Brokers

[NOLATrav]

As far as long trade routes go, a few years ago over on COTI someone posted the idea that goods could travel 1 parsec per Cr1000 of value, based on the rate of carrying standard freight (Cr1000 per ton per jump). So the cheapest cargoes might only be worth carrying a parsec or three but the more expensive lots might be viable across a subsector or two.

It was an interesting idea, if a bit wonky, and really shined a light on high tech and industrial worlds being the powerhouses of the economy. The flip side was agricultural goods - they would have very short legs in this paradigm generally speaking, which seemed counter-intuitive to me.

But the core idea made a lot of sense - high tech manufactured goods, rare raw materials and luxury items will be the stuff that drives long cross-polity trade routes while common goods will be the foundational trade along short mains and clusters.

 

[Geir]

As far as long trade routes go, a few years ago over on COTI someone posted the idea that goods could travel 1 parsec per Cr1000 of value, based on the rate of carrying standard freight (Cr1000 per ton per jump). So the cheapest cargoes might only be worth carrying a parsec or three but the more expensive lots might be viable across a subsector or two.

It was an interesting idea, if a bit wonky, and really shined a light on high tech and industrial worlds being the powerhouses of the economy. The flip side was agricultural goods - they would have very short legs in this paradigm generally speaking, which seemed counter-intuitive to me.

But the core idea made a lot of sense - high tech manufactured goods, rare raw materials and luxury items will be the stuff that drives long cross-polity trade routes while common goods will be the foundational trade along short mains and clusters.

That's an interesting idea, but in practice, you've got time-dependent expenses - the biggest being a mortgage, but also salaries, fees, fuel, etc. The further you go, the more it makes sense to dump the cargo and take the money and reinvest rather than continue to bear the cost of bearing cargo that's decaying at freight opportunity-cost rates, if nothing else.

So there is probably a faster decay rate - somewhat in step with monthly expenses (or every 2-3 jumps), but yeah, high tech stuff (and radioactives?) would have the longest legs, but time will erode the value - though it might make sense to hold onto that ton of radioactives you got real cheap for up to a year to find the right buyer.

But that's still at a player scale. At a megacorp scale, it might look different, but I'm not about to try to model it.

 

[Anstett]

That's why all I threw into WBH was a tariff rate, because we know how to model those in game terms.*

*Not to be considered an endorsement or commentary on any present political-economic controversy, just pointing out that it's easy to take a percentage off the gross selling price and call it good from a game perspective.

Grins, we have a model of that.

Drinax puts in a 20% tariff and the Aslan bomb your planet to the stone age again.

 

[AndrewW]

And the Corrupt Trade Officials table, the OMG The Warehouse Flooded! table.

That's what happens when you have an Isalani named Nakor and he creates a passage between his bag and the warehouse but leaves it open when the bag gets full of seawater.

 

[NOLATrav]

So there is probably a faster decay rate - somewhat in step with monthly expenses (or every 2-3 jumps)

Yeah IMTU I fiddled with 1 parsec per Cr10,000 of value so a 200K air/raft would be a viable product for 20 parsecs out from its point of manufacture rather 200 but still it breaks down rather quickly.

I think the idea falls somewhere between PC scale and Megacorp scale - the old CT Book 7 Subsector Lines perhaps?

 

[Anstett]

There is a good bit of the math done on the Florian and Hierate Trade Routes over on this thread.

Trade on the Hierate Route?

The big companies likely have exclusive and/or extended contracts for certain products. The Hierate would want to have a steady reliably sourced supply. Then the small local shipper brings in the 'meat of the month' from Paal or other locales for the fine dining experience.

forum.mongoosepublishing.com

 

[Terry Mixon]

I wonder if since T5 went bonkers on everything else it covers this kind of stuff.

 

[swordtart]

Rather than try to work out the relative value of goods by factoring in distance maybe just decide the value of goods on an particular world (based on its profile) and add the cost of delivery seperately. Big boys add less delivery charges by making 3+ jumps with bulk and selling in bulk to depot systems who will have resident Brokers. Small traders fill the gaps by buying at the depot planets and making the 1-2 jump drops to feeder worlds and selling there. If you have to get stuff by 3 x Jump 1 it will cost a little more than with a single Jump 3, but the value of goods is the same.

 

[Geir]

Rather than try to work out the relative value of goods by factoring in distance maybe just decide the value of goods on an particular world (based on its profile) and add the cost of delivery seperately. Big boys add less delivery charges by making 3+ jumps with bulk and selling in bulk to depot systems who will have resident Brokers. Small traders fill the gaps by buying at the depot planets and making the 1-2 jump drops to feeder worlds and selling there. If you have to get stuff by 3 x Jump 1 it will cost a little more than with a single Jump 3, but the value of goods is the same.

Makes sense. It's the same whether it's information (which should have value - I guess you can carry mail, so there's that - but speculative data? Is that a thing?) where the scout couriers occupy the short haul feeder routes, the x-boat network the bigger data route - higher upfront costs for J-4 x-boats and tenders infrastructure, but once it's there (depots and brokers in the case of goods) then it makes a better margin even for a longer distance.

So now I'm actually curious about to determine how far a bottle of Saurian brandy can go. (Yes, there are two of Saurus systems out there, one in the Spinward Marches, the other in the Trojan Reach, but whether their brandy is any good is another franchise altogether.)

Or more to the point, how far can my fancy TL15 grav car exports go? It could get really complicated, because for lower tech simple things, the data and a fabricator might be the best export at a distance, but if you're producing industrial goods at the top of the tech level chain, unless you're exporting the factory and the entire supply chain, the finished product will have legs... jump legs, anyway - assuming there is a market on the other end of the chain. Some rich oligarch on a Poor, Non-agricultural, Non-Industrial, Hellworld, might still buy one to fly over the TL5 serfs while drinking his Saurian brandy - hopefully with the autopilot engaged.

 

[Sigtrygg]

How much does it cost to manufacture? What is the list price and what is the discounted price.

How much is the buyer willing to pay?

If the money you get from the buyer is more than your purchase + transport price you are in profit.

Is there a billionaire in the Spinward Marches willing to pay Cr.10,000,000 for a bottle of mayfly tears?

 

[NOLATrav]

I wonder if since T5 went bonkers on everything else it covers this kind of stuff.

It went bonkers with D66 tables to describe trade goods based on planetary trade codes where you can get stuff like “reactive polymers” or various descriptors for foodstuffs or data or whatever. But the actual trade system is pretty much the old CT Book 7 Merchant Prince system.

 

[swordtart]

Data, Fabricator plus the raw materials. On an Ag world you might not even have the necessary raw materials for even that. In that case physically shipping the item is probably more cost effective (especially if you only expect to sell one). Of course a fabricator plus 5 tons of raw materials might take up less space than the finished item.

Low tech goods might be easier to produce by hand on the low tech world than importing them. Even running a fab might be more dififcult when your baseline is iron age. What do you do when it glitches, or you want to modify the product slightly. To make a shovel requires the iron powder and cellulose, that powder is highly refined or the nano-assembler will mess up the crystal structure. Mr Founderson on the other hand can make bloom iron out of iron sands found in the river, not enough to export, but enough for local needs when they can't just buy in sheet metal as a raw material. Mr Smith buys it from him and can produce an effective shovel in short order.

Fabricators blow a lot of the trade idea out of the water as all you need is raw materials (at half the cost of the finished item). Fabricators can even build fabricators. Or maybe you just have a dog sized hive queen assemble up the lot from nanobots. They can probably break that iron sand down into raw silica and iron powder as well. I would expect any decent starport (i.e one with repair facilities) to have a fabricator and you can fast breed others from it.

Ideally the cost of each of the trade goods would be logically linked to the others so that you had a sensible escalation from Common Raw Materials to Common Machine Parts for example, but then you have a lot of work ahead of you and you probably want to start from the ground up. It is probably not worth the effort as it will require discarding the Traveller trade model entirely, which might be a bridge too far. You will have knock on effects like the maufacturing modules for starports in High Guard and probably other bits scatterd through products like Drinax.

Probably best to have a gin and tonic instead.

 

[ColinD]

It went bonkers with D66 tables to describe trade goods based on planetary trade codes where you can get stuff like “reactive polymers” or various descriptors for foodstuffs or data or whatever. But the actual trade system is pretty much the old CT Book 7 Merchant Prince system.

Do you recommend the Traveller 5 book? It sounds interesting.

 

[Condottiere]

For the really large freighters, outside of regular charters, it's probably opportunity cost, for the internal cargo holds.

After all, your operating costs remain the same, whether the holds are empty or full.

 

[NOLATrav]

Do you recommend the Traveller 5 book? It sounds interesting.

I honestly can’t. I was so excited for it, backed the kickstarter, joined the playtest on CotI… but it was just a huge mess of a book.

There’s a lot of really cool ideas in T5 but it’s overly complicated, filled with typos and contradictions and is not internally integrated very well.

It’s fun to flip thru occasionally but it’s not really a playable game. Just my opinion.

 

[Condottiere]

For spacecraft design, a number of presumptions were thrown overboard.

If it was explained why gravitic range was factored by a series of tens, and then stopped, and how that could be expanded, if only by customization.

I can't remember if it was mentioned there, but in Mongoose it was confirmed, why a planetoid hull had an organic gravity field, presumably locally manipulatable to upto six times Terran norm, at four kiloschmuckers per tonne.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I honestly can’t. I was so excited for it, backed the kickstarter, joined the playtest on CotI… but it was just a huge mess of a book.

There’s a lot of really cool ideas in T5 but it’s overly complicated, filled with typos and contradictions and is not internally integrated very well.

It’s fun to flip thru occasionally but it’s not really a playable game. Just my opinion.

Did you know that at one stage you could be perma-banned from CotI if you criticised T5 too heavily? A far cry from the freedom of feedback we have here. Odd since the US is supposed to be the home of free speech and here in the UK hurty words get you two years in the slammer.

Back to the point. I agree with NOLATrav.

Do I regret giving MWM nearly $1000 through two kickstarters to end up with the three book T5 set we have now... still no players book and still no Galaxiad.

That said there is a lot of good stuff in T5, if you want to mine it fore ideas. As a game it is a total non starter, it is based on the worsest task system any version of Traveller has had - T4 - and made worser still, yet there is a hidden system based on flux that could have been used. Character generation is a mess with tables all over the place and contradictory text. personal combat... <shudder>

What has been needed for a long time is an editorial pass or two by someone who can edit and also understands what the rules are supposed to be.

That ship has jumped.

Now the positives. Makers, system design, sophonts, wafer tech, brains, robots, synthetics, the most comprehensive coverage of Traveller tech levels and technology to date, cultures, interpersonal tasks... loads of stuff you can mine and build with.

I would love to see Mongoose take up the task of strip mining T5 and building a hybrid of MgT and T5. MgT character generation, combat, tasks, T5 everything else (after it has been edited for consistency, clarity and compatibility with MgT)

 

[Geir]

That ship has jumped.

Misjumped

 

[FreeTrav]

When I wrote up my Factor career (a factor being a trade agent for a megacorpration, world government, or noble house) I granted access to the Broker skill, but with the limitation that it was reduced by 1 for each jump away from world of origin. Brokers know local trade.

You might find my article from Freelance Traveller, Keeping the Adventure in Merchant Campaigns, of interest - we were apparently thinking along similar lines...

 

[FreeTrav]

When I wrote up my Factor career (a factor being a trade agent for a megacorpration, world government, or noble house) I granted access to the Broker skill, but with the limitation that it was reduced by 1 for each jump away from world of origin. Brokers know local trade.

Incidentally, if you have the time and inclination, I'd certainly not object to articles from you about factors and what they are, and your rules for using them.