a space economy simulation model for OMP

[moonbasebetty]

Hello,

Imagine simulating a realistic basic space economy model for an Earth-Moon system and having the Moon base crew(s) having to fund their stays by shipping local resources to earth.

This would require space cargo and crew transportation vehicles, an EML-2 station, lunar landers, a refueling depot and of course, a Moon base.

Crews would depend on competing logistics support teams, ISRU, smart hab technologies and more.

I am starting out this project called EcoSim

The project is definitaly in its infancy and I realise addons will have to be created for some in-space infrastructure (like the cradle for vehicle support and the refueling depot based on a multipurpose modular universal space transportation vehicle which can be assembled in part by the Orion spacecraft addon and its habitation module or can be enhanced with a scientific lab or it could be modified to support several universal payload containers.

Also a lunar lander which will have to be able to carry crews or cargo to and from the surface of the Moon is needed.

This project really allows for many activities such as mission design, ground support, flying the missions, running a moon base and actually surviving, running a docking station at EML-2, logistics support and evaluation at specific simulation milestones.

Orbiter OMP and Audio and text chat communications between mission participants would provide a realistic simulation environment

The EcoSim link provides a contact page so hit me up if you are interested, either as a programmer, mission participant or if you want to get involved in evaluating the simulation results. It's a space economy model, so what I am after is the best ways to insure survivability of the model and thus of the Earth-Moon system model in a realistic way.

I'm looking forward to establish a cooperation effort which puts several teams in a collaborative mode in the Orbiter multiplayer environment to advance real life human space exploration.

Thanks for reading

Betty

 

[Urwumpe]

I have been thinking about similar entities in single player orbiter. My conclusion is right now, that building a set of independent modules for economics, that can be used as a toolkit is the best option, since this means people can select the economic tools, that they need for their scenario.

 

[jedidia]

My conclusion is right now, that building a set of independent modules for economics, that can be used as a toolkit is the best option

Yeah, I pretty much arrived at the same conclusion.

 

[moonbasebetty]

a more experience driven approach

Thanks Urwumpe,

Yes, an economics toolkit would be nice to choose from. But what I envision is more about the mission experiences that people can have in a multiplayer environment.

People could really role play and learn the roles of say flight controller in mission control or being an astronaut in a Moonbase or space station and they have to organise their logistics themselves and having it all arrive in time so as to not die! Or Pilots and crews of an Earth-Moon shuttle service that regularly fly to and from the Moon.

I see where the economics toolkit could come in handy. It would enable the relations between caterers, mission staff purchasing services or hiring spacecraft. All sorts of possibilities open up.

I have just briefly looked into business or economic games and perhaps something like that is what you referring to. Yes we could integrate something like that into the whole. That way one can predict economic trends based on your inputs of many variables.

Putting the stress on the 'gaming' experience if you will, will hopefully provide procedures and execution notes for the real in-space day-to-day work related to sustaining the model. An economic tool can also predict the survivability of a model without running it through a space flight simulator so it's not the main goal of my idea.

Main goal for me to test the survivability is to have interaction between mission participants and to simulate the missions in real time so everyone comes prepared when it's their time to play the simulation part and to evaluate the inner workings of the space economy model up to the technical level so it resembles a real life situation as best as we can.

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, I think that most that you really need is just a flow of material or money. Since you likely want to play the flow of material, you only need something that generates missions or allows you to see material requests placed by other places.

A bank would be a pretty central place for classic economics, but it is not mandatory - you can also do a lot of B2B-business.

 

[moonbasebetty]

Bank or B2B

Well, i haven't the slightest clue when it comes to economics so that'll add to my learning curve. :thumbup:

So how do you envision a bank? Will that also be a team that handles the virtual money side of things? Oh yes and the bank team could handle the predictions and transactions. Keep records and use business simulation software to make the predictions.

Then the mission teams can test out the predictions by playing them out in the simulated environment.

Is it something like this what you mean?

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, i haven't the slightest clue when it comes to economics so that'll add to my learning curve. :thumbup:

I study business administration for a few semesters now parallel to work, its really wrecking my mind :rofl: Sorry.

I would just make a bank a simple database of accounts and transactions, without players needing to control it for minimum functionality. In the next step, you could make the bank provide loans to the players, of course by other players deciding.

 

[moonbasebetty]

a database of accounts and transactions

Thanks yes, that helps.

So i think basic accounting software will do, wouldn't you agree? .. and i can manage it on my own ... understood and concur!

 

[Urwumpe]

Thanks yes, that helps.

So i think basic accounting software will do, wouldn't you agree? .. and i can manage it on my own ... understood and concur!

Well, you just need to find a channel to communicate through OMP for multiplayer, which could be a bit harder. In single player it is easier.

Also, you mostly need to follow the classic ACID criteria for the implementation to make sure that the data in the bank is transaction-safe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID

Of course, it would be nice to also have tools to manage companies and do the basic internal and external accounting... but that's something players with a Excel sheet often do better.

 

[jedidia]

Not to deter you, but I'm not sure how much sense it makes to implement this idea in OMP. The problem is that an economy needs to be a persistent thing, and I doubt you'll have enough people with enough interest in that and OMP.

The Orbiter community is actually pretty fractured in terms of interest. Some people love to figure out trajectories, some people like to do historical missions, some are excited about exploring prospects of the near future, others run their own virtual space agencies.

Out of all these people, there are only few with an interest in OMP, and out of that small subset, only another subset would be interested in actually dedicating to a persistent scenario. Most people using OMP do it for the fun, or for certain planed but standalone co-op scenarios. In my oppinion, making something like this for Orbiter could get enough people playing it to make it worthwhile if done well (you'd by no means be the first to try. There have been numerous attempts at this), but not in OMP.

This is just what I think, though. Still, gauging the interest interest in such a specific thing as you're planning might be a good Idea. Unless you just want to do it for the fun of making it without caring whether it'll ever see use or not.

 

[moonbasebetty]

Thanks jedidia,

That's real supportive of you.

Well I am just getting into it and even a Orbiter newbie but what Urwumpe said and posted gives me a lot of food for thought.

It's back to the drawing board for me.

I realise i won't be able to escape programming so ill have to learn that and database stuff as well.

I can really see this project get off the ground so to speak, but it will take time. Sometimes I can work long days and sometimes I have the phases where I slow to a stop mostly because i run out of things to do but this project has so many side stuff that needs to be taken care of that it can keep me busy. (I'm a stay at home person) Time is on my side.

 

[Face]

I can only agree with jedidia. Multiplayer efforts are not very welcome in the Orbiter community.

You may have a bigger audience for your project if you make it work for standard Orbiter first.

 

[C3PO]

I wouldn't say multiplayer is unwelcome in any way. It's just very "impractical" when you're simulating realistic space flight. Managing time acceleration even for a "short" trip can be tricky when you have 4 or 5 players.
You could use über-powered craft to shorten flight time, but there are better platforms for that kind of space simulation than Orbiter.

Judging from the success rate of virtual space agency and community space station building, getting a complete economy up and running may be a tall order. However I suspect there might be a few collaborations around between 2-3 people that don't get published on the forum.

 

[Urwumpe]

Judging from the success rate of virtual space agency and community space station building, getting a complete economy up and running may be a tall order. However I suspect there might be a few collaborations around between 2-3 people that don't get published on the forum.

Well, thats also a risk caused by big projects. Its already hard in the commercial world and much more hard in your freetime: Its really hard to imagine in advance how much effort a large project will eventually need.

Thus, its better to always do it in small steps and small projects and only carefully attempting bigger steps.

 

[Face]

I realise i won't be able to escape programming so ill have to learn that and database stuff as well.

Oh, just read that. How did you think this will work out without you doing code work in the first place? Excel?

 

[moonbasebetty]

Hello again,

You guys are absolutely right. It has finally dawned on me! ... Using a standard single player Orbiter version makes life so much easier for me when I think about it. I intend to learn programming as I go forward with the project. I'll put SQL on my list to learn how to handle a database.

Thanks for the sound advice guys

 

[jedidia]

I'll put SQL on my list to learn how to handle a database.

You won't really be needing a database for single player. The only reason why you'd need one for multiplayer is central accessability, not dataload managment (as you'll never have enough data to make a full-blown database engine running in the background worthwhile).
A single-player implementation doesn't need central accessability, so you'll be a lot better off with orbiter-style config files and CSVs.

I'd suggest you grab yourself visual studio express, do a few C++ tutorials, and then slowly start working out how you're going to put that in orbiter. For example, just writing a simple module that keeps track of vessel movements and recognises when a vessel lands at a base might be a good first slice to get aquainted with things.

As a matter of fact, when I wrote [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4942"]my first orbiter add-on[/ame], I didn't know any C++ either (I did know a thing or two about coding in general though), and I worked several months on the thing before putting it into orbiter for the first time.

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, it doesn't harm to know SQL because there are also many good DBMS with small footprint for C++... but yes, you can also do without.

 

[moonbasebetty]

Thanks Jedidia and Urwumpe,

I'll put that in work ... I was thinking about a database to run the economic trends advertised by the simulations. For instance on a Earth-Moon transportation system, I could keep track of fuel consumption to determine which fashion of flying the spacecraft is most suitable on the fuel efficiency level.

 

[Urwumpe]

Thanks Jedidia and Urwumpe,

I'll put that in work ... I was thinking about a database to run the economic trends advertised by the simulations. For instance on a Earth-Moon transportation system, I could keep track of fuel consumption to determine which fashion of flying the spacecraft is most suitable on the fuel efficiency level.

There are better tools available in astrodynamics, which need no data mining. The Delta-V budget is the best choice there.

What you actually need is a way to define supply and demand . That can be done by simple lists, but a database makes your life easier, when things grow bigger and are often changed.