The nature of the book 1-3 Universe

[Max]

Since the survival rolls rarely get easier as one continues in service there must be some sort of stigma attached to service, this should apply even without considering mandatory service.
Interesting.

Not sure how you attach a stigma to hard survival. Can you elaborate?

It's not the hard survival rolls themselves that indicates this, it is the fact that they do not get easier. A skilled person is more valuable to the managers of a job than someone who has no experience. In Traveller a 20 year veteran is put into situations as dangerous as a rookie fresh out of boot camp, his experience and skill are not valued by his managers. There is no bonus to survival for rank either, a colonel is put into as dangerous an environment as a brand new army draftee. Space may be dangerous, but without some reason an organization has steps to minimize those risks for senior NCOs and officers in command who cannot be replaced easily. The IISS (scouts) can justify this (see later) but a military/naval organization has a command structure which has to be protected (if space is really, really dangerous then navy Commanders would have ratings following them around with a spare towel because having an rating do this costs less than losing a Commander).

It could be that the ranks are meaningless and the service folks have no real authority and make no real decisions. Merchant "Captain" Jameson really just passes on orders from the in a safe position real commander (maybe a computer even) which makes all the real decisions and if he dies then "First-Officer" Jane Doe can easily step in to replace him. If this were the case and the rank system is a joke without any actual authority then there would certainly be a stigma attached to anyone who continued to reenlist in a system which only had social promotions instead of entering the real world.

Alternatively there could be a social convention which prizes the egalitarianism of risk (US Marine Corp has a mild form of this convention), in which it felt that all persons should share the risk equally. The IISS of book 6 avoided the lack of ranks by adopting a non-hierarchical command structure where ability determined who gave orders BUT in book 6 survival rolls did become easier as scouts gained skills which limits how far the IISS model can stretch to explain the early universe. While there may be respect for the force-commander who is willing to subject herself to the same risks as her troops, society will still look askance at someone who is part of an organization so tied to an abstract ideal that it will sacrifice effectiveness to maintain that ideal (we might respect the Amish for holding to their beliefs at personal cost but there is still something wrong with them).


Now I have to backpedal on the stigma. Given the deadliness of the universe in general, the idea of "Egalitarian Risk" could be a universal one throughout a society. It would be an interesting society, where there would be social stigma attached to 'cowards' who weren't willing to risk their lives. Hmm, duels would probably be common which would help justify the fatality rate without creating a permanent state of war and safety devices like helmets and seat-belts would be only for cowards. It would probably lose wars with a society which believed that the best place for a general was in a bunker directing the troops instead of on the front lines getting shot at, although maybe the "cowards" would be the real commanders of the first explanation. The "cowards" could be off the tables because no player could be one and would be despised servants to the nominal officers and plan strategies which they suggest to the nominal officers. Hmm, an interesting idea/

 

[Maccat]

*choke* um, I don't get there at all from that...
Using the optional rule (LBB1 pg10) it's only a (flesh) wound! How one is regarded is SOC. High soc careers Navy, Marines; these are prestigious careers!

Of the careers:
Navy Interstellar, governmental
Marines Interstellar (on the ships), at the bases and ports, governmental
Scout Interstellar Mail, government subsidy ships only
Merchant Interstellar Trader, government subsidy routes, otherwise free.

Army planetside
Other space, planet, joe citizen! *any*

Careers excepting medical lacking any ship skills: Marines Army Other.

Aspects that strike me much more:

The only non-governmental ships specifically mentioned are Free Traders and Pirates. (well, yachts too I guess: said nobles though!)Corporate/governmental Merc (Army) Cruiser. Pirates use Scouts, Patrol Cruisers, and Merc Cruisers (all government ships: pirates are other governments!)

Skills Admin Bribery Forgery Gambling Streetwise Xeno-medicine. Shipside Low lottery working passages hijacking skipping piracy. Piracy encounters C port or less, MORE likely if there is a scout base. Education 8+ (~= college degree i figure) neccessary to get most space skills, excepting Navy, Scout, Merchant. Wild west feel of all the bribe/forge, skipping and hijacking, piracy etc.

In general, it resembles the (later) long night. Most worlds have low populations, limited or no starflight capability especially by tech level let alone starport. a population of 10,000s (5, avg) on a world is a very open, empty place, which speaks to me of a frontier. You are very likely to be eaten by the local toothie or killed in a stampede. More space is devoted to primative melee weapons than more fantastic arms. Worlds are filled with (dangerous) life.

Ship maintenance is limited by TL (LBB3 pg 8, ...TL also indicates the general ability of local technology to repair or maintain items which have failed or malfunctioned. ...The technological level is used in conjunction with the technological level table to determine the general quality and capability of local industry.)

Ship types are outright owned, mortgaged, subsidized (government auxialliaries), scout, or naval. The way the costs and expenses work, most ships would be governmental. Local governments establish trade (merchant) and communications (scout) routes within the subsector (LBB3 pg5)

Refined fuel is available ONLY at A or B ports, unrefined fuel may result in drive failure (12, 3%), which may be repairable if you have parts. This holds true for ANY (including scout, naval) starships. Hence extra sets of drives, or extra refined fuel capacity for longer expeditions.

Starships are available ONLY at A ports, spaceships ONLY at B ports. Jump capability is limited by computer capability (through tech level) more than by drive type (J3 at TL9, J4 TLA etc).

The ultimate average world per LBB3 is C555555-7 NI Ag
Tech level is manufacture and maintenance ability (ship annual maintenance!), NI means a lot of what there is is imported though.

OK so you're there working the herding or crops to stock up for the winter, and a ship flies over headed to port.

(LBB3 Pg 3
In nearly all cases, a planet will consider that a starport is extraterritorial,
and not subject to local law, but will also enforce strict entrance and exit controls.) Enforced by the Army?

The Navy is in charge of assuring that the ship obeys the laws of the world. The port has marines, maybe they boarded the ship on it's way in, they help the Army out. Army can be police, hm? The trade ships are likely government financed (subsidized) /owned (at least the routes are set). A naval/ex-naval officer is likely a noble for this world. Ditto the marines. The mail service, run by the scouts, is for government subsidized ships, routes also set by the local government.

The worlds capable of building, let alone maintaining starships are few and far between. An industrial world with an A port is a very powerful presence on the interstellar scene. High population, high government, charismatic or group dictatorships. A navy noble leads the charge!

So we have isolated islands in space capable of manufacturing ships, *some* places capable of maintaining them (or even refueling them!), and many many low pop low tech worlds in between. A stellar capable world is pretty much able to do as it wills, such worlds agree on mail and trade, military action (Piracy) is government against government or results from the skipped hijacked pirated (say by spaceships!) ships.

Proposed, Non-industrial worlds are incapable of building space/starships.

 

[Max]

not bad, seems to work Maccat and is consistent.

I have problems with the end of the long night idea because of my gripe with X-factor. The X-factor is the factor that determines how many people are on a world. We aren't told what the X-factor is that produces the 2D-2 population on worlds but we can determine what it is not. The X-factor is not related to :

• size of planet, or whether or not it is an asteroid belt
• type of atmosphere
• amount of water
• accessibility to other worlds
• population of worlds around it
• technology of the world

- if the universe in an end of long night or beginning of a period of expansion all of those should have some influence on the population of worlds and an X000xxx-3 world should be less likely to have an A pop than an A666xxx-F world, but they both have the same chance of having an A pop or a 0 pop.

(I could fudge that the pop rolls were a simplification of a complex interaction of all those and X, Y & Z factors which was so complex that the results seemed random but once book 6 came out I lost too many factors I used to support this fudge. Book 6 came out detailing worlds and they sytems they were in and STILL population was independent of stellar type & day length & orbital period & tides & so on. A personal peeve, population should reflect the physical character of the world and if you're going to give us a complex system detailing the world than throw on a complex system for adjusting the population.)

 

[tinker123]

As far as the technology goes, the feel matches the "wild west" description that goes with the speed of communication. Just like the open frontier, where news only travels as fast as people, so the manufacturing base is highly concentrated. If your pistol gets damaged in the Yukon of the 19th Century, you can buy a new one, or you can fit a new barrel or a new chamber or firing pin, but nobody is going to manufacture one from scratch for you.

Likewise real-world shipbuilding. Many ports have supplies, most can manage simple repairs, very few yards build ships from plans (relatively). Not many new ships get built, because there are basically enough for the world's trade anyway, and they last a long time.

On the topic of prior service, if each individual has a chance of active service every term (a level of detail that I think may only appear in books 4+) then that implies that there is always a war going on somewhere, and it employs quite a large percentage of all the armed forces in the Imperium. You can derive that percentage, because it's equal to the chance that any individual has of seeing action. Who does the Imperium keep fighting?

 

[Whipsnade]

Who does the Imperium keep fighting?

Tinker123,

Itself mostly.

All those worlds are a source of lots of nasty little nameless conflcits that the thinly stretched Imperial forces must ignore until they threaten to spill over. It doesn't matter if a world is balkanized or not. There are plenty of rebellions, uprisings, insurgencies, and police actions along with civic unrest, peace keeping, and plain, old fashioned, knock down, drag out, wars to keep anyone's trigger finger in shape. Hell, even corporations get into the act.

It's humanity acting like humans, that's all.


Regards,
Bill

 

[tinker123]

Itself mostly.

Good answer. So, in keeping with a social cohesion, manufacturing base & communication speed similar to the wild west, we have an imperial force akin to the Victorian British Empire, circa 1850-1900. Who did they fight? Not too many of the people just outside the empire (apart from China, most of Africa, Afghanistan, Russia, ok, make that nearly everyone who lived just outside the empire), and uprisings of most people inside the empire (Indian mutiny, Sudan, the Zulus, Boers, Sikhs). But hardly ever each other - that wouldn't be cricket!

 

[kafka47]

As I never came to own Books 1-3, it is hard for me to comment. My first Traveller ruleset was Starter Traveller which was a more illustrated (but not as nice as The Traveller Book) Books 1-3 with some mysterious Library Data thrown in.

My own impression, if I can recall what I thought in 1981, that it was that it was sandbox for me to create a universe that would be relatively tightly knit together (hence the low jump numbers on the drives). It was a young society with people retiring all the time and claiming some sort of benefit. It was a stable society with careers that would last for life or until retirement hit. It was a commercial society but one where worlds could adopt their own economic system. It was a dense system. As there was no logic to the population numbers. It was a human based system with lots of alien animals. It had marvelous potential but there was something unrealized (and that did not happen until I started looking at JTAS).

 

[Max]

stable society, hmm, I missed that. makes a lot of sense. the ship financing rules would also support the stable society idea.

 

[tbeard1999]

stable society, hmm, I missed that. makes a lot of sense. the ship financing rules would also support the stable society idea.

The incredibly low interest rates (~2.5% IIRC) and the very long mortgage terms for starships imply several things about the default Traveller universe:

1. Virtually no inflation. This isn't necessarily the same as a stable society. It could simply be that the default interstellar government more effectively manages currency than 21st century Terran governments. In particular, it resists the temptation to simply print money in lieu of raising taxes.

2. Starships have a very long useful life -- 50+ years, with 60-70 years plausible.

3. Technological innovations that make it very easy for banks to repossess starships. See this thread I posted long ago fleshing out "Finance Transponders".

 

[tbeard1999]

Don't know if this has been mentioned, but something strongly implied by the CT rules is an interstellar government that allows its members a very high level of autonomy (only a fraction of randomly generated systems will have the "Captive Government" type).

 

[Max]

true the interest rate implies effectively zero inflation. If wee go beyond the rules it could also be explained by a government subsidy on ship loans, they aren't willing to make a general subsidy on all ship loans like they do with subsidized merchants but they are willing to cover 60% of the interest on ship construction loans (maybe more as a means of keeping shipyard capacity used than of creating more ships).

The 40 year term on a ship mortgage supports the idea that the society is stable, without stability no one would finance a ship over a 40 year period. The financiers are expecting that conditions 2 generations into the future will be similar enough to conditions 'now' that the starship can still repay the loan. Pretty much the only financing which gets a 40 year term in the 21st century is bonds issued by a few, select governments, in the 19th and 20th centuries there were a few companies which also issued 40 year bonds but 2 generations is a long time for financing.

 

[aramis]

40 years is the long end of typical 1950-1980 housing loans...

 

[Max]

Dang, I forgot about residential mortgages. Of course residential mortgages of the time had a lot of stability in them, your 'business' plan for using the property was pretty stable (gonna live there) and the person doing the financing was reasonably certain that as long as you were alive, you going to need to live somewhere. Come war, come recession, come nationalization of industry by the government most people are going to need places to live. And the US was considered a pretty stable country, it is unlikely that you could have gotten a 40 year mortgage in Angola then.

Commercial investment is riskier. The whole basis for the business might cease to exist in 40 years. A communist government might take over Cuba and nationalize the hotel you financed. A large scale and deep recession could lessen the need for transportation long enough to drive the shipowner into bankruptcy. If things are not pretty stable no one is going to make a 40 year commercial loan because the variability of the risk makes pricing the loan impossible . Interestingly if we look at uber stability like the Villani Empire, I expect you could probably get an 80 year ship loan with the payments spread across multiple generations - it would be easy to estimate the risk of the loan.

 

[aramis]

I know that many commercial boats are financed for 20 years, even now... the boat itself is collateral; the purchaser is required to maintain insurance for at least the unpaid principle, and the damage risk is managed in the insurance office, not the loan office.

 

[Max]

25 and 30 yeqars are possible to get for some commercial ships too, if you can put a 20% down payment. However this is based on the stability which the banks can achieve from not accepting the risk. I'm trying to avoid getting political but given the current economic climate, while the bank may be willing to finance the purchase it might not be possible to get the insurance which the bank requires, especially if the insurance companies are unable to quantify the risk. If the current economic situation has done nothing else, it has once again demonstrated the folly of putting large sums of money into investments where the risk has not been adequately assessed. In Traveller terms, the bank is self-insuring and assuming the risk which in itself indicates stability (otherwise the Traveller banks would insist on default insurance).

 

[tbeard1999]

true the interest rate implies effectively zero inflation. If wee go beyond the rules it could also be explained by a government subsidy on ship loans, they aren't willing to make a general subsidy on all ship loans like they do with subsidized merchants but they are willing to cover 60% of the interest on ship construction loans (maybe more as a means of keeping shipyard capacity used than of creating more ships).

The 40 year term on a ship mortgage supports the idea that the society is stable, without stability no one would finance a ship over a 40 year period.

Given that home loans are often 30 years in the 20-21st century US, I don't think that "stability" is critical for long term loans.

What *is* critical for a long term loan is an expectation that the asset will be worth somewhat more than the loan balance at any given time. Today, banks will make equipment loans for about 75-80% of value. Assuming the same standard applies today, at any given point in the loan, a starship should typically be worth 25-33% more than the remaining loan balance.

Stability is not required for this; only durable starships, an active market in used starships, and virtually no inflation.

 

[tinker123]

and virtually no inflation.

although home loans have been seen to work the other way - at times of high inflation on house prices (in the UK at least), some lenders have offered loans for 110% of current valuation, on the assumption that by the time the borrower defaults, the lender may even be looking at a profit from the sale of their reposessed home.

 

[tbeard1999]

although home loans have been seen to work the other way - at times of high inflation on house prices (in the UK at least), some lenders have offered loans for 110% of current valuation, on the assumption that by the time the borrower defaults, the lender may even be looking at a profit from the sale of their reposessed home.

But at the end of the day, a lender cannot afford to loan money at an interest rate equal to or lower than the average inflation rate during the term of the loan. (Of course, banks will often agree to fixed rate loans, but they charge a *higher* initial rate than the initial rate would be with a variable rate loan. In effect, they are betting that the average inflation rates won't exceed the fixed interest rate charged.)

So a 40 year, fixed rate loan for ~5.5%* will have 2 independent assumptions:

1. At any given point in the loan, there the starship will be worth enough to at least pay the loan off (plus a 25-33% cushion for safety). This implies that starships have a very long useful life (far longer than modern seagoing ships) -- at least 40 years.

2. The prevailing inflation rates will not average more than 5.5% per year, less whatever the bank has to earn on the money.

My guess is that inflation in the default Traveller setting is very low 1-2% per year on average. I'd expect that there will always be some inflation in economies with fiat currency (i.e., printed money that is not backed by valuable assets like gold or silver). Even if politicians can resist the urge to spend more than they bring in from taxes, inflation management is inexact and the consensus amond economists is that slight inflation is preferable to deflation. So the central banks will err on the side of slight inflation. (I assume that the default Traveller currency is fiat currency, since virtually all modern economies use fiat currency and the Traveller rules do not specify that credits are backed by gold or other valuable assets).

*The actual loan rate for a starship; I misremembered it earlier.

 

[aramis]

There was a throwaway reference to it being backed by one of the space-common metals.

 

[robject]

Merchant Prince (sigh) was a huge disappointment. [...] A quick look now (I loathe even having to do that for this) and it looks like, among other faults it doesn't even say what size the cargo lots are [...]

I'd like to "talk" with you about that...