WILDSTAR is back with Economic Stats!
Replies:
- #3415 Re: (3409) Imperial Economics by Steven Bonneville
Hi, folks! Just when I went away for a while, everything breaks loose! Oh,
well: I've adopted a "wait and see" attitude toward NeoTraveller. I have
managed to get my hands on Hard Times and Solomani/Aslan: Both look great!
Over the last while, I've been misusing the mainframe at work to do a little
serious number crunching for me. The results are below.
Several people have posted items about commerce, or the amount thereof, in
the Imperium. Since I have just finished loading the entire Imperium and
surrounds (from the DGP data files) into a SAS (Statistical Analysis
System) dataset, I thought that might be instructive to look at the problem
from a different point of view.
Using the worlds coded for Imperial or Imperial Faction allegance, the
following statistics for the Imperium of Pre-Rebellion or very early in
the Rebellion. The "new", rebellion-era statistics were loaded into a
database and tabulated. The Gross Planetary Product and Taxation rules
from Striker were used to compute the GPP in Local Credits. The Striker
exchange table was used to convert these to Imperial Standard (Port-A,
TL-15) Credits, which were then taxed at the suggested rates. Rules from
Trillion Credit Squadron were used to compute the shipyard capacity of
each Class A and B Starport. The Trillion Credit Squadron construction
rules were also used to estimate the number and size of ships. The Imperial
Budget is entirely my own invention; as is the number of starships at each
tonnage class, and the trade between the various classes of starports.
The Third Imperium is a trade protectorate encompassing 10,497 systems
with a total population of about 16,731,817,153,000 sophonts. The annual
Gross Imperial Product is 219,474,958,700,000,000 Credits. This is the
total value of all of the goods and services produced on all the member
worlds of the Imperium in one year, adjusted to Imperial Standard Credits.
The Imperium imposes a tax burden of about 1% of the GIP, producing Imperial
revenues of about 2,194,749,587,000,000 Imperial Standard Credits per year.
The table below shows the major categories of Imperial expenditures, and the
amounts spent on them. Note that the Imperial family recieves its income
in the form of dividends paid to the Throne (the Imperial family holds
shares in a number of megacorporations, and many lesser companies). The
Imperial bureaucracy is supported by user fees (application, liscencing,
processing, and other fees paid for official services rendered). Some
of these services actually produce a profit; others are subsidized by
the Imperium (for example, the XBoat network operates at a loss, but it is
subsidized through the IISS budget). Much of these funds fall into the
"Other Expenditures" category. The "Naval Estimates" and "Army Estimates"
are, for historical reasons, the terms for the Navy and Army budgets.
Category Percent Budget (MCr)
- -----------------------------------------
Naval Estimates 51.20 1,123,711,789
Army Estimates 16.05 352,257,309
Scout Service 21.31 467,701,137
Other Expenditures 11.44 251,079,352
- -----------------------------------------
ALL 100.00 2,194,749,587
The shipyards of the Imperium's Class A starports have an aggregate capacity
(all tech levels) of 5,098,672,838 displacement tons for vessel construction.
Its Class B ports have an additional capacity 4,367,049,593 displacement tons
for the repair and annual maintainance of starships. The table below shows
the tech level breakdown for the Imperium's Class A and B starports.
- ----------------------------------------------------------------
TL ClassA ClassB BuildTons MaintTons Build% Maint%
- ----------------------------------------------------------------
4 0 3 0 117,600 0.00 0.00
5 0 8 0 1,055,652 0.00 0.02
6 2 43 82,000 4,944,480 0.00 0.11
7 4 89 3,763,899 10,738,080 0.07 0.25
8 23 196 15,853,016 40,124,708 0.31 0.92
9 56 308 11,689,867 104,965,363 0.23 2.40
A 135 427 26,558,910 137,957,429 0.52 3.16
B 158 518 87,529,595 420,700,561 1.72 9.63
C 238 579 300,827,072 671,936,269 5.90 15.39
D 244 484 540,769,684 525,260,647 10.61 12.03
E 388 455 1,254,523,697 857,493,892 24.60 19.64
F 485 251 2,163,360,932 1,271,804,383 42.43 29.12
G 55 21 693,714,164 319,950,528 13.61 7.33
- ----------------------------------------------------------------
ALL 1,788 3,382 5,098,672,838 4,367,049,593 100.00 100.00
These figures can be used to estimate the approximate volume of shipping
within the Imperium. A 10,000 displacement ton hull will be used as an
"average" to estimate construction times. A hull occupies its tonnage
in the shipyard for its entire construction time of 160 weeks. Ships
must also undergo annual maintainance; 2 weeks every year. The yards of
the Imperium have an annual capacity of 265,130,980,000 ton-weeks of new
construction or maintainance, and an additional 227,086,570,000 ton-weeks
of maintainance only. Presumably, the Naval Bases, Naval Depots, Scout
Bases, and Scout Waystations contain additional ship construction and repair
facilities to build and maintain ships for the Imperial military services
(this is a logical extension of the policy that a world's survey data does
not include the personnel or technology of any military bases present).
In peacetime, shipyards and ships presumably exist in an equilibrum: the
number of new ships constructed is the same as the number retired from
service; and all ships in service can recieve their annual maintainance.
In practice, there is always some spare shipyard capacity to provide for
regional differences, trade expansion, and so on. Let us assume this
spare capacity at 10%. The active lifetime of a ship must be at least as
long, and probably longer than, the period over which it is financed, 40
years. There is good reason (analysis of the Azhanti High Lightning
class cruisers, the only class of ships for which complete records are
available) to believe that the active life can be more than 100 years.
Let us assume that it is 80 years (exactly twice the pay-off time).
Computation:
X = total tonnage in service
X/80 = annual tonnage taken out of service = annual new construction
160*(X/80) = 2*X = shipyard capacity required for new construction
2*X <= 0.90 * 265,130,980,000 (available new construction capacity) - OK!
2*X = shipyard capacity required for annual maintainance
4*X = 0.90 * (265,130,980,000 + 227,086,570,000)
X = 110,748,950,000 displacement tons.
Let:
T = New Ship Construction Time in Weeks
L = Lifetime of Ship, in Years
U = Shipyard Utilization Factor
N = Ton-Weeks of Shipyard Capacity for New Construction
M = Ton-Weeks of Shipyard Capacity for Maintainance
X = Aggregate Tonnage of In-Service Shipping
Therefore:
X = (U * (N+M)) / (2 + T/L)
But:
X <= (U*N) / (T/L)
Interestingly enough, a 5,000 ton ship requires only 144 weeks to complete.
Therefore, 11 5,000 ton ships can be constructed for slightly less shipyard
capacity as 5 10,000 ton ships. From a construction point of view, smaller
ships are more efficient than larger ones. However, when carrying cargo or
passengers, larger ships tend to be more efficient. A balance must be
struck, and 10,000 tons was chosen rather arbitrarily. The table below
presents a mix of ship sizes; the ratio column indicates how many ships of
a given size can be constructed using the same amount of shipyard ton-weeks.
For the purposes of estimating the number of ships, I will assume (again
rather arbitrarily) that a mixture of ships will be built so that every
10,000 tons of shipping represents an average of 1.6 ships; the Number
column shows how the shipping is distributed to get this total.
- -----------------------------------------------------
Hull Weeks Ratio Number %Occur Total
- -----------------------------------------------------
100 40 400.0000 2 6.25 1,107,490
200 48 166.6667 4 12.50 2,214,979
400 64 62.5000 3 9.38 1,662,120
800 112 17.8571 4 12.50 2,214,979
1,000 120 13.3333 6 18.75 3,322,469
5,000 144 2.2222 2 6.25 1,107,490
10,000 160 1.0000 8 25.00 4,429,958
20,000 174 0.4598 2 6.25 1,107,490
50,000 192 0.1667 1 3.13 554,631
100,000 208 0.0769 0 0.00 0
200,000 224 0.0357 0 0.00 0
500,000 232 0.0138 0 0.00 0
1,000,000 240 0.0067 0 0.00 0
- -----------------------------------------------------
Presumably, Class A starports are also primary trade and commerce locations,
so that most traffic passes through them. Class B ports would be
responsible for less of the trade, and so on down through Class E (slim)
and X (none). Worlds on a shipping main may receive through traffic, even
if the mainworld is bypassed. The following table presents a possible
breakdown. The ships column indicates the number of arrivals and departures
(flight operations) per week; less than half this number will be in port at
any one time.
- -------------------------------------------------------------------
Class Number %Trade TonsTrade TonsEach Ships 1Every
- -------------------------------------------------------------------
A 1,788 44.00 48,729,539,000 27,253,657 4,361 2.3 Min
B 3,382 35.00 38,762,133,000 11,461,305 1,834 5.5 Min
C 2,768 15.00 16,612,342,000 6,001,569 960 10.5 Min
D 1,079 3.99 4,418,883,205 4,095,351 655 15.4 Min
E 1,252 2.00 2,214,979,050 1,769,153 283 35.6 Min
X 228 0.01 11,074,895 48,574 8 21.6 Hrs
- -------------------------------------------------------------------
ALL 10,497 100.00 110,748,950,000
It is interesting to note that there are 17,719,832 starships registered
in the Imperium; approximately 1,688 for every world. The frequency of
flight operations at a Class A port is more hectic than the busiest of
present-day airports. For a commercial starship, between 40% and 60% of
the ship's volume will be cargo or passengers; therefore a Class A starport
handles about 13.6 million tons of cargo a week. This is quite a large
volume of trade, but not enough to feed a planet of billions.
Also note that the above tables are averages over the whole Imperium; not
every Class D port has a ship arriving every half hour. Some facilities will
go for up to a day without seeing a vessel, but others will have departures
every few minutes. A better picture could be had by examining a single
sector or subsector.
Let me know what you think ...
Wildstar
You want to take good care of your star, otherwise it gets all dark and icky.
/