Book 2 economics, again! Beating the dead horse...
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mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
One more thing.
The only ship a merchant can start with according to the rules is a 200t type A, and to do this you'd have to be a very , very lucky, 3 term character.
I've never had a player generate a merchant who's made it past 2nd officer by the basic rules.
Promotion in LBB7 is much easier.
Pirate corsairs are pretty good speculative trade ships - who builds them originally?
IMHO nobles and megacorps do
And then it takes a lucky pirate to get to own one
Who sponsors scientists' Lab Ships, hunters' Safari Ships?
The only ship a merchant can start with according to the rules is a 200t type A, and to do this you'd have to be a very , very lucky, 3 term character.
I've never had a player generate a merchant who's made it past 2nd officer by the basic rules.
Promotion in LBB7 is much easier.
Pirate corsairs are pretty good speculative trade ships - who builds them originally?
IMHO nobles and megacorps do
And then it takes a lucky pirate to get to own one
Who sponsors scientists' Lab Ships, hunters' Safari Ships?
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I notice that per-parsec trade made it in as well
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
You're right, because I'm not sure how to.
I don't think the rates do correspond to J2 but I could be wrong. I always felt they corresponded to something between J1 and J2 but we do agree J1 makes money easy and J3 is unlikely to, at least without subsidies and perhaps a mail contract.
And I tell you that you're wrong. Jump-3 traffic cannot make it.
</font>[/QUOTE]Part of my "reasonable manner" would include that J3 would almost certainly have to be subsidized.
Oh absolutely. With each tweak of the design rules there were ramifications to the trade rules that were never (or rarely) addressed. But it should make sense using the same book (LBB2)
You wouldn't have to twist my arm to accept that proposition, but do note that it is every bit as canonical as the trade system you so fervently believe in. If you're willing to ignore the one, why not ignore the other? Answer: You think the first sounds silly but that the second sounds OK. Well, I don't think that fixed freight and passenger rates that are guaranteed to drive a ship into bankruptcy sounds OK. Do you?</font>[/QUOTE]Equally canonical yes, equally valid I'd argue not. I think (more hope maybe) that Marc gave the trade rules a bit of thought and testing, while the 9 of 10 and 99 of 100 sound too much like off the cuff fluff to be taken too seriously. Just my opinion.
My main argument has always been with what has seemed a practically unanimous voice of Travellers saying Book 2 trade doesn't work for J2 free-traders. I think you're the first I've found who thought otherwise, and we do seem more in agreement than not, but differ on minor points. It's always interesting reading your take.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Maybe M.I.S.T.K!
Mad Imperial Scientists Taking Kontrol!
OK, really it's gotta be the MegaCorps backing research on the cutting edge and I always figured it should be handled more like the IISS Detached Duty than a Merchant. You get the ship and go off doing research then turn in your findings. IF your research isn't providing results, or you're silly and go off and use the ship for trading or adventuring then Mother is gonna take it away
B
Black Globe Generator
Guest
First, speculation is not a Vegas crapshoot. It's saying, "I have a supply of goods here and a market there, and I'm going to transport the goods to market. Based on price indices at the source and the market, I can reasonably expect to turn a profit of [fill-in-the-blank]."
Second, the bank (or other lender) isn't financing speculative goods - they're financing a ship, a physical asset that can be recovered if the purchaser can't make good on the payments. If I follow you line of reasoning, it would be impossible for a commodities trader to ever get a business loan to pay for a computer and office furnishings.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
First, speculation is not a Vegas crapshoot. It's saying, "I have a supply of goods here and a market there, and I'm going to transport the goods to market. Based on price indices at the source and the market, I can reasonably expect to turn a profit of [fill-in-the-blank]."</font>[/QUOTE]I think you have almost changed my mind on this part of the business plan. I'm just not sure how one can work it into the defacto crapshoot part of speculative trading in Book 2. There it is a crapshoot just what kind of goods you'll get as far as it being advantageous for any trade pair.
B
Black Globe Generator
Guest
thrash, I realized something in reading your last few posts. It's impossible to have a rational discussion with you. If someone cites a real-world example, you say it doesn't apply, but if someone cites LBB2, you dismiss it as unrealistic. You change your premises to fit your conclusions, which means that everyone will always be wrong except you.
As such, I recognize that the characters have access to information that I don't, like trade reports and commodities exchange information going back five, ten, twenty, fifty, or even a hundred years. Those averages you speak of for a commodities trader in the real-world are available to a Traveller merchant and lender.
To avoid the accusation of ducking the question, I would create a simulation that generates cargos for free traders and non-starship speculators (from the JTAS article) and then set the simulation to run for a couple of decades to develop those averages. That's how I would do it, if I was the least bit inclined not to simply handwave it and say, "It works well enough in our games - if the characters get filthy rich or lose their shirts, so be it, 'cause I'll roll with it either way."
I'm done here. The last word is yours to take.
It most certainly is. The difference is that a commodities trader covers enough transactions that on the average he has a positive expectation of profit. This is not applicable to single-ship speculation according to the rules in Book 2, unless one is excessively (and unrealistically) well-capitalized.
And how do you propose to model this in CT, which has no such mechanism to analyze?</font>[/QUOTE]I don't care to model it, thrash, because I perfer to play the game than play with the game. I don't want nor need the game to be a precise simulation to be fun and playable - to that end the rules as written work just fine.
As such, I recognize that the characters have access to information that I don't, like trade reports and commodities exchange information going back five, ten, twenty, fifty, or even a hundred years. Those averages you speak of for a commodities trader in the real-world are available to a Traveller merchant and lender.
To avoid the accusation of ducking the question, I would create a simulation that generates cargos for free traders and non-starship speculators (from the JTAS article) and then set the simulation to run for a couple of decades to develop those averages. That's how I would do it, if I was the least bit inclined not to simply handwave it and say, "It works well enough in our games - if the characters get filthy rich or lose their shirts, so be it, 'cause I'll roll with it either way."
The bank won't normally finance the ship at all, unless the purchaser can show that he has a reasonable expectation of being able to make good on his payments. This requires a reliable business plan.</font>[/QUOTE]And with the wealth of information that is available to the characters that is easy enough to do - I'm sorry that you and the rest of the gearheads who feel the need to dissect the books can't see this.
I'm done here. The last word is yours to take.
BGG: I'm glad someone else pointed that out, 'cause I've noticed that about Thrash several times.
On topic: Speculation-predominant-trade is a viable economic model. It's a pre-modern one.
Chris Thrash, Hans Ranke, and several others can't seem to wrap their brains around the idea that people can/would buy something without firm knowledge of profitability of what they're buying, let alone working without a route.
Plain and simple, they retreat to modern economics practices to rationalize their views of traveller, even when told by the designer that they are wrong. S'beit.
Bk2 and T20 provide a paradigm for trade that makes it quite plausible to make the requisite KCr2/revenue ton. It is a major brain-shift, however, from modern freight and flight:
Where you go is determined by what you buy.
Under this mode, you can get average revenue up to about KCr2 per revenue ton with J1; KCr3 with J2, and about KCr5 with J3.
Why the improvements with J#?
more worlds to choose from. More than half of the tables are KCr10+. At KCr10, each +1dm is about KCr1 difference in value. At KCr50/ton, each +1 is about KCr5, etc.
Picking the right target world means picking a world that maximizes resale mods. Under Bk2, one can get some pretty high mods... With J3, and a good broker, I can usually get DM+6 or more. Which means the average 30 tons of spec are making KCr6+ per ton, with occasional hits of KCr60/ton.
Further, it's often advantageous to make a second jump to fill a spec's "Best Sale Potential", selling at a world with a -2 versus a +4 is worth it, when one adds Broker +4 and Bribery 4=+2DM... mostly because the chart pegs out at 250% sale...
On topic: Speculation-predominant-trade is a viable economic model. It's a pre-modern one.
Chris Thrash, Hans Ranke, and several others can't seem to wrap their brains around the idea that people can/would buy something without firm knowledge of profitability of what they're buying, let alone working without a route.
Plain and simple, they retreat to modern economics practices to rationalize their views of traveller, even when told by the designer that they are wrong. S'beit.
Bk2 and T20 provide a paradigm for trade that makes it quite plausible to make the requisite KCr2/revenue ton. It is a major brain-shift, however, from modern freight and flight:
Where you go is determined by what you buy.
Under this mode, you can get average revenue up to about KCr2 per revenue ton with J1; KCr3 with J2, and about KCr5 with J3.
Why the improvements with J#?
more worlds to choose from. More than half of the tables are KCr10+. At KCr10, each +1dm is about KCr1 difference in value. At KCr50/ton, each +1 is about KCr5, etc.
Picking the right target world means picking a world that maximizes resale mods. Under Bk2, one can get some pretty high mods... With J3, and a good broker, I can usually get DM+6 or more. Which means the average 30 tons of spec are making KCr6+ per ton, with occasional hits of KCr60/ton.
Further, it's often advantageous to make a second jump to fill a spec's "Best Sale Potential", selling at a world with a -2 versus a +4 is worth it, when one adds Broker +4 and Bribery 4=+2DM... mostly because the chart pegs out at 250% sale...
And what do you say when the bank's loan officer asks you what happens if another merchant shows up and outbids you for the goods?
Now, if you have a solid contract from a supplier, the bank will probably look kindly on you, but then it's not speculation any more, is it?
Hans
I much prefer Book5 to Book2. Book 2 allow several combinations of TL and jump capacity that are illegal by any other set of rules (Unless you count the 'grandfathering' rule in Book 5 that allowed Book 2 to still be used -- something that I think should be considered as pure gaming artifice).Originally posted by far-trader:
With each tweak of the design rules there were ramifications to the trade rules that were never (or rarely) addressed. But it should make sense using the same book (LBB2)
Unfortunately Book 5 contains one major implusibility that affects cargo capacity considerably. That's the power plant fuel consumptions. A power plant that consumes tons of fuel in weeks is simply too unrealistic for me.
The thing is, those percents that are used on power plant fuel affects the high-jump ships more than the low-jump ships. For a jump-1 freighter, you get a cargo hold of maybe 48 instead of 50%, scarcely a major difference. But a jump-4 ship gets a cargo hold of 20% instead of 24% (figures are guesses -- I can't remember the correct figures, but they're in that neighborhood). I think the effective cargo space of jump-6 ships is almost halved.
My preferred system is QSDS1.5 from T4. It has it's own problems with weapons and carried subcrafts, but for straight surface to surface merchant ships the problems don't come into it.
The trade rules may have been tested a bit. They certainly weren't tested thoroughly. Still, they work well enough for small PC-run tramp freighters (At least as long as there is a good referee to curb the more egregious examples of player ingenuity. I was once in a campaign where the ref played By The Book. We had a real blast running the trade system ragged until it began to pall after two or three sessions during which we made 3 billion credits).
The problem, as I see it, comes when you try to elevate the trade system to something it isn't. It's a reasonably decent simulation of small-time tramp freighter trading. It's not a blueprint for background world-building. It's one thing for a ref to let his NPCs offer a Type A or a Type A2 1,000 credits per ton to deliver freight somewhere a parsec or two away. It's another (and completely silly (no offense intended)) thing to insist that captains of jump-3 vessels routinely accept a mere 1,000 credits to deliver a dton of freight somewhere three times farther away in one third the time.
First of all, I thought it was a specific jump-2 vessel that it didn't work for[*], and secondly, I'm sure that what doesn't work is Book 2 freight and passenger service, not Book 2 speculative trade. There's a very big difference.
[*] Actually, I've been wondering what it is about the A2 that makes it not work, but I haven't gotten around to checking it out.
Hans
At least as long as the players don't hit on one of the flaws or the referee is good enough to head them off at the pass when they do. But what's your problem, then? Chris isn't trying to prevent you from playing your game. He is just trying to make the background a little more self-consistent. He isn't trying to get you to play the captain of a jump-3 freighter that jumps back and forth between the same two worlds year in and year out, carrying freight only and doing no speculative trading. He's just trying to convince you that anyone who did something like that would have to charge more than Cr1000 per dT or go broke.
And, incidentally, if you were playing the captain of a jump-3 ship according to the Book 2 trade rules, you'd be very reluctant to accept any freight, because you'd be taking a big loss on each and every dT that you didn't use for speculative trade. As for passengers, the very best thing you could do would be to rip out the passenger cabins and turn them into cargo space, because each passenger cabin would be a guaranteed loss on each and every jump.
So why would anyone ever build a passenger cabin on a jump-3 or higher ship?
Hans
Marc Miller can dictate the axioms, since it is his game. He can't dictate the ramifications, nor can he reconcile contradictions by edict. Truth and logic just doesn't work that way, however much you seem to believe they do.
You know, Aramis, I could have sworn that a while back I pointed out that under those circumstances there would be no freight and passengers at all on jump-3+, since each dT of freight and each passenger would represent a huge loss. At 5,000 Credits per dT, each passenger cabin represents a constant loss of Cr20,000 per jump, only offset by Cr8,000 whenever there was a middle passenger to carry (a high passenger would pay Cr10,000, but his dT of luggage space will represent another Cr5,000 of loss.)
I don't remember seeing your response to that argument. Remind me, what was it?
And if you can do it then so can others. In a realistic environment, rivals would show up for your cargoes and press the price up. You can't demonstrate that the trade system is realistic by showing that you can play it like a fiddle. I know it can be played like a fiddle. As I've mentioned before, my player group once made 3 billion credits in three game sessions. How does that prove that it is realistic?
Hans
I had a thought this AM about multi-jump passengers and freight.
Using the typical Traveller tables, every additional jump imposes a cumulative -DM on the population index. Or, perhaps a cumulative -1D or -2D to each column.
Thus at a high population world, there might be 3D high passengers travelling up to one jump, 3D-2D travelling 2 jumps, and 2D-1D travelling 3 jumps. So if I could line them all up, I could get (random example):
9 passengers aboard for the first jump only
1 passenger aboard through the second jump
7 passengers aboard through the third jump.
It would definitely make high population worlds even more prominent -- they'd be felt up to 3 jumps away.
As above, a J3 liner could carry up to 11 people up to 9 parsecs, plus up to 16 people 6 parsecs. That would be nice for crossing backwaters -- that would make backwaters true "truck stops" between high population worlds.
Using the typical Traveller tables, every additional jump imposes a cumulative -DM on the population index. Or, perhaps a cumulative -1D or -2D to each column.
Thus at a high population world, there might be 3D high passengers travelling up to one jump, 3D-2D travelling 2 jumps, and 2D-1D travelling 3 jumps. So if I could line them all up, I could get (random example):
9 passengers aboard for the first jump only
1 passenger aboard through the second jump
7 passengers aboard through the third jump.
It would definitely make high population worlds even more prominent -- they'd be felt up to 3 jumps away.
As above, a J3 liner could carry up to 11 people up to 9 parsecs, plus up to 16 people 6 parsecs. That would be nice for crossing backwaters -- that would make backwaters true "truck stops" between high population worlds.
Same as before Hans:
There will always be some people willing to go. If a ship happens to have space open when speculation based, they will, even at book rates, be able to fill out the space aboard with non-spec.
Speculation driven doesn't mean speculation exclusive.
It does, however, mean that most merchants will not have fixed routes. Fixed routes are for subbies. "Real Merchants" will spend their approach evaluating whether to sell here or not (Trader Roll). ALso, whether or not to go elsewhere.
The fixed price scheme imposed by the imperium has an encouragement to both speculate, and to take the longest leg available. Since longer legs will not be constant, such travellers are likely to be far less savory...
Bk5 has better designs, I agree. But Bk2 has the more enjoyable and slightly more realistic trade system. (Trade goods should vary widely in economic density; Bk7 does not vary in economic density at all. Far bigger disconnect for me.)
There will always be some people willing to go. If a ship happens to have space open when speculation based, they will, even at book rates, be able to fill out the space aboard with non-spec.
Speculation driven doesn't mean speculation exclusive.
It does, however, mean that most merchants will not have fixed routes. Fixed routes are for subbies. "Real Merchants" will spend their approach evaluating whether to sell here or not (Trader Roll). ALso, whether or not to go elsewhere.
The fixed price scheme imposed by the imperium has an encouragement to both speculate, and to take the longest leg available. Since longer legs will not be constant, such travellers are likely to be far less savory...
Bk5 has better designs, I agree. But Bk2 has the more enjoyable and slightly more realistic trade system. (Trade goods should vary widely in economic density; Bk7 does not vary in economic density at all. Far bigger disconnect for me.)
TheEngineer
SOC-14 1K
Anybody can think of simply accepting each trade ruleset as a given situation - maybe enforced by Imperial government - in the appropriate universe and perhaps redirect energy to analyse the consequences and think about reasons why and under which circumstances some ship configurations exist ??
If a J-3 liner or any other ship could not exist on its own (in economical sense) its either cross financed or specially subsidized or runs fully payed by taces for the glory of the Imperium. But thats beyond the scope of the rules, which are designed to deal with player characters and thus not pretty good for setting up a complex trade network, which should appear to be "realistic".
Besides, there is not even a working trade model system in this real world, so the attribut "realistic" for any fictional trade system might not really be appropriate...maybe "detailed", "complex" or perhaps "consistent".
If a J-3 liner or any other ship could not exist on its own (in economical sense) its either cross financed or specially subsidized or runs fully payed by taces for the glory of the Imperium. But thats beyond the scope of the rules, which are designed to deal with player characters and thus not pretty good for setting up a complex trade network, which should appear to be "realistic".
Besides, there is not even a working trade model system in this real world, so the attribut "realistic" for any fictional trade system might not really be appropriate...maybe "detailed", "complex" or perhaps "consistent".
I would think subtracting a die for each jump, which would give this:
3D high passengers travelling up to one jump, 3D-1D travelling 2 jumps, and 3D-2D travelling 3 jumps. That's assuming a normalized 3D for passengers for all those worlds.
The real "problems" with both Bk2 and Bk7 T&C both are the low numbers for Hi worlds and the not so relatively small numbers for Lo worlds.
Hans:
as to design systems: I prefer T20/Bk5 over Bk2 any day. Even over MT, these days (easier to work), tho' I do like the low volume TNE bridges and the MT/TNE Jfuel rates. If one tweaks the powerplants right, one can make a J2 M1 ship which can make money without spec under MT... not much, and it requires a LOT of tweaking.
Back to Spec:
No merchant wants to ship with empty berths nor bays. The question is which is the primary load is spec or freight. In a spec dominant model, one's lot of cargo determines where, then one grabs cargos bound there until full. Passengers, too.
Even shipping grain is preferable to shipping empty (it reduces the losses, and might, just might, make a slight profit).
Hans:
as to design systems: I prefer T20/Bk5 over Bk2 any day. Even over MT, these days (easier to work), tho' I do like the low volume TNE bridges and the MT/TNE Jfuel rates. If one tweaks the powerplants right, one can make a J2 M1 ship which can make money without spec under MT... not much, and it requires a LOT of tweaking.
Back to Spec:
No merchant wants to ship with empty berths nor bays. The question is which is the primary load is spec or freight. In a spec dominant model, one's lot of cargo determines where, then one grabs cargos bound there until full. Passengers, too.
Even shipping grain is preferable to shipping empty (it reduces the losses, and might, just might, make a slight profit).
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