Fixing the Economics

[CosmicGamer]

If that is the level of service, it is NOT High Passage. So, it doesn't really matter as you can only handle Mid passage clients. No one, in their right mind, is going to pay twice as much to play chess or drink some "hooch" brewed up in the engine room. Unless maybe a mid-passage includes daily floggings after a Captain's Mast...

I never said my description was for any specific level of passage.

Are you saying in YTU playing chess is considered uncultured and some how too undignified for a high passenger to partake in

What do people in YTU have against a unique liquor made by the Engineer who is a Hutsnuwu descendant and has a secret recipe (at least one ingredient is illegal in some nearby systems) for molasses liquor that's been handed down in his family?

Perhaps I need to explain it in a different way. I thought my examples would be fun but they must have distracted some from the the actual rules I was pointing out.

Based on the core rules:
Steward 0 is a basic training skill for merchants.
Steward 0 skill can care for 2 high passengers or 5 mid passengers.

Why can't the pilot, navigator, gunner, and/or engineer pitch in to care for passengers?

Doing two jobs at once, you count as 1 level less skilled in both. In other words, to be a competent engineer and a competent steward, you have to be level 2 in each... which guarantees you're at least a second term character with a charmed existence, or more likely, a 4th or 5th term character.

Not sure what half of zero would be?

Can someone point me to this rule? If it isn't specific, one interpretation is that 4 crew members, all with only level zero skill might be half as effective and instead of 8 high passengers they can only care for 4?

Would it still be 1/2 the skill level if you are not doing it simultaneously? I can't see a gunner doing much while in jump. Pilot or Navigator either.

 

[rancke]

Why can't the pilot, navigator, gunner, and/or engineer pitch in to care for passengers?

They can. It will just mean that according to the rules[*] they perform their piloting, astrogation, gunnery[**], and engineering at a lower skill level.

[*] According to the Traveller rules I know, anyway. I've no idea if that particular rule made it into MgT.

[**] Though personally I'd allow a gunner to steward his heart out and still be at the top of his gunnery if it comes to ship-to-ship combat.​

Hans

 

[atpollard]

They can. It will just mean that according to the rules[*] they perform their piloting, astrogation, gunnery[**], and engineering at a lower skill level.

[**] Though personally I'd allow a gunner to steward his heart out and still be at the top of his gunnery if it comes to ship-to-ship combat.

Hans

IMHO: The Navigator even more so ... after 8 hours of watching the pilot fly to the 100 diameter jump limit, the Navigator swaggers up to his console and settles himself in for an hour of critical calculations. The ship enters jumpspace and the Navigator does a quick check of the estimated time to exit jump. Pushing up from his chair, he toddles off towards the commons, with a half wave over his shoulder "I'll see ya'll in two weeks." ... Second highest paid member of the crew. :nonono:

 

[HG_B]

I never said my description was for any specific level of passage.

You argued what you argued in order to have enough Steward to handle your passengers.

Sorry, you can't take two sides at once. Doesn't work that way. Your Steward=2 guy on that Tramp carrying 6 High passengers has to sleep & eat. That means your hooch swilling Engineer is in charge at certain times. :devil:

 

[CosmicGamer]

Sorry, you can't take two sides at once.

You have misjudged me sir. I am quite capable of seeing both sides of a situation and arguing the pros and cons of each.

Although in this case, I'm not sure how I was taking two sides though. I was discussing multiple points. I can do that in one post let alone, in multiple separate posts of the same thread. Sorry if my English is not the best at getting what I'm thinking across. Sorry if it's not clear when I am going from one point to the next. Sorry if anyone is lacking in the ability to grasp multiple concepts at once. If you fall in the last category, you probably won't want to continue reading this post because it's going to bounce around a bit. I apologize, my wife is in the hospital and I don't have the time to try and clean it up, make it clearer, or perhaps break it into multiple posts or even start new threads.

Multiple concepts: the level of steward skill and the number of both high and mid passengers needed to make converting cargo space into staterooms for passengers cost effective in a variety of situations - for example, at different jump ranges.

Another concept: based on the discussion of both the logic and the rules; crew members who have multiple skills filling multiple positions on the ship. I was not trying to indicate any specific level of passenger but just the overall concept of a pilot, engineer or gunner helping out with steward duties. While I didn't say it, nor did I say otherwise, my thought was that they would provide the appropriate services as described in the rules for the level of skill they possessed. I thought that this would be the natural assumption baring my saying otherwise.

Another concept? :

If that is the level of service, it is NOT High Passage. So, it doesn't really matter as you can only handle Mid passage clients.

Suggesting steward skill be specialized into steward(high passenger) and steward(mid passenger)?

My following that up by querying about what and why you thought certain things fell under one suggested skill verses another?:

Are you saying in YTU playing chess is considered uncultured and some how too undignified for a high passenger to partake in

Now, another new concept?

Your Steward=2 guy on that Tramp carrying 6 High passengers has to sleep & eat. That means your hooch swilling Engineer is in charge at certain times. :devil:

A possible need to reassess the crew requirement rules to accommodate multiple shifts of personnel? 3 level 0 stewards needed for every 2 high passengers instead of one level 0 steward?

To avoid any confusion, I'm not saying a level 0 steward can somehow take the place of the level 2 steward discussed in a different context earlier in this thread. But this does touch on that concept. Are you suggesting (for YTU or, just for discussion, some hypothetical TU) multiple level 2 stewards, or multiple stewards with a combined skill level to equal a level 2 steward, would be needed to cover multiple shifts? I'd think this would make the economics of transporting passengers even more problematic without more changes to the rules.

And based on your other concept of steward specialization, would steward (high passenger) substitute for steward (mid passenger)? Would it be a one for one substitution? Could a character with steward (high passenger) 1 possibly care for more mid passengers than a character with steward (mid passenger) 1?

 

[HG_B]

Another concept? : Suggesting steward skill be specialized into steward(high passenger) and steward(mid passenger)?

Sorry, Straw-man = auto ignore.

 

[CosmicGamer]

You argued what you argued in order to have enough Steward to handle your passengers.

My main goal in this thread was to find the math and reasoning behind the issues discussed in this "fixing the economics" thread and statements like

Passengers in MgT are less profitable per ton than freight.

I only wanted to get to the bottom of things and not argue either side. At this point, after going through the math and having discourse, I believe there are instances where this is true and instances where it is not.

If I misinterpreted what someone has to say why can't they help explain it instead of something like

Sorry, Straw-man = auto ignore.

I really don't understand how my asking a question is a Straw-man.

On my side, I get quite frustrated when I ask people questions and ask them to explain things I don't understand and instead get, what I'll call hostile/defensive responses and no answers or explanations.

I apologize if anything I said was over the line and offensive.

==
Back on topic, among other things, I'm still hoping someone can point me to where in MgT it discusses crew holding multiple positions. Anyone?
==

 

[McPerth]

They can. It will just mean that according to the rules[*] they perform their piloting, astrogation, gunnery[**], and engineering at a lower skill level.

[*] According to the Traveller rules I know, anyway. I've no idea if that particular rule made it into MgT.​

In MgT, AFAIK, there are no rules for it

[**] Though personally I'd allow a gunner to steward his heart out and still be at the top of his gunnery if it comes to ship-to-ship combat. ​

Fully agreed here.

This was also discussed in This thread:

 

[aramis]

If I misinterpreted what someone has to say why can't they help explain it instead of something like I really don't understand how my asking a question is a Straw-man.

You've given the appearance of straw-man argument by questioning the math, having it explained, redoing it wrong, then arguing that it was done wrong in the first place, even though you've obviously done it wrong by ignoring key chunks.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Sorry it took me a while to get to looking at aramis' spreadsheet. Family medical issues.

To provide a more apples to apples approach, I took aramis' spreadsheet and I added data for revenue and profit then created ships with one steward and 6 staterooms with high passengers for a side by side comparison.

I changed life support to be 2000 per month instead of 4000.
Only the data for J1,J2 and J3 200 ton ships are provided.

Here is my spreadsheet link or go to aramis' thread where I added my modified snippet of his spreadsheet

It is almost 1am here and I'm tired but this is the only free time I have. Let me know if there is anything wrong that needs correction.

The summery is
For 200 ton ship with only freight cargo Profit/(Loss):
J1 44,506
J2 (8,260)
J3 (73,473)

For 200 ton ship with less cargo but a steward servicing 6 high passengers Profit/(Loss):
J1 31,006
J2 7,840
J3 (15,773)

These figures assume a full passenger and cargo load.

 

[Thanos]

This is all based on the core rule book (which = shamful) did the expanded rules improve this mess any?

 

[HG_B]

This is all based on the core rule book (which = shamful) did the expanded rules improve this mess any?

Yes. in many cases MgT has taken already broken rules from earlier and simply regurgitated them.

 

[rancke]

Yes. in many cases MgT has taken already broken rules from earlier and simply regurgitated them.

Indeed. A sad waste of one more opportunity to finally Do Traveller Right.


Hans

 

[Xenon]

with the merchant prince book.... it may be considered somewhat better. the fact is that you get more complex rules, with more ways to fail, and conditional ways to make more money. compared to core, the merchant prince rules leave the traders worse off as a default (unless its a j3+ ship, then freight is better than core). the expanded chart also means that speculative trade makes even more money.

i ran a game once, and the players ended up making money hand over fist because one of them had a decent broker skill and did speculative trade. some of the speculative prices dont make much sense to me, by the RAW. the game ultimately failed because they got bored in the sandbox, after running away from every plot hook i offered them.

as i see it, the speculative trade rules are too good as written. what we really need is a market fluctuation table, and maybe a table to determine the broker bonus of those at the port who are doing business.

traveller is not a good economic simulator, as it lacks a lot of the necessary macroeconomics of bulk trade- in many cases, i must assume that there is a serious shortage of starships, because prices remain very inelastic no matter how much trade we observe to take place. but it is still far better than many other systems on the market today which lack any such option at all.

 

[simonh]

as i see it, the speculative trade rules are too good as written. what we really need is a market fluctuation table, and maybe a table to determine the broker bonus of those at the port who are doing business.

Agreed, I think the RAW represent trade during a reasonably affluent period in a safe region. What the rules need is a set of dials (modifiers) to adjust for general boom/bust conditions, more or fewer competing traders, varying risk premiums and insurance costs in regions with higher or lower criminal or piratical activity or warfare.

This way for example if there's a regional conflict brewing the GM can foreshadow upcoming events in news broadcasts, gradually factor this in through modifiers to the trade rolls and then bring events home through adventure situations.

traveller is not a good economic simulator, as it lacks a lot of the necessary macroeconomics of bulk trade- in many cases, i must assume that there is a serious shortage of starships, because prices remain very inelastic no matter how much trade we observe to take place. but it is still far better than many other systems on the market today which lack any such option at all.

I generally assume that a single player operated trader, even a subsidised merchant, is so insignificant at an economic level that, unless the players are dealing in a seriously rare and special commodity, they have no effect on the wider market. I'm not saying their actions are inconsequential - they can be very important if not vital to their specific trading partners and patrons - but they are just too small to affect supply or demand in all but the most specialised goods.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Shonner]

Are there players who are playing the Mongoose rules as just a solo player, doing trading like it was a boardgame?

 

[Marchand]

Are there players who are playing the Mongoose rules as just a solo player, doing trading like it was a boardgame?

I do a bit of that.

For my most recent go, a Type A paying no salaries (crew are shareholders) were KCr62 up on the first month of pottering about District 268 up near Bowman - not the most lucrative territory. That was just from freight and passengers as starting capital was thin. So KCr41 profit if salaries counted too.

I really like MGT Merchant Prince, particularly the freight rate negotiation rules. I always liked the ideas in GURPS Far Trader and now the essence of it is ported over to MGT for me.

 

[aramis]

That sounds broken too me.
Maintainence exceeding the payments on a new vehicle for something that was properly maintained seems excessive. I agree that maintainence should increase with age, but not that much. YMMV

Coming back at this a few years later - I asked a buddy how much he was spending on keeping his hawg running (a 1967 pan-head)... He said, and I quote, "It'd be cheaper to buy a new V-Rod than ride this bitch to and from work"...

(I'm running some similar numbers for a related project... and trying to figure out how to work it.)

 

[kilemall]

Lost income IS an expense.

The price per ton of cargo is the cost of shipping that much non-drive non-controls non-fuel non-crew-quarters (excepting stewards) tonnage. In essence, you have to pay to ship the stateroom. And at the costs to the ship, not the price listed in the book.

On a J1, that varies by tonnage; when using the methodology to fix the prices overall so that you have actual reasons for trade, you have to fix prices so that people can both afford the ships and many many more can afford the passages aboard them.

I'm not sure I buy the reasoning re: lost profit opportunity. Seems to me the appropriate analysis is profit per ton, which means dividing up that passage ticket by 4 or 5 or whatever tons, and doing the same for the additional steward 'tonnage' and salary.

And as I have said elsewhere, all the systems refuse to deal in the price/value/demand of time that higher jump values should obtain. This system I think tried to, but in a very bad way.

I do agree with the original thesis, I got the core rulebook for $1 as a 'might as well' purchase and was immediately repulsed by the fee structure. I don't know that I am going to bother going into the minutae of how badly it's broken, I just know I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.

 

[kilemall]

Coming back at this a few years later - I asked a buddy how much he was spending on keeping his hawg running (a 1967 pan-head)... He said, and I quote, "It'd be cheaper to buy a new V-Rod than ride this bitch to and from work"...

(I'm running some similar numbers for a related project... and trying to figure out how to work it.)

I have to say, maintenance certainly CAN jump with age, rarity of spare parts, people not familiar with peculiarities of X system because one hasn't come in for servicing in 15 years, more subsystems wear out and break, etc.