Pandoran Merchant Princelings

[rust]

In an earlier post I mentioned that I intended to use the Commercial En-
tity rules from Merchant Prince for my Pandora setting, and meanwhile I
can give you an impression how this works for me.

The basic idea is to create the Pandora Colony's default economic deve-
lopment as it will happen without any interference from the characters.
The results of the characters' activities can then be worked into this ge-
neral default background development.

To become able to treat (almost) an entire colony as one ecomomic enti-
ty I decided that the colonists used some of their colony shares (= con-
verted ship shares) to found the Pandora Cooperative, a jointly owned
company that handles all the important parts of the colony's economy:
Aquaculture, Seafloor Mining, Manufacturing and Civil Engineering.

The profits of the Pandora Cooperative would partially be used to expand
the company itself and partially to support the colony's general budget,
especially the fields that normally need to be subsidized, like education
and health services. Any surplus beyond that would be used either to re-
cruit more colonists for Pandora (using the "Start a large-scale recruiting
campaign" rule) or to buy some major new piece of equipment for the
colony, for example a new research ship.

To model the Pandora Cooperative's subsidies for the general colony bud-
get, I decided to use a payment equivalent to the "Good Employee Stan-
dard of Living" for one quarter of a year for all adult colonists who are not
employees of the cooperative. This way the cooperative's profits would fi-
nance about 25 % of the wages of the non-employees, and this seemed
about right.

This led to the problem to determine the population growth of the colony,
and here I took the 2.3 % per year mentioned in GURPS Space. Looking
at Germany's demographics, these 2.3 % seemed a bit high, so I decided
that they would include not only births, but also the trickle of small num-
bers of new colonists arriving on Pandora between the actual recruiting
campaigns.

The Pandora Cooperative started in 2445 AD with the Industry Types lis-
ted above, Aquafarming, Seafloor Mining, Manufacturing and Civil Engi-
neering, a capital of 2 Million Credits / 80 Wealth and 120 employees.

Things went quite well, so in 2446 AD the cooperative could hire some
more employees and begin to operate in Chemical Engineering, too - the
colony began to produce bioplast and carbon fibres from algae, and it
managed to recruit 38 new colonists in the same year.

I will spare you the entire story of successes and failures, profits and los-
ses, equipment bought an colonists recruited. Most of the time it went ra-
ther well, with 10,000 Credits per new Wealth earned and 9,000 Credits
per Wealth sold off, but there were also years when the colony had to
tap into its bank account on Cassandra to finance urgentle needed mate-
rial - perhaps the activities of the characters during those years will re-
duce the problems.

"Today", in year 2461 AD of this background metagame, the Pandora Co-
operative has 250 Wealth, earns about 20 Wealth per quarter (9 of them
are used to pay the 225 employees), and subsidizes the colony's budget
with 20 Wealth per year. In 2456 the cooperative has started its new Bio-
technology and Genetics Lab, and it will start the exploitation of the Me-
thane Hydrate deposits (which should be discovered until then, according
to my campaign plans ...) as soon as it has enough capital to hire another
30 employees and invest 100 Wealth in the necessary infrastructure.

All in all, the metagame with the slightly modified rules is fun, and it pro-
vides an "economic background canvas" to paint the actual campaign and
its adventures on - although, as mentioned, this is only provisional, and
open to changes by the activities of the characters.

[Ah, sorry, this one became a bit long ... ]

 

[BP]

Love the coop idea...

I take it Merchant Prince rules featured extensively in this, or was most of the numbers from your own creation?

(BTW: 2.3% doesn't sound very high - rule of thumb (70/%) results in doubling pop in 30 years. Actually sounds kinda low for a new colony - though higher TL wouldn't necessarily demand the growth rates of historical endeavors. This was interesting, though didn't dig into why the numbers are so different between the 2 charts...)

 

[rust]

I take it Merchant Prince rules featured extensively in this, or was most of the numbers from your own creation?

Yes, except for the growth rate all numbers are from Merchant Prince, al-
though some are the result of modified rules.

For example, according to the rules each Wealth of profit made gives the
owners of the Commercial Entity a personal income of 10,000 Credits, and
each Wealth sold provides an income of 1d6 x 3,000 Credits.
For my purposes I have changed this to 10,000 Credits of income for the
cooperative, so 10 Wealth of profit bring 100,000 Credits for the colony,
and 9,000 Credits for each Wealth sold.

BTW: 2.3% doesn't sound very high ...

For a German it does, we are currently at about -0.05 % of population
growth, so these 2.3 % feel like a dangerous population "explosion" to
me. :shock:

 

[BP]

Exploding embryonic colonization pods? :lol:

I should have elaborated - pop growth rate is basically births minus deaths (+/- immigrants/emigrants), IIRC. Given TL 9 (?), and intentional colonization, I would assume that deaths would be low (at least from age :twisted, and, like the U.S. 'baby boom' years, births would be high . Additionally, the rate would also be higher given older colonists who normal wouldn't be having children would be doing their part...

'Course, as they settled in, that rate would drop, or it might be low the first few years while the colony was getting its footing and things were less conducive to safely raising young'uns.

(Obviously just off the cuff speculation on my part, and not my area of expertise by any means...)

 

[rust]

Looking at Pandora, I think it is also a problem of colony size and resour-
ces.

With only 550 colonists to start with and each hand urgently needed to es-
tablish the colony, too many children can easily become a problem, be-
cause the need to care for them withdraws colonists from the already
small "labour pool" and channels some of the limited resources to educa-
tion and health facilities for the children.

For example, if the best female hardsuit diver of the only ten experienced
hardsuit divers of the colony becomes pregnant and must no longer dive,
the Governors congratulation may well come through gritted teeth.

 

[Dave Chase]

I think that making adjustments as it feels right is good.

Here in Kansas (United States) there are only 3 counties that have continued to show some job grow each year. Part of the job grow is figured from the number of individuals who live in one county and work in another county.

In the reverse of this, only 1 of those counties has a continual grow of population, 1 of those counties is slightly decreasing in population (0.05% a year), and one of the counties is up and down each year (but only by +/- 2%)

Many counties that have increased population numbers each year show a decrease in job grow each year.

The point behind this example is that there are many factors involved in determine population grow and economic growth. Many times they are directly related but is some cases, they can be only slightly related in effect on each other.

Dave Chase

 

[BP]

Yeh - the first few years might have a very low birth rate.

In fact, it might be pre-agreed not to increase the pop for the initial years?

In 5 years 'expanding', if half the couples had '1.5' children, that would put ~ 25% of the population under age 5!

(This is assuming the colony is not made up of folks who's purpose was to 'populate' the world, and that the initial colonists did not include a large ratio of children...)

 

[rust]

In fact, it might be pre-agreed not to increase the pop for the initial years?

This would make things easier, but I think such an agreement would only
be made for female colonists in key positions.

For the average colonists who run a "family business", for example in the
aquafarming, it probably does not make that much difference whether the
first child is born in Year 2 or Year 6 of the colony, and it does not direct-
ly affect the other colonists that much.
But if the colony's only female small craft pilot becomes pregnant and so
does no longer fit into her vacc suit, this can become a problem for the
entire colony.

 

[rust]

Talking about population growth, economy and Pandora ...

New colonists usually arrive with one colony share (= converted ship sha-
re) with a value of 125,000 Credits.
In setting terms, this is part savings, part mustering out benefit from the
previous job and part Solar Alliance government subsidy - the Alliance
believes that more people from the core worlds on the colonies means
better relations between core worlds and colonies, and therefore subsi-
dizes emigration.

What remains of this colony share once the newcomer has paid for his
passage and the transport of his belongings to Pandora becomes a part
of the colony's property, and helps to pay for all the expenses not cove-
red by the profits of the Pandora Cooperative (see first post).
Plus, the colony share gives the new colonist citizen rights and political
voting rights in the Pandora Colony.

Newcomers without colony shares are rare and only welcome if they have
useful skills. These skills make it possible for them to earn the equivalent
of a colony share by working for the colony for a number of years - de-
pending on the value of the skills - for basically room, board and a little
pocket money. Once this period of "indentured labour" is over, they be-
come colony shareholders with full citizen and political rights.

The children of colonists "earn" their colony shares by attending school
and taking part in community services once they are old enough for this.
Since there are always some minor easy chores to be done in a new co-
lony, there are many opportunities for the children to take over a little
responsibility and "learn by doing". When they reach age 18, they are
handed over the colony share they earned this way, and with it also get
their full citizen and political rights.

 

[BP]

So Alliance would 'buy' colony shares - whole/partial - to send new colonists (seem to recall motivation of Alliance to reduce own pop burden?)?

if the colony's only female small craft pilot becomes pregnant and so
does no longer fit into her vacc suit, this can become a problem for the
entire colony.

"Really honey, you look beautiful - not showing a bit. That suit is just defective is all. Now, about you buzzing the Lorwitz's surface tanks..."

 

[rust]

So Alliance would 'buy' colony shares - whole/partial - to send new colonists (seem to recall motivation of Alliance to reduce own pop burden?)?

The Solar Alliance gives citizens willing to emigrate to the Free Colonies
a government grant (? - hope that is the right word), and this becomes a
part of the money that makes up the colony share, together with money
from other sources - in the end the new colonist has to arrive on Pando-
ra with 125,000 Credits minus his travel costs and personal equipment,
and this is then treated as one colony share by the colony.

Population pressure, the intention to get rid of potential trouble makers
and the belief that core worlders on the colonies will not forget about
their old loyalties and support the Solar Alliance policies are all among
the reasons for the Solar Alliance's government subsidies for emigration.

 

[BP]

Sounds like, after initial setup, a major economic 'import' of the colony would be immigrants.

 

[rust]

Sounds like, after initial setup, a major economic 'import' of the colony would be immigrants.

Indeed, at least the newcomers pay for the necessary expansion of the
infrastructure (housing, transport, etc.), and there is usually also a little
surplus that can be used for other purposes, for example all that luxury
stuff called culture.

 

[BP]

Culture = "...get rid of potential trouble makers and ...not forget about their old loyalties" :twisted: