Help Wanted regarding Economics in MgT

[Hal]

Hi Guys,
As the subject line of this thread might suggest, I'm looking for input on the economics section of MgT.

As fate would have it, I started working on automating via VB.NET, the process for freight lots and such for use with GURPS TRAVELLER FAR TRADER. I'm running into difficulties based on the fact that the rules in that book do not seem to work with Adventure class ships (aka Beowulf, Empress Marava, etc) such that they can operate in a standard Traveller Universe without going bankrupt within the first year - hell, the first couple of MONTHS. The only way for me to fix this issue and others I've identified, is to either change the rules/numbers until the Adventure class ships can survive financially, or to start looking at other rules systems for Traveller and see if those rules might be better.

Classic Traveller's freight rate amounts leave me cold, as they are far too unrealistic for me to use in my campaign. GURPS FAR TRADER has issues that may not be resolvable. That leaves the other versions of Traveller.

T5 rules seem to boil down to a rehash of the older MERCHANT PRINCE rules with some modifications. Available passengers for any of the passenger types works out to being equal to 2d6-7+Population Rating + skill bonus of some type depending upon passenger type.

So, although I've purchased the Mongoose Traveller Main Rule Book and MERCHANT PRINCE - I've not really gone through them in other than a cursory manner. At the time - my group wasn't into Traveller, and the other reason being, my group is GURPS oriented. So, the Role playing vehicle of choice is GURPS, but it doesn't mean I can't borrow from other game systems, those mechanisms that I like

To that end, I would like to ask, has anyone actually used the merchant rules, and the rules for freight rates, etc? Any pitfalls? Any particular thing you like or don't like about the rules so I can maybe get a head start on trying to adapt things to work in case I can't get GURPS FAR TRADER to work to my satisfaction?

 

[McPerth]

May I suggest you to check the Tramp Trade simulator presented by foleypt in this thread?

It can give you some insights in MgT trade system and about its profitability with any ship you might adapt to it (and you night have some nice time by playing it as well).

 

[Timerover51]

None of the Traveller economics systems for star ship operation work very well. The idea was to force the players into speculation. The problem with that it that financing institutions are not going to lend money for star ship construction if the basis is speculation. I have reworked the economic rules to work, but they are definitely not canon.

 

[aramis]

None of the Traveller economics systems for star ship operation work very well. The idea was to force the players into speculation. The problem with that it that financing institutions are not going to lend money for star ship construction if the basis is speculation. I have reworked the economic rules to work, but they are definitely not canon.

Note that, historically, banks did finance merchanting expeditions on the basis of speculative trade right up until the transatlantic telegraph cables were in use. As long as the fastest means of communication was putting the message aboard a ship, speculative trade was the default mode. Once faster communication became reliable (telegraph for coastal, transatlantic cable telegraph for trans-atlantic trade), freight (demand trade) rapidly became the norm. Now, with much faster commo than even air travel, almost all (99%+) of trade is on-demand. But in the 1810's, it was not uncommon for a ship to arrive to sell off the cargo on the quays to local expediters. And if they didn't, it was because the line owned a warehouse at both ends, and owned the cargo right until it left the far warehouse.

Traveller trade needs to be looked at in the light of 1700's and early 1800's trade dynamics, not early 2000's.

 

[Hal]

Traveller trade needs to be looked at in the light of 1700's and early 1800's trade dynamics, not early 2000's.

I'm seeing that even with a per parsec payment plan, per GURPS TRAVELLER FAR TRADER, that things look a little "dicey". Ironically - it seems that the BEST way to make money for a tramp freighter in Far Trader (and I'm still exploring this, so don't take this as writ in stone yet!) is to take the LONG distance freight contracts as opposed to short distance. Why?

Because it is one week in jump, 1 maybe 2 days to get refueled (depends on whether the fuel is brought out to a ship outside of a 100 diameter limit, or the world is small in diameter, etc), and then get back into jump space. If you're paid per parsec carried, and you can get a freight load to travel 13 parsecs for a Jump-2 ship - that works out to roughly 7 jumps, in about 59 days worth of time - meanwhile, you're getting paid for 13 parsec's worth of journeying. A standard 14 day jump schedule, getting paid to travel 2 parsecs - makes less per day, than jumping 13 parsecs and getting paid at the end of the journey.

Which brings me to another "interesting tidbit". Remember the comments made about the Ministry of Weights and Measures - making certain that all the worlds embrace the same units of time as is common to Terra? Ie, 24 hours to a day, 365 days to a year?

How does the Imperium measure months (as in making monthly payments on the ship loan) if there are no MONTHS in the Imperial calendar?

 

[Hal]

May I suggest you to check the Tramp Trade simulator presented by foleypt in this thread?

It can give you some insights in MgT trade system and about its profitability with any ship you might adapt to it (and you night have some nice time by playing it as well).

I'll have to give it a try when I can get my other computer up and running.

 

[Timerover51]

Note that, historically, banks did finance merchanting expeditions on the basis of speculative trade right up until the transatlantic telegraph cables were in use. As long as the fastest means of communication was putting the message aboard a ship, speculative trade was the default mode. Once faster communication became reliable (telegraph for coastal, transatlantic cable telegraph for trans-atlantic trade), freight (demand trade) rapidly became the norm. Now, with much faster commo than even air travel, almost all (99%+) of trade is on-demand. But in the 1810's, it was not uncommon for a ship to arrive to sell off the cargo on the quays to local expediters. And if they didn't, it was because the line owned a warehouse at both ends, and owned the cargo right until it left the far warehouse.

Traveller trade needs to be looked at in the light of 1700's and early 1800's trade dynamics, not early 2000's.

We will continue to disagree on this. Even allowing for the much higher purchasing power of funds in the 1700s, ships were not that expensive. Starships are a different order of magnitude. But that is a discussion for another thread, not this one.

 

[Thanos]

How does the Imperium measure months (as in making monthly payments on the ship loan) if there are no MONTHS in the Imperial calendar?

It does. 12 of them. 30 days each.

 

[Hal]

It does. 12 of them. 30 days each.

365 days in a year, 1 day set aside for the birth of the Third Imperium....

365-1 = 364.

12 x 30 = 360

By my count, that leaves 4 days unaccounted for

 

[Thanos]

As I understood it that day is not excepted from the calender, it's just the day they celebrate the founding of the empire.

 

[Xenon]

mongoose traveller rules are easy to break- if you get a net +9 on the chart to determine purchase price, then you can speculate with no risk. you can also drop terrible rolls and spend more time instead, so you dont even need that large of a bonus to avoid risk. once you get a larger amount of capital to invest in speculation, then the only real limit is what the starport has for sale, cargo space, and jump rating.

with gurps however, you get very different results. especially as the gurps rules for trade make considerably less money than you need to pay for your ship, on average. Mongoose by comparison gives a good enough return on hauling cargo to stay afloat if you do it right, at the cost of random character creation.

 

[aramis]

We will continue to disagree on this. Even allowing for the much higher purchasing power of funds in the 1700s, ships were not that expensive. Starships are a different order of magnitude. But that is a discussion for another thread, not this one.

Look up how Lloyds of London got started, TR. It wasn't insurance. It was financing.

 

[Timerover51]

Look up how Lloyds of London got started, TR. It wasn't insurance. It was financing.

Oddly enough, Aramis, I am well aware of how Lloyd's of London was started, having done some work for them. I just figure that an extended discussion did not belong in this thread.

 

[CosmicGamer]

How does the Imperium measure months (as in making monthly payments on the ship loan) if there are no MONTHS in the Imperial calendar?

It does. 12 of them. 30 days each.

I don't know about other versions, but based on the mongoose Library data, the year is not broken up into specific months or weeks. There is no Monday. There is no January.

Weeks of seven days and months of 28 days are used to refer to lengths of time but rarely to
establish dates.

28 day months would make 13 28 day months and one holiday per year for 365 days.

For ship mortgage, you start measuring out months from the day you buy the ship whether its day 003, day 006 or day 355 of the year. You would skip day 001, holiday.

This of course is puzzling since the core book specifically says ship payment are 480 months/40 years. But then the paragraph this is in has other errors too, so....

In some older versions of Traveller, some folks decided that ship owners did not have to make a payment the same month the ship was undergoing costly annual maintenance. So 13 months in a year but only 12 payments. However the Mongoose core rules only mention monthly maintenance - no annual maintenance. But then there is a reference to shipyards providing annual maintenance in the Library data.

Core rules has ships maintenance as .01% of the total cost of the ship per year on page 138
Page 137 says 1/12 of 0.1% of ship’s purchase price/month which would make it 12 months of undetermined length.

So there is good reason to be a bit puzzled.

Anyone have any other Mongoose references?
EDIT
Spinward Marches and Reft Sector pubs have the same text for dating system

The system uses a seven–day week (named Oneday, Twoday and
so forth) and a 365–day year. Dates within the year are given as
Day–Year. For example, 054–1105 is the 54th day of the 1105th year
since the founding of the Third Imperium.

 

[rancke]

I don't know about other versions, but based on the mongoose Library data, the year is not broken up into specific months or weeks. There is no Monday. There is no January.

There is a Oneday. There are months though we don't know their names:

"Weeks of seven days and months of 28 days are used to refer to lengths of time, but rarely to establish dates." [LDAM:23]​

For ship mortgage, you start measuring out months from the day you buy the ship whether its day 003, day 006 or day 355 of the year. You would skip day 001, holiday.

For ship mortgages there are numerous possible schemes, but none of them are canonical. The only thing we can be sure of is that there are 12 payments per year.


Hans

 

[Thanos]

From the wiki:

Calendar established at the creation of the Third Imperium as a universal calendar reform. Dates count from the founding of the Imperium, the year “zero ” Dates before zero are negative, dates after are positive. For example, Terra discovered jump drive in -2431. The Imperium was founded in zero.
The year is divided into 365 standard days, which are grouped into 52 weeks of seven days each The lengths of days and weeks is a legacy of Terran domination during the second Imperium. Days are numbered consecutively, beginning with one. The first day of the year is a holiday and is not part of any week. For example, the first day (Holiday) of the year 1116 is 001-1116. The last day of the year is 365-1116.

So I stand corrected but I could swear I read somewhere that there were twelve months.

 

[McPerth]

In some older versions of Traveller, some folks decided that ship owners did not have to make a payment the same month the ship was undergoing costly annual maintenance. So 13 months in a year but only 12 payments. However the Mongoose core rules only mention monthly maintenance - no annual maintenance. But then there is a reference to shipyards providing annual maintenance in the Library data.

Core rules has ships maintenance as .01% of the total cost of the ship per year on page 138
Page 137 says 1/12 of 0.1% of ship’s purchase price/month which would make it 12 months of undetermined length.

So there is good reason to be a bit puzzled.

Anyone have any other Mongoose references?
EDIT
Spinward Marches and Reft Sector pubs have the same text for dating system

No Mongose reference, just my interpretation about it, but I always thought the 1/12^th of standard maintenance cost per month meant that the money was put aside for the anual maintenance. As no specific rules about this anual maintenance are in MgT, yet some references to it are, I use the older versions rules for it.

Even so, the mistery of what happens with the 12 payments in a 13 month year remains...

There

"Weeks of seven days and months of 28 days are used to refer to lengths of time, but rarely to establish dates." [LDAM:23]​

Same reference (with slightly different wording) is found in MT:RC, page 42.

The year is divided into 365 standard days, which are grouped into 52 weeks of seven days each The lengths of days and weeks is a legacy of Terran domination during the second Imperium.

Again my guess, not from any canon source, but I guess the week was kept, aside from Solomani tradition, as a conveinent time unit for space travel (and so for Imperium, as it's its main ruling), being the average length of a jump.

 

[CosmicGamer]

No Mongose reference, just my interpretation about it, but I always thought the 1/12^th of standard maintenance cost per month meant that the money was put aside for the anual maintenance. As no specific rules about this anual maintenance are in MgT, yet some references to it are, I use the older versions rules for it.

I can see doing that. If it works for you, great!

But Mongoose does specifically have monthly maintenance and rules for if it is skipped.

Maintenance should be carried out each month. If maintenance is skipped or skimped on, roll 2d6 each month, with a +DM equal to the number of months skipped.

While I enjoy the mongoose version, I do have to criticize the attention to detail and lack of quality control in an effort to push out product rapidly. I've seen material taken from CT or other versions word for word or with little rewriting and little or no thought to how valid they originally were let alone how they fit into the changes made in the Mongoose version. I think the main issue here is the tendency of authors to use terminology they are accustomed to and the current calendar and 12 month mechanics of finance and payments. Once in place, even if an error, people kept it as "canon" instead of correcting it.

Another example. We have ship shares in Mongoose that can produce a varied discount on a ships cost but the mortgage financial mechanics still indicate, but don't specifically say, that exactly 20% of the ships purchase price has to be put down and the remaining 80% is what is paid off.