elizabethan England did indeed assasinate her way to the top as she did, well. . .nobody would give a damn.

If in just maybe twenty five years it turned out 9/11 was actually a battle between some sorts of factions within in the late US or freeworld as a whole, really no one is going to care again-- the US has probably succumb to time and economic problems and crumbled like every empire before her, and now every little nation has nuclear weapons and they are being used tactically in localized conflicts or maybe China is competing with India for world supremacy in a post-freeworld earth, violently conquering, annexing and replacing the inhabitants of other nations with its own people, etc.

Less draumatically (though not really less realistically) citizens of modern day Russia probably would not find such information life-altering. They have plenty of their own stuff.

An example of a truely huge conspiracy is if they discovered those ridiculous little 'space men' (anthropomaniac conspiracy theorists have such precious few creative thoughts) really were authentic ETs, captured by the government, to hide them and their policy of human abduction and cow disintegration from the public at large, because people scare easy. Maybe this would be considered a bigger than huge theory, but it is the sort of crap which is just insultingly stupid.
When I was younger I used to read a lot of stuff about conspiracies. One name that came up often was Carrol Quigly (if I'm spelling it right) who wrote the first book (a huge one) about the history of the (international) central banking cabal. Then, when Bill Clinton was running for president, some magazine, maybe it was Time, asked him about his favorite writers, and my my whole body hair stood on end when I read the name Carrol Quigly as one of his favorite authors. Why would he be saying that publicly, even if it was? Did it mean he was an insider in the cabal, or did he consider them the enemy? Seems to me now it was the latter. Hell, Clinton gave the Panama Canal to China, basically; and I'm sure he didn't do so happily. I think there must have been a lot of pressure mounting about government debt, and he probably was aware that America's powers that be were going to sooner or later have a showdown with the banking cabal.
A conflict usually only takes place between two sides about equally matched and that have more to gain by winning against the other in either spoils or safety by 'beating' the other. I think conflicts like this would be more likely to take place between factions of one system, rather than different systems who probably have no balance of power between each other. So spats within intelligence entities, merchants (corporations), nobles, a nationalistic government, a world of nations, etc. are alot more probable. Just like in nature, when one species encounters another, usually one is the hands down winner, the other could only hope to escape. When two of one species meets, they can beat chests, heads and fists.
But anyways, a lot of... MOST of the conspiracy theory stuff out there is just so crazy I came to the conclusion early on that the real conspiracies were probably funding any crazy guy that came up with any crazy theories, as a smoke screen; --to discredit conspiracy theories in general.
Well there wouldn't be much need for that, folks love to make stuff up without encouragment, and especially with the internet they really don't need any funding.

This is human nature when it comes to anything which is both amazing and suspected but not totally believed or accepted. Take psychics, are they real or not? If they are, for every real one, there is probably at least 1,000 pretending to be, exaggerating what can be done with these abilities that they don't even have for attention and money. Whether any are real or not, there are certainly plenty of fakes in real life, that's a fact.
A lot of the conspiracy stuff is run by conspiracies. Take the case of all those movements out there that talk about banking cabals, and fiat money, the sky is falling, and advocate that people should buy gold, gold and more gold; --cassete tapes, videos... Well, I used to hear of them all over the place, years ago. The last couple of years they all seem to have gone silent... When they were making noise about gold, gold's price kept falling. Since gold's been on the up-swing you don't hear about them anymore... Isn't that odd?
In this particular case, the reason might be those folks are giving sound investment advice. You want to buy low, not when things have already risen high, even though they might still go higher. Because then your risks are increased and your potential profits are decreased, you're closer to the top, and nobody knows for sure where that top will turn out to be (unless maybe they are psychic). :D
The truth of it is, though, whenever you hear about some conspiracy theory that talks about ONE conspiracy controlling everything, THAT is garbage; there are gazillions of them, some in cooperation, some in competition, some in cooperatrition. Not that a single megaconspiracy isn't a future possibility; but it's just not the case factually. IOW, as to the question "who runs the free world", there's no one correct answer. Large organizations, like the cia, one would think, probably have many competing conspiracies within them. Hell, there's like seven conspiracies in the company I work for, with only 20.5 employees.
I meant which part of the system is the bridge of the ship so to speak. Within that bridge, any number of folks could be fighting for the helm. But some ships have the bridge up front, some in the middle and others in the back. Nations too have different configurations which determine where is the group or where are the 'groups' who hold and fight for the wheel, respectively.
Something along the lines of Breakable's first draft. The important thing, I think, is to come up with a limited, and hopefully low number of sectors that account for most businesses, and which have different dynamics. I'm not an economist, but I'm sure there must be such classifications already.
Well apparently Breakable thinks the dynamics are the same for each, that they are different mostly in name only at the top level. I've heard of this concept of business before, it might have alot of truth to it, I can't really say yet.

However one difference that I can think of is that different kinds of events would affect different sectors of business to different extents and over different periods of time. Like a battle would affect local supplies of ammunition and medical supplies immediately, so that's two business sectors initially. Then to replaced lost material, manufacturing would be affected, then mining, etc.

I might be getting too specific with this though, maybe the engine's system for business sectors should not hardcode each with so many specifics. This might get back to what Breakable was saying about not getting into individual sectors in the engine.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Deus Siddis wrote:Well apparently Breakable thinks the dynamics are the same for each, that they are different mostly in name only at the top level. I've heard of this concept of business before, it might have alot of truth to it, I can't really say yet.

However one difference that I can think of is that different kinds of events would affect different sectors of business to different extents and over different periods of time. Like a battle would affect local supplies of ammunition and medical supplies immediately, so that's two business sectors initially. Then to replaced lost material, manufacturing would be affected, then mining, etc.
Okay, good; now, besides battles, different business sectors are affected by economics, I'm sure. Take mining, for instance. 10 years ago no one gave a damn about mining stocks. Nowadays, with the constant rise in the price of commodities, there's a lot of investment going into mining. Price of gasoling is driving up stock prices for alternative energy companies, like geothermal. New car sales are affected by confidence in the economy; real estate is affected by interest rate more than any other sector. And then, the converse: what impact do the conditions in various sectors have on what aspects of the economy?
I might be getting too specific with this though, maybe the engine's system for business sectors should not hardcode each with so many specifics. This might get back to what Breakable was saying about not getting into individual sectors in the engine.
I wasn't specifically thinking about hardcoding anything. We can brainstorm later about what things should be common to about the economies of all cultures and species, and which shouldn't be. We just need to do a bit of exploratory work first, to gain a glimpse of field.
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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by zerospace »

I don't have the time to read through this thread, but I thought I'd leave a reply based on what I know as a programmer. While I am not experienced in simulating economies, or even simulating anything for that matter, there's always a cost when you do something. You can save memory by using the cpu, or you can save the cpu by using memory. That's the main lesson I've learned over the years. You can't do everything! The trick is to get a good balance between what you do do.

Now for .... some speculation. Read it with a grain of salt. I'm guessing...

A big roadblock in this whole matter is the player. Otherwise, for large environments like this, where you have hundreds or thousands of systems, you could use perlin noise, the same techniques they use to generate 3 and 4 dimensional random environments. You can't predict a player though. This means you have to have, at the bare minimum, localized realities. These would rely more on memory, to store the state/activities of the player, since the activities of the player cannot be directly tied to perlin noise functions because players aren't necessarily a number that can be tied to noise. A player's affect can be estimated, however. So you can estimate a player's activities, but not where the player is going to see it - that deffinitely would ruin immersion for some people. Beyond these thoughts here, I don't really know what to say. I myself have not tried to do any of this. I'd like just to educate myself further. I really shouldn't even be commenting about it in a forum because I don't have the experience to justify it, but oh well.

For example, you may have a perlin noise function representing the local economy. It might look like a wave function, with ups and downs. It would be 4 dimensional in the sense that the returned value is different as time passes. This function could affect the frequency of trade wars, recessions, booms, infighting, pirate activity, and so on. Those things would further affect the production of ships, the production of goods, and so on. You might have several of these same types of wave functions associated with the player... except that it's totally subjective and it's up to hte programmer what's recorded, and these would be combined with the economy wave... to produce hte final output. So in this sense, depending on how many of these functions are used, you can yield a result that will atleast work on scales that the player is mostly unaware of. But it necessitates a lot of processing for each output (like when you compute the height of a point on a random map generated with perlin noise - there're different methods though), and the average will be different for different places, depending on how much detail you want it to have. You have to make sure that the effects on the environment aren't too direct, or it would be similar to the player shooting at a non-player, missing it, but still killing it (the death was estimated).

Ahh crap lost a chunk of the post. Ahh well. I am talking BS mostly anyway.
Last edited by zerospace on Mon May 25, 2009 2:59 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by loki1950 »

Welcome zerospace sometimes BS ripens into fertile soil ;) but you might find this thread of interest http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... 21&t=13404

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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by travists »

Here I go reopening a can of worms again. I have been thinking that something like this would be nice. First of all there is no reason to constantly simulate the universe, just update prices once per "day", you can also update quantity at the same time.


As to how: database seems the best implementation to me.

Each good has several input goods (labor, materials, general overhead, etc) likely as a percentage of the cost

Each base has a list of each good with: production rate, consumption rate, import rate, export rate, and stockpile.

Each base also has a storage limit, huge for planets, small for outposts, somewhere in-between for other bases.

Demand = (Pr + Ir) – (Cr + Er) If demand is positive, stockpile grows and price is low. If negative, stockpile shrinks and price is high.

Price = (manufacture cost + profit) modified by demand. It may be expedient, as well as adding to the interconnectedness, to take the mean price of the needed supplies from surrounding bases (perhaps six jumps). If six jumps is not enough to find a needed good, find the shortest rout to get it. Whether an extended rout is needed or not, an import markup would be added. Say two percent or so, per jump.

If the stockpile is not enough to get through say, two days, price goes way up. If the total stockpiles is near base storage limit price goes way down.

In multi-player import and export rates are the actual rates multiplied by a number to bring total traffic up to the desired number. But in single-player these must be hard-coded fudge factors.

I agree that all goods should follow this format, including: ships, parts, weapons, etc.

To up the dynamic nature of the setup: production, consumption, import, and export rates can be modified by in-game events. A blockade would be a decrease in import and export rates. Perhaps accompanied by a change in traffic at the affected base and a news item. A medical emergency would cause consumption to go up, with a news item. A mining base may find a new vein. A factory or industrial planet may develop a new technique. That would cause production to go up, with yet another news blurb. You want factions to be effected by economic changes? Fine, do a query on the bases under their control! I would limit this to perhaps once a “week”.

There also has been some talk of replenishing resources. Agreed, it also would be more realistic to not have a full larder again by saving and reloading the game. This, and the periodic price updates, requires the introduction of the concept and tracking of time. Add one line to the save game “GST=1125648.25” or some such. Time is already advanced during space flight, and may be tracked to keep the news time stamps current. Saving and loading would mark up the passage of some time. Every time 24 hours passes, update the price and quantity tables upon entering a buy/sell screen. Yes, crunching all those numbers will take some time. Throw up an “updating galactic price database…” placeholder while this happens.

That’s my thoughts on it anyway.
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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by klauss »

travists wrote:As to how: database seems the best implementation to me.
That's the wrong thing to ask/answer at this point.

The first question you want answered is: what phenomena do we want to simulate? Which which level of detail?

Only then, you may start looking at implementation alternatives, and only when you analyze each alternative you'll be at a point where implementation details are not only knowable, quantifiable, but also qualifiable.

Ie: talking about implementation details without being certain of what the implementation should do is... misguided.

About the model you're proposing, I see where you're going. Coding suppy & demand as localized rules that interact with neighbours directly, the entire galaxy indirectly, to create a global effect.

There are important details left out, however. For instance, you use "storage limit" as a factor in cost formula to, I imagine, make the system stabilize when a suitable agreeable price is found. Ie: when others start buying your stock just enough to meet your production, the price is "right".

But there are other factors. Bases may not need to store their stuff, they may store it elsewhere, but make it available to you at your request. Say they transport it to your location if you ask for them. Or something like that. In essence, I don't believe storage is they key factor here, but production rate vs demand.

If I produce some amount, and I can only sell half of what I produce in any given period, my prices are too high. If I cannot meet demand prices profitably, I halt production, liquidate whatever accumulated stock I may have.

Also, there's transport cost, which you hinted at once in your text: well, they could be factored in more thoroughly. Price of import is price of buying in neighbouring locations + cost of transport. If the jump from said location takes you through hostile or blockaded regions, then transport cost is high. etc. etc.

In those last two paragraphs lays a simple phenomena I'd like modelled that is left out from your model: manufacturing dynamics. Production shifts as demand does, and demand does shift in response to other things, external to economic models.
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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by travists »

Point taken. I happen to think that full on simulation in the discussion is part of the problem. Approximation allows for a dynamic economy without worrying about each ship in the universe. There are space simulators, city simulators, people simulators. Typically each is their own thing. An economic simulator is possible, but would take as much power as VS it's self!

The phenomena to simulate can be tiered. First tier is just to get prices to fluctuate in a quasi-realistic manner. Tier two, inter relationship. A report generated says that this path or that one is more profitable, so the import/export rates adapt, reflected by changes in traffic patterns (the probability of encountering factions in a system). Tear three priority of manufacturing can change. Perhaps other tears can be added. Start at the most basic, then work up.

My list:
Interrelationship of goods and services
Transport costs and scarcity
(Eventually) traffic patterns change
New trade route becomes popular --> pirate attacks increase --> military/law patrols pick up --> profits fall due too higher import/exports rate -->new route is discovered -->starts again
You like changes in production focus so let’s add that
(supply and demand is implied in an economy)

My thinking on a storage limit is that there is likely to be one. Even if off site, there is only so much space you can secure to stash the stuff. It's not so much a stabilizing factor as a practical one. If every cargo bay is full as well as what you can secure with un-manned turrets in off site storage, now you are starting to fill up empty quarters and closets... You might even pay someone to take it off your hands, production is likely to be shut down too.

You seem to catch most of my meaning. It’s kind of a web. Constructed simply and efficiently enough, each base can take about 1/100 of a second to calculate. 10,000 bases @ 100 bases/second = 100 seconds to do the whole galaxy, which is 1 minute 40 seconds. If this delay is only sporadic, there is little disruption to game play. Part of why I like a database approach. There is at present a master parts list, which is a table. Several linked tables is a database. You can run all kinds of reports on one in very little time. To add traffic patterns, cost per jump figures, production thresholds, it’s all just another table and report. Sadly, my ability to implement them is not sufficient to supply one, I just know what they can do.

To be honest, my eyes kinda glazed over about half way through the thread. Much of the discussion seemed to be implementation proposals and backbiting about how do you handle this or that. So, I tried to provide a baseline set of factors with a reasonable implementation, which happens to be expandable. An interesting byproduct of this kind of implementation is inflation. Something else that is worth simulating (or approximating) in it’s own right.

Shall we see if this idea can be resuscitated enough to get a reasonable list of features? Looks like it kinda fell off some time ago.
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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by Deus Siddis »

travists wrote:I happen to think that full on simulation in the discussion is part of the problem. Approximation allows for a dynamic economy without worrying about each ship in the universe. There are space simulators, city simulators, people simulators. Typically each is their own thing. An economic simulator is possible, but would take as much power as VS it's self!
. . . .
Constructed simply and efficiently enough, each base can take about 1/100 of a second to calculate. 10,000 bases @ 100 bases/second = 100 seconds to do the whole galaxy, which is 1 minute 40 seconds. If this delay is only sporadic, there is little disruption to game play. Part of why I like a database approach.
. . . .
To be honest, my eyes kinda glazed over about half way through the thread. Much of the discussion seemed to be implementation proposals and backbiting about how do you handle this or that. So, I tried to provide a baseline set of factors with a reasonable implementation, which happens to be expandable.
But you are still missing the point that, as Klauss said, we are on the what phase of design, so let's stop talking about the how. That comes later.

We need further discussion on what features are desirable.
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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by klauss »

Even though going into implementation details is premature in my opinion, travists does point to a rather viable design.

I'd like it if progress was made towards the clear and thorough specification of a system as travists described, putting implementation issues aside for the moment, concentrating on simulation rules: what affects what and how first, then defining a series of localized formulas that try to model the previously defined effects, then documenting which variables are tied to other AI levels (say, political simulations that do happen in VS, like faction relations and fleet deployments).
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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by travists »

Deus Siddis, I also sugested some features and interactions, as wel as closeing with a question of if intrest could be raised again to get this hammered out. So, lets get too it.

Feature list:
Supply/demand (given)
Transportation costs(implied)
Travel risk changes price
Traffic patterns change refelecting changes in trade
Changes in traffic change profit levels
Changes in profit levels changes overall trade
Ships and equipment change in price like any other good?
Each base is simulated/aproximated independantly
Long term shifts in profitability of a good shifts production
Factions ability to field craft depends on net trade in their sphere of influance?
Costs of goods depends on costs of supplies to make said good

Additons or objections? Thoughts on order of priority?
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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by klauss »

travists wrote:Additons or objections? Thoughts on order of priority?
I don't think it can be given any order, it has to be monolithic.

But the bright side of it is that your approach (which is in fact called a cellular automaton) is rather easy to implement:
  • Make a function that reads the local neighborhood state...
  • ...computes costs...
  • ...does localized trade...
  • ...saves modified neighborhood state
In theory and in practice rather straightforward to implement in full.

Plus, most of what you mention is already in the game in some form or another, so it shouldn't be too hard to get the feedback going between the politics/events and the economy.

What I'd like to add, though, is provision for government-wide (and perhaps government-funded) economic endeavors. Say, the government applies incentives in a region, taxes imports across some frontiers, etc...

...mostly since we'll need those to:
  • Tweak the system
  • Create believable campaigns
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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by Deus Siddis »

I think that list is missing some bottom level, rubber-meets-the-road, finer-grained simulation. Like simulating the flow of individual resource shipments aboard individual transport convoys moving between resource specialized colonies.

To put it another way, your list currently seems to suggest more of a money based economy (for example, where production costs only money, it does not require specific raw materials in specific proportions). This is simpler and an okay system to use for many games.

But we might consider if a resource simulation economy would be better for VS, because VS has these significant aspects:
  • War Economy
  • Resource Isolation
  • Character Level Perspective
A War Economy is a more demanding form of economy. Situations emerge where you need more of 'Munition A' or you will lose a battle you can't afford to lose. Money is not an issue then. The issue is how much of Munition A is on the nearest Colony or Convoy and when will it arrive here.

Resource Isolation is the fact that the game is full of such things as gas mines, ocean worlds and factory stations, separated by vast distances of vacuum. So an asteroid mine, must have X amount of food arrive before date Y or else everyone begins to starve/leave.

Character Level Perspective means the player experiences most of the game from a bottom level (an individual character), unlike say a 4x game (a massive space empire perspective). He notices inconsistencies like when fish and bottled water prices sky rocket on Atlantis (an ocean world) or there is an abundance of fertilizer on Serenity (an asteroid mine). And he would notice and keep track of many less obvious things too, like competing convoy traffic, if there was a reason to do so- if the economy simulated them.
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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by travists »

Sounds reasonable, how about include some of the larger corperations in that as well? That Brotea or whatever it is that you see a splash of on startup. Did they hust keep the colony going out of the goodness of their hearts (or whatever other pumping organ they use), where they payed by an overstreached government, or did the blockade make for lots of profit? Maybe one of the weapons manufacturers are so calous as to launch a strike just to sell more weapons?

edit: one sneaked in on me, just a moment
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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by klauss »

Deus Siddis wrote:I think that list is missing some bottom level, rubber-meets-the-road, finer-grained simulation. Like simulating the flow of individual resource shipments aboard individual transport convoys moving between resource specialized colonies.
Nono... going that route, simulating things in that much detail, is a sure path to overburdenning the system.

Rather, statistical-numerical, "money-like" analysis is both a lot faster at runtime and a lot simpler at design time...
Deus Siddis wrote:To put it another way, your list currently seems to suggest more of a money based economy (for example, where production costs only money, it does not require specific raw materials in specific proportions). This is simpler and an okay system to use for many games.
...which does not preclude the simulation of production prerequisites.

Part of the formula can say you can't build ships without plasteel. In fact, it should be a given, since traders will want to supply factories with what they need to produce more refined goods, which they can in turn trade at other places, and so like that build a profitable trade route.
Deus Siddis wrote:A War Economy is a more demanding form of economy. Situations emerge where you need more of 'Munition A' or you will lose a battle you can't afford to lose. Money is not an issue then. The issue is how much of Munition A is on the nearest Colony or Convoy and when will it arrive here.
Ya, that kind of stuff is what I was referring to when I mentioned government-wide endeavors.
Deus Siddis wrote:Resource Isolation is the fact that the game is full of such things as gas mines, ocean worlds and factory stations, separated by vast distances of vacuum. So an asteroid mine, must have X amount of food arrive before date Y or else everyone begins to starve/leave.
IOW, logistics.

I bet that applies also to military campaigns, so we could also simulate battles being lost (ships made disfunctional, bases become degraded) because of underprovision.
Deus Siddis wrote:Character Level Perspective means the player experiences most of the game from a bottom level (an individual character), unlike say a 4x game (a massive space empire perspective). He notices inconsistencies like when fish and bottled water prices sky rocket on Atlantis (an ocean world) or there is an abundance of fertilizer on Serenity (an asteroid mine). And he would notice and keep track of many less obvious things too, like competing convoy traffic, if there was a reason to do so- if the economy simulated them.
At the same time, the player will not notice the overarching economic situation/goals without help. So news reports should be pushed into the news system to keep the player informed.
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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by travists »

OK, Deus Siddis, my thinking is not that such transportation does not exist. Rather, those shipments are rendered down to traffic paterns and import/export rates.
Klauss posted while I was thinking of more, and I can't so I'll just post this for now.
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Re: Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by Deus Siddis »

klauss wrote: Nono... going that route, simulating things in that much detail, is a sure path to overburdenning the system.

Rather, statistical-numerical, "money-like" analysis is both a lot faster at runtime and a lot simpler at design time...
I only said what kind of detail we should have, not how much.

It won't be overwhelming simulating finer details if you only track them within a 1-3 system radius around the player, only every hour of run time, only for a few major convoys and a few major destinations, etc. There are many ways to limit how much must be handled at this level of detail.

That's how the dynamic warfare simulation is already handled, right? Simulated in detail up close, but abstract at greater distances and for lesser flight groups. That's what makes it look and feel real from the player's perspective.
...which does not preclude the simulation of production prerequisites.
But then you do need to track the flow and stockpiles of those prerequisite resources. At least to some extent.
I bet that applies also to military campaigns, so we could also simulate battles being lost (ships made disfunctional, bases become degraded) because of underprovision.
Note that the player can destroy things without it being a part of an official campaign. So you need to look for recent infrastructure and logistics changes around the player as well.
At the same time, the player will not notice the overarching economic situation/goals without help. So news reports should be pushed into the news system to keep the player informed.
Definitely.
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