An Alternate Take On Fabrication Rules

J. L. Brown said:
An approach I would take, if I was writing 'Manufacturing Plant' rules is that each manufacturing plant takes in 'production stock materials' and out puts 'product' of its' own TL. I would make manufacturing a multi-step process:
1} Extraction (produces ore)
2} Smelting/refining (produces material)
3} Making production stock (produces components)
4} Producing product (produces finished goods)

The basic assumption is X Cr of input = >X Cr of output; but this improves as TL rises. At TL 1 1000 Cr in might equal 1001 Cr out, and half of the material is 'waste'; but TL 2 would produce both more value & less waste, etc. If you want to model more valuable output, feed in more input -- but the higher Cr output means more waste.

This is for Manufacturing Plants; Fabricators would produce more waste for a given (lower TL than the fabricator) item from a (TL appropriate to the item) Manufacturing Plant.

Lay out the 'productivity' and 'waste' curves so as not to cross the 100% mark before 'maximum TL' unless you are prepared to explain it. The 'waste' might just be useful for making bricks, or some fraction of it might have enough value to go back into the 'Extraction' end of production.

Bleah. I am just roughing this; I haven't really thought it through. I will probably build a spreadsheet at some point. Sorry for being a bit incoherent.
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No worries. I’m incoherent all the time.
 
I'd leave credit values out of it almost totally. Just "X amount of input, X/n amount of output" for each stage. If you're on-selling at any point in process it's a matter for market negotiation. If you're keeping it all within the one production line, the nominal sale price of a material is moot; as an old Chemistry teacher of mine used to say, it's just buckets of hydrogen and buckets of oxygen, really.
 
rinku said:
I'd leave credit values out of it almost totally. Just "X amount of input, X/n amount of output" for each stage. If you're on-selling at any point in process it's a matter for market negotiation. If you're keeping it all within the one production line, the nominal sale price of a material is moot; as an old Chemistry teacher of mine used to say, it's just buckets of hydrogen and buckets of oxygen, really.
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Well, the rules are the ones that brought the value of the raw materials into it. I was just trying to find a way to quantify that.
 
Fair enough, but the mass of the stuff and what it actually costs you to get that is what you need.

Although in many cases a default market value is needed I guess, if you're purchasing at that stage.
 
One of the things the Imperial economy does well is restrict inflation, this is mentioned in canon a few times IIRC, I will look it up.
 
Sigtrygg said:
One of the things the Imperial economy does well is restrict inflation, this is mentioned in canon a few times IIRC, I will look it up.
Click to expand...
Probably explains why the investment return on a ship share is so poor :)
MCr1 gets you KCr1 per annum - 0.1% APR
 
Could be more, that it gets you a seat onboard.


a1210b225befac6664ed295d92b37443.jpg
 
swordtart said:
Probably explains why the investment return on a ship share is so poor :)
MCr1 gets you KCr1 per annum - 0.1% APR
Click to expand...

Also doesn't line up with getting 25 KCr/year for a 25% ownership on a trading vessel (Free/Far) as that would indicate (if paid at the same rate as the ship share) that it was a 100 MCr ship. Myself I'm counting it as 10MCr paid on a ship not 25%. With a new Free Trader being about 45 MCr it is a little less than 25% but if the ship is not brand new its depreciated value could be about that. Make ship shares pay 2.5 KCr/year and they line up. My TL 9 variant of the Free Trader is about 40.5 MCr so 25% ownership=10 MCr is a close alignment.

I would allow characters with more (or less) to buy alternate (acceptable to me) ships either smaller or larger old or new just as long as they had at least 25% down payment. So with 2x25% you could have a 25% down payment on an 80MCr 400 ton (new) subsidized merchant.
 
rinku said:
Is there a MGT2e ultra tech TL chart anywhere for when various things usually come in? CRB just goes up to TL15, and High Guard and CSC have narrow focuses.

Or are we still relying on the various other editions?

Because I am thinking that at some point you're no longer limited to input material composition. You just transform whatever you have to hand into the elements you require, be it matter transmutation or energy-to-matter stuff. TL30?

Although by that point, is it even Traveller anymore? :unsure:

Everyone's likely an immortal psionic godling with personal interstellar portal flight rings.

Traveller: Lensman
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The Robot Handbook has 2 charts that run from TL-16 or so up to something like TL-24.

Edit - Robot Handbook page 104
1753559468441.png

and page 105

1753559504997.png
 
Distributed Intelligence Swarm (TL22) is a bit funny since it is available now, thru study of bee or ant colonies:

  • a distributed system composed of multiple autonomous agents,
  • capable of sensing, reasoning, and acting independently,
  • working together toward shared objectives,
  • operate without a central controller,
    • coordinating actions through decentralized communication and local decision-making.
Traits:
  • Autonomy: Each agent can operate independently with its own goals and reasoning capability.
  • Coordination: Agents exchange signals or share observations to avoid conflict, reduce duplication, or form collaborative strategies.
  • Emergent intelligence: Higher-order behavior arises from local interactions. The system learns and adapts without explicit programming of group behavior.
  • Decentralized control: No single point of failure or orchestration. Control is distributed, which enhances flexibility and resilience.
[Source: https://codewave.com/insights/future-agentic-ai-swarms/]
 
J. L. Brown said:
At the very least, when a book gives a rule on 'some-cool-item' they should include a brief summary of how it improves over the various TLs. The Fabricator appears in Central Supply Catalog, but I am forced to go digging through the Robot Handbook to find out what fabricators are capable of at higher TLs.
Click to expand...
Since Fabricators came out in the Robot Handbook first, what they should have done was reprint the chart from the Robot Handbook into the CSC, but perhaps it was and got cut for some reason.
 
It all needs a complete overhaul.

WBH TL charts contradicts HG, CRB contradicts HG, Robots contradicts CSC, the scaling of Robots is self contradictory...

there is one obvious solution but for some reason it is considered anathema.
 
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