An Alternate Approach to Carrying Cargo

[BetterThanLife]

THere are those who are in it for the journey, not the destination. Not many, but given the price point of passage, it should be most of the passengers...

Actually given the price point of passage I would think the majority of people that book passage are business travelers. The majority of people just cruising about would get their own ship.

 

[atpollard]

There are those who are in it for the journey, not the destination. Not many, but given the price point of passage, it should be most of the passengers...

An 8,000 credit middle passage is only 8 months salary for a Gunner (the lowest paid member of the crew) and less than 2 month's salary for a pilot (the highest paid member of the crew).

While these prices are far above modern airplane ticket prices, several months of salary is probably comparable to passage from Europe to North America in the 1700's. It would be similar to buying a new car in our culture - not a daily event for most people, but not for millionaires only.

 

[BetterThanLife]

An 8,000 credit middle passage is only 8 months salary for a Gunner (the lowest paid member of the crew) and less than 2 month's salary for a pilot (the highest paid member of the crew).

While these prices are far above modern airplane ticket prices, several months of salary is probably comparable to passage from Europe to North America in the 1700's. It would be similar to buying a new car in our culture - not a daily event for most people, but not for millionaires only.

An Admiral's retirement pay maxes out at Cr10,000 per YEAR! I am not saying that traveling awake is strictly for the rich, but at the accepted buying power exchange rate of Cr1=$3 you are looking at an average annual salary buying you a single one way ticket to the next stop. This isn't like taking a cruise, or buying an airline ticket. This is short range immigration. This is half a life's savings to immigrate with your family from England, but instead of crossing the Atlantic, you are only actually crossing the English Channel. And you will arrive broke.

 

[BetterThanLife]

In the T20 manual there are various salaries based on job level. General employees make KCr26 per year. Top executives make KCr104 per year. To be taking trips like that, requires a large portion of that income to be disposable and not required for normal living expenses, keeping up with the Joneses, etc. There is no indication that disposable income is all that prevalent. In fact in Traveller you aren't going to run out and buy a new Air/Raft every 3-5 years even if you are one of the Top Executives.

 

[atpollard]

Every person able to survive 1 term in the scout service will retire with Pilot-1 and is qualified for a job as a ship's pilot earning 5000 credits per month (60,000 credits per year) PLUS room and board (a cabin and 2 weeks life support per jump).

[At 1 cr = $3, that places his annual salary at $180,000 plus room and board.]

I think that we are projecting far too many janitors/manual laborers and far too few genetic engineers/robotic technicians for these advanced technology societies.

As a side note, I once ran a Traveller trade company and was able to pay each of MY 26 employees Cr 100,000 per year (8333 cr/mo) plus a Cr 10,000 per year continuing education allowance and a Cr 50,000 annual bonus based on profit sharing. The trade rules (book 2) support a much more robust economy than many Travellers seem to imagine.

Do whatever you think is best in Your Traveller Universe.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Every person able to survive 1 term in the scout service will retire with Pilot-1 and is qualified for a job as a ship's pilot earning 5000 credits per month (60,000 credits per year) PLUS room and board (a cabin and 2 weeks life support per jump).

[At 1 cr = $3, that places his annual salary at $180,000 plus room and board.]

I think that we are projecting far too many janitors/manual laborers and far too few genetic engineers/robotic technicians for these advanced technology societies.

As a side note, I once ran a Traveller trade company and was able to pay each of MY 26 employees Cr 100,000 per year plus a Cr 10,000 per year continuing education allowance and a Cr 50,000 annual bonus based on profit sharing. The trade rules (book 2) support a much more robust economy than many Travellers seem to imagine.

Do whatever you think is best in Your Traveller Universe.

Actually based on basic living expenses, (minus big ticket items) and provided salaries, Starship Crews are very well paid. LBB4 Mercenary Pay in comparison if you don't want to leave CT being a Prime example. But since they are hired for long trips away from home, without family and stuck in a tin can for long periods of time, with idle time and a multi-million credit Starship to care for, they would have to be well compensated. The average person doesn't want to roam the stars away from home, even if that is what the typical player does.

The average salary I am quoting is what the average salary today in the US is with the canon Cr1=$3 buying power guideline. Am I picking the wrong number? Possibly. However based on the rules for salaries in T20 I am pretty close to accurate. Further based on retirement pay, I might actually be high.

Of course Pilots are well paid. (They are now as well.) In most cases, the pilot for Adventure Class ships, (A term coined, AFAIK, by FASA and representing Starships 100 tons through 800 tons.) is the Owner or the Owner's representative with extreme amounts of autonomy for a Multi-Million (30+) Credit enterprise. Paying him as a High level executive/CEO makes sense. For the bigger ships the Pilot is responsible for Billions of Credits of Starship, and while he isn't likely the be the Ship's Master as well, you aren't going to cut his pay from what he could make piloting a lesser starship. (After all you have to attract the better pilots for that job.)

 

[atpollard]

I agree that the exchange rate of 1 credit = $3 is about correct (some Traveller items are much too expensive at this rate, but just as many items are much too cheap).

I believe that the Traveller Universe places warriors at the bottom of the commercial food chain. I agree that Book 4 soldiers earn much less than a starship’s crewman, but remember that the ship’s gunner is the lowest paid crew member (so poorly paid that a Medic/Gunner taking both positions will actually earn LESS than a simple medic in CT). Soldiers are poorly paid in Traveller.

I would propose that the civilian Robotic Manufacturing Technician (with Mechanical-1 or Electronics-1) that keeps the factory operational that makes:

1 MCr per dTon Radioactives/Gems or

100,000+ Cr per dTon Special Alloys/Pharmaceuticals/Electronics Parts/Cybernetic Parts/ Computer Parts/ Machine Tools/Vacc Suits

Is worth more than 1000 cr/month (12,000 cr/year). If each employee produced only 1 dTon of Electronic parts per YEAR, he should still earn closer to 25,000 credits per year (25% of the cost of goods produced). The manufacturing productivity should be much higher than that. The two economic options are 1) the company owner earns 40,000 credits per month per employee working at his factory, or 2) many high skilled employees earn Engineer/Navigator like salaries. Which option you choose will determine whether your Imperium is more “Honor Harrington” or “Blade Runner” in character.

If you choose the low salary/”Blade Runner” option, then the HAVES earn millions of credits per month and High Passage is just an “airplane trip”. Just don’t piss off a passenger who can hire a mercenary company to kill you for less than the cost of this vacation.

 

[Commander Drax]

Come to that how much should a vacation cost in Traveller, assuming its off world, e.g. Cr8000 for the trip to a nearby world (1 Jump) Cr2000 or Cr3000 for a weeks luxury accomodation at the destination world, followed by another Cr8000 for the return trip. In all we're looking at Cr21,000 for a 3 week break a mere 1 jump away from home. The reason why I ask this is that space tourism is a recurring theme in Traveller with frequent world descriptions stating that they have a booming tourist industry, in some cases attracting visitors from across the sector. Obviously the closer you are to the resort world the cheaper things should get. But any decent tourism would probably cost hundreds of thousands.

 

[Straybow]

I once had a merchant PC who started a trade company on the side (using book 2 rules). I hired agents on 3 worlds within jump-1 of each other to buy any cargo with a net negative modifier (to purchase price) and ship it to one of the other agents on a world with the highest total positive modifier to the sale price. It made a profit.

As the network of agents slowly expanded to more distant worlds, the 1000 credit per parsec cost (I assumed that shipping the cargo 3 parsecs would require 3 separate jumps) proved to be an affordable price for doing business. I would have gladly filled the hold of a jump 3 ship to transport my cargo 3 parsecs in 1 week for 3000 credits per dTon since I was already paying that much and had to wait 3-6 weeks for a chance to convert my goods back into credits to pay for the next speculative cargo. A jump 3 ship would have at least tripled MY annual profits over a jump-1 transport.

We instead found and hired local Broker 4s who got paid based on both purchase and selling price (10% of purchase + 20% of profit) and indemnified against risk of net loss in unprofitable trades. Note that we treated trade as opposed actions, so the broker skill of the seller/buyer would be deducted from our broker's skill. We used a table to generate the skill of the opposing broker based on starport rating.