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[belone]

Something that has always been on my mind is how the player character must actually be an insanely rich individual, every crewmember gets paid 10cr per month, so does this mean that space captains are only extremely rich millionaires/billionaires?

[Candesce]

so does this mean that space captains are only extremely rich millionaires/billionaires?

Ever read the flavor text on the Hound?

"A lucky or gifted officer could make his fortune given the chance to captain one. "

Make a fortune. With a Hound.

Yes, the player-character starts the game obscenely rich already, with several ships and multiple lifetimes' worth of labor in hard currency.

[michail]

Prices in starsector don't make much sense, in particular since population sizes are logarithmic, but prices and demand are not. But just for fun: a size 3 colony with population of at most 10000 people consumes 6000 units of food per month, each costing 20 credit (base price). This makes 120000 credits / 10000 people, or 12 credits a month per person. A spacer can barely support a planetside relative, while the PC can feed a whole city block. This calculation however breaks horribly if we instead base it on size 8 planets. A size 8 planet eats 16000 food per month, or 320000 credits, making it a credit per either 300 or 3k-ish people (depending on whether you use the lower or the upper bound for "hundreds of millions").

But even assuming dystopian 120 credits per month for a person to survive, even a spacer start captain is doing pretty well except for the debt part.

[shoi]

They probably make even less on average. 10 credit salary of crew is supposed to be a big deal. There is some text during one part of the story missions where you pay for a drink with centicredits

[Salter]

so does this mean that space captains are only extremely rich millionaires/billionaires?

Ever read the flavor text on the Hound?

"A lucky or gifted officer could make his fortune given the chance to captain one. "

Make a fortune. With a Hound.

Yes, the player-character starts the game obscenely rich already, with several ships and multiple lifetimes' worth of labor in hard currency.

Kinda makes you think if the player inherited command of his own ship or is a scion of a wealthy family from Kazeron or even the Kanta's.

There is also a subdivision of the credits we see as currency, if you have read the descriptions of certain very rare weapons, such as the centicredit, so the player is obscenely wealthy.

It really does raise the question of how the rest of the sector starts looking at you when you get colonies going and start generating obscene wealth in the hundreds of thousands if not millions of credits every month.

[BobExplains]

If you look at the modern day cost of a supercarrier at $10+ billion each, the cost of capital ships like Paragons, Astrals and Onslaughts are likely comparable in cost on a relative scale based on the production abilities of StarSector societies. The Player Character can often afford dozens of capital ships by the late game and can personally command a fleet that could most likely bulldoze the system defence fleet of any core system. In modern terms that kind of wealth is equivalent to being a trillionaire I would estimate. This makes sense given that the player commands the productivity of an entire society of millions of people (multiple planets) at that point.

[Kakroom]

If you look at the modern day cost of a supercarrier at $10+ billion each, the cost of capital ships like Paragons, Astrals and Onslaughts are likely comparable in cost on a relative scale based on the production abilities of StarSector societies. The Player Character can often afford dozens of capital ships by the late game and can personally command a fleet that could most likely bulldoze the system defence fleet of any core system. In modern terms that kind of wealth is equivalent to being a trillionaire I would estimate. This makes sense given that the player commands the productivity of an entire society of millions of people (multiple planets) at that point.

At that point your income becomes less a measure of personal wealth and more of state budget. Considering most of it is essentially sourced from taxes.

Especially if you're using Nexerelin. Since at that point you're probably spawning a lot of different fleets and a lot of your colonies operate autonomously.

[Davidththird]

I actually remember someone asking a similar question to this, that being how much is 1 credit worth. after they compared the cost of a wolf compared to that of modern frigates they concluded that one credit would be worth approximately 1000 dollars today. Using this we can assume the player character has to start with at least 1 million dollars to afford the fleet they have using the default start settings, not including the money you start with. so I'm guessing the player at the very least is a millionaire at the start.

[Billhartnell]

I actually remember someone asking a similar question to this, that being how much is 1 credit worth. after they compared the cost of a wolf compared to that of modern frigates they concluded that one credit would be worth approximately 1000 dollars today. Using this we can assume the player character has to start with at least 1 million dollars to afford the fleet they have using the default start settings, not including the money you start with. so I'm guessing the player at the very least is a millionaire at the start.

Maybe it was designed to be equivalent to a pound sterling during the golden age of piracy, given the inspirations of this game. You could also check vs supply maintenance cost, which for the Wolf is 5 supplies or 500C a month, compared to the material costs of upkeeping a frigate that is not in port and furnishing the crew's necessities.

[Kos135]

This thread gets me thinking about something:

The player can often fulfill an entire planet's demand for multiple trade goods in a single trade run. This is in a universe where a single Hound frigate, used for trade, can make someone fabulously rich. What if trade opportunities were gated behind personal reputation, faction reputation, and faction commission?

Not only would this dissuade the player from building up an easy stack of cash & experience from trade in the early game, just to suddenly flip from that to an exploration or combat fleet, but it would also encourage the player to side with a faction and care about reputation with individual NPCs. Individual NPC rep exists but it is irrelevant in Starsector's current state.

[speeder]

Please remember to not take the game economy too literally.

For performance reasons the game economy is a bit weird.

For example when I was trying to do an economy mod, I found out the game actually tracks the fact a planet size 8 is consuming millions of food units, not "4000" or something like that, but for performance reasons this is not displayed.

For example when calculating trade between markets, the game calculates all trade, but spawns ships only ocassionally, to represent that trade and allow players and pirates to prey upon the convoys. If you changed the game source to actually transport all goods physically, it would need to spawn thousands of fleets when dealing with markets size 8+ and would run really slowly.


Another thing about scale: remember Persean sector is not THAT populated as some people think, even with tons of faction mods installed, the total population when the game starts is about 2 billion people, most of that population is in Chico actually (someone once did a graph, something like 45% of everyone is living in Chico alone).