Galaxy Simulation - Adding A Economy

 

"Economic growth doesn't mean anything if it leaves people out" - Jack Hemp

 

I have been looking at building a game for some time about the Fermi Paradox and highly influenced by the series the Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin. It is much more about how we should think about mutually assured destruction applied to a galaxy. 

 

Previous In This Series:

 

Galaxy Simulation | A Logic Called Joe (webador.co.uk)

Transferring Into C++ - Galaxy Simulation | A Logic Called Joe (webador.co.uk)

 

A brief recap is that I simulated the development of a galaxy in code from gravity, the heating and cooling of planets as wells to the random evolution of life. We then added nukes to the situation and it turns out in a galaxy of hostile life it is beneficial to take a liberal approach to war and be more 40K than Star Trek but with simply adding a mechanic about degeneration i.e. that empires naturally fall and trade maybe forestalls that trade is enough for the meek to inherit the galaxy...

This was not in a religious sense it was to open up discussions of the Fermi Paradox (The apparent contradiction that we should see alien life in the galaxy but do not) and our own experiences. The previous articles was a simulation of the affect of nuclear war had on the calculus of the yawning expanse of empty sky we see in the galaxy in that we can conclude that war might be as good a reason as any why we might be alone in the universe.

Today we will discuss economics...

 

Economy And Technocracy

 

In my definition anything that requires a calculation between two alternative actions is an economy where it uses a central currency like money as a value system. It therefore follows that the minimum data that must be tracked is the cost of every single good in the economy and the amount of money that an actor has to spend. 

The simulation follows the following principles any buying of a given good increases its cost by a comparable amount. If I buy 10 minerals at a price of 10 the next time I buy them, I must pay 20 per minerals. Therefore, for any object to keep the price stable I must produce an equal amount of X as I buy. 

The simulation been building follows the previous rules a bunch of random points are generated, if especially large the location is a star and heats up the space around it. Anything else will be heated up by nearby stars and according to its mass and atmospheric density will be categorised as red (too hot for liquid water), blue (too cold for liquid water) and green (just right).

It is upon these just right worlds that life develops a random walk will cause life to go through multiple stages of development and if life develops long enough a interstellar empire seizes the stars (well builds an international space station, seizing the stars costs money).

An interstellar Empire has a range of options it starts with a random market i.e. the price per good is assigned randomly (1-100$ dollars per good to be exact). The empire has a range of technologies representing tools.

 

Meet The Commodities

 

The commodities being used in the simulation are as followed. 

 

Commodities: 'energy','data','protein','minerals','alloys','water','chemicals','electronics','silicoln','commercial','uranium','hydrogen','labour','shipping','security'

Energy is used all over the place any piece of technology (described below)  either specifically produces another commodity or converts X of a commodity into some multiple of another commodity. Confused? Well simply put solar panels will produce 1 energy but a fusion power plant will produce 4 energy at cost of 1 hydrogen. 

There is initial cost for building any object alloys, electronics and minerals. The maths described above include a 

The way that I see it is that technology connect prices at