The Premises of Traveller: 2. Space Travel is Unpleasant and Most Do Not Do It

[MasterGwydion]

So your ideal economy would be one where robots build stuff to maintain and make more robots...
do the robot owners sit back and enjoy unlimited wealth and free time, or did the robots long since replace them.

I would consider it more of a mix, since otherwise Population would not matter at all. Until robots are actually sentient, they will always require sophont supervision.

 

[MasterGwydion]

So when you calculate the population, you are going to count all the self driving cars? Those are robots. The current day heavily automated factories? Those are robots. Non sentient robots are technology. IF you are factoring TL into your ECON value, as Nolatrav is, then that is where they should be factored in.

I have a robot that sweeps my house for me. Should I be claiming a household of two?

High TL does not automatically include robotics. See Dune for an easy example. For an OTU example, see the advanced Droyne. Would I count a self-driving car, no. This is for one very simple reason, you are still in the car. A fully automated Semi-truck with no sophont inside, that I would count as far as this conversation goes. Robots working in factories that have replaced sophonts would definitely count.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Just don't claim it as a dependent on your tax form.

You should include the capabilities that come with any tech level as part of the 'progress' whether that comes from steam engines, electricity, or robots. One of the flaws of a straight T4/5-style RU calculation is that it doesn't take TL into account at all (another flaw is negative efficiency - I kind of get why it was done, but it has, um, marginal utility).

In the new WBH, determining the GWP includes the TL as a straight modifier (multiply by TL ÷ 10, with TL 0 treated as TL 0.5 - I suspect it should really be more of an exponential scale, but that would be too much variation for the milieu).

Robots are not accounted for directly, but you could use the ratio of robots to people (assuming they are not people here) as a factor in the world's Efficiency rating - which impacts both RU and my GWP numbers. (But Tech-World has an Efficiency of -1, so I don't know what is going on there, other than random number generation).

And to be clear, I brought Cordan up as an example of the population number being misleading and represented as other than it was. I didn't say I approved of it. If you go look at Wikipedia (or the CIA fact sheets) at countries with a very high 'guest worker' to citizen ratio (UAE and Kuwait being clear examples), the population figures include all residents, citizens or not. Otherwise all stats, from GDP to population density, would become meaningless.

Do not claim it as a dependent. Claim it by depreciation...lolz

 

[MasterGwydion]

Good question! We know from some of the mining and production rules (especially when they get into the nanites) that essentially is what's happening. You get very large productivity numbers - so large that trade between systems for anything but the most exotic of trade goods becomes more or less useless. One could simply take a factory ship, park it in an asteroid belt and churn out endless goods and credits. The only reason to move to another system would be exhausting a belt (but by then you'd be able to use the same tech and consume a planet/moon and get the same results.

This is one of those areas that if you look under the hood it's not a good thing. Though, in the games defense, we literally have nothing but idle speculation to base any of it on. The idea of shipping in factories instead of goods to a star system is a tried and true trope (ex - Imperial Autonetics that Imperial Trader Bury does in Niven & Pournelles The Mote in God's Eye book, and in other Pournelle books as well).

Most of Our current technological thoughts for Lunar and Martian Bases also includes the idea of a "Seed Factory", which is exactly what you describe above.

Having played around a lot with HG and the Robot Handbook, I agree completely that it becomes a simple matter of parking an automated factory in an asteroid belt, producing nearly unlimited goods, and completely stripping the belt clean. I personally love this, as it makes sense as to where humanity is headed as long as We do not destroy ourselves first, but from a balanced game mechanic point of view, it is more than a little game breaking. However, it is still part of the current ruleset, and a relatively new part of the ruleset at that. I am not aware of these capabilities existing in previous editions of Traveller, but I may be mistaken. Some of the Old Guard will have to chime in on that one.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[steelbrok]

In the new WBH, determining the GWP includes the TL as a straight modifier (multiply by TL ÷ 10, with TL 0 treated as TL 0.5 - I suspect it should really be more of an exponential scale, but that would be too much variation for the milie

So WTN from the new WBH is exactly twice the one calculated by GURPS Free trader, does that mean trade volumes just doubled or have I missed something?

 

[Geir]

So WTN from the new WBH is exactly twice the one calculated by GURPS Free trader, does that mean trade volumes just doubled or have I missed something?

No, it's just different. Doubling it gives a nicer 0-15ish number without all the halves generated by the GURPs computation. I had to adjust for their tech levels anyway, so I figured it should have a similar range to all other hexadecimal-ish values - and while it might annoy a few people, keeping the GURPS values would more likely confuse a greater number of people who never knew or cared what the GURPs numbers were.