Number of passengers and freight available

[Annatar]

I have a problem with the rules regarding the determination of available passengers and freight in MGT2. Before, in MGT1, available passengers and freight lots were influenced by both the statistics (trade codes) of the current and destination world. In MGT2, available lots are suddenly only influenced by population and star port.

It is not clear by the rules as written, if the modifiers are only used for the current world or both current and destination world. RAW, made me think that you only consider the current world, my knowledge of the old rules made me think that I probably should consider both worlds.

If the first interpretation is right, only the current world seems to determine the amount of passengers or freight available to *any* kind of destination, meaning the same amount of passengers want to travel to a desirable high pop, high tech world and a backwater, where the dead hang out to dry. That seems to destroy any kind of verisimilitude and any attempt to suspend disbelief at how trade and travel among the stars would actually work.

If both current and destination world are considered for the amount of passengers and freight available, only taking population and star port into consideration seems to run counter to the idea of having trade codes for worlds in the first place, and also to run counter to the idea that trade rules should immerse players in the wider universe, by looking at the planets you can travel to, if only population and star port are important.

Did I miss anything in the rules or are the current rules really that over simplified?

 

[grauenwolf]

Yea, that is weird. I quite liked the old rules where is was influenced by the destination. I shouldn't be able to pick up a boat of travelers heading towards an asteroid mining camp with a current population of 20.

 

[Captain Jonah]

The possibility on Jump one mains exists that the ship load of people jumping to that mining camp with its E class starport because they are going to a better world beyond it.

But MT 1 rules didn't reflect that either.

 

[Annatar]

That's a good point, Captain Jonah, but then, the rules should reflect the possibility of incidental or transiting freight and passengers, not abolish the importance of the destination world completely. And, if there are large amounts of transiting passengers and freight, why do you not find them on those planets that they are only transiting? If you look at the trade rules, those transiting freight lots disappear at the starport E ports and never reappear.
Strangely, when I looked into the trade rules for Traveller 5, I saw the same change. Freight lots are solely determined by the source world (although Trade Classifications play a role). It could be that this change reflects a general change at how freight lots are determined in the game. The game reason could be that players are not forced by the trade rules to only go to those worlds with advantageous trade qualities, but can go to those planets that might be not good for trade, but good for adventure. But, using this reasoning, you only push the problem one step away, because, although you have a good haul to anywhere from Regina, you will end up with marginal freights and passengers to pick up from the destination world.
Anyway, I guess it is quite simple to stay with the old rules to determine amounts of freight and passengers and use the new prices from the new edition.