Cargo Generation

[RainOfSteel]

On page 356, on the Bulk Cargo Table:

Does the World Pop Digit column represent the population of the Origin or the Destination World?

It doesn't seem to say (or I'm blind, per normal).

 

[far-trader]

Origin world. Not clearly stated that I see either but that's what example shows.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Question #2

The Cargos and Passengers, etc., generated by the T20 Sequence . . .

Is this what is available for any particular starship in a particular week? Or is this what is available to *all* starships in a particular week.

I'm inclined to believe the first.

Under the standard paradigm of jumping in, landing, and going out and finding Cargos, Passengers, etc., the minimum assumption is that one crew member, typically the Captain, Owner, or Chief Merchant/Trader/Broker (whatever), is the one that goes out and does the finding.

This begs a question.

If one individual from one can go out and "find" all that cargo to ship, and another individual from another ship can go out and "find" all that cargo to ship, then why can't two individuals from one ship go out and "find" twice as much as one individual (assuring a more profitable load to carry)? How about three, or four?

Anyone for shipping full Priority Cargo and full Double Occupency High Passengers?

 

[RainOfSteel]

Question #3

When I generate cargo/passenger potentials for Lunion to Ianic, I get huge loads that would make any Far Trader profitable, as long as the run is from Lunion to Ianic. There is almost always enough to fill 90-100% of the hold on Priority Cargo, and always enough Incidentals to fill out the last few tons, if needed. There are also always enough High Passengers to fill out the staterooms, and Double Occupency is nice.

However, when reversing this trip, there is very little to carry back. The occasional Major Cargo, 0-3 Middle and 1-8 or so Low Passengers. Now, if a Major Cargo is generated in the upper tonnage, the profits from the lots of Priority Cargo shipped on the run to Ianic would be enough to offset the less than ideal run back to Lunion. But some of the time, it comes up with only one 10 ton Major lot, and maybe a couple of Low Passengers.

This, of course, may seem like the "luck" of all tramp merchants.

But, IMO, it stems from the TL modifiers imposed on Bulk Cargo and Passenger generation. There is an 8 point positive modifier applied when shipping from Lunion to Ianic, and an equal 8 point negative modifier applied when shipping in the other direction. Combined with their Population differences (Lunion 9 and Ianic 6), this is the reason why little is every available to ship back to Lunion.

However, I'd have to look at some of this carefully. For various Bulk Cargos, I'd have to say, yes, I understand why there would be little need to ship materials and goods back to TL-13 Lunion. But what about Passengers? With 60-80 passengers available per ship per week, that's a lot of people going to Ianic from Lunion, but much, much less coming back. That would seem to qualify as immigration (or political imprisonment, whatever).

Personally, looking at the extant UWPS, immigration (forced or voluntary) doesn't look like it's used much (otherwise we'd get a more evenly distributed population; instead of heavily concentrated on a few worlds).

I would *think* a lot of the "spot" market in High and Middle Passengers would be business travellers who can't get a seat on regularly scheduled trips or otherwise need to go *now*. If even 1/3 of the passengers going to Ianic were like this, then you could assume that a portion of that Lunion business "consultant/worker" population would commute back home occasionally (every three months, perhaps). This should, IMO, produce higher number of Passengers to Lunion than are displayed.


This, of course, factors in with Question #2, in my last post. If a ship's crew deploys two "cargo/passenger" acquisition teams, they'd double their chances for success (assuming anyone would allow it; I haven't answered it for myself, yet).

 

[RainOfSteel]

Question #4

The section on Charters is one paragraph long.

Anyone have any thoughts on what would govern what sort of Charters were available on any particular world? Or what they'd like to see?


Also, I'm not sure I like the Charter rates as stated, as they seem to be a recipe for not meeting your monthly mortgage payment. Chartering a Broadsword class ship would be an impossibility for the owner (if the owner had to make monthly payments, that is . . . and isn't some insanely wealthy noble who is putting out the ship on Charter because otherwise it sits in the hanger out behind the manor, alongside the five or ten other ships kept on hand to maintain an image as a "properly" equipped noble).

 

[RainOfSteel]

Question #5

Passengers and Double Occupency.

When there are fewer Passengers than Staterooms, and the Double Occupency percentage indicates that one or more passengers are attempting Double Occupency, can those passengers still request Double Occupency and get the per-person discounted rate? Even though this leaves empty staterooms (the Captain could have insisted that each person buy their own full stateroom for better profits at below maximum carriage)?

 

[RainOfSteel]

Question #6

How many ships may attempt to generate a set of cargo/passengers for themselves per week at any particular world?

Example. On Ianic, if forty standard Far Traders each pick up an average load from Lunion and carry it over to Ianic, how many of them can check to find cargos? Can forty ships even find sets of cargos on Lunion to go to Ianic?

 

[mike wightman]

Answer #3
Why not jump somewhere else from Ianic, like Derchon perhaps?
Then Derchon to Carse, Carse to Capon and finally Capon to Lunion.

 

[Shadowdancer]

If you had two people from one ship out looking for cargoes and passengers, I would allow one to look for passengers and the other to look for cargoes. If they both have the necessary skills for both jobs, then I would allow one to do the primary search for passengers with assistance from the other, and vice versa. That little boost from the other might be enough to nudge the results into more favorable situation.

Or you could handle this through role-playing and if the character with merchant skills isn't having any luck finding good cargoes, let characters with Connections and Carousing see what they can come up with. Then you could roll again on the tables to see what cargoes they find.

 

[mike wightman]

I think the rules are a bit of an abstraction of the whole process, it could well be the entire crew of a ship trying to find cargo and passengers.
The result of all that effort are the rolls the referee makes. If you don't like what you get then you have to wait for a week and try again, or consider a different destination world.
Alternatively, buy the goods yourself and speculate

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
I think the rules are a bit of an abstraction of the whole process, it could well be the entire crew of a ship trying to find cargo and passengers.
The result of all that effort are the rolls the referee makes. If you don't like what you get then you have to wait for a week and try again, or consider a different destination world.
Alternatively, buy the goods yourself and speculate

I understand how the Cargo generation rules are an abstraction, or rather, a "model" of the way things actually get done.

The model must make certain assumptions. One is that even if only one person in the crew is doing the "searching", that the results from the charts are still made available, (and, as shown, without penalty).

Right now I'm working with strictly the rules as they are presented in the THB. However, I see numerous areas where additional modifiers should apply. I was just thinking that additional crewmembers would provide additional positive modifiers, up to a certain limit (based on the population of the world they were on), after which they would become their own competition, and would actually hurt each other's chances.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Answer #3
Why not jump somewhere else from Ianic, like Derchon perhaps?
Then Derchon to Carse, Carse to Capon and finally Capon to Lunion.

Derchon looks like a good place to head to, it's not so far about Ianic on the TL, and so the penalty climbing back out of the TL well isn't as high.

Ianic to Derchon produces "ok" cargo/passenger lists, but not enough to guarantee full passengers. Ditto for Derchon to Carse (Carse's Pop of 4 or less hurts it on both Bulk Cargo and Passenger generation). Carse to Capon is also pretty slim (below Pop 5 means no Priority Cargo).

I was originally concentrating on the Lunion/Ianic run because of the sheer value of it. Unfortunately, trying to do the reverse run isn't valuable, and climbing out of the TL well one jump at a time isn't that hot, either. I guess it would just take some experimentation to work it out a profitable route based on the average available cargos & passengers.

I need to get in gear and do the Speculative Cargo section (but I'm not looking forward to typing in that giant list of cargo types) so I can see where that factors in.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Question #7

Passengers and Double Occupency: Redux

Hmm, how to phrase this one?

Can Passengers be forced into Double Occupency?

Example:

The Captain looks at his potential passenger list:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Passengers Available for: Capon; From: Carse

High Passenger(s) = 5 (30% Double Occupency)
Middle Passenger(s) = 9 (70% Double Occupency)
Low Passenger(s) = 7</pre>[/QUOTE]Six of the Middle Passengers will do Double Occupency. This fills 3 staterooms aboard a Far Trader. Only one (if we round down) of the High Passengers is willing to do Double Occupency. The Captain fills two of the last three staterooms (the first three being taken up by Double Occupency Middle Passengers) with High Passengers as Single Occupency, and then contacts two of the last three High Passengers waiting (including the one willing to do Double Occupency, of course), and offers the last stateroom on Double Occupency for the discounted rate (Cr8,000 ea.). Does this High Passenger desiring Single Occupency switch (under our abstract model) and go Double Occupency anyway, in order to save money?

What if the Captain fills stateroom #4 with one High Passenger, and then tries to persuade the remaining four to all take Double Occupency? Will they? While roleplaying it can handle the situation, the Cargo section is an abstracted model, so there probably needs to be an automatic rule to handle it.

EDIT-----------------
I suppose we can adopt a rule that says the passengers must be fit into staterooms according to the stated Single and Double Occupency desires without modification, but Players in actual games will try to get by that the first time it happens, so I view it at the least desireable alternative.

EDIT-----------------
If the above comes to pass, the three High Passengers who chose Double Occupency against their initial desires find out that one High Passenger got the Single Occupency they desired, there is a high likelihood that one or more of those three will go ballisticly angry. In a real system of selection of many passengers into limited staterooms where one or more passengers will wind up better off than the others, there would have to be a lottery system to render fairness.

 

[Morte]

If you've got the VB DLLs installed, have a play with this (wrote it this afternoon for my current merchant/spy/thug campaign).

http://www.joel-benford.co.uk/temp/T20FreightPax.exe

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Morte:
If you've got the VB DLLs installed, have a play with this (wrote it this afternoon for my current merchant/spy/thug campaign).

http://www.joel-benford.co.uk/temp/T20FreightPax.exe

When I select Amber Zone for the destination world, it generates no Bulk Cargo at all.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Question #8

Red Zone worlds.

Since Red Zone Worlds are blockaded, with no traffic legally allowed, why can anyone with a ship find numerous cargos and passengers for such a destination?

 

[Morte]

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
Question #8

Red Zone worlds.

Since Red Zone Worlds are blockaded, with no traffic legally allowed, why can anyone with a ship find numerous cargos and passengers for such a destination?

Best excuse: you're delivering to the blockading forces (e.g. supplies for the navy) or you're delivering on behalf of someone who has an exemption.

Also there's a sort of assumption that most freight goes on huge great ships and trevellers just carryt the odds and sods, the bits that got "rounded down". Doesn't matter if there's 190.23 kilotons going between A and B or 19.23, so long as you get the 0.23 the big boys left alone...

 

[Morte]

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Morte:
If you've got the VB DLLs installed, have a play with this (wrote it this afternoon for my current merchant/spy/thug campaign).

http://www.joel-benford.co.uk/temp/T20FreightPax.exe

When I select Amber Zone for the destination world, it generates no Bulk Cargo at all. </font>[/QUOTE]That'll be me reading "no major cargo" as "no cargo" then. I uploaded a fixed version.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Morte:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Morte:
If you've got the VB DLLs installed, have a play with this (wrote it this afternoon for my current merchant/spy/thug campaign).

http://www.joel-benford.co.uk/temp/T20FreightPax.exe

When I select Amber Zone for the destination world, it generates no Bulk Cargo at all. </font>[/QUOTE]That'll be me reading "no major cargo" as "no cargo" then. I uploaded a fixed version. </font>[/QUOTE]I downloaded the updated copy, and it handles Amber Zones normally now.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Morte:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
Question #8

Red Zone worlds.

Since Red Zone Worlds are blockaded, with no traffic legally allowed, why can anyone with a ship find numerous cargos and passengers for such a destination?

Best excuse: you're delivering to the blockading forces (e.g. supplies for the navy) or you're delivering on behalf of someone who has an exemption.

Also there's a sort of assumption that most freight goes on huge great ships and trevellers just carryt the odds and sods, the bits that got "rounded down". Doesn't matter if there's 190.23 kilotons going between A and B or 19.23, so long as you get the 0.23 the big boys left alone... </font>[/QUOTE]Carrying supplies to the forces on-station? Doesn't that imply that such military forces have no transport system of their own? How often does the US Navy hire tramp freighters to carry supplies to its ships at sea (really, I have no idea . . . that's not a sarcastic/rhetorical question)?