Amen brother.
Amen brother.
dmccoy1693
SOC-13
Yea, I wonder about that.
Very silly, IMO.
ANY system/discussion/whatever that promotes Traveller, in any form, is a good discussion. Whether a particular player/group uses those rules or not, it is still possible to get good use out of them sometimes (designs, plots, etc etc).
Garyius2003
SOC-13
The good. They changed up a lot of the problems. They are pumping out a lot of stuff, adventures and rule books and supplements.
Tha bad. The ship books are full of totally unuseable ship plans for everything over 2,000 tons--wasting pages with junk. They hate proofreading. They never fixed the economics rules for ships. They changed up the imperial fleet into J-3 or 4 or 5 or whatever with little thought. They hate proofreading. They can't recall from book to book whether they are a big ship or small ship version. They hate proofreading.
Tha bad. The ship books are full of totally unuseable ship plans for everything over 2,000 tons--wasting pages with junk. They hate proofreading. They never fixed the economics rules for ships. They changed up the imperial fleet into J-3 or 4 or 5 or whatever with little thought. They hate proofreading. They can't recall from book to book whether they are a big ship or small ship version. They hate proofreading.
Don't know about this. Marc originally designed the econ to be nonsensical and unworkable. He may have nixed any attempt to correct that mistake.
Mongoose were/are, like everyone else, stuck with concepts built into Traveller at the beginning. Such as starship economics.
I don't know if they asked to be able to change this or not, but I do know that there are many bits of Traveller that are broken. Nonsensical UWPs, starship exconomics, stuff like that.
In some cases that I know of, attempts to fix these have been vetoed.
In other cases, FFE has (metaphorically speaking) stomped all over a writer for nothing more than compiling a list of possible issues and suggested fixes. So maybe it's not the fault of the licensee.
I don't know if they asked to be able to change this or not, but I do know that there are many bits of Traveller that are broken. Nonsensical UWPs, starship exconomics, stuff like that.
In some cases that I know of, attempts to fix these have been vetoed.
In other cases, FFE has (metaphorically speaking) stomped all over a writer for nothing more than compiling a list of possible issues and suggested fixes. So maybe it's not the fault of the licensee.
Mongoose made it worse than CT. I've shown mathematically that at 400Td J1, the CT prices do turn a profit on full load when financed at standard rates (20% down), and if 100% purchased, will fund replacement in well under 40 years, on freight.
MGT don't break even until over 50% financed, and replacement time is longer than that, and further, their pricing for passage is less than the cargo space lost to the quarters.
Mongoose made changes... to exacerbate the issue.
Doesn't really matter because in CT there would be no sane bank that would have made loans to build all those Type A's or Far Traders The system was broken from the get go. In each edition (including of course MGT) I've had to fix it. In CT there wasn't even a gradation for freight or passengers going further than 1 parsec. REALLY fantasyland. It would be like a airline ticket for La to Amsterdam costing only as much as LA to Denver. Bonkers.
Here's my suggestion for a fix that introduces per-parsec pricing yet preserves High, Middle, and Low passages:
Low, middle, and high passages are not tickets, they're travel vouchers issued by various Imperial organizations and a some licensed private institutions (megacorporations and the TAS, possibly others). A Mid Passage can be used as payment for a ticket for a single stateroom for one jump, regardless of the length of the jump (up to jump-4). It can then be redeemed by authorized agents at any Class A and B starport (and any other place that the referee thinks is reasonable) for the price of the ticket. So if a voucher is used to buy a jump-1 mid passage ticket, it can be cashed for maybe Cr4,000 whereas the same voucher used to buy a jump-4 can be cashed for, say, Cr16,000 (details vary). A low-passage voucher work the same way for low passages.
High-passage vouchers were originally meant for important Imperial officials traveling on Imperial business. They can be used just as a Mid Passage, but additionally can pay for up to 1 dton of luggage and, most importantly, to "bump" any passenger not traveling by high-passage voucher. The increased service and improved food given to high passengers is a matter of custom, not law. Over time High passages came to be issued to much less important Imperial servants and to be traded pretty freely. (To trade vouchers is technically illegal, but this hasn't been enforced for centuries).
(A middle passenger who gets bumped might bribe the purser with Cr2000 to bump another middle passenger; to avoid trouble, the purser will tell the new bumpee that it is due to a genuine high passage.)
Although economy passage (two people sharing a stateroom) is common practice, no organization issues Economy Passage voucers.
Tramp ships could demand any price they wanted from the issuing organization were it not for the the law imposing maximum reimbursements; if anyone wants more than Cr10,000 for a high passage, Cr8,000 for a middle passage, and Cr1,000 for a low passage, they must be able to document commensurate expenses. Still, being able to get Cr8000 for a Cr4000 passage is pretty sweet...
And yes, this would mean that the Imperium was essentially subsidizing long-distance interstellar travel to some degree.High-passage vouchers were originally meant for important Imperial officials traveling on Imperial business. They can be used just as a Mid Passage, but additionally can pay for up to 1 dton of luggage and, most importantly, to "bump" any passenger not traveling by high-passage voucher. The increased service and improved food given to high passengers is a matter of custom, not law. Over time High passages came to be issued to much less important Imperial servants and to be traded pretty freely. (To trade vouchers is technically illegal, but this hasn't been enforced for centuries).
(A middle passenger who gets bumped might bribe the purser with Cr2000 to bump another middle passenger; to avoid trouble, the purser will tell the new bumpee that it is due to a genuine high passage.)
Although economy passage (two people sharing a stateroom) is common practice, no organization issues Economy Passage voucers.
Tramp ships could demand any price they wanted from the issuing organization were it not for the the law imposing maximum reimbursements; if anyone wants more than Cr10,000 for a high passage, Cr8,000 for a middle passage, and Cr1,000 for a low passage, they must be able to document commensurate expenses. Still, being able to get Cr8000 for a Cr4000 passage is pretty sweet...
Hans
Not really. A lot of pre-radio shipping charged by expected time, rather than actual distance. And by Amtrack, the cost from Seattle to Denver and Seattle to LA is the same for a passenger: the cost of the railpass. Likewise, passage on european trains is by time... buy the railpass covering the zone, and no matter how far you go, you'v paid the same cost.
And in Alaska, in the 1940's, the shipping charge to most places along a the Yukon River was the same no matter which stop on the river you shipped to; you were charged a flat shipping cost, due to maximum price regulations, by zone. (Records of the Office of Price Administration.) Few operators charged less than the allowed zone cost.
The listed flat rates in CT make a profit on J1 HG designs. For certain tonnages, they also make a profit on J2. Assuming, of course, full loads and no speculation.
Mongoose's numbers don't even do that; they lose money, period, on the standard 80% financing, except on freight alone.
Now, I've got the CT Bk2 designs somewhere, analyzed as well... also using budget boxes... the costs, tho', are pretty close to MGT.
See
Exmining CT Bk5 Economincs
[MGT] Fixing the Economics
It isn't the flat rate itself that's the big problem (Though all the historical examples I know of is for limited times and places, not 300 different jurisdictions with some autonomy for 1100 years). It's flat rates that won't allow the shipping lines to cover expenses.
But J3 and J4 are totally screwed. And the profits to be made by undercutting J1 prices that are twice what they need to be make flat J1 rates untenable in the long run. Flat rates are just not credible.
Hans
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Consider that, given the encounter rules, and the misjump rules, a CT ship's unlikely to last much past 40 years. Before adding in anything like TNE's wear value system. So the ship needs that profit margin. And those basal rates also presume full load. It's not really unreasonable to have a 100% markup in high risk endeavors... I know that's the markup my local cab companies run. (A buddy of mine ran a cab company until just last month. Due to vagaries of damage, risk, and slow periods, his basal costs were less than half the fare rate.)
THey are if there's significant enforced price fixing.
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There are two things wrong with that argument. First of all, it assumes that the conditions described by the trade system for free traders apply equally for regular liners, which really isn't credible. A regular liner would jump from secure world to secure world without encountering pirates, use refined fuel only, never risk a misjump, and have a turnaround time of 9 or 10 days instead of 14. Secondly, if J1 shipping needs that margin, then J2 would need a much bigger margin to break even, J3 a bigger one, etc.
Also, price fixing isn't necessary to maintain a needed margin, since anyone who tried to undercut the prices would go bankrupt.
But significant enforced price fixing across the entire Imperium for 1100 years isn't. The who point of having local government at the subsector level is to allow for taking local conditions into account; price fixing at the Imperial level just isn't credible for 10 years, let alone 1100.
Hans
Gov subsidized isn't relevant to private. Also, the "pre-radio shipping" didn't involve vessels that twice, thrice, four times as fast/expensive per ton shipped.
Bad analogies and not relevant to the econ in questions.
Don't expect to make much of a profit in an economy that's managed by a government. You'd want to trade with worlds that the governments leave pretty much alone. 1107 years of economic micro-management from an Imperium government equals no business on a galactic scale. Only government contractors need apply.
Anyway, let the ref decide if money was made or not for a trip. How many players actually continued doing their accounting still after the second trip somewhere in a game?
Anyway, let the ref decide if money was made or not for a trip. How many players actually continued doing their accounting still after the second trip somewhere in a game?
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Any economic system has to make sense. If the gummint is giving Paul a free ride, it has to find a Peter to rob. And while it may take much of Peter's profit, it can't take it all, or Peter will go bankrupt. In which case the gummint is unable to pay Paul and doesn't last much longer.
But that really a side issue.
My argument was that a too literal interpretation of the rules is implausible precisely because I don't believe there has been 1107 years of economic micro-management. Or 7 years for that matter. Is there anything in the canonical background material (as opposed to the trade rules) that suggests that the Imperium is micro-managing anything? I can't think of a single thing, let alone a preponderance of the available evidence. can you?
Which ref? The generic ref has very little to do with this discussion. Wil and I and HG and the other Traveller fans who're contributing meaningfully to it are really the only refs involved. And I, for one, is a lot more interested in the world-building aspect than the campaign-running aspect. I could handle running a Merchant campaign just fine (I'd just use the trade variant in Insterstellar Wars with a few tweaks), but I really don't have the time to write up a game universe of even a hundred worlds. For that I have to rely on others. But I can only use stuff that makes sense to me, so I have an interest in trying to make the trade system make sense.
Also, all practical issues aside, I enjoy trying to make the Traveller Universe make sense. You might say it's a hobby of mine. And people usually expend far more effort on their hobbies than any practical considerations would warrant.
Hans
No. The 3rd Imperium so far, knock on wood, has only established the bare minimum jump routes that it patrols and has not meddled in small business affairs with regulations and red tape. There probably wouldn't be an Imperium still after 1107 years if they controlled everything. I'm sure lots of planetary populations would have died out by now that depended totally on government aid to survive.
Unlike Hans, I'm more into running an ATU now. I can see the fixed rates happening. I can also see it being used as a specific limiter on interstellar trade to prevent local trade federations from building up to be threats to the Imperium.
Then again, I'd rather run Prototraveller than the OTU anymore, and the GTU defined many things the OTU didn't, and in so doing became completely alien to my understanding of the OTU... but it's also Hans' primary baseline.
Then again, I'd rather run Prototraveller than the OTU anymore, and the GTU defined many things the OTU didn't, and in so doing became completely alien to my understanding of the OTU... but it's also Hans' primary baseline.
OK, I'll bite. Alternate Imperium. Fixed rates. Not just any fixed rates, but the specific fixed rates set forth in the CT rules. How does it actually work? Who benefits and how do they enforce in the face of the people that suffer from it? How much does Tukera charge for mid passage on its jump-3 and jump-4 liners? How much does Al Morai charge on their jump-3 and jump-4 liners? How much does a subsector-wide line charge on theirs? If it's the fixed rates, how do they stay in business? If they need to subsidize the freight and passenger rates, why do they stay in that business? If someone else subsidize them, who, how, and why? Who uses jump-1 ships for anything other than 1-parsec distances? That is to say, what customers pay to use jump-1 vessels for freight and transport on anything other than 1-parsec distances?
Not quite. CT is still my baseline, the part of it that makes sense. I just think that GT added a lot of good stuff and clarified some of the CT clutter. I wouldn't have "adopted" GT's per parsec pricing if fixed rates had made sense (Come to that, Jim McLean et alii presumably wouldn't have changed anything if it had made sense). If GT had changed a system that made sense, I wouldn't have accepted it as my "primary baseline". Provide me with an interpretation of CT that actually works, in the universe-building sense, and I'll drop anything from GT that doesn't fit with it. Promise.
Hans
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