Essential Trade Goods

[robject]

When it comes to trade, I prefer rolling directly for things, and letting those things modify the price based on what they are and what world they're from.

Surely there is an essential set of trade goods that work well in any setting (and it seems that Book 3 was a good attempt).

And it shouldn't be a HUGE list. Again, Book 3 seems to be a good attempt.

What do you think should be in that list?

Exotics/Uniques - what kinds?
Luxuries - what kinds?
Manufactured - what kinds? Is this == Technology?
Technology - what kinds? Is this even a category?
Industrials? Or is this the same as Manufactured?
Agriculturals?
Pharma?

 

[aramis]

When it comes to trade, I prefer rolling directly for things, and letting those things modify the price based on what they are and what world they're from.

Surely there is an essential set of trade goods that work well in any setting (and it seems that Book 3 was a good attempt).

And it shouldn't be a HUGE list. Again, Book 3 seems to be a good attempt.

What do you think should be in that list?

Exotics/Uniques - what kinds?
Luxuries - what kinds?
Manufactured - what kinds? Is this == Technology?
Technology - what kinds? Is this even a category?
Industrials? Or is this the same as Manufactured?
Agriculturals?
Pharma?

Book 3 is a little too short. T20's list of 100 feels much more complete, while still being manageable.

In fact, I'd say, "Use T20's list"... and the rules for Double occupancy and steerage... I had a finger in on 2 of the three, so I'm biased.

 

[tjoneslo]

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=13160

This is the speculative trade cards from the T20 goods list. Rather than roll dice, you can shuffle a deck of cards and draw them out.

 

[robject]

Some of those items look familiar... I bet Marc imported some into T5.

The Book 3 list is at times perhaps TOO low level. For example, metals are broken down, as are vehicles, and ammunition is separate from weapons (even though in that case they have the exact same characteristics).

I admit it's hard to keep the list below 100 items... here's 58. If I can keep it around 64 I'll be happy.


Agricultural (nitrates, seedstock, livestock)
Antimatter
Archaeologicals/Fossils
Armor
Aromatics
Art (Monumental Art, Museum Items, Writings, Recordings, Masterpieces, Music)
Branded Commodities
Chemicals (Precipitates, Particulates)
Coins/Currency
Computers

Contemplatives
Crafted Items
Crystals
Cybernetics
Data
Decorations
Disposables
Educationals
Electronics
Emitters/Blockers

Encapsulants
Ephemerals
Equipment
Excretions
Exotics
Fauna
Fibers
Flora
Food (Delicacies, Drinkable Lymphs, Decoctions, Fermented Fluids, Flavorings, Juices, Liquor, Meats, Nectars, Nostrums, Nutraceuticals, Nutrients, Spices, Tisanes, Wines)
Gems

Gravitics
Industrial Materials (abrasives, biologics, gases, ices, dyes, minerals, isotopes, carbon, catalysts, chelates, corrosives, hydrocarbons, dusts, silanes, sludges, radioactives, fluidics, metals, allotropes, alloys)
Insidiants
Insulants
Jewelry
Machinery
Magnetics
Minerals
Non-Fossil Carcasses
Obsoletes

Organics
Osmancies
Pelts/Furs
Pharma
Photonics
Polymers
Reparables
Robots
Secretions
Sparx

Synthetics
Tactiles
Textiles
Tools
Vehicles
Wafers
Weapons
Woods

 

[mike wightman]

Emm, its actually in LBB2...

 

[infojunky]

I have been playing with the Bits 101 Cargos book. Which Mongoose so nicely reprinted in one of the later splatbooks Supplement 13 Starport Encounters (I Think)

 

[robject]

Emm, its actually in LBB2...

Yeah. That always throws me, and I second guess myself into error.

 

[robject]

New thought for the day.


After I bugged Marc for awhile, ten years or so ago, I like to think I pressured him into creating the commodity tables for T5.

Which are nice and all, but I wanted them to influence pricing, in the way that Book 2 commodities establish a base price. Okay I said it: I want the commodities to establish the base price, like Book 2 does it.


I think grouping commodity types based on their base price and market effects is a way to get a smaller table but a variety of items. For instance, a subordinate table for Book 2 that listed alternate commodities based on similar value and niche.

That would also allow the Book 2 table to be adjusted, since there are many entries that are for all intents and purposes duplicates except in name.

 

[Major B]

Rob, I'm following this thread with much interest because it nests with the Beowulf project I am working on. I hope that the end result of this discussion will be useful in that project but I haven't found a way to contribute yet to the discussion.

I have a sort of tangential question but I don't think it is so much of a tangent that it needs a new thread. If you disagree, let me know and I'll cut this off to another location.

If this discussion leads to a better table for common goods, what about the uncommon ones? I would like to see something holistic that has the small chance for that lottery-winning cargo that looks like something no one would really want. Can that be incorporated into the final result?

Don't know if you've read Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy so I'll paraphrase from the first book for an example of what I'm thinking of. A merchant captain finds a world (Norfolk) that is purposefully kept low tech (about TL4-5) but produces a rare and highly sought after alcoholic beverage at a specific season. Then he learns of another world (Lalonde) that is just beginning colonization but has a tree composed of extremely dense hard wood. He is the only one to make the connection, buys a hold full of logs though everyone thinks he is crazy, and parleys that into a hold full of Norfolk's beverage and gets rich selling it.

So while the beverage (food, liquor) is covered in your table, rough-cut tree trunks are not part of your agricultural sublist. I understand the desire to keep the list as short as possible so don't extend the list to cover every possibility but can there be a general purpose entry for "that one rare thing" that doesn't seem valuable but in the right place at the right time can be a game changer?

 

[Timerover51]

The problem I have with the trade goods table is that not every planet is going to have all of those trade goods available. A low population planet with a corrosive atmosphere is not going to be exporting massive quantities of agricultural products or industrial goods. A low population planet is going to be limited overall in what trade goods are going to be available, as there is a finite limit at to what they can produce.

A High Tech Level, High Population planet with a standard atmosphere will likely have everything for sale, but a planet like Lydia in the Glisten sub-sector in the Spinward Marches with the planetary characteristics of E110430 and a Tech Level of 6 is not going to have a whole lot of trade goods to offer. Now, how they will pay for their imports might be the starting point for an adventure.

 

[kilemall]

The problem I have with the trade goods table is that not every planet is going to have all of those trade goods available. A low population planet with a corrosive atmosphere is not going to be exporting massive quantities of agricultural products or industrial goods. A low population planet is going to be limited overall in what trade goods are going to be available, as there is a finite limit at to what they can produce.

A High Tech Level, High Population planet with a standard atmosphere will likely have everything for sale, but a planet like Lydia in the Glisten sub-sector in the Spinward Marches with the planetary characteristics of E110430 and a Tech Level of 6 is not going to have a whole lot of trade goods to offer. Now, how they will pay for their imports might be the starting point for an adventure.

I rather like the idea of dumped out of place goods at a low-end starport.

Maybe a deal gone bad.

Maybe a cheap forward warehousing strategy.

Maybe an eccentric ordered them and didn't pay.

Maybe a TL6 planet thought buying those TL 12 autoharvesters would be just the thing to get the crops in, until the cost of maintaining them bankrupted the whole project.

Maybe a previous ship had to sell it's whole cargo to get repair assets or the whole ship jumped out, and the lots are the leftovers the locals didn't buy.

Maybe a major megacorp is running a surplus shop off the beaten path to unload unwanted goods while not suppressing their top-end market prices.

Maybe the whole planet, or at least a significant portion of the starport population, is in the pirated goods go-between business. Pirates dump at 40% of value, on most Traveller trade systems that's nowhere to go for the resellers but up.

Rather then institute logic, go with the weird like the UWP and make incongruous lots a story starter.

 

[coliver988]

I rather like the idea of dumped out of place goods at a low-end starport.

Maybe a deal gone bad.

Maybe a cheap forward warehousing strategy.

Maybe an eccentric ordered them and didn't pay.

Maybe a TL6 planet thought buying those TL 12 autoharvesters would be just the thing to get the crops in, until the cost of maintaining them bankrupted the whole project.

Maybe a previous ship had to sell it's whole cargo to get repair assets or the whole ship jumped out, and the lots are the leftovers the locals didn't buy.

Maybe a major megacorp is running a surplus shop off the beaten path to unload unwanted goods while not suppressing their top-end market prices.

Maybe the whole planet, or at least a significant portion of the starport population, is in the pirated goods go-between business. Pirates dump at 40% of value, on most Traveller trade systems that's nowhere to go for the resellers but up.

Rather then institute logic, go with the weird like the UWP and make incongruous lots a story starter.

I like that idea, and you formulated it better than that fuzzy idea in the back ofd my head when going through this and thinking the same thing as Timerover51.

Could even be the illegally gained goods getting dumped - credit laundering! You buy, then get into trouble for the sale of stolen goods 3 systems later.

 

[kilemall]

My other critique is that the trade code modifiers from LBB2 greatly incentivizes appropriate buys from source planets and naturally pairs to customer planets, gives a range of cheap buy-ins to bet the ship speculation, an d the once a week roll means a LOT of marginal non-optimal deals in-between the big wins.

 

[ovka]

an d the once a week roll means a LOT of marginal non-optimal deals in-between the big wins.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but isn't that kind of the point? The players are always chasing the next big score. "Nope, not this week. Let's take what's available and move on."

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

 

[kilemall]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but isn't that kind of the point? The players are always chasing the next big score. "Nope, not this week. Let's take what's available and move on."

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

Exactly.

Some of these other systems allow for multiple speculative lot checks, but they don't have the Big Win lottery aspect of LBB2. That makes one roll a week imperative unless you have additional cash drain (bribery, harsh space environment hazards and/ or pirates).

I do like a lot of the named new cargo types, but I would tend to just incorporate them into LBB2 Table Two and make them small win / big win too.

 

[ovka]

Ah, ok. Sorry, kilemall. I thought you were pointing to that as a criticism. :rofl:

Anyway, it seems to me that the other situation could be handled with a "referee special" entry if one feels the need to have the otherwise out of place cargo be randomly table generated.

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

 

[tjoneslo]

Just because:

T5.09 page 478 has the official T5 list of Trade Goods, with p.479-483 has the descriptions.

GT Far Trader: p38-40sb has another list of goods.

T20 core book, p. 360-361 has the list used to build the trade cards published above.

Book 2, p47 is the base list of 36 goods

I also dug through the google machine and got a table of US trade in Goods by Principle Commodities, a list of about 70-80 items. Give me a day or so to review these lists to see if I can come up list in the 50-100 items that makes sense (at least to me).

 

[kilemall]

Another advantage to the greatly differentiated specific cargo model as opposed to these bland Merchant Prince on systems is that you can draw conclusions about how far goods 'travel'.

Back of the envelope figuring, say 20% of the cargo's potential 100% value, can be taken up by transport costs and still build in a reasonable return often enough.

So say a low-end commodity, bulk grains at Cr5000 per ton, 20% of which is Cr1000 per parsec- going to be a 1 parsec regular distance, unless the destination has mods that bump it up, maybe to 3 parsecs.

An example of a high end commodity, Radioactives at MCr1, have a travel budget of Cr200000- or 200 parsecs.

Major starship components have even greater travel budgets.

This has uses beyond figuring out trade patterns.

The more expensive the item per dton, the more you can expect a megacorp to be involved- and want to possibly even lock down a sector's worth of business from one or two Industrial or mining worlds. This is the stuff of corporate, planet and/or noble wars.

Things might go at a slower pace then, or odd buildups of mismatched supply due to delays or the like, thus causing our speculative cargo market in the first place as immediate local needs or temporary oversupply forces dumping.

One trick I wouldn't miss is rolling for surplus exports that further mod produced goods down, and greatly desired imports up beyond world trade codes. There is a lot of intrigue and piracy one can build from knowing who wants what and motivations for conflict.

 

[tjoneslo]

Some of those items look familiar... I bet Marc imported some into T5.

The Book 3 list is at times perhaps TOO low level. For example, metals are broken down, as are vehicles, and ammunition is separate from weapons (even though in that case they have the exact same characteristics).

I admit it's hard to keep the list below 100 items... here's 58. If I can keep it around 64 I'll be happy.

So I dug through this list and compared it to the other lists of good (book 2, Book 3, T20, GT:FT, real world sources). When I read through the list I found a list of 21 items that seemed to be redundant, and/or not really trade type
items.

Branded Commodities => Commodities
Contemplatives      => Art
Decorations         => Art
Disposables         => Commodities
Educationals        => Data, Art
Encapsulants        => Industrial Materials
Ephemerals          => Descriptor
Excretions          => Organics
Exotics             => Descriptor
Fauna
Flora
Insidiants          => Industrial Materials
Insulants           => Industrial Materials
Magnetics           => Equipment,Tools
Obsoletes           => Descriptor Equipment, Tools
Osmancies           => Art
Photonics           => Equipment, Tools
Reparables          => Descriptor Equipment, Tools
Secretions          => Organics
Sparx               => Crystals
Tactiles            => Art

I added four (generic) items back in to the list:

Commodities
Consumer goods
Live Flora/Fauna
Structures

This takes the list to 41 items.

Next: Equipment, Machinery, Tools. These three items are too generic and overlap with each other. I would suggest combining these and breaking them down by useful types:

Agricultural Equipment and Tools
Computers
Industrial Equipment and Tools
Medicinal Equipment and Tools
Mining Equipment and Tools
Office machines
Power Generation Equipment and Tools
Scientific Equipment and Monitoring tools

This takes your list to 45 items. I'm stuck now because I can't add new items that are not already part of the more generic categories. There is an equipment classification code table (T5.09 p609). Which may be used to decompose items into less generic categories.

For example:

Food (Delicacies, Drinkable Lymphs, Decoctions, Fermented Fluids, Flavorings, Juices, Liquor, Meats, Nectars, Nostrums, Nutraceuticals, Nutrients, Spices, Tisanes, Wines)
Industrial Materials (abrasives, biologics, gases, ices, dyes, minerals, isotopes, carbon, catalysts, chelates, corrosives, hydrocarbons, dusts, silanes, sludges, radioactives, fluidics, metals, allotropes, alloys)

These two could be divided into as many categories as you would like.