Starport Economics and the Fall of the Imperium

  Using TCS (my thanks to Wildstar and Steve and Cynthia) and some basic
assumptions about salaries, profits and costs, I have done some thinking
about starport/shipyard economics that suddenly yielded one surprising
mechanism.

  Assuming a static total tonnage in the Imperium, the shipyards must divide
their space into doing the yearly overhaul and building ships to replace those
who go away (through age or destruction).

  The yearly overhauls do not require that large a contingent of labour, so it
can accept a normal 25% vacancy, the breakeven is at 45% vacancy. Construction
(and repair) on the other hand is very sensitive to slumps and the breakeven
occurs at around 20% to 25% vacancy, and to give the same percentage of profit
it need a practically 0% of vacancy. This is easily accomplished through
building small crafts for sale when a vacancy appears. Construction, while
riskier, will however give much larger profits per ton of shipyard capacity
than overhauls.

  Repairs have the same demands in labour as construction and gives a profit
in between of construction and overhauls. I assume that repairs take place on
the 25% of overhaul space that normally is available.

  Now, imagine the rebellion: Not only will the naval fleets require repairs
in large numbers, but the targetting of commercial shipping and general
raiding will drive the demand for repairs through the roof.
  Since repairs are more profitous than overhauls, these repairs will steal
space from overhauls. All shipyards will hire like crazy to keep up. And ships
will have to go without overhaul. The places they can get overhaul on are
limited to same or higher TL and type A starport (repairs can be done on other
places) so they can't go somewhere else.
  When large numbers of ships go without overhaul, they will start breaking
down partially or catastrophically which further raises the demand for
repairs and lowers the availability of overhaul.

  The repairs will lessen the profitability of interstellar trade enough to
drive most operators out of business, and many ships are lost though the
catastrophic malfunctions.
  One might think that it would stabilize somehwere, since when the number of
ships goes down, the demand for repairs go down and the availability of
overhaul go up. But since repairs require more labour than overhaul huge
numbers will be laid off, at the same time as the economic winds down due to
lack of shipping.

  It is possible that this is enough to break the economy totally.

- -bertil-
- --
"Ack! Phht!" - Bill the Prez