Freight Rates/Availability 2nd Ed

[Kilgs]

Wow. I have used Merchant Prince (1st ed) exclusively even after picking up MgT2. So I never actually looked at their economic rules. The Freight situation seems really lucrative. The amount of freight available has completely multiplied and the rates are twice as much as before.

So... is this causing problems for anyone? What is the effect on game balance? It seems that you could get rich really quick with just hauling freight whereas before the freight just paid for the fuel and you had to work at spec trading.

 

[Fovean]

You’re not the first to notice. There’s been some talk about it for a while on the MgT forum.

There is a sidebar in the rules suggesting you (as Ref) hand it all off to the players and let them play with it. I guess the idea is let them cover the mortgage, you build ADVENTURES!

I think it’s fine. Sure they make a ton of money here and there but one solid hit on their ship is millions in repairs.

RAW sort of make it hard to run a scrappy, can-you-pay-the-bills type of campaign but my players these days scoff at the whole mortgage paradigm in general anyway. It’s a good fit for us. And I think that’s the intent - avoiding the whole accountants in spaaace/interstellar banking thing.

 

[aramis]

Wow. I have used Merchant Prince (1st ed) exclusively even after picking up MgT2. So I never actually looked at their economic rules. The Freight situation seems really lucrative. The amount of freight available has completely multiplied and the rates are twice as much as before.

So... is this causing problems for anyone? What is the effect on game balance? It seems that you could get rich really quick with just hauling freight whereas before the freight just paid for the fuel and you had to work at spec trading.

Note that, under Bk2, costs to operate are cheapest in the largest hulls...
I've done some extensive analysis, it's in COTI Reference - CT Econ ... A pure cargo Bk2 design makes money at all tonnages over abouot 190Td... same for Bk5 designs, but not the same.

The issue is fill-rate. Under Bk2, a ship at a pop 5 going to a pop 5+ has a minimum 2 major and 3 minor lots of freight... minimum 20+10 = 30 Td.
Typical will be around 4 major and 5 minor, with 120+75= 195 Td. If either world is larger. more are expected. Note that the expected is assuming a 3 rolled on all dice... the actual average is higher. A Type A can make money at book rates on any green zone pair of pop 5+.... with spec cargo providing a bonus . A Type A should fill most of the time by avoiding small pop.

Book 7 assumes a much higher trade flow... and ships in the 1000 to 20000 Td range. It assumes needing to fill several hundred tons of cargo... but the table used is the same one as in CT revised (1981 edition)... it's just that it produces that much freight AND that much cargo... with no "bulk cargoes" being