High jump Shipping and Ticket costs
- Thread starter mlooney
- Start date
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
-Daniel- said:
Mistake in there, fixed it for you :lol:
This is one of those areas where I think getting too detailed hoists you by your own Petard.
If we are going to use economics and cost modeling to derive jump costs then doesn't it behoove you to toss out the idea that player ships can even participate in main world cargo services? It would all be handled by larger cargo vessels who can move it more cheaply AND who are actually known. I would not trust a courier who just showed up with my freight. Tramp freighters still have to establish reputations to be trusted.
The other thing is that NO version of Traveller has ever modeled the galactic economy in any sort of reality. Yes it costs more to buy and operate a jump 6 vessel, but like many other things it's scaled up not using a complicated spreadsheet model, but simple tables.
It's great work to do it, but I think an over complication of one specific area that doesn't lend itself well to the gaming portion. If you are going to put such a huge premium on jump 6 then you should scale every jump level in a similar fashion. And add in the economics of hub and spoke operations vs. Direct. And more... so where do you draw the line?
If you want to show a higher cost associated it is far easier to simply add a 10% surcharge for every additional parse above one if you are wanting to get there in one jump. So the 100cr cost for jump 1 is Cr110 for jump 2, Cr120 for jump 3, etc. It's simple and scalable and doesn't require a spreadsheet or a calculator for most. And it still provides for a premium for longer jumps in one shot.
If we are going to use economics and cost modeling to derive jump costs then doesn't it behoove you to toss out the idea that player ships can even participate in main world cargo services? It would all be handled by larger cargo vessels who can move it more cheaply AND who are actually known. I would not trust a courier who just showed up with my freight. Tramp freighters still have to establish reputations to be trusted.
The other thing is that NO version of Traveller has ever modeled the galactic economy in any sort of reality. Yes it costs more to buy and operate a jump 6 vessel, but like many other things it's scaled up not using a complicated spreadsheet model, but simple tables.
It's great work to do it, but I think an over complication of one specific area that doesn't lend itself well to the gaming portion. If you are going to put such a huge premium on jump 6 then you should scale every jump level in a similar fashion. And add in the economics of hub and spoke operations vs. Direct. And more... so where do you draw the line?
If you want to show a higher cost associated it is far easier to simply add a 10% surcharge for every additional parse above one if you are wanting to get there in one jump. So the 100cr cost for jump 1 is Cr110 for jump 2, Cr120 for jump 3, etc. It's simple and scalable and doesn't require a spreadsheet or a calculator for most. And it still provides for a premium for longer jumps in one shot.
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
I believe that would be the Freight option vs. the Speculative Trade costs.
You just use your Broker skill to set up a fixed amount for each trip with a contract for dates etc. and off you go. I don't know that it needs to be in the Core Book, but should be something within a future version of Merchant Prince.
You just use your Broker skill to set up a fixed amount for each trip with a contract for dates etc. and off you go. I don't know that it needs to be in the Core Book, but should be something within a future version of Merchant Prince.
phavoc said:
I don't think it should be linear.
Jump 1 and Jump 2 ships are a dime a dozen, there will be people willing to accept razor thin margins just to get the business. On the flip side, Jump 6 ships are rare, and anyone that needs to get something there via Jump 6 is willing to pay the premium.
A simple formula would be maybe the square of the jump...
So, for an easy example,
if
Jump 1 = 1000
then:
Jump 2 = 4000 (1000*2^2)
Jump 3 = 9000 (1000*3^2)
...
Jump 6 = 36000 (1000*6^2)
But I am OK with the complex financial formula derived numbers...
One issue with modeling all this is that the Traveller universe doesn't reflect reality very well, at least as far as economics goes.
Today we have the highest TL countries making airliners and selling them to the lowest. Ethiopia, not exactly known for its booming economy or overall tech level, flies 777s - the most advanced passenger liner on the planet. They paid in USD and operate a growing fleet of them.
Traveller would (should) be the same, with the higher TL worlds building most of the ships because it's more efficient and cost-effective to fly the higher TL ships, while the lower TL ships would be older models (notice nobody builds MD-88s or 737-400s anymore - you buy them from the boneyard or after someone else has turned them in).
So the pricing schemas are all skewed. Which is ok since it's a game. But care has to be taken when trying to push TOO much reality into gaming theory. People still have to travel between planets, so there needs to be some affordability built into that.
Plus if you are paying Cr36,000 for passage, you are going to have a damn fine room with the best food and alcohol being served to you nightly while the "little" people below decks get standard fair and standard rooms (and decreased passage costs).
Nobody pays that kind of money to travel coach. At least that's not been the case in human history (except in emergencies).
Today we have the highest TL countries making airliners and selling them to the lowest. Ethiopia, not exactly known for its booming economy or overall tech level, flies 777s - the most advanced passenger liner on the planet. They paid in USD and operate a growing fleet of them.
Traveller would (should) be the same, with the higher TL worlds building most of the ships because it's more efficient and cost-effective to fly the higher TL ships, while the lower TL ships would be older models (notice nobody builds MD-88s or 737-400s anymore - you buy them from the boneyard or after someone else has turned them in).
So the pricing schemas are all skewed. Which is ok since it's a game. But care has to be taken when trying to push TOO much reality into gaming theory. People still have to travel between planets, so there needs to be some affordability built into that.
Plus if you are paying Cr36,000 for passage, you are going to have a damn fine room with the best food and alcohol being served to you nightly while the "little" people below decks get standard fair and standard rooms (and decreased passage costs).
Nobody pays that kind of money to travel coach. At least that's not been the case in human history (except in emergencies).
DickTurpin
Banded Mongoose
phavoc said:
Actually, recent history shows the opposite when you factor in the vast decrease in travel times. When air travel first became available, the wealthy would pay a hefty premium to travel overseas in a matter of hours rather than weeks. No one can argue that a seat on an airplane was more comfortable than a cabin aboard a ship, but it was worth it to save time. To a lesser degree the same thing happened when planes started using jet engines and again with the Concord; reduced flight time and more expensive equipment, carried a premium in exchange for the reduction in travel time.
In Traveller, there is a further time savings possible from higher jump numbers. For destination many parsecs apart, higher jump ships can take shortcuts that can shave many weeks off of a trip. A trip might be possible with a jump-1 ship, but often a jump-2 or jump-3 ship can cross gaps that can cut months off of the total trip. As the saying goes, "time is money" and the most people are willing to spend extra money to save time.
DickTurpin said:
Air travel was a luxury to begin with. Alternate forms of transport, such as the train, was what the masses took. Or buses even. The Concorde was always a luxury, it was marketed and operated as such.
For Traveller there is no alternative to traveling between planets but jumping. Also, if you look at things historically, the cost of travel on any form of conveyance has decreased over time even as travel distances increased and travel times decreased. The Traveller model is a static one, with no improvements over time or tech. So it's pattern has no historical comparison.
I'm all for the hand wave when it comes to certain game mechanics that needlessly bog the player or ref down. I do like to see some accomodation to reality however. If only adventurers and the wealthy can afford to travel between planets then the model is broken, but game play can still occur as long as one doesn't go too deep into the explanation. And for many that concept is fine.
However, since this is essentially a reboot things like this should at least be discussed and brought forward.
AKAramis said:
We (the non-royal kind that hasn't seen HG) don't know the costs of operation because they aren't present in the CRB. Assuming they are somewhat along the lines of all previous versions of Traveller, the costs should be broken down into:
ship mortgage
fuel
crew
life support
docking fees
profit
One thing about modeling all this is that games do a horrible job at modeling real-world events. Even the costs listed above have some huge holes in them. We know that starships can last quite some time (multiple decades, perhaps a century). The performance of a spanking new TL-15 vessel at 1G is the same as that of a TL-12 1G vessel that's 60yrs old. With regular maintenance and refurbishments your TL-12 ship can provide the same level of service as the TL-15 at a fraction of the cost. But that sort of thing isn't modeled. In the real world the price of a ticket to from from NYC to LA remains the same whether or not you are on a 787,777,767,747,737 or an MD-88. Cost to the passenger is on a per-seat basis, and airlines don't modify pricing based upon equipment. They DO, however, sometimes modify the equipment on a route based upon it's profitability and the costs of operating the equipment. How do I know this? Because I spent nearly a year working on creating software for passenger accounting revenue. I learned all kinds of silly rules and regulations related to ticket pricing and airline costs. It's one of the most arcane and silly things you can think of, but that's what everybody in the industry does as the de-facto standard.
We already know from the statements in Traveller that megacorps abound at the Imperial, sector and sub-sector levels. So it's safe to assume that these corporations will act in a manner similar to corporations today. Which means wringing every Cr they can out of shipping and passengers. But if they squeeze too tight they will create a market for competitors. So they should be running efficient (and profitable) routes with pricing that discourages anyone else from swooping in and taking their business. PC's, being non-established drifters, have that ability. Except for the idea that a PC can demand the same pricing that established and scheduled liners and freighters get. That's just silly - at least from a modern perspective. The closest analogy we'd have is a courier service, except their pricing is typically more expensive because it's on-demand and people are paying for time. I can hop on a charter plane and get to LA pretty much at any moment I want. But it's going to cost me $20-30k. If I drive to the airport, buy a ticket and take a regularly scheduled flight I can fly in 1st class for a cool grand. But I might get there a few hours later, so is the 20x cost worth the time savings? Only I can say yes or now to that question.
I'm relatively sure the overall economics haven't been modeled, just some of the basic prices. Which goes back to my argument of too much complex modeling in a game system fails because you can never model it all and still enjoy it as a game. The J-6 passage is out of the pricing range of just about everyone. So most scheduled travel for the average Imperial citizen is going to be in the J-1 through J-4 range. Due to the nature of jump travel ALL multi-system jumps will have to build in generous layover times. So a person who is traveling on 4 jump-1s should spend 2-5 days on a planet or station waiting for the next leg of their trip because the arrival times of a ship cannot be predicted, so all schedules will have to assume the longest travel duration for jump emergence, time to arrive at station/on planet, and then depart.
Which begs the question if this is the case, who pays for the temporary lodging? Is it included in the price of the ticket or is it out of the Travellers pocket? Or do we want to deal with something like that? Is it better to simply hand-wave that sort of complexity out and provide flat-rate costs and be done with it? I think the latter is probably better, but for those PC's who are traveling without a spacecraft, knowing that this sort of thing occurs, gives ref's the background to create mini-adventures with potential time windows.
Another question is what level of detail belongs in the book? Should this be mentioned as background info and let the reader go where they may? Or do we simply not acknowledge it and let people either figure it out, make their own rules, or be blissfully ignorant (until someone else brings it up)?
Mortgage - returns to CT style 40 years of monthly 1/240th of purchase price after 20% down. (So 1/192 of financed amount).phavoc said:
Fuel: no changes
Crew: slightly higher for big ships, due to captains & officers being added.
Life support - close enough to MGT 1
Docking fees not yet changed
Profit: the margin used in the calculations was 30% added to highest of (mean +1 stdev) and (median +1 stdev). (This allows for a pretty decent profit up for big ships, while allowing small ships to scrape by. One can presume that it's handled in universe by some imperial regulation - price fixing is actually not all that uncommon in transport industries.)
phavoc said:
They do, sort of. Traveller, despite being a "generic" rules system actually has a lot of biases towards the "default" Third Imperium setting. One of those biases are the assumed TL of the Imperium. In MegaTraveller, all the standard ships were built at TL15. Somewhere in the TI, there were these TL15 worlds (or maybe just shipyards) cranking out TL15 everything then exporting those ships, exactly as you describe, to the rest of the TI. Editions since MT (TNE, basically) also assume TL15 for the most part. I can't say about T5, not having looked at it.
It was my understanding that the drive sizes and operational profit tables were all generated were all assuming the construction at TL15; J1 - J5 ships built at lower TLs should be less efficient in terms of fuel tankage, volume, fuel use, and so on and so their economics would change accordingly.
Epicenter said:
MegaTraveller still had the idea that people were running around in various TL ships. The average TL across the Imperium has pretty much been 12 in all the versions (with exceptions, like GURPS and when the Virus got introduced).
If anything is going to be generated using spreadsheets, then the average TL needs to be used to figure out costs. There are advantages/disadvantages to the higher and lower tech levels. A drawback to zipping around in TL-15 ships is that sometimes you might have to wait a while for a part to get where you are, because TL-15 worlds aren't terribly common. But that's more of a ref issue than anything else. Normal playing would not necessarily reflect that concept.
AKAramis said:
Will have to wait and see HG rule changes to really comment on this. But I'd suggest to the powers that be if you are going to place pricing and such in the CRB you provide a minimal explanation on how those prices are arrived at. The massive price change from J5 to J6 will seem like a typo to anyone who doesn't know the underlying principles of such.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Shipping and passenger rates would probably be based on opportunity costs.
