Agricultural Manufacturing Raw Materials from Asteroid Mining (or Fuel Refining?)

[swordtart]

So, how do you figure out how many refineries or smelters you would need to supply a given tonnage of Agricultural Manufacturing Plants?

You don't really require any. It is the biospheres that would supply the Agricultural Manufacturing Plant.

I am not even sure that the rules provided even allow you to determine a sensible number of them since an Agri plant doesn't actually require a level of input feedstocks. It just makes a level of output for a level of plant tonnage requiring a level of Power and makes 25% more if your planet has an AG trade code.

You could do some clever maths to work out how many tons of Manufacturing plant produced enough common consumables for two people for a day as that is the level of output of a ton of biosphere, except that the biosphere does all that without the benefit of the Agri Plant (and the Agri plant does it all without the benefit of a biosphere - or materials at all).

All a bit vague unfortunately.

My preferred solution is to assume any manufacturing plant requires the same 50% (or 1D x 10%) rule for fabricator feedstock for all manufacturing plants (except for high tech products). 1 ton of Common Consumables will on average require Cr175 in "feedstock" to produce the Cr500 worth of output. This feedstock is not all foodstuffs of course since any product will need to be packaged. this might also be provided by the smelters.

Common Consumables of course could cover more than just food. You may prefer to use the cost of a meal as your "target" price and work out how many meals equate to a ton of output and calculate your inputs cost from that.

 

[MasterGwydion]

You don't really require any. It is the biospheres that would supply the Agricultural Manufacturing Plant.

I am not even sure that the rules provided even allow you to determine a sensible number of them since an Agri plant doesn't actually require a level of input feedstocks. It just makes a level of output for a level of plant tonnage requiring a level of Power and makes 25% more if your planet has an AG trade code.

You could do some clever maths to work out how many tons of Manufacturing plant produced enough common consumables for two people for a day as that is the level of output of a ton of biosphere, except that the biosphere does all that without the benefit of the Agri Plant (and the Agri plant does it all without the benefit of a biosphere - or materials at all).

All a bit vague unfortunately.

My preferred solution is to assume any manufacturing plant requires the same 50% (or 1D x 10%) rule for fabricator feedstock for all manufacturing plants (except for high tech products). 1 ton of Common Consumables will on average require Cr175 in "feedstock" to produce the Cr500 worth of output. This feedstock is not all foodstuffs of course since any product will need to be packaged. this might also be provided by the smelters.

Common Consumables of course could cover more than just food. You may prefer to use the cost of a meal as your "target" price and work out how many meals equate to a ton of output and calculate your inputs cost from that.

The old World Tamer's Handbook had 1 Dton of food equaling enough to feed 100 people for a month. Not sure if that helps or not...

 

[swordtart]

The old World Tamer's Handbook had 1 Dton of food equaling enough to feed 100 people for a month. Not sure if that helps or not...

Let's play with that. 14 cubic metres is 14,000 L (and 3000 person days). 140L per person/month = 4-5L per day. 24 hour ration packs are 1-2L (but require additional water) and 10 man packs are 55L so it is quite swingy but in that order of magnitude.

The cost per person will be lets say the Cr10 of the CSC rations which is the same order of magnitude in the Core Rulebook cost per meal. So the value of 1 Ton of Output would be KCr30 (quite a bit more than the Cr500 of the Common Consumables). Even 3000 person days of fast food would be KCr12.

At 100% efficiency it will require 1 ton of inputs (and since it is a self contained system 100% of inputs go somewhere, even if it is back into waste recycling). Cost would be KCr15 worth of feedstock, if this is basic easy production maybe we can go with the low end of the 1dx10% and have it 20%. That would still make the feedstock costs KCr6 (or maybe KCr2.4 for fast food).

This is the problem with any analysis, most of the numbers in the game are just made up and are inconsistent with each other.

It is usually estimated that it takes 1000 square metres to grow food (and probably oxygen) to support one person for a year. It is difficult to see how 1 Dton of biosphere could hope to produce all the life support requirements of 2 people.

1 DTon of Common Consumables must consist mostly of fresh air for it to cost so little. It is hard to imagine any commodity that would cost the same as a months food for one person but that provides enough food for 100 times that number. 14 cubic metres is a heck of a volume, the contents are worth Cr1 per 13L of contents. The value of the Cr is fairly hard to estimate since you can buy a high tech computer for less than the cost of a meal.

I fear this is an exercise in futility

 

[MasterGwydion]

Let's play with that. 14 cubic metres is 14,000 L (and 3000 person days). 140L per person/month = 4-5L per day. 24 hour ration packs are 1-2L (but require additional water) and 10 man packs are 55L so it is quite swingy but in that order of magnitude.

The cost per person will be lets say the Cr10 of the CSC rations which is the same order of magnitude in the Core Rulebook cost per meal. So the value of 1 Ton of Output would be KCr30 (quite a bit more than the Cr500 of the Common Consumables). Even 3000 person days of fast food would be KCr12.

At 100% efficiency it will require 1 ton of inputs (and since it is a self contained system 100% of inputs go somewhere, even if it is back into waste recycling). Cost would be KCr15 worth of feedstock, if this is basic easy production maybe we can go with the low end of the 1dx10% and have it 20%. That would still make the feedstock costs KCr6 (or maybe KCr2.4 for fast food).

This is the problem with any analysis, most of the numbers in the game are just made up and are inconsistent with each other.

It is usually estimated that it takes 1000 square metres to grow food (and probably oxygen) to support one person for a year. It is difficult to see how 1 Dton of biosphere could hope to produce all the life support requirements of 2 people.

1 DTon of Common Consumables must consist mostly of fresh air for it to cost so little. It is hard to imagine any commodity that would cost the same as a months food for one person but that provides enough food for 100 times that number. 14 cubic metres is a heck of a volume, the contents are worth Cr1 per 13L of contents. The value of the Cr is fairly hard to estimate since you can buy a high tech computer for less than the cost of a meal.

I fear this is an exercise in futility

I am coming to the conclusion that every single price listed in Trade Goods is bullshit. Show Me anywhere that you can pay basically $500-$1,500 for 14 cubic meters of "Agricultural Products". The people who decided that are morons or this hasn't changed since the 70s. Water is 200Cr/Dton. Hell, Refined Fuel is only 500Cr/Dton. So why is a Dton of "food" the same price as, what is effectively filtered water?

In the US, 14m3 of water costs between $700 to $84,000. Also in the US, the average price for 14m3 of beer is about $40,000, yet in Traveller, the base price for "filtered water" and beer is the exact same. That is only one example of tons of possible examples. This is one reason why Traveller has no functional or even semi-functional economics system. Because the people doing the writing and editing do care if it makes sense or not.

I am pretty sure I can fix the prices to be more accurate in an afternoon of internet research to come up with a baseline price index. Then all that would have to be done is to determine the fictional exchange rate between Imperial Credits and US Dollars, or whatever other currency is used to build the price index.

There will obviously be exceptions based on the Imperial TL. Aluminum used to be the most valuable metal on Earth due to how hard it was to extract and refine. That is why the Washington Monument in Washington DC is capped with an aluminum pyramid-shaped cap. At the time it reflected America's wealth and power. Now aluminum is cheap as hell. So, there would be some technological wiggle room in assigning price modifiers to the preliminary price index.

Edit: The price of water in the 70s in the US was about $1.60/Dton and beer was actually about twice as expensive as it is currently, or $80,000/Dton.

 

[swordtart]

Games tread a dangerous path when prices are arbitrary. Given the variation on prices 15% up to 400% you might be picking up that 14,000 L of carrots for Cr75 .

Pegging to modern prices would at least allow you to rationalise a price rather than having to rationalise all of them. You can still vary due to TL. Historical prices can be a bit variable as well so you can probably find a precedent.

With the ubiquity of fabricators you should be able to figure out commodity prices from the unit price of finished goods and the rules for assessing the raw materials cost. As it stands it is a complete muddle-go-nowhere.

 

[ottarrus]

Ok, going all the way back to OP on this one.
Several thoughts enter my mind regarding the basic question "Can agricultural materials be harvested from asteroids?"
- Most asteroids are rocks or ice. 'Ice' does not mean H2O ice. It could be frozen methane any number of other gasses. And any 'water' ice will almost assuredly be contaminated with something. That's why you refine your ship fuel, after all.
- There is a lot more to 'soil' than mere regolith. The biologicals necessary are complicated and must be living. And it's not as easy as dumping sewage onto rock dust, with apologies to 'The Martian'. [btw, dibs on the code name 'Halbarad' for Project Elrond ]
- The articles regarding asteroid mining generally are trying to simplify the process. Not very many Traveller players want to get so granular as to parse how many hundredths of one percent a given rock has of any given mineral, not even lanthanum.

My conclusion is that if one was worried about frozen living cells being present in asteroids, this is how I'd probably rule it at the table:
- Determine what percentage of the asteroid had 'Very Rare Material', if any.
- Roll 2d, no modifiers:
-- On a 2 result there is organic material, but it's not compatible with most known life [wrong amino acids, toxic, whatever]
-- On a 12 result there is compatible organic material and with the assistance of a highly skilled biologist and chemist that material could possibly be used as soil feedstock. This would depend a lot on the skills of the biologist and chemist.
-- Any other result is inorganic inert very rare minerals.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Ok, going all the way back to OP on this one.
Several thoughts enter my mind regarding the basic question "Can agricultural materials be harvested from asteroids?"
- Most asteroids are rocks or ice. 'Ice' does not mean H2O ice. It could be frozen methane any number of other gasses. And any 'water' ice will almost assuredly be contaminated with something. That's why you refine your ship fuel, after all.
- There is a lot more to 'soil' than mere regolith. The biologicals necessary are complicated and must be living. And it's not as easy as dumping sewage onto rock dust, with apologies to 'The Martian'. [btw, dibs on the code name 'Halbarad' for Project Elrond ]
- The articles regarding asteroid mining generally are trying to simplify the process. Not very many Traveller players want to get so granular as to parse how many hundredths of one percent a given rock has of any given mineral, not even lanthanum.

My conclusion is that if one was worried about frozen living cells being present in asteroids, this is how I'd probably rule it at the table:
- Determine what percentage of the asteroid had 'Very Rare Material', if any.
- Roll 2d, no modifiers:
-- On a 2 result there is organic material, but it's not compatible with most known life [wrong amino acids, toxic, whatever]
-- On a 12 result there is compatible organic material and with the assistance of a highly skilled biologist and chemist that material could possibly be used as soil feedstock. This would depend a lot on the skills of the biologist and chemist.
-- Any other result is inorganic inert very rare minerals.

Thanks for the insight.

 

[swordtart]

Ok, going all the way back to OP on this one.
Several thoughts enter my mind regarding the basic question "Can agricultural materials be harvested from asteroids?"
- Most asteroids are rocks or ice. 'Ice' does not mean H2O ice. It could be frozen methane any number of other gasses. And any 'water' ice will almost assuredly be contaminated with something. That's why you refine your ship fuel, after all.
- There is a lot more to 'soil' than mere regolith. The biologicals necessary are complicated and must be living. And it's not as easy as dumping sewage onto rock dust, with apologies to 'The Martian'. [btw, dibs on the code name 'Halbarad' for Project Elrond ]
- The articles regarding asteroid mining generally are trying to simplify the process. Not very many Traveller players want to get so granular as to parse how many hundredths of one percent a given rock has of any given mineral, not even lanthanum.

My conclusion is that if one was worried about frozen living cells being present in asteroids, this is how I'd probably rule it at the table:
- Determine what percentage of the asteroid had 'Very Rare Material', if any.
- Roll 2d, no modifiers:
-- On a 2 result there is organic material, but it's not compatible with most known life [wrong amino acids, toxic, whatever]
-- On a 12 result there is compatible organic material and with the assistance of a highly skilled biologist and chemist that material could possibly be used as soil feedstock. This would depend a lot on the skills of the biologist and chemist.
-- Any other result is inorganic inert very rare minerals.

I guess it depends on whether "Organic" is using the chemistry or the biology definition. Organic chemistry is just the chemistry of carbon containing compounds, there is no requirement for them to be living.

It also depends on if the biospheres even require soil at all. You can grow plants in sand alone, adding nutrients as liquid fertilizer, there is evidence to suggest that this might actually be a better growing medium than soil as there is less opportunity to introduce harmful micro-organisms (a key benefit in an enclosed eco-system). Bio char can be added as a supplement to alter the structure, but as this is has been produced at a high temperature any living organisms (beneficial or otherwise) will have been destroyed.

Even if you did decide to include micro-organisms to manage the soil you would probably want to carefully vet them.

In a K'kree ship the biospheres are extensive and designed to provide for the need for open areas of "natural" surroundings as much as nutrition. I am not sure that it has been specified how K'Kree conduct farming or sewerage. It is possible that the land is directly fertilised by the K'Kree simply depositing manure as they go. They are not a private race and therefore bodily waste elimination is also probably not a private function, indeed this may be one of the reasons why a natural environment is necessary to their society. As herbivores their dung will be readily compostable with little risk of harmful contamination possible from carnivore excrement. Adding minute amounts of organic compounds extracted from asteroids (at probably great cost) seems redundant compared to the quantity a ship full of K'kree will generate naturally.

 

[ottarrus]

I guess it depends on whether "Organic" is using the chemistry or the biology definition. Organic chemistry is just the chemistry of carbon containing compounds, there is no requirement for them to be living.

It also depends on if the biospheres even require soil at all. You can grow plants in sand alone, adding nutrients as liquid fertilizer, there is evidence to suggest that this might actually be a better growing medium than soil as there is less opportunity to introduce harmful micro-organisms (a key benefit in an enclosed eco-system). Bio char can be added as a supplement to alter the structure, but as this is has been produced at a high temperature any living organisms (beneficial or otherwise) will have been destroyed.

Even if you did decide to include micro-organisms to manage the soil you would probably want to carefully vet them.

In a K'kree ship the biospheres are extensive and designed to provide for the need for open areas of "natural" surroundings as much as nutrition. I am not sure that it has been specified how K'Kree conduct farming or sewerage. It is possible that the land is directly fertilised by the K'Kree simply depositing manure as they go. They are not a private race and therefore bodily waste elimination is also probably not a private function, indeed this may be one of the reasons why a natural environment is necessary to their society. As herbivores their dung will be readily compostable with little risk of harmful contamination possible from carnivore excrement. Adding minute amounts of organic compounds extracted from asteroids (at probably great cost) seems redundant compared to the quantity a ship full of K'kree will generate naturally.

I submit that a biosphere verdant enough to keep several hundred thousand claustrophobic grazers fed is nigh-on impossible. There isn't a hay industry keeping the dairy cows fed on alfalfa and oats after all. But that's my own opinion about K'Kree generation ships....
My basic point in my comment to the OP is that finding organics suitable for any specific biochemistry in an asteroid or comet is going to rare.... as in 'lanthanum plated unicorn' rare, and are certainly nothing you can plan on. The only reason why I even put them on a d2 table was the possibility that it could happen, however unlikely that might be.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Organics and biotics are very different.

Every single chemical in a living body can be artificially manufactured now, with today's technology.

Growing plants hydroponically or in a sand like substrate and feeding them with nutrient laden water, whith the nutrients (including nitrates) being water soluble and thus able to be taken into the plants is similarly trivial, especially by TL9.

You can then eat the plants or feed them to animals and eat the animals.

Biotics are living chemicals - bacteria, fungi, etc. It is probably best to keep them away from your agridomes in the first place.

Every single element needed for living things is more abundant in asteroids than in the Earth's crust.

 

[ottarrus]

Organics and biotics are very different.

Every single chemical in a living body can be artificially manufactured now, with today's technology.

Growing plants hydroponically or in a sand like substrate and feeding them with nutrient laden water, whit the nutrients (including nitrates) being water soluble and thus able to be taken into the plants is similarly trivial, especially by TL9.

You can then eat the plants or feed them to animals and eat the animals.

Biotics are living chemicals - bacteria, fungi, etc. It is probably best to keep them away from your agridomes in the first place.

Every single element needed for living things is more abundant in asteroids than in the Earth's crust.

Fair point.

 

[WingedCat]

I just found this thread, and most of it is what I meant to imply, so I don't have much to add except:

I didn't read it that they were turning rocks into food. I read it that the by products of the smelters were producing rocks that were being added to the biospheres to supplement the waste recycling. Plants are good at turning rocks and carbon dioxide into feedstock for agricultural plants.

There is quite a bit of recycling, along the lines you point out. But no system is 100% perfect, and they do have the capability to manufacture food for export. It would be fair to say (though an incomplete answer, since it leaves out the waste recycling and doesn't mention the many intermediate steps such as all the plants) that they are indeed turning rocks (mainly carbonaceous asteroids, plus icy asteroids for the water, and metal asteroids for a bit of supplement such as iron) into food.

 

[WingedCat]

Every single element needed for living things is more abundant in asteroids than in the Earth's crust.

My favorite quote on this (which might be quoted by Travellers with a background in belter life support and some way of having heard or read ancient Terran media): "Water: 35 liters. Carbon: 20 kilograms. Ammonia: 4 liters. Lime: 1.5 kilograms. Phosphorus: 800 grams. Salt: 250 grams. Saltpeter: 100 grams. Sulfur: 80 grams. Fluorine: 7.5 grams. Iron: 5 grams. Silicon: 3 grams. And 15 other elements in small quantities. That's the total chemical makeup of the average adult body. For that matter, the elements found in a human being is all junk that you can buy in any market with a child's allowance. Humans are pretty cheaply made."

This is the problem with any analysis, most of the numbers in the game are just made up and are inconsistent with each other.

Quite true.

It is usually estimated that it takes 1000 square metres to grow food (and probably oxygen) to support one person for a year. It is difficult to see how 1 Dton of biosphere could hope to produce all the life support requirements of 2 people.

I see it as mostly recycling, with the cost of consumables accounted for in its maintenance.

1 DTon of Common Consumables must consist mostly of fresh air for it to cost so little.

A thing is worth what people will pay for it, not the true cost of manufacture or mining. Where the true cost is greater than what people will pay, it's generally not for sale.

See all the claims in recent decades about the Earth running out of oil, only for people to "discover" more sources. The sources were there, but they were uneconomical to exploit until oil prices went up and/or technology drove the true cost down. People have known how to make 100% synthetic petroleum for decades - the technology is there to shut down all oil wells forever - except that it's far more expensive to go that route than to just pump more oil, for now.

If people won't pay for food to be imported, then food won't be imported. These prices reflect typical conditions around 1105; during the Long Night, some worlds no doubt paid much higher prices for Common Consumables because they could either do that or literally starve. But that only worked so long as they could pay those higher prices.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I just found this thread, and most of it is what I meant to imply, so I don't have much to add except:

There is quite a bit of recycling, along the lines you point out. But no system is 100% perfect, and they do have the capability to manufacture food for export. It would be fair to say (though an incomplete answer, since it leaves out the waste recycling and doesn't mention the many intermediate steps such as all the plants) that they are indeed turning rocks (mainly carbonaceous asteroids, plus icy asteroids for the water, and metal asteroids for a bit of supplement such as iron) into food.

And, as I said earlier, I was able to peg a roughly 2% volume for that kind of material as refining output, which I take out of common ore's percentage. Mongoose should add that as an official refining result. Thanks for the input.

 

[WingedCat]

Mongoose should add that as an official refining result.

There's been interest expressed, here and there, in something to address mining and manufacturing in depth - which should also address previous lore such as Universal Manufacturing Templates, and input on manufacturing practices from the ancient Vilani Bureaux and ancient Terra's International Organization of Standards. The formulas would have to be exactly right, though, with all sorts of implications all across the Third Imperium and beyond (not to mention syncing up with the tidbits on this topic in Central Supply Catalogue, Robot Handbook, Vehicles Handbook, and High Guard). Quite a bit of it may have to address the reasons why setup X doesn't produce exactly output Y in different context Z, and the adventuring possibilities that result (fighting corruption, retrieving technical secrets, and running growing industrial/trade empires, among other possible themes; that last one may be particularly applicable to certain styles of Pirates of Drinax campaigns). This may get into merchant prince territory, so Mongoose may be holding this aspect back until and unless they publish a new Merchant Prince book.

Someone may want to pitch that book to them. I'd recommend having an outline before pitching, given the breadth of topics such a book might cover.

Thanks for the input.

You are welcome.

 

[Terry Mixon]

There's been interest expressed, here and there, in something to address mining and manufacturing in depth - which should also address previous lore such as Universal Manufacturing Templates, and input on manufacturing practices from the ancient Vilani Bureaux and ancient Terra's International Organization of Standards. The formulas would have to be exactly right, though, with all sorts of implications all across the Third Imperium and beyond (not to mention syncing up with the tidbits on this topic in Central Supply Catalogue, Robot Handbook, Vehicles Handbook, and High Guard). Quite a bit of it may have to address the reasons why setup X doesn't produce exactly output Y in different context Z, and the adventuring possibilities that result (fighting corruption, retrieving technical secrets, and running growing industrial/trade empires, among other possible themes; that last one may be particularly applicable to certain styles of Pirates of Drinax campaigns). This may get into merchant prince territory, so Mongoose may be holding this aspect back until and unless they publish a new Merchant Prince book.

Someone may want to pitch that book to them. I'd recommend having an outline before pitching, given the breadth of topics such a book might cover.

You are welcome.

I hope someone does pitch it and can do it justice. It would be an amazing resource.

If they do, I’d be happy to beta for it (I’ve done so for another Traveller rulebook) but I’m not cut out to actually write it. I’m afraid writing science fiction is more my bag.

Fabricator input is another aspect of this as it is being discussed in a different thread. The costs of the input vary (as per the books) but what it is isn’t discussed.

I decided it was raw materials equal to the value of the required input materials. I call what I came up with Fabrication Units. 4:1 common raw materials:uncommon raw materials, so five tons of material worth KCr40. Need something that costs MCr1 fabricated? The GM decides the materials cost is KCr800? The input is 20 Fabrication Units and that is 100 tons of material.

It would need a materials feeder to make it work, but for my money that makes sense. Build a materials hopper with an UNREP system and go to town.

If you have an Advanced Fabricator, @Geir agreed in a back and forth that it would have a deconstructor in it as well (nano machines, you see) and you could load asteroid materials in, deconstruct them to fill the hoppers, and when you have enough Fabrication Units, build.

That’s all in my Traveller Universe, but it is an explication of how it could work in the wider one. When there are no details, we make it up.

Edit: I really should roll Crystals and Gems, and Precious Metals into the mix. Maybe at the same ratio as refining them to make things easy.

Maybe this? It includes refining the ore into raw materials. One could easily round it to KCr10 in value for simplicity.

 

[rinku]

Projecting the speculative trade tables into general production is always going to result in issues, as is fact checking 21st century costs with TL12 ones. Beer the same price as filtered water? Most of the costs are in the packaging and - in a space context - obtaining and processing the water. That actually makes a bit of sense.

Instead of treating the Speculative Trade Tables as a supermarket, it's better to think of them as eBay.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Projecting the speculative trade tables into general production is always going to result in issues, as is fact checking 21st century costs with TL12 ones. Beer the same price as filtered water? Most of the costs are in the packaging and - in a space context - obtaining and processing the water. That actually makes a bit of sense.

Instead of treating the Speculative Trade Tables as a supermarket, it's better to think of them as eBay.

Agreed, but we don't have anything better to work with.

 

[rinku]

Sure we do. The equipment lists are there to show us retail values for goods on sale. Still incomplete, but more representitive. We know what a given design of vehicle or ship or robot sells for. The trade tables don't tell us *what* vehicles or *what* robots are in a particular interesting lot that the character has tracked down. If it's a relatively cheap lot per ton that may suggest common models, while a higher price per ton might be special and rare ones.

We have a degree of knowledge about what is involved in resource extraction and manufacture. The COST of mining or farming is the cost of capital plus the cost of labour - in the case of robot mining those are combined - plus any costs for things like mining leases or land tenancy. You pay your capital cost, and maintenance and wages per unit time, and receive raw materials. There may be storage costs, there are usually shipping costs. And then you start the actual manufacturing processes and move into a new heirarchy of costs.

Before you even break ground there will be surveying costs. There may be ongoing security costs (those natives aren't going to exterminate themselves!). Taxes. Bribes. Public relations costs.

There are almost certainly administrative costs at all stages.

But most of the time we don't need to know all that, because we have a handy retail price. Assuming a fair market economy, the retail price is probably marked up 20-60% from wholesale price, which is itself marked up maybe 20-30% from cost. Assuming most Traveller goods are pretty cheap to make because of robots but may be expensive to ship because of starships, you could do worse than just say cost price is half of retail price.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Sure we do. The equipment lists are there to show us retail values for goods on sale. Still incomplete, but more representitive. We know what a given design of vehicle or ship or robot sells for. The trade tables don't tell us *what* vehicles or *what* robots are in a particular interesting lot that the character has tracked down. If it's a relatively cheap lot per ton that may suggest common models, while a higher price per ton might be special and rare ones.

We have a degree of knowledge about what is involved in resource extraction and manufacture. The COST of mining or farming is the cost of capital plus the cost of labour - in the case of robot mining those are combined - plus any costs for things like mining leases or land tenancy. You pay your capital cost, and maintenance and wages per unit time, and receive raw materials. There may be storage costs, there are usually shipping costs. And then you start the actual manufacturing processes and move into a new heirarchy of costs.

Before you even break ground there will be surveying costs. There may be ongoing security costs (those natives aren't going to exterminate themselves!). Taxes. Bribes. Public relations costs.

There are almost certainly administrative costs at all stages.

But most of the time we don't need to know all that, because we have a handy retail price. Assuming a fair market economy, the retail price is probably marked up 20-60% from wholesale price, which is itself marked up maybe 20-30% from cost. Assuming most Traveller goods are pretty cheap to make because of robots but may be expensive to ship because of starships, you could do worse than just say cost price is half of retail price.

I get that, but we’re making guesses at most of the production costs. That’s what they could clear up.