PoD - Oleb

[MasterGwydion]

One of My players asked Me, why Drinax even needs pirates? Certainly not to make more money. They are sitting on a huge collection of extremely expensive art and cultural treasures. My player asked, what kind of an idiot sends out a privateer instead of just selling a 200MCr statue to the Museum of Tobia and buying aTL-15 Asteroid Mining and Manufacturing Ship? They have all of the knowledge of TL-15 in the Scholars' Tower. They buy one ship to jump start their manufacturing and, "Viola!" in a few years they now have a TL-15 manufacturing base and can rebuild. Instead, they have spent 200 years doing next to nothing. How much money did they spend leasing ships so they could invade Asim for the food, which they don't even have enough ships with jump engines to even take advantage of? Heck! That little invasion cost them their prince. 20 years of cutting edge TL-15 medical care 24/7? I do not even want to think what that would cost in Traveller.

Especially, when you consider that the Drinax system has a Resources of B and an Efficiency of +3. They just lack infrastructure and labor, but the written description of Drinax says that they are out of resources, which is clearly not the case. How can you have a Resource level of B and be described as having no resources? Don't they have an entire planet worth of wreckage and ruins to salvage materials from? I understand about disease bombs and radiation, but that is what protective gear is for. The same protective gear that they manufacture for the Vespexers.

My answer to My player was a bad one. "It just is. Don't think about it or the whole campaign falls apart." I love the PoD campaign. It is one of My all time favorites in any game system, but the premise is built on a sand foundation of ignoring the rules of the setting and of the game system.

 

[AndrewW]

Oleb wants to live out his dream of being a pirate through the players.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Oleb wants to live out his dream of being a pirate through the players.

So, I guess My answer was right, even though I don't like it. Oleb is an idiot...lol

 

[Geir]

Think about all those Counts of Nowhere and Barons of Nonesuch. All they have left is their heirlooms. Not gonna sell them. On the other hand... if you have a pirate ship, you could just take them and sell them yourself...

 

[Condottiere]

Power projection.

 

[agentwigggles]

Well, the overly cramped nobility left on the floating palace, has been selling anything of value on for the last 200 years.
Drinax doesnt have any leverage. The statue and gems may be worth 200m.
No one will pay 200m.
No one has to pay 200m, when they're from Drinax.
Drinax needs the money. Drinax has no functional economy.
So everyone that even wants Drinax gaudy art, can just tell Oleb. 'Fuck off. I'll give you 50m.'
So Oleb been supporting a Anagathic habit for him and his daughter. A small SDB fleet, an even smaller Jump navy. The subjugation of nother planet. The subjugation of the drinax surviving population. The maintaince of the floating palace.
All that is expensive.

What about the Salvage?
What about it.
Its already spoken for. Thats how the Vesperex pay their taxes/trade with the Floating Palace for enviromental suits and equipment needed for hydropanic farms.
The Vesperex is salvaging as much as they can with what they have.

So lets say Drinax gets a mining ship.
That has a few problems.
Who is gonna crew it?
Any able spaceman is in the navy.
You can compell the Vesperex to serve on it, train them how to operate with the navy guys.
Okay.
No one will pay market rate for Drinax ore, regardless to its quality or amount.

Drinax has no economy. It has no military. It has no social leverage.
Drinax needs to sell the ore, more than anyone needs to buy it.
So Drinax gets to sell the ore, at break even prices, or maybe just one or two percent profit.
However, I strongly suspect they'll have crewing issues.
If you're teaching a Vesperex how to work a ship, you're teaching how to work in the merchant marines.
So they just leave, and go get a better job.

Though, let say that works mining ship gets market rate for ore, does well.

This doesnt solve Drinax actual problem.

The first problem, is that the Floating Palace, will fail, it will just drop out of the sky. It needs major replacement parts. Its been over crowded and under maintained for 200 years.

The second problem and the real problem.
The Aslan.
The Trojan Reach is a comfortable buffer between the 3I and Heirate.
Eventually the Aslan has to expand. Its the only way for their young males to gain any social mobility. Eventually a persuasive young aslan will rally enough second sons and clanless to go claim land.
And the Major clans will be forced to go into a Civil War to force the minor clans to wrangle them.
Or declare sancture support the war.
Drinax will burn, if it not envoloped by Mutual Defense Pact with the 3I or it manage to cobble Drinax Empire 2: Quest for Peace to make other parts of the Reach easier to deal with.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Well, the overly cramped nobility left on the floating palace, has been selling anything of value on for the last 200 years.
Drinax doesnt have any leverage. The statue and gems may be worth 200m.
No one will pay 200m.
No one has to pay 200m, when they're from Drinax.
Drinax needs the money. Drinax has no functional economy.
So everyone that even wants Drinax gaudy art, can just tell Oleb. 'Fuck off. I'll give you 50m.'
So Oleb been supporting a Anagathic habit for him and his daughter. A small SDB fleet, an even smaller Jump navy. The subjugation of nother planet. The subjugation of the drinax surviving population. The maintaince of the floating palace.
All that is expensive.

What about the Salvage?
What about it.
Its already spoken for. Thats how the Vesperex pay their taxes/trade with the Floating Palace for enviromental suits and equipment needed for hydropanic farms.
The Vesperex is salvaging as much as they can with what they have.

So lets say Drinax gets a mining ship.
That has a few problems.
Who is gonna crew it?
Any able spaceman is in the navy.
You can compell the Vesperex to serve on it, train them how to operate with the navy guys.
Okay.
No one will pay market rate for Drinax ore, regardless to its quality or amount.

They are not selling the ore. It is a mining and manufacturing ship. It would have TL-15 Manufacturing Plants. This is how they build their infrasturcture and quit hemorrhaging money.

Drinax has no economy. It has no military. It has no social leverage.
Drinax needs to sell the ore, more than anyone needs to buy it.
So Drinax gets to sell the ore, at break even prices, or maybe just one or two percent profit.
However, I strongly suspect they'll have crewing issues.
If you're teaching a Vesperex how to work a ship, you're teaching how to work in the merchant marines.
So they just leave, and go get a better job.

Though, let say that works mining ship gets market rate for ore, does well.

This doesnt solve Drinax actual problem.

The first problem, is that the Floating Palace, will fail, it will just drop out of the sky. It needs major replacement parts. Its been over crowded and under maintained for 200 years.

It fixes this problem.

The second problem and the real problem.
The Aslan.

Nothing fixes this problem. lol

The Trojan Reach is a comfortable buffer between the 3I and Heirate.
Eventually the Aslan has to expand. Its the only way for their young males to gain any social mobility. Eventually a persuasive young aslan will rally enough second sons and clanless to go claim land.
And the Major clans will be forced to go into a Civil War to force the minor clans to wrangle them.
Or declare sancture support the war.
Drinax will burn, if it not envoloped by Mutual Defense Pact with the 3I or it manage to cobble Drinax Empire 2: Quest for Peace to make other parts of the Reach easier to deal with.

 

[MonkeyX]

also the Drinax companion adventure gives him a good reason to think it’s cool. I have it that most of the aggressive stuff is suggested by Rao and the diplomatic stuff by his son. Oleb in the short story is an adventurer so I think he just wants to relive that too.

 

[Condottiere]

Going by the Russians, expansion might be the only choice, when faced by contraction.

 

[agentwigggles]

They are not selling the ore. It is a mining and manufacturing ship. It would have TL-15 Manufacturing Plants. This is how they build their infrasturcture and quit hemorrhaging money.

My questions for ytu is who employed to do work that and for me that would be a long time table. Decades. This isnt a challenge. This is being curious.

 

[MasterGwydion]

My questions for ytu is who employed to do work that and for me that would be a long time table. Decades. This isnt a challenge. This is being curious.

Actually, I did the math. mining and building everything from scratch with the Mining and Manufacturing ship takes about 10 years.

Long time employment is good for job security. Pilot is likely Drinaxi Navy. The ship is likely not jump-capable, just to increase the amount of space that can be used by the mining and manufacturing components. One Engineer/Maintenance guy and 100% Common Area. All of the 2 employees can be paid each month by selling a few tons of TL-15 Advanced Electronics or TL-15 Sindali robots to someone through Sal or someone else. Within 10 years you are building up to 10,000-Dtons TL-15 ships inside a moon of one of the systems' gas giants and you have a multibillion Credit manufacturing economy.

 

[SwordOfHumakt]

Pulling this thread out of low berth, the reason in my campaign was that Drinax has been mined by high tech (TL12+) systems for over 2000 years before the Aslan bombed it. Every resource that high tech mining can squeeze out of the system was scooped up centuries ago. What's left is rocks.

 

[MasterGwydion]

If that were true, Drinax wouldn't have a Resource Code of B (Abundant)

 

[SwordOfHumakt]

It also says it has a class A starport (and thus can build starships, has a highport, etc.). My assumption is that there's a lot of the description of worlds in the region that's well out of date. As I mentioned, it's the reasoning I used in my campaign.

 

[MasterGwydion]

It also says it has a class A starport (and thus can build starships, has a highport, etc.). My assumption is that there's a lot of the description of worlds in the region that's well out of date. As I mentioned, it's the reasoning I used in my campaign.

The starport was destroyed. Are you telling Me that since the starport has been destroyed, the now nearly non-existent population of Drinax somehow mined out the whole system? Changed it from having abundant resources to having none?

In all honesty, if that is the case, then every single bit of information provided in game is bullshit. Once again we are having to make up excuses for writers ignoring the rules and a poorly designed setting.

Either information is accurate or it is not. If it is not, it can't be used for any actual game purposes.

What part of this do you people not seem to understand? Make the information accurate and then the system works! (more or less anyhow).

What is with this insane drive to have to create things that violate the rules? That are purposely misleading? and which purposely make the rules in the WBH useless?

If the Economics stats are not accurate, how can that information be used with the formulas in the WBH? Do you guys honestly not see that this is making the game more and more unplayable as time goes on and the game becomes more complicated?

The WBH is new(ish). WTF are we doing designing new systems that don't work since none of the information that is needed to make it work is accurate? Geir's book is brilliant, but how the f8ck am I supposed to use it if the entire Travellermap and every published UWP is inaccurate every time a writer feels the need to "be creative" (which actually means not being creative enough to write a story and stay within the worldbuilding rules so they claim creativity and f*ck up the setting.

Here is My problem. Which information do I listen to? The UWP and such which has actual mechanical effects or the fluff (descriptive text) which has no mechanical effects?

 

[J. L. Brown]

One of My players asked Me, why Drinax even needs pirates? Certainly not to make more money. They are sitting on a huge collection of extremely expensive art and cultural treasures. My player asked, what kind of an idiot sends out a privateer instead of just selling a 200MCr statue to the Museum of Tobia and buying aTL-15 Asteroid Mining and Manufacturing Ship? They have all of the knowledge of TL-15 in the Scholars' Tower. They buy one ship to jump start their manufacturing and, "Viola!" in a few years they now have a TL-15 manufacturing base and can rebuild. Instead, they have spent 200 years doing next to nothing. How much money did they spend leasing ships so they could invade Asim for the food, which they don't even have enough ships with jump engines to even take advantage of? Heck! That little invasion cost them their prince. 20 years of cutting edge TL-15 medical care 24/7? I do not even want to think what that would cost in Traveller.

The UWP of Drinax has to be crap. This is already hinted at in several places, but the author never spells it out. My Drinax has the Floating Palace as functionally TL-9 -- just enough that the grav-units can be jury rigged into working for another year or two. The Scholars Tower has records of TL-15 technologies, but nobody understands all of it; there are a handful of Scholars, and each one studies a specialty as much as they can, but there would need to be thousands of them to really grok what they have. There are a handful of still-functional artefacts (good luck finding the owners manual), and a very limited capacity to hand-craft a 'wonder' every couple of years.

There are two driving forces behind the Piracy Plan: "Oleb Has No Money" and "Oleb Needs To Spend Money".

There are priceless artworks on every surface; priceless to every Drinaxi Noble, and a couple jaded collectors. If you flood the market, they rapidly become worthless to the external minority who value them; and the price of removing them is deep unrest amongst the Drinaxi Nobles. Combine this with Oleb needing to be seen 'giving Largess' and 'living large' to maintain his hold as King, and the royal coffers being drained by 220 years of this plus various disasters. Failing to Give Largess or to Live Large risks the whole royal line neing discredited; and every Noble will try to seize power. The resulting conflict will destroy everything left of Drinax. Rao is much smarter than Oleb; and figures piracy is the new (low-investment) income stream that Drinax needs right now -- and the key to having anything left to inherit.

Drinax needs to rebuild economically; they need mining equipment, they need terraforming equipment, they need bio-domes and/or bio-spheres to produce food until the terraforming is done, they need Manufacturing Plants, and transportation infrastructure, and a thousand other things that are priced in TeraCredits -- and they need people! More particularly, Drinax needs people who are willing to work (which rules out many of the Nobles), and understand high tech equipment (which rules out many of the TL-7 or TL-8 Vespexers).

My Drinax is: D54545A - 9 (at the Floating Palace) and E545400-7 (among the Vespexers). But I changed a bunch of stuff -- for example, I made Drinax a large, distant moon of a SGG.

 

[Endie]

Certainly not to make more money. They are sitting on a huge collection of extremely expensive art and cultural treasures..

Do you think it’s wise or sustainable to live off your capital rather than securing your income?

Contrary to the common meme, Oleb’s plan as he states it explicitly at the start isn’t bad: pirate, get a bit of cash as a bonus, do favours for planets, spend money on them, bring them into the fold by protection from the nothing-to-do-with-us-mate increase in piracy, and persuade the major powers to accept tariffs because he’s a source of security.

The mad bit is MJD’s advice in the Companion about “don’t raise the piracy response index high: let it run down”. No: the point is to take it as high as possible before the imperium or hierate respond and only then let it simmer. It’s a goal to get it high, not keep it low.

The financial situation of Drinax is ruinous at the start and the travellers should be trying to solve that through patron missions. If they bring Pourne in then a 1% take of their tax (using the figures from Pocket Empires) solves a lot. And if they bring in Browne with the right arrangement then the tariffs are almost irrelevant.

 

[Endie]

The UWP of Drinax has to be crap. This is already hinted at in several places, but the author never spells it out. My Drinax has the Floating Palace as functionally TL-9 -- just enough that the grav-units can be jury rigged into working for another year or two. The Scholars Tower has records of TL-15 technologies, but nobody understands all of it; there are a handful of Scholars, and each one studies a specialty as much as they can, but there would need to be thousands of them to really grok what they have. There are a handful of still-functional artefacts (good luck finding the owners manual), and a very limited capacity to hand-craft a 'wonder' every couple of years.

There are two driving forces behind the Piracy Plan: "Oleb Has No Money" and "Oleb Needs To Spend Money".

There are priceless artworks on every surface; priceless to every Drinaxi Noble, and a couple jaded collectors. If you flood the market, they rapidly become worthless to the external minority who value them; and the price of removing them is deep unrest amongst the Drinaxi Nobles. Combine this with Oleb needing to be seen 'giving Largess' and 'living large' to maintain his hold as King, and the royal coffers being drained by 220 years of this plus various disasters. Failing to Give Largess or to Live Large risks the whole royal line neing discredited; and every Noble will try to seize power. The resulting conflict will destroy everything left of Drinax. Rao is much smarter than Oleb; and figures piracy is the new (low-investment) income stream that Drinax needs right now -- and the key to having anything left to inherit.

Drinax needs to rebuild economically; they need mining equipment, they need terraforming equipment, they need bio-domes and/or bio-spheres to produce food until the terraforming is done, they need Manufacturing Plants, and transportation infrastructure, and a thousand other things that are priced in TeraCredits -- and they need people! More particularly, Drinax needs people who are willing to work (which rules out many of the Nobles), and understand high tech equipment (which rules out many of the TL-7 or TL-8 Vespexers).

My Drinax is: D54545A - 9 (at the Floating Palace) and E545400-7 (among the Vespexers). But I changed a bunch of stuff -- for example, I made Drinax a large, distant moon of a SGG.

As you and I have discussed, I totally agree on the Drinax UWP: it’s insane and must be a cursory and ancient survey.

I had Rao take on of the characters down to the Great Fabricator Hall and show them the row of great fabricators, and tell them that one failed forty years after the bombardment; one failed seventeen years ago; and now another one failed in the past six months. If another failed then there would no longer be the capacity to maintain the flow of parts needed for the basics: lifters, hydroponics etc. So things have come to a head and a great gamble is needed: the travellers are that gamble.

(Meanwhile I had Harrick take another player to the surface and show them the state in which the Vespexers lived and explain that without success in rebuilding the Kingdom the Vespexers would at best be doomed to continue in their wretched lives, and at worst driven off their land by Aslan. It worked.)