So labour is linked to but not dependent on population, just as it would be linked to or possibly derived from TL. The higher the TL, the more ubiquitous automatons become, the more they take over labour from the sapient population.
Pocket Empires
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So labour is linked to but not dependent on population, just as it would be linked to or possibly derived from TL. The higher the TL, the more ubiquitous automatons become, the more they take over labour from the sapient population.
And in the MT RC:
"In the 17th year of the Imperium, Cleon Zhunastu declared, “Any sentient life form within the Imperial borders, regardless of its origin, is a protected being, and thus a citizen of the Third Imperium.” Cleon went on to say that robots are not citizens of the Imperium “One may argue that an intelligent robot might
be sentient,” stated Cleon, “but it is definitely not a life form.”
In taking this stand, Cleon clearly sided with the industrial interests in the Imperium by declaring robots to be property, not
citizens."
Agree and my question was that, where is the point when the infrastructure became worker. When we chat yesterday and I read the trav books, my thoughts have been changed a little bit and I think a TL12 robot are more workforce than infrastructure, because it has a "Low Autonomous" logic with int3.
So what do you consider the difference between a worker and infrastructure to be?
I'll use the term robot to refer to a non-sophont in this instance.
A robot used for whatever labour purposes is a piece of equipment. It is owned as property by a corporate or individual entity, has no say in its status or employment, but is unaware of this. It can be turned on or off, run continuously bar servicing and maintenance requirements, and does as it's programmed to do. It has no rights as it has no comprehension of self.
A worker is a sophont that has a sense of self, a sense of self-worth, and the ability to learn and grow and question and create. Unless in a social system that permits slavery a worker has a choices, on a range from wildly great to barely acceptable, regarding its life including work, housing, socialising, use of spare time, continuing education, etc.
I don't see the development of created sophonts, either by way of mechanical means or cloning or using synthetics or any permutation of these, to prevent or limit the use of robots as a means to maintain the labour capacity of a society. So even if in YTU at TL12 some robots are considered workers due to the combination of mental and emotional attributes they have, that doesn't necessarily preclude the use of robots as automatonic labour to enable the rest of society more leisure time.
Yes, Pocket Empires is a book for T4. It's a paper & pencil 4X game with played on a generational time scale. It provides very high level economic, political, and cultural systems which the player can manipulate in various ways. It also includes a strategic level wargame using assets the players can build/purchase. Over the generational time spans, a player is supposed to increase planetary tech levels, the size of empires, populations, and so forth.
Think of it as sort of, maybe, kind of ACKS for Traveller but written twenty years before ACKS was written.
Back to the "Are robots infrastructure or population" question.
I tried, and failed, the explain to pg67 that his idea didn't work from both a design standpoint and a mathematical standpoint. Design first.
Here's the equation at the heart of the question: GWP = (RE * LF * I) / (C+1)
RE is resources, LF is Labor Force, I is Infrastructure, and C is Culture. We need only concern ourselves of the first three. The only way to increase a planet's GWP is to increase it's resources, population, or infrastructure. Of those three, resources is the both the hardest to increase and provides the smallest possible increase. Labor Force is tied to population which can theoretically increase from tens to tens of billions. Such increases take many many generations however. Infrastructure is the easiest and fastest to increase and can provide for moderate increases. For most "normal" worlds, the Resources factor is usual two digit numbers, the Labor Force factor a three digit number, and Infrastructure a high one digit or low two digit number.
From a design standpoint, robots count as Infrastructure because you can build robots faster than you can have babies.
The idea doesn't work mathematically mostly because of the marked size difference between the Labor Force and Infrastructure factors. Let's use the Sylea example for PE itself. Sylea's RE, LF, and I factors are 18.5, 800, and 11 respectively for a result of 162800. If we shift one between LF and I for 801 and 10 for a result 148185, so moving robots from Infrastructure to Labor Force hurts instead of helps.
... when you have tens of billions of workforce. (If I understand well the situation.)
Labor is PopDigit-1.
Labor Base is 100, when the Labor Score is 9. Hence the Labor force factor will be a 3digit number, if your PopDigit is A, what means your pop is more than 10billions.
Not quite and because you didn't understand what I wrote. Look at the sentence again:
For most "normal" worlds, the Resources factor is usual two digit numbers, the Labor Force factor a three digit number, and Infrastructure a high one digit or low two digit number.
Notice that I used the terms "normal" and "usual". The GWP of a world with a population of under 10 million - what Traveller refers to as a Non-industrial world - is relatively small and you're not going to "grow" it in any amount of time other than generations. My example was using worlds with enough population to have high GWPs.
In that case yes. The Labor Base adjustment used to convert Labor to the Labor Force Factor is determined by a world's population code. The Labor Base adjustment is a killer for population under 10 million, population code 7, which ties in nicely with Traveller's long standing "Non-Industrial" trade code. You'll notice the link to the NI trade code in the book's example of the Cararialta family who initially base themselves on a world with a population code of 3 but immediately target a nearby world with a population code of 7.
When you look at the equation with a smaller population, not much changes. Shifting a digit or two out of Infrastructure and into Labor Force doesn't make any substantial differences. Using Sylea again, but with just enough population to receive a Labor Base adjustment of one we get (18.5 * 8 * 11) for 1628. Shifting robots the same way give us (18.5 * 9 * 10) for 1665. Both those numbers aren't the final RU totals, they still need to the Culture score and then adjusted for trade and other factors. There isn't enough of an increase produced to make fiddling the rules worth the effort.
Also, while shifting robots can slightly increase RUs for below 100 million, the same decreases RUs for world over a billion and those are the worlds in you PE you're depending on for RUs.
Congrats!
Ok. Please exactly define your term of "normal world".
Eg Sylea? One of the largest pop world? Thx.
I agree with you here, that's what I meant in my former post.
But, if I understand right how PE works, allowing robots among labor force will affect more the equations than what you tell, as a Pop 5 planet (labour factor 4, if I understand it) could buy 10 million robots and see its labour raised to 7 (the equivalent to a Pop 8 world).
And this would not be by reducing infrastructure, as you assumed, as it could be raised again to its maximum (be in by low int robots or other factors infrastructure represents)...
I did. Re-read my post and pay attention.
We're talking about PE so a "normal" world in that context is one whose GWP produces enough RUs to make it relevant. The Resource factor rarely very exceeds 20 and the Infrastructure factor cannot exceed tech level. That leaves it up to the Labor factor to "create" the large GWPs needed for significant RUs. However, while a large Labor factor is needed to create large GWPs, a Labor factor below a specific point cripples a GWP.
The Labor factor is a product of the population multiplier and the Labor Base adjustment. The adjustment is the key and it increases by orders of magnitude just as population does. That adjustment doesn't reach a "neutral" value of 1 until a world's population code is 8. Look at a few worlds, each with the same Resource and Infrastructure factors, each with the same population multiplier, and each with different populations. We'll use Resources 15, Infrastructure 12, and a pop multiplier of 5.
Pop code 6 => Labor Code 5 => Labor Base 0.01
Pop code 7 => Labor Code 6 => Labor Base 0.1
Pop code 8 => Labor Code 7 => Labor Base 1
Pop code 9 => Labor Code 8 => Labor Base 10
[15 * (5 * 0.01) * 12) = 9
[15 * (5 * 0.1) * 12) = 90
[15 * (5 * 1) * 12) = 900
[15 * (5 * 10) * 12) = 9000
While those raw scores still need to be adjusted by Culture scores, trade volumes, and other factors, the power of the order of magnitude steps should be apparent. Below a pop code of 8, a world doesn't count for much. They won't be producing the RUs your pocket empire needs for investment, advancement, military forces, and everything else. Such worlds will be hard pressed just to pay their own bills.
You've only read through the rules, you haven't actually played PE. Because you haven't sat down and run through a century's worth of yearly budgets trying to improve starports, advance tech levels, build infrastructure, tweak cultures, create military forces, and all the rest you don't quite grasp the power of population in creating the RUs of which you'll never have enough.
The "order of magnitude" stepping used is another aspect you don't quite grasp. Population code increases become harder and thus more rare as population codes increase because the "distance" between the "steps" become larger. Shoveling robots into the mix doesn't work either because of the number of robots required to reach the next order of magnitude. To increase a population of 10 to 100, you only need 90 robots. To increase a population of 10 million to 100 million - which gives us that magic Labor Base of 1 - you need 90,000,000 million robots. Robots can only plausibly increase population codes for those codes small enough not to matter.
Shifting robots does not work from either a design or mathematical standpoint.
PE contains two sample campaigns; The Empire of Seven Stars and the Cararialta Family. The latter is an exercise in long term frustration because of the RU totals involved. The Cararialta's and their nascent empire are extremely poor in the game's terms. You have to spend centuries slowly building before you have budgets you can do anything with. The Seven Stars campaign is a much better one in which to not only learn the rules but to also see how the rules play out in practice. Do yourself a favor and play 50 yearly turns of the Seven Stars campaign. It will be an eye opener.
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