actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Mongoose should hire Felbrigg to be on their Let's Play team.
Traveller Needs a "What is Charted Space?" Book
- Thread starter Grognardia
- Start date
Mongoose should hire Felbrigg to be on their Let's Play team.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Things would be a lot easier if Mongoose would discard the idea that the Imperium only rules the space between the stars and state that the Imperium is an empire, its noble fiefholders rule planets, and beneath them the planetary governments are allowed autonomy to a greater or lesser degree. Imperial nobles can intervene, but they usually don't because managing the affairs of a planetary population is better left to the planetary government, and when planets joined the Imperium most of them were able to negotiate keeping their governments and a degree of autonomy. Imperial noble planetary fiefholders are responsible for 1) enforcing Imperial law, 2) ensuring the flow of tax revenue, 3) ensuring trade is not impeded, and 4) ensuring that planetary or interplanetary conflicts don't become too destructive. It could be explained on one page. The tax revenue must flow.
Micky
Emperor Mongoose
haha! Awesome! You need a job as an editor?
I'm at fifty something pages entering a first edit of a chapter detailing the multiple ministries of the Imperial bureaucracy which are the tools the nobility have to manage the Imperium. Covering those point you raised (as well as others)
Some noble isn't out there with hat in hand collecting taxes.. he is just responsibility for making sure it happens. The Ministry of Economics is probably the most important of those ministries for the reason you said. My first draft of that ministry alone is roughly 12 pages. There is a lot to explain and detail. The income must flow.... all those nice shiny toys must be paid for... I provided rather a stark example ... not even counting the far greater expenditures needed for supporting the SPA and IISS.
'....the collection of credits which are needed to fund the mindboggling expenses of the Imperium. How mindboggling? Take for example the maintenance needs of the Imperial Navy just for upkeep of its Tigress class Dreadnoughts. Upkeep alone on just that one class of starship costs the Imperium over thirty-five billion credits a year.'
Thirty-five billion credits is slightly less than one quarter of a day's GWP for Pourne, an unimportant hellworld planet of only TL10, not industrial or rich, with less than a billion population with a good (but not amazing) infrastructure rating and decent (but not great) Efficiency.
Browne, a nearby poor, high population TL 9 world (again, not with an industrial code) with indifferent Efficiency and a B-Class starport generates that every six minutes in GWP. It's not even a noticeable amount to Regina subsector, let alone the Third Imperium.
Edit: I'm deliberately not getting into the discussion of what percentage of GWP is taken by world governments or the Imperium, in taxes or tariffs. But when 35 billion represents 0.002% of GWP of a single, poor high-pop world then even a 2% tariff is covering it a thousand times over...
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Micky
Emperor Mongoose
exactly the point I was trying to make without modelling the whole of Imperial economics. Which would be fun to do, probably less so to read haha.
It was an example of large number but one that is such a minuscule part of the overall budget. Perhaps I should have, instead of the Tigress, made mention of the hundreds of billions working for the Imperium (360 billion at 2% of Imperium population using current standards). Wages alone for the Imperium employed would go into the trillions. The point being... the Imperium needs a massive influx of credits every year or else it doesn't have that nice large Imperial fleet much less afford to subsidize free trade or maintain the huge IISS presence it does. It was a merely an example to show just how much the Imperium needs to bring in without making a full blown economic dissertation out of it.
Anstett
Emperor Mongoose
Need enough for game flavor without being a simulation.. It was a merely an example to show just how much the Imperium needs to bring in without making a full blown economic dissertation out of it.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
Because it made sense to me, IMTU I have the purchase of goods taxed at 3% to keep the impact on trade low. 2% goes to the Imperium and 1% goes for the world.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
It might not be fun to read, but it would be hella useful.
CordwainerFish
Emperor Mongoose
Talk about walking a tightrope.Need enough for game flavor without being a simulation.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Yes?
Current economics is enough of a black art and multidimensional shell game. I'm not sure Far Future economics needs to make sense to a 21st century gamer with opinions.
Very, very much YTU territory. IMHO best to just state that there's a large background economy that is only seen by the big players, and anyone down at street level sees THIS. Weak PC-centric rules, since they apply to player grade NPCs just as much as the PCs... but maybe not the ACTUAL average citizen or to the elite. Both of whom might exist in a base level of everything provided for them, just at different grades.
For that matter, the Galactic economy might be too big and complex for normal comprehension. Could essentially be multidimensional chess played out by specialist planet grade AIs. Or secret precogs. Or just unpredictable chaos in the mathematical sense.
Very, very much YTU territory. IMHO best to just state that there's a large background economy that is only seen by the big players, and anyone down at street level sees THIS. Weak PC-centric rules, since they apply to player grade NPCs just as much as the PCs... but maybe not the ACTUAL average citizen or to the elite. Both of whom might exist in a base level of everything provided for them, just at different grades.
For that matter, the Galactic economy might be too big and complex for normal comprehension. Could essentially be multidimensional chess played out by specialist planet grade AIs. Or secret precogs. Or just unpredictable chaos in the mathematical sense.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Probably quantum mechanics.
We won't know what actually happened, until someone gets around to opening the box.
We won't know what actually happened, until someone gets around to opening the box.
Micky
Emperor Mongoose
Wasn't really in my plans to do but I started taking a whack at it. I love crunching numbers. It did lead me to revise my intro paragraph to that ministry. The Tigress example fell a bit flat I suppose.
'How vast are those expenses? Take for example the maintenance requirements of the many Class A Imperial Starports found throughout the Imperium. Upkeep alone on just that one type of starport costs the Imperium over four and half trillion credits a year.'
Anyhow, with a lot of modelling yet to go I'm up to around 13 trillion credits the Imperium needs to shell out every year.
Cool. I'm shooting you over a PM.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
If it didn't, someone would have to subsidize it.
Sorry to keep coming back to this but a 1% tax on a single poor, non-industrial world on the same scale as Browne covers that figure in nine months of the year.
A problem with the economics of Traveller is that naval ships and their maintenance and the supporting bureaucracy on the scale we know of are a drop in the ocean with the vast income available.
I suspect that the truth - persistently avoided by MWM due to his love for a small ship universe - is linked to the vast expense of running large numbers of mega freighters constantly from efficient agricultural worlds to the many high pop Hellworlds.
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actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Well, the hypothetical megafreighters would only go to hellworlds if the shipping company were making money on the trip, so there would be no expense to the Imperium, unless the Imperium is subsidizing the shipping company. As far as I know, the Imperium only subsidizes mail carriers, and then only on certain routes.
If the world information on the traveller map or other sources says what it says, and these conditions require freighters and imports, then the ref has a decision to make. Either he changes the world's conditions/UWP in his TU so that the world doesn't require imports or freighters (like no one lives there) or he gives it exportable resources so people would have a reason to live there, and freighters would have a reason to go there. The hellworld would see ship traffic according to how profitable it is to make that voyage.
IMO the cost of shipping should be reevaluated. Ships would probably use wilderness refueling whenever possible to reduce expenses, and I don't find it plausible that it costs thousands of credits to travel a couple of jumps.
That is why I very carefully said "is linked to"!
There are a lot of possible reasons and areas for expenditure. We know that subsidized freighters, for instance, are an integral part of the setting and have been for decades. So no: the shipping companies don't need to be making their profits on the actual goods imported...
And in the core, where at least early versions of the game had the involvement of the Imperium at a greater level (cf @Sigtrygg ) that subsidisation may take the form of panem et circenses to avoid the sort of revolutionary unrest that arrives within a week of hunger appearing. As the Imperium settles gracefully into decline and decadence that will be more and more of an issue.
I'm sure most of us can come up with three or four equally viable areas where the imperium spends the vast fiscal resources instead of actually sticking a viable fleet in the Trojan Reach...
Garnfellow
Cosmic Mongoose
From The Traveller Book:
So, maybe? Note that this passage seems to forget about the good old 400-ton Type R subsidized merchant. In my own campaign the 300-ton Type U armed packet is also frequently issued subsidies from individual worlds or even subsector governments.
Somewhere there's a note that subsidized vessels can be pressed into service by the subsidizing government in times of war. I've always wanted to use that tidbit in a game . . .
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
The Imperium does not subsidise, it is world goverments off the Imperial trade lanes (the xboat routes were mapped on top of them) that subsidise merchants to carry goods and mail between the subsidy worlds and the main trade lanes. See the Traveller Adventure.
Remember THIS ISSPARTA TRAVELLER, the authors broke their own subsidy rules with their standard ship designs (and setting) all the way back in 77 and never changed it.
Remember THIS IS
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