Odd things in Galaxy 1

[ebw]

Qutiri is Rich Industrial with Gross Prod. 16800 M Cr.
Zaonce is Average Industriel with Gross Prod. 42xxx M Cr.

How does that fit together?

Will the Gross Product or the Low-Agri - Rich Indus have more influence on the
prices paid?

[reills]

I have found the best profit when trading between a Rich Industrial and a Poor Agricultural. As for the relative wealth between different systems... one can only guess (high cost of living, taxes, corruption - all readily available in my hometown)

[Uncle Reno]

Qutiri is Rich Industrial with Gross Prod. 16800 M Cr.
Zaonce is Average Industriel with Gross Prod. 42xxx M Cr.

How does that fit together?

One possibility that comes to mind is Qutiri might have a small output of whatever major product they have but with an extremely high profit margin.

Will the Gross Product or the Low-Agri - Rich Indus have more influence on the prices paid?

Just had a quick look at the Oolite Wiki and it doesn't look like Gross Productivity affects the prices at all, only Economy type.

HTH.

[ebw]

Thanks for quick replies.

[TGHC]

You also tend to find that the the greater the difference between the tech levels the greater the price difference.

The best trading pairs IN Galaxy 1 (Santaari) are here

[Dr. Nil]

Qutiri is Rich Industrial with Gross Prod. 16800 M Cr.
Zaonce is Average Industriel with Gross Prod. 42xxx M Cr.

How does that fit together?

Since Gross Prod. is the value of the total production a less productive system with a large population may have a GP greater than a more productive system with a smaller population.

An example from the real world:

The UK is a highly developed country, but it's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is behind that of India - a developing country.

[DataPacRat]

I'm toying with some narrative, involving a Broke Adder start in Maesin rather than Lave; partly because I have an obvious fondness for rodents, and partly because starting in a TL1 system seems as if it would crank up the difficulty from Hard to Nintendo Hard.

But I'm still trying to figure out what some of the numbers mean. Population 0.8 billion, fine, there's 800,000,000 sapient small harmless furry rodents. But the "Productivity" is listed as 768 megacredits, or about 960,000 credits per rodent. They're at Tech Level 1, so can't even build a useful missile, or reconfigure a ship's existing systems to fit in a larger cargo bay; and they're an anarchy, without large-scale forms of cooperation so... where is that wealth coming from? Is it the purely domestic production, or does it include trade that doesn't benefit the local rodents, or something else?

A modern-day first-world nation like Canada could be argued to fall under TL1, and has a GDP per capita of around $40,000... so might that imply that a Canadian dollar is worth around 24 credits?

How much further flufftext can be squeezed out of such numbers?

[Cody]

But the "Productivity" is listed as 768 megacredits...

That's pretty low compared to most systems - but the human colonials on Qudira match it exactly!

[DataPacRat]

But the "Productivity" is listed as 768 megacredits...

That's pretty low compared to most systems - but the human colonials on Qudira match it exactly!

As best I can tell, in Sector 1, the system with the highest productivity per capita is Ceesxe, with something like 8,800,000 credits per sapient - around 9 times that of poor Maesin.

... Still trying to figure out any good flufftext therefrom.

[Disembodied]

But I'm still trying to figure out what some of the numbers mean. Population 0.8 billion, fine, there's 800,000,000 sapient small harmless furry rodents. But the "Productivity" is listed as 768 megacredits, or about 960,000 credits per rodent. They're at Tech Level 1, so can't even build a useful missile, or reconfigure a ship's existing systems to fit in a larger cargo bay; and they're an anarchy, without large-scale forms of cooperation so... where is that wealth coming from? Is it the purely domestic production, or does it include trade that doesn't benefit the local rodents, or something else?

A megacredit is 1 million credits … so 768 megacredits is Cr768,000,000, which only comes to Cr0.96 per rodent.

{Edit: unless my arithmetic is waaay off … which is always a strong possibility!]

[montana05]

so... where is that wealth coming from? Is it the purely domestic production, or does it include trade that doesn't benefit the local rodents, or something else?

Well, its an anarchy so nearly everything is possible. The Credits might come from drug dealing, piracy or murder for hire (like Seedy Space Bar), no functional government and no controls could provide a lot of sources of income.

[DataPacRat]

But I'm still trying to figure out what some of the numbers mean. Population 0.8 billion, fine, there's 800,000,000 sapient small harmless furry rodents. But the "Productivity" is listed as 768 megacredits, or about 960,000 credits per rodent. They're at Tech Level 1, so can't even build a useful missile, or reconfigure a ship's existing systems to fit in a larger cargo bay; and they're an anarchy, without large-scale forms of cooperation so... where is that wealth coming from? Is it the purely domestic production, or does it include trade that doesn't benefit the local rodents, or something else?

A megacredit is 1 million credits … so 768 megacredits is Cr768,000,000, which only comes to Cr0.96 per rodent.

{Edit: unless my arithmetic is waaay off … which is always a strong possibility!]

Er... whoops. Looks like I slipped an 'illion or so.

Okay, so Maesin has a "productivity" of a little under 1 Credit per person, and Ceesxe somewhere around 9 Credits per person.

Meanwhile, a budget Adder is around 65,000 Credits, and an average ton of food is 4.4 credits - about 0.0022 Credits per pound of food. In the present, a pound of food is around, what, a couple bucks for a pound of apples, more for meat, less for cheap junkfood? So, does that imply that one modern dollar is roughly the same value as a millicredit? That would imply that Maesin's inhabitants have a GDP per capita of around $960 (around that of modern Niger or Liberia, which is arguably plausible), and the hypertech people in Ceesxe around $8,800... which is only around that of El Salvador, when modern first-class nations can have a GDP per capita ten times that.

So... am I slipping with my math again? Am I underestimating the wealth of TL1 Anarchies, or of TL15 CorpStates, or are Oolite planets a lot more economically homogeneous than modern-day nations (maybe throwing in some handwaving about how a lot of wealth is concentrated in the hands of the rich), or is something else entirely going on?


Part of the reason I'm trying to get a mental handle on all these numbers. Say we've got a bright young rodent in Maesin, who Really Really Wants to spend large amounts of money on a particular personal project; what would her life have been like as she hustled to accumulate the cash, insider info, and less-formal-but-no-less-valuable juice to get her paws on a functional Adder?

(Somewhat relatedly, what's the largest amount of non-cheated wealth you've ever seen a pilot collect in Oolite?)

[Disembodied]

Am I underestimating the wealth of TL1 Anarchies, or of TL15 CorpStates, or are Oolite planets a lot more economically homogeneous than modern-day nations (maybe throwing in some handwaving about how a lot of wealth is concentrated in the hands of the rich), or is something else entirely going on?

Ultimately I think the problem is that these numbers - cooked up for what was expected to be a throwaway game in 1984 - were never intended to bear any real scrutiny …

However, there's also the fact that GDP (or, in this case, GPP) is a horribly inexact method of calculating economic output. What might account for the apparent smallness of the difference between the simple pastoral (?maybe nomadic/hunter-gatherer) rodents of Maesin and the ultra-sophisticated high-tech avians of Ceesxe could be the vastly higher level of efficiency on the latter world. For example: communications on Maesin could be dependent on a network of runners, signal fires, and messenger bats, whereas citizens of Ceesxe enjoy direct wireless neural connection an ultrafast system-wide net. Although the infrastructure costs are obviously hugely greater on Ceesxe, the per-mile cost of sending a message is much, much higher on Maesin. So on Maesin, a lot more work has to be done to achieve a fraction of what can be done on Ceesxe.

Does that make sense?

[DataPacRat]

Am I underestimating the wealth of TL1 Anarchies, or of TL15 CorpStates, or are Oolite planets a lot more economically homogeneous than modern-day nations (maybe throwing in some handwaving about how a lot of wealth is concentrated in the hands of the rich), or is something else entirely going on?

Ultimately I think the problem is that these numbers - cooked up for what was expected to be a throwaway game in 1984 - were never intended to bear any real scrutiny …

True, but reverse-engineering ridiculous throwaway numbers into something that makes sense is at least as much fun as just handwaving it all. (Next up: Coming up with a set of ideas to choose from, explaining in-game planet sizes versus populations of billions. )

However, there's also the fact that GDP (or, in this case, GPP) is a horribly inexact method of calculating economic output. What might account for the apparent smallness of the difference between the simple pastoral (?maybe nomadic/hunter-gatherer) rodents of Maesin and the ultra-sophisticated high-tech avians of Ceesxe could be the vastly higher level of efficiency on the latter world. For example: communications on Maesin could be dependent on a network of runners, signal fires, and messenger bats, whereas citizens of Ceesxe enjoy direct wireless neural connection an ultrafast system-wide net. Although the infrastructure costs are obviously hugely greater on Ceesxe, the per-mile cost of sending a message is much, much higher on Maesin. So on Maesin, a lot more work has to be done to achieve a fraction of what can be done on Ceesxe.

Does that make sense?

It's at least /an/ explanation, which is one more than I had to work with an hour ago.

I'm wondering whether the Maesinites would necessarily be quite so pre-technological as you describe, though. Is there any more info about low Tech Levels than TL2 covers Oolite-quality missiles and rerouting systems for larger cargo bays? Depending on what counts as a "good enough" missile, then TL1 could cover anything up to roughly World War 2 level tech, or up to better-than-present-day tech.

Also, there's further complications between natively-produced tech, and what tech is available via import; for example, a lot of present-day third-world nations are leapfrogging some issues with infrastructure by jumping straight to mobile phone networks instead of trying to lay landlines everywhere. Even if the Maesinians are as migratory as you make out, they might mirror mindsets more like Modern Mongolia than Middle-Ages Morocco.


(... Also, I'm currently thinking of various social arrangements that would allow people who average an income of 1 Credit per year to collect 65,000 of them; if they scrimp and save and increase risk of not having enough to feed themselves, by each contributing 10% of their annual income to the cause, and take 10 years to gather the wealth, that's still 65,000 individuals making significant impacts to their lives to gather the resources for even 1 stock Adder. Which puts a certain rather significant amount of social pressure on the shoulders of the pilot of said Adder to make that investment worthwhile...)

[Disembodied]

It's at least /an/ explanation, which is one more than I had to work with an hour ago.

A further thought: our current measurement of GDP takes no account of environmental impacts. Cutting down a rainforest is all positive, according to a measure of GDP. It's possible that a society more used to looking at things on a planetary, even multi-planetary scale - i.e. the Co-operative - might measure things differently. Maesin might be poor, but it's undemanding, environmentally; whereas Ceesxe might be rich, but that economic output (and population level) comes with a heavy environmental cost. If those costs are factored in, it might explain why Ceesxe isn't many times more wealthy in comparison to Maesin.

I'm wondering whether the Maesinites would necessarily be quite so pre-technological as you describe, though. Is there any more info about low Tech Levels than TL2 covers Oolite-quality missiles and rerouting systems for larger cargo bays? Depending on what counts as a "good enough" missile, then TL1 could cover anything up to roughly World War 2 level tech, or up to better-than-present-day tech.

There isn't really any more detail on what tech levels actually mean: TL1 could plausibly mean anything from "stone age" to "just capable of FTL space travel". My own preference is to imagine that the systems that make up the Co-operative contain a very wide range of societies, so I lean more towards TL1 being more towards the Stone/Bronze/Iron Age end of things. Of course, technologies do cross boundaries …

There is a slight clue: it's known that the pen-and-paper RPG Traveller was an influence on Braben and Bell's original game. There is a TL comparison chart for Traveller here:

http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Tech_Level ... cations.29

Also, I'm currently thinking of various social arrangements that would allow people who average an income of 1 Credit per year to collect 65,000 of them

Well, the "average" might be wildly off. If the huge majority of Maesinites live as hunter/herdspeople or subsistence farmers, they may not play any part in the calculation at all: that MCr768 might be shared out over a much smaller number of individuals who play an active part in the Co-operative economy, clustered around a few spaceports-cum-trading-posts.