UWP to GDP

[Pyromancer]

New calculation for fleet budget:

The percentage of the GDP that is spent on the fleet depends on government type, starport type, and the interstellar situation:
Government type: fleet percentage
0: 0.4%
1: 0.8%
2: 1.0%
3: 0.9%
4: 0.85%
5: 0.95%
8: 1.1%
9: 1.15%
A: 1.2%
B: 1.1%
C: 1.2%
D: 0.75%

starport type: modifier
A: 1
B: 0.9
C: 0.8
D: 0.7
E: 0.6
X: 0.0

Interstellare situation: modifier
peace: 1
tension: 2
conflict (or conflict foreseeable): 10
total war: 50

Fleet budget = GDP times fleet percentage times starport modifier times situation modifier


The total fleet budget for the Democratic League of Progress is 65,000 MCr/year (it's peace).

Assuming no losses, the DLP has ships for 650,000 MCr.
This could be something like:
2 battleships (200,000dton, 150,000 MCr each) for 300,000 MCr
4 heavy cruisers (75,000dton, 50,000 MCr each) for 200,000 MCr
4 light carriers (15,000dton, 15,000 MCr each) for 60,000 MCr
10 escort ships (5,000dton, 3,000MCr each) 30,000 MCr
60,000 MCr worth of support ships and planetary defense ships

 

[steve98052]

I would say that GURPS Far Trader is likely to be the best resource for economic realism. At least one of the authors is (or was) an economist, and it went past other economists in play-test. But it may be a challenge to find it unless print copies are still available, because the expiration of the SJ Games Traveller license means they can't sell it as PDF any more.

 

[atpollard]

I would say that GURPS Far Trader is likely to be the best resource for economic realism. At least one of the authors is (or was) an economist, and it went past other economists in play-test. But it may be a challenge to find it unless print copies are still available, because the expiration of the SJ Games Traveller license means they can't sell it as PDF any more.

I am almost certain that it is on the GURPS Traveller CD from FFE (Marc Miller)
It may be on DTRPG from FFE (Marc Miller).

 

[Pyromancer]

I would say that GURPS Far Trader is likely to be the best resource for economic realism. At least one of the authors is (or was) an economist, and it went past other economists in play-test. But it may be a challenge to find it unless print copies are still available, because the expiration of the SJ Games Traveller license means they can't sell it as PDF any more.

Finding it involved only a trip to the basement and opening the correct box. The box was even labelled.

The GDP (GWP) calculation in "Far Trader" is similar to mine (base GDP per TL, modified by trade codes). The numbers are different, but in the same ballpark - I think.
At first glance, I don't like their trade system.

 

[steve98052]

I would say that GURPS Far Trader is likely to be the best resource for economic realism. At least one of the authors is (or was) an economist, and it went past other economists in play-test. But it may be a challenge to find it unless print copies are still available, because the expiration of the SJ Games Traveller license means they can't sell it as PDF any more.

I am almost certain that it is on the GURPS Traveller CD from FFE (Marc Miller)
It may be on DTRPG from FFE (Marc Miller).

I didn't know there was going to be an FFE GURPS Traveller CD. More for my shopping list!

Finding it involved only a trip to the basement and opening the correct box. The box was even labelled.

That makes things easier. Some of my boxes (including gaming book boxes) are pretty nicely labeled too, but sometimes it's not easy to find the boxes themselves because everything has been moved around a lot lately.

The GDP (GWP) calculation in "Far Trader" is similar to mine (base GDP per TL, modified by trade codes). The numbers are different, but in the same ballpark - I think.
At first glance, I don't like their trade system.

If the economics are reasonably well done, the numbers should be in the same ballpark. The people who wrote Far Trader did try to blend a lot of assumptions that are made by published Traveller (assumed relative productivity of different planet types, governments, etc.) with real economic assumptions. It's also possible that materials published after Far Trader have been strongly influenced by them, to the point that it becomes de facto canon (even if the GURPS Traveller no-rebellion history is a dead end branch). The main economic assumption that lots of sources didn't consider was Baumol's cost disease, which observes that things that can be automated (such as most manufacturing) generally will be as technology advances, reducing their cost dramatically, but things that cannot be automated (such as live entertainment) will not decline in cost, so the relative cost of not-easily-automated parts of the economy will increase relative to things that can be automated.

As for the trade system, it's complicated, particularly as one uses more of the optional rules. That's kind of the way GURPS is all over, though more in rules than in sourcebooks. But people have coded some of the messy parts into software, and generated look-up tables and maps that save game-masters the trouble of recalculating everything. One place for that is the Utzig map, which includes nice tables like the trade table in this Regina Jump-6 map. I think other sites include similar data, possibly updated more recently than ten years ago.

 

[Pyromancer]

Related topic: Passenger numbers.
In GURPS Far Trader there is one passenger per 200,000 dtons of cargo. This is only modified for rich worlds and (sub)sector capitals. In my example, along the busiest trade route, there would be ONE passenger per week. If I work with this, there are no civilian passenger ships. If you want to go to another world, either book a passage on a cargo ship (which probably isn't fitted to transport passengers), or be important enough so that you can use government/military ships.

 

[steve98052]

Related topic: Passenger numbers.
In GURPS Far Trader there is one passenger per 200,000 dtons of cargo. This is only modified for rich worlds and (sub)sector capitals. In my example, along the busiest trade route, there would be ONE passenger per week. If I work with this, there are no civilian passenger ships. If you want to go to another world, either book a passage on a cargo ship (which probably isn't fitted to transport passengers), or be important enough so that you can use government/military ships.

Ships like a Beowulf or an Empress Marava are cargo ships, primarily. Passengers are secondary, for extra profits and added adventure opportunities. Far Trader specifically breaks out passengers (and cargo) available to small ships, noting that big ships leave the little guys only leftovers on busy routes. But those numbers are large enough.

I looked at Utzig IAI again since I wrote before, and it's fine in Spinward Marches, but not necessarily to be trusted in other sectors. Where its world data are accurate, its trade figures look good too, and they're a big time saver.

Looking at Efate, I see that there should be enough passengers to fill a player character ship's passenger cabins on most routes. When visiting a small economy world, that's not so likely; only a few oh Hefry's neighbors have enough passengers to fill cabins. In those cases, it's good business to look for passengers who are just passing through. So rather than looking for passengers at Hefry, for example, try to fill cabins at Regina who are going to Efate instead.

Your setting may be different. But if the GM's plot requires six passengers to board at a population 1000 world with a population 100 world eight jumps away, then it happens, never mind the tables. But players and characters may find that suspicious. . . .

 

[phavoc]

Starports shouldn't affect naval spending. History has shown us that nations that have neither the technical capabilities nor the domestic shipyard capabilities will deploy state of the art warships. A planet with class C starports may still deploy jump-capable warships in excess of the local TL. All they need to do is have the credits to purchase them elsewhere. Basic maintenance is done locally but the equivalent of C, or D checks (heavy maintenance) is done elsewhere.