CT Only: How much for the planet?

[san*klass]

And yet the SPITE Must Flow ...

I’m reading the Trade Fleet as kind of a Spacing Guild without CHOAM on the production/consumption end.

Having never read Dune, I had to to do a Google search, but now agree with your assessment.
I see the TF as arising out of a merger/take over of several supplier/shipping organisations, about a hundred years ago. The Free Traders refused to be dragged into this and have managed to scrape together enough business to survive.
TF runs several Markets where buying and selling and contracting takes place.
One of these is the only A class Starports in the subsector, so giving TF a monolopy on new ships. The Xeno's buy from TF, but Free Traders are in 100+ year old junk heaps.
Spinward Flow I couldn't Google a reference to SPITE-could you please clarify?

 

[Spinward Flow]

Spinward Flow I couldn't Google a reference to SPITE-could you please clarify?

It's a twist on a famous catch phrase in DUNE ... the spice MUST FLOW ...

 

[san*klass]

I see the TF running this subsector (maybe two) on the outskirts of Terran Space, about 7 or 8 subsectors from Sol.
There have never been any substantial conflicts here, since initial colonisation some 200 years ago. And the TF (like the 3I) doesn't care unless trade is disrupted or curtailed.
So, Army is more of a planetary police/ internal security organisation than an actual army. All negotiation and stun batons/guns.
Marines are solely TF Troopers to protect TF installations, Markets and ships, with no interest in anything beyond that. Except boarding parties against (often) smuggling and (very rarely) piracy.
Maybe a rebellion and an ancient alien threat are needed to shake things up??

 

[san*klass]

It's a twist on a famous catch phrase in DUNE ... the spice MUST FLOW ...

I get it now- thank you!

 

[LTJGBeam]

As I understand it, after TFR, JMF had wanted to write another Klingon book, but been refused by Paramount (who then owned the franchise, and who, in the then developing character of Worf, were taking Klingon portrayal in a totally different direction to JMF's).
The silliness of How Much was an indirect snipe at them. And, at one point the snipe was direct, when one of the main characters sees a mountain peak crowned by stars (Paramount's logo) and has a feeling that everything was under control.
JMF's TFR Klingons were not sympathetic, but maybe a bit understandable and an even lesser bit excusable. But they certainly were more likely to create and maintain a vast interstellar empire than the growl, honour, headbutt, honour, punch, honour, did I mention honor?, honour viking biker gang fools that we ended up with. They couldn't organise a drunken party in a brewery.
Oh well, winge over, move on, nothing else to see.

I had never heard that. But it makes sense. I have to agree with your assessment of JMF's Klingons vs. the TNG Klingons.

Sorry for replying so late, but by father fell ill in 2020 shortly before your response and passed away a couple of months later. My Mom took it hard, and I have been spending a lot of time with her. I have only just recently felt up to gaming, and started perusing CotI...

 

[Enoki]

I don't see the OP situation at all in Traveller. If you take any random subsector of the map, or roll one up for yourself, what you will find in terms of trade is that there are only two or three, maybe four, systems / worlds that are really economic power houses. There will be another half dozen or so systems that do okay economically but certainly wouldn't generate massive trade of any sort. The rest of the systems--the vast majority--are all marginal to basket cases economically and not worth bothering with in terms of some mega corp or large shipping line.

So, what you end up with is a few systems in each subsector that mega corporations and major shipping lines haul to using large ships. Everything else in the system relies on local shipping lines or individual contractors (free traders) to haul to the rest of the systems in the subsector.

Because of the distances and time of travel involved, there aren't many, if any, shipping corporations that can monopolize more than a few subsectors, if that. Instead, they focus on delivering a specific range of goods along with some passenger service but only to a select few systems per subsector. Most mundane goods are manufactured / mined / grown locally or on a world such that ones that need these and cannot produce them are at most one or two jumps from the production location.

 

[Spinward Flow]

If you take any random subsector of the map, or roll one up for yourself, what you will find in terms of trade is that there are only two or three, maybe four, systems / worlds that are really economic power houses. There will be another half dozen or so systems that do okay economically but certainly wouldn't generate massive trade of any sort. The rest of the systems--the vast majority--are all marginal to basket cases economically and not worth bothering with in terms of some mega corp or large shipping line.

So, what you end up with is a few systems in each subsector that mega corporations and major shipping lines haul to using large ships. Everything else in the system relies on local shipping lines or individual contractors (free traders) to haul to the rest of the systems in the subsector.

Agreed.
What you wind up with amounts to "layers of archipelago" that somewhat naturally creates a hub and spoke network at the upper end of high volume interstellar trade to high population worlds ... down to more of a point to point tramp free trader "local trader" serving the lower end of the low volume trade to the mid and low population worlds.

This then naturally forms "trade volume brackets" (high/mid/low) which then in turn dictates the displacement of starships capable of carrying those volumes in ways that are ultimately profitable (for someone, somewhere). Whether the profits come from ticket revenues for transport services or from the arbitrage of (speculative) goods, merchants need to make profits in order to remain in business (profit or perish, basically).



One of the ironies of Traveller is that there isn't much of attention paid to the migrations of world populations. Pretty much every world on the map just stays "stuck" at whatever UWP population number got rolled for it. Things like boom & bust cycles prompting waves of migration have to be inferred, based on the distribution of population numbers around a subsector/sector.

Active colonization efforts can actually raise a UWP population number pretty quickly.

• Population: 0 = 0-9 people as permanent residents
• Population: 1 = 10-99 people as permanent residents
• Population: 2 = 100-999 people as permanent residents
• Population: 3 = 1000-9999 people as permanent residents
• Population: 4 = 10,000-99,999 people as permanent residents

As you can see, all it takes to raise a population from 0 to 1 is the delivery of "a couple free traders worth of passenger settlers" and a world gets a population bump of +1.

Going from population 1 to 2 might take another "dozen or so free traders worth of passenger settlers" to get another population bump of +1.

After that, the rate of growth will necessarily slow down unless you get more ships involved to transport colonists/settlers ... but the point still stands. At the low end of the scale, it doesn't take a huge number of immigrants who stay permanently to increase a world population. However, those people aren't going to "pull up stakes" and move someplace with no opportunities for them to make a living, so being able to "jump start" a world economy and attract enough people to climb out of the Population: 0-4 "doldrums" becomes something of an interesting challenge. The hard part is avoiding Dutch Disease while founding a world's economy, especially since almost all Non-industrial worlds get founded on a basis of resource extraction for interstellar trade. Whether worlds can "grow beyond" just being resource extraction nodes in the broader trade network then becomes the challenge.

Agricultural trade coded worlds are perhaps the easiest to "jump start" since they only require a minimum population of 100,000 people. In groups of 8 passengers, that amounts to 12,500 passenger blocks of 8 people each to reach that minimum number (and ignoring birth rates and death rates). That may sound like a daunting number of passengers for a single starship to transport ... but if you broaden the time horizon from "instantly" out into decades (3-4?) and use multiple starships for the task ... things start looking a bit more doable.

A fleet of Type-M Subsidized Liners transporting 20 colonists per ship can move ~240 people "one way" (outbound to a colony) each year.
A fleet of 11 such Type-M Subsidized Liners chartered to operate for 40 years can move 105,600 people to a colony world within 3 parsecs of the world exporting colonists. That's enough to establish an Agricultural trade coded world if the birth/death rate plus emigration rate away from the colony world adds up to a net zero loss of population during those 40 years.

On a human scale, that would be a long term project.
For a representative government that needs to get periodically re-elected, it is definitely a long term project.
For a corporation, technocracy or civil service government, it's a long term project ... but one that can be accommodated within their long term planning budgets.

My point being that such projects are possible ... but they require a tremendous investment of time, capital, political will(ingness) and political continuity of purpose to accomplish. There will always be opportunities to derail such a colonization project, for reasons various, sundry and parochial ... but it CAN BE DONE if there is sufficient investment in the prospect.

 

[TamsinP]

Agreed.
What you wind up with amounts to "layers of archipelago" that somewhat naturally creates a hub and spoke network at the upper end of high volume interstellar trade to high population worlds ... down to more of a point to point tramp free trader "local trader" serving the lower end of the low volume trade to the mid and low population worlds.

This then naturally forms "trade volume brackets" (high/mid/low) which then in turn dictates the displacement of starships capable of carrying those volumes in ways that are ultimately profitable (for someone, somewhere). Whether the profits come from ticket revenues for transport services or from the arbitrage of (speculative) goods, merchants need to make profits in order to remain in business (profit or perish, basically).



One of the ironies of Traveller is that there isn't much of attention paid to the migrations of world populations. Pretty much every world on the map just stays "stuck" at whatever UWP population number got rolled for it. Things like boom & bust cycles prompting waves of migration have to be inferred, based on the distribution of population numbers around a subsector/sector.

Active colonization efforts can actually raise a UWP population number pretty quickly.

• Population: 0 = 0-9 people as permanent residents
• Population: 1 = 10-99 people as permanent residents
• Population: 2 = 100-999 people as permanent residents
• Population: 3 = 1000-9999 people as permanent residents
• Population: 4 = 10,000-99,999 people as permanent residents

As you can see, all it takes to raise a population from 0 to 1 is the delivery of "a couple free traders worth of passenger settlers" and a world gets a population bump of +1.

Going from population 1 to 2 might take another "dozen or so free traders worth of passenger settlers" to get another population bump of +1.

After that, the rate of growth will necessarily slow down unless you get more ships involved to transport colonists/settlers ... but the point still stands. At the low end of the scale, it doesn't take a huge number of immigrants who stay permanently to increase a world population. However, those people aren't going to "pull up stakes" and move someplace with no opportunities for them to make a living, so being able to "jump start" a world economy and attract enough people to climb out of the Population: 0-4 "doldrums" becomes something of an interesting challenge. The hard part is avoiding Dutch Disease while founding a world's economy, especially since almost all Non-industrial worlds get founded on a basis of resource extraction for interstellar trade. Whether worlds can "grow beyond" just being resource extraction nodes in the broader trade network then becomes the challenge.

Agricultural trade coded worlds are perhaps the easiest to "jump start" since they only require a minimum population of 100,000 people. In groups of 8 passengers, that amounts to 12,500 passenger blocks of 8 people each to reach that minimum number (and ignoring birth rates and death rates). That may sound like a daunting number of passengers for a single starship to transport ... but if you broaden the time horizon from "instantly" out into decades (3-4?) and use multiple starships for the task ... things start looking a bit more doable.

A fleet of Type-M Subsidized Liners transporting 20 colonists per ship can move ~240 people "one way" (outbound to a colony) each year.
A fleet of 11 such Type-M Subsidized Liners chartered to operate for 40 years can move 105,600 people to a colony world within 3 parsecs of the world exporting colonists. That's enough to establish an Agricultural trade coded world if the birth/death rate plus emigration rate away from the colony world adds up to a net zero loss of population during those 40 years.

On a human scale, that would be a long term project.
For a representative government that needs to get periodically re-elected, it is definitely a long term project.
For a corporation, technocracy or civil service government, it's a long term project ... but one that can be accommodated within their long term planning budgets.

My point being that such projects are possible ... but they require a tremendous investment of time, capital, political will(ingness) and political continuity of purpose to accomplish. There will always be opportunities to derail such a colonization project, for reasons various, sundry and parochial ... but it CAN BE DONE if there is sufficient investment in the prospect.

Or take a Type R subsidised merchant, convert the 200 ton cargo bay to staterooms. That's 50 passengers per trip at single occupancy, or 100 at double-occupancy.

It's far more likely that the ships used to transport colonist would be much larger, most likely in the 2000-3000 ton range. Each would be able to carry several hundred colonists and the supplies, materials and equipment needed to get going.

Of course, that assumes that they aren't being transported to the colony in low berths.

 

[kilemall]

Agreed.
What you wind up with amounts to "layers of archipelago" that somewhat naturally creates a hub and spoke network at the upper end of high volume interstellar trade to high population worlds ... down to more of a point to point tramp free trader "local trader" serving the lower end of the low volume trade to the mid and low population worlds.

This then naturally forms "trade volume brackets" (high/mid/low) which then in turn dictates the displacement of starships capable of carrying those volumes in ways that are ultimately profitable (for someone, somewhere). Whether the profits come from ticket revenues for transport services or from the arbitrage of (speculative) goods, merchants need to make profits in order to remain in business (profit or perish, basically).



One of the ironies of Traveller is that there isn't much of attention paid to the migrations of world populations. Pretty much every world on the map just stays "stuck" at whatever UWP population number got rolled for it. Things like boom & bust cycles prompting waves of migration have to be inferred, based on the distribution of population numbers around a subsector/sector.

Active colonization efforts can actually raise a UWP population number pretty quickly.

• Population: 0 = 0-9 people as permanent residents
• Population: 1 = 10-99 people as permanent residents
• Population: 2 = 100-999 people as permanent residents
• Population: 3 = 1000-9999 people as permanent residents
• Population: 4 = 10,000-99,999 people as permanent residents

As you can see, all it takes to raise a population from 0 to 1 is the delivery of "a couple free traders worth of passenger settlers" and a world gets a population bump of +1.

Going from population 1 to 2 might take another "dozen or so free traders worth of passenger settlers" to get another population bump of +1.

After that, the rate of growth will necessarily slow down unless you get more ships involved to transport colonists/settlers ... but the point still stands. At the low end of the scale, it doesn't take a huge number of immigrants who stay permanently to increase a world population. However, those people aren't going to "pull up stakes" and move someplace with no opportunities for them to make a living, so being able to "jump start" a world economy and attract enough people to climb out of the Population: 0-4 "doldrums" becomes something of an interesting challenge. The hard part is avoiding Dutch Disease while founding a world's economy, especially since almost all Non-industrial worlds get founded on a basis of resource extraction for interstellar trade. Whether worlds can "grow beyond" just being resource extraction nodes in the broader trade network then becomes the challenge.

Agricultural trade coded worlds are perhaps the easiest to "jump start" since they only require a minimum population of 100,000 people. In groups of 8 passengers, that amounts to 12,500 passenger blocks of 8 people each to reach that minimum number (and ignoring birth rates and death rates). That may sound like a daunting number of passengers for a single starship to transport ... but if you broaden the time horizon from "instantly" out into decades (3-4?) and use multiple starships for the task ... things start looking a bit more doable.

A fleet of Type-M Subsidized Liners transporting 20 colonists per ship can move ~240 people "one way" (outbound to a colony) each year.
A fleet of 11 such Type-M Subsidized Liners chartered to operate for 40 years can move 105,600 people to a colony world within 3 parsecs of the world exporting colonists. That's enough to establish an Agricultural trade coded world if the birth/death rate plus emigration rate away from the colony world adds up to a net zero loss of population during those 40 years.

On a human scale, that would be a long term project.
For a representative government that needs to get periodically re-elected, it is definitely a long term project.
For a corporation, technocracy or civil service government, it's a long term project ... but one that can be accommodated within their long term planning budgets.

My point being that such projects are possible ... but they require a tremendous investment of time, capital, political will(ingness) and political continuity of purpose to accomplish. There will always be opportunities to derail such a colonization project, for reasons various, sundry and parochial ... but it CAN BE DONE if there is sufficient investment in the prospect.

Agreed for the most part on colonization.

Costs for colonization can be slashed by going low berth, the risk may be worth it for low SOC stuck on a Poor planet.

That is an incentive I would build in, you get SOC 7 on arrival subject to alteration on subsequent behavior, or can easily earn that.

The skilled qualified people you need for running major projects/systems will need better then low berth and other incentives to buy in.

A major potential incentive is going to be the government/law level mix. Setting an attractive combo that is responsive and free of corruption but not lawless/too dangerous would be helpful.

This is where the skill of Social Engineering comes to the fore, especially at low enough pop levels that make it easier to implement changes (whether agreed on or imposed). Cultural design is worth the investment especially for a whole planet.

That is a special skill table I have, EDU A+,

1 Social Engineering
2 Industrial Engineering
3 Civil Engineering
4 Vehicle Engineering
5 Naval Engineering
6 Bio Engineering

All of which you need to bootstrap a world. May have to hire engineers for specific projects if you can’t get them to move in.

One of the major elements for that bootstrapping is upping that TL which to me represents largely economic success in exports until you get out from under the Non-Ind pop issue. Export trade while lowering living costs for disposable income is key, so as colony manager you have to concentrate on really understanding your local subsector market to get that done.

 

[Spinward Flow]

It's far more likely that the ships used to transport colonist would be much larger, most likely in the 2000-3000 ton range.

Granted ... but that would be for purpose built colony transport starships, in which "people ARE the cargo" to be transported (so to speak).

Or take a Type R subsidised merchant, convert the 200 ton cargo bay to staterooms. That's 50 passengers per trip at single occupancy, or 100 at double-occupancy.

Counter-proposal.

The stock 400 ton Type-R Subsidized Merchant can haul "200 tons of cargo volume" (converted into passenger "containment" as you cite) but is limited to J1/1G drive performance, which makes it slow to deploy for colonization efforts across 2+ parsecs. To make up for the lack of transport speed, you need to buy/build/crew more starships.

The 500 ton J3/3G SIE Clipper design that I'm working on finalizing the details of (and haven't published in full yet) would be capable of hauling "1000 tons of cargo volume" (converted into passenger "containment") at J1/1G drive performance, for an apples to apples comparison. My design would construction cost somewhere around 4.5x the price of a single stock 400 ton Type-R Subsidized Merchant to achieve that drive performance while having 5x the carrying capacity and 2.4x the crew. So in a "ton for ton" comparison, when moving 1000 tons @ J1/1G you can either have 1x 500 ton SIE Clipper towing 50x 20 ton Boxes externally @ J1/1G ... or ... you can have 5x 400 ton Type-R Subsidized Merchants with a combined 5x 200 ton cargo capacity (conversion to passenger "containment" cost being extra).

I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that the "Clipper alternative" would wind up being cheaper ... and could attract capital from a wider pool of potential investors, due to the decentralization of capital investment (more opportunities for third party buy in).



Where things get interesting is at the 2 parsec range, though.

You need 2x 400 ton Type-R Subsidized Merchant starships to move 200 tons of cargo volume equivalence 2 parsecs per 2 weeks and a combined crew of 10 for the 2 starships (no ship's troops or gunners included).
You need 1x 500 ton SIE Clipper towing 13x 20 ton Boxes externally to move 260 tons of cargo volume equivalence 2 parsecs per 2 weeks and a crew of 12 for the 1 starship (including 2 ship's troops and 1 gunner).

The 400 ton Type-R Subsidized Merchant starships will have significant operational overhead costs (life support, crew salaries, fuel purchase expenses, annual overhaul maintenance, berthing fees. etc.) to pay for and requires a "permissive environment" to travel through (defense against ship to ship attacks not included!). Unrefined fuel usage will eventually catch up and cause these starships to misjump within the first few years of operation, which could result in complete loss of craft with all aboard.
My 500 ton SIE Clipper starships will have dramatically reduced operational overhead costs (regenerative biome life support and fuel purification plant leaves only crew salaries and annual overhaul maintenance expenses as the main driver of costs) to pay for and is able to operate in a "threatened environment" due to the inclusion of an Escort Fighter (basically a mobile turret) capable of fending off "unwanted encounters" while en route. So basically, cheaper to operate and much more safe and secure once out in the wild.



Which is a long way of saying that I'm trying to design and engineer my way to a solution that can undercut the business models of even the Type-R and Type-M subsidized designs ... while at the same time offering more flexibility in mission set and use cases, because ... modularized container standards and external loading/towing through maneuver and jump.

Mind you, the entire foundation of the external load modeling basically involves "doing drop tanks in reverse" (kinda sorta) ... but it actually works when you rabbit hole deep enough into the mathematics of it all.

 

[Enoki]

Agreed for the most part on colonization.

Costs for colonization can be slashed by going low berth, the risk may be worth it for low SOC stuck on a Poor planet.

That is an incentive I would build in, you get SOC 7 on arrival subject to alteration on subsequent behavior, or can easily earn that.

The skilled qualified people you need for running major projects/systems will need better then low berth and other incentives to buy in.

A major potential incentive is going to be the government/law level mix. Setting an attractive combo that is responsive and free of corruption but not lawless/too dangerous would be helpful.

This is where the skill of Social Engineering comes to the fore, especially at low enough pop levels that make it easier to implement changes (whether agreed on or imposed). Cultural design is worth the investment especially for a whole planet.

That is a special skill table I have, EDU A+,

1 Social Engineering
2 Industrial Engineering
3 Civil Engineering
4 Vehicle Engineering
5 Naval Engineering
6 Bio Engineering

All of which you need to bootstrap a world. May have to hire engineers for specific projects if you can’t get them to move in.

One of the major elements for that bootstrapping is upping that TL which to me represents largely economic success in exports until you get out from under the Non-Ind pop issue. Export trade while lowering living costs for disposable income is key, so as colony manager you have to concentrate on really understanding your local subsector market to get that done.

If you look at more rural areas of the world with low populations, what you need to 'bootstrap' a world is a combination of reasonably smart, independent, and energetic people that can build the basics for themselves with only a little bit of outside help. That is, they can construct their home, grow most of what they need to survive food-wise, and can begin small business operations that are profitable.

Beyond that, the next stage calls only for civil engineers and architects and a handful of political leaders. The former can design and layout infrastructure beyond the basics like water, sewer, and electrical distribution systems, and design more complex buildings and structures. The political leaders are necessary to organize a society growing in size and provide some degree of social control over it.

Initially, what you need are a combination of tradesmen, farmers, and lots of basic labor. These can build all the basic infrastructure and get agricultural production going. Once that happens, you can expand from there.

What you have to determine is where in this process a world is, if it is growing. If it is already established, it could be in decline--think abandoned mining town / ghost town. People have moved away, or the population is shrinking for some other reason.

What you also have in Traveller is a massive amount of galaxy that is unexplored, potentially unoccupied by anything sentient, and ripe for colonization if you want to go that way with the game.

 

[TamsinP]

If you look at more rural areas of the world with low populations, what you need to 'bootstrap' a world is a combination of reasonably smart, independent, and energetic people that can build the basics for themselves with only a little bit of outside help. That is, they can construct their home, grow most of what they need to survive food-wise, and can begin small business operations that are profitable.

Beyond that, the next stage calls only for civil engineers and architects and a handful of political leaders. The former can design and layout infrastructure beyond the basics like water, sewer, and electrical distribution systems, and design more complex buildings and structures. The political leaders are necessary to organize a society growing in size and provide some degree of social control over it.

Initially, what you need are a combination of tradesmen, farmers, and lots of basic labor. These can build all the basic infrastructure and get agricultural production going. Once that happens, you can expand from there.

What you have to determine is where in this process a world is, if it is growing. If it is already established, it could be in decline--think abandoned mining town / ghost town. People have moved away, or the population is shrinking for some other reason.

What you also have in Traveller is a massive amount of galaxy that is unexplored, potentially unoccupied by anything sentient, and ripe for colonization if you want to go that way with the game.

In the first wave, you also want prospectors/surveyors to map and locate resources, scientists to determine what is safe to eat and drink and medics to analyse and respond to any local diseases (plus the inevitable accidents).

 

[Dragoner]

Here is a recent book on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_City_on_Mars

 

[bookwyrm]

Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey, had a good look at the different things that go into starting a colony on another planet from scratch, and the things that go right and could go wrong over the first few years of landing on planet.

For those who don't know, Anne McCaffrey wrote the Pern series, and Dragonsdawn is basically a prequel, her 9th book in the series.

 

[kilemall]

I don't see the OP situation at all in Traveller. If you take any random subsector of the map, or roll one up for yourself, what you will find in terms of trade is that there are only two or three, maybe four, systems / worlds that are really economic power houses. There will be another half dozen or so systems that do okay economically but certainly wouldn't generate massive trade of any sort. The rest of the systems--the vast majority--are all marginal to basket cases economically and not worth bothering with in terms of some mega corp or large shipping line.

So, what you end up with is a few systems in each subsector that mega corporations and major shipping lines haul to using large ships. Everything else in the system relies on local shipping lines or individual contractors (free traders) to haul to the rest of the systems in the subsector.

Because of the distances and time of travel involved, there aren't many, if any, shipping corporations that can monopolize more than a few subsectors, if that. Instead, they focus on delivering a specific range of goods along with some passenger service but only to a select few systems per subsector. Most mundane goods are manufactured / mined / grown locally or on a world such that ones that need these and cannot produce them are at most one or two jumps from the production location.

I largely agree with this, except for painting a picture where megacorps/lines are only benignly involved with the major worlds and that mundane items are 1-2 parsec at most.

In general yes the big lines are playing footsies with the megacorps to service the big producing and consuming planets.

And they would like to keep it that way.

So the one thing they don’t want is new major production from some upstart world being hauled by a small local line. Cuts them out, keeps capital local which might accelerate development, they don’t control or coordinate it, and smacks of disruptive market competition.

I think this motivation of ‘we don’t control it we won’t let it grow’ is a major reason for the lack of uniform TL development.


So a vicious overreaching trade/transport monopoly sounds like exactly the sort of interventionist organization that would evolve, in whatever peculiar culture it takes.

As for mundane, let’s take a pen, specifically the future analog of the Fisher space pen. We will call it 4Cr each to match the lower end NASA version.

We’ll make this easy and call it 10 grams including packaging.

10 grams is 100 pens for 1kg, 1000kg dtons means 100,000 pens and Cr400000 per dton base price.

Non-Ind worlds are going to get a mod at least, call it +2. That’s 20% margin for an item that they can’t create except for handcrafted versions or quills made from local fauna feathers, also +2 to production base sale price.

Assuming a Cr1000 per parsec rate and 10% dton value maximum to keep it profitable, there would be a market for these pens going from worlds with high enough pop and TL 7+ to avoid Non-Ind trade code, to Non-Ind worlds for 40 parsecs.

On a practical basis it will likely be less as there will be at least 1-2 source planets per subsector. Also, Pop 1-4 planets are going to take years to use up just a dton of this item.

But it illustrates that what counts is the legs of an item in terms of dton value, not whether it’s mundane.

 

[Enoki]

I largely agree with this, except for painting a picture where megacorps/lines are only benignly involved with the major worlds and that mundane items are 1-2 parsec at most.

In general yes the big lines are playing footsies with the megacorps to service the big producing and consuming planets.

And they would like to keep it that way.

So the one thing they don’t want is new major production from some upstart world being hauled by a small local line. Cuts them out, keeps capital local which might accelerate development, they don’t control or coordinate it, and smacks of disruptive market competition.

I think this motivation of ‘we don’t control it we won’t let it grow’ is a major reason for the lack of uniform TL development.


So a vicious overreaching trade/transport monopoly sounds like exactly the sort of interventionist organization that would evolve, in whatever peculiar culture it takes.

As for mundane, let’s take a pen, specifically the future analog of the Fisher space pen. We will call it 4Cr each to match the lower end NASA version.

We’ll make this easy and call it 10 grams including packaging.

10 grams is 100 pens for 1kg, 1000kg dtons means 100,000 pens and Cr400000 per dton base price.

Non-Ind worlds are going to get a mod at least, call it +2. That’s 20% margin for an item that they can’t create except for handcrafted versions or quills made from local fauna feathers, also +2 to production base sale price.

Assuming a Cr1000 per parsec rate and 10% dton value maximum to keep it profitable, there would be a market for these pens going from worlds with high enough pop and TL 7+ to avoid Non-Ind trade code, to Non-Ind worlds for 40 parsecs.

On a practical basis it will likely be less as there will be at least 1-2 source planets per subsector. Also, Pop 1-4 planets are going to take years to use up just a dton of this item.

But it illustrates that what counts is the legs of an item in terms of dton value, not whether it’s mundane.

The way they get around that is simply subcontracting the small ships. Think of this as something like an Uber operation. The big corporations deliver in bulk the stuff the subsector has ordered or needs on a regular basis to one of a few high consumption worlds. The stuff going to the low consumption worlds is divided up there and made ready for shipping.
One or more independent small ship operators comes to the hub world and picks up their load for distribution to the smaller systems. In each they also pick up any loads going back to the hub. If they have extra space they might separately contract other loads. The mega corp doesn't really care because something like say, 10 tons of specialty cargo, even if it competes with their products, is so small an amount it's irrelevant. Think of it as some local say bakes specialty sweets or has a particular and good hot sauce they bottle.
The amount they make is so small that it remains a mostly local product going to just a few worlds at most. But if the mega corp does find an interest in such a product, they send in an executive ship, make a deal the local producer can't refuse, and now the product is made by the mega corp while the original producer retires rich.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Sorry for replying so late, but by father fell ill in 2020 shortly before your response and passed away a couple of months later. My Mom took it hard, and I have been spending a lot of time with her. I have only just recently felt up to gaming, and started perusing CotI...

Sorry to hear. You have my condolences -- that always hits hard.

Welcome back, though!

 

[kilemall]

The way they get around that is simply subcontracting the small ships. Think of this as something like an Uber operation. The big corporations deliver in bulk the stuff the subsector has ordered or needs on a regular basis to one of a few high consumption worlds. The stuff going to the low consumption worlds is divided up there and made ready for shipping.
One or more independent small ship operators comes to the hub world and picks up their load for distribution to the smaller systems. In each they also pick up any loads going back to the hub. If they have extra space they might separately contract other loads. The mega corp doesn't really care because something like say, 10 tons of specialty cargo, even if it competes with their products, is so small an amount it's irrelevant. Think of it as some local say bakes specialty sweets or has a particular and good hot sauce they bottle.
The amount they make is so small that it remains a mostly local product going to just a few worlds at most. But if the mega corp does find an interest in such a product, they send in an executive ship, make a deal the local producer can't refuse, and now the product is made by the mega corp while the original producer retires rich.

The buyout is the rational business model.

Some folks aren’t rational, for them it’s trade war.

And no I am not talking 10 ton odd lots but real production.

Good example would be grav vehicles, which is a nice IND -3 30% off sell anywhere which is within reach of a TL10 pop 7+ world. You have somebody like Tucker or Tesla who won’t back down cause vision and they won’t be bought off.

OP TF guys know what to do here.

 

[Enoki]

The buyout is the rational business model.

Some folks aren’t rational, for them it’s trade war.

And no I am not talking 10 ton odd lots but real production.

Good example would be grav vehicles, which is a nice IND -3 30% off sell anywhere which is within reach of a TL10 pop 7+ world. You have somebody like Tucker or Tesla who won’t back down cause vision and they won’t be bought off.

OP TF guys know what to do here.

The mega corp comes in, dumps .001% of their grav vehicle production on the planet selling each for say 20% of what the competition is selling them at. When the competition complains to the government, the government says they'll do something, but foot drags because the mega corp just gave every government uber flunky a big "campaign contribution" (aka bribe).

They then open a competing factory where they offer all the competition's skilled workers a salary that's 10 to 20% higher than the locals are giving.

It's hard to make a profit when nobody will buy what you make, and you have nobody to make it.

Guys like Tucker or Doble (steam cars) were engineers first, businessmen second. That's what really did them in.

 

[kilemall]

The mega corp comes in, dumps .001% of their grav vehicle production on the planet selling each for say 20% of what the competition is selling them at. When the competition complains to the government, the government says they'll do something, but foot drags because the mega corp just gave every government uber flunky a big "campaign contribution" (aka bribe).

They then open a competing factory where they offer all the competition's skilled workers a salary that's 10 to 20% higher than the locals are giving.

It's hard to make a profit when nobody will buy what you make, and you have nobody to make it.

Guys like Tucker or Doble (steam cars) were engineers first, businessmen second. That's what really did them in.

Sure, that’s one way to do it. And still would be done in the US without laws prohibiting anticompetitive practices. Market capitalism isn’t accidental.

Another is guild type stuff. It depends on the culture and laws, and of course such variables as size of empire and impinging competitive polities including naval strength backing how business is done.