Trade Classifications and Non-Mainworlds

[Garnfellow]

The Trade Classifications reflect specific types of information about the Mainworld (and to a lesser extent, other locations in the system).

Trade Classifications apply labels to worlds (both the Mainworld and other system worlds in the system) which are used in the Trade and Commerce system. They identify basic conditions relating to population, climate, political, and economic status (403).

In T5 one TC is explicitly mainworld only (Px) and a few others are explicitly non-mainworld only (Fa, Mi, Pe). Presumably all others are applicable to either type of world. And yet . . . I can't think of an example where any of the planetary, population, or economic classifications have been applied to a non-mainworld.

Assume a system with a mainworld with a UWP of A000999-E As Hi In Va and a non-mainworld in the habitable zone with F666666-6.

The mainworld is clearly more Important (with a score of 4, compared to the garden world's -3), despite being a far less attractive place to live. Shouldn't the second world qualify for Ag Ga Ni Ri, or is it stuck with just Fa?

I wonder if maybe the old secondary classifications are really obsolete under T5.

 

[tjoneslo]

In T5 one TC is explicitly mainworld only (Px) and a few others are explicitly non-mainworld only (Fa, Mi, Pe). Presumably all others are applicable to either type of world. And yet . . . I can't think of an example where any of the planetary, population, or economic classifications have been applied to a non-mainworld.

Assume a system with a mainworld with a UWP of A000999-E As Hi In Va and a non-mainworld in the habitable zone with F666666-6.

The mainworld is clearly more Important (with a score of 4, compared to the garden world's -3), despite being a far less attractive place to live. Shouldn't the second world qualify for Ag Ga Ni Ri, or is it stuck with just Fa?

I wonder if maybe the old secondary classifications are really obsolete under T5.

The trade codes are a short hand method of indicating the general types of goods required and available from the system as a whole. But like most generalizations it is very easy to find flaws in the system.

The assumption is in most systems there is only one port (the mainworld). So this world sets the policy (political and economic) about goods imported or exported. The port is the Imperial port, where a set of rules regarding trade exist and can be enforced.

So the free trader (for whom the trade codes become important) don't need the codes for the secondary world because they are not (in general) going to be trading there. The Imperium doesn't support the traders going there, as the world is under the control of the main world. And the government of the main world may dislike or actively discourage outsider traders at the secondary worlds.

Now in your Traveller Universe, these secondary worlds could be independent enough to warrant a separate port and trade systems. And/or adventure fuel.

 

[Garnfellow]

The assumption is in most systems there is only one port (the mainworld). So this world sets the policy (political and economic) about goods imported or exported. The port is the Imperial port, where a set of rules regarding trade exist and can be enforced.

So the free trader (for whom the trade codes become important) don't need the codes for the secondary world because they are not (in general) going to be trading there. The Imperium doesn't support the traders going there, as the world is under the control of the main world. And the government of the main world may dislike or actively discourage outsider traders at the secondary worlds.

I would generally agree with all this for versions of Traveller prior to T5 . . . but I think T5 suggests -- and the system could handle -- a much more textured view of intrasystem trade. T5 doesn't specifically describe the TCs as applying to the entire system, and it doesn't rule out applying most of the TCs to non-mainworlds.

 

[mike wightman]

It's a question of detail.

If you are mapping a sector then only the mainworlds make up your dataset.

If you are detailing a single system (e.g. Tarsus, Beltstrike) then you can detail every detail in a system.

I have run campaigns that never made it out of the system the PCs started at, I generated additional worlds by cherry picking from worlds designed from a subsector I had been generating.

It was a balkanised system, the mainworld government was separate to the belt industrial government, which was itself separate from the government of the gas giant moon.
World, belt and moon all had their own trade classifications.