EDG said:
Well, adding an economic code for a world (or being able to calculate one at least) should allow us to get a much better grasp of how the trade should flow. How one figures out that code is another matter.
Really we have to determine where all these 'small craft' are doing their speculative business. I always envision the PC ships doing most of the trade among the C/D/E starports that are off the beaten track. But when you get to the "core" worlds with the high pops and the good starports, a small ship probably doesn't have much to do beyond shipping passengers or freight.
Agreed about the code, mostly.
For the MGT modification, I made the assertion that the main trade of the players will be in the spot market-what needs to move right now, and may well be gone next week or tomorrow. The spot market in this trade is assumed to be essentiallt the leftover bits from the real serious trade. Regarding port type, one can make arguments that this dross can be more frequent at type A/B starports or more frequent type CDE starports, or largely independedt of volume of trade.
Picking which model will be for my purposes the most important determinant of how player trade is developed.
The brief versions of the the three positions are:
More at high volume ports
Pro: More trade = more leftovers =larger spot market; higher volume ports have lerger ships, and are more likely to have preassigned cargos/frieghting contracts. Simply, the rate of increased trade will always be somewhat higher than the number of hulls/cargo holds needed to move it. Available trade drives transport, and excess hold capacity will cdreate a demand for a spot market. Larger ships will tend to create larger lots.
Con:Bigger ships will be able to carry freight more flexibly and produce less excess lots; bigger flow will tend towards better organization and less chance of errors/overages creating excess or errors for the spot. Bigger ports are likely to have better infrastructure integration with the shipping companies/owners, leading to less excess. Increased traffic will make ity easier to reroute excess to another contract carrier, and not put it on the spot market.
More at low volume ports
Pro Less traffic means more liklihood of insufficient cargo space for existing needs. Ships are smaller at low volume ports, and thus less flexible in terms of cargo carriage. Lower traffic creates a slower drive to increase hulls due to time delay -thus a surge in cargo will take longer to effect the traffic to the planet, and thus sit longer.
Smaller ships will tend to encourage smaller lots.
Con:
Low volume port means less volume of cargo - traffic likely determines port type. Poor port is correlated with less planetary output. Lower traffic may produce very static carrier arrangements. If smaller ports are more likely to have bigger spot markets, the implication is that more shipping is done by use of the spot market, not contract or in-house; this increases risk, and lowers profit; production may well be more closely syncronised with available hulls, resulting in much lower spot market.
Independent of shipping volume
Pro:This mainly suggests that the trade the players will have access to is essentially the error term in any trade equation, and that it is essentially unpredictable regradless of the flow, partly because it is such a small portion of trade in high volume ports (and thus unstable) or it is a large part of an essentially volitile (smaller) market on low traffic ports. Also, both of the above models operate at all levels, and either cancel out, or act to increase variance, and thus reduce predictability. Convenient.
Pro: Somewhat of a tautology. Assumes that trade follows statistical ideas of variance and error which may be rubbish; is convenient, and thus likely an oversimplification or handwave.
