The basis of my Terran Empire is that of Imperial Monopolies - each of the nine Great Houses has an Imperial Patent granting it with a monopoly over one good which is crucial for interstellar civilization; even the Emperor himself agrees to buy these goods from the Great Houses (as each is the sole legal manufacturer of that particular good). In essence the "technocratic feudal" arrangement IMTU in the Terran Empire is that the Emperor grants the nine Major Houses with monopolies allowing them to rake massive profits; in return, they must raise a military force of a certain size which may be called forth by the Emperor at his discretion, up to 36 months in a decade, and pay a flat 20% of their monopoly revenues to the Emperor. They also get the right to rule their domains - one Subsector per Great House with the Emperor directly ruling the tenth Sub sector (the Empire is 3x3 Subsectors).
What I would like help for is ideas for goods to be monopolize; one major good per Great House. The ideas I had so far were Jump Drives (House Solana), "positronic" high-order robot brains (House Chiang), and Battledresses and other forms of powered armor (House Taylor). I have six (actually seven if you include the Imperial Household) more houses to assign monopolies to:
House Nakamura
House Bergman
House Kozlov
House Dahari
House Mehra
House Rasheed
And the Imperial Household - House Durnhal
I was thinking about granting a monopoly on banking (or just investment banking?) to the Imperial Household, but I'm not sure if that's too extreme or not.
Keep in mind that worlds should be able to produce the basics of survival (food, shelter, water, clothing, air, filters [and other survival equipment)], spare parts for life-supporting infrastructure etc.). So these aren't monopolized - the Empire does not engage in hydraulic despotism per se.
In addition to these Imperial Patent monopolies over certain goods, they also have privileged access to technology. At TL15 - the tech level of the Imperial Golden Age - only the Great Houses were allowed to own ships with drives Q-U (and thus 3,000-3,999 dton ships or fast 1,000 dton ships) and only the Imperial Household was allowed to own ships with drives V-Z (and thus 4,000-dton or bigger ships and fast big ships. Only the Great Houses and the Imperial Household were allowed to equip their troops with Battledresses.
What do you think?
What I would like help for is ideas for goods to be monopolize; one major good per Great House. The ideas I had so far were Jump Drives (House Solana), "positronic" high-order robot brains (House Chiang), and Battledresses and other forms of powered armor (House Taylor). I have six (actually seven if you include the Imperial Household) more houses to assign monopolies to:
House Nakamura
House Bergman
House Kozlov
House Dahari
House Mehra
House Rasheed
And the Imperial Household - House Durnhal
I was thinking about granting a monopoly on banking (or just investment banking?) to the Imperial Household, but I'm not sure if that's too extreme or not.
Keep in mind that worlds should be able to produce the basics of survival (food, shelter, water, clothing, air, filters [and other survival equipment)], spare parts for life-supporting infrastructure etc.). So these aren't monopolized - the Empire does not engage in hydraulic despotism per se.
In addition to these Imperial Patent monopolies over certain goods, they also have privileged access to technology. At TL15 - the tech level of the Imperial Golden Age - only the Great Houses were allowed to own ships with drives Q-U (and thus 3,000-3,999 dton ships or fast 1,000 dton ships) and only the Imperial Household was allowed to own ships with drives V-Z (and thus 4,000-dton or bigger ships and fast big ships. Only the Great Houses and the Imperial Household were allowed to equip their troops with Battledresses.
What do you think?
