System for economic simulation

[Alonsua]

Hi there,

does anybody know about any free code or openly available system for economic simulation when multiple parties are involved in trade, such as Eve Online, or have you got any idea about how to design and implement a fictious one, or where to access to reliable economic data (specifically revenue by sectors/industries in every country/state/city)?

Thank you.

[mlangsdorf]

two seconds searching on google led me to statista.com, which will give you useful things like US corporate profits by sector
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...s-by-industry/
and US GDP
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...es-since-1990/
or Coca-Cola's revenue and income from 2009-2016
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-of-coca-cola/

you have to buy a membership to get access to their sources, though.

With more Googling, you might find other, similar, free sites.
oh, what the heck, I'll give you a second freebie:
factfinder.census.gov links to the US government Census data, which includes things like the 2012 Economic Census, which contains (among other things) corporate revenue broken down by state and industry.

[Hide]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

Hi there, does anybody know about any free code or openly available system for economic simulation when multiple parties are involved in trade, such as Eve Online, or have you got any idea about how to design and implement a fictious one, or where to access to reliable economic data (specifically revenue by sectors/industries in every country/state/city)? Thank you.

What's up!

What do you want to simulate? "Economic simulation" is pretty broad. We could talk about the Gross Domestic Product of a country, the value of a currency in the global market, the value of labor, and so on.

If you want to create a "trade system" for your world, bear in mind that most options from search engines will point you to trade simulations within our world; for example, trading simulations with Japanese companies and your results. And most probably, you won't have control over the market's fluctuations or your acquisition power per your economy's situation.

For country-scale figures and assuming this will be for a small GURPS group, you may have to control a lot of variables, because probably you won’t have much input from your players.

I believe you could start with the law of supply and demand.

You can create a small-custom-environment for trade; this requires you to pick and set a few specific items exclusively for trade, along with their prices and availability. I recommend a few items because, if you are a GM you will need to keep track of other stuff. To keep it simple some games feature wood, meat, gold (currency) and stone... Other games feature crystals and gas. Such resources will determine your starting point.

Do you know the way?

Here's the introduction to supply and demand.
Here is a simple explanation to make calculations.
And here, you can find instructions to graph the supply & demand curves in Excel.

And this is an hypothetical scenario, of the stuff you need to think about:

Roughly speaking , games with trading systems start with predefined parameters for "prices, supply and demand". In other words, they have NPCs/bots which buy and sell items at a given price; this includes the stuff you normally find in the world and the stuff you only find from special events or those which you can craft, etc.

The marketplace comes to life once the game is fed with the input from players/gamers and fluctuates with the influence of the environment (game-events, patches, etc.).

Think of this: The game is new, and you are the first person to make a "craft-exclusive" sword. The game will buy it from you at $1.00 and the NPC won't sell it because it is a craft-exclusive item. Then you think about it: "It took me 5 days making this sword... I gathered materials and money to cover the crafting fees; also this sword is rather powerful, compared to the swords from the shop which sells at $400.00".

You decide this sword is worth at least $1,000 game currency and choose to sell this item to other players; after 2 days, you sell the sword at $1000.00 and this lets you buy some other stuff.

You will buy a potion from gamer X. Gamer X decided to sell the potion at $500.00 (he's doing what you did). HOWEVER, gamer Y (from a clan) sells the same potion at $ 300.00 (cheaper, because he doesn't have to do everything alone). You buy gamer Y's potion and everybody else does the same: It is the cheaper potion, it is “always” available and the other guy sells potions at $500.00 only. A month later, gamer X gets tired of this, and he lowers his price to $ 350.00; his potions start to sell whenever gamer y's potions are not available. The following month, the game releases the "ultra-potion pack", granting 10,000 free potions to loyal gamers. Some of these guys decide to sell such potions at $200.00!

Gamer X and gamer Y have two options: Quit selling potions or lowering the price. Most players don’t require their potions, and those who might need them can buy them at a cheaper price. Obviously, the environment changed the conditions of the market.

The game keeps record of these transactions. Sometimes it provides gamers with information to find the "right price", sometimes it does not. But if players can buy and sell among them, people will always be bargaining, and the economy shall move "by itself".

One year later, your $1000 sword is worth $500.00, and the potions are worth $50.00. Truth is, both items are really easy to acquire, but back then, you did not know it was an introduction to crafting and selling stuff. Also, the NPC shop started selling those items at $600.00 & $60.00 respectively; developers set that price knowing their market's statistics; now, they are want to make players craft the newly released items and try the newest missions from their expansion release... you hear about this awesome "craft-exclusive" sword.

... And then you start over.

- Hide

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by Hide

What's up!

What do you want to simulate? "Economic simulation" is pretty broad. We could talk about the Gross Domestic Product of a country, the value of a currency in the global market, the value of labor, and so on.

If you want to create a "trade system" for your world, bear in mind that most options from search engines will point you to trade simulations within our world; for example, trading simulations with Japanese companies and your results. And most probably, you won't have control over the market's fluctuations or your acquisition power per your economy's situation.

For country-scale figures and assuming this will be for a small GURPS group, you may have to control a lot of variables, because probably you won’t have much input from your players.

I believe you could start with the law of supply and demand.

You can create a small-custom-environment for trade; this requires you to pick and set a few specific items exclusively for trade, along with their prices and availability. I recommend a few items because, if you are a GM you will need to keep track of other stuff. To keep it simple some games feature wood, meat, gold (currency) and stone... Other games feature crystals and gas. Such resources will determine your starting point.

Do you know the way?

Here's the introduction to supply and demand.
Here is a simple explanation to make calculations.
And here, you can find instructions to graph the supply & demand curves in Excel.

And this is an hypothetical scenario, of the stuff you need to think about:

Roughly speaking , games with trading systems start with predefined parameters for "prices, supply and demand". In other words, they have NPCs/bots which buy and sell items at a given price; this includes the stuff you normally find in the world and the stuff you only find from special events or those which you can craft, etc.

The marketplace comes to life once the game is fed with the input from players/gamers and fluctuates with the influence of the environment (game-events, patches, etc.).

Think of this: The game is new, and you are the first person to make a "craft-exclusive" sword. The game will buy it from you at $1.00 and the NPC won't sell it because it is a craft-exclusive item. Then you think about it: "It took me 5 days making this sword... I gathered materials and money to cover the crafting fees; also this sword is rather powerful, compared to the swords from the shop which sells at $400.00".

You decide this sword is worth at least $1,000 game currency and choose to sell this item to other players; after 2 days, you sell the sword at $1000.00 and this lets you buy some other stuff.

You will buy a potion from gamer X. Gamer X decided to sell the potion at $500.00 (he's doing what you did). HOWEVER, gamer Y (from a clan) sells the same potion at $ 300.00 (cheaper, because he doesn't have to do everything alone). You buy gamer Y's potion and everybody else does the same: It is the cheaper potion, it is “always” available and the other guy sells potions at $500.00 only. A month later, gamer X gets tired of this, and he lowers his price to $ 350.00; his potions start to sell whenever gamer y's potions are not available. The following month, the game releases the "ultra-potion pack", granting 10,000 free potions to loyal gamers. Some of these guys decide to sell such potions at $200.00!

Gamer X and gamer Y have two options: Quit selling potions or lowering the price. Most players don’t require their potions, and those who might need them can buy them at a cheaper price. Obviously, the environment changed the conditions of the market.

The game keeps record of these transactions. Sometimes it provides gamers with information to find the "right price", sometimes it does not. But if players can buy and sell among them, people will always be bargaining, and the economy shall move "by itself".

One year later, your $1000 sword is worth $500.00, and the potions are worth $50.00. Truth is, both items are really easy to acquire, but back then, you did not know it was an introduction to crafting and selling stuff. Also, the NPC shop started selling those items at $600.00 & $60.00 respectively; developers set that price knowing their market's statistics; now, they are want to make players craft the newly released items and try the newest missions from their expansion release... you hear about this awesome "craft-exclusive" sword.

... And then you start over.

- Hide

Sounds good enough for microtrading, but I need to code a system working in different scales, from micro to macro. I need to work out something that works at a "single player" level and works at a "multinational corporation" or "national government" too. The easiest thing would be to make calls on real time world databases, while the playerbase is small enough to avoid the collapse of the bandwidth :)

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

two seconds searching on google led me to statista.com, which will give you useful things like US corporate profits by sector
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...s-by-industry/
and US GDP
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...es-since-1990/
or Coca-Cola's revenue and income from 2009-2016
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-of-coca-cola/

you have to buy a membership to get access to their sources, though.

With more Googling, you might find other, similar, free sites.
oh, what the heck, I'll give you a second freebie:
factfinder.census.gov links to the US government Census data, which includes things like the 2012 Economic Census, which contains (among other things) corporate revenue broken down by state and industry.

Good enough, but aren´t there any real time data, such as national US debt or something alike?

[hal]

You could try picking up TRAILBLAZER by METAGAMING. It is an out of print game, but one can be had on ebay for about $17.

It is a sci-fi based campaign game, and if items being produced aren't purchased by the traders, the production rate drops, etc. If an item is purchased in quantities, production gets ramped up, and so forth. Bidding on prices when there are two or more traders on the same world who want access to a given commodity - results in driving the prices up, and therefor making the producers want to produce more.

It is not a bad game actually, one I enjoyed playing back in my college days. I don't know of that would be what you're interested in however.

Anyone remember MULE? It was a trading simulation game as well - computerized and all that. Dang, but I miss that game.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

Sounds good enough for microtrading, but I need to code a system working in different scales, from micro to macro. I need to work out something that works at a "single player" level and works at a "multinational corporation" or "national government" too. The easiest thing would be to make calls on real time world databases, while the playerbase is small enough to avoid the collapse of the bandwidth :)

I think that kind of modeling is beyond the capabilities of actual academic researchers with large grants.

There's also an interesting problem with it. You want players to use it to have their characters make choices. Do those choices have any effect on the economy? If they don't, it seems as if you're making economic titans with the ability to transform or create entire industries unavailable. But if you do, then as soon as those effects show up, the real world databases are no longer accurate, because those economic titans don't exist in the real world.

If you want some ideas on modeling, I recommend essays by John Barnes ("How to Build a Future," in Apostrophes and Apocalypses) and Michael Flynn ("An Introduction to Cliology," in In the Country of the Blind). I learned a good deal from them.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

Good enough, but aren´t there any real time data, such as national US debt or something alike?

I doubt there's real time data for the US debt because bonds are traded all the time. However, you could get a good enough number trivially by Googling "US debt".

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I doubt there's real time data for the US debt because bonds are traded all the time. However, you could get a good enough number trivially by Googling "US debt".

Exactly, something like this I found earlier:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

but with the data divided by industries and, if possible, with current companies or the most important ones in every industry (and for the entire planet, not only US).

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I think that kind of modeling is beyond the capabilities of actual academic researchers with large grants.

There's also an interesting problem with it. You want players to use it to have their characters make choices. Do those choices have any effect on the economy? If they don't, it seems as if you're making economic titans with the ability to transform or create entire industries unavailable. But if you do, then as soon as those effects show up, the real world databases are no longer accurate, because those economic titans don't exist in the real world.

If you want some ideas on modeling, I recommend essays by John Barnes ("How to Build a Future," in Apostrophes and Apocalypses) and Michael Flynn ("An Introduction to Cliology," in In the Country of the Blind). I learned a good deal from them.

I will read on them as soon as possible. I could actually call the real world databases with dynamic modifiers according to the size of the player companies (but first I need to find these databases). So for example if computers and peripherals is an industry of 300 billion dollars a year, and Leonovo got 20% at the moment as is, and a player gets to develop a company with revenue for up to 50% of the world industry, then Leonovo share goes down to 20%*0,5=10% and its value drops accordingly :)