MGT Only: Specs upgrade A2 to A3?

[Kilgs]

I think that is where they got the idea, as the stats on the "concept" model are clearly MT, not MgT. Which reminds me, does anyone know the source of this image? It does not state designer's name or website or anything.

Fairly certain it's the same guy that did the awesome Scout graphics. May have the link somewhere...

http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/gallery/mag/seeker.html

Full gallery here, look for images by MAG:

http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/gallery/index.html

 

[mike wightman]

Speculation that swings on a single free trader's cargo is more akin to stockyard dickering than what the markets do. The big shippers in Traveller don't make the mistake of speculating. They have locked contracts before the shipment leaves port in the first place.

And in the 2 weeks it takes to ship the agreed goods the prices change on the destination world...

Unless you are price fixing on a grand scale or certain there will be no fluctuation in the worth of the goods it's all speculation.

It's speculation on the part of the buyer that no cheaper goods will become available during the 2 week window, its speculation on the part of the seller that the buyer will honour the contract with cheaper goods available.

 

[rancke]

Are there main routes that are at least four systems in a row? Yes?

The average merchant vessel along such a main is a type A, yes? Maybe an A2.

That is extremely unlikely. If all the worlds have lowish populations, 200T ships may be enough to cover all their transportation needs, but otherwise they will be rare, owing to their competitive disadvantage against 1000T+ ships. And what J1 or J2 ship can compete against J3 ships on three-parsec jumps?

Suppose that the systems are named Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma and are in that order.

Suppose that Alpha makes for export a rare beverage, and this beverage is produced seasonally and relatively cheaply on Alpha, like tea in the 19th century in China.

Suppose that the folks living on Gamma are clamoring for this beverage, and as such the first traders of each trading season can get as much as a 500% profit on his load of this beverage, like England did for tea in the 19th century.

You are trying to tell me that using a J-3 vessel over such a route is of no advantage? It takes the type A at least 3 weeks to bring its load in and the A2 two weeks. In the time it takes the type A the type A3 can make two runs!

No, I'm not trying to tell you that. First of all, I was thinking of routes that spanned more than one jump-3. A route with four or five or six three-parsec jumps between Alpha and Gamma.

Secondly, over a single three-parsec jump most everybody else will be using J3 ships too. And the winner of the race will be determined by jump variation.

Over a strict J-3 route, you are correct. But as someone who has played a speculative merchant's game many times, I very rarely ran my J3 boat over only a J-3 route. More often it was doing exactly as I said, running ahead of the regular trader traffic to skim the cream.

The fallacy is your assumption that regular traders will be using J2 along three-parsec routes. Both J2 and J3 are cheaper per dT per parsec than J1 and J4+, so that's what regular traders will use (except for one-parsec routes, of course). Which of J2 and J3 is cheapest depends on which shipbuilding rules you think are closest to "reality", but they're pretty close to each other. Which means that across two parsecs J2 is cheaper than J3 and across three parsecs J3 is cheaper than J2. So the length of the jump will determine the jump drive used.


Hans

 

[pendragonman]

So you are saying that traders will sell their current ship and buy a different one every time they change to a new main? Just so the J-2 boats won't be "wrongly used" when working a J1 main? Just so a J-3 trader won't be "wrongly used"? Really?

Free traders (the people, not the boats) are always going to stay on one main for their entire career? They aren't going to do what free traders are apt to do, drift from main to main looking to skim the cream off of speculative markets?

Really? I think that a Trade ship fixed to one route for its career is likely to be owned by a more fixed trading company. One with warehouses and perhaps a permanent landing pad number rented at each starport it uses. In that case, I can see "min/maxing" my jump drive to minimize costs. But free traders who actually free trade? I just don't see it.

 

[rancke]

So you are saying that traders will sell their current ship and buy a different one every time they change to a new main? Just so the J-2 boats won't be "wrongly used" when working a J1 main? Just so a J-3 trader won't be "wrongly used"? Really?

No, I'm not saying that.

Free traders (the people, not the boats) are always going to stay on one main for their entire career? They aren't going to do what free traders are apt to do, drift from main to main looking to skim the cream off of speculative markets?

Mostly I'm not talking about free traders at all, I'm talking about the competition free traders face from the regular freight companies.

Really? I think that a Trade ship fixed to one route for its career is likely to be owned by a more fixed trading company. One with warehouses and perhaps a permanent landing pad number rented at each starport it uses. In that case, I can see "min/maxing" my jump drive to minimize costs. But free traders who actually free trade? I just don't see it.

You don't see freight companies anticipating 'China tea races' and sheduling their ships to enter such races? Really?


Hans

 

[aramis]

The comparative advantage is lost above 1000Td, Hans.

For J1 and J2, it's 400Td having the lowest cost to operate per Td of cargo.
For J3, it's almost flat from 400Td up.
J4, and up, it's 2KTd (above that, you get into different drive formulae and crew requirements); and even then, the costs are more than 5x the cost of J2 at 400Td...

Each colored line is a different J#, J1 blue to J6 gray. Tonnage across, price vertical, note log scale on price.

 

[Vladika]

One thing that MUST be remembered about the Tramp trade. A ship will often NOT load a cargo for a port that they can't pick up an outgoing cargo. If a profitable cargo is available at a nearby port, certainly. (In Traveller terms you are talking and extra 2 weeks minimum; not really profitable* for most ships but the greater the cost of J2 and J3 ships the worse it gets.)

At times a captain will refuse a cargo because he can't unload, or go to a port where he can't load.

Two real world examples readily come to mind.

1) Ethiopia a couple of decades back; No ship would load food bound for Ethiopia as the docks, and warehouses, were full of rotting food and there was nothing to do about that situation. (Several ships dumped their cargoes at sea when the situation aboard became intolerable.) The cause was lack of transportation for the food to the inland starving areas. (Google it if you want to know more. Anything else I write would transgress several board rules.)

2) Hampton Roads Virginia; In the early 80's there was a coal miners strike in WV. No coal went to port to be loaded. At it's height, there were well over 100 colliers at anchor in Hampton Roads doing nothing. (It was a big boost for Australian Coal as while it was a much longer haul to market, it was a reliable source.)

In example "1", a J1, J2 or J3 ship would have made no real difference. In example "2" a higher jump ship could handle the trade that a "slower" ship couldn't.

*Of course, if you have credits to speculate with, and a High Tech Industrial world one, maybe two, jump(s) away, you are still "golden".

Edit Added: A possible 3rd example; West Coast (US and Canada) and Alaskan Gold Rushes. The cargo had to be worth quite a bit more than the ship as the crews would be nearly guaranteed to "jump ship" to prospect. This left countless ships, without crews, rotting in harbors.

 

[rancke]

The comparative advantage is lost above 1000Td, Hans.

For J1 and J2, it's 400Td having the lowest cost to operate per Td of cargo.
For J3, it's almost flat from 400Td up.
J4, and up, it's 2KTd (above that, you get into different drive formulae and crew requirements); and even then, the costs are more than 5x the cost of J2 at 400Td...
Each colored line is a different J#, J1 blue to J6 gray. Tonnage across, price vertical, note log scale on price.

I'm not going to bother refuting any of this. There comes a time when you realize that life is too short. I'll just say that I stand by my calculations.


Hans

 

[MongooseMatt]

Mostly I'm not talking about free traders at all, I'm talking about the competition free traders face from the regular freight companies.

Just to pop in here (and, I acknowledge, this may not be part of the debate), we always presumed that different rules were in play (in terms of both being within the universe and actual game rules) for free traders and the 'big boys.' The big boys do not do speculative trade and so you can't scale up the trading rules from the core book - those are what the players are forced to use because they do not have the scale and muscle of the big shipping firms.

That is what Merchant Prince is for

 

[GypsyComet]

And in the 2 weeks it takes to ship the agreed goods the prices change on the destination world...

Unless you are price fixing on a grand scale or certain there will be no fluctuation in the worth of the goods it's all speculation.

It is a matter of sheer scale. The big guys ARE the market. Look up how commodity futures work. The free trader is literally adding eight train cars worth of something to the millions already bought and paid for weeks before.

Market fluctuations simply do not matter, because the agents present at each end are *always* negotiating three or more months ahead. If the shipment that just arrived cost 5% more than the current on-planet rate it doesn't matter, because when it was paid for (three months ago) it was the market rate, and the shipment three months from now will some in at the cheaper price because it is being negotiated today. The big guys aren't nearly as worried about month-to-month fluctuations as they are year-to-year, or decade-to-decade. Their scale of "speculation" is that the economy will be stable enough to warrant building ships and facilities to service it over decades or centuries. The week-to-week stuff is just noise on the curve.

 

[mike wightman]

Megacorp factor Eneri on planet Abicus notices that the market for widgets is ripe for exploitation.

He does a deal with Widgets are us to supply them all they need and sends the order off to planet Widget-maker one jump away.

The megacorp warehouse manager receives Eneri's order and dispatches a mega-freighter full of widgets to Abicus.

The ship arrives only to discover that a megafreighter from a rival corporation jumped in nearly two weeks ago and the market for widgets is now flooded.

Of course the big boys speculate, but they also manufacture the goods they speculate with, pay people to exploit the raw materials they will ship to their factories to manufacture the goods they will speculate with, and more importantly will go out of their way to fix prices and manipulate markets.

Too many of the trade models people suggest forget the one major setting element - your market knowledge is at least two weeks old and stuff can happen in that two weeks.

Until ftl communication is invented all trade will be speculation unless massive price fixing takes place.

 

[pendragonman]

Megacorp factor Eneri on planet Abicus notices that the market for widgets is ripe for exploitation.

He does a deal with Widgets are us to supply them all they need and sends the order off to planet Widget-maker one jump away.

The megacorp warehouse manager receives Eneri's order and dispatches a mega-freighter full of widgets to Abicus.

The ship arrives only to discover that a megafreighter from a rival corporation jumped in nearly two weeks ago and the market for widgets is now flooded.

Of course the big boys speculate, but they also manufacture the goods they speculate with, pay people to exploit the raw materials they will ship to their factories to manufacture the goods they will speculate with, and more importantly will go out of their way to fix prices and manipulate markets.

Too many of the trade models people suggest forget the one major setting element - your market knowledge is at least two weeks old and stuff can happen in that two weeks.

Until ftl communication is invented all trade will be speculation unless massive price fixing takes place.

You are still thinking with a contract for immediate delivery. Megacorp A signs contracts with Megaretailer Y on Abicus to deliver them 10,000 tons of widgets for arrival three (or six or a year) from now for a fixed unit price. Megaretailer Y now figures out what retail price point they are going to sell their widgets at.

The differences are the economies of scale. Ever wondered why McDonalds can make a quarter pound burger cheaper than Bill's Burger Barn? It is for the same reasons that Megacorps can make money on mass loads of products when a Free Trader can't. If a free trader could purchase all of the widgets that a factory can produce for the next year all at once, soon all of the other free traders will have to pay his price for the widgets so that they can make their deliveries.

Of course, if a free trader could do that, they would be moving up to be one of the big boys, and their competition would be able to do the same thing, buy out the entire production for a source of goods for several years at a time.

 

[mike wightman]

You are relying on them fixing the price - i.e. market rigging.

What happens when a competitor's shipment arrives and offers them at a lower price? Burger King burgers cheaper than McD's?

Do you honour the contract? Have you paid up front? Do you buy the cheaper goods as a true capitalist does?

 

[pendragonman]

Since it is a signed contract, if you don;t honor it you get sued. Very few polities are going to allow a company to blow off signed contracts, especially from a megacorp.

 

[rancke]

Since it is a signed contract, if you don;t honor it you get sued. Very few polities are going to allow a company to blow off signed contracts, especially from a megacorp.

Indeed, and contracts between people from different worlds would be one of the things that Imperial law concerned itself with. So breaking such a contract would be breaking Imperial law as well as local law.


Hans

 

[Vladika]

Since it is a signed contract, if you don;t honor it you get sued. Very few polities are going to allow a company to blow off signed contracts, especially from a megacorp.

Blowing off a MegaCorp contract? Excellent plan, IF, you are looking of Mercenaries. Problem is, they are going to be MegaCorp Mercenaries looking for YOU.

In the normal course of business, they'd just lawyer you to death. Really piss them off and it's cheaper to get rid of you once and for all.

New Plot: J4-6 ship, FULL of corporate lawyers... Good luck just keeping them happy in transit!

 

[rancke]

In the normal course of business, they'd just lawyer you to death. Really piss them off and it's cheaper to get rid of you once and for all.

It's always dangerous to annoy someone with deep pockets, but let's not make megacorporations into bigger menaces than they are. Remember that a mere subsector-wide company like Oberlindes was able to go toe-to-toe with a Tukera subsidiary and win. Megacorporations are powerful, but compared to planetary economies of high-population worlds, interstellar trade is really a pittance. There will be planetary companies with far deeper pockets than any regional branch of any megacorporation. An entire megacorporation would probably have the funds to squash such a company, but that would require convincing the top that spending that sort of money was worthwhile. Something that, for example, Akerut failed to convince Tukera of. Twice.


Hans

 

[Hyphen]

Full gallery here, look for images by MAG[/url]

He often also goes by "magmagmag". He's from Japan, and has images here in the CotI gallery as well as elsewhere.

 

[SpaceBadger]

Remember that a mere subsector-wide company like Oberlindes was able to go toe-to-toe with a Tukera subsidiary and win.

Somewhat like the Terrans beating the First Imperium, isn't it?

 

[SpaceBadger]

Fairly certain it's the same guy that did the awesome Scout graphics. May have the link somewhere...

http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/gallery/mag/seeker.html

Full gallery here, look for images by MAG:

http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/gallery/index.html

Thanks! Missed this post somehow until Hyphen commented on it above.