The penultimate page! We're just about finished with this book, which is exciting. I'm really looking forward to the book on world creation, but first...Trade and Commerce modifiers!
When last we met, we had a cliffhanger about the modifiers that would be used to determine the value of a potential cargo. These include character skill, broker services, and the world itself. We begin with...Broker DMs!
I know, way too many exclamation points.
So, there are four different types of brokers available to help you sell things when you bring them to a new world. There's nothing fancy about them; each type of broker gets 5% for every +1 they give to the value table modifier. The maximum is a +4 broker, who gets paid 20% of the sale price as commission. And you can only use one guy. I think the +4 guy is a bit risky unless you know you're going to get a high roll anyway, because he's expensive.
Math check! Okay, so let's say you're trying to sell a cargo on a planet. You paid 80% of its actual value. You have no special skill, and this world isn't anything special, either. So, your profit depends entirely on the broker (no other DMs to the roll). You roll a 7 on the die. If you hired the +1 guy, he bumps that to an 8, and you would sell the cargo at 110% of the purchase price. But Broker-Man gets 5%, so you are at 105% percent, or a 25% profit. Not bad.
Now we make the same deal with Super-Broker-Man, who is a +4 on the roll. Again, a 7 is rolled, modified to an 11. Now you're up to 150% of the actual value, less his cut of 20%, so 130%. Okay, that's pretty sweet. I retract my previous concern; Super-Broker-Man is totally worth it. Unless you bomb your roll, in which case you're probably going to be lucky to break even on the deal. Well, trade is a gamble.
Character skills can be applied, but only certain ones. You can't use your Navigation or Forward Observer skill to get a better deal, but if you have Bribery or Administration, those are modifiers you can use. Too bad Rifle isn't an applicable skill: "Are you sure you can't make me a better offer?" *click*
World Types. Ah, good! Now we get some idea of the breakdown of how worlds are classified, even if it's only for trade purposes. So, there are six world types mentioned here: Agricultural, Non-Agricultural, Industrial, Non-Industrial, Rich, and Poor. These are not exclusive categories; you can have an agricultural, non-industrial, rich world. Or can you? Let's take a look.
It looks like the world types are graded from 0-9. I see rankings for atmosphere, hydrographic (how wet is the planet; Earth would be at 65-70%, which I'm going to guess would be a 6 or 7 on this scale), population, and government type. Government types are ranked from 0 to 9? Interesting.
Okay, let's do it this way. Tables are old-school to the core, right? So, instead of just listing off the requirements as it's done in the book, let's visualize it with a table. Hmm...I just realized that this is going to be a three-dimensional table, since there are multiple variables. Let's simplify it a bit. Three tables. One for Agricultural Y/N, Industrial Y/N, and R/P. Yeah, that should work. The zero only comes into play in one specific instance. The tables are going to be rough, since I'm not all that familiar with Blogger's interface for this.
AGRICULTURAL
- Atmo Hydro Pop
- N N N
- N N N
- N N N
- Y Y N
- Y Y Y
- Y Y Y
- Y Y Y
- Y Y N
- Y N N
So, that's a pretty narrow range for an agricultural world. You have to get a Y in all three columns to qualify as an agricultural world.
INDUSTRIAL
I don't actually need to do a full table here, since the two variables are population and atmosphere. If you've got an atmosphere of 9 or higher (so, it goes higher than I thought), you might have an industrial world, depending on the atmosphere. So, it works like this, and it's a weird breakdown.
Atmosphere of 0, 1, 2, 4, 7, or 9 means you qualify for an industrial world. That, coupled with the population requirement, means that you cannot have a world that is both agricultural and industrial; either you have too many people for ag, or not enough for industry.
RICH/POOR
This table actually has different requirements for R/P; they only share one characteristic, population.
- Gov Atmo Pop Hydro
- P
- P P
- P P
- R P
- R P
- R R R
- R R
- R R R
- R
We're only about halfway down the page, too.
Okay, so to be a rich or poor world, you have to qualify in all three (or two) categories. So, a world with an atmosphere of 2 and a hydrographic of 6 isn't poor; likewise, a planet with a government of 7, atmosphere of 6, and population 9 is NOT a rich world. So, unlike the first two categories, it's not an either/or situation. Your planet can be middle-class.
We get another tease for the trade goods table, which is on the next page. We're told that the goods listed are abstract, not specific; a cargo of 'Firearms' can be anything from flintlock replicas to laser carbines. That would help to explain the price fluctuations, too; some things in a category will be more valuable than others in the same category. We're also told this so that characters can do some judicious 'pilfering' of the cargo...not that upstanding characters would ever do such a thing, even if there was a massive mortgage payment due at the end of the month. Smuggling? No, no. Wouldn't dream of it.
The cost of the individual items (should they be known) can be used to calculate how many of an item are actually in the cargo. The example given is shotguns; a ton of shotguns (150 Cr/gun) costs 30,000 Cr. That works out to 200 guns. However, a ton of shotguns would be 266 guns (based on their individual weight). Instead of an extra 66 guns (there are no wholesale prices here, apparently), you get the difference in packing materials, crates, etc.
We're also reminded that some of the items on the list are individual, not crates. But that's it for this page! Sigh...well, next time (hopefully tomorrow), we will be done with this book as we take a look at the Trade Goods Table, which is on the last page of the book.
And don't forget to check out my science fiction book on Amazon, Bard Conley's Adventures Across the Solar System, if you want pulpy, action-adventure science fiction to get you in the Traveller mood.
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