Hello Folks,
It has often been said, that one can not or should not attempt to determine what the economics of a given region is, based solely upon the tables listed on page 11 of book 2: Starships.
None the less, I've a few questions to pose to people at large, and ask they they take on the mindset of being a starship captain who is present at world A as listed below:
World A: Pop 8 world, TL 10, Starport A
World B: Pop 2 world, TL 5, Starport C
World C: Pop 3 world, TL 7, Starport D
World D: Pop 8 world, TL 12, Starport B
Worlds A, B, C and D all occur along a jump-1 main. I left out world Z, which leads to A from the other direction simply because I'd like to concentrate on some issues involving the rules on page 11 as far as cargo generation and passenger generation per the rules.
Lets say for the sake of argument, that you're a ship's captain of a 200 dton type A trader. You have a crew of 4, which includes the standards for a pilot, engineer, medic, and steward. You've got 6 staterooms available for lease to any potential passengers, and you have 82 dtons of available cargo space in your hold.
Question: would you as the captain, short of chartering your ship to various people, and absent any speculative cargo you could potentially hope to sell at world D, consider choosing World D as your ultimate destination while at world A?
Using the rules as presented on page 11, going from world A to world B, results in rolling 3d6-1d6 for number of high passengers. Rolling a 10 on 3d6, and a 4 on 1d6, we start off with a potential for 6 High Passage customers. However, because the World B's Pop value is less than 5 (4 or less), a penalty of -3 is applied to the number of High Passengers. Now we're down to 3 potential passengers. However, all is not lost. World B's tech level is listed as being 5. The TL modifier would thus be 10-5, or 5. We've gone from our base 6 potential passengers to 3 back up to 8. So that's a good thing. Looking for cargo, we'd get 1d6+4 (base major cargos available) -4 (Low pop penalty) +5 (Tech level modifier) to 1d6+5 major cargos. At an average of 3.5 x 10 tons of cargo per major cargo roll, and having a total of on average, 9.5 rolls per - it is highly likely that the Type A trader can fill its cargo bay up to 80 dton's worth of cargo (ok, freight really, but that's CT, what can I say?).
However, once at world B. In order to turn a profit, and absent any speculative cargo being found, where do you as the captain choose to go?
If back to world A, you'd roll 1d6-1d6 for high passengers, 1d6-0d6 Middle passengers, and 2d6 Low passengers. However, because of the circumstances involved:
Destination world 8+, +3 to die rolls, Tech Level modifier = (TL 5-10) or -5, all the passenger rolls will be modified by -2. Chances are: zero High Passengers, plus perhaps 1 middle passenger (on average) plus 5 low berth passengers (On average). Cargo (Freight) availability will be:
1d6-2 Major
1d6-1 Minor
Modifiers will be:
Pop destination: +1
TL mod: -5
So Major cargoes will be 1d6-2+1-5 or 1d6-6 (automatically zero)
Minor Cargoes will be 1d6-1+1-5, which is only a 16% chance of having any cargoes at all!
The journey back from world B to world A is going to be in general, far worse than the outbound journy to World B.
Looking at the economics generated for going from World B to World C, we find that the economics will be such that things are even worse trying to go from B to C than from B to A.
So my question is - how does any kind of economy exist such that ships travel between worlds A and D with any kind of regularity based on the current rules of CT's Book 2: Starships?
The answer it seems, requires that the Type A trader owner, must engage in either specially chartered trips for anyone who wishes to journey between worlds A & D, or, the starship must engage in speculative trade such that the profits made from selling such cargoes between worlds A and D make up for the loss of income required by more mundane activities such as shipping freight or taking paying passengers.
Thoughts?
It has often been said, that one can not or should not attempt to determine what the economics of a given region is, based solely upon the tables listed on page 11 of book 2: Starships.
None the less, I've a few questions to pose to people at large, and ask they they take on the mindset of being a starship captain who is present at world A as listed below:
World A: Pop 8 world, TL 10, Starport A
World B: Pop 2 world, TL 5, Starport C
World C: Pop 3 world, TL 7, Starport D
World D: Pop 8 world, TL 12, Starport B
Worlds A, B, C and D all occur along a jump-1 main. I left out world Z, which leads to A from the other direction simply because I'd like to concentrate on some issues involving the rules on page 11 as far as cargo generation and passenger generation per the rules.
Lets say for the sake of argument, that you're a ship's captain of a 200 dton type A trader. You have a crew of 4, which includes the standards for a pilot, engineer, medic, and steward. You've got 6 staterooms available for lease to any potential passengers, and you have 82 dtons of available cargo space in your hold.
Question: would you as the captain, short of chartering your ship to various people, and absent any speculative cargo you could potentially hope to sell at world D, consider choosing World D as your ultimate destination while at world A?
Using the rules as presented on page 11, going from world A to world B, results in rolling 3d6-1d6 for number of high passengers. Rolling a 10 on 3d6, and a 4 on 1d6, we start off with a potential for 6 High Passage customers. However, because the World B's Pop value is less than 5 (4 or less), a penalty of -3 is applied to the number of High Passengers. Now we're down to 3 potential passengers. However, all is not lost. World B's tech level is listed as being 5. The TL modifier would thus be 10-5, or 5. We've gone from our base 6 potential passengers to 3 back up to 8. So that's a good thing. Looking for cargo, we'd get 1d6+4 (base major cargos available) -4 (Low pop penalty) +5 (Tech level modifier) to 1d6+5 major cargos. At an average of 3.5 x 10 tons of cargo per major cargo roll, and having a total of on average, 9.5 rolls per - it is highly likely that the Type A trader can fill its cargo bay up to 80 dton's worth of cargo (ok, freight really, but that's CT, what can I say?).
However, once at world B. In order to turn a profit, and absent any speculative cargo being found, where do you as the captain choose to go?
If back to world A, you'd roll 1d6-1d6 for high passengers, 1d6-0d6 Middle passengers, and 2d6 Low passengers. However, because of the circumstances involved:
Destination world 8+, +3 to die rolls, Tech Level modifier = (TL 5-10) or -5, all the passenger rolls will be modified by -2. Chances are: zero High Passengers, plus perhaps 1 middle passenger (on average) plus 5 low berth passengers (On average). Cargo (Freight) availability will be:
1d6-2 Major
1d6-1 Minor
Modifiers will be:
Pop destination: +1
TL mod: -5
So Major cargoes will be 1d6-2+1-5 or 1d6-6 (automatically zero)
Minor Cargoes will be 1d6-1+1-5, which is only a 16% chance of having any cargoes at all!
The journey back from world B to world A is going to be in general, far worse than the outbound journy to World B.
Looking at the economics generated for going from World B to World C, we find that the economics will be such that things are even worse trying to go from B to C than from B to A.
So my question is - how does any kind of economy exist such that ships travel between worlds A and D with any kind of regularity based on the current rules of CT's Book 2: Starships?
The answer it seems, requires that the Type A trader owner, must engage in either specially chartered trips for anyone who wishes to journey between worlds A & D, or, the starship must engage in speculative trade such that the profits made from selling such cargoes between worlds A and D make up for the loss of income required by more mundane activities such as shipping freight or taking paying passengers.
Thoughts?
