Merchant Prince Purchase and Sale modifiers

[theatrix]

I am a bit confused from the Determine the Purchase Price section of Merchant Price. In the die roll modifiers it say sto:

Add the largest Dice Modifier from the Purchase DM column

and to

Subtract the largest Dice Modifier from the Sale DM column

I am assuming that I only consider the DMs for the trade classifications that actually exist on the purchasing world (for the Purchase and the Sale DM). So if I am on a Rich Industrial world and there is a purchase modifier for Industrial of +5 and there is NO Sale modifier for either Rich or Industrial then I would use 0 as the Sale DM. OR Should I ignore the trade classifcations for the Sale DM and just use the highest Sale DM that exists in the column. So if there is +3 for NI worlds in the Sale column would I use the 3 as the - negative modifier.

Anyway any help / feed back would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely

Theatrix in CA

 

[rust]

As I read it, since your characters buy the trade goods on
a specific planet, and the idea of the trade codes is to make
the planets, the available goods and the prices different, you
should only take the modifiers for the specific planet in ques-
tion. So, if there is no Sale DM mentioned for that specific
planet, you do not subtract any modifier.

 

[Captain Jonah]

An example of how I understand it to work.

A broker 2 with +1 Soc bonus buying goods.

He starts on a waterworld Agri planet (fish) and finds a load of high class fish (luxury goods), this gives a +2 (agri) or a +1 Waterworld so he gets +2. If the world was rich or high pop he would qualify for the sale DM which would be subtracted. Since the world is neither he does not get the minus. So his total is +5 to bid for the luxury goods.

Later on he tries to buy a load of advanced weapons from a black market fence (clearly stolen from a military shipment). This is done at a free port in an interdicted system. So there are no bonuses to the buy price (industrial +0, high tech +2 neither of which apply) but there is a modifier of +4 for the red zone. So his broker is at -1 (broker 2 and +1 SOC, -4 red zone).

Selling is the same but adds the sales mod and subtracts the buy mod. For example the pirate who stole those advanced weapons selling them to the fence would have a +4 for selling in a red zone and no penalty since the free port is neither industrial nor high tech).

Hope this helps.

 

[BFalcon]

Basically, the way to look at it is this: If someone is in plentiful supply, the prices go down - so why would a buyer pay more? Likewise, if demand is high but supply low (such as food or medical supplies on an asteroid base), the prices go up (sometimes drastically).

So the rules actually make sense and are a little abstract, but try to cater for a wide range of combinations of codes which would otherwise drive us mad, I suspect.

 

[Chernobyl]

I've been putting it all into a spreadsheet. I've been wondering how everyone else handles trade. My group finally got into a ship and was able to get free to the point where I could do some trades and when we started up with the tables the eyes or the rest of the party sort of glazed over. But that's where my royal trader shines, right? making money on trades? to pay for the ship and keep us going? because he still can't fire a gun, so he's next to useless on planet missions.
So me and the DM are looking to find a way to handle the trade details between games so when we get together for games its more roleplay fun for everyone.
Anyway, the spreadsheet I've done up so far, will look at any two systems in the Spinward Marches, and tell you what goods are automatically available, and the estimated profit per ton of any given speculative trade between them. It compares all the purchase and sales DM's, freight modifiers, passenger tables, mail container availability. So far its just the generic trade goods from the core rulebook, not new "specific" trade goods in the merchant prince book. My next step is to look into comparing good legality, and its subsequent increase in sale price, on the destination planet.