Midway step in refactoring trade

[travists]

Looks good, though I personally remain unsold on the all-consuming war that the average citizen has been wearing the same clothes since the war began and everybody outside the military is subsistence farming; especially if there are starships for sale on the civilian market. Then again pleasure worlds and space casinos produce little no matter how much they consume, so aren’t quite part of the "industry level".

[Deus Siddis]

Looks good, though I personally remain unsold on the all-consuming war that the average citizen has been wearing the same clothes since the war began and everybody outside the military is subsistence farming; especially if there are starships for sale on the civilian market.

Well that might not be totally relevant at this juncture since as the graphic shows every sector of the economy receives goods from the manufacturing and agricultural sectors. So no one is cut off from such necessities.

Then again pleasure worlds and space casinos produce little no matter how much they consume, so aren’t quite part of the "industry level".

The trouble I have with pleasure worlds and space casinos is that they are far too specialized for such big, expensive and isolated things. You could have entertainment like small casinos inside of even asteroid mines and tourism could be intra-planetary or be a small part of the economies of your average pastoral agricultural world or "night life" developed world. In other words it is hard to justify entire bases/planets be allocated to only this small purpose, let alone an entire industry.

[travists]

And Los Vegas is not isolated and specialized? Such are vacation spots, drawing from wide swaths of space. Not to mention Confed personnel on leave. There are, of course, other economic activities on pleasure planets, but the tourism industry is the only one big enough to need off-world supplies. And people if the whole passenger liner thing gets developed!

[greenfreedom10]

I think it would be great if the goal of dynamic economy could be extended to dynamic universe with ways to adjust every (or nearly every) object that exists.

What I have been trying to put together (barely a skeleton now) during a bit of free time recently is a list of attributes that could be assigned to objects, from star to cargo. These attributes would be managed by a dynamic engine using basic math and/or ingame occurrences.

One simple example: an object attribute called "active" could indicate whether a station is inhabited/derelict, a ship is operational/drifting, a cargo item is still current or old, and a weapon still contains an active charge or not.

Another example: a planet being a "gas giant" could be adjusted if eg. terra-forming takes place for some reason. Only the attribute would need to be adjusted, and the game engine would display the planet differently based on the attributes (perhaps added later in development). This same thing could be applied to the way seamless flight is being considered now.

I think we could go a long way with this, only limited by how much effort we want to put into giving VegaStrike built-in support for bigger, more dynamic plots and news items (automatically generated).

Okay, so the reason I mention this now is because Deus says "pleasure worlds" are too specialized to exist in the game universe. I agree with this, but I do think it would be fun if the game could evolve dynamically and there could be a very few of these very special places appear based on their unique places in the universe's economy.

So for example a given economic area might be 25% industry, 40% residential, and 35% commercial. If we can come up with a way for areas to interact economically, then we might be able to make individual economies evolve at times into eg. (not "pleasure worlds" but) "heavy commerce" worlds. "Heavy commerce" sounds much better, is much more likely, and is I suspect more what Deus has in mind. The game engine could then read the attributes and generate "heavy commerce" for a planet description, use different graphics for seamless flight, etcetera. Meanwhile the dynamic engine might adjust the economic status slightly and game-years later the player might notice the description to be "medium commerce" instead, along with similar changes in visuals and other related economies.

I acknowledge that this "attributes" sort of thing probably already exists in VegaStrike, in some form. It would be neat if a simple "attribute list" like this could become a more significant part of the way the game universe is managed and allow for more dynamism in VegaStrike.

I acknowledge that I do not know what the code looks like, nor do I have the time to learn enough to find out; I just want to share my ideas in case they have some merit.

[Deus Siddis]

And Los Vegas is not isolated and specialized?

Los Vegas isn't a whole planet or a lonely building in deep space. Giving it that much isolation and special treatment is just economically absurd.

So is giving it its own industry among only six others, along with its own unique group of imported commodities which comes with the territory of making it an entire industry.

[travists]

Many countries have places that draw people from all over the world. While Vegas is just a short trip from L.A. it is quite a jaunt from Tokyo, yet they have people from Japan all the time. Given the ease with which space travel is done a system being analogous to a city seems reasonable.

Perhaps "tourism industry" was a bit strong, shall we just say that there are worlds and/or bases that have a high demand for certain goods, but produce little useful?

[Deus Siddis]

Perhaps "tourism industry" was a bit strong, shall we just say that there are worlds and/or bases that have a high demand for certain goods, but produce little useful?

Actually if we say "produce little useful" is produce research, that would work well with the above system of sectors. The research sector just creates information which is not a commodity, so from the space trader's perspective it produces nothing.

So you could have these more developed worlds that demand some upper-class goods perhaps, but seem to produce "nothing". And they'd be part of the Research industry.

[travists]

Sounds almost like research, military, tourism, and a few others could be combined into "resource sinks" What "industry" they are a part of only will matter when we get to what ship parts are available there.

[Deus Siddis]

Sounds almost like research, military, tourism, and a few others could be combined into "resource sinks" What "industry" they are a part of only will matter when we get to what ship parts are available there.

I am open to the idea.

Since neither produces "anything", it mostly depends on the amount of overlap Military and Research have in terms of the commodities they consume.

And I suppose there might be a lot of overlap. Any classified research work will need security, which means weapons. Sensory equipment used to study distant celestial objects could also be used to detect a distant enemy presence, especially one that may be hiding via said celestial objects. Expensive AIs and Antimatter would make the most sense operating in both research and military applications.

[travists]

So do we want a more involved flow of goods chart or jump right into the items?

[Deus Siddis]

Well as you said "everything must come from somewhere" so I think we need to get into the somewhere next. We need to break each industry down into a full list of its location types, both planet and space based.

This is also critical from a gameplay perspective, since the primary thing the space trader does is decide on and then fly routes between locations. If the locations and relationships between them are not well designed then the trade game could become too convoluted or too simplistic or could have many deadwood locations and items that aren't worth going to or buying.

[travists]

Sounds good, as long as we don't wory about bases hanging in the middle of nowhere. I know I am not up to a compleat teardown and rewrite of the universe generating code.

[travists]

Thought about doing everything in one go, but Let's go sector by sector.

Mining:
Asteroid:
Produces ores (buy from private miners?), unprocessed metals esp. rare earths, silicates, small qty. water, and small qty. gems.
Consumes food, mining equipment, station type atmospheric maintenance, and labor.
Used by all factions, small stable population.
Gas:
Produces industrial and atmospheric gases esp. Hydrogen
Consumes food, water, gas collection and processing equipment
Used by most factions, minimal population.
Planetary (lava/molten):
Produces gems, unprocessed metals, small qty. industrial gases
Consumes food, water, station type atmospheric maintenance, and labor esp. robotic.
Primarily used by human groups, minimal population. ***Unsuitable for large scale colonization***
Planetary (rocky): --Rare--
Produces stone, fair qty. water, some metals.
Consumes food, mining equipment, station type atmospheric maintenance, labor, and some consumer goods.
Used by most factions, small slowly growing population. ***Some “domed city” colonization***
Planetary (habitable) and superbases are a special case.

[Deus Siddis]

So I think we need to answer to two questions on this--

• Where is the economy's energy coming from?
• Why are no other special planet types suitable for mining?

[travists]

Planetary mining, I would think, is limited because those planets that can support life are needed for food and colonies. However, as we seem to be reworking bases and planets we could always make some... I can see a planet being over run with manufacturing, agriculture, and people (colonies) but why mining? On moons perhaps?

As far as "energy" are you meaning what is the driving force, the primary source of resources, or how things are powered?

[Deus Siddis]

Planetary mining, I would think, is limited because those planets that can support life are needed for food and colonies.

What I mean is why list only lava and rock worlds as being part of the mining sector? Why not dirt, ice, ocean or others?

As far as "energy" are you meaning what is the driving force, the primary source of resources, or how things are powered?

How things are powered.

[travists]

Mining planets:
Feel free to add planets, that's why I didn't do the whole thing at once! What would a dirt planet mine? Why mine rather then terraform? Do both?

Power:
Let's look through the cargo again:
Confed seems to have mostly fusion and some fission.
Rallan has bio-power, likely some others too.
Aera... I don't recall if they have any power devices.

The state of Anti-matter in the VS universe does not seem to have developed to a reliable and efficient power source. As such, water, heavy water, and Hydrogen would be similar to our oil today.

[Deus Siddis]

Hmm, this might be easier with a cleaned-up list of planets, free of duplication. Maybe like this:

• Frozen
  Molten
  Arid
  Oceanic
  Temperate
  Industrial
  Populated

The state of Anti-matter in the VS universe does not seem to have developed to a reliable and efficient power source.

But is there enough use for it that there would be special facilities around devoted to producing it, I wonder?

As such, water, heavy water, and Hydrogen would be similar to our oil today.

That was my thinking to, so maybe Oceanic worlds like Atlantis could be in the mining sector?

[travists]

On anti-matter:
Yes, there would be facilities. It has numerous weapon applications.

On Planets:
Many planets fall into several areas, the question is what they net. Oceanic water? fish

[Turbo]

Team, I have two thoughts:

1. There are references to antimatter in the weapon descriptions (Reaper I think), so antimatter technology is at least advanced enough for weapons-grade use. Most energy sources are easier applied to destroying things than powering things. For example a stick wrapped in oily rags is an adequate tool to destroy a house with fire, but to heat the house with fire you need a container (fireplace or oven) and a hole for smoke to escape; which is easier to build? Therefore it is not necessarily a continuity error that we have antimatter weapons but not power sources. I'm just mentioning it so that we avoid any broad statements in one place that inadvertently create conflict with other places.

2. Pleasure planets produce entertainment, which is intangible. Currently, entertainment is a class of cargo (i.e. tri-vids, games, books, etc). If inter-system communication is cheap enough to provide an Internet-like capability (and the Andolian existence supports this), then Entertainment could be broadcast/streamed and might not appear as cargo, or the demand for physical media would be low on most worlds. Therefore the pleasure planet has a lot of incoming cargo (tourists, food, servant bots, etc), but the major outgoing cargo would be tourists. Since you also have tourists inbound, I am not sure how you would handle game mechanics so that pilots can make money. The simplest solution is that tourists are only available as mission cargo to and from pleasure planets, and never appear in commodity exchange. I'm not sure how the engine generates missions, though I do know how it determines the amount of cargo in commodity exchange. Hopefully they're not related. And, we'd need for there to be a big penalty if you were hauling tourists and had to dump the cargo. Do random-mission payoffs and/or mission-failure penalties have anything to do with the value of the cargo?

[travists]

Yes, With the exception of slaves, people are not commodities and should not be able to be purchased. However, there are numerous reasons for a private pilot to find him/herself with people as cargo.

[pheonixstorm]

A quick note about WHY there might be pleasure planets.

Case 1: Even the Star wars universe (in one of the Rogue Squadron books) there is talk about a planet whos economy is more or less based around tourism. I don't remember the why.. distance from heavily populated worlds was one I think, low population density of the world in question another..

Case 2: Natural Wonder. This in itself could be a major tourist draw, something akin to Old Faithful or the giant Red Wood trees. Think of what any planet might be like. Who knows what kind of natural rock or gas formations could inspire people to travel light years from home for vacation.

In master of orion 3 there are planetary specials like these that increasetourism. Natural Wonders, Exotic Wildlife... any of these could be a major draw for tourists to a particular planet. As such you would eventually (as more and more people travel to such places) get soemthing like Las Vegas or Dubai with a whole bunch of different reasons for travelling to a planet classified as a pleasure planet.

While pleasure planets may not have the type of exports other worlds would, it would be far more specialized as industries catering to certain sectors of the local economy (pleasure bots, holo vids, virtual reality) may be the local exports, perhaps even an exotic drink that can only be grown locally and is a popular export. So, while a PP might import nearly everything, it would still have a small export market.

[travists]

I've also been thinking about a pleasure "base". While it's more of a ship that can move as the front changes, assuming they go for the war-fighters on leave market, most would find a spot that works and just stay there.

Also, the more I think about it, the more I think you can't erase "duplicates" to talk about exports, with the exception of the molten/lava duality. Atmosphere will play a large role, as Ralan are stated to be methane breathers and seem to have an ammonia based diet. As such the ammonia oceanic worlds would be a source of Ralan specific food, and those with a methane atmosphere would have a greater need for Ralan specific goods. "Temperate" is all fine and dandy, but is it a forest world, grassland world, mostly ocean, but with enough land to separate it from oceanic, some combination? Devoted to farming, harvesting native resources, growing colony?

One last stab at university planets. If we assume that a planet if not a whole star system in the VS universe has transportation that makes it functionally the same as a city, what do you think of when someone mentions "Boston"? Baked beans, the original "tea party", and Harvard would be common in the US I think. There are doubtless several cities throughout the world that are known as much, if not more, for the local university than anything else. Why then is it so strange that a planet could have a university that garners wide acclaim and eventually becomes the dominant economic driver on the planet? Such would need housing for an ever growing student base, consume those things that kids the first time away from home tend to consume. And, as such settings foster independent thinking, ISO propaganda would run rampant.

[pheonixstorm]

Actually for universities I would be thinking late 18th/19th century. You had what... Cambridge, Oxford and several other high class schools in various countries. The thing is though if you wanted to attend them you would have to hop on your horse and travel long distances to get there. Or go by boat.. but either way you could look at VS the same way since the distances/time between systems or sectors would cause high value highly sought after universities to become the basis for a planetary economy instead of in todays society were traveling from say New York to go to school in the UK isn't as difficult (think in-system schools, even well regarded).

[travists]

Deus on vacation? Anybody else want to get back on this one? We seemed to have a good head of steam going till last week....