Homegrown Corporation Writeups For Your Traveller Universe

[MasterGwydion]

Thanks, all, for the suggestions. The economics of Traveller is something I have only come to as I have, um, _matured_ and I have a load of catching up to do on how the numbers work. Are the best sources the core rule book and the SOG?

The numbers don't work. Do not try to make economics in Traveller make sense. You will end up in a padded room drooling onto your straightjacket. I and many others have tried and failed. Traveller isn't designed to have a working economic system. The economy of Traveller is rolling a few D6s each time you go to a starport. That is the total depth of the Traveller economic system.

Currently, the CRB is the only source of information for this unless you go back to previous editions.

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

The numbers don't work. Do not try to make economics in Traveller make sense. You will end up in a padded room drooling onto your straightjacket. I and many others have tried and failed. Traveller isn't designed to have a working economic system. The economy of Traveller is rolling a few D6s each time you go to a starport. That is the total depth of the Traveller economic system.

Currently, the CRB is the only source of information for this unless you go back to previous editions.

I agree with this. That said, there have been people who did solo-play "trading" campaigns, playing a Free Trader plying the space lanes and using the economic system to see if they sink or fail. I saw people do this in Classic Traveller and MegaTraveller, and the upshot was that you rapidly go broke. This was by design -- PCs were meant to be desperately poor so that they would take up the borderline-illegal (or wholly illegal!) jobs offered by patrons.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I agree with this. That said, there have been people who did solo-play "trading" campaigns, playing a Free Trader plying the space lanes and using the economic system to see if they sink or fail. I saw people do this in Classic Traveller and MegaTraveller, and the upshot was that you rapidly go broke. This was by design -- PCs were meant to be desperately poor so that they would take up the borderline-illegal (or wholly illegal!) jobs offered by patrons.

Yeah, many early games railroaded you by design so you have no choice but to follow the Referee's plot. Your options in many early games was follow the plot or your character dies. In Traveller, that could have been due to bad rolls during character creation, before you ever have an opportunity to "follow the plot"! lol.

 

[rinku]

Thanks, all, for the suggestions. The economics of Traveller is something I have only come to as I have, um, _matured_ and I have a load of catching up to do on how the numbers work. Are the best sources the core rule book and the SOG?

Pretty much. But also any mercantile fiction or history, and real world economic matters can be shamelessly plundered.

There have been Traveller products that deal with merchant matters (Usually called "Merchant Prince") in previous editions, including 1st edition Mongoose.

But keep in mind that most of what has ever been published is a narrow window on the greater scope of an interstellar economy, and that it's all fictional. No one really knows how it would really operate.

 

[Condottiere]

Well, it's the Lovecraftian School of Economics.

 

[mavikfelna]

If you want a look at a reasonable merchant in space story that would fit well in Traveller and has reasonable, though not necessarily fully realistic, economic model, look at the Age of the Solar Clipper stories by Nathan Lowell. They are fantastic and really feel like a traveller campaign to me.

 

[Condottiere]

There is Holo the Wise Vargr, and Kraft Lawrence.

 

[rinku]

Poul Anderson has a bit. Nicholas van Rijn is the perfect template of a Traveller Merchant Prince; David Falkayn that for a trade explorer and adventuring Merchant.

 

[ResslynHalvik]

Yeah, all good background. Where I need to put in some legwork is on how the numbers work in the game milieu - I can have my fantasy about a 1200dT converted liner with a couple of boats, and robots galore for ground clearance and archaeological stratigraphic and sectioning excavation, and a mesh of pseudo-GPS grav-floaty beacons to give your excavation reference grid, but could there ever be a revenue stream to fund it all?

 

[MasterGwydion]

Yeah, all good background. Where I need to put in some legwork is on how the numbers work in the game milieu - I can have my fantasy about a 1200dT converted liner with a couple of boats, and robots galore for ground clearance and archaeological stratigraphic and sectioning excavation, and a mesh of pseudo-GPS grav-floaty beacons to give your excavation reference grid, but could there ever be a revenue stream to fund it all?

This sounds like a research expedition, so likely funded by a university or wealthy patron.

 

[Anstett]

Yeah, all good background. Where I need to put in some legwork is on how the numbers work in the game milieu - I can have my fantasy about a 1200dT converted liner with a couple of boats, and robots galore for ground clearance and archaeological stratigraphic and sectioning excavation, and a mesh of pseudo-GPS grav-floaty beacons to give your excavation reference grid, but could there ever be a revenue stream to fund it all?

How I handle it in my game. One of the players has a Lab Ship. Horribly inefficient in most Traveller games.

But the player leaned in heavy to the Mad Scientist vibe she had going and we created a charter to explain how the finances limp along.

Dragonslayer Space | Main / PioneerShipsCharter

 

[rinku]

I tend to repurpose the common ships on the grounds that MOST ventures might be able to afford second hand, but aren't flush enough to commission a purpose built design. Or that a conversion that's good enough is... good enough.

The Subsidized Liner hull is a good one. Useful J-3 and removing staterooms for other fittings should be a fairly easy job. And for any mission that involves a lot of people... stock will do. Prison transports (or, with the drives stripped, prison HULKS!), colony ships, troop ships. If a science expedition needs to bridge J-3, staterooms -> labs works.

 

[ResslynHalvik]

This sounds like a research expedition, so likely funded by a university or wealthy patron.

I was more thinking about how the ongoing finances of a small company providing this as a service works.

 

[rinku]

Well... if the venture is going to be a cost for quite a while, you'd have to fund it from projected future income. Unless there's something like tax involved. If funding the operation means the company runs at a loss you could be able to justify it that way. Technical bankruptcy ploys or tax havens could also be involved.

If the small company belongs to someone with considerable personal wealth or resources it could be a vanity project, largely bankrolled by that person. Those don't always need to make economic sense, though you'd hope that the company's stake in the matter is accounted for properly.

Unless outright fraud is also involved.

Note that a lot of the above may only apply to the entity *employing* the venture, and not to the venture's own accounting. The company itself probably just works out its costs and sets its fees accordingly. If there's a demand for the service there would be competition and maybe price wars, advertising and corporate espionage to consider.

 

[ResslynHalvik]

Well... if the venture is going to be a cost for quite a while, you'd have to fund it from projected future income.

Yes - this is what I am failing to be able to work out - where in the economy of a system or or sub-sector or sector there are customers who have the need for the service and the means to pay for it, in enough volume that the company is a going concern. Even if they plug gaps in the capital and operational costs with under-the-counter or off-thebooks activtiies (such as illegal sales of rare artefacts), it would be very noticeable at audit that a company with expensive ships and equipment was keeping head above water on an apparent trading loss.

 

[rinku]

Okay, well... a sector is a VERY big thing. Even a subsector usually has one or two worlds that have enough people, tech and wealth to provide likely patronage for any interesting venture.

Artifact collection is just the sort of thing that the megarich go for. If it costs a million credits a month, that's pocket change to a trillionaire, and something an enthused multi billionaire might be ably to justify. MegaCorporations are even bigger; their interest could be as facile as some unique piece for the lobby of the corporate HQ at the sector capitol, or maybe they are hoping to uncover something they can profit from. Their employment could also be as a smokescreen for some other operation - if an innocent dig team is sent to a planet, that might let them infiltrate personnel to that planet.

 

[ResslynHalvik]

Okay, well... a sector is a VERY big thing. Even a subsector usually has one or two worlds that have enough people, tech and wealth to provide likely patronage for any interesting venture.

Artifact collection is just the sort of thing that the megarich go for. If it costs a million credits a month, that's pocket change to a trillionaire, and something an enthused multi billionaire might be ably to justify. MegaCorporations are even bigger; their interest could be as facile as some unique piece for the lobby of the corporate HQ at the sector capitol, or maybe they are hoping to uncover something they can profit from. Their employment could also be as a smokescreen for some other operation - if an innocent dig team is sent to a planet, that might let them infiltrate personnel to that planet.

Hmmm. . "Patronage" feels a bit of a wobbly foundation on which to build a company - I guess I am looking for "market", and as a trained archaeologist I am wanting to make that a market for archaeology, not for treasure hunting. Also, if all/most/much archaeology is a front for other operations or infiltration, an "innocent" dig team is rare so that archaeology is a beacon for "look over here - we are doing something really sus here"

 

[rinku]

Well, those were just ideas. To be honest, if the spy side of things was very common, they'd not do it - people would catch on. That one would be an occasional complication, I'd think.

The bread and butter jobs are likely to be up front and legit, coming from Corporate research, Universities, Government departments and private individuals. Digs often need to be undertaken if a construction or mining project stumbles across something; it doesn't need to be anything other than a planetary level government with an interest, or laws requiring it.

An example from a few years ago, a local private school was breaking ground on an new project and they started digging up bodies. Turned out the site was an old graveyard that had been forgotten about. Records were incomplete about who had been buried there, but there were plenty of living relatives, so the state government set up a major dig/exhumation/DNA analysis operation until they could be sure they'd found all the remains and relocate them.

Remap that into space, maybe scale it up a bit, and the call goes out for teams that can do the work.

 

[ResslynHalvik]

Yes, I'm a qualified archaeologist, so understand the scenarios. All I'm saying is that I haven't worked out the economics of it yet. In the UK, where I am most familiar with the practices, archaeology started off as antiquity hunting by bored wealthy individuals, then as it got regulated or expectations grew trained professionals starting taking over and by the early 20th century digs tended to be moderately well-funded but done very rarely. Then the regulatory and planning landscape changed with the introduction of PPG 16, which multiplied greatly the number of excavations that happened, but because most of that is being funded by developers for no perceived benefit by them it's now done on a shoe string. PPG 16 type funding wouldn't stretch to ship-based expeditions heading out into the great unknown for months at a time!

I need to run up a business model canvas and work out what the outgoings of the kind of organisation I'm designing would be and then see what the costs of expeditions would need to be to fund that. Then from somewhere try to find out some economic figures for who in a sub sector would be willing and able to pay for that. I wonder if we have any information anywhere on how the fifth frontier war is being funded - that would help fill in some of the thinking.

 

[Shardan13]

I know it's not in your concept but perhaps expand expand the type of jobs your business does. The one comes to mind is a bit grim but with all those digging robots perhaps a side hustle of helping disaster recovery. Especially with the fifth war happening I can see ruined cities and sadly someone has to go through and recover bodies and important items.