Effects of competition in Traveller Merchanting

[jawillroy]

Not having seen/read/touched Merchant Prince, or any of the later iterations of Traveller, I don't know if anyone's handled this. But is there anyone who's houseruled competition into the CT trade model? Or is it just assumed to be part of what goes into the pricing rolls, with the Admin/Bribery/Broker rolls?

Suppose you've got a couple of merchants onworld, competing to buy the same cargo: that's one thing. But maybe you've got ten, or twenty: they all want to buy, so the price is going to tend to go up. Right?

And suppose you've got a lot of merchants onworld trying to unload goods - well, ships come from a bunch of places, and they bring a greater variety of goods, so it might be less pronounced, but a larger number of merchants trying to sell goods known to be desired in a place will tend to bring the price down. Right?

Maybe Admin and Bribery (and trader, and broker if you use those skills) explains this all away: the more skilled administrator the merchant, the more likely he is to know how to find and finagle the best prices; that gives him an edge. And if he's got competition, maybe the payoffs, kickbacks and assorted grease he applies with his bribery skill all get folded into the final price.

Thoughts?

Certainly, Mercantile Traveller gets a lot more fun when there's a definite effect on prices due to the presence of competitor merchants, and when different companies decide "There ain't room on this rock for the two of us."

 

[Icosahedron]

I think someone already covered this on another thread.
The price given for a commodity is the price on that day, taking all things into account (except the things you're actually expected to dice for.) So I reckon competition is already accounted for.

 

[jawillroy]

Oh, they probably did, but hey.

Next time I'm running a game with a merchant theme, though, there's going to be some differences. "Aha! I've identified this cargo of X that I can buy at 40% list!" "Well, so has the factor for TriWorld combine, and he's just upped the bid to 50 percent. The seller looks back to you - care to bid 60?"

And on the next time around - "Woohoo! I can sell my Beezel Cheeze for 400% list!" "Well, you could, but TriWorld's got a ship in port and they're selling it for half that..."

If the PCs keep running into TriWorld this way, what's going to happen next time they run into TriWorld crews in port, or spot a TriWorld ship on approach?

 

[far-trader]

Not much to do with "competition" but more about why some bargains aren't...

...HEY! A bulk lot of Beezel Cheeze for 40% retail! They go nuts for this in the next system! I buy it all and have it delivered to the ship.

(all through jump the crew and passengers complain about an increasingly strong odour, like unwashed socks, maintenance slips as crew grumble and avoid the hold, passengers get downright hostile constantly complaining about reporting the Captain to the SPA for health violations, the longest week ever... )

Finally the ship drops out of jump and lands. The crew can't wait to open the ship up and get some fresh air. The passengers run off the ship to the nearest laundry with a shower to get the stink off themselves and their stuff. Word spreads throughout the starport and fewer passengers book passage.

The only good news is the Captain easily finds an eager buyer for the Beezel Cheese and they are offering 400% retail for the whole lot. They are coming to pay and pick it up immediately.

The buyer arrives with his transport trucks and hops down out of the lead one. Stops dead in his tracks and covers his nose. Trying not to laugh he asks in a funny nose pinched voice "When did you buy this Beezel Captain? It's at least a week overripe. All it's good for now is reprocessing into biofuel. You'll have to hire someone to haul it away as industrial waste. I guess I've got my trucks here so I could do it for you, standard hazardous handling fees since the trucks will have to be sterilized after to get the smell out. I know someone who can decontaminate your ship too...

...but I'd never do anything so cruel as that.

:devil:

 

[jawillroy]

Oh yes you would.

So would I.

 

[dccarles]

Book 7: Merchant Prince is insane, even more insane than the original trade rules.

In a perfect market, with perfect information, there would be no profit to be made by anyone who wasn't in already. As soon as any commodity went on the market, the price would be bid down almost to the break even point. Jump drive, however, makes information imperfect; the bewildering variety of cultures and planets make the interstellar market utterly chaotic.

So there's a lot of profit to be made by brave adventurers with a tramp freighter. Big, reliable routes would be taken by the megacorporations (Tukera, for example, knows that some hi-pop world is always going to be exporting computer parts and importing food, and the market isn't going to dry up soon) so the little guys pick up the flotsam where they can.

I suggest you refer to Merchant Prince for qualitative purposes only, not quantitative ones. I also suggest that trading campaigns lean heavily on the various markets - on some planets, who you know is everything, on others, what you know is - and take some pains to liven up the individual cultures and worlds. (And not every planet is a monoculture.)

Trading, I think, should be a task, not a model. As it is, the rules purport to give a snapshot of the market; that model doesn't stand up to too much examination. The referee needs to help it along - a lot.

--Devin