Trade Makes the Galaxy Go Round

I’m still crunching away at the trade figures for the RimWorlds. At present, I have covered most of Lymethius and Gamelea Subsectors and already some interesting patterns are beginning to emerge.

GURPs: Traveller - Far Trader works by creating a World Trade Number for each main world – derived from that world’s Tech Level and population, and modified by the Starport type. An individual planet’s World Trade Number ranges from 0 to 6.5.

The World Trade Numbers of two worlds are added together, modified by Trade Classification type, if applicable, and by the distance in parsecs between the two worlds. The resulting number is called the Bilateral Trade Number and represents the amount of trade between the two worlds in question. What we are looking for is the existence of Major, Minor and Feeder Trade Routes associated with Bilateral Trade Numbers of 10+, 9+ and 8+.

Where GURPs: Traveller - Far Trader is quite clever, is that the distance modifier uses a logarithmic scale. This means that while the serious negative modifier of –2 kicks in at 10 parsecs separation, it is still possible to have a Major Trade Route between two planets up to 19 Parsecs apart, assuming each had a World Trade Number of at least 6 and both were members of the same polity. If there are sufficient High Tech/High Population worlds, they will naturally daisy chain and create lucrative Mains.

Where this information becomes useful from a gaming point of view is when you want an idea of how much traffic, and of what tonnage, is likely to be in a system, and how much freight and passengers are likely to be hanging around, waiting for a ride.

Be prepared however, if you want to use GURPs: Traveller - Far Trader as an economic mapping tool, for a lot of initial work. While parts of the job can be auto-calced by a bit of cunning Exel-fu, there is a lot of tedious manual matching of pairs of WTNs with distance modifiers to arrive at BTNs. Though, if you stick to the formula rules, you can quickly correct any initial calculation errors – such as happened to me this evening when I realised that Acorlis V’s WTN was wrong; once this was fixed, the BTNs I had laboriously calculated all corrected themselves – which was a relief – and the trade routes I had noted leading to Acorlis V all disappeared as the BTNs had dropped below the Feeder Route threshold – which makes sense as Acorlis V is best described as a dusty pest hole the inhabitants are too poor to leave.

Fifty Followers - a mile stone

I discovered today that fifty people now follow this blog. This fact is in equal parts humbling and terrifying - humbling that fifty people care enough about what I write to subscribe to my blog, and terrifying that they might find out I have no idea what I'm going to write about next!

My thanks to you all for your support - I hope to get back into the swing of things soon.

Website Update #13

While work on Gazolan Subsector has ground to a halt, I'm still plugging away at trade routes with GURPs Traveller: Far Trader. Due to the slightly cock-eyed way one reaches inter-system Trade volumes, there is room for error and I had to redo a chunk of stuff when I realised I was deducting the distance factor twice.

On a happier note, I have almost finished painting a nice little crawler flatbed and some figure conversions. More here.

Issue 4 of Brett's Traveller fanzine, 'Into the Deep' is now available as a free .pdf from here.

With a focus on Reavers' Deep Sector, 'Into the Deep' also provides useful background information for Brett's Classic Traveller PBeM, Reavers' Deep. The game is coming up on its third anniversary and is still going strong.

"The Department" Enters Its Final Week of Fundraising

I have been following developments of the science fiction/film noir themed Skirmish Wargame/RPG "The Department" with interest. With influences as diverse as Blade Runner and the computer game Syndicate, it could be an interesting way of playing out those noir-style Traveller scenarios.

Joseph Dragovich, lead writer on this project, is using an interesting fundraising mechanism, akin to Eureka Miniatures 300 club, where interested parties in effect pledge some cash to ensure the project gets to press.

Joe says,

"We're entering our final week of our Kickstarter drive and we're well on our way to getting to our funding goal.

We have raised over $2000 so far but we still need more pledges if we are going to make our funding goal.

Kickstarter uses an all-or-nothing funding model, so if we do not meet our $3800 goal by the 16th of September, the game will not be produced.

We have a lot of great rewards for backers, such as t-shirts, posters and signed copies of the rules. We're offering Kindle, Ebook, Pdf versions of the game.

Our Kickstarter page


You can learn more about Kickstarter's all or nothing funding here


I've signed up for a copy of the rules as this looks like a game I would really enjoy.

Design Notes - Incremental Progression

With new figures to paint and a full diary, progressing development of Gazolan Subsector has temporarily stalled. I have, however, located the current (1109) subsector capital, Thiroor, at 2213.

Thiroor lies on the “lower lip” of the Wedding Cup, Miigaurshish and, incidentally, was one of the early systems in Gazolan Subsector to be occupied by the Imperium. House Hendrian of Thiroor, Subsector Dukes of Gazolan, have been slowly increasing their power and influence since the Sakul Wars of the late Ninth Century. With the death of Sector Duke Edenar in 1097, Akansair Hendrian was able to present both himself and his House as the most suitable candidate to succeed to the Sector Duchy. Akansair I was succeeded by his son Mekal in 1104. Mekal was succeeded by his brother, Akansair II, in 1107.

I need to re-examine the systems of the Wedding Cup as these would appear to be the core worlds of Gazolan Subsector – the centre of power that House Hendrian as protected and nurtured since the Sarkul Wars. It is these worlds that have given House Hendrian the wealth and resources to replace House Ulanor as Sector Dukes, and to hold their own against their enemies – both internal and external.

Interlude

As often happens when I’m working on a project, instead of continuing with the development of Gazolan Subsector I suddenly decided that I needed to re-examine the economics of the RimWorlds using GURPs Traveller: Far Trader. This then involved trying to beat the various GURPs economics formulae into a spreadsheet. After much swearing and Googling, I developed a semi-automatic method for generating the various World Trade Numbers, and then a manual method for linking them together to generate the Bilateral Trade Number.

Currently, I have worked up numbers for Lymethius Subsector and have just started moving out into Gamelea. I am starting to see the beginnings of trade routes, though the Far Trader rules demand relatively high values for routes.

Heaven and Earth would generate the trade routes for me, but it doesn’t seem to present all the World Trade Numbers. Also, I’m finding the exercise useful in getting me to see different patterns in my subsectors. I’m looking forward to extending the numbers up the Julnar Reach into Gazolan Subsector to see if the story I was beginning to create about the Reach in my last post is backed up by the economic data. Lastly, generating these numbers, while useful for the background of a trade game, will also give me a feel as to the true volume of shipping travelling the routes of the Subsector.