Traveller Trade Tool

[myrmidon009]

All,

I have put together an update to Arkathan's excellent Traveller Trade workbook. So, first, thanks to him for putting together such a great tool! This tool wouldn't have been created without his ideas and vision. Most of the changes have been reconfiguring the sheets and changing formulas. There are three major changes.

1. The tool can handle inter-sector trade.
2. The database includes nearly the entire map from travellermap.com. It covers all sectors in the square bounded by (-9, 5 = Stinj Tianz) and (9, 6 = Randtred).
3. The tool uses macros. The macros work by manually calculating only the required sheets and copying required data values between sheets.

See the 'Instructions' tab for how to use the tool. The 'Changes' tab goes into more detail on what changes have been made.

There is also one major note.

1. If the workbook is taking a long time to calculate, delete the formulas in the map on the 'Input' tab. These take the longest to calculate; everything else calculates pretty quickly. They have to do a double look-up, which seems to be processor-heavy.

I hope this aids you all in your trading. Thanks again to Arkathan for his workbook. If you find any bugs or have any feedback, feel free to shoot me a message.

 

[Terry Mixon]

All,

I have put together an update to Arkathan's excellent Traveller Trade workbook. So, first, thanks to him for putting together such a great tool! This tool wouldn't have been created without his ideas and vision. Most of the changes have been reconfiguring the sheets and changing formulas. There are three major changes.

1. The tool can handle inter-sector trade.
2. The database includes nearly the entire map from travellermap.com. It covers all sectors in the square bounded by (-9, 5 = Stinj Tianz) and (9, 6 = Randtred).
3. The tool uses macros. The macros work by manually calculating only the required sheets and copying required data values between sheets.

See the 'Instructions' tab for how to use the tool. The 'Changes' tab goes into more detail on what changes have been made.

There is also one major note.

1. If the workbook is taking a long time to calculate, delete the formulas in the map on the 'Input' tab. These take the longest to calculate; everything else calculates pretty quickly. They have to do a double look-up, which seems to be processor-heavy.

I hope this aids you all in your trading. Thanks again to Arkathan for his workbook. If you find any bugs or have any feedback, feel free to shoot me a message.

Does it accept manual entry of worlds? If not, I just uploaded a modified version of the one in the original thread that does. We've forked!

 

[myrmidon009]

Does it accept manual entry of worlds? If not, I just uploaded a modified version of the one in the original thread that does. We've forked!

Not directly. However, you can add your own sectors, subsectors, and systems. There are directions on the 'Instructions' tab of how to do that. If you create your own sector, name its subsectors, and starting adding the systems from your homebrew, they would appear (after finishing the directions) in the drop-down list for selecting the purchase and sale systems. Then you would always have them available.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Not directly. However, you can add your own sectors, subsectors, and systems. There are directions on the 'Instructions' tab of how to do that. If you create your own sector, name its subsectors, and starting adding the systems from your homebrew, they would appear (after finishing the directions) in the drop-down list for selecting the purchase and sale systems. Then you would always have them available.

That sounds like a lot of work, sadly, for off the cuff generation of trade goods, freight, and passengers.

Here is the post where I uploaded the modifications I made to allow one-offs. Rather than have a forked sheet, you might think about adding it in. It only took me a couple of hours to make the changes I made, and it addresses the need for manual entry.

Post in thread 'Excel Traveller Trade'

Sunday at 9:37 PM

I needed the ability to manually enter data for going off the beaten path, so I added the capability to choose between selecting planets normally or using a Yes/No selection to allow manual entry of the origin/destination system name, hex, UWP, and Zone type. Hopefully, I didn't break anything. Let me know if there are oddities.

• Terry Mixon

• 

 

[Terry Mixon]

Perhaps I'm blind, but there seem to be a bunch of tabs missing.



This is what I see.



Only the first two are there to unlock and proceed.

 

[myrmidon009]

Perhaps I'm blind, but there seem to be a bunch of tabs missing.

I hid several of the tabs, including those. I figured they wouldn't be referenced regularly, and wanted to keep the sheet as clean as possible. There's a list of all the tabs (including which ones are hidden) on the 'Changes' tab.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I hid several of the tabs, including those. I figured they wouldn't be referenced regularly, and wanted to keep the sheet as clean as possible. There's a list of all the tabs (including which ones are hidden) on the 'Changes' tab.

Thanks. I had no idea tabs could be hidden. You might want to put that in the instructions for people like me. Back to seeing if I can figure it out.

 

[myrmidon009]

I had no idea tabs could be hidden. You might want to put that in the instructions for people like me.

I totally forgot to mention that the tabs were hidden on the 'Instructions' tab. I'll add that to my list of changes to make.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I tried copying and pasting the data into the System Process tab but it's a garbled mess. This is a hard tool to use. Maybe you need a video showing how it works.

 

[Terry Mixon]

It mentions copying the name of the sector, but it is already listed. Do I still copy it? I hate to be that guy, but you need Instructions for Dummies for people that have no clue what they are doing. I'm just trying to load the Solomani Rim and have no idea what needs doing or is already done.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I've sadly decided that I may not be smart enough to use your tool.

 

[myrmidon009]

I'm certain that's not the case. I'll make sure and add more thorough instructions.

To answer some specifics:

All of the Solomani Rim data (really, pretty much all of Charted Space) is already listed in the database, so you shouldn't need to add it. You can select it under the Purchase Sector and Sale Sector on the 'Input' tab. You should only need to add data to the hidden tabs if you are adding homebrew data.

Thank you for being the crash test dummy. It's hard to know what everyone sees. I've been in it so long that I can't see the forest for the trees. I appreciate the feedback! I will work on improving my instructions.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I'm certain that's not the case. I'll make sure and add more thorough instructions.

To answer some specifics:

All of the Solomani Rim data (really, pretty much all of Charted Space) is already listed in the database, so you shouldn't need to add it. You can select it under the Purchase Sector and Sale Sector on the 'Input' tab. You should only need to add data to the hidden tabs if you are adding homebrew data.

Thank you for being the crash test dummy. It's hard to know what everyone sees. I've been in it so long that I can't see the forest for the trees. I appreciate the feedback! I will work on improving my instructions.

Based on the instructions, I thought I had to do it. Maybe a general use section when using normal Charted Space sectors?

 

[myrmidon009]

Based on the instructions, I thought I had to do it. Maybe a general use section when using normal Charted Space sectors?

Good point. I'll make a note clarifying about Charted Space sectors already being included, and when one would need to add new data.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I managed to figure out how to add the sector and enter the data. Now that I have purchased something, I see this on the sales.



Why is it all stricken?

Also, I put in 200 tons of major freight, and it is listed as incidental rather than major.





Honestly, as the sales DM is on the purchases tab, shouldn't the sales price be there as well before I enter selling on that tab? I'd move Sell DM to just before Tons Sold and add the price generated for sale there as well. Can't make a rational sales decision without it.




Trade codes are also stricken.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Looking at the trade goods table, a lot of stuff is stricken out. it seems looking at the numbers, the sales prices should be higher, too. Am I missing something?

 

[myrmidon009]

Great! I'm glad you got it working.

• Regarding the strikethrough, I'm not sure what's going on there. I don't see it on my end right now, but I'll see if I can recreate it later.
• Regarding the goods being listed as 'Incidental', I just have that backwards. The top row should be 'Major' and the bottom row should be 'Incidental'. I'll get that fixed.
• Regarding the Sales DM being visible but not the Sales price... This is because the players will know all of the information on the 'Purchases' tab at the time of their purchase. If you hold your mouse over, you will see that the DMs listed are the known DMs, or the values that the players would know. It notably does not include the modifier due to the NPC's skill. So they will know the purchase price as well as the known DMs, but they won't know the effect of the NPC's skill nor the sale price. As I understand it, the sales price can't be calculated until you get to the sale system. They wouldn't buy it if they knew it was going to sell poorly!
• I'll look at the prices as well.

I've got to head to bed, but I'll try to keep up on this over the next few days.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Great! I'm glad you got it working.

• Regarding the strikethrough, I'm not sure what's going on there. I don't see it on my end right now, but I'll see if I can recreate it later.
• Regarding the goods being listed as 'Incidental', I just have that backwards. The top row should be 'Major' and the bottom row should be 'Incidental'. I'll get that fixed.
• Regarding the Sales DM being visible but not the Sales price... This is because the players will know all of the information on the 'Purchases' tab at the time of their purchase. If you hold your mouse over, you will see that the DMs listed are the known DMs, or the values that the players would know. It notably does not include the modifier due to the NPC's skill. So they will know the purchase price as well as the known DMs, but they won't know the effect of the NPC's skill nor the sale price. As I understand it, the sales price can't be calculated until you get to the sale system. They wouldn't buy it if they knew it was going to sell poorly!
• I'll look at the prices as well.

I've got to head to bed, but I'll try to keep up on this over the next few days.

If I save the file, the strike throughs go away but comes back. Not sure why.

Looking at the sales sheet, I see this behavior.



The formula for the sale price modifier:



Q is the purchase price column, not the sales price column (R).

The lower the roll, the better the price mod. Shouldn't a higher roll be a better result?

No wonder the sales prices are crap. The better I roll, the worse the pay.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Berthing Costs.



The formula:




The things that 8,000km can match.



I'll wager that is supposed to be A. Looking at the data, almost all of the starports in the gathered data are planetary diameters.

 

[To Tha Moon!]

Thought you might want to take a look at this:

General - This is awesome! I dropped my "high-value, low-weight cargo" article on my blog into ChatHGPT - it can act as a Broker. Who needs some cargo?

I posted this with the text copied & pasted into ChatHGPT. This is fantastic. High Credits, Low Weight Cargo It based it on the game it ran for me a couple of months ago. And the Ross-class ship. It even gave adventure hooks. This would make Refereeing a lot easier, I'd think. Holy Kratzon...

www.travellerrpg.com