Gold Pieces for Credits

[Reynard]

Check Scoundrel, "Barbarians may not roll for cash benefits." They do not start with currency, period.

Correct. Gold pieces are not currency. They are worthless. Didn't you understand when you saw the non value of 300 gp in the 3I???? 300 stalks of celery would be worth more than 300 gold coins. :lol:

Since you somehow went off somewhere else answering my statement, let's consider yours.

"A currency (from Middle English: curraunt, "in circulation", from Latin: currens, -entis) in the most specific use of the word refers to money in any form when in actual use or circulation as a medium of exchange, especially circulating banknotes and coins"

Gold can be, and obviously is, used as currency no matter what it's value at any time or place. Celery can also be a regular medium of exchange though a bit seasonal. The only reason diamonds on 21st century Earth have so much value is they way they are controlled by a few groups otherwise a handful of diamonds could be (and probably should be) chump change. As long as someone finds enough value in an item, it can be a form of currency.

And back to my original statement, the barbarian career does not have the character start with any form of money including gold. They can have a few sellable items they can convert to cash once off world. Once up and playing, they could receive a treasure in the form of gold coins during an adventure. Most merchants won't be exchanging goods for gold any more than you can walk into a mall and buy clothes with it. Tom's original statement dealt with exchanging to a usable medium of general currency. In Traveller, they simplified currency with the Credit which, like money on Earth today, can be digital or physical. It's the Imperial starport that extends the Credit to so many places and becomes a common exchange medium like the american dollar once was around the world.

For a similar example, that barbarian could walk to a starport emplaced on their world and regularly exchange goods for credits to buy items in startown stores they would otherwise have no access to. Being a barbarian doesn't make you a knuckle dragger. You can live simply and want it that way like communes or out of the way settlements today on Earth.

 

[Reynard]

"I'd adjust the size of the coins like this to make the math work:

1 Penny p with 25 grams of copper = Cr0.1 (40 weighs 1kg)
1 Copper Piece cp with 250 grams of copper = Cr1 (4 weighs 1 kg)
1 Silver Piece sp with 30 grams of silver = Cr10 (33.4 weighs 1 kg)
1 Gold Piece gp with 10 grams of gold = Cr100 (100 weighs 1 kg)
1 Platinum Piece pp with 50 grams of platinum = Cr1,000 (20 weighs 1 kg)
How does this sound?"

Interesting to see the standard Credit at the level of a yen or the pre-euro lire where it's closer to a penny than a dollar. A gold piece here is much like the old time 20 dollar gold piece used to carry large values in a small item back when paper currency was less common. Before skyrocketing inflation, the american penny was a much more standard exchange coin.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Check Scoundrel, "Barbarians may not roll for cash benefits." They do not start with currency, period.

Correct. Gold pieces are not currency. They are worthless. Didn't you understand when you saw the non value of 300 gp in the 3I???? 300 stalks of celery would be worth more than 300 gold coins. :lol:

Since you somehow went off somewhere else answering my statement, let's consider yours.

"A currency (from Middle English: curraunt, "in circulation", from Latin: currens, -entis) in the most specific use of the word refers to money in any form when in actual use or circulation as a medium of exchange, especially circulating banknotes and coins"

Gold can be, and obviously is, used as currency no matter what it's value at any time or place. Celery can also be a regular medium of exchange though a bit seasonal. The only reason diamonds on 21st century Earth have so much value is they way they are controlled by a few groups otherwise a handful of diamonds could be (and probably should be) chump change. As long as someone finds enough value in an item, it can be a form of currency.

And back to my original statement, the barbarian career does not have the character start with any form of money including gold. They can have a few sellable items they can convert to cash once off world. Once up and playing, they could receive a treasure in the form of gold coins during an adventure. Most merchants won't be exchanging goods for gold any more than you can walk into a mall and buy clothes with it. Tom's original statement dealt with exchanging to a usable medium of general currency. In Traveller, they simplified currency with the Credit which, like money on Earth today, can be digital or physical. It's the Imperial starport that extends the Credit to so many places and becomes a common exchange medium like the american dollar once was around the world.

For a similar example, that barbarian could walk to a starport emplaced on their world and regularly exchange goods for credits to buy items in startown stores they would otherwise have no access to. Being a barbarian doesn't make you a knuckle dragger. You can live simply and want it that way like communes or out of the way settlements today on Earth.

The typical image that comes to mind is a muscle bound warrior with a Greatsword.

 

[Reynard]

I also see a bunch of neo-hippies tending their flocks and living with nature in a low tech lifestyle or a type of amish. It's a big Imperial realm.

 

[Reynard]

I also see a bunch of neo-hippies tending their flocks and living with nature in a low tech lifestyle or a type of amish. It's a big Imperial realm.

 

[Rick]

Or a male Aslan from an ultra-conservative clan!

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Conan the Barbarian vs Shaggy from Scooby Doo
Which barbarian would win?

 

[Condottiere]

 

[simonh]

There's a lot of conjecture here doing an awful lot of extrapolating from few or no data points.

First off, nowhere in any of the Traveller material I've seen has ever mentioned artifical manufacture of elements. Even if it is possible to manufacture useful quantities of elements from fusion reactors at Traveller Tech Levels, there's no guarantee it would be cheap. We know decent sized fusion power plants in starships cost tens of millions of credits, and would at most be able to make milligrams of material per day given their likely power ratings. Compared to simply flying up to an asteroid with large amounts of gold in it and hauling it off, I find it hard to believe the fusion reactor option would really be all that economically viable.

The second point is that we know from considerable Traveller canon that asteroid mining is a viable occupation that can make you rich. If everything in an asteroid could be manufactured more cheaply, what exactly are these asteroid miners doing? Clearly there must be something valuable in these asteroids.

Finally, anyone that thinks a dton of gold cargo is lieraly a dton cube of solid gold bock isn't thinking very clearly. Nobody even ships steel in big ass cubes, it's just not a viable form to ship materials in, for handling purposes if nothing else. In reality the material would be in a form that could be conveniently handled by loading equipment, and suitable for use by whatever equipment is intended to consume it. Metals are commonly transported in bar, rod, ingot, sheet or roll form.

We all know what bars of gold look like, and I've seen TV and film images of them stacked in palletes for transportation and storage. It seems to me the density of one of those palletes in terms of gold to empty space is probably something like at least 5x as much space and packing material as there is gold. Also they're not going to be in dton cubes. More likely they'd be in maybe 1m packing crates. Allowing for the crates and space between them, that would drop the ratio to perhaps 10x or even 20x. And that's assuming that a 'dton' of gold is literaly a dton volume of gold packed for transportation. I don't think that's a given.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Condottiere]

There's the matter of floor loading, though if you turn off the gravity, and fully initialize the inertial compensators, possibly clamp it in the reinforced cargo hold next to the factor fifteen hull armour.

Though it's been pointed out that starship fusion plants, though that may apply to most spaceships, are optimized for overclocking, as compared to a planetary municipal power generator.

 

[simonh]

Though it's been pointed out that starship fusion plants, though that may apply to most spaceships, are optimized for overclocking, as compared to a planetary municipal power generator.

I tend to assume that too, but only for brief periods. The fusion power plant, drives and internal gravity systems may well be a little over-engineered to enable brief periods of over-rating but the key word is brief. It's not something you'd want to do for an entire journey.

I tend to think of Traveller cargo capacities in terms of shipping containers. They have a fixed volume and a variable mass depending on the contents, but they also have a maximum weight they are rated for. That's how it works for standardised cargo containers in my Traveller games, and cargo handlign bots, container attachment systems, floor grav plating, etc is designed around these standards, though frankly the issue has never really come up.

I think something that's easy to loose track track of is that just because the Traveller design system abstracts vehicle size into 'dtons', that doesn't mean that all of a sudden mass must be completely irrelevent in the Traveller universe. It's simplification for game purposes. Push the logical consequences too far, and things will start shaking loose from plausability.

Simon Hibbs

 

[F33D]

There's the matter of floor loading, though if you turn off the gravity, and fully initialize the inertial compensators, possibly clamp it in the reinforced cargo hold next to the factor fifteen hull armour.

If you use an actual Grav drive (as MGT trav has it) then everything within the grav field (entire ship) gets moved at the same time. The artificial grav exists so that the people aren't in free fall the entire time. That would also explain why in Mgt, the fact that mass change in spacecraft does NOT affect performance. In FACT, that's the only logical conclusion given that fact.

 

[simonh]

If you use an actual Grav drive (as MGT trav has it) then everything within the grav field (entire ship) gets moved at the same time. The artificial grav exists so that the people aren't in free fall the entire time. That would also explain why in Mgt, the fact that mass change in spacecraft does NOT affect performance. In FACT, that's the only logical conclusion given that fact.

In principle there are several ways a gravitic drive could work.

* It could create an artificial gravity field around an object, causing that object to 'fall' in the desired direction. In free space, occupants of a vehicle moving this way would experience freefall regardless of the acceleration of the vessel, if it didn't have some additional system to provide internal artificial gravity. I think this is what your talking about, but it's not in any way the only option.

1) It could act to attract itself, or repell itself relative to some external mass. This makes the most sense when the vehicle is near a planet, so e.g. the gravitic module could push against the planet's mass, accelerating it upwards away from the planet. Lateral motion could be generated by angling the drive to repel one side of the planet more than the other. The thrust generated this way would work more like a jet or rocket engine, but without any exhaust. Thrust would be transmitted mechanically from the drive, though it's mountings and into the structure of the vehicle. This would work best near a planet, but in principle you could point it at distant bodies. Mega Traveller assumed that gravitic vehicles worked this way.

2) It could be a graviton emitter. Again, this would work much like a rocket propulsion system, but the exhaust would be gravity waves. This is my favourite option.

3) Mega Traveller thrusters were not true gravitic drives, but were supposedly based on gravitic technology and worked by some kind of quantum interaction or other in the drive plates to generate magic thrust. Of the options above, I think this made them most similar to the graviton emitter. I'm listing them as an option as they have form in Traveller history, even though they're too vaguely defined to pin down exactly how they are supposed to work.

Edit - Finally you could have a drive capable of operating in more than one mode. So near a planet it operates in gravitic repulsor mode (2) for efficiency reasons, enabling it to counter the planet's gravity and still have it's normal rated thrust available for propulsion, and in deep space it becomes a graviton drive (3) at it's rated thrust. This might explain why ships with 1G rated drives are apparently capable of landing on and taking off from planets with 1G+ gravity fields, at least the obvious problems with this aren't discussed anywhere in the rules.

It's quite possible I may have missed something, but those are the options off the top of my head.

Simon Hibbs

 

[F33D]

1) It could act to attract itself, or repell itself relative to some external mass. This makes the most sense when the vehicle is near a planet, so e.g. the gravitic module could push against the planet's mass, a
2) It could be a graviton emitter. Again, this would work much like a rocket propulsion system, but the exhaust would be gravity waves. This is my favourite option.

Yes, but that would REQUIRE a drop off in efficiency. Which is not the case in Mgt. (I'm only referring to MGT rules. NOT other versions.)

3) Mega Traveller thrusters ... [/quote]

Again this isn't MT and in MT MASS carried effected thrust. So, no.


Simon Hibbs[/quote]

In order to account for how the drive works in Monggose Trav it HAS to be something like I described.

 

[Reynard]

Back to the original situation postulated by Tom, how would the exchange actually be handled besides whatever the Ref god proclaims?

His scenario has the barbarian hop off the ship at an Imperial starport and head straight for the nearest currency exchange, which I could see being a reasonable and common service. Since such a service isn't in the antiquities market, value would need to be either a known and listed currency or the coin would need to be assayed for it's gold content then valued at current gold standard. The barbarian seems a bit cosmopolitan so the situation could be the barbarian's community does have normal Imperial interaction and this money is a listed commodity OR the coins are used as a convenient object to transport gold to be exchanged for Credits when off world. Gold may be as readily available as it was in Central America centuries past but the society doesn't permit outside cultural influence such as Credits. Possibly any Credits left when the barbarian returns home is exchanged for equivalent gold more likely much purer than the original coins.

Walking off a ship with the coins could be a problem unless passage was paid for another way. I'd say a better situation is the barbarian exchanges at a local starport to have passage money and income on the travels.

I checked Merchant Prince for insight to gold pricing. I'm assuming I missed a decimal somewhere because my results seemed very small. CR75000 for base price for a dton of gold gets you 0.0003Cr/gram. A standard US gold coin is 3-30 grams or 0.0009Cr to 0.009Cr for the range. I see a few examples of bullion bars at 1417 grams which would be 0.43 Cr.... A half dollar?! Quoting Amos & Andy, "You mean to tell me them diamonds is worthless?".

 

[Galadrion]

A standard US gold coin is 3-30 grams or 0.0009Cr to 0.009Cr for the range. I see a few examples of bullion bars at 1417 grams which would be 0.43 Cr.... A half dollar?! Quoting Amos & Andy, "You mean to tell me them diamonds is worthless?".

"Lemme put it to ya this way: he is de broker, an' you is de brokee."

 

[Condottiere]

Life size gold statues alloyed with some form of strengthening agent should become vogue.

Or larger than life size if you happen to be a dwarf.

 

[Jacqual]

Life size gold statues alloyed with some form of strengthening agent should become vogue.

Or larger than life size if you happen to be a dwarf.

I dunno I think that with the way a great number of folks are posting why would anyone want a life size (or larger) statue made of the worthless stuff?

 

[simonh]

In order to account for how the drive works in Monggose Trav it HAS to be something like I described.

I hope you don't mind, but we're far OT for this thread so I'll split my reply off into a new topic.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

How about this?
1 Copper piece cp with 25 grams of copper = Cr1 (40 weighs 1kg)
1 Silver Piece sp with 7.5 grams of silver = Cr25 (133.6 weighs 1 kg)
1 Silver Dollar $ with 30 grams of silver = Cr100 (33.4 weighs 1 kg)
1 Gold Piece gp with 10 grams of gold = Cr1,000 (100 weighs 1 kg)
1 Platinum Piece pp with 50 grams of platinum = Cr10,000 (20 weighs 1 kg)
How does this sound?"