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Free Traders i.e. Citizen of the Galaxy

Also, the Family as per Heinlein would have no problems trading with the Galactic Space Vegans because they ate basically tofu.
 
About the only way that I can see adapting Citizen of the Galaxy to Traveller is drastically reduce the cost of the ships or simply start with the Free Traders already in place with a fairly large number of ships in existence. The problem would be when the population grows sufficiently to require a new ship. Then the ship cost becomes a major factor.

I am more comfortable basing my Free Traders on Andre Norton concept as shown in the Solar Queen series. Then the ship cost becomes a bit more doable, as long as you reduce the badly inflated cost of the ship hull. The cost of the basic ship hull makes no sense whatsoever.
 
About the only way that I can see adapting Citizen of the Galaxy to Traveller is drastically reduce the cost of the ships or simply start with the Free Traders already in place with a fairly large number of ships in existence. The problem would be when the population grows sufficiently to require a new ship. Then the ship cost becomes a major factor.
Remember it took a generation or more for a family to generate a new ship. Often it was the combination of a couple of families.

I did a generational population model years ago, for it to work the replacement rate needed to be under 3 or so. Though you still end up with a huge population. So my assumption is a fair number of them became settled folk along the way.

As a side note, I too feel the ship costs are a bit high generally I have costed commercial ships between 10% and 50%. Warship prices less so.
 
Small ships and one to a few BIG ships: dispersed structures with affordances to carry freight, smaller ships, some manufacturing capability, labs, and habitat modules.

- Drop off a "trading post" and some cargo shuttles, pick it up when the trade opportunities diminish.
- Position and replenish deep space waypoints to enable advantageous trade routes.
- Actual offices in orbitals and on dirtside for important worlds.

Depending on 'culture', you might have a "homeworld", or some arbitrary place for a regular (biannual? decadal? every generation?) family reunion/shareholder meeting.
 
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