Industries in a sci-fi setting

[kilemall]

There are likely Free Trade Zones, known as Foreign Trade Zones in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-trade_zone


The idea being to ship in parts, do assembly work in the US, then assuming the finished product does not cross out of the zone but gets shipped out of country, does not pay taxes.
We can probably assume a lot of planets will operate this sort of thing, a local extension of extrality to a degree, capturing employment dollars without lowering tax revenue and/or barriers to destructive internal economy/society wrecking imports.
So the starport and immediate startown beyond may have a large industrial district and attendant population, and a good deal of interstellar cargo coming in and out servicing those industries.
The locals may be assembling and handling much higher TL items then they could afford or the world can support economically, which is fodder for all manner of adventure.


Most of that life support cost for crew and passengers are going to be in the form of supplies, food and services already noted, so even your average Free Trader is going to be spending Cr20000+ per week in port and the larger liners/ship Cr100000+ per trip. Even with a small ship universe and less then 500 ship per week ports, 100 ships spending say an average of Cr60000 each makes for a 6Mcr per week business- plenty of room for services to make bank.

Don't forget services the Travellers, either crew speculators or ship operators do not normally pay or get in the income stream for but would be there too- the cargo handling warehousing and customs work.


We can probably also assume that beyond a certain TL most of these supply companies are going to be operating specialized makers in a starport/FTZ and only 'importing' cheap raw materials from the planet.

C and D starports will of course likely have all sorts of 'unofficial' support services that may- or may not but charge to try anyway- fix your ship or provide fuel at non-standard rates, quality, etc.

We can also likely assume some extralegal warehousing and import/export industries, ones that legally exist in the starport beyond the reach of the planet's FTZ rules but which handle items illegal on the world. They would be the ones looking to circumvent the rules, most likely by raw bribery rather then deception/masking.


Some planets will have 'exports' that will be illegal in the interstellar polity, or trying to export items the world does not want exported or people to escape. There will be 'services' for that too.


Vehicle rental if the adventurers don't have one, for in-port travel and work or world transport.




Don't forget orbital industries- a lot of larger ships that never land requiring the services mentioned coupled with industries that use free solar energy, cheap shipped in-system resources and take advantage of LEO FTZs means a hive of activity at the Up station.

I particularly like the idea of orbital locals venturing between ships in their ratty grav vehicles, peddling food or wares directly like a seaport sampan.



Now if we are talking scifi industry in general not specific to starports, that's a whole nother post.

 

[kilemall]

Or consider the ABC stores in Hawaii. A chain of convenience stores.

And, boy, are they convenient. You thought Starbucks saturated your community? You should see the ABC stores. (Mind, from my house, I know of 1 2 3 4 5 6

They are EVERYWHERE. They have one or two per block in Waikiki (and the blocks are short there).

From an article:

7-11 used to be like that in Dallas. They have become a bit more rationally spaced in their placement now.

 

[Whipsnade]

There are likely Free Trade Zones, known as Foreign Trade Zones in the US.

Yup, those and the so-called "bonded logistic parks" are just extensions and expansions of the the older bonded warehouse concept. However, while different levels of extrality are extended to those areas they are are not inside a port. They may be near a port or even abut a port, but they're rarely within the physical boundaries of a port.

The idea behind FTZs and the like is to add the salaries and wages from labor within those zones to the local economy by forgoing all or most of the proceeds from tariffs which would normally be assessed on the goods in those zones.

 

[Enoki]

I have no doubt that there would be whole, major industries that exist in the Traveller setting that we are clueless about even existing. Imagine living say, 150 years ago (1868).

You'd have absolutely no clue something like the Internet, computers, cell phones, etc., could exist. Modern cars, aircraft, etc., would be understandable but not in the form or capability they exist today in. A "smart" home? No clue in 1868.

You wouldn't know about plate tectonics, what the bottom of the oceans look like, how weather actually works, the jet stream, that the sun is a fusion bomb perpetually going off... in fact, you'd know nothing about anything nuclear...

Something as simple as the electric light would be miraculous. A totally automated factory would be nearly inconceivable.

Now we move to a future where there is interstellar travel, planets that have very different conditions than Earth, and thousands of years of invention. So, I'd say there would be a wide range of industries and services we have no clue about existing there.

 

[nobby-w]

[ . . . ]
Now we move to a future where there is interstellar travel, planets that have very different conditions than Earth, and thousands of years of invention. So, I'd say there would be a wide range of industries and services we have no clue about existing there.

That's pretty much the point of the original posting. I'm looking for some speculative ideas about industries that one can't get just by reading the trade category lists I linked to. The question is an invitation to come up with some ideas and discuss their whys and wherefores.

 

[kilemall]

That's pretty much the point of the original posting. I'm looking for some speculative ideas about industries that one can't get just by reading the trade category lists I linked to. The question is an invitation to come up with some ideas and discuss their whys and wherefores.

The listing of items you mentioned seemed starport support in nature, so that's why I didn't go whole hog.


Alright, let's start with one of my personal bugs- the chemical industry.


A lot of the technology we utilize has chemicals at its root, whether power, manufacturing, lubrication, materials technology, or food.


But the chemical processes we use is deeply affected by the peculiar mix of resources we have here.


We can heat chemicals for processing using oxygen, use water as a solvent, use minerals because we have a crust and a lot of heavy metals deposited therein, and a protective atmosphere shielding all those minerals and liquids from UV/gamma bombardment and allowing for processes to radiate away that heat.


The very minerals we use for common processes we take for granted is 'not natural' in the sense that our form of life overran the previous methane inhabitants and oxygenated the world. Most of the world's useful minerals were formed or altered into varying oxides by this process.


So the many rock worlds that have some version of methane atmosphere will have a very different materials base and potential economic products.


Large scale chemical processing often requires a lot of water, and of course can potentially pollute a lot of it. A planet with lower hydrographics may have a great deal more competition for water use, stringent pollution control, and entirely different processes that are more 'dry' and cost more for products that we consider common, but possibly be forced to create new products with even better properties.


Exochemical engineering is going to be different and present challenges and unforeseen benefits.



Then consider the baseline Traveller high tech- gravitics, nuclear manipulation, fusion. We usually think of these in manufacturing for armor and starships, hard metal, but they also fit straight into the wheelhouse of chemical processing.


Common gigapascal pressures, direct subatomic alteration, fusion bottle shielding, cheap power and heat- these will likely allow massive advances in the chemical arts.


On a practical game basis, it would manifest as products with amazing properties- the never gets dirty clothing fabric, sticky chemical surfaces that can clamp onto anything with subatomic bonding activated by electricity, the various plascretes, food synthesized out of rocks, etc.


You can generate these things by thinking of the mundane things that need doing and giving related technologies a boost, including chemical. Then backtrack why people would have come up with it in the first place and the background industrial processes that would make it 100-1000x cheaper to make in one place over another.


Technology is invented to solve problems and create opportunity, and there will be plenty of both in space colonization. Making a technology like exochemistry a part of world building will help cement those worlds as 'could be real' places.

 

[nobby-w]

The listing of items you mentioned seemed starport support in nature, so that's why I didn't go whole hog.
[ . . . ]

Maybe it will help if I explain what I'm trying to do. This is a world building exercise of sorts. I'm looking to design some representative locations and go right down into detail answering the question of 'what's in this location?' It's a sort of thought experiment to be able to fill out background colour.

There are some links below for maps and items I have done and some items that are larger and work in progress. There are also a bunch of smaller locations and supporting bumf in a onenote document but that's not really practical to post here.

Posting about a small town -
Map of large island: http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Gallery/index.php?n=2704
Map of region (microclimate in an old impact crater): http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Gallery/index.php?n=2703
Study of small town: http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Gallery/index.php?n=2702 Note that this also has some blurb about the contents of the locations.

High level map of a mega city - http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Gallery/index.php?n=2645 I did this largely to (a) teach myself how to use Adobe Illustrator and (b) to lay out the major regions in the city and make a framework to hang the detail off.

Incomplete PDF of the startown around a major starport: http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/attachment.php?attachmentid=1693&d=1538847651 This is work in progress, and is an exercise in filling out enough of a major startown with stuff a party can interact with. I don't necessarily intend to block out all of it in detail but I probably will do several neighbourhoods in the level of detail of the filled in area, along with the notes.

Scratch file for designing a space station with a public high port: http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/attachment.php?attachmentid=1694&d=1538847711 This one is really intended to be a sort of microcosm of a larger station.

The end goal is to (a) have some locations that I can use and (b) go through a process of back-filling the sort of mundane detail in a universe by thinking it down to specifics. I'm hoping it will make my games quite a bit richer. There is still quite a bit of thought to go into questions of what sort of technology and industry the universe has - what does the banal and mundane look do and how does it work?

I've done some thinking and research and I asked this question to get some views on it and perhaps stir up some sort of discussion. The intention is to get some ideas on what sort of businesses, facilities or other features one might find in various locations a party might frequent, for example:

• A high-port space station, in particularly a more seedy one run by parties with their own agency that might not be quite aligned with those of the local state actors (IMTU Smegulons, stateless space dwellers a bit like the Belters from the Expanse).
• A large, bustling seedy startown in a major starport.
• Downtown in a large and somewhat lawless city
• Smaller starports on frontier or backwater worlds deep in the neutral zone.
• A network of old spacegoing facilities, once built in a large colonial land grab and as logistic support for military activity. Now abandoned and substantially squatted by Smegulons.
• Various types of societies in different worlds in the region.
• Facilities that might be made available to pirates or other riffraff by state actors willing to turn a blind eye.

... and so forth

 

[Black Vulmea]

The end goal is to (a) have some locations that I can use and (b) go through a process of back-filling the sort of mundane detail in a universe by thinking it down to specifics. I'm hoping it will make my games quite a bit richer.

First, your maps are really, really impressive. Are you planning on turning the starport concourse into something like geomorphs?

I rarely map anything in Traveller down to this level of detail because the players' characters move around too much to make it worthwhile - it would be a fool's errand for me to map a concourse, or a startown, to this level of specificity when the adventurers will visit it once in a few months of travel. If it's a neighborhood or station or facility the adventurers are going to explore for some reason, maybe, but very rarely does a trip to a startown bar on a patron search devolve into a dungeon crawl which requires this much detail, awesome as it is.

What's more useful to me are lists which help me to improvise on the fly, that and a lot of familiar real-world locations which I recycle endlessly. When I ran a swashbuckling campaign using Flashing Blades, frex, the players never knew that most of their duels in Paris were fought on the streets and alleys and courtyards of New Orleans Square at Disneyland.

For Traveller, one of my most important tools for depicting a location is a comparative technology chart: how does a tech level 9 trip to the doctor differ from the same trip at tech level A and tech level E?

Which leads me back to why I asked about the geomorphs. That's the kind of thing I find endlessly useful, again because so much of my actual at-the-table refereeing involves improvising.

One more thought, kinda at right angles to this, about mapping a startown or any other location in Traveller: get away from two dimensions. In a world with near-ubiquitous gravitic travel, frex, money will go up - terraces, penthouses should be the locations for affluent businesses and residences, while the ground level should be for the underclass.

 

[nobby-w]

A few interesting points here.

[ . . . ] Are you planning on turning the starport concourse into something like geomorphs?

I had the vague notion of something like that, although no specific plans to. It's in a pretty rough state at the moment and I've really only done the bits around the passenger concourse.

I rarely map anything in Traveller down to this level of detail because the players' characters move around too much to make it worthwhile [ . . . ]

I'm doing some sample locations in detail as a thought exercise to come up with some background material. It's easy to come up with a trite list but takes a bit more thought to fill out something with a bit of verisimilitude. I think my trite lists and encounter tables will be much better for having done some of these designs in detail and spending some time designing these will improve my ad-libs as well. Also, I'm trying to put a bit of colour into the locations - specific NPCs and suchlike. The process of designing the whole location engages bits of my brain that facilitate the creative work.

The maps and fleshed out locations will be a sort of side effect. They are being driven by some adventures I'm writing for a campaign. It's all a part of a world-building exercise; the end goal is to make a region that the party hangs out in - a sort of west marches style campaign setting where the locations can be re-used. To that end, i'm also trying to map out a spacer community and subculture that the party would be embedded in and have some reason to invest in contacts within that setting (think of a sort of neutral zone between some major polities).

[ . . . ]Which leads me back to why I asked about the geomorphs. That's the kind of thing I find endlessly useful, again because so much of my actual at-the-table refereeing involves improvising.[ . . . ]

I'll think about that. That would be quite a useful format and might make a use for the maps. One could, perhaps do several versions of each block - for example, the town could have versions with and without the cult, or with a military garrison, a mining village, or perhaps overrun by chamax bugs.

[ . . . ]One more thought, kinda at right angles to this, about mapping a startown or any other location in Traveller: get away from two dimensions. In a world with near-ubiquitous gravitic travel, frex, money will go up - terraces, penthouses should be the locations for affluent businesses and residences, while the ground level should be for the underclass.

I have thought about trying to make it more 3-dimensional, with a couple of levels of pedestrian concourse and shops/businesses in some regions at least. This really fell down on the platform - I really don't want to get into 3D modelling for this. One could do something with layers on AI. Being next to a starport, I don't think most of the buildings will be all that tall. However, one could do something similar for Downtown Vetawa.

 

[Black Vulmea]

It's in a pretty rough state at the moment and I've really only done the bits around the passenger concourse.

What you've done so far is really, really good.

I'm doing some sample locations in detail as a thought exercise to come up with some background material.

I can totally see how that would work - makes perfect sense.

It's easy to come up with a trite list but takes a bit more thought to fill out something with a bit of verisimilitude. I think my trite lists and encounter tables will be much better for having done some of these designs in detail and spending some time designing these will improve my ad-libs as well.

Developing a useful and flavorful at-the-table random generator is a lot harder than it looks.

Also, I'm trying to put a bit of colour into the locations - specific NPCs and suchlike.

It's really important to me as a referee that planets and star systems the travellers visit don't become a grey blur. Part of my prep involves determining what is distinctive about the dot on the hex map and sophonts who live there, and from there I can develop non-player characters who are hopefully interesting and memorable.

I described my approach to non-player characters as a social sandbox, in which characters and relationships are akin to hallways and rooms, but I agree that a good location as an intersection of non-player characters can be important as well - the role of the tavern in Backswords & Bucklers comes to mind. In my experience, most of my locations are rife with npcs. but the matrix in which the location is set remains less defined until it needs to be defined; frex, a spacer's hangout might get a fair amount of detail, but not every joint in Startown, or even the merchants next door, unless or until they become directly relevant.

I also look for stuff akin to the wine list - in my Traveller campaign, it's stuff like the TAS News Service feed, or the stock exchanges, which help to build out the larger setting.

Anyway, great work so far, nobby - looking forward to seeing more.

 

[flykiller]

any more work on this?

 

[Sir Brad]

I've got "Free Trader Jo" and "Free Trader Joe" they sell personal supplies to Ships crews, normally the kind of stuff the line you work for would supply from Ships or Port Stores but Free Traders and Freebooters wouldn't, you still see crew from Merchant Lines as well as Scouts & Navy personal since they have a better selection and higher quality options.

Both companies compete agresivaly with each other, if you go back throw around 30 layers of holding companies they are both owned by the same people.