Then change the damn starport code to what HAS to be there to make interstellar commerce work, not come up with bizarre open field tonnage ports.
Would that I could, but it's unfortunately not up to me.
Note that I'm not the one that came up with Zila's multi-thousand ton trade class E starport. That's partly down to the writers of TTA who described something much more substantial than a slab of bare bedrock, and partly down to the inescapable logic of interstellar traffic flow. As I pointed out earlier, every J1 ship and many J2 and J3 ships going to and from the Towers Cluster would pass through the Zila system, offering great opportunities for enterprising fuel sellers. Assuming (as I do) that it would be plum against the principles of the Imperium to grant monopolies on fuel sales in its starports, there's no plausible explanation why someone isn't selling refined fuel to all those passers-through.
C at lower TL + pop of billions because the world is underperforming or has too much pop for economical support, ok I can see that working.
Of course a high-population world with an unusually small starport would have lower than average trade (or the other way around). But that lower trade would still correlate to population size rather than population level.
I really don't remember that one, I have some homework to do, I'm not sure where my copy is. Assuming that's right and I have no reason to doubt it, it's more 10% incremental stuff, when actually that's not what happens economically when we have jumped TLs, you get more of a bump and far different results on governmental, business management and environmental realities.
I won't accuse GDW of having done any deep economic analyses before coming up with that table. I will point out the desirability of keeping planetary economies to a level that we can comprehend.
But this feeds into an issue I have with the whole TL setup, seems like we have these grand TL adjustments that change civilization and multiply tools/transport/energy near exponentially from TL1-11, then 12-15 are just increments of 11.
When GURPS Traveller was published, it was argued that Traveller TL10-15 corresponded pretty much to early GURPS TL 10 - late GURPS TL10. GURPS TL11 and 12 was really above TTL15 (Even though GT equated TTL13-14 with GTL11 and TTL15 with GTL12).
Ref manageable, start charging for personnel, training, pensions, shrinkage, ammunition...
All that is already accounted for in the whopping 10% of original cost maintenance figure from TCS. Everything but combat repairs and replacement of combat losses is accounted for, including peacetime replacement. And even then it's difficult to account for more than 5-6% if you try to list individual expenses.
...plain screwups, trust me any military can soak up any amount of money you are willing to blow.
But that doesn't mean that with a given budget every military prefers overspending on a smaller organization to maximizing what they can get for the money they get allocated.
I did once toy with the idea of a MISS factor that would be multiplied with military expenses. It stood for Military Inefficiency Spending Syndrome. The miss factor could go from 1.0 and up. It would go up with 0.1 per decade of peace and go down in times of war. It would also start 0.1 point higher for every order of magnitude the budget was. Never did finish developing the idea.
You seem to keep focusing on the pop difference alone, and confusingly quoting a billion to one numbers when I've been doing A to 1, or in the newer formula pop squared, which yields a 100 to 1 pop ratio.
That's because I've had the same discussion about T5 resource units, which T5 also gets wrong (unlike
Pocket Empires which gets it right) and feel very strongly about it. The starport class is a side issue that I'm not even sure how we got into. I think it's quite in order to adjust trade according to starport class.
And I am focusing on trade tonnage in that formula. My point in bringing per capita export up is to refute the idea that economic activity, success and tonnage generated to ship is a flat ratio to population, and it's just NOT so.
Not a flat rate, no. But I never did say anything about flat rates. I just insisted that there will be a correlation; not that the correlation will be 1.
It can be wildly different, on a planet with a general TL rating, and with interstellar regions with greatly different pops, TLs and governments, it will be wider differences and VERY individual.
But with worlds with greatly different populations and the
same TLs and governments, the differences will be much closer to the differences in population than to the differences in population level.
You also seem to consistently gloss over the pop squared LL squared revised formula, which does have a wider pop swing, and keep referencing the original. At least acknowledge it even if it is 'wrong' from your perspective.
I've ignored law level because I've never thought about law levels influencing trade before and didn't want to get sidetracked.
If you insist on hearing my immediate thoughts, I'd say that law can hamper trade, but I don't think the effect is a flat rate to law level (
), nor do I think it would be anywhere near as influential as population. But thast's just the first reaction.
If you do have a system or even a general feel for what levels you want to generate under what conditions, then perhaps you can post it for the OP. You seem to be closer to what he deems reasonable then I am.
Currently I'm using the system from
Far Trader, not because I don't think it has its flaws and could be improved upon, but because it's the best available at the momen. (It does, for example, take starport class into account and adjusts up and down when they're greater or lesser than expected). But I add my own touches, especially to the worlds with smaller populations. Yori's salt exports are in addition the the FT figures, as is the tourists to Alell and Kinorb and Heya. I'd lowball Heya's trade because of its position more than a day inside the solar jump limit. Etc., etc..
Hans
