Trade app/spreadsheet
- Thread starter Adam Dray
- Start date
Via /r/Traveller on Reddit I found this nifty website app by a person called grauenwolf. You select a system and put in a jump distance and it calculates all kinds of trade info from the trade goods and desired good to passenger lists and more for each system within reach.
It's pretty cool.
It's pretty cool.
I'd love it a lot more if I could plug in my own values instead of having to select an OTU system.
open office spreadsheet version of original trading system
Earlier in November this year as a spreadsheet exercise to see what could be done without coding I created a spreadsheet (in open office, not excel) based on the trade system from the original traveller universe after I received the original traveller trading rules as part of a promo for the kickstarter novel.
Having said "without coding" I ended up including one macro (not automatically run but rather requiring pressing a button) for generating random numbers, else autocalculate also regenerates random numbers which changes trade values after pressing enter. You can avoid the macro by manually copying the values on the autogenerated random numbers into the cells which require random numbers (one copy and one paste special action), but that really was annoying.
The spreadsheet is driven by lookup tables which are in separate worksheets.
eg each good row has planetary modifier for which price is affected by (negative or positive number)
for the selected current planet (via lookup) determine what planetary modifiers (if any) are in effect
Calculate potential purchase price based on standard price modified by speculative percent result ( which in turn is in a lookup table), planetary modifiers and modified again by broker success result ( which in turn is in a lookup table) and taxes/fees.
If decide to buy then add to list of things for sale. Note duplicate "same" goods are possible at different prices. My take on this is that the actual goods are different but fall under same "generic" description. For selling add quantity and value of both together or keep separate as required.
Note: Values were only inserted for planets for two subsectors in the spinward marches which was all that was required for testing. Values for planetary modifiers (ie value 1 if in place) not guaranteed to be correct - was entered manually.
Variations from original rules:
Maximum of 9 speculative cargoes in ships holds. Maximum of 6 speculative cargoes available for purchase
You select the planet which you are on. In the order you want to try to sell goods you have these listed from top to bottom.
Broker result uses 3d6 instead of 2d6 as skill role
Number of goods available for sale/purchase based on values for planet in planetary lookup table and random 2d6 value. NB you can prevent goods being available /sale for a particular planet but not a specific type of good. And by changing the value in the lookup tables for number of goods available restrict to a maximum or minimum being available for all planets. Currently minimum is 0.
All in tons. Not tons or units. You will want to change prices /quantities for the unit items in the lookup table for materials as these are still currently the standard price per unit... not in tons. The spreadsheet treats these are value for 1 ton....
Can have opposed broker rolls to further adjust prices
Has some capacity for non speculative cargo if the GM wishes. Some additional goods codes were created (not chosen by randomness as speculative goods) to use as basis for delivery value of these goods by a ship
Open Office does allow saving as excel version. Currently this is known to 1) remove the open office macro to generate random numbers (not that it would work under excel anyway) 2) Prevent auto calculation for broker skill roll if allowing computer to determine skill roll of brokers as opposed to entering them manually.
And now find I can't upload the *.ods (open office version in the thread) - reply with suggestions if want to look at it.
I wasn't ware the traveller site http://travellertools.azurewebsites.net/ mentioned earlier in this thread being available.
Earlier in November this year as a spreadsheet exercise to see what could be done without coding I created a spreadsheet (in open office, not excel) based on the trade system from the original traveller universe after I received the original traveller trading rules as part of a promo for the kickstarter novel.
Having said "without coding" I ended up including one macro (not automatically run but rather requiring pressing a button) for generating random numbers, else autocalculate also regenerates random numbers which changes trade values after pressing enter. You can avoid the macro by manually copying the values on the autogenerated random numbers into the cells which require random numbers (one copy and one paste special action), but that really was annoying.
The spreadsheet is driven by lookup tables which are in separate worksheets.
eg each good row has planetary modifier for which price is affected by (negative or positive number)
for the selected current planet (via lookup) determine what planetary modifiers (if any) are in effect
Calculate potential purchase price based on standard price modified by speculative percent result ( which in turn is in a lookup table), planetary modifiers and modified again by broker success result ( which in turn is in a lookup table) and taxes/fees.
If decide to buy then add to list of things for sale. Note duplicate "same" goods are possible at different prices. My take on this is that the actual goods are different but fall under same "generic" description. For selling add quantity and value of both together or keep separate as required.
Note: Values were only inserted for planets for two subsectors in the spinward marches which was all that was required for testing. Values for planetary modifiers (ie value 1 if in place) not guaranteed to be correct - was entered manually.
Variations from original rules:
Maximum of 9 speculative cargoes in ships holds. Maximum of 6 speculative cargoes available for purchase
You select the planet which you are on. In the order you want to try to sell goods you have these listed from top to bottom.
Broker result uses 3d6 instead of 2d6 as skill role
Number of goods available for sale/purchase based on values for planet in planetary lookup table and random 2d6 value. NB you can prevent goods being available /sale for a particular planet but not a specific type of good. And by changing the value in the lookup tables for number of goods available restrict to a maximum or minimum being available for all planets. Currently minimum is 0.
All in tons. Not tons or units. You will want to change prices /quantities for the unit items in the lookup table for materials as these are still currently the standard price per unit... not in tons. The spreadsheet treats these are value for 1 ton....
Can have opposed broker rolls to further adjust prices
Has some capacity for non speculative cargo if the GM wishes. Some additional goods codes were created (not chosen by randomness as speculative goods) to use as basis for delivery value of these goods by a ship
Open Office does allow saving as excel version. Currently this is known to 1) remove the open office macro to generate random numbers (not that it would work under excel anyway) 2) Prevent auto calculation for broker skill roll if allowing computer to determine skill roll of brokers as opposed to entering them manually.
And now find I can't upload the *.ods (open office version in the thread) - reply with suggestions if want to look at it.
I wasn't ware the traveller site http://travellertools.azurewebsites.net/ mentioned earlier in this thread being available.
I would love to check you your spreadsheet, just to see how you did it. I was going to try to do something similar for a spreadsheet i use in my campaign, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
I love the website at TravellerTools, especially the part where he gives passengers with UPPs and some background, and I am toying with the idea of embedding that into my spreadsheet, but would prefer to have something that I could use offline if needed.
As for a suggestion, you could always just put a direct link to the file on GoogleDocs or put it on Dropbox or something similar. Of course you could also just email it to anyone who wants it as well.
I love the website at TravellerTools, especially the part where he gives passengers with UPPs and some background, and I am toying with the idea of embedding that into my spreadsheet, but would prefer to have something that I could use offline if needed.
As for a suggestion, you could always just put a direct link to the file on GoogleDocs or put it on Dropbox or something similar. Of course you could also just email it to anyone who wants it as well.
open office spreadsheet version of original trading system
About five minutes after I posted the above thread, I remembered/rediscovered that CoTI had a system of uploading files.
CoTI features -> File Library then choose subforum Spreadsheets
My post with the open office version has just been posted into its own new thread (waiting to be approved) in the subforum spreadsheets. The export from open office into excel will be the next post (only one file permitted per post) though please note any testing I've done has only been done in open office though I've seen the lookups work in the exported Excel version.
Also another trade spreadsheet, with a totally different approach to a trade calculation spreadsheet is in:-
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=25892
About five minutes after I posted the above thread, I remembered/rediscovered that CoTI had a system of uploading files.
CoTI features -> File Library then choose subforum Spreadsheets
My post with the open office version has just been posted into its own new thread (waiting to be approved) in the subforum spreadsheets. The export from open office into excel will be the next post (only one file permitted per post) though please note any testing I've done has only been done in open office though I've seen the lookups work in the exported Excel version.
Also another trade spreadsheet, with a totally different approach to a trade calculation spreadsheet is in:-
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=25892
Outstanding find Thread which has spreadsheet version(s) as attachments
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=35426
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=35426
New thread link for 35426 https://www.travellerrpg.com/index....ased-on-original-traveller-open-office.35426/ to replace that above which no longer works
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