Macro and Micro Economics of Star Citizen
Looking at games like X4, Eve especially, but to some extend Elite Dangerous compared to SC, there is a very significant time difference to achieve economic impact. That’s probably a gross understatement, SC time cost for any economic impact is profound.
For example, in eve, I can trade across 8 stations in 30 minutes. In star citizen, im lucky if I even get to my ship in my hanger in 30 minutes. Nevermind loading and unloading cargo.
In x4, the players impact on the economy is non-existent at first, but after having a few haulers it grows, and obviously after creating a corporation it is much larger. This scales a bit for eve by multi-boxing. In both of these cases, having a broader economic impact is possible because we aren’t micromanaging every little thing our space crafts do.
With star citizen, assuming a player population of 20 or 30k, and with the insane time cost to do anything, there isn’t a real economy to establish the game on over the the space that is planned for it to occupy. It’s maybe possible with a hundred thousands of players, but that isn’t sustainable imo.
What is the end game economy here? I don’t see anything good with the time cost of doing anything in combination with the player counts we are seeing.