Monthly Ship Payments

[BetterThanLife]

On Spec trade the lack of realism is in that the rules don't allow the locals to have any broker skills. The players blitz in from no where and can get top dollar for whatever they are carrying. Sorry I don't buy it.

The second thing is that since the roll is random, there is only one small chance (Generally in the 1% range.) of there actually being Doomahitchies the next time you get to Planet A. But OK This week we have Widgets to for sale, next week wheat. You can make a 350% profit but if all that is available sells for less than KCr2 per ton you are still in trouble with your mortgage payments. Yes you can get lucky. You can also get unlucky. With the wide variation in the operation, what bank would finance a ship for such an endeavor?

It doesn't matter though, we are no longer roleplaying we are roll playing. You get out your map, your charts and your dice and off you go. What does the rest of the party do while you, the Merchant Prince, and the Referee are engaged in all this die rolling? Where is the fun or adventure?

You still have to run from Port A to Port B, needing to turn a profit (And quite a bit of profit to keep something other than a Free Trader ahead of the creditors.) In your case you are running from Port A to Port B and then to Port C, over to D and back to A to start all over again. Where is the adventure? Where is the excitement? What is there to keep a player's interest?

I can do the same thing, and make more profit in at the same time. (And have more time to adventure.) Forget the ship, rent a warehouse on a nice Rich World. Buy your commodity one week, warehouse it for a week and sell it the next. With average rolls you make a profit based on your skill (It is your differential and a Rich World is virtually guaranteed to either be a flat mod or a positive diffeential.) and you never have to worry about the expense of a ship. You also don't have to worry about that pesky time spent in Jump Space, You can trade every week. (So do twice as much business.) You make at least 10 times the profit in half the time because you lack the overhead. Further since you are local here it is actually more reasonable to believe you know the market and the market trends on that world so you should be able to generally make a profit.

If that is the kind of game you want. Then there is how to do really well at it. (And it is about as exciting.)

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by princelian:
I disagree on the realism. Accuracy may be an issue, but it's very realistic.

The CT/T20 Speculative Trade model? Realistic?

One fundamental flaw is the system of trade modifiers for purchase and sale of goods based on world trade codes.

These represent highly desirable-to-exploit trade routes.

If PCs can read a map, so can anyone else.

In an environment where there is an advantageous trade situation/potential, everyone will exploit it. This tends to quash the value of that trade situation/potential.

For instance: Big widget A from Industrial world X is highly valued on Non-Industrial world Y (T20 item 69, Construction Equipment, purchase I-4, sale NI+4).

This advantageous trade situation/potential between worlds X and Y will be exploited so often that the purchase price of big widget A will go up because of the demand at the source, and the sale price will go down because there is so much available on the market at the destination.

GURPS Far Trader notes this flaw and hauls out the term, "Law of One Price" (p.11), "Previous versions of Traveller ignored the market's power to eliminate arbitrage opportunities."

On top of this, T20 makes things more complicated by including the difference between both world's TL's, and to a lesser extent the destination world's population, in the overall results. Higher TL's at the source and higher populations at the destination are both good, and this means that trying to go in reverse, from low TL worlds to high TL worlds is typically a very difficult proposition.

This is not to say that there are no arbitrage opportunities in the stellar market, but they are certainly not sitting about so blatanly for johnny-come-lately PCs to exploit so readily.

Originally posted by princelian:
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• Tramp Merchant Captain buys Doomahitchies on World A for 90% of their value.</font>

Right along with every other Tramp Merchant Captain trying to make a credit.