World Economic Data

[Chaos]

My star system generation rules here , combined with some old thoughts on trade rules here, have made me think about a way to randomly (but reasonably realistically) generate economic information about worlds.

For data about worlds, I will assume the world in question was generated with my alternate rules, not the standard Traveller rules.
Note also that these are just my thoughts at the moment; none of this has been tested.
Lastly, this procedure is only for real colonies, not just mining outposts and such, as the latter tend not to have a full-fledged economy.

Agriculture
The first big part of the economy is agriculture.
The fertility of a world is determined by 2d6-7+Native Life-(absolute value of Climate)+1/3 of Tech Level.
Any world with a Fertility value of 10 or higher can feed its own population, assuming that a proportion of the population typical for the TL is working in agriculture (that´s about 2-3% for TL 8, in the real world)

Mining
A world´s mineral richness is determined by 2d6-2+1/2 of Tech Level. Also add +1 for each mining outpost in the system belonging to this planet.

Industry
A world´s industrial infrastructure is determined by 2d6-7+Population+1/2 Tech Level. Also add +2 for each shipyard in the system belonging to this planet.

Tourism and Oddities
A world´s tourism and oddities "production" is determined by 2d6-2 for type A worlds and 1d6-1 for type B worlds. Add +1 for every two research or harvesting stations, and +1 for a type A or B starport. Also add +1d6/2 if the planet has archaeological ruins that are open to visitors, and +1d6/2 if the planet has any famous natural or architectural wonders.
"Oddities" refers to things that cannot be clearly sorted into one particular category - like export items that are particular to this planet (Swiss cuckoo clocks, anyone? ). Also, it includes income from banking, trading, brokerage, tolls... stuff like that. Most importantly, T&O production does NOT strain resources, which makes it very important for worlds with poor fertility and/or mineral resources.


Results
The planet´s Agricultural Surplus (or Shortage) (AS) is determined by Fertility-10.
The planet´s Mineral Surplus (or Shortage) (MS) is determined by Minerals-Industry.
The planet´s Industrial Surplus (or Shortage) (IS) is determined by Industry-Population.

The per capita Gross Planetary Product is the sum of AS, MS, IS, and the Tourism & Oddities value.
The per capita GPP is an exponential value to a base of 2, so a GPP value of 10 means the per capita GPP of approximately Cr1,024.


Looking at this, it still requires alot of work; I´d still like to hear some comments on this.

 

[tjoneslo]

Have you read the World Tamer's Handbook? It does all of this, then goes a step further in letting you refine how your world utilized the existing resources. That is, in order to support an industrial base of a given size requires a mining and ag base of a given size. Each of which requires a number of people based upon technology level. This becomes a (not entirely) stable feedback loop system.

At one point I tried to link the WTH production values to the CT trade system, and may still have some of that data.

 

[Chaos]

Originally posted by tjoneslo:
Have you read the World Tamer's Handbook? It does all of this, then goes a step further in letting you refine how your world utilized the existing resources. That is, in order to support an industrial base of a given size requires a mining and ag base of a given size. Each of which requires a number of people based upon technology level. This becomes a (not entirely) stable feedback loop system.

At one point I tried to link the WTH production values to the CT trade system, and may still have some of that data.

I don´t have the World Tamer´s Handbook, and I´m not in the mood to shell out for something I´ll have to adapt anyway. Not after having spent 45 Euros for the THB. But that´s another story.

Anyway, the concept itself is very good. Let´s see.


Fertility limits the maximum population, in that output per square mile of arable land, times square miles of arable land, divided by output needed per person, is the hard limit of population that a planet can feed. Land surface is surface times (100-10*Hydrographics) times Diameter^3, IIRC. Only a fraction of that is arable, say Fertility*5%. Fertility and a TL-based factor determine the number of people that one square kilometer can feed.
If we assume Earth has a natural Fertility of 10 (slightly less than its Native Life value - call it wear and tear, or just a bad dice roll ) and add 4 for the current TL of 8, we get a fertility of 14. Say people fed per square km is Fertility*TL, that would be 112 for Earth, which as far I can tell has about 80 people per square km of land area right now. Sounds more or less reasonable.
That would give a maximum population for Earth of about 8.4 or so billion.

We know that the TL doesn´t just mean knowledge, it also means the necessary infrastructure to produce items of that TL - not to mention that a higher TL includes the knowledge of things that can improve industrial infrastructure. Therefore we can assume that, all else being equal, higher TL will mean better infrastructure.
The proportion of infrastructure to demand on raw materials should be pretty much linear. However the demand on manpower should decrease rapidly, as both producing a certain value of goods takes much less work at higher TL, and a much bigger proportion of the population is available for industrial production. For example (if I remember the example from Macroeconomics classes correctly) in re-volutionary France (TL 3, in other words) about 75% of the population was farmers, whereas now (TL 8) it is less than 5%.
Let´s make it simple and say the per capita GDP from industrial production roughly doubles for each TL. That means (as GDP codes are base 2) that the pc-GPP increases by 1 per TL, and the Pop code necessary for a certain infrastructure level is reduced (roughly) by 1 per 3 TL.

So, as a first draft, per capita GPP is Infrastructure+Tech Level.
Infrastructure cannot be higher than either Minerals or Tech Level; also Population(UWP code)+1/3 TL puts a cap on infrastructure.
Per capita GDP, expressed in credits, is roughly Cr10,000 for Germany (25,500 Euro or about $30,000), and similar number for other Western nations. pc-GDP codes being base-2 logarithmic numbers, would give Germany a pc-GDP code of 13, and most Western nations codes of 12 to 14.
That would give these nations Infrastructure values of 4 to 6. That´s a bit low for my liking - I´d prefer an Infrastructure closer to TL for a healthy economy. Well, without slipping into the Political Pulpit, things *could* be better today economically - and face it, Earth today *would* be rather a backwater planet, transplanted into the year 1100 of the 3rd Imperium. Let´s leave it as it is for the moment.

We haven´t worked Tourism&Oddities into this; I´m rather fond of the concept since it seems to be the only really original thing I´ve contributed to all this.
I also want a modifier to pc-GPP that reflects the political and social conditions - either the government code or law level code. Let´s settle for Law Level, to reflect the stifling effect of too much bureacracy and red tape.
T&O is usually a value around 5 for habitable worlds, and law level codes for high population worlds are mostly in the 5-10 range.
So lets say that pc-GPP is:

Infrastructure+TL+T&O-Law Level

To return to the above example of Germany, I´d estimate Germany´s law level to be somewhere in the 6 to 8 area - say, 7. T&O is hard to estimate, but 5 looks just about right. Figured into the formula, that would put the Infrastructure value at 7, just below the maximum for TL 8. Sounds good.


So, what do you people think of this?

 

[Chaos]

To my embarassment, some rather substantial errors have made it into the previous post. The devil, it seems, is not just in the details.

First, from what is stated in the THB (the population density of Earth in the 70s was 15 people per square mile of land at 3 billion people) this means there were 6 people per square kilometer, not 40, and now there are 12, not 80. Somehow I took a kilometer to be 1.6 miles, not vice versa (and thus, a square kilometer to be about 2.5 square miles, not vice versa).

Second, I have now figured out - at least I *think* I have figured out - the formula to determine a world´s surface area from its diameter. Somebody please correct me if I´m wrong (again):

s=(d*pi)^2
(s=surface area, d=diameter, pi=3.14...)
Dammit, my math professor would paddle me with the textbook for groping around in the dark like that...


***


Now with some testing and fine-tuning I did we have the following formulas:

Fertility: 2d6-7+Native Life+1/3 TL
Minerals: 2d6-2+1/4 TL
Effective Workforce: Population+1/3 TL
Infrastructure: 2d6-7+TL
Tourism&Services: 2d6-2 (for A worlds) or 1d6-1 (for B worlds), +1 each for "tourist magnets" like natural or architectural wonders, archaeological ruins, pilgrimage sites and so on.

Effective Workforce is the amount of work that the working population, aided by technological advances, can do.
Infrastructure represents the actual production "hardware", plus transportation, and other things besides natural resources and workforce that influence industrial production.
Tourism & Services is Tourism & Oddities under a more serious name.

Industrial capacity is limited by Minerals, Effective Workforce and Infrastructure.
It is therefore the minimum of these three values.

Per capita Gross Planetary Product - pc-GPP because I´m too lazy to type it each time - is determined as follows:

2*Industry+T&S-Law Level

***

For now we have only looked at each world separately - now we figure the effects of trade into the whole thing.

Let´s give each starport type a certain Trade Capacity:
Type A: 3
Type B: 2
Type C: 1
Type D and E starports are too small to handle enough trade to meaningfully influence a planetary economy.

This trade has several effects:

First, raw materials can be imported, effectively increasing Minerals by up to the Trade Capacity; this can lead to a higher Industry if Minerals was the smallest of the limiting factors.
This reduces pc-GPP by the Mineral amount imported, but the increase in Industry raises it by twice that number - in other words, a net gain.

Second, raw materials can be exported, *if* that wouldn´t lead to a drop in Industry.
This increases pc-GPP by the Mineral amount exported.

Third, foodstuffs can be imported, effectively raising Fertility by up to the Trade Capacity - this reduces the pc-GPP by the Trade Capacity (to pay for the food) but effective increases maximum population and thus total GPP.

Fourth, agricultural products can be exported; these exports are assumed to be cash crops grown on land not needed to feed the population, so don´t impact maximum population; they do, however, increase pc-GPP by the Trade Capacity.

Fifth, the Tourism & Services value is increased by the Trade Capacity.

Sixth, the maximum Tourism & Services value is limited by starport size:
Type A: 25
Type B: 16
Type C: 9
Type D: 4
Type E: 1
Type X: none
Since T&S doesn´t rise that high, Type A and B starports effectively have no limit of T&S values.

So the revised pc-GPP is
2*Industry+Mineral I/E+Agricultural I/E+T&S-Law Level
(I/E means "Import or Export")

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Actually, Chaos, its A=4*pi*(r^2)=pi*(d^2).