Economics

The two thousand star systems of the Cooperative once enjoyed a golden age of peace and prosperity, and perhaps the wealthiest of them can still pretend to. The trade ships that once safely travelled between planets now have to be well armed and escorted to fend off pirate attacks, from small-time criminals desperate for their next meal, to powerful robber barons extracting tithes from everyone who passes through their space. The Cooperative's police force, concentrated near a few influential planets, can no longer maintain order. The mercenaries they hire for a few credits a kill are too few, too unreliable to do so either. And in the darkness between the stars, an old enemy lurks, fearless, perhaps waiting for order to collapse entirely.

(Oolite website, Introduction)

Trade and economics, yes ... but greatly affected by piracy and by the decline of the Galactic Cooperative.

The impact of Piracy

The second Elite novel, Imprint, starts off with the continual fighting off of pirates (the so-called "Knights Templars"). This is set some 20 or so years before Oolite - and things have only gotten worse since then.

Cim created a Space-sim simulator for analysing the relationship between pirates, traders & bounty-hunters in Oolite which you can find here: (Discussion is here).

Trading Commodities

Classic Elite - and thus the Oolite Vanilla game - has a grand total of 17 tradeable Commodities. There is a spectrum of 8 types of world to trade them between - ranging from Rich Industrial to Poor Agricultural.

The Oolite Reference Sheets which came with the game download (search for OoliteRS - stashed away in the entrails of your computer!) tabulates it all quite nicely. The Trading Goods Profit Table is worth looking at for a more comprehensive summary.

There are a number of OXPS which add individual commodities (see Links below), and also others which quite turn aspects of the vanilla game economy on their head.

Critiques of Oolite's economics

• Let's assume a 1Tc barrel of Food contains 1000kg of food, or approx 500 person-days of food. A Boa will bring 125Tc, and lets say 2 or 3 arrive each day carrying food rather than other goods. So they're only importing enough food to feed a couple of hundred thousand people at most. We can probably pretty safely assume then that the Food cargo is generally luxury food, interstellar delicacies, and the like, and all planets are usually self-sufficient for basic food needs. The NPC bulk haulers (eg HammerHead) could raise it to a couple of million people, perhaps, which is still negligible.

Cim (2012).

• The Vanilla game descriptions seem controversial. Why does a Poor Agricultural system market have more food and soft goods at a lower price than a Rich Agricultural? We have no such controversy at the opposite end of the scale: a Rich Industrial market has more electronics and machinery at a lower price than a Poor Industrial market. It seems that "Poor Agriculture" is a logically flawed definition: it reflects the system's economic specialization, not the productivity level, nor the richness/poverty level!

...

Oolite's economical model was inherited from the good old 8-bit 42 KB Elite. Compared with later space sims which feature hundreds of items in their goods lists, Oolite seems modest. You have only 17 goods – and only 14 goods for legal trade. Moreover, even this humble list is mostly useless. In reality you have an extremely limited subset of the most profitable items for your milk runs. Buy computers in industrial systems, sell in agricultural, buy alcohol & and/or furs, sell in industrial, repeat. Sometimes furs more profitable, sometimes alcohol, that’s all. Well, having 100 credits for start you’ll buy cheap food and sell it with good profit, but it is a very short period. Oolite is definitely NOT about economics. You have no reason to buy textiles if you have more cheap and more profitable food. Similarly, you have no reason to buy machinery if there is enough stock of the more profitable computers. And you have no reason to trade minerals, radioactives and alloys – of course, you can collect these items as bounty (if you have fuel scoops and enough free space in the cargo bay).

There are at least three basic types of economy in other space sims, not just the Elite industrial/agricultural dichotomy. And, there are actually at least three groups of goods in Oolite, matching these basic types of economy.

Agricultural goods (food, wine, textile, furs) – here production is not limited by TL, but is strongly affected by environment. It will be good to assume dramatic fluctuations of quantity and price for such items due to weather effects and other unpredictable events, affecting harvest.

Raw materials (minerals, radioactives, gold, platinum, gems) – mining is affected by an unpredictable environment too, but to a lesser degree. In any case, industry needs buffer stocks of raw materials to allow uninterrupted production.

Industrial goods (computers, machinery, alloys, luxury, firearms) – industry is a business with long-term planning, so it is the most stable sector of an economy: don’t expect significant fluctuations of quantity and prices. And high-tech goods will require a high enough TL.

Slave and narcotics (and partly firearms of course) are a special case. This is illegal business, criminal, affected by random events, so quantities and prices for such items will be highly variable.

(Stranger's introduction to SW Economy)

Taxation

• Import and export tariffs - which are high on some worlds - are automatically added or deducted and this is reflected in prices shown (on the F8 screens) quote from Elite's Instruction Manual.
• Fines for illegality (piracy etc) are paid at the orbital stations.
• Other fines and taxes are added by OXPs.

Income Tax (Diplomancy OXP by Commander Day) - also fines for visiting system stations without a visa.

Fines for traffic offences (Safe Docking by Phantor Gorth).

Fines for importing illegal goods (Smugglers by Phkb).

Investment

This is possible through OXPs

• Home System (Phkb) allows you to invest in your home system with corresponding benefits as you pump more money in
• Hermitage (Phkb) allows you to buy a Rock hermit

Ship pricing

BB Post by Lestradae (2009):

• I invested some thought in this lately and came up with the not completely new idea of letting the game calculate the prices based on the ship stats. That would have a lot of good consequences. For example, Uber ships would no longer be so Uber if you had to work really long to acquire them. And the quality of a ship would directly reflect into how difficult or easy it was to acquire.

• I have devised a suggestion how such a calculation could look like. It even produces rather fitting prices. Example results would be, for example:

A flying strut: 276 Cr

Adder: 29,500 Cr

Gecko: 70,760 Cr

Asp MkII: 120,960 Cr

Cobra MkIII: 150,000 Cr

Python: 177,650 Cr

Tesoura: 432,000 Cr

Fer-de-Lance (0.6 LS): 606,500 Cr

Anaconda: 714,150 Cr

Imperial Courier: 972,000 Cr

Benulobiweed Firefly: 1,110,400 Cr

Super Cobra: 1,622,000 Cr

The Ultimate Uber Ship*: 345,610,000 Cr

• The Ultimate Uber Ship has all the highest stats that I found for any ship - but combined in one ship

The calculation would take a Cobra MkIII with a base value of 150.000 Cr and then modify the price according to the stat differences in combination.

Basic Ship:

Cobra MkIII:

• Extended Cargo Capacity: 35 tons
• Speed: 0.35 LS
• Energy Banks: 4
• Missile Slots: 4
• Possible Equipment: All
• Manoeuvrability (Pitch/Roll): 1.5
• Gun Mounts: All 4
• Energy recharge rate: 4
• Price without Equipment: 150.000 Cr

Suggestion for price calculation:

• Cobra MkIII as standard with Standard Price: 150.000 Cr
• Extended Cargo Capacity: Price is raised/lowered 20%/10% per 20 additional/smaller Cargo Bay
• Speed: Price is doubled (each time)/lowered 20% per 0.1 LS jump up/down
• Energy Banks: Price is raised/lowered 20%/10% per additional/fewer Energy Bank
• Missile Slots: Price is raised/lowered 20%/10% per additional/fewer Missile Slots
• Possible Equipment: Price is taken down 10% per essential equipment piece not available
• Manoeuvrability (Pitch/Roll): Price is raised/lowered 20% per 0.5 additional/lower Pitch/Roll
• Gun Mounts: Price is lowered 10% per unavailable, 5% per reduced capacity Gun Mount
• Energy recharge rate: Price is raised/lowered 20%/10% per 1 additional/lower Energy recharge rate
• Price without Equipment is result of 150.000 Cr multiplied by all multipliers!

Three example calculations might look like this:

Gecko:

Extended Cargo Capacity: 3 tons (Price lowered 20% for non-existing cargo space) M=0.8

Speed: 0.30 LS (0.05 LS down, price lowered 10% as slower) M=0.9

Energy Banks: 3 (1 Energy Bank less, price lowered 10%) M=0.9

Missile Slots: 4 (Price stays as is) M=1.0

Possible Equipment: No MilSh, No ECC (Price lowered 20% as 2 essential EQ N/A) M=0.8

Manoeuvrability (Pitch/Roll): 2.25 (Price raised 30% as 0.75 additional Pitch/Roll) M=1.3

Gun Mounts: 1 (Price lowered 30% for 3 unavailable Gun Mounts) M=0.7

Energy recharge rate: 4 (Price stays as is) M=1.0

Price without Equipment: 150.000 Cr * 0.7 * 0.8"2 * 0.9"2 * 1.3 ~ 47.2% ~ 70.760 Cr

Tesoura:

Extended Cargo Capacity: 135 tons (Price raised 100% due to big cargo space) M=2.0

Speed: 0.30 LS (0.05 LS down, price lowered 10% as slower) M=0.9

Energy Banks: 7 (3 Energy Banks more, price raised 60%) M=1.6

Missile Slots: 4 (Price stays as is) M=1.0

Possible Equipment: All (Price stays as is) M=1.0

Manoeuvrability (Pitch/Roll): 1.5 (Price stays as is) M=1.0

Gun Mounts: 4 (Price stays as is) M=1.0

Energy recharge rate: 4 (Price stays as is) M=1.0

Price without Equipment: 150.000 Cr * 0.9 * 1.6 * 2 ~ 288% ~ 432.000 Cr

Imperial Courier:

Extended Cargo Capacity: 135 tons (Price raised 100% due to big cargo space) M=2.0

Speed: 0.35 LS (Price stays as is) M=1.0

Energy Banks: 8 (4 Energy Banks more, price raised 80%) M=1.8

Missile Slots: 8 (4 Missile Slots more, price raised 80%) M=1.8

Possible Equipment: All (Price stays as is) M=1.0

Manoeuvrability (Pitch/Roll): 1.5 (Price stays as is) M=1.0

Gun Mounts: 4 (Price stays as is) M=1.0

Energy recharge rate: 4 (Price stays as is) M=1.0

Price without Equipment: 150.000 Cr * 1.8"2 * 2 ~ 648% ~ 972.000 Cr

• But see Tsoj's post (2021).

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Links

OXPs introducing individual new commodities

• Darkside Moonshine Distillery - Witchfire Whisky: Distilleries are only found in a few systems in each chart, often clustered in poor agricultural regions such as the Tortuga Expanse in chart 1. The price for Witchfire grows with distance from the distilleries making cross chart runs very profitable.
• Montana's Resource Pack - Quirium crystals - like gold, platinum & gemstones
• Fuel Tweaks - Quirium Fuel

OXPs with a broader economic scope

• Risk Based Economy - by Cim. Makes trade prices depend on government as well as economy (1.77).
• Risky Business - by Phkb. As above. See BB discussion and comparison with Cim's above here.

• SW Economy - by Stranger (2012-21). Introduces trade in medicine, water & air. Makes trade in textiles etc more worthwhile. Planet size & economy size now also relevant.

• New Cargoes - by Cim 2014. Introduces 100 sub-variants of the regular commodities.
• New Cargoes Trading Advice - transcript of the Advanced Trading course at Lave Academy

OXPs doing other things but impacting on Economics

• Diplomancy OXP - Taxes! wars! citizenship! the need for Visas etc. by Commander Day
• Smugglers - black markets, bribes & smuggling compartments

• Recession.oxp by JohnSmith (2006) - an escort mission, but set against an economic Recession.

Interesting but broken/unfinished OXPs

Note that some relevant oxp's would have been broken when Oolite v.1.81 replaced the old unwieldy commodities.plist & illegal_goods.plist with the new Trade-goods.plist (2014).

• New Deal - by Vincentz (2015). Unfinished, but featured new icons and was going to feature a new economics.
• Real Life Economics - by Phasted (2012-4). Seems to ignore the impact of piracy. Written before Oolite v.1.82 and probably broken now. See the end of the thread for the newest .oxp link.
• Switeck's Shipping v0.5 OXP (2010) - AI, Economy, and Ship changes.

BB Discussions

• Cim's seminal discussion on economics for v.1.82 (2014-5)
• Another Cim inspired discussion (2013): Piracy, trade, AI roles, Market prices (Sat Aug 03, 2013 9:29 pm for a bit; Sun Sep 01, 2013 2:57 pm for a bit)
• Speculation on the economics of Biodomes/Orbital stations
• BB Thread comparing Maesin (Poor Agricultural Anarchy, TL: 1, 0.8 Billion Small Harmless Furry Rodents with a Productivity of 768 MCr) with Ceesxe (Rich Industrial Corporate, TL: 15, 6.4 Billion Fierce Bony Birds with a Productivity of 56,320 MCr): population 8x as big but GNP only 73x bigger! (2007-18)
• Should Oolite have a financial system? (2014)

Role of different species

• BB thread on the possible relevance of species (2013)
• Redspear's analysis culminating with an alternative economic model based on trade between species (2017)

Game issues

• Tax OXP? thread (2012)
• Problems of having too much money (2015)

Reference

• Career Options - Trader for more detail and useful OXPs
• Trading Goods Profit Table - a useful summary of Vanilla game commodity profits
• Commodity Calculator for calculating commodity prices for OXP markets
• BB thread on commodities.plist for programmers (2007-11)
• Deterministic Oolite - randomness & markets - vaguely related musings (2017).