CT+ Trade

[zakrol]

Trade

Trade based on T20's tables, but with a per parsec revenue base. (Sigg)

LBB-based (perhaps revised) rules. (robject)

--------

This topic needs to be addressed even if it is simply to say leave it alone.

From previous discussions on CotI I'm aware there are strong feelings about this. That may be why robject has not started the topic?

 

[zakrol]

The freight and passenger rules seem to be fairly constant throughout LBB1-3, LBB7, MT and T20 so we have a solid base. The big question is do we go to a per parsec revenue? I'd say yes.

One bone of contention I have is the effects of tech causing streams of passengers and freight shipments heading to low tech backwaters with nothing coming the other way. I don't want absolute realistic simulation but you have to wonder why all those high tech people make one way trips and how the low tech worlds pay for the goods if they don't export anything. It wouldn't take much of a modification to the tables and DMs to correct this.

The other big question is speculative cargo. LBB1-3 has a simple and explict price for goods system, whilst LBB7 and MT have a more abstract but more complex system for calculating buying and selling price of generic (and unspecified) trade goods.

I've never used the basic CT system. Does it work? We need something that doesn't turn into a cash cow.

 

[robject]

There are vocal posters who want per-parsec rates.

As in the combat system, I am leaning toward marking CT+ "alpha", with the simpler combat mechanic and the LBB worldgen and trade systems untouched.

If fixes are adopted, we can then release a "beta".

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Well, charging by distance/time is only realistic. It costs more to send FedEx Overnight than it does to send Parcel Post. A zone model (like these folks use) would even work with Jump: w/in J1 everything costs X; w/in J2, it costs x*1.5 for 2 weeks, x*2.5 for 1 week; @ J3, it costs x*2 for 3 weeks, x*3.5 for 2 weeks, x*4.5 for 1 week; etc. A purely "per parsec" system isn't going to be realistic. There has to be a premium for wanting it there "overweek".

Its actually pretty simple, or the US Post Office couldn't manage to calculate your shipping. (I apologize to any Postal employees on this board. )

(BTW, I just pulled those numbers out of thin air - don't beat me up over that.)

 

[robject]

I agree with all of your points, Fritz.

It seems that many of us like the added realism, and many of us don't.

In some cases, such as vehicle component-level design, the added realism provides a synergy to a simpler high-level design system. If this can be done with trade, then both types of Travellers win.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

A simple table can be used to implement it:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Time Distance
J1 J2 J3 J4 J5 J6
1wk *1 *a *c *f *k *r
2wk - *b *d *g *l *s
3wk - - *e *h *m *t
4wk - - - *j *n *u
5wk - - - - *p *v
6wk - - - - - *w</pre>[/QUOTE]

 

[Straybow]

I'd like to see the mass vs. volume question addressed...

[ducks and runs for cover]

 

[far-trader]

There is no mass vs volume question, all references to volume are the case of a mass delusion, everything is mass tons [looks around for another foxhole]

 

[tjoneslo]

The best reason I've seen for leaving the jump rates at a per jump (rather than per parsec) is simple inertia. The CT rules work the way they are, and there isn't sufficient reason to change them. Or rather you don't gain a whole lot by changing them so why bother.

This isn't my argument. I suggested making the change for the T20 rule book, but couldn't make the case to the Powers That Be sufficiently.

 

[laning]

<chiming in from out of the blue>

I agree with Fritz' table. Express it as a simple formula instead of a table, if that is more digestible on the printed page. The important thing is to make the trade rules more believable than CT was. The original CT economic model was one of the weaker parts of the game design IMHO, and it seemed to strain the disbelief suspenders of more than one novice to the game. It was a significant contributing factor to driving away some of those novices. (There were others, but they were mostly off-topic to this thread, and are potential flame bait besides, so let's avoid them here.)

-Laning
www.cfids.org

 

[laning]

The trade goods.

Does anyone else think the CT list of trade goods needs updating? and probably some rebalancing too?

I'm too tired to do the work involved right now (as usual), but lists of actual exports and imports in the present world might work as a good starting draft. A World Almanac, perhaps. I was thinking of the online CIA World Fact Book at first, but you have to look up each country separately to get its list.

Then modify up or down the trade goods list primarily by world pop code.

-Maybe +1 for hi pop, and -1 for lo pop.
-Could also modify for TL, for agricultural, vacuum, industrial, etc.

In keeping with the D6 tradition, it can be 36-line list. Roll 2D, with the first die representing the first digit and the second die the second digit, yielding a range of numbers from 11 to 16 then 21 to 26, all the way up through 61 to 66. Pop code modifiers affect the second die and the other modifiers affect the first die.

Skew the table so that, for instance, prestellar worlds or nonindustrial worlds don't export vacc suits and agricultural worlds do export different food products.

It's been many years since I've looked at the CT trade tables, but IIRC, this doesn't depart from the original setup by a lot.

I am unfamiliar with the T20 rules; perhaps they already do this to the satisfaction of everyone interested in the topic?

-Laning
www.cfids.org

 

[laning]

One new twist. At first blush, maybe it violates KISS a little too much, but roll it around on your tongue a few moments to get the full flavor before passing judgement. I think it will seem simple and attractive to players. :->

As my post above, have a cargos table for export goods. Also have a very similar table to determine what import goods are in demand during a given week at a given starport. It is skewed to reflect what a UWP would want to buy, just as the export goods table is skewed to what UWPs want to sell.

From the player perspective, roll 2D to see what cargos you can pick up, then travel to the next system and on arrival roll 2D to see what they're willing to buy from the PCs that week. That meets the KISS standard, right?

PCs will only very rarely find an exact match between the cargo(s) they're carrying on speculation and what they can sell, but a modicum of sense and a couple of minutes looking at the trade tables should ensure that most of the time they can sell most of what they're carrying. If they have unsold surplus, they can choose to keep carrying the unsold goods to their next port, or see below for alternatives for getting rid of cargo when there is no immediate local demand.

The player(s) in the group who do the little bit of work of scanning through the tables to decide which cargos are good risks can make the decision by the seat of their pants and still make a difference to their profit margin. They do not need to do mathematical analyses that are difficult or tedious for many persons. OTOH, those who enjoy that kind of thing will find that, since they have to roll dice at both origin and destination to see what cargos are in supply and demand, they won't be able to guarantee a cash cow simply because they have the mathematical ability to milk the system. Sure, ability will help, but there will always be risk.

If each table is skewed appropriately for the types of goods that would be imported/exported for various UWPs, then flows of goods and capital should give sufficient appearance of being balanced for most persons' purposes.

This should result in fewer players having problems with overstretched disbelief suspenders.

There is relief for pressured sellers! If the players are unable to find any purchasers for the types of cargos they are selling, they can wait until the next week and roll again. Or, they can sell to a local factor (NPCs with trader and/or broker skill) at a substantial discount on the nominal value of the cargo. Blanks yet to be filled in on how much the discount should be, and how to determine any modifiers to this price. There is a good opportunity for role playing the NPC encounter(s) with the factor(s), but it isn't really required so referees not so inclined can easily skip it.

Subsidized merchants and cargo carriers who are travelling regularly scheduled routes in service to a shipping line should get some advantages to finding buyers for their cargos, but also more limit to potential profits. This reflects prearranged cargo shipping, as well as standing relationships with factors and other buyers and sellers.

This game mechanic probably encourages PCs to try to create standing relationships with particular NPC buyers and sellers on any world they expect on a recurring basis. Which, it seems to me, Is A Good Thing. There should probably even be positive DMs for buying/selling with merchants where there's an existing personal relationship.

This personalizes and fleshes out the selling process in a way that tends to increase players' interest in what they're going to be feeling the need to do in any case. They may as well enjoy it, right?

The funny thing is reinventing this idea now in 2005. When first reading the LBB trade rules in 1977, it seemed like that was what they were about to say, and I was surprised and a bit disappointed when they didn't. I'd forgotten the idea completely until just now.

-Laning
www.cfids.org
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -Philip K. Dick

 

[aramis]

One simple argument for keeping the fixed prices per jump:

It is a clear implication that the Imperium engages in pricefixing, on a grand scale.

A per parsec cost imperium is NOT the same TU; it implies a far more free-market, Laizze Faire capitalist society.

It specifically discourages civilian long-range craft, and long range trade. This is not broken, this is a social control imposed from on high.

Take, for example, it the cost to fly a 6 hour or less flight, no matter the distance, were mandated to cost $500 by the FAA. Such a control would not hurt larger liners that much. They would, however, minimize their own costs on such flights. It would make 727 to/from Seattle and Anchorage more profitable, and the Milk-Run (Anchorage, Kodiak, Cordova, Ketchikan, Juneau, Seattle and back) WAY more profitable. People would still pay to go. Not as many. different hub systems would develop.

The Imperium is not a Democratic Free Trade Economy! It's a command economy, which makes demands, and if those demands are not met, punishes.

Changing that one detail changes the whole extended outlook.

Your milleage may vary. I've ALWAYS explained the fixed prices as imperial price fixing and interstellar social engineering.

 

[laning]

Originally posted by Aramis:
One simple argument for keeping the fixed prices per jump:

It is a clear implication that the Imperium engages in pricefixing, on a grand scale.

<<<snip>>>

The Imperium is not a Democratic Free Trade Economy! It's a command economy, which makes demands, and if those demands are not met, punishes.

Changing that one detail changes the whole extended outlook.

Your milleage may vary. I've ALWAYS explained the fixed prices as imperial price fixing and interstellar social engineering.

Indeed! Of course, I see how one can infer that, but my mileage does indeed vary. I originally put it down to a crude economic game system, sufficient for most role-playing groups, and avoiding the overwhelming challenge of creating a sound and sophisticated economic game system.

You're saying that the megacorps, working hand in glove with the throne, want things to stay just the way are. Or is it the throne, working hand in glove with the megacorps? A subtle difference. ;->

That version of the TU is ephemerally seductive to me. One can compose some intriguing adventure settings and plots in it. It certainly helps explain why it feels like inflation is nonexistent, and why so many worlds' resources lie unexploited for centuries. For the referee who likes to keep things from getting out of control, it helps. But, in the long run, even in my version of the TU, where the 3rd Imperium is anything but a command economy, the 3rd Imperium made the general state of affairs too static. And there are many more science fiction adventure possibilities in a freebooting Far Future than in such a tightly controlled one.

Also, the rule may help explain a command economy for the 3rd Imperium, but since the same trade rule covers all of Charted Space as well as all player-generated maps, it seems less likely the game designer(s) were trying to promote all interstellar polities as command economies.

This is no attempt to take away from YTU. I would probably quite enjoy adventuring in your game. It's always fun to explore other persons' games!

Perhaps I was missing the boat, lo, these 25+ years. Mayhap intentionally blind to what Marc Miller and colleagues intended. I hope not. Maybe it was one of the possible interpretations of the OTU that they left open, but they definitely wanted to include as many varied interpretations as there were people who wanted to play. So, I can add it to the list of questions to ask the Great Old Ones of Our Beloved Game.

In the context of CT+, this seems like an important issue to resolve. Is it desirable to keep this trade rule that promotes the player interpretation of a command economy controlling all interstellar trade?

I am very reluctant to rain on anyone else's TU. And I'm enough of a traditionalist that a big part of me wants to keep it. But I've always had a strong yearning to "fix" what seemed like a problem to me. On balance, I say update it.

--Laning
www.cfids.org
"MTU can beat up YTU." -Richard Honeycutt(?)

 

[daryen]

Aramis,

The problem is that if you don't have free ranging trade, then you don't have interdependencies. In other words, if you have wide ranging trade, and that trade disappears, you will get dead worlds. If you don't have wide ranging trade, then most worlds (basically anything with pop 4+) are self-sufficient.

If trade really is the "lifeblood" of the Imperium, and worlds actually depend on trade, then you must have a somewhat reasonable model. Per-parsec gives you that.

All a per-jump model gives you is a bunch of independent, self-sufficient worlds. Hardly the OTU I have read about.

 

[robject]

Originally posted by daryen:

The problem is that if you don't have free ranging trade, then you don't have interdependencies. In other words, if you have wide ranging trade, and that trade disappears, you will get dead worlds.

If you change that to read "backwater worlds", then that looks just like the Spinward Main.

 

[laning]

LOL, I agree with robject, daryen, AND Aramis. To borrow a phrase with a much more sinister original meaning, "separate but equal" Traveller universes. Each of you has a perfectly valid interpretation of a Traveller Universe. And the rule system shouldn't try to mandate one and only one interpretation of the TU.

I propose writing the rule as optional. Referee's choice whether it is per parsec or flat fee. Add a short paragraph about the different kinds of resulting universes that either choice might produce.

It's in keeping with the original spirit of CT to make the game welcoming to a wide variety of interpretations. In retrospect, maybe CT should have implemented more optional rules. Or maybe it actually did, since LBBs 4 thru 7 were optional in their entireties. Plus Snapshot, Striker, et al.

The argument that 3rd Imperium worlds were dependent on interstellar trade doesn't seem compelling enough to force a game rule. Canon did seem to leave enough wiggle room for an almost opposite interpretation, but my reading of the Long Night supports the importance of interstellar trade. That the Imperial throne and nobility, and Navy, etc. are partly propped up by interstellar trade is more compelling, but even that doesn't require the individual member worlds to be dependent on trade. In fact, even the Imperial government can be argued to depend on the income from each member world far more than the income derived from interstellar traffic. They neglected developing trade because it wasn't very significant. It wasn't very significant due to neglect. Whichever. (Something I think Dulinor was trying to change.) Again, YMMV.

Or, in some TUs, most worlds capable of interstellar trade are well developed and self sufficient; they don't need interstellar trade for survival. They have large trade volumes, but the majority of the trade takes place on their own world, and few goods are so valuable to bother transporting elsewhere with those hideously expensive starships. The only worlds that become "dead" if trade withers are ones with tiny populations and insufficiently diverse resources (tending to correspond to tiny economic significance) and hyperpopulated worlds depending on food imports or some other key resource that underlies food production. It's open to question what a hyperpopulated world is exporting in order to pay for food and other necessities. Goods and services don't transport well given interstellar travel times, and the cost of starships makes interstellar transport of raw materials and export of finished goods rather problematical. Which brings me back to trying to create an improved list of cargos, and an improved system for matching appropriate cargo types to UWPs.

Also remember, the trade rules should work for all of populated space, not just the 3rd Imperium. And should work for persons who "roll their own" universes, not just those of us trying to use the off-the-shelf universe that includes the 3rd Imperium.

I suggest DMs on the trade tables for different interstellar governments. The Vargr should have less stable and lower volume trade, for instance, while safer areas of space have more stable and higher volumes of trade. (Zhodane, perhaps?) Give brief guidance to referees who are rolling their own universes on which DMs relate to which types of interstellar governments.

We may want to get more specific now and draft actual lists of cargos, as well as tables for determining cargo purchase/sale availability and prices. I'll task myself with copying the lists out of CT, MT, T4, and Far Trader and posting them here as a starting point for discussion. No promises about doing it quickly, so anyone else feel free to beat me to the punch.

Those canonical tables are just for cargos available to buyers, so I will also separately attempt tables that "mirror" them for determining cargos that worlds would like to purchase from sellers.

--Laning
www.cfids.org
And remember to never begin a sentence with a conjunction.

 

[daryen]

Speaking of insanely expensive starships, is there any thought to reducing their price?

People always mention the great implausibilities of Traveller as being technological: jump drive, reactionless thruster, anti-gravity, etc. The biggest economic implausibility is seeing all of these borderline criminal "adventurers" running around with multi-million credit starships (armed, no less).

Basic ships need to have their costs cut by at least a factor of 10. Sure, military stuff needs to be high (ding them on armor and military weapons), but the civilian equipment should be much, much less.

 

[robject]

Heh heh! And I'm on the other end of that spectrum, Mike -- I've watched ship prices creep in a steady descent down from LBB2 to T4, and I want ships to be back up around their CT-level prices.

I think my fear (and yes, it's an emotional reaction, rather than an intellectual one) is that cheap starships dilutes the value of ownership too much for my comfort. Or something. Or maybe it's just a grognardly feeling.

 

[daryen]

Originally posted by robject:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by daryen:

The problem is that if you don't have free ranging trade, then you don't have interdependencies. In other words, if you have wide ranging trade, and that trade disappears, you will get dead worlds.

If you change that to read "backwater worlds", then that looks just like the Spinward Main. </font>[/QUOTE]I don't think you read that quite right. I said that if you do have wide ranging trade, then you will get dead worlds when the trade stops. Conversely, if you have limited trade like Aramis wants, you force all worlds to be self-sufficient. In essense, trade becomes irrelevant.

If you have a per-jump pricing model, you eliminate all trade at greater than J1, except for that which is completely subsidized by the Imperium. Sure the Imperium can impose stupid rules, but the companies handling the trade still actually have to make money, and are only going to do things that make them money. J1 makes money; J2+ loses money.

As a result, with a per-jump pricing model, there should be no "backwater worlds" on the Spinward Main. Since 99% (or so) of all trade is with J1 ships, every world on the Spinward Main becomes very, very important. Even an otherwise airless rockball with no mineral resources becomes a critical link in the jump chain.

Likewise, worlds like Rhylanor make no sense. No one will ever both to trade with them, as the J2 requirement removes the profitability. Basically, the only way Rhylanor would ever see trade is if they subsidize it until they are bankrupt. Of course, then the trade would go away again.

Could an interstellar organization or government force a per-jump pricing model? Sure. It could even run for a while until they run out of money. But there just isn't any way for it to last 100 years, much less the 1100 the Imperium has been around.