Hi all,
I stumbled across this universe a few weeks ago and have been amazed by the volume of data available and complexity - super intimidating, but also super motivating to figure out what is going on around here. I’ve enjoyed setting up my first base, but really find tracking the overall economy much more entertaining (and a nice excuse to sharpen my programming skills)
I’ve shared the below with folks in the UFO discord, but thought it would be good to share more broadly to get feedback and because I find it super interesting.
Note: At this point the data is 4-5 days old and was just a one-time snapshot, so things may have changed significantly / just be weird anomalies
General Observations
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Much of the economy takes place outside of the public CXs. You can see that in the volume/value of trade in the higher tier tech that dwarfs basic inputs etc.
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Probably tied to that, there seems to be a huge amount of wealth concentration in a small hand full of top companies (and likely corps) who are coordinating private, planned economies
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There also isnt a ton of geographic variation in volumes / prices. I captured a bit of it below, but probably given the wealth concentration in off-line markets that might dump/purchase big quantities infrequently (relative to normal volumes traded), and somewhat limited variety in the actual geography, the pricing on different exchanges is hugely volatile
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There also isnt a real place for all of that wealth to be spent, other than setting up more bases. Probably, because there arent real “scarce” resources or things players are competing for, the massive wealth accumulation is not driving inflation (because those dollars arent competing for anything that is scarce)
With that as context, see below for how I was trying to get my hands around the overall “shape” of the universe today:
- Where are the population centers / production centers and how is that changing?
- How is that geography shaping the economy and flow of goods around the universe?
- Who are the major companies / corporations, and how are they shaping the future direction?
The below are, at best, poor answers to the above questions, but at least start to hint at what is going on and give an “ok” baseline to see how things change
Pdf link which might be easier to read: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zm5q1OfuRgg8XwdFs60uu5dEprZmXvWn/view?usp=sharing
