The 100% Unofficial Trade Game Thread

[alex_greene]

This thread is for the fans of the trade game in the back of Traveller.

Over the years, I'm sure there must have been many strategies and tactics invented, and abandoned, and reinvented for the trade game. Arguably, the trade game is as popular as the chargen section and the worldbuilding section.

So here you go. Have at it. Share your stories and your strategies. It's all about keeping the wheels of commerce turning.

 

[Vormaerin]

Yes, with the caveat that any reliable trade route is going to get the attention of shipping lines who will endeavor to lock it down with contracts and/or attract other free traders if not profitable enough for a proper shipping organization.

Free traders are mostly going to be operating on marginal or high risk trades if trying to speculate. "Reliable" runs don't get left to freelancers.

 

[Condottiere]

Unless the free traders reorganize on social media, such as Spacelane Wagers.

 

[alex_greene]

Yes, with the caveat that any reliable trade route is going to get the attention of shipping lines who will endeavor to lock it down with contracts and/or attract other free traders if not profitable enough for a proper shipping organization.

Free traders are mostly going to be operating on marginal or high risk trades if trying to speculate. "Reliable" runs don't get left to freelancers.

It's like ice trucking. Some places, the routes are so shady that none of the big commercial interests will go near them. The Spinward Main might be tempting for all the big commercial trade ships, but more often than not they're going to skip worlds routinely and concentrate on Type A and B ports where the big markets are.
Your characters can trade happily anywhere along the Spinward Main, and the big corps will never muscle in. Their magic men will always look at the worlds on the map and tell the decision makers that there's never going to be enough money in the Marches for the big trade.

 

[Saladman]

I did a solo trading game in a rolled up subsector once. You just need a crew with one or two good cash rolls, all the ship's positions filled plus broker, and you're good.

Mechanically the real money's in speculative cargo, though you may fill out with hired loads. I spent some time breaking even or bouncing around, but sooner or later I always got one good brokerage roll, made some real money, and rolled that into higher value cargoes until I got another good brokerage roll. Without GM intervention/opposition you can get a runaway effect. And that's without exploiting "golden pairs," I avoided going back and forth between two adjacent worlds with ideal trade codes.

This predated Solo from Zozer, so I didn't have the full range of challenge and opposition I'd have gotten from a separate GM, or from a dedicated solo play engine. In a full campaign I'd positively expect some in-universe pushback on things like finding and exploiting golden routes, you'd expect competition, and eventually changes to market DMs. Golden pairs especially could and should be smoothed out in the rules, but aren't, but that's no reason to limit yourself only to the rules and not GM judgement.

And, this was in Mongoose 1e. 2e tamed the trading profit chart, which I appreciate. But my unscientific impression is that was offset somewhat by the boost to ship shares - which I also appreciate, in itself, but I can't tell that the two changes were balanced against each other.

 

[Galadrion]

Once you've got the necessary spacing skills covered, the key element becomes Broker skill modifiers. Streetwise, Admin and Carousing can help, but Broker is the real moneymaker. Get a good mix of those (and optionally a ship, though you can make it work buying passage and shipping space on other people's ships) and you can snowball your resources to whatever degree you want. (I generally don't prefer to go much beyond the Subsidized Merchant level, although I will occasionally get to the point where I want to commission a custom free trader in the 600- to 1000-displacement ton range.)

When trading up ships, too, I've occasionally set up a franchising system, where the new owners were buying out shares in my old ships, and I was earning a percentage based on how much of the ship I still owned. But that takes a contact you feel you can really trust, and a referee who's business-minded enough to go along with it.

 

[ColinD]

I love trade and use the trade codes of the planets to make opportunities and linkages.
If the Travellers are on a world with High Population, like Banasdan than they will most probably make Luxury Goods cheaper and sell to the Rich Noricum or the Agricultural Lakamsal would have a trade route to the Asteroid Arcturus. This way the Travellers would get to know certain farmers or farming co-ops on one world and certain Restaurants or Station Administrators for space stations in Arcturus. I like to build these opportunities as fleshed out NPCs who end up needing or being needed by the Travellers for other jobs.

 

[Ol'Weedy]

Once you've got the necessary spacing skills covered, the key element becomes Broker skill modifiers. Streetwise, Admin and Carousing can help, but Broker is the real moneymaker. Get a good mix of those (and optionally a ship, though you can make it work buying passage and shipping space on other people's ships) and you can snowball your resources to whatever degree you want. (I generally don't prefer to go much beyond the Subsidized Merchant level, although I will occasionally get to the point where I want to commission a custom free trader in the 600- to 1000-displacement ton range.)

When trading up ships, too, I've occasionally set up a franchising system, where the new owners were buying out shares in my old ships, and I was earning a percentage based on how much of the ship I still owned. But that takes a contact you feel you can really trust, and a referee who's business-minded enough to go along with it.

Agree. With Broker-4, speculative trading quickly gets to the point where you want a bigger cargo hold. It's when you realize you can just rent/buy a warehouse on multiple worlds, you find yourself suddenly rich one day.

 

[Condottiere]

Broker works on understood market mechanics and (human) psychology.

You probably need to be familiar with local economy and market conditions.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Sooo... I am back at having interstellar trade stuck in My head. (It never really goes away) I was taking a look at Earth in the here and now and saw some interesting numbers that I thought may be able to be applied to Traveller's trade game. Current Earth ships about 1.5 tons of cargo every year for every person on the planet, roughly 11 billion tons of cargo a year for Earth. Earth is fully TL-7 and partly TL-8. So what if We use the TL for how many tons of cargo are shipped per year by a population. Earth is roughly TL-7.5 and ships 1.5 tons of cargo per person. So, maybe a TL-4 world ships 0.8 tons per person. Maybe a TL-15 world ships 3 tons per person. Then you just multiply for the population and you have to total cargo shipped in a year. That is on planet shipping only, so We'd have to find a way to assign a percentage to this to determine how much of those tons shipped are from extra-planetary trade. It will not be 100% accurate, but it should be enough for Us to build a trade system around to approximate gross trade tonnage. Not useful to PCs, but handy for Referees and writers.

 

[Geir]

Sooo... I am back at having interstellar trade stuck in My head. (It never really goes away) I was taking a look at Earth in the here and now and saw some interesting numbers that I thought may be able to be applied to Traveller's trade game. Current Earth ships about 1.5 tons of cargo every year for every person on the planet, roughly 11 billion tons of cargo a year for Earth. Earth is fully TL-7 and partly TL-8. So what if We use the TL for how many tons of cargo are shipped per year by a population. Earth is roughly TL-7.5 and ships 1.5 tons of cargo per person. So, maybe a TL-4 world ships 0.8 tons per person. Maybe a TL-15 world ships 3 tons per person. Then you just multiply for the population and you have to total cargo shipped in a year. That is on planet shipping only, so We'd have to find a way to assign a percentage to this to determine how much of those tons shipped are from extra-planetary trade. It will not be 100% accurate, but it should be enough for Us to build a trade system around to approximate gross trade tonnage. Not useful to PCs, but handy for Referees and writers.

It might actually decrease with TL (especially destination TL) as it is a lot cheaper to transport data (a fabricator file) than bulk goods. Plus, if we just look at tonnage and not value, the US is (or at least was - this was probably a decade ago) shipping more scrap metal to China than any other product, by mass, not value. Lower TL goods are more likely to take up the most tonnage.

Of course ,as I just mentioned in another thread, I wrote an 'out' in that fabricator goods are going to lag 2-3 TLs behind, so finished high tech good will have a market no matter what.

 

[Condottiere]

I would guess that fast fashion might be the easiest to understand.

You identify the demographic that would be interested, at a particular price point, and import enough clothing to satisfy their itch, over a short time window.

 

[MasterGwydion]

It might actually decrease with TL (especially destination TL) as it is a lot cheaper to transport data (a fabricator file) than bulk goods. Plus, if we just look at tonnage and not value, the US is (or at least was - this was probably a decade ago) shipping more scrap metal to China than any other product, by mass, not value. Lower TL goods are more likely to take up the most tonnage.

Of course ,as I just mentioned in another thread, I wrote an 'out' in that fabricator goods are going to lag 2-3 TLs behind, so finished high tech good will have a market no matter what.

In My example no destinations were talked mentioned. That just covers shipping goods between locations on a planet. Lower tech goods do tend to be bulkier, although having to pull them with oxen instead of trucks, trains, boats, or grav vehicles would likely bring the number back down an equalish amount. Then just apply a percentage reflecting how much of their economy is dependent on off-world trade and that is the total tonnage of goods shipped to and from the planet every year. That should then give you a rough idea of port size, ship sizes, etc. No idea how that would line up with Charted Space. lol For a homebrew world, not created by a bunch of rolls creating random star systems, it may be something that works.

 

[Anstett]

I would guess that fast fashion might be the easiest to understand.

You identify the demographic that would be interested, at a particular price point, and import enough clothing to satisfy their itch, over a short time window.

Step one fabricate the goods
Step two send influencers to a system
Give them two weeks to drum up interest in this "new rare thing"
Step Three your free trader shows up with a supply of this new thing three weeks after the influencers jumped
Step Four sell for profit

Step something the big boys overwhelm the market and make everything super cheap.