Speculative Trade Modifiers

[Culture-pig]

Hi folks,
I've been looking at trading after the character in my solo campaign has acquired a fat trader. But I'm rather confused over the modifiers for price under speculative trade.

The rules (both core and Merchant Prince) state that you roll 3D6 adding skills etc. then adding purchase DM's and subtracting Sale DM's.

It's not clear to me whether both Purchase and Sale DM's are derived from the current planet (where the goods are being purchased) or Purchase DM from current planet and Sale DM from destination planet.

Irrespective of the answer, I don't really inderstand the rationale for applying purchase and sale modifiers to the purchase price. Why have both when you're only doing one thing - purchasing or selling ?

Similarly it is not clear whether the intention is for a negative Sale DM to have a negative effect. By that I mean, for one pairing of planets I've been looking at, there is a +2 modifier for the trade classification of the current (purchase) world and a -3 modifier for the trade classification of the destination (sale) world. Now, as the rules are written, subtracting -3 from the running total, will result in that total increase that total by 3 i.e. a combined purchase/sale DM of +5 (if I remember my maths correctly). This works for me, as it will make negative modifiers in the sale DM column have a positive impact upon the ultimate purchase price, hopefully leading to greater profit.
However, I'm not sure this is the intention of a negative modifier.

Can anyone shed some light on this for me please ?

Thanks

Martin.

 

[Elrick]

You only use the purchase DM when you are buying the goods and the sale DM when you are selling the goods. The core rulebook has a couple of examples (page 164) which show this in action.

Hope this helps.

 

[Culture-pig]

Thanks Elrick,
That is what I assumed when I first looked at it. But the process description is pretty clear that you use both DM's for buying (Determine Purchase Price p163) and selling (Determine Sale price p164). Also examples of different actions omit to mention modifiers when they are zero, hence my confusion.

Thanks

Martin.

 

[Elrick]

Thanks Elrick,
That is what I assumed when I first looked at it. But the process description is pretty clear that you use both DM's for buying (Determine Purchase Price p163) and selling (Determine Sale price p164). Also examples of different actions omit to mention modifiers when they are zero, hence my confusion.

Thanks

Martin.

That's how I've always done it (since Classic Traveller) and it works fine for me, but reading the rules again I'm not sure. It does say that you apply both purchase and sale DMs.

However, looking at the selling example on page 164 for precious metals it mentions an industrial world but fails to break out how the +3 die modifier on the 3D6 is calculated. Presumably it is +2 for industrial (from the sale DM column) and +1 for desert (from the purchase column), although the rules say that you should subtract the purchase DM, so maybe it should be a +1 die modifier (+2 for industrial and -1 for desert)?

I've always used the rationale that the characters don't necessarily know where they are going to sell the items, so I wouldn't know what sale DM to apply at purchase time. I have had characters tooling around with a couple of tons of speculative cargo in the corner of the bay for several jumps before they sell it (it was Howood from the Traveller Adventure, so it wasn't going to spoil, and they really thought they might be going to the Vargr Extents at some point...). I've not had a player complain yet... :wink:

 

[nDervish]

It's not clear to me whether both Purchase and Sale DM's are derived from the current planet (where the goods are being purchased) or Purchase DM from current planet and Sale DM from destination planet.

Current planet. The point of speculative trade (as opposed to the flat 1kCr/dton freight lots) is that you're buying it outright and will then carry it around until you sell it. There is no "destination world" because you might get there, discover that the market is unfavorable, and decide to hold on to it for sale elsewhere instead.

Irrespective of the answer, I don't really inderstand the rationale for applying purchase and sale modifiers to the purchase price. Why have both when you're only doing one thing - purchasing or selling ?

First off, keep in mind that when buying, the sale price DM is reversed and vice-versa. This reflects that something which you can't sell for much in a given place will typically be cheap to buy there as well.

As for why this isn't just rolled into the buying DM, that's because a given world will generally have more than one trade code. Say you're buying Advanced Vehicles (Buy: In +0, Ht +2, Sell: As +2, Ri +2) on a high-tech planet. That's a +2 DM, plain and simple. Now say you're trying to make that same purchase on a high-tech asteroid belt - now the DM is 0 (+2 for the Ht Buy modifier, -2 for the As Sell modifier) because the population there wants to be buying more vehicles, not selling the ones they already have.

Does that make any more sense to you?

 

[Culture-pig]

Thanks - that does seem to make more sense !

I was probably thinking in terms of adding all modifiers as you do earlier in the process, but actually you just take the top two for this. In effect it's a shorter way of listing all the possible trade classification pairings.

Thanks

Martin.