Purpose and Uses: NRS and WTB

[RainOfSteel]

I have many questions about the Natural Resources Score (NRS) and the World Trade Balance (WTB).

1) I cannot locate in the THB what the purpose of the WTB is. What is it used for?

2) The only purpose I can find for the NRS is to be plugged into the calculation of the WTB. Is it used for anything else?

3) Why don't the UWP values for the Gateway to Destiny list the NRS of each world?

4) What is the chart at the bottom of THB p. 379 used for?

 

[tjoneslo]

Neither score are used for anything. They are additions to the standard UWP/sector layout, I believe from either the TNE or T4 ruleset.

When I saw them in the playtest draft I suggested using them as modifiers for the basic trade system, something I'd still like to do, but currently they are simply interesting numbers.

 

[RainOfSteel]

tjoneslo,

Drat! I suspected it might be something like that.

The WTB looks like it clearly could be used an an input to either starship economics or GWP calculations.

The NRS is suitable for a whole lot more, and could be a key factor in many UWPs.

 

[tjoneslo]

It would be fun to do something with these numbers, but none of the sector archives have them. So the first project would be to generate them and add them to the current sector information.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by tjoneslo:
It would be fun to do something with these numbers, but none of the sector archives have them. So the first project would be to generate them and add them to the current sector information.

Wouldn't be that tough in my MS Access database.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Ok, I managed to get the NRS loaded to all worlds (that are in the database).


Next step, I see, is to figure out the Indigenous Lifeforms stat (Step 7). Then, on to the WTB.

 

[tjoneslo]

I'm interested, what is the mean and median NRS value across the all the star systems?

The serious problem with the WTB was in order to have it "make sense" as a trade indicator, it needed to balance. Which meant generating the NRS, Lifeforms and WTB for a large group of system, then tweaking the rules until the trade would (using random data) balance. That is, the WTB for all worlds in a large area (like a sector) should be pretty close to 0. But I was never able to get enough data to properly balance it.

 

[RainOfSteel]

tjoneslo,

<eeek! />

SQL doesn't do Median very easily.

However, I can get the Mean in a flash.

My database is about 15,000 worlds.

The Mean was 4.93.

The Max was 17 (Hiland/Old Expanses), which seems to have a size of C . . . and that doesn't mean 13,000 kilometers diameter, but unfortunately, the NRS calculation in Step 6 doesn't take into account the special sizes above A, and so neither did my code (oops). I'll fix it here in a bit.

There were eight Size A worlds that had NRS 16, though.

 

[RainOfSteel]

I'm sure at least one person would be interested to hear that Stoner/Hinterworlds generated itself a 2.

And it must have rolled high to get it, too. If it had rolled lower, it would have been 0.

 

[tjoneslo]

I found my old Ley sector worksheet which I build during the playtest, and generated the NR and WTB numbers:

NR: average: 6.3, median: 6
WTB average: 0.8, median: 0

 

[RainOfSteel]

Interesting.

When I did a query just for Ley, I came up with a Median of 4.9 (the extra digits were a little different than for the whole, but the average was still the same).

 

[RainOfSteel]

Hmm, of course, when one omits "Option Explicit", and types one variable name incorrectly, it can cause problems (particularly when it's in the Atmosphere 4-7 +2 condition).

I deleted the NRS values and reran the code, and got a new Median of 6.01 for all, and 6.04 for Ley.