Trade Routes

[tim_manley]

In the old sets the Spinward Marches map had the trade route lines drawn on it (or X-Boat routes....)

Did anyone of you use them for anything?

I think I must have tried a few things

Jump gates/points (ships without jump drive can travel the lines)

Well known jump routes (jump in 1/2 the time)

any others?

 

[daryen]

The lines on the old map were X-boat routes.

What that meant is that information travelled most quickly down the lines, then fanned out from there where appropriate.

Those were not trade routes.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by daryen:
The lines on the old map were X-boat routes.

What that meant is that information travelled most quickly down the lines, then fanned out from there where appropriate.

Those were not trade routes.

And they didn't work as X-boat routes. It wasn't so much that they connected to some really strange worlds (low-population worlds that you'd think couldn't possibly rate an X-boat node)[*] because you can sometimes come up with explanations for something like that. But they included dog-legs that made no sense at all when you consider that an X-boat link isn't actually a route, it is just two systems less than 4 parsecs apart with an X-boat tender each.

[*] Though that didn't help.

Hans

 

[vegascat]

The routes look like the results of the random subsector generation system from the LBBs. It would have helped to move some of the nodes over a system sometimes. I do that when generating subsectors, but the areas in print are canon.

X-boat routes are where you can find X-boat tenders and post messages. They should be on high pop worlds at 4 parsecs apart.

 

[daryen]

I never said the X-boat routes made any *sense*. Just that they are supposed to be X-boat routes.

Look, I love the Spinward Marches as much as anyone. Just don't try to make too much sense of stuff, as it was obviously generated randomly. The silly X-boat routes are the least of the problems in the Marches.

 

[PVernon]

Tim,
If you are looking for trade route information try Anthony's Grand Survey site.

http://maps.grandsurvey.com/

Peter V.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by daryen:
I never said the X-boat routes made any *sense*. Just that they are supposed to be X-boat routes.

Look, I love the Spinward Marches as much as anyone. Just don't try to make too much sense of stuff, as it was obviously generated randomly. The silly X-boat routes are the least of the problems in the Marches.

Oh, I'm sure there must be one or two problems in the Marches that are smaller than the silly X-boat routes.

Hans

 

[Liam Devlin]

Trade rtes...thorny issue sometimes. IIRC The Imperial mover and shaker in Transportation of Goods/ Services and people was ye olde Tukera Lines (no matter what flavor Traveller you played)
. They tended to follow the J-4 X-routes somewhat, wih the ever famous J-4, 3ktn classic Tukera Liner. equipped with no contragrav lifters, it was dependent utterly on C-class starports or better to the systems it travelled. (No gas giant refuelling in other words).
In reviewing the dagudashaag sector for collapse, following in the footsteps of Mark Seemans, I caught his passage wherein he'd talked to Mr Marc Miller at a Con about reconstructing Trade rtes for the MT era of Traveller.
Figure in Subsector capital (usually a Hi pop world, maybe the highest Tech of the subsector)as one stop, all other Hi pop worlds, as well as those with the Ri Trade modifier (Rich worlds). Then link them up by J-4 or less. Its a bit of work, going through the UPPs, but it works.
For those of us in the New Era (out in the wilds)...A planet's Tech level and available starport are going to dictate whether or not A ship will put into port. Pocket empires (if they are known to one another--unlikely in the 1202 era, as most of these are beginning to branch outwards tentatively beyond their mini-Safes (the Hard Times vocabulary, mea culpa (Grins), but some REfs might see the Guild in this era and Free traders who've gravitated away from them as having the Most extensive Astrogation/ trade knowledge available. The Mains will become more important, due to collapse die offs, once profitable worlds maybe wastelands, barren, or depopulated severely. Also, the poor devils maybe making a living in a J-1 ship, tied to the main as they were. In the wilds (as was the case in Hard Times campaigns) a C-class starport is a jewel. Its a major repair facility. After them, the D-class (High quality Spaceport equivalent H). The ignoble E-class port returns as the basic landing strip. X-class means you're really risking landing most of the time. Technophobic/ xenophobic natives are the least of your troubles. There's no beacon or weather service reports to glean, and no telling if the dirtsiders have something they can shoot you down with either til you're committed.
And the other feature of former Hi pop dead worlds, salvage of relic technology. This has its own risks in trade. Stuff you bring back has High credit value in those PEs, but the hassle of getting free of AI virus can be an adventure in and of itself.
News, and mail packets subsidies will be found in the PEs only as a hard and fast rule (unless the PE has opened a colony outside its "safe", and PCs are recruited to do it, (sparing the few ships of the Polity for defense, etc)--thats why its called Adventuring tho!
My .02cr worth. Hope some has been useful, whatever milieu in OTu your using.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Almost forgot! After doing the Hi In, & Hi, & Ri worlds, along with Cp's & Cx's...You'll get the Major J-4 or less Tukera lines rtes. They may parallel the X-boat lines betimes, sometimes not. From there, you can develop your subsidiary trade rtes. Say, your Ag (agrarian/aquacultural worlds) that feed the Hi pop worlds), your Ni resource worlds that tie into the Hi In worlds (Like asteroid belts, though these differ one from another). These subsidiary rtes can be run by smaller Sector-wide or Subsector companies. Sometimes even former Adventurers (The March harrier carrier Service is an example) set up a rte. after carving out a particular niche.
I found it tedious but rewarding to xerox a Sector hex map out of one of MT books and color code the worlds (I don't have H& E world builder), and the OTU UPPs to make out these routes myself as a GM. Then I took colored gel ink pens and made the various connections for the Trade companies Imtu.
When I took the campaign into TNE, they (the maps) served as a blue print for both exploration and salvage missions alike.

 

[Anthony]

For those curious: my trade maps (at maps.grandsurvey.com) are based on GURPS Traveller, which evaluates trade based on TL, starport, and population. To actually generate routes involves a rather large processing task on a computer, figuring out shortests paths, and trying to merge routes where efficient (in a way that can probably be optimized more, but works well enough). Most routes are J2 or J3 (J2 is marginally favored)

 

[trader jim]

Guys - lets get this Trade Rout thing totally "Squared Away" soon!! Ol Trader Jim needs New Escap....trade routes just to stay in bussiness!!! the richer ones the better!!

 

[tim_manley]

I could see x-boat routes helpful in that there is a tender there and you can trace the flow of information from a system.

Trade routes helpful only in the fact that there should tend to be more ships in the systems at either end of the trade route.

My oringal question though was has anyone used them for different purposes in YTU?

Like, perhaps, travelling along that line meant your jump distance was rated at 1/2 actual; the rotue was 'jump easy' and it's why it became a standard route. Or perhaps they're wormholes/star-gates etc....

just curious.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Ahh, I begin to see where you're heading (Liam dusts off thinking cap, replaces back in hindmost pocket).
You see Jump lanes as making "grooves" in N-space eh? Not an unreasonable idea. ANtony Farrel's Star Kingdom of the Swan/Banners web site uses Jump gates. As for the "routes" having say, grooves in em... try looking at Freelance Traveller's site off of www.downport.com, under doing it "My Way column", or "Tweaking the Jump drive". IIRC somewhere in there, where I think your heading with this was covered in a CT-MT campaign.

Hope thats helpful!

 

[Vorlanth]

Actually - I've been using this idea in my Traveller game for a while. Essentially, I see the energy required to access J-space as being largely the energy required to tear a controlled hole in N-space (Jump emergance or precipitation also tears or deforms local N-space, but by a much smaller amount). So high traffic areas with lots of ships Jumping outsystem along similar vectors tends to "weaken" N-space in local regions. Therefore I made rules around what I call "Line Jumps" which are along known, high-traffic vectors connecting two systems in a region with weakened N-space (rather than "Free Jumps" which are whatever the Astrogator feels like charting). Although the size of a "Line Jump" region can vary widely, they are generally on the order of a a millilightsecond (1/1000 of a light second or approximately 300 kilometers) in diameter or less - so they are difficult to find by accident in the vastness of space.

Essentially the rules I use reduce the fuel cost and travel time by small amount which depends on how weak local N-space is (I've toyed with making the saving in time and fuel random but currently am keeping at one of three states - none (0%), slight (10%), and moderate (20%)). Note that because N-Space is weakened, Jump emergance (when a ship precipitates into N-space) in an "Line Jump" region is much more easily detected as more more energy can leak through from J-space.

Generally data on a system's charted "Line Jumps" (if any) are available for a fair price from the starport (it's all to their trade advantage if more ships come through faster). Since these N-space weakened regions are known to drift (as space-time itself moves and expands) ships have to update their data roughly once every few years (though some regions evidence drift much more frequent and faster than that). Some trading concerns and corporations are suspected to have charted their own "Line Jumps" which they protect as a trade advantage.

There are also a small number of naturally occuring areas of N-space weakness that have no correlation to high jump traffic but, although research is ongoing, no one has been able to artificially produce them (other than by thousands of jumps repeated in the same region of space)

 

[Liam Devlin]

vorlanth thats the best nutshell write up I've read on this topic in a long, lonnnnnnnnng time. Short, sweet, and succint. Kudos! Stars fer you lad!