Pyromancer
Mongoose
Is there any official information on the typical traffic in the sector? How many and what kind of ships fly the trade routes? How much traffic does each of the systems see?
[Pirates of Drinax] Traffic
- Thread starter Pyromancer
- Start date
PsiTraveller
Cosmic Mongoose
Gurps Traveller takes a good stab at this in Far Trader. At 5-10 million credits a year in trade there is about 0-5 tons per day of cargo available, 10-50 a week.
There are several pages of charts to go through to develop the Bilateral Trade number between worlds.
If you go by the Starport quality and how much fuel they are supposed to produce you get a pretty large volume of shipp tonnage running around.
A Class C Starport has to produce 100 Tons of fuel per day. This would supply 500 tons of ships Jumping 2 hexes. Subtract percentage to supply fuel for the power plants and you could say it is 400 tons of ships per day? 450?
Class B is 1000 tons of fuel per day, so that would supply 4000- 5000 tons of ship per day with fuel. You could reduce that if you were looking at fuel supply for the system ships as well, but as a rough guide it gives a bit of a basis for the discussion. If the starport has to produce that much refined fuel (system ships could use unrefined), there must be a demand for that much fuel per day.
There are several pages of charts to go through to develop the Bilateral Trade number between worlds.
If you go by the Starport quality and how much fuel they are supposed to produce you get a pretty large volume of shipp tonnage running around.
A Class C Starport has to produce 100 Tons of fuel per day. This would supply 500 tons of ships Jumping 2 hexes. Subtract percentage to supply fuel for the power plants and you could say it is 400 tons of ships per day? 450?
Class B is 1000 tons of fuel per day, so that would supply 4000- 5000 tons of ship per day with fuel. You could reduce that if you were looking at fuel supply for the system ships as well, but as a rough guide it gives a bit of a basis for the discussion. If the starport has to produce that much refined fuel (system ships could use unrefined), there must be a demand for that much fuel per day.
Pyromancer
Mongoose
My hope was that someone - preferable someone designing the campaign - had already crunched the numbers and made assumptions. And I wouldn't be surprised if the information WAS somewhere in the books; I keep finding information in places I didn't expect it.
Pyromancer said:
I've taken the GURPS Traveller: Far Trader rules, added a dash of a few other rules, ran the T5 Second survey data through a python program, generated a huge volume of data, and dump it all into the wiki:
https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Trojan_Reach_Sector/economic
https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/images/0/01/Trojan_Reach_Sector.pdf
The columns you want from the first page are: Trade (MCr/Year), Passengers / Year, and SPA Population. The map shows where the trade flows. It's not official, and if you have other rules you'd like me to add to the list I can do that as well. I've added the Book7/T5 speculative trade rules as well but still need to post that update.
Pyromancer
Mongoose
tjoneslo said:
Thank you, that's fantastic!
Is this only for direct trade? The traffic passing through between the Hierate and the Imperium would also be interesting, but I have no idea how you would calculate it.
This is only for the direct trade between worlds. I would need to dig up the raw data files to find the trade between specific worlds and sum them. The output is trying to balance the volume of data (which is very large) with easy to read/understand. I should probably read though a number of data visualization texts to see if there are better ways to present this. Suggestions welcome.
steve98052
Mongoose
One point about trade volumes is that major world pairs will have some long-distance trade. There's probably a measurable volume of trade between Mora and Capital, for example.
Something that the bilateral trade number system didn't bother to model is aggregated long-distance trade. There may not be much trade between Esalin and Capital, but the total trade between Jewell Subsector and Core Subsector might be enough to fill a few freighters per year. It might make sense to run the trade program on non-adjacent subsectors, using the total population and the highest trade modifiers that apply, to get a feel for the volume of long-distance trade.
Something that the bilateral trade number system didn't bother to model is aggregated long-distance trade. There may not be much trade between Esalin and Capital, but the total trade between Jewell Subsector and Core Subsector might be enough to fill a few freighters per year. It might make sense to run the trade program on non-adjacent subsectors, using the total population and the highest trade modifiers that apply, to get a feel for the volume of long-distance trade.
steve98052
Mongoose
If I dig through Far Trader, I might be able to come up with a "subsector trade number". But that means a fair amount of study.
https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Trade_map_summary#Statistical_Analysis
I captured the external trade at the sector level. That is, how much trade in each sector goes outside of the sector. Based upon internal review of the data, I would say most (99%) of that goes into the surrounding sectors, and the same would be true at the subsector level too.
I've added to the wish list the idea of capturing the source/target of the external trade and finding a way of mapping that.
I captured the external trade at the sector level. That is, how much trade in each sector goes outside of the sector. Based upon internal review of the data, I would say most (99%) of that goes into the surrounding sectors, and the same would be true at the subsector level too.
I've added to the wish list the idea of capturing the source/target of the external trade and finding a way of mapping that.
Jim McLean, the author of GT:FT, expressed regret that there wasn't more words in the book on the speculative trade system. On other Traveller Forums, the complaint is trade system written in GT:FT doesn't match the reality of the Traveller Universe. Specifically the Gravity trade model used as the basis of the GT:FT trade system relies, quite heavily, on communications that are faster than goods can be shipped. And communication at the speed of travel is one of the defining characteristics of the Traveller Universe.
In these discussions, I've made the point that the Third Imperium is built around the idea of fostering trade between worlds. There are a number of Imperial supported functions (x-boat network, office of calendar compliance, LIC licences, Imperial claims to space but not worlds) to make trade work better than might be expected.
In either case, this is all background for the Traveller Universe. The question of how big, and busy, is the star port on the world your players are visiting is an interesting question of a number of Referee's. But not something that determines the flow of your adventures.
In these discussions, I've made the point that the Third Imperium is built around the idea of fostering trade between worlds. There are a number of Imperial supported functions (x-boat network, office of calendar compliance, LIC licences, Imperial claims to space but not worlds) to make trade work better than might be expected.
In either case, this is all background for the Traveller Universe. The question of how big, and busy, is the star port on the world your players are visiting is an interesting question of a number of Referee's. But not something that determines the flow of your adventures.
