System for economic simulation

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by thrash

If what you need is "good enough for roleplaying," I recommend Corporate Shadowfiles for Shadowrun. It's not an economic simulator, but it covers most of the potential roleplaying scenarios involving high finance and corporate-level intrigue in enough detail to be useful for campaign planning. The mechanics are reasonably portable to other systems as well.

Done. I liked it and actually inspired me for the template design of the companies and gave me some ideas for major areas of interest, but the areas are not complete and the system is really abstract, not hard numbers given (though I may be wrong, because I read the book very quickly). However it got a lot of narrative and is more summarized than my economy books.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by whswhs

In which case you aren't constrained to have that global revenue stay constant over time—I'm sure if you checked you would find that the global revenue of the computer industry has increased by orders of magnitude since 1948—or to have its increase be subtracted from the revenue of other industries.

Yes, this is why it is important that I get real databases, so I can update the market size according to reality.

[Alonsua]

I may actually just implement an algorythm to create a few thousand fictional companies, split among them a gross world product according to the space rules for designing planets, which looks into regional TL and area population, and try to ignore any possible objections from the players, since I am concluding that this cannot be easily done :S

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

Yes, this is why it is important that I get real databases, so I can update the market size according to reality.

If you want to assume that your player characters are not capable of increasing the rate of world economic growth above what it is in our world. Some of the characters you've talked about on other threads sound as if they might be capable of generating higher economic growth rates, though.

This really is the "Reed Richards is useless" problem discussed on TVTropes. You have transcendentally brilliant minds like Reed Richards, Tony Stark, or Lex Luthor in the world. But somehow none of their inventions ever come into use as consumer products, or change anyone's daily life, or make the global economy more productive. And that seems like something of a paradox; at the very least, it diminishes the verisimitude of your setting.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If you want to assume that your player characters are not capable of increasing the rate of world economic growth above what it is in our world. Some of the characters you've talked about on other threads sound as if they might be capable of generating higher economic growth rates, though.

This really is the "Reed Richards is useless" problem discussed on TVTropes. You have transcendentally brilliant minds like Reed Richards, Tony Stark, or Lex Luthor in the world. But somehow none of their inventions ever come into use as consumer products, or change anyone's daily life, or make the global economy more productive. And that seems like something of a paradox; at the very least, it diminishes the verisimitude of your setting.

According to the set of rules mentioned I think there are factors for TL. With these people who are inventing things from TL+1. I need to set the area´s TLs, but according to these rules if I am not mistaken they should be able to raise the Income Per-Capita from 31,200$ to 43,200$ in an average area, let´s say some countries are at -2 (I don´t know how much is realistic, but I think I read some on this in Transhuman books, so I will check asap), this means that they can increase it from 19,200$ to 43,200$ (it makes a big difference, I think). They can also increase the world´s carrying capacity from ten thousand millions to fifteen thousand millions. Am I right?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

According to the set of rules mentioned I think there are factors for TL. With these people who are inventing things from TL+1. I need to set the area´s TLs, but according to these rules if I am not mistaken they should be able to raise the Income Per-Capita from 31,200$ to 43,200$ in an average area, let´s say some countries are at -2 (I don´t know how much is realistic, but I think I read some on this in Transhuman books, so I will check asap), this means that they can increase it from 19,200$ to 43,200$ (it makes a big difference, I think). They can also increase the world´s carrying capacity from ten thousand millions to fifteen thousand millions. Am I right?

In the real world, there's much greater disparity. Going by Wikipedia's information on PPP based per capita income, and ignoring Qatar as a freakish outlier (oil money that doesn't reflect actual economic productivity or TL), they go from $104,000 for Luxembourg and $88,000 for Singapore down to less than $1,200 for the six poorest African nations.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by whswhs

In the real world, there's much greater disparity. Going by Wikipedia's information on PPP based per capita income, and ignoring Qatar as a freakish outlier (oil money that doesn't reflect actual economic productivity or TL), they go from $104,000 for Luxembourg and $88,000 for Singapore down to less than $1,200 for the six poorest African nations.

It is fine, there are wealth adjustments too which gets the numbers down to 10 percent (Poor) or less (Dead Broke) (At "Poor" it gets down to 1,920$ which is not so far away from the target). The problem is that I am unable to find out the summary of countries by TL, have you got it or know where may I find it exactly?

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

otherwise the production would vary among the different sectors, which might be interesting if it doesn´t get too hard, because it sets the players on the way to fighting over the best industries/sectors.

Productivity varies wildly between sectors in the real world. The rate of return for investments in the computer software industry is higher than the rate of return for investments in the computer hardware industry which is higher than the rate of return for grocery stores which is higher than the airline industry. Corporate sectors are not interchangeable, and if you treat them as if they are, you'll have oddities like a 100,000 person company focused on running second-hand shops making as much money as Google.

It's your game, and maybe that won't bother your players, but everything you've written so far about your economic system looks like it would constantly break my suspension of disbelief while also being fairly complicated in play.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Productivity varies wildly between sectors in the real world. The rate of return for investments in the computer software industry is higher than the rate of return for investments in the computer hardware industry which is higher than the rate of return for grocery stores which is higher than the airline industry. Corporate sectors are not interchangeable, and if you treat them as if they are, you'll have oddities like a 100,000 person company focused on running second-hand shops making as much money as Google.

It's your game, and maybe that won't bother your players, but everything you've written so far about your economic system looks like it would constantly break my suspension of disbelief while also being fairly complicated in play.

Well, it is all coded so players dont get to see the current mathematical system behind the results, they only get to see the actual results of their actions. About the different sectors I have already implemented a kind of "wealth" for every sector "level", so while setting up a cutting-edge software developing company may cost about 156,000$/employee, setting the second-hand shops may cost 31,200$/employee or even 15,600$/employee (and yet I need to apply the area wealth modifiers...). This takes it to the point that though all costs are the same, where a programmer may bring 9,360$ in net profits to her company, the owner would need five to ten retailers to make the same kind of net profits with second-hand shops. Have you got any ideas about how to properly fix the matter though?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

The problem is that I am unable to find out the summary of countries by TL, have you got it or know where may I find it exactly?

TL is not really a meaningful concept for a society with significant external trade; you're basically the same TL as the trading community you're part of, just possibly poor.