Mega-Corporations

[rancke]

The list of Megacorporations is only the biggest, best-known, Imperium-wide MegaCorps. More have been added from time to time through-out CT publications, as needed for stories or when one of the more famous MegaCorps wouldn't fit.

The list of mega-corporations is authoritative. There are 13 of them and they are all listed in the essay about megacorporations. Merchant Prince says that the next level down is sectorwide, though it seems plausible (to me) that there are corporations that cover several sectors, maybe even several domains (just as there are subsector-wide companies that cover several subsectors). I don't recall any like that having been added in any CT publications, though.

We also learn something of the workings of Tukera in The Traveller Adventure, for example that it has a subsidiary, Akerut, for shipping within the Spinward Marches (implying probably other subsidiaries for similar purposes in other sectors); it has its own security service, the Vemene; and its inter-division communications are poor enough that a high level exec can divert corporate assets and personnel for his own get-richer-quicker scheme.

There is one more canonical subsidiary, Keratu in the Forquee Subsector (Subsector G of Massilia) mentioned in Arrival Vengeance, and two more non-canonical mentioned in JTAS Online, Ekatur in Regina and Ketaru in Pretoria.

Oberlindes is a sectorwide, maybe domain wide. Not all the described canonical megacorps are imperium wide.

(as of 1116) Oberlindes is firmly established in Regina, has recently moved into Aramis, and has a passenger line to Rhylanor. Possibly also lines to worlds in Lanth, Vilis and Jewell, but that hasn't been established. It's not a sector-wide company by any stretch of the definition.

I thought the criteria for being a MegaCorp was that it HAD to be Imperium-wide?

No. It's the Limited Imperial Charter.

No, it's the being Imperium-wide, just as SS thought. Companies need an Imperial charter to engage in interstellar transportation, that's all. It can be a two-ship company running between Rhylanor and Porozlo.


Hans

 

[ShadowHawke]

Just like the hundreds of people over the last three decades who've used trade mechanisms, pay scales, retirement income, trade classifications, Striker, TCS, HG2, and god knows what else to "derive" everything from planetary to duchy to imperial budget, Shadowhawk is attempting too much with far too little. It has t worked since 1977 and it isn't going to work now.

Yeah I understand that. But given the group of people on this board primarily devoted to Traveller, I would imagine we have the capability of building some form of UWP that represents import/export GWP/RU factors in a manner that all players would have a better idea how the systems work.

i just read the RU thread somewhere here where the negative efficiencies will actually be percentage of the RU - this makes much better sense and some of those worlds that had huge negative RU will once more be somewhat profitable and have a better picture.

I know that the trade classifications do not represent what "everyone" is doing - I know that there are factors for the others, I was just questioning the 10% labor factor. I also realize that a Hi world may have the conditions to make it an Ag world but I figured they focused on more profitable enterprises that revolved around such a Hi population.

 

[rancke]

Shadowhawk took the Ag trade label and then over applied it until he actually seriously asked what the "other" 630000 people on his Ag world were doing with themselves. He'd taken a trade classification to its ultimate and illogical conclusion; i.e everyone on an Ag world must be busy picking persimmons because Ag means all agriculture all the time.

But that's a mistake about what the Ag classification actually means. Though to be fair, many other people have made the same mistake. An 'Ag' classification means certain modifiers to certain trade rolls, no more, no less. It doesn't mean the world is necessarily an agricultural world, though many writers of background fluff have made that assumption.


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

The It's Raining on Mongo fallacy refers to someone taking one aspect of a planetary description and applying to the entire planet all the time. Thus, the statement about rain somewhere on Mongo at sometime is inflated and/or over applied until it is raining everywhere on Mongo all the time. ...

Ah, thanks.

...Yes, trade classifications in Strikerdo count for a little more. That game's economic model, along with the one found in TCS have been officially disallowed for application beyond the narrow applications within their specific game. ...

Not disallowed. Nothing is ever disallowed. Anyone can take and use anything they want to - in their own personal universe. It just isn't OTU. We were simply reminded that it is not and was never intended to have been a description of the canon milieu, but we remain free to use it in our own personal settings if we want. (Yes, I'm slow, but I can be taught. )

Which is kind of a shame. Trav has always had this problem about making games that don't reflect the milieu - High Guard being the worst offender, in some ways. Milieu ends up being a bit of an orphan child.

... Trade classifications do count for a little more in GT:FT too. They are used with several other factors to paint a very broad picture of the relatively small part of a planetary economy dealing with interstellar trade. The economist who wrote GT:FT took care not over apply the trade classifications because he knew just what a slender straw he was balancing that book on. ...

Which brings up an interesting point. Far Trader draws properly on economic theory, but its rules assumptions are as arbitrary as anything else in the game: trade tonnage and value based on a table that basically says X number of people put out Y tons/dollars in goods pretty much without regard to what those goods might be, tonnage value increasing by a straight half order of magnitude with each magnitude increase in population. They based their assumptions on economic theory, but they did not try to do a detailed study of economics to craft a perfect simulation of 500 world economies - they made something that would be simple, workable, and believable. The urge to craft something realistic is well and good - and I'm as guilty of being driven by that motive as the next guy - but, in a game where we decide a world's government by rolling two dice, the only real requirement is that it be believable, not perfect.

 

[Carlobrand]

Yeah I understand that. But given the group of people on this board primarily devoted to Traveller, I would imagine we have the capability of building some form of UWP that represents import/export GWP/RU factors in a manner that all players would have a better idea how the systems work. ...

Well, we probably could, but we aren't building a UWP. We're taking the UWP and the rules that the game gives us and using those as tools. The game's rules are by their nature imprecise and intended to give the game master a lot of freedom for his imagination.

There are only three factors being looked at in the original game: a world is agricultural or nonagricultural - or in the middle; a world is industrial or nonindustrial - or in the middle; a world is rich or poor - or in the middle. Then Merchant Prince adds a few categories like Hi-pop/Lo-pop, Vacuum, Desert, Water, and so forth. However, our attention for the moment is on agriculture.

In this case, we're dealing with a rule that says an earthlike world with a population in a certain range is an agricultural world. That does not mean the world is a breadbasket feeding the subsector. It means, in the game of supply-and-demand, that they have spare supply of foodstuffs to sell to others and bring in some currency. They have more than they need, ergo excess supply, ergo what they have is available at a lower price. They do not have spare supply of industrial output, so no bargains there; in fact, if the pop is low enough, their industrial output costs more than average 'cause the demand is greater than supply - which makes them a nice market when you sail in with your cargo of industrials. But as far as the Ag code is concerned, it means, "Here is a world that produces more than they need, so you can probably buy it cheaper than on other worlds."

Can you calculate what the available extra is? Sure, within a broad range. Easiest way to do that is to calculate what the population needs, then say there's more than that. How much more? Well, however much you want, depending on the tech level. You can built a robot around TL8. You can build a rather good basic robot around TL9. It does not require great intelligence to be a robot tractor pulling a hoe, or a robot harvester: bot brain needs to be smart enough to follow a programmed pattern and to stop and call for help if anything looks odd - or if a sizeable object gets in its way, 'cause it wouldn't due to accidentally run someone down and you don't want your hoe damaged because some prankster plopped a log in your field. Nor does it cost an incredible lot - you make up the cost in 4 or 5 years from what you save on farmhand salaries, pure profit after that. Still need someone to supervise the things, but basically you've cut your farm workforce to a small fraction of what you'd need today. Imperium's not big on bots but it is big on profit, and nobody's gonna fret about a bot out in an open field away from everyone.

So, from about TL9 forward, you could conceivably have every square foot of arable land on the planet under till and have a local population of as little as a few hundred thousand - with the bulk of those being bot techs doing annual maintenance and the occasional repair. The only thing that stops you from doing that is there just isn't a market for that much food - unless you happened to be a parsec away from a high-population vacuum world, in which case you could get very rich doing things that way.

Now let's look at some numbers. Pop code 5 to 7: anything from 100,000 to 99,999,999 souls. Borrowing on the Book 3 Food and Overhead rules, about a kilogram per person per day: 36,500 to about 36,500,000 tons is consumed locally every year. Keep in mind, our TOP population figures are comparable with the population of Egypt or Mexico. On a size 8 world with 70% water, that means there's still huge areas of the world that have never seen a living soul. Anyway, anything over that consumption figure is overproduction - some desperate producer who can't find a buyer and will lose money unless someone arrives to take it off his hands. (We are not messing with wastage and loss, folks, live with it.) How much more is there?

Well, that's where the devil hides in the details. If there's not much of an export market, not much more. If there's a big demand out there, lots and lots more. Excess results in lower prices, which is a disincentive to expanding production, so the agricultural output of the world is going to expand until it reaches the limit of the available market, including exports. On a world with an E port and little trade, it might be no more than 20% in a good year, and the farmers who are late to market will be cursing. On a world with an A port and lots of hungry neighbors (and no nearby competition), it'll be as much as the neighbors can eat, right up to the point where the last arable acre is in production - under some bot. Usually somewhere between the two, but the point is that at TL9 it'll be demand driving agri production, not population - except that more and more of the world's carbon-based pop is working in building and servicing bots, but we don't have rules for that (and some of that is roboticized too).

Now, if your world is tech level 8 or lower, then we can look up some historical figures and put those to work, but it's still only an approximate.

 

[rancke]

In this case, we're dealing with a rule that says an earthlike world with a population in a certain range is an agricultural world. That does not mean the world is a breadbasket feeding the subsector.

I couldn't agree more, though as I mentioned above, Traveller writers have made that exact assumption more than once.

You can built a robot around TL8. You can build a rather good basic robot around TL9. It does not require great intelligence to be a robot tractor pulling a hoe, or a robot harvester: bot brain needs to be smart enough to follow a programmed pattern and to stop and call for help if anything looks odd - or if a sizeable object gets in its way, 'cause it wouldn't due to accidentally run someone down and you don't want your hoe damaged because some prankster plopped a log in your field. Nor does it cost an incredible lot - you make up the cost in 4 or 5 years from what you save on farmhand salaries, pure profit after that.

I don't believe in robots that don't require maintenance and don't break down and have to be repaired and replaced. There will be some running expenses, so the profit will never be pure. In addition, profit requires that you can sell what you produce. Anything over what you can eat yourself and sell is pure loss.

And whatever your ability to produce cheap foodstuff, your neighbors with the same or better TL can do that cheaply too. Carniculture and hydroponics on worlds without decent atmospheres, your own methods on worlds with decent atmospheres. Worlds with lower TLs will be potential customers, but their ability to pay is less because their per capita incomes are lower. I just don't believe in breadbasket worlds feeding the huddled masses of neighboring worlds. Breadbasket worlds supplying neignboring middle classes with stables and upper classes with luxuries is a different matter.

And as you add another field to your robot farm, prices go down yet again.

Still need someone to supervise the things, but basically you've cut your farm workforce to a small fraction of what you'd need today. Imperium's not big on bots but it is big on profit, and nobody's gonna fret about a bot out in an open field away from everyone.

Well, bots are valuable bits of equipment. You're going to need defenses to prevent acquisitive neighbors from putting down and "harvesting" the robots.

So, from about TL9 forward, you could conceivably have every square foot of arable land on the planet under till and have a local population of as little as a few hundred thousand - with the bulk of those being bot techs doing annual maintenance and the occasional repair.

You're not going to get a self-sustaining robot workforce. Repair bots need spare parts to maintain worker bots and they break down too and need to be replaced.


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

...I don't believe in robots that don't require maintenance and don't break down and have to be repaired and replaced. There will be some running expenses, so the profit will never be pure. ...

Alas, my lamentable tendency toward imprecise language. Semi-pure, then. I could of course dig out what maintenance and repair rules exist, but I didn't want to get too bogged down in details.

...In addition, profit requires that you can sell what you produce. Anything over what you can eat yourself and sell is pure loss. ...

Yes, as in:

... The only thing that stops you from doing that is there just isn't a market for that much food - unless you happened to be a parsec away from a high-population vacuum world, in which case you could get very rich doing things that way. ...

And of course I could elaborate further about other competing sources and transport distances and - as you point out - the ability of advanced cultures on hostile worlds to produce palatable nutrition by technological means, and all of that. However, it was already a rather lengthy post, and we have very little available that speaks to the cost-effectiveness and quality of manufactured food at higher tech levels (a startling omission given the game's nature), so my ability to factor that in was limited.

Frankly, like you I tend to think of exported foods as a luxury rather than a necessity, but the game does like to portray a vision of worlds three days away from hunger, or at least the MegaTrav/TNE variant of it does. (Kindly excuse my imprecise but dramatic phrasing.)

...Well, bots are valuable bits of equipment. You're going to need defenses to prevent acquisitive neighbors from putting down and "harvesting" the robots. ...

So's a modern tractor or combine harvester. So's my car when I leave it in a supermarket parking lot. So's an air conditioner - we had people going around stealing those locally once. It happens, and there'll be the usual "arms race" of law verses criminal as they look for solutions that control the problem without being an economic burden while the criminal tries to find ways around the controls. Again, I'd rather not go all TMI on it.

Still, if anyone is interested in more detail, I'd be happy to oblige.