DESIGN: Economy Details for v.2

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EntropyAvatar
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#106 Post by EntropyAvatar »

skdiw wrote:Okay, resources ledges to a net balance of zero. In that case why just do + 20 food produce and then - 20 food consumption <edit> and other ppl pay for surplus? We are back to my original question: why do you need money to accompany the production of food? How do you do food focus if you don't have a net money surplus to reinvest in? How do your planets grow in the first place if the net always = 0? That is really strange.
The total wealth of your empire (production - consumption) is equal to your total industry. Remember that we are saying money == production, so all wealth must come from industry. The net for wealth is not zero. The net for food and minerals is zero. This just means that the food and minerals have to go somewhere (either consumed, or into storage or ?).

I wonder if you are being thrown off by the way we are calculating net wealth on a planet? We convert all resources to money, and then subtract consumption.

Of course, this is not what I envision actually happening. The mental picture is freighters stuffed with food or minerals travelling to the industry worlds that need them, while freighters with equipment, machinery and consumer goods travel to the resource worlds that need them. Production - consumption is just an easy way to calculate the outcome of all that.
In my first example, the net = 0; in the second, the net = +10. In both example, the money consumption is already taken account. We just balance with a positive income and not worry about any background calculations.
As far as I can tell, the only difference between your first and second example is the price. Since in your example the planet is self-sufficient, I don't see how raising the price of food makes the whole planet richer.
Now in your example, planet B would have a surplus of wealth so B can now pay for A to get food over to A. Planet A isn't just a trading partner; A is part of your empire; kinda like if your friend is in trouble, you go help him.
If we are using the unmodified Omega plan, all of B's wealth comes from the factories on planet A. If those factories disappear, then B's wealth can only come from the imperial reserves. B can still ship its excess food to A, but without factories, where will B get the spare parts for maintenance, the consumer goods, etc?
<edit>I don't see why B will run into debt if each food produce is accompany a positive money.
Food production is a source of money only if someone pays for it. In my scenario, the people on planet A can no longer pay anything, because they can't make anything. So the government starts to pay. But who pays for the government? Not the people on planet A, they can't. The only people with money are the people on planet B, and they only have what the government just paid them. If the government takes all that back , they will have nothing too. But at least everyone gets to eat until the farm equipment starts to break down. This is why this empire desperately needs to get factories built.
Now, I can see if producing food is just producing food and ppl have to pay for surplus, then I can see this interplanetary trade and dependence that you are talking about.


Producing food is just producing food. If there's money coming in, it has to come from somewhere.
But in that case, I would suggest forget about the (+) and just worry about the (-) of the eqaution.
If we do that, then farming, mining and research worlds don't get any benefit from their main efforts.

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skdiw
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#107 Post by skdiw »

Ok; I see now. I was confused between your proposal and krik's proposal.

<edit> I was really thrown off by your calculation when you convert resources to wealth. Say a planet generate 40 food and 10 min. Say it converts to 50 money. Does that mean another planet can convert that 50 money into 50 min? Otherwise we need food stamps and other specific moneys to keep track, which is way too complicated.
Last edited by skdiw on Thu Oct 02, 2003 6:08 pm, edited 3 times in total.
:mrgreen:

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Krikkitone
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#108 Post by Krikkitone »

also buildings with a few exceptions Should have a fixed production. You should just be able to build multiple buildings

ie Smart Tractors give +1 food Each, (assuming the number of Smart Tractors<=number of farmers)

This gives a built in cost for changing focii, and allows it (forces it) to be gradual. You start building Auto Factories and as you assign farmers to work in them you begin scrapping the now useless Smart Tractors.

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Re: Plan 9

#109 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Quintin wrote:I'd like to break up my comments.

M y com me nt s .

there. All done ;)
:D

I believe the plan can address most of your concerns.
1) Difficult to write an AI to properly manage an empire, decide what planets should have which focus, etc. Say one of your food producing planets gets destroyed... what should the algorithm be for determining which planet gets a focus shift to food production?
Since this is meant to be a player decision, it is also meant to be a somewhat interesting/hard decision, so you're right that it would be a little harder to code. In this case I think the AI would have to look at each of its planets and evaluate how good it would be at farming versus the importance of its current focus.
2) Empires are too fragile with the super interdependency created with said buying/selling.
Each part of the economy is interdependent, but the fragility of an empire really depends on the numbers. If you can't grow enough food to keep people from starving, that's bad. If you can't mine enough then your production suffers. Keep in mind that production in a healthy empire will be significantly higher than maintenance. This surplus is used to expand the economy, build new stuff or build up the treasury. It's only when empire production starts to fall below maintenance that things start to get serious.
Why would ANY empire surplus be wasted? In the here and now, we don't dump raw iron into the ocean or shoot it into the sun if we can't us it immediately.
This is a good point. One way to look at it is that the excess production that's not stockpiled by the government was never produced. Farmers just looked and saw the market was going to be saturated so they grew fewer crops that year.

In the current model, the government could choose to buy all excess resources in to stockpile, but since it has to pay for them it could become a crimp on the treasury.

If we wanted to, we could run the stockpile differently. Maybe the producers suffer the normal waste penalty when there's a surplus, but all the excess goes into stockpiles. When there's a shortage and stockpiles are drawn down, perhaps the producers benefit in proportion. Even if there are no stockpiles to draw down, the producer's benefit (but consumer's get screwed).

Anyway, there are many different ways we can run stockpiles. I think the important thing is we somehow avoid having each colony maintain an explicit stockpile.
Maintenance (some of this is a reiteration)
I can see an argument for some portion of maintenance being the farmer or miner's time, but I think we can abstract that in most cases by throwing it into the net benefit of the infrastructure. A special building might actually decrease food production if the base is too low, but I see special buildings being fairly rare.

I still think maintaining all types of infrastructure should require money (production). Maybe it varies from type to type. E.g. farms are cheap but labs expensive.
I'm in favor of putting together some system that stands up in at least a vague, hand-waving kind of way that feels easy to use and is simple.
I really think we are fairly close to that with the Omega plan.
I suggest that for every 50 points of food or minerals in stockpile requires 1 AU of maintenance.
Something like that could certainly work.
I think the current ideas would force all new colonies to initially be industry focused
Maybe a colony starts out with whatever type of infrastructure is appropriate for it's major focus? Say the people who built the colony ship thought ahead. That way an agricultural colony would be agricultural from the start.
Inevitably, some colonies will be changing their focus. Since this involves major shifting around of a planetary economy, there'd be some penalties, no doubt.


I think the inherent cost of building the new type of infrastructure is penalty enough.

Thanks for everyone's comments. It's certainly helping to make the Omega plan clearer in my mind. Even if it makes it foggier for everyone else :wink:

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#110 Post by EntropyAvatar »

skdiw wrote:Say a planet generate 40 food and 10 min. Say it converts to 50 money. Does that mean another planet can convert that 50 money into 50 min? Otherwise we need food stamps and other specific moneys to keep track, which is way too complicated.
Yes, all the food and minerals put on the market have to be bought by someone, or else the game goes back and takes some of the producer's money away.

No, this doesn't allow you to sneakily convert food into minerals while in transit. If there's not enough minerals available (total) then total consumption of minerals is proportionally cut back everywhere and industry produces less. If there's a surplus of food and no one's buying (not even for stockpiles), then farmers end up with less.

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Krikkitone
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#111 Post by Krikkitone »

1) Difficult to write an AI to properly manage an empire, decide what planets should have which focus, etc. Say one of your food producing planets gets destroyed... what should the algorithm be for determining which planet gets a focus shift to food production?
Actually, the whole 'Focus' idea makes AI management very easy (depending on how complicated it is in implementation, but in general)

I figure that a simple Dev Plan system would work.

Give each planet one 'Value' for Each of the four resources that is the sum of all of the inputs into them.

For example as a player you say
All Planets +1 Industry, +1 Food
Rich Planets +2 Mining
'Red zone' Planets -4 Food

Then a Rich, uninhabitable planet would have
Industry 1
Mining 2
Food -3
Research 0

The Computer could then select a Major and Minor focus that provided the best match to the values. (there are only 25 combinations, I'm pretty sure a computer can check that pretty easily) For other management options additional value modifiers could be set on an individual planets, planets could have their Focus setting changed and Locked by the player, and there could be a 'threshold' of how much better the best has to be than the current setting before it changes.

This way a player could set how specialized v. self sufficient he wanted the planets to be, counter a shrinking or slow-growing stockpile by increasing food or mineral production (as appropriate), beef up Industry or research empire wide, or just on developed worlds. If the right tools are in place he could even say all Klackon Worlds focus more on Industry, all Psilon Worlds focus more on Research.
If we wanted to, we could run the stockpile differently. Maybe the producers suffer the normal waste penalty when there's a surplus, but all the excess goes into stockpiles. When there's a shortage and stockpiles are drawn down, perhaps the producers benefit in proportion. Even if there are no stockpiles to draw down, the producer's benefit (but consumer's get screwed).
That actually might be a way to simplify it, all food/minerals above the amount consumed go into an imperial stockpile and producers are the ones that 'own' the stockpile (they pay to put food in and benefit when food is taken out)
I suggest that for every 50 points of food or minerals in stockpile requires 1 AU of maintenance.
Then you would need someone to control the stockpile (to pay for it and be willing to Not put stuff in it.) If producers control the stockpile, I think it might be easier if a certain percentage of the stockpile disappeared each turn (no more than 5%, but no less than 1%) If government does then a limit would be necessary....I think producer controlled stockpiles are actually better, since there's no government involvement necessary.

Although there does exist the problem of blockades..but here's my solution to that

For a blockaded world
Industry= base Wealth

All Tax Revenue Generated from that Wealth must be spent locally
and no funds come from the Imperial Treasury

Stuff consumed from stockpiles adds to the Taxed Wealth that must be spent On the planet and subtracts from the Untaxed Wealth.. The Imperial government then takes the same amount from its treasury and pays relevant producers.

Stuff added to the stockpile from local producers ends up the same.

Research would probably not be done on blockaded worlds because there is no way for the outside government to pay for it. Local Taxed Wealth could probably get diverted back to Untaxed (in a reverse of the stockpile consumption situation) but there would need to be some type of a rule for that. (possibly one depending on the blockaded world's Save v. spend setting, any tax revenues in excess of what would Normally be spent on that world shift back to Untaxed to buy Research.)
I think the current ideas would force all new colonies to initially be industry focused
Maybe a colony starts out with whatever type of infrastructure is appropriate for it's major focus? Say the people who built the colony ship thought ahead. That way an agricultural colony would be agricultural from the start.
That I think is the advantage of Plan Omega, Colonies can start out as whatever they want, and normal growth will happen the same (because Wealth allows production to be shipped around) Now if you want to speed grow those colonies then an Industrial focus will help them receive those funds more effectively, but it is assumed to be unnecessary.

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#112 Post by EntropyAvatar »

I figure that a simple Dev Plan system would work.
The only thing I'd worry about with that type of system is if changing a weight by one for a broad class pushes a whole pile of planets over the edge into changing their focus.
That actually might be a way to simplify it, all food/minerals above the amount consumed go into an imperial stockpile and producers are the ones that 'own' the stockpile (they pay to put food in and benefit when food is taken out)
I was thinking of a producer-owned stockpile back when this subject first came up. The fly in the oinment here is that the player would like to be able to sell items from the stockpile to another empire. It would be a bit strange to have to then turn around and pay producers for what you sold. If producers get payed more when there's a shortfall, independent of whether there are reserves to draw down, then the producers don't really care what level the reserves are at, and the player is free to add or subtract from the reserve (with the regular consequence that it's risky to sell-off your reserve).
If producers control the stockpile, I think it might be easier if a certain percentage of the stockpile disappeared each turn (no more than 5%, but no less than 1%)
I think this is reasonable, (but maybe hard to explain in the case of minerals...)
Although there does exist the problem of blockades..but here's my solution to that
I prefer that we basically treat a blockaded planet exactly as a normal one-planet empire. So when a planet is blockaded, it carves out it's portion of the stockpiles and treasury and the colony suffers whatever are the logical consequences of its current position. If a planet with no industry is blockaded, that's too bad. It will have to try to build some industry from its monetary reserves, or hope the monetary reserves are enough to keep it going until the blockade is lifted.

Probably there would be some special (or player-defined) 'blockade management' that would kick in to try to make the most of the blockade situation. Or perhaps without player intervention the planet would try to chug along as normal until the wheels fell off.

To sum up, a blockaded planet is isolated, runs by the same rules, but probably make different decisions.

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#113 Post by EntropyAvatar »

One thing that keeps coming up is this possibility of zero industry on a planet, creating situations where even the smallest amount of overspending could go in at the maximum rate.

I'm wondering if it's not a good idea for population to intrinsically produce some small amount of industry. Like say a unit of population produces 1/10th what it would if it had a full factory infrastructure. This would represent scattered very light manufacturing and construction capability.

We would boost maintenance costs according so this doesn't amount to free maintenance, but it would at least allow people to do a little something on their own if the major infrastructure is destroyed (provided that social organization still exists, represented by a not-terrible morale level).

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#114 Post by Krikkitone »

I'm wondering if it's not a good idea for population to intrinsically produce some small amount of industry
I think it's a good idea.

As for the inter-empire trade agreement... well its rather simple, in that sense, food moved between stockpiles depends on the producers.


But you are right that blockades have a few complications with producer owned surpluses. Government owned might be better.

Treating them as a The One planet empire is probably good assuming one other modification put in.

an automatic minimum tax rate.

If the government doesn't have enough in taxes to bring its treasury (either Imperial or local blockaded) up to at least 0, the tax rate is automatically increased until it does... so a Research Focus World would continue to chug along, but the tax rate there would increase substantially because the local blockaded treasury would be spending a lot to maintain research.... (probably the 'side effects' from that could be automatically temporarily suppressed in a blockade so your people don't auto-riot on every non industry focused world as soon as it gets blockaded.)

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#115 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Krikkitone wrote:As for the inter-empire trade agreement... well its rather simple, in that sense, food moved between stockpiles depends on the producers.
I'm pretty sure people will see a stockpile of stuff and want to be able to do what they want with it (like ship a chunk of it to another player in exchange for a treaty). I think this means a government-owned stockpile. But they don't want to see excess resources flowing in and money flowing out. So the government doesn't pay for the surplus it stockpiles. However, when the stockpile get drained, the government gets payed.

Of course, this isn't 'fair' to producers, but it's not as though they are going to launch a constitutional challenge. Over-production of resources is basically a drain on producers to build up a stockpile. Just like over-taxation is a drain on the entire economy to build up the treasury.
an automatic minimum tax rate.
I don't know about this. Basically, if there's not enough industry in the system, then there's going to be problems no matter what the tax rate it.

I'd prefer that if there are no reserves left, then the government of a blockaded colony just can't spend more than it takes in. So it stops paying for certain things. Probably research would be the first thing it stops paying for, military defences the last. If the government doesn't have enough to maintain planetary defences, some of them will be cannabalized to keep others going. Basically the consequences of the imbalanced economy (e.g. labs scrapped for lack of maintenace) just play out as they will.

Since a colony that's suddenly isolated may have a very imbalanced economy, it's probably a good idea for the player or some AI to step in and try to refocus the economy on more self-sufficient terms. But that doesn't have to happen. You could end up with a starving population that's just scraping infrastructure to keep other stuff going a little longer. If the situation is really bleak they'll probably just surrender to the blockading power.

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#116 Post by Krikkitone »

I'd prefer that if there are no reserves left, then the government of a blockaded colony just can't spend more than it takes in
The problem is the same as in real government, there is discretionary and non discretionary government spending in our model.

Non discretionary...
Research
Filling up stockpile (eliminated in Omega +1)
Paying for Worlds with negative Wealth

Those all happen before taxes are collected so they are a part o.

There are a few possible ways to deal with this

1. government is a consumer of research, if there is a Research surplus (because the government is unable to buy Research in the 'resource allocation phase') The Research producers are penalized like any resource surplus producer is and lose/don't get their money and the government doesn't receive the research (However research should NOT be stockpiled)

2. Paying for worlds with negative Wealth... assume government forced socialism... anything the consumers can't pay for is counted as surplus and billed back to the producers... So in our World A World B example, all of the Food producing world's excess food would get it 0 money and would cost the undeveloped world 0 money.

(This would mean that both world A and B would have 0 Wealth (instead of a positive and Negative Wealth))

So that would mean a change in the order

1. Calculate Surplus/Deficit in actual Resource production [Mineral/Farm]
2. Calculate Industrial Production (based on any Mineral Shortfall)
3. Add Industrial Wealth to Each World
4. Calculate Tax income (if there is one tax rate for all worlds, and Net Imperial Taxable Revenues=Industry...this should work well)... but do not subtract it from the world's Wealth yet
5. Government Pays for Research (not allowed to spend more than it has)
6. Figure out other consumers ability to pay (food/minerals)
7. Pay producers based on consumers Ability to pay* see below
8. Spread 'Tax Burden' around proportional to planet's Wealth.
9. Untaxed Planetary Wealth and Remaining Government Treasury Money is available for Spending.

Wealth in Empire, Treasury, Empire+ Treasury
Step
3=Industry, 0 , Industry
4=Industry, Tax*Industry, Industry*(1+Tax rate)
5-7=Industry+Research, Tax*Industry-Research, Industry*(1+Tax rate)
8=(1-Tax)*Industry+Research, Tax*Industry-Research, Industry

So a 100% Tax rate wouldn't Really be 100%, (in the sense that there would still be Some private spending on Consumer Goods and local development...but that would be dependent on Research spending by the government... and Total Wealth available for buildings/ships/maintenance and CG would end up equal to Imperial Industry)

So the government doesn't pay for the surplus it stockpiles. However, when the stockpile get drained, the government gets payed.
Well this means that there is no need for a 'stockpile policy' unless there is a cost to maintaining a stockpile (ie 1 AU per 50 units of food or minerals.)

Although that would be OK too.. But I would think that in that case, there needs to be some way of preventing infinitely growing surpluses

(I'd say the easiest is probably a % decline in the surplus each turn, that way AUs don't interfere with it)

However, I'd say that if the government doesn't Pay people for surplus, it doesn't benefit from deficits

1.. Surplus: Stored and producers don't 'get paid' for the surplus (lose money in proportion to the amount they produced)
2.. Deficit: Used up and consumers don't have to pay (gain money in proportion to the amount they consumed)

That way the government treasury is only involved if it sells the surplus to other governments.

(Official DeltaOmega plan)

Edited Note: Under DOp, the blockaded world has a seperate Treasury with a starting amount taken from the Imperial Treasurey proportional to...Industry I guess, just like local food and minerals stockpiles come from the Imperial stockpile with an amount equal to local consumption.

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#117 Post by EntropyAvatar »

But I would think that in that case, there needs to be some way of preventing infinitely growing surpluses

(I'd say the easiest is probably a % decline in the surplus each turn, that way AUs don't interfere with it)
I don't think it's vital that we have some limiting mechanism for stockpiles. After all, the player does have to produce all of it, and he's paying an opportunity cost having it all sit in stockpile. That said, I think % decay every turn is good limiter if we decide we want one.
However, I'd say that if the government doesn't Pay people for surplus, it doesn't benefit from deficits
I admit that its doesn't seem fair for the government to get it free but collect on outflow. I think it would be strange though to give consumers a break when there's a shortage. There's going to be drawbacks to any model however.

Maybe the best tradeoff is here: producers lose when there's a surplus but benefit when there's a shortfall (whether or not that shortfall is met by the stockpile). Producer gains/penalties are essentially decoupled from the stockpile level. So the government can sell the stockpile and it won't hurt producers, though it might hurt your empire if people start starving a few turns down the road. Since the government doesn't profit from drawing down the stockpile, there's no change in how you handle it for a blockaded world.
Krikkitone wrote:
I'd prefer that if there are no reserves left, then the government of a blockaded colony just can't spend more than it takes in
The problem is the same as in real government, there is discretionary and non discretionary government spending in our model.
I agree the goal should be to make everything discretionary in an emergency (like a blockade). The changes for achieving that look good. Perhaps if there are payments that really need to be made, maybe it could start scrapping buildings? I guess this would boil down to prioritizing the order of scrapping.
So that would mean a change in the order:
Well I don't like the looks of that list, but I can't think of a simpler way right now to get things calculated with these assumptions. Best to think about it after I've had some sleep.

To any innocent bystanders: As we are trying to deal explicitly with the nasty corner-cases, it looks much more complex than it really is....

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#118 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Ok, so it seems we have two possibilities. We can keep the 'non-discretionary' spending and rely on whatever the consequences of debt are to keep things sane. Or we deal with the situation where the government can't afford to pay the non-discretionary spending.

If the second case, I think the steps laid out in Krik's last post have a number of drawbacks.

1. Tax rate has to be the same everywhere.
2. 100% tax rate is not 100% if the government is spending more than it takes.
3. There is a problem in steps 6-7: Consumer's ability to pay might depend on how much THEY get payed from other consumers.

So, I have the following proposals:

Stockpile:

-The government doesn't pay for things to be stockpiled (meaning that producers lose if there's a surplus). This is needed to avoid a source of non-discretionary spending.

-The government gets payed when the stockpiles are drained. Of course this is unfair to producers, but it's a degree of unfairness that is controllable by the player. Maybe he lowers taxes on resource planets in compensation. This allows a simplifying assumption that the price consumers pay for a unit of resource never depends on surplus or shortfall.

Research:

- There is some treasury limit, X, that the treasury cannot fall below. this might be zero, or whatever the limit is on debt. The government will not spend money on research the will bring the treasury below X BEFORE any tax income this turn. This way we don't have to know what the tax income this turn will before planet-by-planet wealth is calculated, and therefore we don't have to have the same tax rate at each planet.

- Either the excess research is lost, or the government gets it anyway. There are arguments for both sides. In the second case, the government effectively declares a lower payment rate for research. A lower payment rate will eventually catch up to it as research worlds fall on hard times, but that's not a concern for the current turn.

Surplus and Shortfall:

- When calculating production and requirement for resources, each planet is only assigned the NET resource value. For instance, if a planet's food production equals its consumption, it doesn't play a role in the empire-wide food market.

- This removes the possibility that a planet with a surplus won't have enough to meet its own needs. More importantly, it eliminates the possibilty that a resource exporter won't be able to pay for its own consumption of the resource (which could happen if it is a big consumer and there are many consumers who can't pay).

- The other effect of this is that big exporters and importers are more effected by surplus or shortfall, which I consider a neutral change.

Paying for Minerals:

A fairly weak assumption will be enough to ensure that a consumer of minerals can always pay. Ensure that the cost of the minerals for a factory will never exceed the factory's output. The only way I can see this not holding is if really high unrest reduces factory output but not consumption. If we do model unrest this way (not recommended), then say the factory basically shuts down when the cost of minerals will be higher than output.

Everything

Since we know that all mineral consumption can be payed for, it unties the knot.

1. Research payment
2. Sum up food and mineral production
3. Calculate industrial production
4. Account for mineral consumption/export
5. Account for food consumption/export
6. Account for taxes.

The monkey-wrench

I just realized the problem with this. Some races will consume minerals to eat, or use food in factories. Hmm. I think we will just have to define appropriate penalties for the government going into debt.

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#119 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Ok, keep everything above up to the 'paying for minerals' part.

The government will pick up the tab for planets that can't pay for whatever they need. The government can also go into debt.

Say the debt limit is X% of the scrap value of all the infrastructure and buildings in the empire. If the government is in debt, there is also an interest rate of Y% that gets added to the debt each turn.

At some debt level there is a chance each turn of bankruptcy. The chance hits 100% at the debt limit.

If bankruptcy occurs, there is widespread social upheaval, and enough buildings and infrastructure are scrapped all over the empire to clear the debt. The specific buildings scrapped would be random, but 'extras' would be more likely to go. If we have such things, we could throw in a corresponding revolution.

The debt represents an unsustainable pattern of economic activity that erodes the economy 'under the surface'. The weakness only become evident once a bankruptcy occurs. Note that this debt is internal debt. A loan from another player would be a different story. The only consequences for non-payment there would be to relations and reputation.

A blockaded planet starts out at zero reserves if the empire is in debt, or its fraction of the reserves if the empire has any. A blockaded planet is not allowed to go into debt, but there should be no problem calculating the effect of non-payment since there's no trade going on.

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#120 Post by Krikkitone »

Sounds good (as I was gone over the weekend I couldn't post in changes once I also realized the problems with my model)

One possible method for bankruptcy,

instead of a hard bankruptcy point, have 'fraction of discretionary spending allowed'

So as you go into debt and approach the debt limit, you would be allowed to spend a smaller and smaller fraction of your incoming taxes (since that portion is descretionary)..the rest goes towards eliminating the debt.

(You could still have a hard bankruptcy limit, but this would make it less like a single hard limit and put a few more 'penalties' in for partial debt)

Locked