The Economy of the Imperium

[aramis]

Thanks Aramis! (I was hoping you might drop in if I kept writing your name. Speak of the devil

Is there any other guidance in the canon on economics that you are aware of? So far in this thread I have got:
GT - Far Trader
TNE - World Tamer's Handbook
T4 - Pocket Empires

Also, which is the best?

T5 also has a similar set of economics extensions to T4.

MT has an interesting soc rule that's echoed in T20, which provides a baseline for figuring some economic data, but requires input assumptions. It's short enough to quote:

Social Standing x Cr250: The number of credits the character must spend in a month on upkeep (food, clothing, lodging, and incidentals). Ordinary purchases (buying equipment, getting a starship high passage ticket) does not count toward this total.
If the character is unable to keep up the proper rate of
upkeep spending for a year, his or her apparent Social Standing drops one level. Apparent Social Standing is the Social Standing perceived by others.
(MT PM p.30)
​

Note that the input assumption needed is "What is the average soc?" and it answers "What is the average upkeep expense?" which, when coupled with a tax rate, gives "What is the average income? - and average income is usually close to GDP per capita. (When average income isn't close to GDP, it's lower and represents a major income inequality; it can't be higher unless that income comes from off-world. Thus, if GDP per capita is under average income, you've got a world with a "satellite economy" - examples would be places like Eagle River, Alaska - GDP per capita for the town is about 1/10 the average income for the town - most people work and shop elsewhere.)



If you use Striker or TCS for economics (I've been known to), you get a bunch of answers that work well for MT, but not for prototraveller...

The GURPS Far Trader makes several input assumptions I disagree with, and presumes a demand/gravity model for 99% of all trade. I think that's it's biggest flaw; the rates of demand trade go from under 25% to over 90% when the transatlantic telegraph went in, based upon the ship manifests I was able to find online in the late 90's... a dataset Jim told me they didn't even think to look at. It also suffers from only indirectly answering the question of "how much can I find here cheap?"

TNE's WTH builds economics from ground up, doesn't mate well to anything else in the list. But it's fun.

T4 Pocket Empires is heavily abstracted. It's a backdrop for a specific type of game, and not an examination of nor predictor for the OTU.

Best? Loaded question.
Most detail of what the government can do? T4-PE
Most detail of trade flows? GT - but it probably errs large, and it's complex.
Most useful for "What kinds of units can this place raise?" A mixture of Striker and TCS, tweaked to include bits of GT one likes, but with the distance numbers adjusted for one's tastes.
Most playable for running a colony? TNE-WTH

 

[tjoneslo]

WOW, tjoneslo, that page is tour de force! Fantastic work. Also, I never would have found that in the wiki based on the page name, so thanks for pointing it out.

Thanks. I've tried to link to it from various places, but obviously not enough.

1) is GT part of the OTU or is its own offshoot? I don't really understand it's place in the canon.

In theory GT is fully part of the OTU, except for this historical events after the split of the timeline. Loren has stated the split point is sometime shortly before the (much more obvious) assassination of Strepthon / assassination of Dulinor split. The exact time and description of the split has never been revealed.

2) There are some summary stats at the top of the page, among them:
Total GSP 1,153,811,330 billion
Trade 622,251 billion
Does GT spit that out, or is it an error? Trade is <0.06% of the economy? If that is the case, no empire should care at all about protecting trade. It is economically irrelevant. (Maybe some individual systems care, but it just couldn't be an empire-wide matter.)

This is correct, and what GT spits out. As Aramis points out there are questions about if the results are a true reflection of an interstellar economy. I am not comfortable trying to defend the choices of the system.

I've done some work to adjust the output by changing the interpretation of BTN. But don't have a way to decide if the results are "good" or "worse".

 

[tjoneslo]

TNE's WTH builds economics from ground up, doesn't mate well to anything else in the list. But it's fun.

T4 Pocket Empires is heavily abstracted. It's a backdrop for a specific type of game, and not an examination of nor predictor for the OTU.

I've dug through these on several occasions. They are good about doing small scale, pocket empires. These fail from my perspective in that they require significant user input to decide how the parts of the economy are distributed.

T5 also has a similar set of economics extensions to T4.

Other than the base economic extension values and the RU, there is no guidance about how the values relate to anything understandable as economics.

Best? Loaded question.
Most detail of what the government can do? T4-PE
Most detail of trade flows? GT - but it probably errs large, and it's complex.
Most useful for "What kinds of units can this place raise?" A mixture of Striker and TCS, tweaked to include bits of GT one likes, but with the distance numbers adjusted for one's tastes.
Most playable for running a colony? TNE-WTH

I agree with this.

 

[kilemall]

On the nature of TL and the various Imperii, I think we can attribute the near static/slow increase nature of TL to one of two things, possibly both-

1) An intentional TL slowdown built into the empires deliberately, perhaps looking for stability over destructive change, but also not maximizing output so as not to strip the resources of a system over the long haul. Societal managing in terms of 10,000 years of post-industrial habitation, not just strip it in 500 years and be done. Another term might be sustainable economy.

2) TL gets harder to achieve the higher you go. Perhaps something like TL^TL exponential kinds of cost.

Could be both, in which case the 3I is going for a middling path, a lot of stability but being surrounded by potentially hostile polities means upping the max TL every 300 years or so is advisable, for greater economic and combat potential to keep that edge. Easy to do when the costs are so much to advance.

 

[aramis]

Let us look at some benchmarks in various places...

CT...

Subsistence on a Long Term Basis: When time must pass quickly, the referee can allow personal survival or subsistence costs at the following values.
Starvation Level: bare minimum of food, Cr60 per month; dismal lodging, Cr60 per month.
Subsistence Level: reasonable food, Cr120 per month; acceptable lodging, Cr180 per month.
Ordinary Level: good food, Cr200 per month; good lodging, Cr200 per month.
High Living: excellent food, Cr600 per month; excellent accommodations, Cr300 per month.
(TTB, p 100.)​

So...
What soc is which? Don't know. Shortening those:
Starvation Cr120/month. Cr1440/year
Subsistence Cr300/month Cr3600/year
Ordinary Cr400/month Cr4800/year
High Living Cr 900/month. Cr10,800/year
No ties to Soc directly.
All in Cr Local.

Striker GDP per capita:

Tech	Base
5	2,000
6	4,000
7	6,000
8	8,000
9	10,000
10	12,000
11	14,000
12	16,000
13	18,000
14	20,000
15	22,000
Trade Class	Mod
Rich	x1.6
Industrial	x1.4
Agricultural	x1.2
Poor	x0.8
Non-Agricultural	x0.8
Non-Industrial	x0.8

Also all in CrLocal.

Combining these gives an interesting, if uncanonical, view...

TL	Average SOL
5	Starvation+Cr560/year
6	Subsistence+Cr400/year
7	Ordinary+Cr1200/year
8	Ordinary+Cr3200/year
9	Ordinary+Cr5200/year
10	High+Cr1600/year

Kind of optimistic. This would be the average person...

Now, if Striker numbers were in CrImp, it gets MUCH worse... Because TL5, the worst exchange is x20...

But note that TL 5-6-7 figures match pretty closely to US GDPPC for the comparable eras...
US GDP Per Capita, 1947-1977, per http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp-per-capita/table/by-year

year	GDPPC
Jul 1, 1977	9,354.37
Jul 1, 1976	8,516.52
Jul 1, 1975	7,669.47
Jul 1, 1974	7,174.06
Jul 1, 1973	6,689.67
Jul 1, 1972	6,051.09
Jul 1, 1971	5,583.15
Jul 1, 1970	5,218.67
Jul 1, 1969	4,990.21
Jul 1, 1968	4,665.03
Jul 1, 1967	4,283.08
Jul 1, 1966	4,106.63
Jul 1, 1965	3,769.37
Jul 1, 1964	3,547.89
Jul 1, 1963	3,338.59
Jul 1, 1962	3,230.45
Jul 1, 1961	3,034.44
Jul 1, 1960	3,003.80
Jul 1, 1959	2,947.77
Jul 1, 1958	2,703.54
Jul 1, 1957	2,749.09
Jul 1, 1956	2,645.30
Jul 1, 1955	2,544.43
Jul 1, 1954	2,372.02
Jul 1, 1953	2,449.06
Jul 1, 1952	2,293.84
Jul 1, 1951	2,224.33
Jul 1, 1950	1,909.09
Jul 1, 1949	1,821.19
Jul 1, 1948	1,861.13
Jul 1, 1947	1,708.92

I suspect that third table is why it's not canonical to use Striker numbers. At TL10, the average person can afford high living...

 

[vegas]

Aramis & tjoneslo, that is all super helpful. You guys are saving me a ton of leg work. Thanks so much.

Aramis, I see what you are saying about using the personal consumption in MT to estimate income, but MT's consumption function being linear with SOC doesn't seem plausible. Realistically, the consumer spending intercept can't be zero, and it won't grow linearly at the high end, at least if we look at modern US consumption patterns as an example. So rather than consumption being a funciton of the form B*SOC, a realistic formula would have to be something like A + B*SOC + C*SOC² (which would be stupid complex to put into a game, so no wonder they didn't).

...[GT:FT] presumes a demand/gravity model for 99% of all trade. I think that's it's biggest flaw; the rates of demand trade go from under 25% to over 90% when the transatlantic telegraph went in,

I don't think I follow this. I don't think gravity models are intended for time-series analysis. If there is a technology change that affects friction for trade (e.g. new transatlantic telegraph) gravity theory doesn't say that trade is unchanged, it just says you have to recalculate your estimation parameters for the new technology regime/level of friction. (At least that is my understanding of the model). So I am not following why that is a counter-example to the model. (In the real world, gravity models have been very successful at explaining trade volumes between locales.)

tjoneslo's result of having trade volumes of <0.06% of GDP is a big problem for GT though. It needs to be 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than that to make sense of the canon on trade and its importance.

I feel a bit queezy about this math exercise:

Combining these gives an interesting, if uncanonical, view...

TL	Average SOL
5	Starvation+Cr560/year
6	Subsistence+Cr400/year
7	Ordinary+Cr1200/year
8	Ordinary+Cr3200/year
9	Ordinary+Cr5200/year
10	High+Cr1600/year

Kind of optimistic. This would be the average person...

I want to interpret those B3 cost of living data as being typical in the Imperium (and therefore at roughly Imperium average TL) and not constant across systems of different TLs in the Imperium (since I think incomes and cost of living should change across TLs). So I don't think I'd want to follow the implicit assumption behind the combination of that data in your table.

Reading all this, the approach I'm leaning toward is Striker for everything except per capita income, GT:FT for incomes, and >100X boost in GT trade volumes. But it will take me a few days to get my head around tjoneslo's work, and to go and figure out how GT:FT generates all that data.

Also, I don't want to forget flykiller's insight that Imperium is actually capacity constrained, not capital constrained, so I need to learn more about shipyard capacity too. I'm not sure where to look that up...

 

[aramis]

GT FT Trade Numbers in a nutshell

UWTN = (Pop/2) + TL_Mod
WTN = UWTN + PortMod

TTL	TL_Mod		UWTN	A	B	C	D	E	X
0	-0.5		7+	0	-1	-1.5	-2	-2.5	-5
0-6	0		6-6.5	0	-0.5	-1	-1.5	-2	-4.5
6-8	0.5		5-5.5	0	0	-0.5	-1	-1.5	-4
9-14	1		4-4.5	+0.5	0	0	-0.5	-1	-3.5
15-16	1.5		3-3.5	+0.5	+0.5	0	0	-0.5	-3
			2-2.5	+1	+0.5	+0.5	0	0	-2.5
			1-1.5	+1	+1	+0.5	+0.5	0	0
			<1	+1.5	+1	+1	+0.5	+0.5	0

[tc=2]Port_Mod[/tc] [tc=7]Starport_Mod[/tc]

BTN for a route = WTN_A + WTN_B + TC_Mod – Distance_Mod

TradeCodes	Mod		Dist (Pc)	Dist Mod	Dist (Pc)	Dist Mod
Ag ⇒ Ex	+0.5		0-1	0	60-99	3.5
Ag ⇒ Na	+0.5		2	0.5	100-199	4
In ⇒ Ni	+0.5		3-5	1	200-299	4.5
Different polity	–0.5		6-9	1.5	300-599	5
			10-19	2	600-999	5.5
			20-29	2.5	1000+	6
			30-59	3

[tc=2]TC_Mod[/tc] [tc=4]Distance_Mod[/tc]

The value of trade on a given link, in GURPS $, is 10^(BTN) per year.
On a short route:
The DTons is 10^(BTN-3.5) Td/Year
The Weekly DTons is 10^(BTN-5) Td/week
and Daily is 10^(BTN-6) Td/Day.
Passengers are 10^(BTN-5) per day, 10^(BTN-6.5) per week, and 10^(BTN-7.5) per day.

On longer routes: Reduce the BTN when looking for tonnages (but not values). This represents that higher value cargoes move further.

Distance (Pc)	BTN Mod
<50	0
50-99	–0.5
100-499	–1
500-999	–1.5
1,000	–2

[tc=2]Tonnage Reduction for distance[/tc]

Note that, based upon the costs to ship, the G$ is worth about Cr1.4 to Cr1.7...

That's enough to understand how it's derived. The actual use allows it to vary by week... but this gives the basic formulae.

The biggest issue is the distances, so if you're going to tweak, there's the place to start. Note that a +1 modifier to BTN is an order of magnitude more trade, and that the trade code mods don't match those in Bk2 nor Bk7 (and Bk 7 is also MT, TNE, and T4 trade).

 

[tjoneslo]

One last link for you is the source code for generating the data values in the wiki.

The system described by GT:FT (and explained by Aramis) wants you to generate the trade between every pair of worlds in your area of interest. This can be time consuming to do by hand over even small areas.

The PyRoute code uses path finding (A* paths) to find a route for the trade between every pair of worlds, then sums the results as it goes. And it uses the full set of world data available (53,000+ systems). Duplicating the process on a smaller scale produces different results.

If you want to make changes to the GT:FT system, let me know what specifically you would like to tweak and I can point you to the code changes needed to implement them.

Also I disagree with Aramis here about what to change to reflect your ideal Traveller Universe.

The value of trade on a given link, in GURPS $, is 10^(BTN) per year.

This is the simplest thing to change. Adding +0.5 to +2 to the BTN number gives you much higher trade values without altering the underlying formula and calculations.

 

[Vargas]

Apart from destroying all previous canonical adventures and campaigns, along with innumerable personal adventures and campaigns, what possible benefit can be derived from such a project?

Economics drives decisions at all levels in life?

 

[aramis]

Keep in mind: any adjustment of BTN is a logarithmic increase; +0.5 triples (well x3.16227...) trade, and +1 multiplies it by 10. +0.25 would be x1.778

Also, GTFT itself lists the BTN for every world in the Spinward Marches.

And, at least in HG, the cost for high jump numbers, shoots up radically over 3, and the opportunity costs for time lags should massively reduce things, I'd use a pretty flat scaling... 0.25 per parsec over 1.

Note that regina to terra is 322 parsecs & 166 jumps at J2 (the cheapest way to ship); at j4, it's 288 parsecs & 73 jumps... (J4 is about 10x the cost of J2) - anything travelling by demand would have been ordered at least 1314 days prior (3 years, 219 days) for J4...
WTN 4.5 & 5, BTN 5; BTNTd 4 = 1000 tons/year worth BTN 5 G$100,000... or roughly KCr150. That's roughly 20 tons a week from Earth to regina and from regina to terra.

But note also - the costs to ship that far are about Cr650x322 per ton (assuming you own the ships)... and charged most likely at Cr1100/td/pc (1100x322=354200) - that stuff needs to be worth at least Cr100,000/ton, but the value per ton established by B7 is only KCr5.5 on average... so the size factor calculation is bad; non-reflective. Note also, the base value per ton in GTFT is set at K$10....

 

[vegas]

Yeah, each element of the model has to be individually considered, but if the output is that trade is just 0.06% of the economy, then trade is economically insignificant. (That is way below measurement error and is indistinguishable from zero.) If trade is that insignificant then it really blows up the canon:

1) there can't be a Long Night - economies aren't doing enough trading to notice if trade disappeared.
2) there can't be commerce raiding - it would be a waste of time, no one would care
3) there probably aren't tramp traders at all. The infrastructure and inherent security risk isn't worth the bother for the insignificant economic benefit of allowing it.

Trade needs to be 100 to 1000X larger (6 to 60% of the economy), or else no government is going to bother with it outside of very specialized cases (say, establishing a colony that needs goods it can't supply itself.)

 

[tjoneslo]

The effect of making the trade larger, especially on the 3 orders of magnitude you are suggesting has two outcomes.

1) It demands that universe become a large ship universe. You will require multiple thousands of 100,000 Dton ships to haul the cargo between worlds. Even the trade as written requires a dozen or more 10,000 Dton ships to haul cargo along the largest routes.

2) The larger volume of trade will demand a more active naval force to protect it. In some ways the Trade volume selected in the GT:FT book was to balance the power of the Imperium (which controls the trade) with the power of the individual worlds (which want to remain local). Making the trade volume this much large radically alters this power balance. This may be correct for your view of the Imperium.

Keep in mind the Trade volume is averaged over the whole of the sector. GT:FT has a side bar to explain this. Basically the most populous worlds will have almost no trade relative to their economy. But the majority of worlds, with smaller populations, the trade will be much larger proportions of their economy. In some cases, the trade may outstrip their entire economy.

So keep that in mind. If you try to increase the volume of trade for the largest worlds, the ones that would affect the overall sector economy numbers, what happens to the smaller worlds?

 

[Timerover51]

Yeah, each element of the model has to be individually considered, but if the output is that trade is just 0.06% of the economy, then trade is economically insignificant. (That is way below measurement error and is indistinguishable from zero.) If trade is that insignificant then it really blows up the canon:

1) there can't be a Long Night - economies aren't doing enough trading to notice if trade disappeared.
2) there can't be commerce raiding - it would be a waste of time, no one would care
3) there probably aren't tramp traders at all. The infrastructure and inherent security risk isn't worth the bother for the insignificant economic benefit of allowing it.

Trade needs to be 100 to 1000X larger (6 to 60% of the economy), or else no government is going to bother with it outside of very specialized cases (say, establishing a colony that needs goods it can't supply itself.)

That would hold true also for planets. A Earth-type planet that is self-sufficient is not going to have a great need of trade. The planets in most need of trade are those with low populations and a high Tech level, those requiring a closed environment, asteroids belts, and those with extreme characteristics such as Desert Worlds, Ice Worlds, and Water Worlds.

 

[vegas]

I have just got my hands on GT:FT so it will take me awhile to wade through all of it to get to the point that I can intelligently offer suggestions. For now, all I can say is that economically significant trade is fundamental to the canon, so one way or another, on OTU model has to preserve it.

 

[aramis]

I did some playing around in a spreadsheet with the GTFT numbers and found a close-fit to the demand-drop used...

Given a shipping cost of $10K per ton, the cost of shipping as a fraction of the value of the goods is the basis for the mod...

For the most part, it's half the base 2 log of the fraction of cost of the goods,
They throw hiccups at ShippingCost=PurchasePrice and ShippingCost=300*PurchasePrice - both of those have a half-step with +0.5 additional between them and the next step.
Those also happen to be the 8/12/16 week and 256/384/512 week nominal times...

Oh, and the pre-purchase delay discount is Cost x0.9^(weeks early/4), scaled on 1/2/4/8/12/16 weeks early. From which I get a delay value, and I don't think it's included in the distance modifier.

Which implies they worked things out for $20K, then changed their minds but didn't change the table...

Anyway, it also underscores a couple other issues- the GTFT costs for J≥3 don't rise to the the costs for even basic budget box cargo-haulers in Bk5.

 

[kilemall]

Aramis, a fun thing is to take that Striker per capita and then throw it into the local vs. CrImp TCS table, which is purportedly currency exchange as opposed to Striker's item cost.

So our CR 12,000 person at TL10 at a starport A planet 'earns' 9000 hard CrImp.

But going with the Striker table as an item purchasing modifier, if he's importing a TL 15 starport A CrImp 1000 item it's going to cost him 2000 local Cr. His actual purchasing power importing is 6000 CrImp.

While of course I'm sure much has been discussed and made and discarded about these discrepancies (and heavens if we forget, NOT CANON), I think it's not really a bad model.

It means the lower TL planets are going to import higher tech very rarely, and that higher TL planets are going to be able to buy a LOT of lower TL items.

It also means that a TL15 person can take their local Cr and live like a poobah amongst the 'savages', at least for awhile especially if they have a pension.

A 22,000 Cr per capita TL15-A person would have 27,500 Cr at TL10-A, and TL10 items imported would cost 50%.

It is interesting to consider how a multi-TL currency exchange works to not have cash drain out of a heavily importing world, whether that is a low tech world desperate for critical equipment or a high tech one indulging in a buying spree.

The rich get richer, the poor get poorer- or at least don't get ahead. Perhaps another reason for slow TL growth, it takes a lot of hardscrabble effort to lift up a whole world's currency exchange and production value.

However, getting paid in hard CrImps would be a VERY enticing economic proposition to any frontier worlder looking to get ahead.

Cross-hatching both tables at the same time doesn't really solve your example of subsistence vs. high living (other then showing how high tech helps improve per capita existence), as we can infer living costs are all local. Perhaps though, our per capita TL10 person starts becoming an interstellar customer with his disposable income?

A really harsh thing to consider is the TCS naval tax of 500 Cr local cross-indexed with the Striker per capita. 25% of one's TL5 earnings off to planetary defense, 30% of that to the Imperium vs. the laughable percentage that higher TL citizens pay- if that isn't rebellion fodder, I don't know what is. Of course that is by world not by individual, but that just shifts the center of potential rebellion.

If one was to routinely denominate buying items in trade or pay by these tables, it would become very important to know under what circumstances one bought or got paid in CrImps vs. locals. Careless players could find their 5 MCr payoff contract stipulates local credits at a TL3-D starport, worth only 500,000 CrImp.

Another interesting thing to consider would be ship expenses. Perhaps buying a Free Trader as a TL9 ship reduces the costs, 70% cost by the Striker table.

I would think all the shipping fees would be in CrImp. However, perhaps the fuel and starport fees are denominated locally- so you can earn more going to the higher tech/pop planets, but you also pay more in costs.

The purchasing power of low tech small pop planets would be horrible. You would go there to use your superior buying power to get desirable items to ship to the higher pop planets.

I'm getting into the microeconomic/roleplay weeds here, but bottom line there are some pretty interesting consequences if you apply both of those old school tables at once, rather then individually.

ESPECIALLY if you go outside the OTU and they instead describe interactions between individual worlds or pocket empires.

 

[aramis]

Striker is explicit, Kilemall, that you use both.

The problem being that TL5 C ports are barely subsistence for everyone there using those CT numbers.

I can understand why Marc doesn't want the Striker numbers used for the OTU... TL <4 worlds are all starvation.

 

[kilemall]

Striker is explicit, Kilemall, that you use both.

The problem being that TL5 C ports are barely subsistence for everyone there using those CT numbers.

I can understand why Marc doesn't want the Striker numbers used for the OTU... TL <4 worlds are all starvation.

Er, where does it say use both TCS and Striker? I have just reviewed both from the CD-ROM and they don't reference each other.

The relative value tables are different, one is basically 5% increments the other 10%.

TCS relative value table is currency conversion for tax summation for Big Fleet Building, Striker relative value table is individual item purchase (although Striker does have that per capita fed budget, could be used to create a different value for fleet building, world taxation x .3 for the Imperium and .7 for the world's forces).

Ya, one has to assume that from an interstellar standpoint TL 4- is heinously primitive. You are just getting canning, steam power and refrigeration to take a shot at growing large cities as a norm not an imperial center.

However, if I am out of food on the ship, I'll be happy to risk TL4 canned goods and sell off a spare laser pistol in the process.

 

[aramis]

Er, where does it say use both TCS and Striker? I have just reviewed both from the CD-ROM and they don't reference each other.

The relative value tables are different, one is basically 5% increments the other 10%.

Striker has both the formulae and the currency conversion table.
Page 38 and 39, respectively.

All striker prices are explicitly in local credits.

 

[kilemall]

Striker has both the formulae and the currency conversion table.
Page 38 and 39, respectively.

All striker prices are explicitly in local credits.

Yes, that is the relative value table- for pricing. Typically it's for importing higher tech weaponry for cutting edge advantage for merc forces within the context of Striker. It costs importing as a significant expense, which makes for a very careful game of resource use to buy exactly what is needed and no more for operations.

Done in reverse, higher tech to lower tech items, it can make that CrImp go very far.

Page 39, section D, says explicitly Imported Equipment, not currency. Other then buying equipment, the Striker per capita is not run through a currency ratio like I am proposing doing.

That rule is not currency conversion, as I have stated twice now, and is a different ratio then the TCS tables, which IS about currency conversion.

And again they do not refer to each other. I'm saying, try using BOTH at the same time as an interesting thought experiment on the nature of an interstellar economy and currency.

Another thought, the harsher cost table IMO helps cover the interstellar shipment costs, whereas the TCS table shows currency 'travels' better.

On a practical basis, at a minimum, I wouldn't bother with this as a standard game element, my assumption for most space/merch action/trade is that everything is denominated in CrImp equivalent and any currency conversion is happening behind the scenes.

Where it could be a really good roleplay 'not in Kansas anymore' mechanism is when the characters cross that extrality line for adventuring or trying to be economic bigshots. Going local should be a distinct experience and feel, and nothing like messing with player money to bring that home.

Another roleplay use is the titanic effect these sort of things have on economic interaction. One major plot point IMTU is that a major world is going to get it's UWP TL rating dropped, with a major humanity-wide recession resulting with a drop in trade and overall wealth. This is part of the theme 'history has not stopped' and causes shakeups and lack of confidence in the assumptions of the current system-perhaps even what it means to be a nation.

This story line would not have occurred to me without looking at these relative value tables and 'whatif' they actually model something rather then are just force build tools.