A question about Resources

[Condottiere]

Depends on how the costs break down.

Jump drives tend to be the big ticket item, but apparently you either could pay them off at once, or over forty years.

Then there's hydrogen, but in a vertically integrated business, that could be fractional.

And through the magic of Hollywood accounting, you could be charging freight space to your (self/subsidiaries/friends/family).

 

[J. L. Brown]

I wrote up a Medium Freighter design on Arkathan's very useful Ship Designer spreadsheet. This is a TL-12 20000 dTon J-2 design, with fuel/cargo containers for all fuel past a single parsec. It is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vFQCYeGIe1H-_ncWyF6cAZ0bJKG6ZHkHap0N29NrBDU/edit?usp=sharing
This ship needs to jump (full) often enough to meet the monthly costs of 15.33 MCr, something I tried to figure on the 'Ship Info' tab. If it is going J-1, then it has 15437 dTons of cargo space (plus the cost of an extra 0.95 MCr of fuel); J-2 it has 13437 dTons of cargo space (plus an extra 1.9 MCr of fuel).

I then dropped the J-2 drive, Jump fuel, fuel refineries, the batteries for the J-drive, and beefed up the M-drive to 3G, and the powerplant to support it. I adjusted the crew & so on to accommodate those changes. That design is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i6_Y6NRm0FLC17EHNDrfQzP7m6Qfq5gE-FKsY6paBtk/edit?usp=sharing
This ship has 18045 dTons of cargo space, and a monthly cost of 13.05 MCr (fuel costs are insignificant). In a week it can travel more than 18 AU according to the calculator here: https://www.cyborgprime.com/traveller-rpg-blog/traveller-rpg-ship-travel-time-calculator

Both designs can carry 100 Medium Passengers, but neither calculates the revenue from those passages.

 

[Arkathan]

What I don't get though is, why do the mainworlds not benefit from the resources on other planets in the system, the same way they do from Gas Giants and Asteroid Belts?

What I got from Geir on that was that the numbers were for the main world. Each other colony generates its own number based on its own infrastructure, capabilities and resources. If the Main world OWNS the secondary world(s), those numbers would be added for the system, but this is not always the case.
You have to have SOME sort of presence on the other worlds to grant any meaningful contribution to the whole. Since each is calculated separately, each secondary world could benefit from the presence of a gas giant and asteroid belt, granting a cumulative bonus to a system for each additional successful world.

For purposes of population until Mongoose puts out a defined system, when using automated units/facilities, substitute Man-hours of work for population, dividing by 8.

 

[Condottiere]

Leveraged buyout.

 

[Geir]

Keep in mind that the whole RU thing is based on Resources as one input and is a crude measure that I tried to backfill into something meaningful like GWP. The +G+B metric is meant for the system as a whole, but the whole thing needs some 'from the ground up' logic applied - WPTEG-like. Though trade is also a factor in wealth and isn't directly addressed. At this time.

 

[Galadrion]

What I don't get though is, why do the mainworlds not benefit from the resources on other planets in the system, the same way they do from Gas Giants and Asteroid Belts?

This would be where a Pocket Empires-style book would come in. Use the WBH to generate all the involved worlds, and then use the rules for transferring resources between said world.

 

[Terry Mixon]

This would be where a Pocket Empires-style book would come in. Use the WBH to generate all the involved worlds, and then use the rules for transferring resources between said world.

Looks like that might be on the horizon.

A question about Resources

As it stands currently in the WBH, Resources are determined by a 2d6-7+Size+DMs. Then for the system as a whole, if the Mainworld is TL-8+, you add in the gas giants and asteroid belts. What about the other planets in the system? Why are they not counted for Resources? Do planets just...

forum.mongoosepublishing.com

 

[J. L. Brown]

This would be where a Pocket Empires-style book would come in. Use the WBH to generate all the involved worlds, and then use the rules for transferring resources between said world.

And also -- resources available from each Gas Giant and Planetoid Belt is currently set at '1'. It seems like it should be higher, and probably a little variable. 'Resources' is also very general; breaking them down into categories would create opportunities for some systems to have excesses or shortages -- encouraging trade.

Phavoc:

Extractive industries are hard to model. One would think nearly all star systems, as a whole, would have a great deal of resources and running out of them would be a prodigious effort for any civilization. Trying to model the complexity is difficult, at best.

Of course the key component is going to be cost - are the resources lying around the system economically recoverable for a society? If it were an ant-like society that exists only to reproduce and grow and eschews concepts like profits or societal luxuries, then that question comes down only to cost of extraction vs usefulness of the resource. If ya gotta have it then price is rarely an option.

If, however, you are talking a capitalistic or semi-capitalistic society, then profitability then becomes more of an issue. That's where you can see pockets of blight and success, and systems with good infrastructure and those without it. The extractive industry is going to be based upon cost and need. And this is where the dice rolling is gonna fail unless you want a totally random sector (and I think we already have that in Traveller with all the problems associated with the illogic of it).

Otherwise a good ref needs to tweak their setting. Random rolls are fine, but the subtle hand of the GM is required to make the setting make sense for your gamers. A planet, moon, or even an asteroid field is gonna be a pretty big place. Chances are there are going to be pockets of usefully extractable resources a society in a system could use for internal consumption or for export. Traveller has never done well, as a gaming system, of developing the system infrastructure that one would naturally expect to see before people hared off to another system to see if there was a Psyche in every orbit. It's far cheaper to operate in your own system than go light years away to get things. Or, as Al Bundy said one episode - "Peg, why go out for milk when you have a cow at home". Gotta love a good Bundy aphorism.

In any event I think the rolling up of tables will leave you short in designing a good usable gaming system. It's fine to use as a base, but tweak things where it makes sense to do so.

I think 'cost' is too squishy; but it is true that some resources are going to be easier to harvest than others, and that ought to be modeled. Pulling hydrogen from water in an icy asteroid is far less risky & energy intensive than scooping gas from Jupiter; pulling nickel & iron from an M-type asteroid is far easier than mining them from the crust of Terra, which is far easier than pulling those from the core of Terra. All of this gets easier (and cheaper, and more practical) with advancing technology and improvements in infrastructure.

Maybe we could break these down into broad categories based on what the resources are useful for: Structural Metals; Structural Organics; Tool Metals, Tool Organics; Reactive Metals; Reactive Organics; Reactive Gases; Energy Metals; Energy Organics; Energy Gases; Food Metals; Food Organics; Food Gases; ... & etc.

 

[Geir]

Maybe we could break these down into broad categories based on what the resources are useful for: Structural Metals; Structural Organics; Tool Metals, Tool Organics; Reactive Metals; Reactive Organics; Reactive Gases; Energy Metals; Energy Organics; Energy Gases; Food Metals; Food Organics; Food Gases; ... & etc.

Maybe it can be tied a little closer to Trade Goods available and requested...

 

[J. L. Brown]

Maybe it can be tied a little closer to Trade Goods available and requested...

'Trade Goods' needs a serious re-vamp; but I am not sure this thread is the place for that discussion.

I would like to see a 'TL ladder' of materials, Manufacturing Plants, and so on. It seems very weird to me that a 'Mineral Refinery' does not take in Ore -- it produces Ore; with 100% efficiency. 'Smelters' are a different thing, and always 50% efficient no matter what the TL they are built at. All the manufacturing Plants seem to be 100% efficient, but do not take anything (other than labor & energy) as inputs. 'Advanced Goods' are produced only at TL-12+, but are built in 'Advanced Manufacturing Plants' which become available at TL-10; etc.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Maybe it can be tied a little closer to Trade Goods available and requested...

Even this is more complicated than I was looking for. I was just curious if post TL-8 you just added up the Resources for all of the planets in a system, added 1 for each gas giant and asteroid belt and called it done?

btw.... Whose genius idea was it for resources to be rolled on a 2d6-7+DMs? This means that, without DMs, an average planet has no resources. Does this make sense to anyone? Even an ice comet has resources. Also, what is the total volume of an asteroid belt if it were all grouped together, instead of spread out in a ring around the star? Because all of this is worth only 1 Resource. Same with a gas giant. All of that hydrogen, and only 1 measly Resource Point.

Do Hydrographics affect a world's Resource number? Does Size? If Size affects a Resource number, than how can gas giants only have 1 Resource point given their Size? What about moons? Do they have resources?

Right now, in the Traveller rules, one world almost always has more resources (not usable resources, just total resources) than the entire rest of the system combined. Or is each planet generated separately and then added together?

 

[Geir]

btw.... Whose genius idea was it for resources to be rolled on a 2d6-7+DMs?

That genius would be me. But you forgot the very important +Size DM and the table that follows gives plenty of other DMs (WBH p.131) Also it explicitly says that the minimum value regardless of the roll is 2.

That's the Resource Rating of the world. The Resource Factor is then the the Rating plus other DMs, as indicated on page 187, which once again emphasise that the lower limit is 2 PLUS the asteroid belts and gas giants. I wouldn't include the other worlds, in fact, the only reason the +G+B is there is because that's how resources are added in T5 and so it gives you a way to compute RU that is consistent. It's a rather lame, but easy to compute from existing sector data, value of additional resources available, but doesn't speak to whether they're actually reachable or out in the Oort cloud or so close to the sun that the rain is liquid iron.

As for 'all that hydrogen' we've already established in a different thread that even an ocean worth of hydrogen is more than a fleet would need for thousands of years. More important that resources is whether you have the capacity or will to exploit it. The cores of the ice giants might be gargantuan diamonds but good luck mining them.

 

[MasterGwydion]

That genius would be me. But you forgot the very important +Size DM and the table that follows gives plenty of other DMs (WBH p.131) Also it explicitly says that the minimum value regardless of the roll is 2.

You're my favorite genius Geir! Ah yes! I did totally miss that. Thank you!

That's the Resource Rating of the world. The Resource Factor is then the the Rating plus other DMs, as indicated on page 187, which once again emphasise that the lower limit is 2 PLUS the asteroid belts and gas giants. I wouldn't include the other worlds, in fact, the only reason the +G+B is there is because that's how resources are added in T5 and so it gives you a way to compute RU that is consistent. It's a rather lame, but easy to compute from existing sector data, value of additional resources available, but doesn't speak to whether they're actually reachable or out in the Oort cloud or so close to the sun that the rain is liquid iron.

So, it is more of a T5 thing thrown in for consistency and relative ease of use, using only existing sector data. Okay. Makes sense.

As for 'all that hydrogen' we've already established in a different thread that even an ocean worth of hydrogen is more than a fleet would need for thousands of years. More important that resources is whether you have the capacity or will to exploit it. The cores of the ice giants might be gargantuan diamonds but good luck mining them.

Yes, we did. My point was more to if hydrogen was considered a Resource or not. Such as, does a world with no water have a lower resource number than a world that is 0.1% water, like the Earth? Obviously, most planets have more than can be used in thousands or more years and gas giants for millions or billions of years.