Trade

[PsiTraveller]

I am trying to think of ways to calculate or randomize the Freight tonnage available for shipping farther than the next Jump. All the tables refer to the Jump rate per parsec travelled, but it is calculated on a single Jump. So shipping something from Drinax to Theev for example is not covered.

This is important because if a trading ship is working along a Main that has, let's say 6 planets in a row a ship might get a contract for shipping something from planet 1 to planet 6 at a Jump 2 rate, at 2 jumps a month. This would pay them every Jump and reduce the other freight cargo space they had to find, and the space available for taking on larger lots.

Personally i think the rules would be impossible to sort out, there are way too many variables, does the customer want 1 Jump every week, which causes maintenance problems if regular service is not done. Is the standard 2 Jumps a month considered standard so shipping something 3 Jumps away (system 3 on the first Jump, 5 on the second and a jump 1 to system 6 on the third jump). This would take 5 weeks to complete. The variables in timing for J1 to J3 or j4 craft make me think that there is really no way to get a complete system in place.

Merchant Prince has a total distance travelled and a price per ton per parsec + negotiated rate that could be used. The pricing is low in my opinion, at the point where it makes no profit to ship something for someone else. Using the second edition pricing of 1000 Credits per 1 Parsec Jump the low end shipping rate would be 5000 Credits for the job and take 5 Jumps to get there. This could be the same ship taking 10 weeks or different ships jumping in sequence and taking 5 weeks plus whatever time it takes to unload and load in each system.

Shipping any distance in either edition does not seem to make a lot of sense. The value of the cargo is lost over a short distance, unless you are dealing in high end materials. In the Pirates of Drinax the Treasure Ship had Dust Spice bound for the Aslan Hierate. The value is set at 6000 per ton. Shipping at the Merchant Prince rates of 500 Cr/parsec travelled +/- the negotiated rate means that the 12 parsecs journey would cost more than the spice is worth. The other high end items are okay, cost of shipping is not too bad.
The system is worse in 2nd edition with the increase in shipping prices. At 3000 per ton for a J3 rate and 160 for J2the Spice Dust would have a freight charge on them of over 10 000 Credits with the J2 and J3 jumps along the route.

Anyone else thought of the issues dealing with a trade system? I am handwaving a lot of it away but I have a Merchant Prince Broker in my Pirates of Drinax game, so I have to have some sort of idea of how things might work.

What do you folks do?

 

[dmccoy1693]

I'd say calculate the route and charge that much, assuming a price of one jump per week. They can stop for maintenance, but that shouldn't figure into the price.

If the customer wants to pay less, then they should use a ship with a longer jump drive, but since they are not using a faster ship, the crew should be compensated for each jump they make.

 

[alex_greene]

I did try to make the rule clear that traders who carry freight don't necessarily have a contract to get a particular cargo container from port A to port B. Often, a freight container has to travel from port to port to port in multiple stages, each stage with a different ship.

Most freight runs are just single stages - the ship just picks up the cargo container at point A, and drops it off at the next port, whereupon the container will just happily sit there until the next ship comes along to take it to the next stage in its journey. It's the cheapest option, for both the ship's crews and for the people paying you to haul them.

Free traders and other independent vessels just catch the outliers: most of the freight containers tend to get hauled around by the bigger megafreighter types owned by Megacorps.

The referee is within his right to generate a cargo run of freight containers for the crew to take with a destination multiple jumps away, and pay the crew to carry the cargo containers all the way there (e.g. because the crew has such a good reputation for reliability), but most of the freight cargo containers only tend to be hauled one jump at a time, whenever a trader is available.

 

[alex_greene]

When I offered my feedback during the playtest, I did try to get in a clarification that traders who carry freight don't necessarily have a contract to get a particular cargo container from port A to port B. Often, a freight container has to travel from port to port to port in multiple stages, each stage with a different ship.

Most freight runs are just single stages - the ship just picks up the cargo container at point A, and drops it off at the next port, whereupon the container will just happily sit there until the next ship comes along to take it to the next stage in its journey. It's the cheapest option, for both the ship's crews and for the people paying you to haul them.

Free traders and other independent vessels just catch the outliers: most of the freight containers tend to get hauled around by the bigger megafreighter types owned by Megacorps.

The referee is within his right to generate a cargo run of freight containers for the crew to take with a destination multiple jumps away, and pay the crew to carry the cargo containers all the way there (e.g. because the crew has such a good reputation for reliability), but most of the freight cargo containers only tend to be hauled one jump at a time, whenever a trader is available.

 

[PsiTraveller]

I tried to make a connection between Starport type and fuel production and amount of cargo moving through a system. I am not sure if I am on to something or just trying to read too much into arbitrary numbers in a game. I made this point in another thread, but will repeat it here.
A J2 Far Trader is 200 Tons and has 60 tons of cargo, so we get 30 tons of cargo per 100 tons of ship. The Free Trader has 40 tons per 100 tons of hull, the subsidized liner has 20 tons of cargo space per 100 tons of hull. The 2000 Ton freighter in Traders and Gunboats has 1000 tons of Cargo for 2000 tons of hull, so 50 tons of cargo per 100 tons of hull.
So let's play it safe and say 30 tons of cargo for every 100 tons of hull.

Type B Starport fuel production is 1000 tons of fuel per day. This amount of fuel would allow 10 000 Tons of hull to be fueled per day. So that would be 3000 tons of cargo per day moving through the Starport.

Then you get to the really hand wavy part and figure out which direction that cargo is moving to, how much is Freight available for hire, how much is spec freight and you quickly go down the rabbit hole.

I would be tempted to argue that the Merchant Prince rule from 1st edition about 3 attempts to find cargo based on planet population may be in error. The planet could have a very small population because the conditions are terrible, but the Starport could be very large because the system is located at a crucial juncture of trade routes. If a lot of ships are using the system to get from point A to point C,D or E then the amount of cargo available may be larger than the small number of workers on the rotten planet in system. It's just a thought.

As it stands right now in the Core book 2nd edition, with a roll of 7 on the 2D for Freight, and Broker skill 2, Stat +1 there are around 600 tons of freight available at a Starport. (If someone can check my numbers on that that would be awesome.)

 

[phavoc]

There is no valid economic model for Traveller, there never has been. In theory Free Traders and their ilk would only be able to pick up crumbs and dreg freight on mainline cargo deliveries. Regularly scheduled freighters (and liners) will lock up the majority of all freight and passenger traffic. Freight and passenger liner schedules will be published well in advance to allow for orderly commerce.

All this adds up to the freight tables in the game being there as a gaming mechanic, and thus should be considered guidelines only. If you have some PC's who are looking to make some money from freight then it won't be anything more than the spot market, which won't necessarily pay that much of a premium. If it's a valuable cargo no shipper is going to put it in the hands of someone who is an unknown.

The other control point is going to be planetary populations, and then TL. Ignore starport codes, as they aren't an indicator of economic activity. Low population, low-tech worlds aren't going to generate much traffic. But if you have a system pair of planets with populations in the tens or hundreds of millions J-3 between them, then most likely most traffic between them will be optimized for that. Slower cargo ships may travel at J-1 between them, but not with high-value or passenger cargo. But low-value cargo, and passengers who can't afford the more expensive jump would travel this way, as would the local freighters making the circuit between the worlds.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

There is no valid economic model for Traveller, there never has been.

“GURPS Traveller: Free Trader” begs to differ.

 

[Galadrion]

Personally, I would rule that the randomly generated cargoes are just what's readily available at the port - the public postings, if you will. Multistage shipping contracts will not be as common, and will tend to vanish into the background noise for the most part. Unless a carrier is specifically looking for such, they just aren't likely to come up on most searches. Thus, there really isn't much point in trying to come up with some sort of generalized random generation procedure for these cargo contracts.

Now, if such contracts are wanted (by either the players or the referee) then the referee should come up with the details himself, based on what he thinks is reasonable. For the most part, that's going to mean answering the question, "What will move the game in the direction I want it to go?" It's also going to mean that the contractor is going to be approaching the ship's crew as a patron - most, if not all, of the details are "to be determined" and negotiated.

 

[mancerbear]

Now, if such contracts are wanted (by either the players or the referee) then the referee should come up with the details himself, based on what he thinks is reasonable. For the most part, that's going to mean answering the question, "What will move the game in the direction I want it to go?" It's also going to mean that the contractor is going to be approaching the ship's crew as a patron - most, if not all, of the details are "to be determined" and negotiated.

I was going to say this. I use multi-stage freight as a lure to get my players going where I want them to go. Have an adventure planned for Mithryl? A multi-stage cargo from Flammarion should do it, especially if it's offering a slightly higher fee than hat would be expected.

I don't do this every time though. No way do I want my players putting two and two together and realising that every time I offer a multi-stage freight it will lead to an adventure.

 

[Galadrion]

Shouldn't just limit yourself to just that option, Mancerbear. Sometimes it should pay better, sometimes it just offers a guaranteed (or apparently guaranteed) payout for getting somewhere - say, the players want a reason to shift between separate mains, but don't want to risk doing so without a payoff. Sometimes it's a legit offer (most of the time, I'd say), sometimes the patron is trying to scam the players, sometimes he's involved in shady business which may come back to haunt (or splash!) the players.

Most of the time, the business should be legit and above board, and offer the players a fair chance to make a little. If every "opportunity" (or even a serious percentage of them) turns out to be a con, illegal deal, or just plain bad deal, it's not going to take the players long to start avoiding them like buffet dinners down at the local plague pit. But just enough of them should come with... entanglements to keep the players on their toes and cautious - they are adventurers, after all! And not all entanglements need to be all bad, either - some may be difficult situations, but offer unexpectedly large rewards, the sort of thing that any sane traveller would look askance at, but (if successful) turn out to pay well, even considering the complications. "Yeah, you got conned into doing that run for us, but hey, we paid you, didn't we? And better than you coulda gotten anywhere else, too!"

Of course, that can be balanced out by the crime lord looking for the players' ship, wanting compensation for his dumped cargo... :twisted:

 

[fusor]

There is no valid economic model for Traveller, there never has been.

“GURPS Traveller: Free Trader” begs to differ.

It's "Far Trader", actually.

Also, while it's definitely a more realistic economic system, it's not exactly easy to calculate. You'd need to write a program to be able to figure out all the trade numbers for anything more than a cluster of a handful of planets.

 

[Condottiere]

I remember in Warhammer, when you looked at the meager number of models on the table, though still a pain to move, it was explained you're only looking at a small part of the ongoing battle.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

There is no valid economic model for Traveller, there never has been.

“GURPS Traveller: Free Trader” begs to differ.

It's "Far Trader", actually.

Curses! Corrected again!

Also, while it's definitely a more realistic economic system, it's not exactly easy to calculate. You'd need to write a program to be able to figure out all the trade numbers for anything more than a cluster of a handful of planets.

Well yeah, but that’s because it’s a valid economic model... written by a genuine economist. I would argue it’s worth it. Particularly if you’re playing on, say, Roll20, or some other VTT, where you can script that all away anyway.