What does a RU mean

[rancke]

How many RUs does it take to "build" an E class starport? How long does it take to put into service?

There is a bigger question out there. How many RUs invested over how many years does it take to upgrade a D to a C, C to B, B to A?

What starports come with a high port? If I want to add a high port, how many RUs does it take, and how long does it take to come online?

You'll need a way to establish the exchange value between RUs and credits to answer that question. But guesstimating that RUs are worth a lot, I'd say a small fraction of an RU to establish a Class E starport. I'll also suggest that better starports are built organically, if that's the word I want, as trade and traffic grows.

For example, the difference between a Class B and a Class A starport is whether or not there's a shipbuilding industry in the system. So the starports themselves can be completely identical (thus costing exactly the same to establish).

Likewise, turning a small Class D starport into a small class C starport would probably cost less than turning a large Class D starport into a large Class C starport.

So the answer to your question is, IMO: 'There is insufficient information to say'.


Hans

 

[robject]

What about Forine? Pop 9, starport D.

Pixie? Uakye? Boughene?

Hey, if all you can find is four exceptions, then we're doing well. Now compare the entire dataset and see what you get...

 

[rancke]

Hey, if all you can find is four exceptions, then we're doing well. Now compare the entire dataset and see what you get...

Those are a handful that I came up with in ten seconds. I'm confident that I could find a lot more if I thought it would be any use.


Hans

 

[robject]

That's why I've long championed the notion that a starport class doesn't depend on what can potentially be done at the starport, but on what is actually currently being done at the starport.

This is quite reasonable, but sanity suggests that the two are typically the same.

 

[robject]

Those are a handful that I came up with in ten seconds. I'm confident that I could find a lot more if I thought it would be any use.


Hans

Yeah, I don't have the Spinward Marches spreadsheet handy, otherwise I would have used it. If I remember to run it through my analysis script, I'll post the resuts.

 

[pendragonman]

I figure RUs are here to stay, even if there isn't a direct exchange rate to credits. I may be wrong, but I am associating RUs in my head with a measure of a system's GDP. RUs giving us a way to compare the relative economies of systems despite the variety of styles of economies and variety of government types. Thereby RUs aren't a measure of monetary strength but a measure of long term wealth or investment.

In previous rule sets, we had no way of building starports or even spaceports from the ground up (so to speak). We could handwave something out of ship construction rules, but there was nothing concrete. Since we were previously using ship construction, we used credits as a measure of cost. All along I have thought that ports were a manifestation of infrastructure and therefore really are a manifestation of the ability to handle a certain volume of traffic.

From what I have seen from your responses, it seems that my thoughts on this are largely correct. Yes, Hans, there are exceptions. This is Traveller after all, and without the outliers to cause arguments over where would we be?

So, taking Rob's quicky review of a sector of data, a reasonable if small sample considering the number of sectors for which we have data, we have that the average class A is found in systems with RUs greater than 3000, the average B has around 1000, class C averages less than 600 but positive RU, D and E are found on negative RU systems.

Now, looking again at the analysis provided so far, it seems that depending on the systems previous RU situation, and therefore its previous economic strength giving an indicator of growth or decay when compared with current, we can say that some D ports are C ports that have lost some capabilities as the economy crashed or are smaller C ports that are growing to full C status as the economy continues to grow.

Similar observations can be made for C and B ports. A ports seem to be the ultimate port, and is either growing to encompass even larger capacity or is atrophying as shipping decreases and less docking space is required but is continuing to build jump capable shipping as the local infrastructure is maintaining at least one jump drive manufacturing plant.

So it comes to mind that we now know at what approximate infrastructure and economic power level a port becomes available. We have a new question: How do we gauge when/how a system develops infrastructure? It shouldn't all be GM handwave. If so, what would we argue about?

Just an aside, I have put this in the T5 forum for a reason. How do we do this using as much of the T5 guidance as we can while relying on as little of previous rulesets as possible?

 

[rancke]

I figure RUs are here to stay, even if there isn't a direct exchange rate to credits. I may be wrong, but I am associating RUs in my head with a measure of a system's GDP. RUs giving us a way to compare the relative economies of systems despite the variety of styles of economies and variety of government types.

As long as the pop component is exponential rather than linear, the concept is fundamentally flawed and won't give sensible results. Useable results, gamable results, possibly, but not sensible.

Thereby RUs aren't a measure of monetary strength but a measure of long term wealth or investment.

What exactly is the difference?


Hans

 

[Vladika]

Thereby RUs aren't a measure of monetary strength but a measure of long term wealth or investment.

What exactly is the difference?


Hans

Money is a medium of exchange and as such is fluid.

Most people will acknowledge that the value of money is, shall we say "erratic", even when based on a commodity, like gold, or tied to a "reserve currency".

Wealth is an even greater fiction, as resent collapses of "bubble" investments has shown. (Housing, Dot coms, etc.)

Investment Wealth is often nothing more that stock, which is worth what people believe it is by evidence of what they will pay, or sell it for. Also, stated "value" as collateral or real holdings. An essentially worthless warehouse or obsolete factor my still be an "investment".

A high tech company can have stock either rocket, or nose dive. Still, it's only really worth what it can be converted to money for. The more that is bought, or sold, the more erratic it's "value" becomes, until stabilization takes hold.

I don't remember the world name you mentioned earlier with zero population and a dormant Class A satrport. That is investment, what it is worth in money is scrap metal and salvage.

 

[rancke]

Money is a medium of exchange and as such is fluid.

I thought that 'monetary strength' referred to GWP.

Most people will acknowledge that the value of money is, shall we say "erratic", even when based on a commodity, like gold, or tied to a "reserve currency".

The value of money is also erratic when tied to a commodity. If the economy expands faster than the supply of the commodity, you get deflation and if the economy expands slower than the supply, you get inflation (one famous example is the economy of Spain when they imported fleetloads of gold and silver). A properly maintained fiat currency is far more stable. The problem there lies in the 'properly maintained', as a fiat currency is more vulnerable to abuse.

I don't remember the world name you mentioned earlier with zero population and a dormant Class A satrport. That is investment, what it is worth in money is scrap metal and salvage.

I didn't mention the name as I couldn't remember it. But now I've dug out my copy of BtC and found it. It is Binges. A population of 700 and a Class A starport.

"The colony arrived on Binges to make money, an in 812 began to construct a huge starport with financing via the Glisten First Bank. It soon became clear that the Imperium would not in the short term be expanding, and the bank called in the loan, ruining the colony. The world is now the property of the bank's agents, who continue to maintain the complex to ensure that when the Imperial expansions occurs [sic], Binges will be a major world." [BtC:78]​

Hans

 

[pendragonman]

Wealth is also those things at attract money, like mineral wealth. It just needs to be dug up and processed. Or gems, precious metals, naturally occurring radioactives, renewable resources (like lumber or herd animals), or luxury foodstuffs that the affluent might enjoy.

To develop wealth, one builds infrastructure, transportation and manufacturing capacity, and need a growing knowledgeable workforce.

 

[rancke]

Wealth is also those things at attract money, like mineral wealth. It just needs to be dug up and processed. Or gems, precious metals, naturally occurring radioactives, renewable resources (like lumber or herd animals), or luxury foodstuffs that the affluent might enjoy.

That would be Resources, wouldn't it? One of the factors used to compute RUs, but not RUs themselves.

To develop wealth, one builds infrastructure, transportation and manufacturing capacity, and need a growing knowledgeable workforce.

And labor and infrastructure are two other factors in RU. I still don't understand the distinction you made between monetary strength and long term wealth or investment.


Hans

 

[pendragonman]

Hans,

Those three factors you yourself say are components of RUs is WHY I AM CALLING RUs WEALTH and not MONEY.

A person can be wealthy owning land, but be cash poor. A person can be cash rich (like a banker) without having long term wealth.

 

[rancke]

Those three factors you yourself say are components of RUs is WHY I AM CALLING RUs WEALTH and not MONEY.

Look, I'm not trying to give you a hard time. But you seem to say one thing in one post and another in the next post and I can't make it out. Presumably I'm misapprehending you either one place or the other. You distinguish between 'monetary strength' and 'long term wealth'. By 'monetary strength' do you mean just plain money, total supply of currency? Or something more? And first you say that 'long term wealth' is the same as investment, which I would interpret as infrastructure alone, then you say that 'wealth' is the same thing as resources, and then you say it's the same thing as resources modified by labor and infrastructure.


Hans

 

[pendragonman]

1) Wealth can be both infrastructure and resources.

2)Money is just plain money. Cash. Greenbacks. Moola. Simoleans. Marks. Yen. That the money supply isn't infinite is only because printing gobs more to cover will make the money worth less. On the other hand, a diamond is a diamond is a diamond is a diamond. It will always have value until destroyed. Things with almost permanent value are wealth.

What was said by someone else (can't remember who) is that money is impermanent. That same person told you that infrastructure was wealth. It is, but it is not the only component.

Can you buy something today with a Deutschmark from 1987? If so, at nowhere near face value. Can you trade a pig of copper from 1987 for something you want? You may have to turn it into some of that liquid money stuff first but yes you can as a pig of copper hold intrinsic value that money does not. A bridge similarly holds value, and you can get that liquid money from it by making people pay tolls then spending that liquid on something you want.

Money by itself is not wealth. Money is an artificial means of bartering things of wealth for other things of wealth without having to carry around 5 chickens to buy 1 goat.

EDIT: Can we now get back to the actual purpose of the discussion instead of discussing what is and isn't wealth or money? The purpose of the thread wasn't to define RUs but how to use them.

 

[rancke]

I have not access to it, so I might well be wrong, but for what I've read in various posts in this board, was this not in T4 Pocket Empires?

Also for what I've read here, the very concept of RU was taken from it for T5, so I guess any such sots (in RU and time) that could be given in T4 would be easily extrapolable to T5...

Unfortunately there was a transmission error (or a deliberate change) that changed the labor component of the formula from a fraction of the total population to the population level.


Hans

 

[Vladika]

Unfortunately there was a transmission error (or a deliberate change) that changed the labor component of the formula from a fraction of the total population to the population level.


Hans

I'd be happy to look it up in my BBB, if it only had an index.

 

[rancke]

I'd be happy to look it up in my BBB, if it only had an index.

Look what up? I'm relying on the formula quoted here on the boards some time ago. Do you think that it's been misquoted?

As for the Pocket Empires version, I checked that myself.


Hans

 

[tjoneslo]

I spent some time looking through Pocket Empires and World Builder's Handbook to find a use for the RUs. The challenge here, as Hans has pointed out, is that the definition of "Resource Unit" has changes from Pocket Empires in some subtle and not so subtle ways.

My first question is do you think there is a simple conversion of RU to Credits or not?

Pocket Empires, for example, defines a conversion of RU to Credits as 1TCr divided by the worlds labor factor ( TL * 0.1 * Resource Available * infrastructure). The two examples in the book result in values of BCr4.919 (for Slyea) and BCr9.216 (for Khiur), both in local credits. So if you follow Pocket Empires, the RU becomes just another unit of money, like the credit.

My reading of the slim mentions of the definitions of the RU in the T5 Core rules seems to imply the answer is No. There is something different about how RUs work in the current Imperial economic system that can't be expressed using simple Credit (or Credits over time).

If you agree with the latter, there needs to be a clearer description of what an RU is, and what it can buy.

 

[rancke]

My first question is do you think there is a simple conversion of RU to Credits or not?

T4 RUs, absolutely. T5 RUs, definitely not.

My reading of the slim mentions of the definitions of the RU in the T5 Core rules seems to imply the answer is No. There is something different about how RUs work in the current Imperial economic system that can't be expressed using simple Credit (or Credits over time).

If you agree with the latter, there needs to be a clearer description of what an RU is, and what it can buy.

Indeed there does. My problem is that I can't figure out what that description could possibly be. So I'm eagerly awaiting the official exposition.


Hans

 

[pendragonman]

I am starting to think that RUs don't actually purchase anything but are a measure of economic power of a system. Instead of defining what RUs buy, I think that what is really needed is what types of infrastructure is expected at a certain level of RU; what amount of wealth, sophistication, and sustainable tech is represented by a certain level of RU.

Especially since we don't have a way of evolving RU year over year in the GM's toolbox.