Free Traders - stuck in star clusters?

[nathanbibb]

Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but something has been bothering me since I started testing out the CT trading rules (I'm totally new to Traveller here):

If you are a Merchant that is lucky enough to muster out with a Free Trader, you have a bit of dept over your head and will need to jump from world to world making a buck. All this sounds like a good incentive to adventure, but since the Free Trader is only capable of Jump-1, does that mean that it is limited to only it's local star cluster? No way to move to other subsectors?

Has anyone dealt with this somehow, or are there portions of the rules I'm missing? Holding extra fuel in the cargo bay, maybe?

 

[McPerth]

Canonically it has been so. Free and Fat mechants, both being jump 1 capable, are mostly restricted to the mains (chains of worlds able to be traveller by J1 ship), while the far trader and larger companies (with their higher jump ships) take care for trade among those mains.

Fortunately for those damp traders, those mains are common enough in the Imperium for them to have a niche in the Imperial inernal trade.

And in any case, see that collapsible tanks in the hold of a free/fat trader allow them for higher jumps (albeit they take 2 weeks at least) if they want to change the Main they are opperating in (albeit using them regularly will lead to being broke to any Free Trader master).

 

[tim_manley]

collapsible tanks in the hold of a free/fat trader allow them for higher jumps (albeit they take 2 weeks at least) if they want to change the Main they are opperating in.

This is exactly how we did it. Collapsible tanks able to carry enough fuel for another J1 enabled the ship to "hop" from cluster to cluster, or to one of those isolated worlds.

 

[McPerth]

This is exactly how we did it. Collapsible tanks able to carry enough fuel for another J1 enabled the ship to "hop" from cluster to cluster, or to one of those isolated worlds.

To use them to reach one of those isolated worlds is courting banckrupcy, as it takes 2 weeks to reach what a far trader may in one (so making one wxtra improductive week per jump).

Using them to swap from one main to another may be another thing, if the main one is in is overcrowded with such traders or a richest route is in the nearly one.

In any case, I'd expect it to be an exceptional case when one such ships uses this 2 jump (that does not meano jump 2) capacity, even if it is an option open for those exceptional cases...

And, off course, those reasonings asume the ship is going on for profit, if already paid in full and used for other uses, things fully change.

 

[tim_manley]

Well, my players used the free traders for cargo and passengers as secondary to pretty much everything else. So having the ability to take x3 J1 was more important to them than running profit by taking 2 weeks instead of 1 to try and compete.

Or they were using those x2 J1 trips to smuggle something to some amber or red zone world for bigger profit.

 

[Vladika]

One of the very best clusters for profit, as well as adventuring, is the Sword Worlds Main. A very good mix of trade classifications to be had there.

 

[rancke]

To use them to reach one of those isolated worlds is courting banckrupcy, as it takes 2 weeks to reach what a far trader may in one (so making one wxtra improductive week per jump).

Onew problem with the classic picture of (jump-1) free traders working their way up and down a main is that it's not just empty hexes that involves (almost) unproductive jumps. Low-population worlds are also pretty unproductive. Not quite as bad as empty hexes, granted, since you can buy fuel and get a few passengers and bits of cargo, but pretty bad even so. So jump-1 free traders would mostly go back and forth over the same strecth of the main bordered by low-profit worlds at each end.

As you say, deliberately switching from one overcrowded chain of worlds to another chain of worlds will happen, but a free trader will try to keep the number of times it happens down.

For this reason I will always provide my players with a jump-2 ship if I run a free trader campaign.


Hans

 

[tim_manley]

I will always provide my players with a jump-2 ship if I run a free trader campaign.

I always made them figure out how to get their own if they didn't want what htey mustered out with. Or, if they mustered out with nothing, then how do they go about getting a ship....

 

[rancke]

I always made them figure out how to get their own if they didn't want what htey mustered out with. Or, if they mustered out with nothing, then how do they go about getting a ship....

To me a ship is a plot device, not a piece of equipment. If I want to run a campaign where the PCs control a ship, I'll provide a ship; if I want to run a campaign where the PCs don't have a ship, they don't get a ship just because a random roll on the mustering out tables says they do.


Hans

 

[tim_manley]

To me a ship is a plot device, not a piece of equipment. If I want to run a campaign where the PCs control a ship, I'll provide a ship; if I want to run a campaign where the PCs don't have a ship, they don't get a ship just because a random roll on the mustering out tables says they do.


Hans

Having to figure out how to get a ship is a plot device. It's the pilot episode of the series so to speak. But, you're the GM and the creator so how you want to do it I the way you do it -- there is right or wrong.

I know I've had players "inherit" ships, or they discover abandoned ships that I've designed and they take over. The most fun though is having a few hooks in the wings ready for me to pull out and watching them hash it out and figure out the problem. Quite often they come up with ways I hadn't anticipated and I ad-lib. Some of the most fun games I've ever had in fact.

 

[McPerth]

Onew problem with the classic picture of (jump-1) free traders working their way up and down a main is that it's not just empty hexes that involves (almost) unproductive jumps. Low-population worlds are also pretty unproductive. Not quite as bad as empty hexes, granted, since you can buy fuel and get a few passengers and bits of cargo, but pretty bad even so. So jump-1 free traders would mostly go back and forth over the same strecth of the main bordered by low-profit worlds at each end.

The problem with this reasoning (while I agree on it) is that rules make as easy to sell your cargoes to a LoPop planet as to a HiPop one, the same way as they don't take into account many things as TL, etc. And Merchant Prince only makes this worse.

You can well sell 100 dtons of holovideos to a planet with only some hundreds of TL 2 people, if those are the planet stats. you can even obtain a good price due to TL change. What will they do with them escapes my reasoning .

 

[tim_manley]

The problem with this reasoning (while I agree on it) is that rules make as easy to sell your cargoes to a LoPop planet as to a HiPop one, the same way as they don't take into account many things as TL, etc. And Merchant Prince only makes this worse.

You can well sell 100 dtons of holovideos to a planet with only some hundreds of TL 2 people, if those are the planet stats. you can even obtain a good price due to TL change. What will they do with them escapes my reasoning .

So, my player/video combination utilities that have all of Star Vixxxen videos I'm sure can sell for almost anything you want on a TL2 world.

Want gemstones? Sure, here's as much as you can carry, we'll take your entire cargo hold of those vids....

 

[rancke]

The problem with this reasoning (while I agree on it) is that rules make as easy to sell your cargoes to a LoPop planet as to a HiPop one, the same way as they don't take into account many things as TL, etc. And Merchant Prince only makes this worse.

You can well sell 100 dtons of holovideos to a planet with only some hundreds of TL 2 people, if those are the planet stats. you can even obtain a good price due to TL change. What will they do with them escapes my reasoning .

Tell me about it. Once long ago I was a player in a campaign run by a By-the-Book referee. The campaign started slipping out of his hands when he allowed us to fill the entire cargo bay of our free trader with computers bought at 30% of cost. Then we jumped around from world to world until we found one that paid 300% for computers.

That was a world with a population level of 4. We unloaded the entire lot. Because the rules said we could.

After that we played the trade system like a fiddle for two or three sessions. By the time we grew tired of that we had a fortune of three billion credits. We decided to set up bank accounts of a quarter of a billion credits for each PC, just to have something to fall back upon in case of bad luck, and then looked around for something to invest the other two billion in.


Hans


PS. What do you people think of an extra rule for the trade system (any trade system, take your pick) that restricts the amount of money you can sell anything for to, say, 10% of the world's GWP?

 

[rancke]

So, my player/video combination utilities that have all of Star Vixxxen videos I'm sure can sell for almost anything you want on a TL2 world.

Want gemstones? Sure, here's as much as you can carry, we'll take your entire cargo hold of those vids....

200 TL2 people probably do not have as many gemstones as you can carry. But they could have a few bead necklaces. Enough to let you break even on one of your video players.


Hans

 

[tim_manley]

200 TL2 people probably do not have as many gemstones as you can carry. But they could have a few bead necklaces. Enough to let you break even on one of your video players.


Hans

Good point -- didn't really think about the "only 200 people" thing and focused on the TL2 thing...

But then, hundreds of people on a population is not sustainable. They're either colonists (IMO) or dying. But I think that's another thread.

 

[nathanbibb]

After that we played the trade system like a fiddle for two or three sessions.

I have to say, in the limited amount of play testing I have done with the trade system (using an ex-Merchant with Admin-3), my little trading company was making money hand over fist. Starting with only 160,000 Cr, by the end of one quarter they were at 2.5 MCr. But I guess at that rate it would be years before they would get to the billions of credits, or even enough to buy a new ship and increase the earnings.

Of course there's always the chance I'm doing something wrong...

 

[rancke]

I have to say, in the limited amount of play testing I have done with the trade system (using an ex-Merchant with Admin-3), my little trading company was making money hand over fist. Starting with only 160,000 Cr, by the end of one quarter they were at 2.5 MCr. But I guess at that rate it would be years before they would get to the billions of credits, or even enough to buy a new ship and increase the earnings.

You have to have a nest egg that will allow you to not sell your cargo if you don't get a good offer. Jump around. Whenever you find something expensive at a good discount, fill up. Jump around some more. Wait until you get a good offer on you multi-million credit cargo, then sell.


Hans

 

[JimMarn]

200 TL2 people probably do not have as many gemstones as you can carry. But they could have a few bead necklaces. Enough to let you break even on one of your video players.


Hans

I think it would differ by millenia and civilization. Some would have large amounts of gem stones, some would likley have less than a dozen or so and the monarch would have most of them.

Of course, some human civilizations have had differing ideas on what a precious stone was than others.

 

[rancke]

I think it would differ by millenia and civilization. Some would have large amounts of gem stones, some would likley have less than a dozen or so and the monarch would have most of them.

Well, 200 people are unlikely to have accumulated a great store of anything.

And then there's the fact that these people are in contact with the rest of the universe. There was another free trader visited just the other year. And a couple of years before that. And...

So whatever paltry store of riches those people used to have has probably been expended years ago and whatever they have gathered since then earmarked for something useful like rifles or cough syrup or broad-spectrum vaccines or a bolt of silk or carpenter's tools.

TL2 people are primitive, not stupid. (As Paul Drye put it).


Hans

 

[Condottiere]

Get one of the crew members to wear a black turtleneck and jeans, book an auditorium, and tell the populace how they're not purchasing a product, but buying into a lifestyle.