Stranger's Roolite Essay on Economics & Trade

[Cholmondely]

I completely agree with cim's arguments. All 2048 systems must have enough internal sources to provide primary needs like food, drinking water and oxygen. I have my own study of Oolite economy model. It was summarized in document Oolite - economy, statistics, demography (PDF format, on Russion). Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_OS-F ... 8sTCD2DMug
Moreover, 128 t capped value for each goods category (non individual item) is unrealistically low not only for needs of billions of planet population, but for observable system traffic too.
I think the only way to solve this paradox is to assume that private trader have access not for global system market per se, but to very limited free trade pool (maybe private companies again, restricted in trade volumes?).
You have no possibility to export enough drinking water for billions of population indeed, but you can purchase some water to supply external ports.

The following posts will give an edited Google Translate version of this Essay

[Cholmondely]

Part the First (lightly edited) - of perhaps 10 parts?
Part the First (more moderately edited - problematic text in red)

Ooniversum. Economics, statistics and demography.

To analyse the accuracy of the economic and demographic models of the procedurally-generated game world of the Ooniverse seems to be absurd. But oddly enough, this exercise provides a good opportunity to think through the logic of the game world and see the vulnerabilities of the model quite clearly.

Let's start with the global statistics.

The average population of an Oolite planet: 3.5 billion.
The average gross domestic product: 15267 M₢ / day
Average income per capita: 4.362₢ / day

Purchasing Power of the ₢
First of all I would like to clarify the purchasing power of the ₢ and tie it to the usual currencies which we are used to.

And here for the inquiring mind resides a myriad of mysteries.

Why is it that a ton of wholesale alcohol costs about 25₢ but a drink in the seedy bar costs about 4₢ (albeit with a snack, but also hundreds of kilograms in one sitting heavily uporotyh!)? A hundredfold margin - this is something rather bizarre.

Attempts to understand the situation are complicated by the fact that the product is transported in containers and thus must take into account the packing factor (net weight / gross weight). Therefore we first have to find the answer to this question: what is meant by "standard monophonic 1TC cargo container" and what are the dimensions of this container?

Real size of 1TC cargo containers
(i) The lower limit of the range - the hypothesis of Selezen: a standard monotonnic container has a capacity of one metric ton volume, i.e. 1 cubic meter based on that of water. In this case, a cylindrical container has a diameter of approximately 0.8 m with a length of 2 meters. And now unrealistically low prices for the same alcohol in bulk as compared with the price of serving a drink in the seedy bar can in part be explained: the packing ratio of fragile goods yields for 0.1 liters of alcohol as a portion of the gross size about 0.25₢.

(ii) But! Analysing the screenshots of visible container sizes, made at a certain distance, gives however a 5 times greater size: a container of 10 m length with a diameter of 4 m and an internal volume of 125 cubic meters! Such monstrously large-size packaging is difficult to work into our analysis of seedy bar pricing. So let's discard Selezen's volume-based analysis and move to a weight-based description, Well, let's say, a ton is the weight of the container, but then its alcoholic contents will have specific cost only about 0.2 cubic meter of credit for!
So! Guess what flashed through my mind when I found an old ship in the original Elite specifications. There the dimensions are not given in meters but rather in imperial feet. And if you take this position, and somehow survive the concomitant effects of this on the rest of Oolite, the new range is logically and psychologically plausible.

The dimensions of the Cobra Mark III are cut from a massive 130x30x65 to 40x9x20m - much larger heavy fighter, but less strategic bomber B-2 Stealth. A little Adder sized 30x8x45 m (shed a hefty size of commercials with the District House of Culture) - is reduced to 9x2.5x13.5 m: not a minivan or even a wagon, of course, but it will come down to a single long-distance swimming length.

Using this foot/metre conversion, the dimensions of the container are reduced to a length of 3 meters and a diameter of 1.2 meters and an internal volume - up to 3.375 cubic meters. And then you can safely assume that its structural weight is really 1 tonne (based on a sealed enclosure to withstand the vacuum insulation and climate control systems), and that in such a container one can pack a ton of almost any cargo except bulk of fragile items.

Slave containers, rescue capsules & passenger cabins
A special case - the slaves. Sex slave carriage 50 kg requires cryocontainers monochromatic of 1TC, i.e. in this case, the slaves do not believe by weight and the heads. A similar conversion is valid with the selected rescue capsule. And cryocontainers sizes obtained are entirely suitable. The rescue capsule, however, turns out to be a bit crowded - 2.1x1.8x1.8 m, but within reasonable limits.

The passenger cabin, consuming 5 tonnes of space in the cargo hold. A group of four containers linked 2x2, has dimensions of 3x2.4x2.4 m - not the Hilton hotel, of course, but as a single cabin it seems quite plausible, given the fact that the ship also has a mess room and recreation area. Instead, fifth container - equipment for life support and replaceable cartridges / tanks with consumable components of LSS.


The hypothesis about the size of the footage received an unexpected verifation. The mass of ships is not listed in their specifications: not in the manual attached to the Oolite or the EliteWiki, nor are they given in the descriptions of the files or the shipdata.plist's (see Oolite JavaScript Reference: Ship). But for experienced developers this hidden parameter is known and is used. So if you create a simple script that will display the value player.ship.mass, you can find out the following:

Adder 16t ship mass
Cobra Mark I 52t ship mass
Cobra Mark III 215t ship mass
Python 267t ship mass

The volume of the Adder on its dimensions is 303.75 m3. Ship is steshan on a wedge and one can estimate its constructive volume as about half of the overall volume - 150 m3. This gives an average density of about 0.1 t / m3, this value is quite close to the characteristics of modern carrier missiles with their typical ratio of dry mass to filled fuel being 1:10.
The Python has a wedge-shaped form. If you navigate the volume of the pyramid with a base of 80x40 feet and a height of 130 feet and cut it on the side ribs to the rhombic profile (half of the volume of the total), then the inner volume of the ship is of the order of (24x12x40) / 6 = 1920 m3 and thus has an average density of about 0.14 t / m3 .
The Cobra Mk. III - a boat of a rather complicated shape. Take instead a large-scale analogue of the B-2 bomber, which is similar to Cobra. The bomber has dimensions of 52.5x21x5.2 m (with volume inside these dimensions of 5730 m3) with a dry weight of 56.7 tons and a normal flight mass with fuel and armament of 168.4 t. So a Cobra Mk. III has dimensions of 40x20x9 m3 (volume inside these dimensions of 7200 m3). With identical and accurate geometric similarity to the B2, there will be a dry weight of about 71.25 tons and a normal flight mass of 211.5 t. Given that the Cobra Case Mark does not have a central influx, and evenly goes to the wedge to consoles, the Sukhum mass 71.25 T can be safely multiplied by three and approximately. The foot/metre hypothesis does not contradict these calculations.


Whatever the scale of the scale either for the standard, the cargo inside the ship needs to be packed away. Look at trucking. For large ships, a multiple 5 ton, and an additional cargo compartment for 15 tons suggest that one of the standard ways of packaging of cargo is a group of 5 pieces of magazines. You can, of course, imagine and revolve suspensions on the same B-2 and even long tape-cartridge. When laying in a ton cassette, 160 units of volume (cubic meters or cubobuts are not important) occupies. Hexagonal

The packing in principle makes it possible to slightly reduce this volume, but on the essence of our approximate attacks it is little effect, since the inner volume of the ship has a sufficiently complex shape - we can only imagine the shapes as we have no access to the ships themselves. In principle, the wide hull of the Cobra Mk. III allows, without any further problems, holding 4 magazines of dimensions 20x4x10 and there is enough space for an additional cargo compartment. For the Python, the task is also in principle solved. If you focus on the internal volume of the ship of about 69,300 cubic units, 100 tons of cargo will take 16,000 cubic volume units - approximately 23% of the vehicle's volume. This is quite acceptable if one is obsessed with the need for rational accommodation. It's more complicated in the case of the Anaconda. Its dimensions are 75x60x170 and even if we take her shape as a clean pyramid, we get only 255,000 cubic units. 750 tons of cargo fills 47% of the volume of this ship.

Well, we will assume that we have clarified this matter. Let us turn to the economy.

The Economy
Which products should form the basis of the ₢:$ comparison? Gold and platinum, the traditional monetary equivalents in our world - are unreliable standards - as in the Ooniverse these resources are mined in asteroid mines. It is unreasonable to expect that they have retained the usual market value we know here. It is safest to choose as a basis the essentials: food, clothing, alcohol.

Price Annual demand/person
Food 4.5 ₢ / t 0.5 m
Alcohol 25 ₢ / m 0.05 m

The overall picture obtained is very optimistic: food cost is approximately 1/450 of the gross domestic product of the Ooniverse. This is quite plausible for a high-tech space-oriented community. And even if we assume that the cost of food is instead 10% of the total cost of a normal standard of living, we find that the "social budget" is about 2% of the gross domestic product.

Moderately edited down to here

Let us approach the situation from the other side. Let's try to equate the ₢ to our real-world currencies on the basis of its purchasing power. Close to reality, the picture is equal 1 when 1₢ = $ 1000. Check for compliance with the real world:
Food 4.5 $ / kg x 35 = 157.5 rubles / kg
Alcohol 25 $ / kg x 35 = 875 $ / kg
Potatoes are cheaper this sum, cheese - more about that in the middle. Vodka and ordinary wine is cheaper, vintage wines and fine cognac expensive - a goal also in the plug.
Check the alignment of other goods.
The average price of a slave 15₢ = $ 15,000. The annual cost of maintaining a slave 2.25₢ food + about as much on clothes and other essential items in a total of $ 4500 / year. Rab-builder does the job for which a free man would have to pay $ 2000 per month or $ 24,000 / year. During the first 9 months of operation servant
Price
2.25 ₢ 1.25 ₢
Total 3.50 ₢
It pays off and starts to make a profit.
Sex slave generates income $ 36,000 a year. Its content is more expensive. If take the value of food products 20% of the total cost of presentation, the annual costs 11.25 ₢ = 11250 $. Full payback 8 months of operation.
Finally, the final test. The insurance amount for the salvation of man in open space - about 250 ... 500 ₢. value of life in the Western developed countries is estimated at $ 1000000 = 1000 ₢. Such amounts airlines paid to the families of those killed in accidents.
In this scenario, average gross domestic product per capita is $ 4,360, and the annual - $ 1.6 million. It is enough for the social programs that guarantee a comfortable life at the bottom of the atmosphere.

Added (14/12/2021):

Excursus: Ship Prices
And how does the established scale correlate with the prices of ships and equipment? If Jameson had started his career as a Naval Fighter Pilot, he would have been fine with the odds. The cost of a missile is $ 35,000, the cost of a heavy fighter is $ 150 million, quite reasonable values from the real world. The problem is that this level of technology is difficult to imagine in the hands of private traders. The Mark Three Cobra isn't a truck or even the legendary Cessna 172 Skyhawk, which could once be bought for $9,000. But let's chase this away as just being gaming conventions. After all, the suggestion that young Jameson began his career with a $150 million ship with a $100,000 seed capital is no more fantastic than the player's wanderings in the magical world of Morrowind, populated by dark elves and orcs.

Ship Pricing
Hmm... well, by the way, just a question about the price of the ship.

Ship Weight Price Unit Cost (₢/TC)
Adder 16 TC 65 000₢ 4062.5
Cobra Mark I 52 TC 100 000₢ 1923
Cobra Mark III 215 TC 150 000₢ 698
Python 267 TC 200 000₢ 749

Now the question itself: what does the Adder crumb consist of, that a ton of its mass costs 4,000₢? I remind you: the average market value of alloys is 39₢ per TC, mechanisms - 56₢, electronics - 82₢. And why is it that this technologically most advanced Mark Three Cobra in our sample has the lowest unit cost of about 750₢ per ton?

Hyperdrive Pricing
Counter question: how much can a hyperdrive cost? To begin with, the mass of the ship does not affect the requirements for its hyperdrive. A Python, or even a Naval Hippopotamus, can enter the wormhole left by the tiny Adder with its cheap Hyperdrive, and without spending a drop of fuel, make a jump of at least 6.8 LY.

The mass of the ship affects only the lifetime of the wormhole, and theoretically, after the opening of the crater, not only a naval armada can be carried through it, but also the entire orava of traders in the system: each subsequent ship passing through the entrance funnel prolongs its existence. Here, by the way, is a fundamentally different mechanism for long-distance navigation, which does not require hyperdrive on each ship: a network of constantly open wormholes connecting systems. Let's take a hyperdrive cost of 57,000₢. Then we get the cost of the hull of the ship minus the cost of hyperdrive:

Code: Select all

Ship                         Weight                  Price                   Unit Cost (₢/t)
Adder                           16t                 8 000₢                       500
Cobra Mark I                 52t                43 000₢                      827
Cobra Mark III              215t                93 000₢r                     433
Python                        267t               143 000₢                     536

And still the hull of the ship is an order of magnitude more expensive than the components separately. But here a rationale can be found. To put it mildly... In general, if you decompose a human body weighing 80 kg into atoms and decompose the resulting chemically pure elements into jars, then theoretically you can earn as much as $ 145 on this. But if you carefully disassemble a healthy body into organs, then it can be disposed of by spare parts already for $ 45 million (this is not a typo!). Complex systems are much more valuable than their constituent materials.

So, we do not know what technologies are used in the Universe in the design and construction of ships. If their components are not just assembled on the conveyor into one whole, but mutually adjusted and individually adjusted (I am not talking about self-learning neural networks of quantum processors!), then the cost of the finished product can easily exceed the cost of components by orders of magnitude.

But back to the goods.

One can, of course, come up with a different understanding: for example, the price announced in the F8 screen manifest is not the price of the goods, but the declared cost of its transportation and the real price of the goods is an order of magnitude more expensive. The carrier does not buy the goods, but concludes a contract for its delivery to its destination. The cost of buying /selling this contract, for example, is about 10% of the real value of the goods. Then the cost of the creed drops to $ 100, the price of the rocket becomes $ 3500, and the price of the brand new Cobra Mark Three - $ 15 million. The total annual gross product per capita also falls to $160,000. The share of essential products is growing by an order of magnitude and averages 1/45 of the gross product of the system. The figures are very plausible. Although, of course, this assumption is logically flawed - what prevents the illegal sale of selected goods somewhere in the outskirts not controlled by GalCop for its true price?

Whichever way we accept the conversion factor, it is difficult for a middle-class native to save up honestly for a space ticket. Suppose a young socially active and not lazy Jameson is engaged in skilled demanded labor and earns five times more than per capita on average - 25₢ per day. To buy a Cobra Mark Three in this scenario, you need to save 6,000 days - 16.5 years. And even baby Adder Jameson will see in the expectation of exclusively on his own strength only after seven years of exhausting work without respite. Without the state system of training young pilots in the Universe can not do. And in principle, these investments pay off quite quickly - but this is discussed further on. But back to the Universe. Let's see what we got. Take two polar cases.

1. Extremely industrial economy.
Average population of the main planet: 4.86 billion
Average gross domestic product: 33711 M₢/day
Average product per capita: 6.936 ₢/day
The main goods produced by the system:
Mechanisms 48 ₢/TC
Electronics 62 ₢/TC
Luxury Goods 80 ₢/TC

The commodity of luxuries will have an expanded definition in the Universe: these are not only pieces of glamorous products, art objects and antiques, but also almost everything that, in totalitarian regimes with a distributive ersatz economy, is covered by the concept of "to get by the blata". It is unlikely that this product category makes up the dominant part of the system's exports, so it is quite possible to accept an average unit price of 50₢ per ton (a firearm has approximately the same price - but this category in a certain scenario may well make up a significant part of the system's exports). If measured by such a template, then the daily gross product of the system is equivalent to the production of 675 million tons of goods. In practice, of course, a significant part of the budget goes to the needs of the planet itself and such resource-intensive projects as the construction and operation of orbital stations, lunar colonies, planetary settlements, the development of asteroid mines, the maintenance of the fleet to protect against thargoids, the maintenance of GalCop patrol forces to protect against pirates. And to feed the GalCop bureaucracy. Ten percent of GNP in the form of exports outside the system is a plausible estimate for a technologically oriented civilization into space, and as we will see later, the actual cargo flow between the systems is much lower than this value.

2. Extremely agrarian economy.
Average population of the main planet: 2.34 billion
Average gross domestic product: 4339 M₢/day.
Average product per capita: 1.854 ₢/year.
The main products produced by the system are food, textiles, alcohol and furs.

But due to the high difference in the cost of a unit of production, it is not so easy to determine the average unit price of goods.
Food 2.2 ₢/TC
Textile 6 ₢/TC
Alcohol 22 ₢/TC
Fur 58 ₢/TC

Mass transportation of cheap food and textiles over long distances gives a smaller profit than transportation of alcohol and furs, so it can be assumed that in private cargo transportation, the last two groups of goods should give a predominant contribution to turnover. And in this case, at a ratio of 50:50, the average price of a ton of goods is 40 ₢ / TC, which almost ensures the trade balance.

On the other hand, given the shortage of food in the industrial worlds, food should make up a significant share of cargo transportation. Having purchased at a price of 65₢ per TC of agricultural machinery produced in the industrial world, the farmer must sell 30 TC of food to pay for it. And he can use the rest of the product produced with its help for his own needs or sell it on the domestic market.

But there are two logically weak points here.

First of all, in the game we observe intensive shipping in industrial systems with lethargic navigation in agrarian ones (compare at least closely located Listi and Diso).

Excuse me, but such a picture upsets the elementary balance! The total flow of ships leaving industrial systems should be equal to the total flow of ships entering agrarian systems - and vice versa! The above picture would be fair if in the Universe there were a dozen agrarian systems per one industrial system! But this is not so: the ratio of systems with an extremely industrial and extremely agrarian economy is 218:318! And the ratio of industrial systems to agrarian systems is 720:825 - this is clearly not enough to explain the observed picture. One might assume that the solution to the paradox is in the existence of a vast layer of systems with a balanced economy. The bulk of the cargo flow of industrial systems falls on non-extreme from the point of view of profit, but relatively safe trade routes into stable balanced systems. Otherwise, why would these systems have a higher GNP compared to specialized agricultural ones? But there are only 503 such systems and they cannot forget the gradient.

Demographics
The situation becomes even more incomprehensible if we pay attention to the relative share of the population of the industrial and agrarian worlds. The demographic pyramid of the Universe is inverted and simply contradicts real reality and all logic. The combined population of 720 industrial worlds is 3132 billion inhabitants. The total population of 825 agrarians is 2244 billion, that is, for every 10 farmers there are 14 inhabitants of industrial areas. In this scenario, 60% of the agricultural products produced should go beyond the system. That is, the farmer, roughly speaking, having purchased a ton of agricultural machinery, produces 30 tons of food for export and 20 tons for the domestic market. This is enough to feed hundreds of people for a year. He has nowhere to put the rest of the products. Nothing prevents him from switching to the production and export of more lucrative alcohol and furs, but why then are poor agrarian systems so poor? With such a colossal foreign market, agricultural systems that monopolistically determine prices in the foreign market should live like oil emirates. The population of industrial systems is clearly excessive, and with a ratio of total gross product of 3.22:1 in favor of industrial systems, agrarian systems with their small population are able to absorb only a small part of the output produced in industrial systems. Again, to oversimplify the situation, if agricultural systems export 600 kilocredits from each megacredit produced, the counterflow of goods for the equivalent amount of 600 kilocredits is only 18.6% of the total 3,223 megacredits of industrial systems.

The Strangers World economics model

So much for the default Universe. My Population Tweak setup shifts the distribution of the population towards agrarian systems: with an average population of 3 billion The average population of a system with an extremely agrarian economy is 4.25 billion, and with an extremely industrial economy - 1.55 billion inhabitants. The overall population balance is 2.3:1 in favor of agrarian systems. Now every ton of agricultural schemes purchased in industrial systems returns to the industrial worlds in the form of 30 tons of food and 70 tons goes to the domestic market. Accordingly, 300 kilocredits from each megacredits are exported in the agrarian system, in the industrial system - the same 300 kilocredits with 3223 or 9.3%.

And by the way, let's try to once again estimate the purchasing value of the creed in the reconfigured Universe.

The gross product per capita in the system with the maximum agrarian specialization is now about one kilocredit per inhabitant per day. Suppose that only 10% of the gross product is accounted for by food production, and the rest is spent on winter olympics in the subtropics, palaces for the fathers of the nation and their chelyady, the maintenance of their own amusing self-defense fleets and other pranks. Food production is, say, a ton per year per capita - this is enough to feed its own population and export to replenish the budget. Even so, a ton of food costs 36.5₢, an order of magnitude more than the typical value in the F8 manifesto, which again strengthens our suspicion that the carrier actually sees only a tenth of the true value of the goods. And if the real cost of other goods is in the same proportion, then the average price of a unit of goods during transportation between systems is about 500₢ per TC.

And if money from the budget is not stolen and if food production is half of the gross product of the system (the other half is scattered on alcohol, furs, income from tourism and the sale of ethnic souvenirs), then the price of a ton of food should be about 180₢. And alcohol - ten times higher.

So a portion of a drink in deep space may well cost 4₢. If it's a big portion for the whole evening.

Volume of Trade
But this is an unrealistically large mass of goods. Just unrealistically huge. With an average gross product for the Univesum of 15267 MCr / day and the price of a ton of product of 500₢, we get the maximum cargo flow through the system of 30.5 million tons - 10 kilograms per inhabitant per day!

Suppose only 10% of the system's output is exported. Suppose only 10% of this cargo flow is unloaded at the main station, and the rest is delivered by heavy trucks to low orbit and taken by shuttles. And then the total cargo flow through the system, excluding heavy trucks, is reduced by two orders of magnitude - up to 300 thousand tons.

Let's look at the number of ships in the system at a turnover of 1 flight per day.

Let's take approximately the following layout for the transportation of 2000 tons of cargo:
1 Anaconda x 750 TC + 4 escort ships
2 Boa x 125 TC + 4 escort ships
10 Pythons x 100 TC + 20 escort ships

Small-capacity ships are not yet taken into account: they hardly account for a significant amount of traffic.

In total, the system averages about 1950 transporters and 4200 escort ships.

Uh, let me tell you, batenka, you've been lucky on the scale, the observant gamer will object. Well, let's say a ship gets to the station in an average of half an hour - how many ships can be found on the way? A dozen traders from strength.

A thoughtful gamer will strike roughly such a balance. The window of entry to the lock opens for two minutes, so that transit through the station is a maximum of 720 arrivals/day. Well, a well-established dispatch service is able to take one arrival per minute, this increases the maximum daily flow by half - up to 1440 boards. And taking into account the time for the release of departing launchings (albeit with an interval of 15 seconds) - and even less. This is a transit of a large airport, but not a gateway of a planetary scale.

Specifically, the layout looks like this. 3 Anacondas, 6 Boas, 30 Pythons and 84 escort fighters. Per minute (let's say) for the reception of 123 arrivals, a total of 120 minutes. Then the whole squadron should be released back out again, another 30 minutes. The imported 6,000 TC of cargo must be transported to the bottom of the atmosphere by shuttles - 200 departures of 30 TC. And these shuttles should deliver cargo to the station from the bottom of the atmosphere. Another 200 minutes. Total in total 400 minutes - 6 hours 40 minutes of uninterrupted debugged work. In total, the capacity of the station is in no way higher than 21 thousand tons per day. Just seven percent of our estimated value based on freight traffic. And this does not take into account the time for receiving and sending all sorts of trifles and for the launch windows for GalCop patrol ships.

But this is unrealistically high, the meticulous gamer will notice. Calculate the total quantity and price of the goods in the market of the F8 system. Well, where are your 21,000 TC here?

Well, the last objection is just the easiest to deal with. The market on the F8 screen is the surplus products coming into the open sale. The vast majority of freight traffic goes through the station in transit and is not displayed in the F8 manifesto.

Further. Canonical texts mention the presence of several stations in the system. How many exactly? In developed industrial systems of high technological level, such as Leesti and Tionisla - at least 5 stations, each of which can accommodate 2,000 ships in its docks. A total of 10,000 ships that can be based in the system. In practice, as we calculated above, the station is able to receive and release a maximum of 420 movements/day - with a transport/escort ratio of 1: 2, this is 140 transports and 280 escort ships. Five stations - 700 transports and 560 escort ships. Plus, a fraction of ships are equipped with equipment that allows you to land directly on the planet. Hardly a majority. A total of 1,000 transports and 2,000 escort ships in the system can be accommodated. The total cargo flow is a maximum of 150 thousand tons per day. Let's say the same number of ships are on service at the docks. And another 500 ships of free traders, hunters, smugglers and pirates who act at their own risk, without relying too much on the official infrastructure. This is another 25 thousand tons, hardly more. A total of 175 thousand tons of cargo traffic per day and 2500 pilots in the system with combat experience. That's the upper limit. In practice, even in a system with intensive navigation, the amount of cargo traffic should be reduced at least twice: 75 thousand tons through the stations, and let it be the same 25 thousand tons for the share of free traders. It's still a lot.

Why, with such a densely populated system, do we not observe a dense flow of traffic, from time to time compacted into traffic jams? Well, first of all, space is a huge space. Let's move away from our cozy 1:100 vanilla game scale model of the planet and accept the scales as they would be in reality. Take a planet with a radius of 5,000 kilometers and place the entry point to the system some 10 radii from the planet - 50,000 km. The diameter of the scanner field in this scenario will cover only 1/1000 of the distance to the planet and even if you do not deviate from the route, the ships along the way will be encountered only occasionally. Much less often than we actually see in the game. And secondly, why not assume that each neighboring system within a radius of 7 light years corresponds to its own entrance point with an entrance beacon? And the planet has its own station? (Leesti: 5 neighbors within a radius of 7 light years, 5 stations. Tionisla: 6 neighbors - 6 stations!). Yeah, we don't see that in the game. We always log in at only the one entry point, no matter where we come from. Well, there are a lot of things missing in the Vanilla game - no drags, no generational ships, no additional planets and moons...

So, we came to the conclusion that private cargo transportation between systems gives a maximum fraction of a percent of the declared GNP system. The rest falls on the domestic market or is transported by large-scale transport.

Editorial Note: the second half is equally long and will be found beneath.

[stranger]

Needs some human edition indeed
Russian word "однотонный" for example means not only
1. monophonic
2. monochromatic
but also
3. having 1 ton capacity
It is my part of work to clarify such issues. Still hope to find time to do this job.

[Cholmondely]

Needs some human edition indeed
Russian word "однотонный" for example means not only
1. monophonic
2. monochromatic
but also
3. having 1 ton capacity
It is my part of work to clarify such issues. Still hope to find time to do this job.

I'm going over it and high-lighting confusions in red so you can easily spot them!

If you fill me in just above by editing your post there, I can eventually present a fully-edited version at the top of this thread, and then minimal space will have been taken up by the editing process.

[stranger]

I'm finished verification of first essay (Oolite as game world and its relations with real astronomy). Planning to upload edited transcript to Google Drive soon. After that I'll begin work on verification of economics essay.
Thank you for your interest and for your very impressive work on Oolite Wiki, sir!

[Cholmondely]

I'm finished verification of first essay (Oolite as game world and its relations with real astronomy). Planning to upload edited transcript to Google Drive soon. After that I'll begin work on verification of economics essay.
Thank you for your interest and for your very impressive work on Oolite Wiki, sir!

A pleasure.

Thank you for helping polish the russian translation of Mr Gimlet! I'd argue that my commencing the more serious wiki work was a direct response to your endeavours.

[Cholmondely]

Also Added (14/12/2021):
Let's move on from macroeconomics, which the average trader/huckster is of little interest to, to the profits and risks of his profession. No, there will be no advice on how to choose the best route, what and where to buy and sell for pumping capital. Let's put the question differently. How cost-effective is the occupation itself?

For a gamer, oddly enough, it is cost-effective under any conditions. He can not go bankrupt in any way, the maximum that he risks is to lower the starting 100 credits of capital, but he will not lose Cobra, the magic combination of save / load allows you to step on different rakes countless times. But what would it be like in real life, where save/load doesn't roll?

The average price of a ton of electronics in the extremely industrial system is 62.1₢ per TC, in the extremely agrarian system - 101.3₢ per TC, profit is almost 40₢ per TC of cargo. Average prices for alcohol 36.1 and 22.1₢, profit 14₢. Average prices for furs 83.0 and 57.8₢, profit 25₢. These are the extreme values. Let's say a Cobra trader, in a Mark Three, makes flights between average industrial and agrarian systems, where the average profit is half. Suppose that market fluctuations in the price of furs and their available quantity lead to the fact that the trader is loaded with furs only half of the time. Even in this case, the average profit will be 20₢ per TC of cargo on a flight to the agricultural system and 10₢ on the way back. In this scenario, the Cobra Mark Three without an additional cargo compartment with a starting cost of 150,000₢ pays off in 500 flights each with a full load. With the mode of work a day on the road - a day in the docks is three years of work, and then you can save up for a cozy house with a garden somewhere in a calm agrarian system. Well, four taking into account the starting pumping of capital and the payback of upgrades. You can retire for a well-deserved rest much earlier, like a year and a half or two, and then selling Cobra for 70-75% of the original price.

A python with a carrying capacity of 100 TC and a starting cost of 200,000₢ seats pays off under the same conditions for only 150 flights, taking into account the cost of upgrades and maintenance - a year of navigation. Unless, of course, there is something to fully download it. But let's say that there is something - otherwise what's the point of acquiring a big ship? It is unlikely, of course, that electronics and furs make up the bulk of the cargo flow between the systems. The owner of a large ship will have to fill the hold with essential goods: these are mechanisms in the agrarian worlds and food in the industrial (and again alcohol). Suppose a huckster on a Python takes the same 20 TC of electronics (profit 400₢) and fills the remaining place in the hold with 80 TC of mechanisms (about 640₢ more). Return flight - 20 TC of alcohol (140₢) and 80 TC of food (220₢). In total, a round-trip flight will give 1400₢, an average profit of 7₢ per TC. Under such conditions, python will pay off in about 300 flights - two years. And for twenty years of hard work, if everything goes as it should, theoretically you can become the owner of a colossal transport empire of a thousand ships and take over the entire system (in two years we buy a second ship for the proceeds, in four years there are already four of them, in six years - eight and so exponentially).

In fact, of the 700₢ earned on the flight, The Captain Python will give 100₢ to two escort mercenaries (they are not particularly interested in working for a smaller share) and at least 100₢ from each flight will be saved for unforeseen repair costs (we include refueling here), so that the payback period of the Python will be almost twice as long as in comparison with the optimistic estimate. But these are still quite acceptable conditions for business. With 400₢ of net profit from the voyage, the Python's crew (say, owning a ship on the pays) will recoup it in 500 flights.

If it weren't for the pirates. And the thargoids. And the other vicissitudes of fortune.

And speaking of pirates. These gentlemen live by what? Well, the banner of - robbery.

And more specifically? Well, there was a gang of scumbaggers on the old Kraits of the lonely trader, gutted him with lasers. Navar from the collision, if you are lucky - two or three containers with cargo (an average of 100...150 credits) and a couple of pieces of cladding (another 70...80₢). Not tough for a brigade of three or four snouts. Yes, and this product is legally sold, you will have to hand over somewhere in the wilderness for half the price. Even if you take the starting price of old Krait for 75 thousand credits, until you pay for it, the combat rating for a thousand will exceed. The occupation is troublesome and dangerous, like shearing a pig. There is a lot of screeching, but little wool.

Well, so what, the reckless gamer will say, they are pirates after all for courage and entourage. Without pirates, there will be no games.

That's right, but I'd like it to be authentic.

First of all, in real reality, robbers go only out of necessity from a large road to a wet business. When the victim, instead of meekly turning out his pockets and sadly walking away, stands in a heroic pose. The developers of Oolite v.1.80 have worked out this scenario. The merchant can now get off with a slight fright, throwing overboard part of the cargo. The critical starting point for the green gamer has become significantly easier and allows you to less often abuse the magic combination of save/load.

Moreover, in real reality, it is more profitable to regularly fleece the victim, extracting a set share of the proceeds, than to rig it to the thread once. Piracy obeys the law of the food pyramid. To feed one lion or a dozen hyanae in the African savannah you need - off the top of your head, we will not nitpick with the numbers - a herd of hundreds of antelopes. Predators regularly take their share, without reducing the population of herbivores to extinction. Let's apply this rule to our average system with a cargo flow of 100,000 TC per day.

Let's say that pirate activity is concentrated mainly in unstable agrarian worlds. Merchants included in such systems have on board expensive cargo - goods of the industrial group, and the GalCop patrol in such systems is weakened. Let's say that conflicts with pirates occur every fifth flight to an unstable system and on average pirates extract their legitimate tithes. The average purchase price of 20 TC of electronics and 80 TC of mechanisms is (20 * 75 + 80 * 53) = 5740₢, the average purchase price of a unit of goods is about 57.5₢. Profit from the sale of goods 400 + 640 = 1040₢, we take away 200₢ to pay for escorts, 840₢ in the balance. According to the above rules, pirates extract from regular trade 2% of the cargo - approximately 1000-2000 TC per day, depending on the cargo flow in the system. For hucksters, it's unpleasant, but not deadly. Net profit from the flight decreases from 840 to 725₢, the payback period of the business increases by fifteen percent - well, let it be up to 575 flights, three years with a little intensive work without holidays and weekends. Taking into account indirect losses for the payment of escorts, the overhead costs for business risk are about 30 percent. At the same time, gentlemen of fortune are not in the way. Let's say a typical pirate group is a Python in the Black Dog variant and three fighters. Which, if necessary, can unite in larger flocks. With such a composition, 10-20 brigades - 40-80 pirate ships - can be fed daily at the expense of traders in the system. And even if you sell the goods for half the price, the proceeds from the raid will be 3400₢ per group. A python worth 200,000₢ and three Kraits worth 75,000₢ each will pay off again for 125 raids. Four months with a little - unless, of course, you drink recklessly and diligently go to work every day. And if you go out in dangerous raids, skipping all the loot, as it is usually accepted among this public, then a much larger population can feed on hucksters without uprooting them. And what, in our beautiful state, the population of non-producing officials and law enforcers is at least comparable to the population of producers, and the life of this group of comrades has definitely been mulled.

In principle, and in the current state of affairs, piracy, if approached wisely, can open up interesting opportunities for an enterprising businessman. Forcing the huckster to eject and taking him prisoner, you can get an insurance reward for him, transferring it to GalCop's emissaries somewhere in neutral territory. And the abandoned ship should at least be scrapped. So far, it seems that both capabilities require a net status, but what prevents you from making a package that bypasses these restrictions?

There is another very vital scenario. Members of the Coast brotherhood are themselves hired as an escort to the merchant in order to protect him from the vicissitudes of a dangerous path through an unstable system. Of course, for a higher fee than a mercenary with pure status would have taken. And where should the merchant go? It is more profitable for him to earn 20₢ per ton of cargo when flying to a dangerous system and voluntarily give half of the proceeds than to loiter dully between relatively safe systems (there are no absolutely safe systems in the Universe), having 5₢ per TC of cargo.

Again, a little bit of demography and sociology.

There are few direct indications of the average life expectancy of the inhabitants of the Universe. And the references to the triumph of nanotechnology, which allow the extension of the active life of an individual to two centuries and a quarter, do not seem convincing to me personally as a biologist. Medicine can reduce population losses through premature mortality from disease and bring average life expectancy closer to the age of centenarians, but cannot increase the maximum life expectancy without a radical genetic rearrangement of the aging program. So the maximum that can be counted on in the foreseeable future is 120 years. Let's take this optimistic value as a basis, then the reproduction of a population of 3 billion occurs at a birth rate of 25 million people a year.

With such large numbers, one can safely rely on the empirical law of three percent. The vast majority of the population are convinced homebodies and conservatives, who are unlikely even to make a tourist voyage on a comfortable Strelka (well, except for a honeymoon trip and on a long-awaited pension). Three percent of the young — a million people — will be mobile and ambitious enough to try to escape from their habitual habitat. Of this million, again, three percent – 30,000 – will prove capable and competent enough not to fail. Most of them will work as a team, but again three percent of them – a thousand young drivers – will prove to be bright individualists. A thousand ambitious and talented Jamesons for the system every year, eager to push aside the old fart and take a worthy place in life. Two million potential members of the Elite Club in the Universe who enter the Samurai Trail every year. Quite a plausible scenario.

We'll come back to that later.

Now let's move from trading risks to an acceptable level of risk to life.

An acceptable level of physical risk is a concept based on a highly irrational subjective assessment. A person may be afraid of the negligible probability of death in a plane crash (1 per million flights) and calmly relate to the situation when 1 person out of 5,000 dies every year in a car accident (one and a half percent of the total mortality with an average life expectancy of 75 years!). Among people involved in extreme sports, the cumulative 10% risk of death during active sports (take 10 years) is not considered prohibitive. It can be expected that a comparable, or even higher, level of long-term risk will not stop an enterprising trader - seafaring in the not so long ago days of the Great Geographical Discoveries was an occupation no less risky.

In the case of piracy, we are faced with an extremely curious situation from game theory - a game with a non-zero amount. Simply put, this is a situation where the prices/costs of winning and losing are incommensurable.

For a huckster, the least evil would be to lose all the cargo, but to save the ship and crew than to engage in battle with superior enemy forces and lose everything. Pirates know that. But it is also unprofitable for pirates to exacerbate the conflict in general. Gentlemen of Fortune are pragmatic people, and even if the numerical advantage on the battlefield is on their side, destroying the bill of exchange with an escort with the risk of exchanging one's Krait at the cost of 75,000₢ for surviving cargo and pieces of scrap - it is not worth it. To make up for the lost Krait, you will have to make a couple dozen more raids out of the plan. And GalCop's Vipers, although they patrol infrequently, can still look at the light. Traders who are tormented by life know that a pirate will not get on the horn unnecessarily. Have you grasped the essence of the conflict?

The outcome of a game in a non-zero-sum game depends on whether the players have the opportunity to negotiate and whether they will abide by the agreement. If there is no such possibility, each player is forced to proceed from the worst forecast of the situation and will play suboptimally.

Let's say a huckster comes into conflict with pirates on average once per 5 flights in a dangerous system - this is an average of 2 times per 10 flights in total. Let's assume again from the rule of three percent that in general the pirates he met are nice intelligent people who only by the will of circumstances found themselves on the path of vice. The problem is precisely in those three percent of cases when it was not possible to reach an amicable agreement. For a variety of reasons. Perhaps the huckster's business has been going badly lately and he simply has nothing to offer. It is also possible that the leader of the gang decided to give the young unfired fighters the opportunity to practice fire, and at the same time to raise their authority with a cause. Perhaps the load of karma began to weigh too heavily on the leader of the group and he decided to change the place of deployment, playing at the end all-in and eliminating at the same time witnesses to the crime. In this case, the outcome of the conflict will not be limited to the loss of cargo thrown overboard - the conflict will turn into fire contact. Suppose also that the crew of a huckster in a conflict situation manages to escape from the battlefield in two cases out of three. The risk in this scenario is extremely high - the probability of the death of the ship is about one percent in every tenth voyage. Let's also say, taking into account the costs listed above, the Python pays off on average for 575 flights. In this scenario, 44% of cargo carriers lose their ship even before it recoups the invested costs and is eliminated from the game. Half of the Pythons die by the 690th flight. Only 11 Pythons out of a thousand have a chance to live to the age of 25 years (4500 flights) with such pressure. And you say - old ships that are passed down from generation to generation as a family heirloom...

This scenario is true only if the hucksters who got into the first altercation do not learn anything. In practice, Darwin's law works in the Universe: experienced hucksters become smarter. They choose safer routes and more effective strategies of behavior (technical equipment, hiring an escort, voluntary division with the right people - it does not matter) and are less likely to get into dangerous situations. I modeled the learning curve under the assumption that the interval between dangerous situations is proportional to the square root of the number of dangerous situations experienced. That is, having been in a hundred altercations, a grated huckster sticks into them a dozen times less often than a self-confident young man. In this scenario, the picture changes dramatically: only 17.5% of carriers lose their ship before they have time to recoup it. 46% of Pythons reach the venerable age of 25 years and are inherited by the children of successful hucksters. By the time of retirement, the veteran huckster has experience of about 75-80 dangerous situations and 8.5-9 units of survival skill.

But that's not all. We did not take into account the transfer of experience from generation to generation. Young Jameson doesn't immediately take control of Python. Let's say he spends the first half of his career under the command of an experienced captain. The probability of survival of the ship and crew during this period depends on the experience of the captain, but Jameson learns something. Let's say that Cap studied at his own risk and Jameson came under his command when Cap had half his career under his belt - 2250 flights. By this point, Cap has about fifty dangerous situations and 7 units of survival skill behind him. By the time Cap surrenders business to his successor, his survival skill will reach 8.75 units. Let's assume again that Jameson has internalized the square root of this skill - about 3 units. That's less than he would have gained by studying on his own, but he studied in safer conditions than his mentor. By the time he retires, Jameson's successor will have a skill of 7 units and will have experience of about 40 independent dangerous episodes - less than his mentor. The probability of survival of the ship in this scenario, however, is somewhat higher: 49% of ships will live up to 25 years.

Jameson's successor in the second generation will take command with a skill of 2.7 units. From this point on, the dynamics almost reaches equilibrium: the values in subsequent iterations are about the same.

A special combat rating in this scenario can not be gained - a veteran huckster retires, having only isolated cases of experience in using weapons to protect his life and the greater the experience of survival of a huckster, the less often he has the opportunity to practice fire. It is understandable: the optimal survival strategy of a huckster in the Universe is the art of sneaking off the battlefield unnoticed. The Average rating (32 kills) is the maximum that can be expected from a particularly lucky veteran.

From a macroeconomic perspective, the merchant marine as a whole has a two-fold payback ratio in about 4 years. Having invested 200 thousand credits in his first Python, the thrifty and lucky owner will double his working capital every four years, and in 20 years of commercial activity his steamship empire will theoretically grow to 32 ships - not half a thousand, of course, but also very solid.

Well, we have dismantled the base of the food pyramid of the Universe.

It's time to move on to predators. And again, a small sociological study: who are the gentlemen of fortune? What made them engage in this unseemly craft, rejecting honest commerce? What is the need to spoil your karma and risk your life? Is it just the natural depravity of nature and the craving for villainy?

A typical representative of this ancient venerable profession on our old woman Gaia has almost nothing to do with the image of a romantic villain and adventurer. To begin with, in ancient times, and in the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, the border between legal trade and illegal robbery was very blurred. Simply put, not only did they not disdain to pull everything that lies badly, but also did not consider it shameful to take away by force. In Europe, there were entire seaside villages that looted shipwrecks from generation to generation. And service in the Navy was still hard labor. It was Robinson Crusoe who went to sea out of a thirst for wandering, and to a simple sailor what joy is it to eat corned beef and scurvy from scurvy? They went to sea out of desperation, and rebelled out of desperation. And then the way in one direction, to the same outgotheads. Or the gallows.

Which does not exclude, of course, the emergence of such charismatic figures as Drake, Rehley or Morgan. Same three percent rule.

And chests stuffed with ringing golden doubloons are also a myth. You might think that galleons with the treasures of the Spanish crown travelled back to the Old World in an endless stream, ...yeah, sure! The pirates in reality actually seized everything that could be sold on the shore or used in business: hemp, cotton, tea, cloth, canvas, nails, lead, gunpowder, fresh water.

It's the same in the Universe. Of course, no one is dragged into the Galactic Fleet by a Press Gang - not in these times. And no one scurvies even in impoverished worlds. But not everyone is so lucky in life - to get a pilot's diploma of the Lave academy (and a brand new Cobra Mark Tree to boot!). Why else are so many pilots stuck in old Kraits and Mambas?

Before you analyze the risk of a pirate lifestyle, you should pay attention to an issue that cannot be decisively bypassed. Raiding a trader of cargo and fleecing him is just the beginning of the business. The loot has to be sold somewhere. And since the rejects of society cannot enter the GalCop stations - where can they be refueled, re-equipped and repaired? After all, where do they have to rest and drink the loot?

Actually, this idea is the basis of such packages as Pirate Cove, Deep Space Pirates, Free Trade Zone and a number of others.

I will add to this the considerations that I made in my time on the forum.

There are badlands well away from the GalCop-patrolled areas, there are asteroid fields where pirates can have their own hidden bases, shipyards and even factories. There are technologies for collecting fuel from the corona of the sun and obtaining alloys and radioisotopes from asteroids. There are gray and black markets on the planets and free trading zones where you can exchange all this for high-tech devices. There are space-breakers that GalCop looks down on.

And GalCop has no control over what happens at the bottom of the atmosphere – that's in the purview of local governments. There are, finally, unstable systems with a power vacuum, where GalCop's presence is purely symbolic. We can add to this that in addition to outright thugs, the Universum is teeming with indiscriminate plebs, who do not disdain to make money on occasion from everything that offers opportunity. This is the typical understanding of proletarian quarters, where everyone survives as they can.

The situation is not so delusional.

A cute example of such a pirate republic in real life is that of the Somali pirates, with whom the impotents of the UN can not and do not want to do anything. Half a century ago, Southeast Asia was also a pirate haven. But since the governments there adopted human rights, the problem was solved by force, systematically knocking out the most notorious thugs and their families.

And our native dictatorship of the ninth technological level convincingly demonstrates the viability of the criminal economy. And there is no need to nod at the "dashing nineties" and at the "Yeltsin lawlessness", which, they say, is already in the historical past. Where, excuse me, is the fine line between the legal share of the security forces and their chelyady and illegal robbery?

So, gentlemen, the free pirate republic of Tortuga may well be reborn in the Universum. And even control entire regions. And to strike, like a mushroom, from the inside the worlds that are listed in the register of the Galactic Commonwealth as stable and prosperous. A crime boss who began his journey with an ordinary fighter and made his way into a thin layer of really influential figures can be white and fluffy before the law. And even gain the immunity of a member of the Commonwealth Council of State. But before taking such a pleasant position, the pirate will have to take the risky path from ordinary piracy to donning the mantle of authority.

Unlike a huckster who seeks to evade meeting pirates, a pirate is actively looking for prey. But as I noted above, for the most part it is possible to squeeze the cargo from the huckster without a shootout, only by the threat of force. Suppose gentlemen of fortune go out to work a day in two. In order for the pirate Python to fill the hold to the top, the group must process a dozen Python hucksters and squeeze tithes from them. It is unlikely that the harvest can be regularly removed without much hassle. Most likely, as a rule, it is necessary to finish off a free place in the hold with a passing product on the occasion - legal and illegal. Let's say that the share of prize production in a conventional raid is half, and the rest is accounted for by smuggling and other economic activities. That is, the system should feed 80-160 pirate ships daily, and in total the Coastal Brotherhood in unstable systems can have 250-500 ships, or even more. Every three meetings with a merchant out of a hundred end in conflict, each hundredth - the death of a merchant, it follows that a member of the brigade makes fire contact on average once every twenty raids - once every two months. A particularly impressive combat rating in this scenario also can not be gained, given that the kylls sign for the whole gang.


As a rule, pirates attack with an overwhelming numerical advantage. Let's take the probability of writing kills to the account for 90% and the probability of the death of a pirate for 10%. Even in such a favorable scenario, only 43% of bulls gain 8 kills and live to gain the Poor rating, and the composition of the brigade changes by half per year. So there are almost always vacancies in this field in an unstable system - 250 young ambitious pilots out of a thousand every year can try to play on the dark side of the Force. But it is problematic to find fame in this field: only one pirate out of a thousand lives to gain the Above Average rating.

If we take into account the Darwin factor, the layout changes - experienced fighters gain survival skills in each fight and their fighting skills grow. By adopting the pace of gaining experience proportional to the square root of the number of victories, we already significantly increase the probability of survival: half of the fighters who know how to learn survive to the Average rating (16 kills), and 11.65% to the Competent rating (128 kills). But in general, the pirate trade is not the best way to gain a combat rating: a sporadic bout of combat experience from time to time, with breaks of weeks and months, does not explain the phenomenal rating of the members of the Elite club and the Status of Competent will thus be the limit of dreams for a veteran of the Coastal Brotherhood.

Who are the Elite?
So who is replenishing the ranks of the Elite club?

Treasure hunters. Pirate raiders. Professional killers. Tournament fighters. People who do not use weapons from time to time, as a last resort, but are actively looking for opportunities to replenish the combat account.
There can't be many people like that. Here you need to have a special temperament.

The combat score of the best ace of the First World War, Manfred von Richthofen, is not just impressive - it seems incredible for reasons of elementary statistics. If there are opponents of equal strength, the probability of winning ten victories in a row is one chance out of a thousand. Twenty wins is one in a million. Thirty to one in a billion. The Red Baron had 80 aerial victories. On carefully reading the analysis of the military career of any famous ace, it becomes painfully clear: war is not a sports competition run according to the Olympic system, where opponents of approximately equal strength meet and the winner passes to the next round.

Almost all the air victories of the Red Baron were achieved with the overwhelming numerical superiority of German aviation on the battlefield and in conditions of tactical initiative. And almost all aerial victories were won over two-seat British airplanes - reconnaissance and light bombers. Only twice did Richthofen meet in battle with an experienced pilot who had several aerial victories on his account, and both times the enemy was inferior to him in experience.

Contrary to a beautiful legend, aces are not knights of the sky, strictly observing the code of honor and chivalric rules of war. Aces are cold-blooded killers, skillfully planning and using any opportunity to turn the situation in their favor as much as possible and achieve results with minimal risk. The ace almost never converges in battle with an opponent of equal strength - he gains a rating, shooting unobsular green youth.

Actually, the same thing is done by a gamer, gaining combat experience in the safest possible situations. Of course, against the backdrop of the Elite club, the famous aces from real reality look sluggish. Ivan Kozhedub - 64 wins, Above Average. Manfred von Richthofen - 80 wins, Above Average. Erich Hartmann - 352 wins, Competent. Not impressive!

It should be taken into account, of course, that the military career of real-life pilots did not last long. Richthofen took part in the fighting for a year and a half, his most successful month - April 1917 - brought 22 victories. René Fonk (75 wins) also fought for a year and a half. Hans-Joachim Marsey scored 151 aerial wins in a year and a half. It is difficult to say how long a person is able to withstand the stress of constant hostilities. A military pilot in peacetime remains in the best physical shape from strength for a dozen years, so that very few real-life pilots would have reached the Dangerous rating (512 kills). To achieve the Deadly rating (2560 kills) for 25 years of career, you need to win a hundred victories every year. That is two wins a week.

But something from the military-historical literature confirms the thesis: aces are people of a special kind. In a combat situation, unfired pilots, having survived the first serious altercation, quickly seperate into two categories. Most of the pilots honestly and conscientiously pull the strap, but do not take risks in vain and enter the battle on their own initiative reluctantly. And so they just do the rough work, covering the aces, and become expendable. Very few become aces, and statistics confirm this. The French had 750 fighter pilots by the end of World War I who shot down 2,019 enemy aircraft. There were 52 aces, that is, pilots who shot down 10 or more aircraft (this was the criterion of ace among the French). The total number of aircraft shot down by French aces is 908. Thus, 7 percent of the pilots shot down almost half of the enemy aircraft. I think a similar deviation from the average random distribution will be found in the analysis of the combat operations of the aviation of other warring countries. Here's an assessment of the situation from another source - Pete Bonanney's The Art of the Kill: Air combat statistics convincingly show that about 10% of pilots account for over 80% of victories.

So the Darwin factor really works.

And if you stretch the simulated survival curve, taking into account the set of survival skill in the realm of large numbers, in terms of a million ambitious young pilots (the best of the best, sir!), you will get something like this:

Survival curve: "Soft" model

Rating Kills Skill Number of Survivors Average Career Total number
Harmless 0 1 1 Million } }
Almost Harmless 8 2.83 636,726 } }
Poor 16 4 504,568 } Less than a year } 293,434
Average 32 5.66 362,315 } }
Above Average 64 8 226,557 } }

Competent 128 11.3 116,584 1 year }
256 16 45,566 2 years } 121,758

Dangerous 512 22.63 12,075 4 years }
1,280 35.78 867 10 years } 25,775

Deadly 2560 50.6 45 20 years ~900

The number of survivors out of a million people indicates what proportion of graduates of a given year will be able to achieve this rating at some point in the future. The total number of pilots is calculated taking into account the survivors of previous releases, provided that every year a million young pilots enter the samurai trail. I assumed that a novice fighter learns not at his own risk, but under the guidance of an experienced mentor - hence the probability of winning the first fight is taken at 90 percent, the probability of death at 10 - the same starting figures as for a pirate, but the rate of gaining combat experience is 128 kills per year.

Stop, an attentive reader will say, the pirate is gaining combat experience, using the numerical advantage to minimize the risk. But how does a bounty hunter gain experience if Darwin's bald pirates become more cunning and more experienced? Even if only half of the pirate brigade fighters reach the Poor rating, such fighters have a survival skill of 4, and the weighted average skill of the brigade should be about 2 (accurate modeling gave a slightly lower value of 1.9).

So a novice bounty hunter fighter, even in a carefully planned favorable situation of tactical superiority, has a significant chance to face a more experienced opponent and lose his first fight. And the probability of such an outcome increases in proportion to the weighted average skill of the enemy - about twice. This drastically reduces the likelihood of achieving a high rating. Not just twice, but that is drastic. And specifically our table now looks like this:

Survival curve. "Rigid" model
Rating Kills Skill Number of Survivors Average Career Total number
Harmless 0 1 1 Million } }
Almost Harmless 8 2.83 392,768 } }
Poor 16 4 244,925 } Less than a year } 114,673
Average 32 5.66 125,400 } }
Above Average 64 8 48,687 } }


Competent 128 11.3 12,802 1 year }
256 16 1,942 2 years } 6.797

Dangerous 512 22.63 135 4 years }
1,280 35.78 1 10 years } 132

Deadly 2560 50.6 20 years

In this scenario, only 135 fighters out of a million have a chance to reach the Dangerous rating, and the probability of reaching the Deadly rating can be considered almost zero.
But even without our pretentious simulations, it is enough to ask a simple question: if a fighter starts his career with a 90% probability of winning, then who are the nine losers who become his first victims?
Those ordinary pilots, whose ambitions are not supported by abilities. And such cannon fodding a system with a population of three billion people is able to supply enough. Remember our estimate of 500 singles in the system acting at their own risk? Add to that 2,000 escort pilots. Total 2500. So, that's exactly the ten percent that were smart enough to survive. And they account for 22500 Jamesons, who never had time to learn anything. But ready to grab any job. Dirty, dangerous - it doesn't matter. Just not to return to the bottom of the atmosphere.

Half of the pirate brigade fighters, as we found out, die within two years. The survival rate of escort pilots is about the same level - the risks are comparable. In total, 625 vacancies are released annually and 6250 ambitious green pilots apply for them. Of which 5625 (the same 90 percent of cannon fodge for fire practice) are culled annually in the first battle. Well, that is, on average, about 17 people die violently per day in the system. Not so much - this is the typical mortality rate of a city with a population of half a million. For a three-billion-dollar population, the system is a drop in the bucket. The Universe is a cruel world, what does it care about losers?

Not all, of course, of them are majors, starting their careers on the glamorous Cobra Mark Three at the price of 150 kilocredits. Some start on the old Krait or on Mamba, or even on Adders. Let's take the average price of a ship of 100 Credits - like the Cobra Mark Odin. The total annual loss in monetary terms per system is 625 megacredits. From the point of view of the global economy, it's a question, the hour of loss of working time for the planet as a whole. In the total share of cargo traffic through the system - already quite noticeable. With a cargo flow of 100 thousand tons per day and an average price of a ton of cargo of 50 credits, the annual cargo flow through the system is 1825 megacredits, so that indirect losses are already 34.25% turnover is seventeen times higher than the direct loss of cargo traffic due to pirate activity. But even here there is quite a life situation, just like in our national economy: they stole one million, and caused damage to a hundred.

But I'll tell you a secret - for macroeconomics, this is not fatal. And what's more. Major carriers are interested in maintaining a moderately high level of pirate activity. Because the pirate press reduces competition from more vulnerable small businesses. But small entrepreneurs are also good. The guy on the Sidewinder, whom they pay to escort through dangerous systems for a hundred creeds, gets coffins. You have to be desperately lucky to make enough capital in this job and start your own business.

No, I don't mean to imply that large shipping companies, or even governments, tacitly support piracy. Not at all. It's just that the numbers are just that.

By the way, two interesting conclusions follow from the above.

First of all, the probability of converging in a fight with a strong opponent is significantly diluted and in the calculation of the survival curve, we can return to the "soft" model. Hunters rarely converge in battle with a strong opponent. Moreover, an experienced hunter is able to quickly determine the level of competence of the victim and get out of the fight in time if the situation begins to develop not in his favor. So realistically, the probability of a collision with an experienced opponent is not even 10%, but significantly lower, and on a good note, this second derivative should also be simulated in the survival curve.

And secondly, we did not take into account one simple fact in our analysis of the food pyramid. The pirate is able to move from primitive gathering to a planned economy of exploiting a renewable resource. When tithing a tithe is cut, its victim remains alive and can be milked regularly.

The hunter withdraws his prey from the population irreversibly. Therefore, the maximum number of hunters who can feed in the system is limited by the number of prey. As we have already found out, the population of potential prey in the system is fed at a rate of about 6250 units per year.
If a hunter scores a rating at a rate of 128 kills per year, 48 hunters in the system is the upper limit. Given that not all potential victims have criminal status and can be objects of legal hunting, it is possible to reduce this figure by half. Approximately 50,000 hunters in all eight sectors. Okay, let's take into account the young, which will simply die before it has time to gain a solid combat rating. And this is a lot - the mortality rate among hunters in the critical initial period of training is a huge, equilibrium number of the hunter population with an annual influx of 1,000 people set at 440 individuals. So we get about 113,000. Who haven't we counted yet?

In our scrupulous economic and demographic analysis, we somehow completely missed one thing. The Universe is in a state of permanent war with the Thargoids. The Galactic Fleet alone has 103 cadre squadrons and over 230 reserve squadrons - and this is about 6-8 thousand combat vehicles, and their pilots are really the best of the best, sir! Naval aces can be safely added to the common pool - given the war with the Thargoids, the targets for them are in abundance. Total 120 thousand.
What about GalCop's pilots? There are 2,048 GalCop stations, each of which is based on at least a fully equipped squadron, and these pilots also passed the Darwin selection sieve. That's about 49,000 more combat vehicles. This is if in system one GalCop station. And if there are an average of five of them per system, then there are already about 250 thousand GalCop patrol ships. A lot of power.

GalCop pilots, of course, basically this power is enough to just need displaying - pirates respect them and do not come into fire contact every day, and how to get so many targets for cops? Given that outwardly law-abiding hucksters also require an eye, 120 cops in the system for 2500 hucksters is in principle not such a large amount. It is difficult to expect an impressive combat rating from Galkop's pilots as a whole. But perhaps five thousand truly formidable fighters among them will be gained. A total of 125 thousand.

There are also local self-defense forces, feudal squads and other armed formations - but we have already counted almost all the strong fighters among them.

And that's what we have in the end.

Survival curve. Model taking into account the resource limit of the food pyramid

Rating Kills Skill Number of Survivors Average Career Total number
Harmless 0 1 1 Million } }
Almost Harmless 8 2.83 636,726 } }
Poor 16 4 504,568 } Less than a year } 83,360
Average 32 5.66 362,315 } }
Above Average 64 8 226,557 } }

Competent 128 11.3 116,584 1 year }
256 16 45,566 2 years } 34.590

Dangerous 512 22.63 12,075 4 years }
1,280 35.78 867 10 years } 7,322

Deadly 2560 50.6 45 20 years 255

Thus, on average, the system has 40 pilots with a Rating above Average and below, 17 pilots with a Rating of Competent and 3...4 pilots with a Rating of Dangerous. Quite a worthy company of interlocutors for an adventurer - both in the bar and in battle. Pilots of the Deadly class can not be found in every system - there are 32 of them per sector. Well, if an eighth of them are natives of feudal worlds, the intrigue in feudal jousting tournaments is assured: 32 of the best fighters from all eight sectors will turn the jousting tournament into an epic memorable spectacle.

As for the Elite class pilots, these legendary figures do not fit into my model. This phenomenon does not fit into any model. It is simply impossible: the probability of growing to the Elite rating is 125 chances per billion. An Elite class fighter appears in the Universe once every 25-30 years and reaches this rating in adulthood, after 50 years of continuous battles. That is about 70 years. So Holdstock's secret dark wheel organization is as much a legend as Raxxla.

Ray Stranger
1:153 Aonah
Revision of the document of September 26, 2014

APOLOGIES: I'm a moron. I edited the second half of Stranger's essay twice. This is one version, the other is beneath.

[Cholmondely]

Also Added (14/12/2021):

This has been too long to fit into the one post, so the first part has been added on above under a big red heading!

Trading: Cost-effectiveness of the career
Let's move on from macroeconomics, which the average trader/huckster is of little interest to, to the profits and risks of his profession. No, there will be no advice on how to choose the best route, what and where to buy and sell for pumping capital. Let's put the question differently. How cost-effective is the occupation itself?

For a gamer, oddly enough, it is cost-effective under any conditions. He can not go bankrupt in any way, the maximum that he risks is to lower the starting 100 credits of capital, but he will not lose Cobra, the magic combination of save / load allows you to step on different rakes countless times. But what would it be like in real life, where save/load doesn't roll?

The average price of a ton of electronics in the extremely industrial system is 62.1 credit per ton, in the extremely agrarian system - 101.3 credit per ton, profit is almost 40 credits per ton of cargo. Average prices for alcohol 36.1 and 22.1 credits, profit 14 credits. Average prices for furs 83.0 and 57.8 credits, profit 25 credits. These are limit values. Let's say a Cobra trader, Mark Three, makes flights between average industrial and agrarian systems, where the average profit is twice lower. Suppose that market fluctuations in the price of furs and their available quantity lead to the fact that the trader is loaded with furs only half of the time. Even in this case, the average profit will be 20 credits per ton of cargo on a flight to the agricultural system and 10 credits on the way back. In this scenario, the Cobra Mark Three without an additional cargo compartment with a starting cost of 150 thousand credits pays off for 500 flights with a full load. With the mode of work a day on the road - a day in the docks is three years of work, and then you can save up for a cozy house with a garden somewhere in a calm agrarian system. Well, four taking into account the starting pumping of capital and the payback of upgrades. You can retire for a well-deserved rest much earlier, like a year and a half or two, and then selling Cobra for 70-75% of the original price.

A python with a carrying capacity of 100 tons and a starting cost of 200 thousand seats pays off under the same conditions for only 150 flights, taking into account the cost of upgrades and maintenance - a year of navigation. Unless, of course, there is something to fully download it. But let's say there is something - otherwise what's the point of acquiring a big ship? It is unlikely, of course, that electronics and furs make up the bulk of the cargo flow between the systems. The owner of a large ship will have to fill the hold with essential goods: these are mechanisms in the agrarian worlds and food in the industrial (and again alcohol). Suppose a trader on a Python takes the same 20 tons of electronics (profit 400 credits) and fills the remaining place in the hold with 80 tons of mechanisms (about 640 more). Return flight - 20 tons of alcohol (140 creeds) and 80 tons of food (220 creeds). In total, a round-trip flight will give 1400 credits, an average profit of 7 creeds per ton. Under such conditions, python will pay off in about 300 flights - two years. And for twenty years of hard work, if everything goes as it should, theoretically you can become the owner of a colossal transport empire of a thousand ships and take over the entire system (in two years we buy a second ship for the proceeds, in four years there are already four of them, in six years - eight and so exponentially).

In fact, of the 700 credits earned on the flight, The Captain Python will give 100 credits to two escort mercenaries (they are not particularly interested in working for a smaller share) and at least 100 credits from each flight will be saved for unforeseen repair costs (we include refueling here), so that the payback period of the Python will be almost twice as long as in comparison with the optimistic estimate. But these are quite acceptable conditions for business. With 400 credits of net profit from the voyage, Python's crew (say, owning a ship on the pays) will recoup it in 500 flights.

If it weren't for the pirates. And the thargoids. And the other vicissitudes of fortune.

And speaking of pirates. These gentlemen live by what? Well, the banner of - robbery.

And more specifically? Well, there was a gang of scumbaggers on the old Kraits of the lonely trader, gutted him with lasers. Navar from the collision, if you are lucky - two or three containers with cargo (an average of 100...150 credits) and a couple of pieces of cladding (another 70...80 credits). Not dense for a brigade of three or four snouts. Yes, and this product is legally sold, you will have to hand over somewhere in the wilderness for half the price. Even if you take the starting price of old Krait for 75 thousand credits, until you pay for it, the combat rating for a thousand will exceed. The occupation is troublesome and dangerous, like shearing a pig. There is a lot of screeching, little wool.

Well, so what, the reckless gamer will say, they are pirates after all for courage and entourage. Without pirates, there will be no games.

That's right, but I'd like it to be authentic.

Economics of Piracy

First of all, in real reality, robbers go only out of necessity from a large road to a wet business. When the victim, instead of meekly turning out his pockets and sadly walking away, stands in a heroic pose. The developers of Oolite 1.80 have worked out this scenario. The merchant can now get off with a slight fright, throwing overboard part of the cargo. The critical starting point for the green gamer has become significantly easier and allows you to less often abuse the magic combination of save/load.

Moreover, in real reality, it is more profitable to regularly fleece the victim, extracting a set share of the proceeds, than to rig it to the thread once. Piracy obeys the law of the food pyramid. To feed one lion or a dozen hyanas in the African savannah you need - off the top of your head, we will not nitpick with the numbers - a herd of hundreds of antelopes. Predators regularly take their share, without reducing the population of herbivores to extinction. Let's apply this rule to our average system with a cargo flow of 100 thousand tons per day.

Let's say that pirate activity is concentrated mainly in unstable agrarian worlds. Merchants included in such systems have on board expensive cargo - goods of the industrial group, and the GalCop patrol in such systems is weakened. Let's say that conflicts with pirates occur every fifth flight to an unstable system and on average pirates extract their legitimate tithes. The average purchase price of 20 tons of electronics and 80 tons of mechanisms is (20 * 75 + 80 * 53) = 5740 credits, the average purchase price of a unit of goods is about 57.5 credits. Profit from the sale of goods 400 + 640 = 1040 creds, we take away 200 credits to pay for escorts, 840 credits in the balance. According to the above rules, pirates withdraw from trade two percent of the cargo - approximately 1000-2000 tons per day, depending on the cargo flow in the system. For traders, it's unpleasant, but not deadly. Net profit from the flight decreases from 840 to 725 credits, the payback period of the business increases by fifteen percent - well, let it be up to 575 flights, three years with a little intensive work without holidays and weekends. Taking into account indirect losses for the payment of escorts, the overhead costs for business risk are about 30 percent. At the same time, gentlemen of fortune are not in the way. Let's say a typical pirate group is a Python in the Black Dog variant and three fighters. Which, if necessary, can unite in larger flocks. With such a composition, 10-20 brigades - 40-80 pirate ships - can be fed daily at the expense of traders in the system. And even if you sell the goods for half the price, the proceeds from the raid will be 3400 credits per group. A python worth 200,000 credits and three Kraits worth 75,000 each will pay off again for 125 raids. Four months with a little - unless, of course, you drink recklessly and diligently go to work every day. And if you go out in dangerous raids, skipping all the loot, as it is usually accepted among this public, then a much larger population can feed on traders without uprooting them. And what, in our beautiful state, the population of non-producing officials and law enforcers is at least comparable to the population of producers, and the life of this group of comrades has definitely been mulled.

In principle, and in the current state of affairs, piracy, if approached wisely, can open up interesting opportunities for an enterprising businessman. Forcing the trader to eject and taking him prisoner, you can get an insurance reward for him, transferring it to GalCop's emissaries somewhere in neutral territory. And the abandoned ship should at least be scrapped. So far, it seems that both capabilities require a net status, but what prevents you from making a package that bypasses these restrictions?

There is another very vital scenario. Members of the Coast brotherhood are themselves hired as an escort to the merchant in order to protect him from the vicissitudes of a dangerous path through an unstable system. Of course, for a higher fee than a mercenary with pure status would have taken. And where should the merchant go? It is more profitable for him to earn twenty credits per ton of cargo when flying to a dangerous system and voluntarily give half of the proceeds than to loiter dullly between relatively safe systems (there are no absolutely safe systems in the Universe), having five credits per ton of cargo.

Demographics of Piracy
Again, a little bit of demography and sociology.

There are few direct indications of the average life expectancy of the inhabitants of the Universe. And the references to the triumph of nanotechnology, which allow the extension of the active life of an individual to two centuries and a quarter, do not seem convincing to me personally as a biologist. Medicine can reduce population losses through premature mortality from disease and bring average life expectancy closer to the age of centenarians, but cannot increase the maximum life expectancy without a radical genetic rearrangement of the aging program. So the maximum that can be counted on in the foreseeable future is 120 years. Let's take this optimistic value as a basis, then the reproduction of a population of 3 billion occurs at a birth rate of 25 million people a year.

With such large numbers, one can safely rely on the empirical law of three percent. The vast majority of the population are convinced homebodies and conservatives, who are unlikely even to make a tourist voyage on a comfortable Strelka (well, except for a honeymoon trip and on a long-awaited pension). Three percent of the young — a million people — will be mobile and ambitious enough to try to escape from their habitual habitat. Of this million, again, three percent – 30,000 – will prove capable and competent enough not to fail. Most of them will work as a team, but again three percent of them – a thousand young drivers – will prove to be bright individualists. A thousand ambitious and talented Jamesons for the system every year, eager to push aside the old fart and take a worthy place in life. Two million potential members of the Elite Club in the Universe who enter the Samurai Trail every year. Quite a plausible scenario.

We'll come back to that later.

Now let's move from trading risks to an acceptable level of risk to life.

An acceptable level of physical risk is a concept based on a highly irrational subjective assessment. A person may be afraid of the negligible probability of death in a plane crash (1 per million flights) and calmly relate to the situation when 1 person out of 5,000 dies every year in a car accident (one and a half percent of the total mortality with an average life expectancy of 75 years!). Among people involved in extreme sports, the cumulative 10% risk of death during active sports (take 10 years) is not considered prohibitive. It can be expected that a comparable, or even higher, level of long-term risk will not stop an enterprising trader - seafaring in the not so long ago days of the Great Geographical Discoveries was an occupation no less risky.

In the case of piracy, we are faced with an extremely curious situation from game theory - a game with a non-zero amount. Simply put, this is a situation where the prices/costs of winning and losing are incommensurable.

For a trader, the least evil would be to lose all the cargo, but to save the ship and crew than to engage in battle with superior enemy forces and lose everything. Pirates know that. But it is also unprofitable for pirates to exacerbate the conflict in general. Gentlemen of Fortune are pragmatic people, and even if the numerical advantage on the battlefield is on their side, destroy the bill of exchange with an escort with the risk of exchanging Krait at the cost of 75 kilocredits for surviving cargo and pieces of scrap - it is not worth it. To make up for the lost Krait, you will have to make a couple dozen more raids out of the plan. And GalCop's Vipers, although they patrol infrequently, can still look at the light. Traders who are tormented by life know that a pirate will not get on the horn unnecessarily. Have you grasped the essence of the conflict?

The outcome of a game in a non-zero-sum game depends on whether the players have the opportunity to negotiate and whether they will abide by the agreement. If there is no such possibility, each player is forced to proceed from the worst forecast of the situation and will play suboptimally.

Let's say a trader comes into conflict with pirates on average once per 5 flights in a dangerous system - this is an average of 2 times per 10 flights in total. Let's assume again from the rule of three percent that in general the pirates he met are nice intelligent people who only by the will of circumstances found themselves on the path of vice. The problem is precisely in those three percent of cases when it was not possible to reach an amicable agreement. For a variety of reasons. Perhaps the trader's business has been going badly lately and he simply has nothing to offer. It is also possible that the leader of the gang decided to give the young unfired fighters the opportunity to practice fire, and at the same time to raise their authority with a cause. Perhaps the load of karma began to weigh too heavily on the leader of the group and he decided to change the place of deployment, playing at the end all-in and eliminating at the same time witnesses to the crime. In this case, the outcome of the conflict will not be limited to the loss of cargo thrown overboard - the conflict will turn into fire contact. Suppose also that the crew of a trader in a conflict situation manages to escape from the battlefield in two cases out of three. The risk in this scenario is extremely high - the probability of the death of the ship is about one percent in every tenth voyage. Let's also say, taking into account the costs listed above, the Python pays off on average for 575 flights. In this scenario, 44% of cargo carriers lose their ship even before it recoups the invested costs and is eliminated from the game. Half of the Pythons die by the 690th flight. Only 11 Pythons out of a thousand have a chance to live to the age of 25 years (4500 flights) with such pressure. And you say - old ships that are passed down from generation to generation as a family heirloom...

This scenario is true only if the traders who got into the first altercation do not learn anything. In practice, Darwin's law works in the Universe: experienced traders become smarter. They choose safer routes and more effective strategies of behavior (technical equipment, hiring an escort, voluntary division with the right people - it does not matter) and are less likely to get into dangerous situations. I modeled the learning curve under the assumption that the interval between dangerous situations is proportional to the square root of the number of dangerous situations experienced. That is, having been in a hundred altercations, a grated trader sticks into them a dozen times less often than a self-confident young man. In this scenario, the picture changes dramatically: only 17.5% of carriers lose their ship before they have time to recoup it. 46% of Pythons reach the venerable age of 25 years and are inherited by the children of successful traders. By the time of retirement, the veteran trader has experience of about 75-80 dangerous situations and 8.5-9 units of survival skill.

But that's not all. We did not take into account the transfer of experience from generation to generation. Young Jameson doesn't immediately take control of Python. Let's say he spends the first half of his career under the command of an experienced captain. The probability of survival of the ship and crew during this period depends on the experience of the captain, but Jameson learns something. Let's say that Cap studied at his own risk and Jameson came under his command when Cap had half his career under his belt - 2250 flights. By this point, Cap has about fifty dangerous situations and 7 units of survival skill behind him. By the time Cap surrenders business to his successor, his survival skill will reach 8.75 units. Let's assume again that Jameson has internalized the square root of this skill - about 3 units. That's less than he would have gained by studying on his own, but he studied in safer conditions than his mentor. By the time he retires, Jameson's successor will have a skill of 7 units and will have experience of about 40 independent dangerous episodes - less than his mentor. The probability of survival of the ship in this scenario, however, is somewhat higher: 49% of ships will live up to 25 years.

Jameson's successor in the second generation will take command with a skill of 2.7 units. From this point on, the dynamics almost reaches equilibrium: the values in subsequent iterations are about the same.

A special combat rating in this scenario can not be gained - a veteran trader retires, having only isolated cases of experience in using weapons to protect his life and the greater the experience of survival of a trader, the less often he has the opportunity to practice fire. It is understandable: the optimal survival strategy of a trader in the Universe is the art of sneaking off the battlefield unnoticed. The Average rating (32 kills) is the maximum that can be expected from a particularly lucky veteran.

From a macroeconomic perspective, the merchant marine as a whole has a two-fold payback ratio in about 4 years. Having invested 200 thousand credits in his first Python, the thrifty and lucky owner will double his working capital every four years, and in 20 years of commercial activity his steamship empire will theoretically grow to 32 ships - not half a thousand, of course, but also very solid.

Well, we have dismantled the base of the food pyramid of the Universe.

Sociology of Pirates
It's time to move on to predators. And again, a small sociological study: who are the gentlemen of fortune? What made them engage in this unseemly craft, rejecting honest commerce? What is the need to spoil your karma and risk your life? Is it just the natural depravity of nature and the craving for villainy?

A typical representative of this ancient venerable profession on our old woman Gaia has almost nothing to do with the image of a romantic villain and adventurer. To begin with, in ancient times, and in the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, the border between legal trade and illegal robbery was very blurred. Simply put, not only did they not disdain to pull everything that lies badly, but also did not consider it shameful to take away by force. In Europe, there were entire seaside villages that looted shipwrecks from generation to generation. And service in the Navy was still hard labor. It was Robinson Crusoe who went to sea out of a thirst for wandering, and to a simple sailor what joy is it to eat corned beef and scurvy from scurvy? They went to sea out of desperation, and rebelled out of desperation. And then the way in one direction, to the same outgotheads. Or the gallows.

Which does not exclude, of course, the emergence of such charismatic figures as Drake, Rehley or Morgan. Same three percent rule.

And chests stuffed with ringing golden doubloons are also a myth. You might think that galleons with the treasures of the Spanish crown travelled back to the Old World in an endless stream, ...yeah, sure! The pirates in reality actually seized everything that could be sold on the shore or used in business: hemp, cotton, tea, cloth, canvas, nails, lead, gunpowder, fresh water.

It's the same in the Universe. Of course, no one is dragged into the Galactic Fleet by a Press Gang - not in these times. And no one scurvies even in impoverished worlds. But not everyone is so lucky in life - to get a pilot's diploma of the Lave academy (and a brand new Cobra Mark Tree to boot!). Why else are so many pilots stuck in old Kraits and Mambas?

Before you analyze the risk of a pirate lifestyle, you should pay attention to an issue that cannot be decisively bypassed. Raiding a trader of cargo and fleecing him is just the beginning of the business. The loot has to be sold somewhere. And since the rejects of society cannot enter the GalCop stations - where can they be refueled, re-equipped and repaired? After all, where do they have to rest and drink the loot?

Actually, this idea is the basis of such packages as Pirate Cove, Deep Space Pirates, Free Trade Zone and a number of others.

I will add to this the considerations that I made in my time on the forum.

There are badlands well away from the GalCop-patrolled areas, there are asteroid fields where pirates can have their own hidden bases, shipyards and even factories. There are technologies for collecting fuel from the corona of the sun and obtaining alloys and radioisotopes from asteroids. There are gray and black markets on the planets and free trading zones where you can exchange all this for high-tech devices. There are space-breakers that GalCop looks down on.

And GalCop has no control over what happens at the bottom of the atmosphere – that's in the purview of local governments. There are, finally, unstable systems with a power vacuum, where GalCop's presence is purely symbolic. We can add to this that in addition to outright thugs, the Universum is teeming with indiscriminate plebs, who do not disdain to make money on occasion from everything that offers opportunity. This is the typical understanding of proletarian quarters, where everyone survives as they can.

The situation is not so delusional.

A cute example of such a pirate republic in real life is that of the Somali pirates, with whom the impotents of the UN can not and do not want to do anything. Half a century ago, Southeast Asia was also a pirate haven. But since the governments there adopted human rights, the problem was solved by force, systematically knocking out the most notorious thugs and their families.

And our native dictatorship of the ninth technological level convincingly demonstrates the viability of the criminal economy. And there is no need to nod at the "dashing nineties" and at the "Yeltsin lawlessness", which, they say, is already in the historical past. Where, excuse me, is the fine line between the legal share of the security forces and their chelyady and illegal robbery?

So, gentlemen, the free pirate republic of Tortuga may well be reborn in the Universum. And even control entire regions. And to strike, like a mushroom, from the inside the worlds that are listed in the register of the Galactic Commonwealth as stable and prosperous. A crime boss who began his journey with an ordinary fighter and made his way into a thin layer of really influential figures can be white and fluffy before the law. And even gain the immunity of a member of the Commonwealth Council of State. But before taking such a pleasant position, the pirate will have to take the risky path from ordinary piracy to donning the mantle of authority.

Demographics of Pirates
Unlike a trader who seeks to evade meeting pirates, a pirate is actively looking for prey. But as I noted above, for the most part it is possible to squeeze the cargo from the trader without a shootout, only by the threat of force. Suppose gentlemen of fortune go out to work a day in two. In order for the pirate Python to fill the hold to the top, the group must process a dozen Python traders and squeeze tithes from them. It is unlikely that the harvest can be regularly removed without much hassle. Most likely, as a rule, it is necessary to finish off a free place in the hold with a passing product on the occasion - legal and illegal. Let's say that the share of prize production in a conventional raid is half, and the rest is accounted for by smuggling and other economic activities. That is, the system should feed 80-160 pirate ships daily, and in total the Coastal Brotherhood in unstable systems can have 250-500 ships, or even more. Every three meetings with a merchant out of a hundred end in conflict, each hundredth - the death of a merchant, it follows that a member of the brigade makes fire contact on average once every twenty raids - once every two months. A particularly impressive combat rating in this scenario also can not be gained, given that the kylls sign for the whole gang.


As a rule, pirates attack with an overwhelming numerical advantage. Let's take the probability of writing kills to the account for 90% and the probability of the death of a pirate for 10%. Even in such a favorable scenario, only 43% of bulls gain 8 kills and live to gain the Poor rating, and the composition of the brigade changes by half per year. So there are almost always vacancies in this field in an unstable system - 250 young ambitious pilots out of a thousand every year can try to play on the dark side of the Force. But it is problematic to find fame in this field: only one pirate out of a thousand lives to gain the Above Average rating.

If we take into account the Darwin factor, the layout changes - experienced fighters gain survival skills in each fight and their fighting skills grow. By adopting the pace of gaining experience proportional to the square root of the number of victories, we already significantly increase the probability of survival: half of the fighters who know how to learn survive to the Average rating (16 kills), and 11.65% to the Competent rating (128 kills). But in general, the pirate trade is not the best way to gain a combat rating: a sporadic bout of combat experience from time to time, with breaks of weeks and months, does not explain the phenomenal rating of the members of the Elite club and the Status of Competent will thus be the limit of dreams for a veteran of the Coastal Brotherhood.

Who are the Elite?
So who is replenishing the ranks of the Elite club?

Treasure hunters. Pirate raiders. Professional killers. Tournament fighters. People who do not use weapons from time to time, as a last resort, but are actively looking for opportunities to replenish the combat account.
There can't be many people like that. Here you need to have a special temperament.

The combat score of the best ace of the First World War, Manfred von Richthofen, is not just impressive - it seems incredible for reasons of elementary statistics. If there are opponents of equal strength, the probability of winning ten victories in a row is one chance out of a thousand. Twenty wins is one in a million. Thirty to one in a billion. The Red Baron had 80 aerial victories. On carefully reading the analysis of the military career of any famous ace, it becomes painfully clear: war is not a sports competition run according to the Olympic system, where opponents of approximately equal strength meet and the winner passes to the next round.

Almost all the air victories of the Red Baron were achieved with the overwhelming numerical superiority of German aviation on the battlefield and in conditions of tactical initiative. And almost all aerial victories were won over two-seat British airplanes - reconnaissance and light bombers. Only twice did Richthofen meet in battle with an experienced pilot who had several aerial victories on his account, and both times the enemy was inferior to him in experience.

Contrary to a beautiful legend, aces are not knights of the sky, strictly observing the code of honor and chivalric rules of war. Aces are cold-blooded killers, skillfully planning and using any opportunity to turn the situation in their favor as much as possible and achieve results with minimal risk. The ace almost never converges in battle with an opponent of equal strength - he gains a rating, shooting unobsular green youth.

Actually, the same thing is done by a gamer, gaining combat experience in the safest possible situations. Of course, against the backdrop of the Elite club, the famous aces from real reality look sluggish. Ivan Kozhedub - 64 wins, Above Average. Manfred von Richthofen - 80 wins, Above Average. Erich Hartmann - 352 wins, Competent. Not impressive!

It should be taken into account, of course, that the military career of real-life pilots did not last long. Richthofen took part in the fighting for a year and a half, his most successful month - April 1917 - brought 22 victories. René Fonk (75 wins) also fought for a year and a half. Hans-Joachim Marsey scored 151 aerial wins in a year and a half. It is difficult to say how long a person is able to withstand the stress of constant hostilities. A military pilot in peacetime remains in the best physical shape from strength for a dozen years, so that very few real-life pilots would have reached the Dangerous rating (512 kills). To achieve the Deadly rating (2560 kills) for 25 years of career, you need to win a hundred victories every year. That is two wins a week.

But something from the military-historical literature confirms the thesis: aces are people of a special kind. In a combat situation, unfired pilots, having survived the first serious altercation, quickly seperate into two categories. Most of the pilots honestly and conscientiously pull the strap, but do not take risks in vain and enter the battle on their own initiative reluctantly. And so they just do the rough work, covering the aces, and become expendable. Very few become aces, and statistics confirm this. The French had 750 fighter pilots by the end of World War I who shot down 2,019 enemy aircraft. There were 52 aces, that is, pilots who shot down 10 or more aircraft (this was the criterion of ace among the French). The total number of aircraft shot down by French aces is 908. Thus, 7 percent of the pilots shot down almost half of the enemy aircraft. I think a similar deviation from the average random distribution will be found in the analysis of the combat operations of the aviation of other warring countries. Here's an assessment of the situation from another source - Pete Bonanney's The Art of the Kill: Air combat statistics convincingly show that about 10% of pilots account for over 80% of victories.

So the Darwin factor really works.

And if you stretch the simulated survival curve, taking into account the set of survival skill in the realm of large numbers, in terms of a million ambitious young pilots (the best of the best, sir!), you will get something like this:

Survival curve: "Soft" model

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Rating                      Kills         Skill                     Number of Survivors                Average Career                Total number
Harmless                      0            1                             1 Million                           }                                          }
Almost Harmless           8         2.83                            636,726                           }                                          }
Poor                            16           4                              504,568                           } Less than a year                 }   293,434
Average                       32        5.66                            362,315                           }                                          }
Above Average             64           8                              226,557                           }                                          }

Competent                 128        11.3                           116,584                                 1 year                            }
                                  256        16                               45,566                                  2 years                          } 121,758

Dangerous                   512        22.63                          12,075                                 4 years                           }
                                 1,280      35.78                              867                                 10 years                          }   25,775

Deadly                       2560        50.6                                45                                  20 years                          ~900

Editors note: This and the next two tables look lousy no matter what I do - and the view here is different from the view of the raw text on the page. And I have a sneaky suspicion that it will look even more different on your computer than on mine...
Best to look at the text in the editing window after you have pressed the " quote button on the top of this post.

The number of survivors out of a million people indicates what proportion of graduates of a given year will be able to achieve this rating at some point in the future. The total number of pilots is calculated taking into account the survivors of previous releases, provided that every year a million young pilots enter the samurai trail. I assumed that a novice fighter learns not at his own risk, but under the guidance of an experienced mentor - hence the probability of winning the first fight is taken at 90 percent, the probability of death at 10 - the same starting figures as for a pirate, but the rate of gaining combat experience is 128 kills per year.

Stop, an attentive reader will say, the pirate is gaining combat experience, using the numerical advantage to minimize the risk. But how does a bounty hunter gain experience if Darwin's bald pirates become more cunning and more experienced? Even if only half of the pirate brigade fighters reach the Poor rating, such fighters have a survival skill of 4, and the weighted average skill of the brigade should be about 2 (accurate modeling gave a slightly lower value of 1.9).

So a novice bounty hunter fighter, even in a carefully planned favorable situation of tactical superiority, has a significant chance to face a more experienced opponent and lose his first fight. And the probability of such an outcome increases in proportion to the weighted average skill of the enemy - about twice. This drastically reduces the likelihood of achieving a high rating. Not just twice, but that is drastic. And specifically our table now looks like this:

Survival curve. "Rigid" model

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Rating                      Kills         Skill                     Number of Survivors                Average Career                Total number
Harmless                      0            1                             1 Million                           }                                          }
Almost Harmless           8         2.83                            392,768                           }                                          }
Poor                            16           4                              244,925                           } Less than a year                 }   114,673
Average                       32        5.66                            125,400                           }                                          }
Above Average             64           8                               48,687                           }                                          }


Competent                 128        11.3                             12,802                                 1 year                            }
                                  256        16                                 1,942                                  2 years                          }  6.797

Dangerous                   512        22.63                               135                                 4 years                           }
                                 1,280      35.78                                  1                                 10 years                          }   132

Deadly                       2560        50.6                                                                      20 years                          

In this scenario, only 135 fighters out of a million have a chance to reach the Dangerous rating, and the probability of reaching the Deadly rating can be considered almost zero.
But even without our pretentious simulations, it is enough to ask a simple question: if a fighter starts his career with a 90% probability of winning, then who are the nine losers who become his first victims?
Those ordinary pilots, whose ambitions are not supported by abilities. And such cannon fodding a system with a population of three billion people is able to supply enough. Remember our estimate of 500 singles in the system acting at their own risk? Add to that 2,000 escort pilots. Total 2500. So, that's exactly the ten percent that were smart enough to survive. And they account for 22500 Jamesons, who never had time to learn anything. But ready to grab any job. Dirty, dangerous - it doesn't matter. Just not to return to the bottom of the atmosphere.

Half of the pirate brigade fighters, as we found out, die within two years. The survival rate of escort pilots is about the same level - the risks are comparable. In total, 625 vacancies are released annually and 6250 ambitious green pilots apply for them. Of which 5625 (the same 90 percent of cannon fodge for fire practice) are culled annually in the first battle. Well, that is, on average, about 17 people die violently per day in the system. Not so much - this is the typical mortality rate of a city with a population of half a million. For a three-billion-dollar population, the system is a drop in the bucket. The Universe is a cruel world, what does it care about losers?

Not all, of course, of them are majors, starting their careers on the glamorous Cobra Mark Three at the price of 150 kilocredits. Some start on the old Krait or on Mamba, or even on Adders. Let's take the average price of a ship of 100 Credits - like the Cobra Mark Odin. The total annual loss in monetary terms per system is 625 megacredits. From the point of view of the global economy, it's a question, the hour of loss of working time for the planet as a whole. In the total share of cargo traffic through the system - already quite noticeable. With a cargo flow of 100 thousand tons per day and an average price of a ton of cargo of 50 credits, the annual cargo flow through the system is 1825 megacredits, so that indirect losses are already 34.25% turnover is seventeen times higher than the direct loss of cargo traffic due to pirate activity. But even here there is quite a life situation, just like in our national economy: they stole one million, and caused damage to a hundred.

But I'll tell you a secret - for macroeconomics, this is not fatal. And what's more. Major carriers are interested in maintaining a moderately high level of pirate activity. Because the pirate press reduces competition from more vulnerable small businesses. But small entrepreneurs are also good. The guy on the Sidewinder, whom they pay to escort through dangerous systems for a hundred creeds, gets coffins. You have to be desperately lucky to make enough capital in this job and start your own business.

No, I don't mean to imply that large shipping companies, or even governments, tacitly support piracy. Not at all. It's just that the numbers are just that.

By the way, two interesting conclusions follow from the above.

First of all, the probability of converging in a fight with a strong opponent is significantly diluted and in the calculation of the survival curve, we can return to the "soft" model. Hunters rarely converge in battle with a strong opponent. Moreover, an experienced hunter is able to quickly determine the level of competence of the victim and get out of the fight in time if the situation begins to develop not in his favor. So realistically, the probability of a collision with an experienced opponent is not even 10%, but significantly lower, and on a good note, this second derivative should also be simulated in the survival curve.

And secondly, we did not take into account one simple fact in our analysis of the food pyramid. The pirate is able to move from primitive gathering to a planned economy of exploiting a renewable resource. When tithing a tithe is cut, its victim remains alive and can be milked regularly.

The hunter withdraws his prey from the population irreversibly. Therefore, the maximum number of hunters who can feed in the system is limited by the number of prey. As we have already found out, the population of potential prey in the system is fed at a rate of about 6250 units per year.
If a hunter scores a rating at a rate of 128 kills per year, 48 hunters in the system is the upper limit. Given that not all potential victims have criminal status and can be objects of legal hunting, it is possible to reduce this figure by half. Approximately 50,000 hunters in all eight sectors. Okay, let's take into account the young, which will simply die before it has time to gain a solid combat rating. And this is a lot - the mortality rate among hunters in the critical initial period of training is a huge, equilibrium number of the hunter population with an annual influx of 1,000 people set at 440 individuals. So we get about 113,000. Who haven't we counted yet?

In our scrupulous economic and demographic analysis, we somehow completely missed one thing. The Universe is in a state of permanent war with the Thargoids. The Galactic Fleet alone has 103 cadre squadrons and over 230 reserve squadrons - and this is about 6-8 thousand combat vehicles, and their pilots are really the best of the best, sir! Naval aces can be safely added to the common pool - given the war with the Thargoids, the targets for them are in abundance. Total 120 thousand.
What about GalCop's pilots? There are 2,048 GalCop stations, each of which is based on at least a fully equipped squadron, and these pilots also passed the Darwin selection sieve. That's about 49,000 more combat vehicles. This is if in system one GalCop station. And if there are an average of five of them per system, then there are already about 250 thousand GalCop patrol ships. A lot of power.

GalCop pilots, of course, basically this power is enough to just need displaying - pirates respect them and do not come into fire contact every day, and how to get so many targets for cops? Given that outwardly law-abiding traders also require an eye, 120 cops in the system for 2500 traders is in principle not such a large amount. It is difficult to expect an impressive combat rating from Galkop's pilots as a whole. But perhaps five thousand truly formidable fighters among them will be gained. A total of 125 thousand.

There are also local self-defense forces, feudal squads and other armed formations - but we have already counted almost all the strong fighters among them.

And that's what we have in the end.

Survival curve. Model taking into account the resource limit of the food pyramid

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Rating                      Kills         Skill                     Number of Survivors                Average Career                Total number
Harmless                      0            1                             1 Million                           }                                          }
Almost Harmless           8         2.83                            636,726                           }                                          }
Poor                            16           4                              504,568                           } Less than a year                 }   83,360
Average                       32        5.66                            362,315                           }                                          }
Above Average             64           8                              226,557                           }                                          }

Competent                 128        11.3                           116,584                                 1 year                            }
                                  256        16                               45,566                                  2 years                          }   34.590

Dangerous                   512        22.63                          12,075                                 4 years                           }
                                 1,280      35.78                              867                                 10 years                          }     7,322

Deadly                       2560        50.6                                45                                  20 years                          255

Thus, on average, the system has 40 pilots with a Rating above Average and below, 17 pilots with a Rating of Competent and 3...4 pilots with a Rating of Dangerous. Quite a worthy company of interlocutors for an adventurer - both in the bar and in battle. Pilots of the Deadly class can not be found in every system - there are 32 of them per sector. Well, if an eighth of them are natives of feudal worlds, the intrigue in feudal jousting tournaments is assured: 32 of the best fighters from all eight sectors will turn the jousting tournament into an epic memorable spectacle.

As for the Elite class pilots, these legendary figures do not fit into my model. This phenomenon does not fit into any model. It is simply impossible: the probability of growing to the Elite rating is 125 chances per billion. An Elite class fighter appears in the Universe once every 25-30 years and reaches this rating in adulthood, after 50 years of continuous battles. That is about 70 years. So Holdstock's secret dark wheel organization is as much a legend as Raxxla.

Ray Stranger
1:153 Aonah
Revision of the document of September 26, 2014