Technology and Trade in the Festrian Reaches
Okay, you know you've done it. Bought computers at 40% on a tech 12 world, zipped off to a nonindustrial tech 3 world, sold 'em at %400, then put money down on a new ship.
All the while, neglecting the disparity between the technological levels of the worlds in question.
There's really two issues with that. One concerns the market for technology; the other concerns the regulation of technology.
It seems to me that where a significant disparity in technology exists - in either direction - the number of people available to buy and utilize it would drop.
Goods produced at a given tech ought generally find a broad market on worlds at the same level. But selling low tech goods to a high tech world will be more difficult: think of a TL 4 - 6 typewriter. Nowadays, TL7, you can scarcely give the things away.
And in the other direction: those high tech machine tools might be coveted by primitive worlds, but can they be powered? Can they be maintained? Do those TL 12 computers have their own power source, and therefore don't need to be hooked up to a donkey treadmill to operate? Or will the buyer have to obtain a separate fusion plant to run his machines?
And what of raw materials, and foodstuffs? Will things produced by a TL 3 world be usable on a TL 7 or 8 world without refinement?
Weapons and vehicles are more clear-cut. Blades we see in use, culturally, at any tech level. Any culture will be happy to obtain whatever weaponry it can maintain. On isolated, low tech worlds, firearms will be more popular than energy weapons which are expensive and require major power sources to recharge. Bullets are cheap. But the military, or the very wealthy might have the power sources, and might want the prestige of the exotic weaponry.
On a corporate scale, worlds and megacorporations produce goods for export to specific markets at lower than their own technological level: For example, a TL 10 world producing TL 5 rifles and ammunition for sale on worlds unable to produce them themselves. (Someone on CotI put it well: Sell a man a rifle, and you can sell him bullets the rest of his life. Build a man the infrastructure to make his own rifle, and you've spent a lot of money.)
But traders at the PC level don't generally have the luxury of factories to produce what they sell. Spec goods are found catch-as-catch can, and as the book 2 system stands, it seems likely that often the goods available for sale weren't produced on the given world at all! (Ever bought computers on a TL3 nonindustrial world? I have....) Indeed, Book 2 trade rules pretty much ignore technology.
Darn it. Do I need to get another copy of Merchant Prince? I sold mine.
Book 2 trade, after all:
All the while, neglecting the disparity between the technological levels of the worlds in question.
There's really two issues with that. One concerns the market for technology; the other concerns the regulation of technology.
It seems to me that where a significant disparity in technology exists - in either direction - the number of people available to buy and utilize it would drop.
Goods produced at a given tech ought generally find a broad market on worlds at the same level. But selling low tech goods to a high tech world will be more difficult: think of a TL 4 - 6 typewriter. Nowadays, TL7, you can scarcely give the things away.
And in the other direction: those high tech machine tools might be coveted by primitive worlds, but can they be powered? Can they be maintained? Do those TL 12 computers have their own power source, and therefore don't need to be hooked up to a donkey treadmill to operate? Or will the buyer have to obtain a separate fusion plant to run his machines?
And what of raw materials, and foodstuffs? Will things produced by a TL 3 world be usable on a TL 7 or 8 world without refinement?
Weapons and vehicles are more clear-cut. Blades we see in use, culturally, at any tech level. Any culture will be happy to obtain whatever weaponry it can maintain. On isolated, low tech worlds, firearms will be more popular than energy weapons which are expensive and require major power sources to recharge. Bullets are cheap. But the military, or the very wealthy might have the power sources, and might want the prestige of the exotic weaponry.
On a corporate scale, worlds and megacorporations produce goods for export to specific markets at lower than their own technological level: For example, a TL 10 world producing TL 5 rifles and ammunition for sale on worlds unable to produce them themselves. (Someone on CotI put it well: Sell a man a rifle, and you can sell him bullets the rest of his life. Build a man the infrastructure to make his own rifle, and you've spent a lot of money.)
But traders at the PC level don't generally have the luxury of factories to produce what they sell. Spec goods are found catch-as-catch can, and as the book 2 system stands, it seems likely that often the goods available for sale weren't produced on the given world at all! (Ever bought computers on a TL3 nonindustrial world? I have....) Indeed, Book 2 trade rules pretty much ignore technology.
Darn it. Do I need to get another copy of Merchant Prince? I sold mine.
Book 2 trade, after all:
- You don't really know the source world of what you're buying, because you don't know who you're buying it from. It could be produced locally, or it could have come in on another merchant ship. So there's no indication of the TL at which it was produced beyond a very broad brush.
- You don't really know who you're selling to. It could be a local buyer, or it could be another merchant bringing the goods on to another world. So there's no indication of the end user's TL.
posted by Jwarrrlry at 8:09 AM
3 Comments:
I would feel your pain but am too busy giggling at your lament at having sold your Merchant Prince.
Fear not though, I am pretty sure once I get my Sector finished I will have to start dealing with things like this...crap.
Okay not giggling anymore.
Seriously though perhaps you should pick up the CT CD, that has all the books and is searchable too, or so I hear.
Notes to self, since I'm reasonably certain nobody's reading this anymore!
I've been experimenting using the exchange rate system that appears in the JTAS (i think I have it in Best of #1?) which pins the exchange to Starport type and tech level, adding a layer of detail to Book 2 trade. Stuff originating at high tech and selling at low is sold at the higher tech's exchange: stuff bought at a lower exchange will sell based at a rate midway between the two exchanges. It results in an emphasis on buying raw resources on lower developed worlds and selling at higher developed ones: finished goods generally go the other way.
Goods bought on a low tech world, but imported from a high tech world, will cost more. Going the other way, they'll cost less.
It still doesn't address the question of the questionable uselfulness of higher tech in lower tech worlds.
I've been reading Jared Diamond's "Collapse" and it's been instructive about low tech societies, isolation and dependence, and has me thinking about what's going on with non industrial worlds, non-agricultural worlds and others in isolation.
What does it mean to have a Tech level 13 world, but with a population under a million? In which basically nothing that makes a high tech society can be made entirely locally? The problem strikes me as similar to that of Norse Greenland: a society desperately trying to maintain a European standard - in fashion, in culture, in foodstuffs - in spite of the destructive impact that had on their marginal environment. While they could have adopted the mode of the Inuit and survived, they insisted on maintaining cattle agriculture and dependence on dwindling trade with Iceland and Norway: everything they valued had to be imported. Wood included (wood especially).
I live in the United States. I can build a guitar: I personally lack the infrastructure to fabricate the parts myself. My guitar necks, the body, the pickups all have to be shipped, and I can assemble the parts myself. My desire to make the guitar and the knowledge of how to are part of my tech level; the connection with producers of the parts is also part of my tech level.
So your tech level 13, non industrial world can maintain itself insofar as it's connected to worlds that can supply what it needs to maintain that standard. What I need to decide is how long that chain can be before the standard cannot be maintained, and what happens then?
According to Diamond, the medieval sea voyage from Norway to Greenland took about a week, and happened only one or two times a year. If it took longer? If it was less frequent? Things would have fallen apart faster.
I'm working up a new sector with all this in mind, and one subsector appears to be made up of several clusters whose primary shipbuilding worlds are only TL 9 or 10; there's no big industrial world of tech higher than 10. There are several high tech worlds of low population: I can't see them operating at their "native" tech unless there's a suitable parent world in a nearby subsector one, perhaps two jumps away. They're isolated from the clusters by J2 and J3 gaps: while J1 vessels can make the run if they are supplied with sufficient fuel, that's going to be rare. So they'll be VERY isolated - unless a parent world can be found capable of shipping suitable drives.
If I continue to use Book 2 "Miller/Chadwick" drives alongside Book 5 "Harshman" drives, then it's possible to devise both trade and paramilitary fleets that can span those gaps without resorting to multiple jumps, and that can supply the higher tech "Ni" worlds to at least the baseline local tech. I'll have to puzzle out what those look like.
I still read it.
And how is the exchange rate play working. I've been slacking on my ATU but the universe is making me deal with it again so this piqued my interest. I'm about to send some Travellers off to look at the commercial aspects of a small area of the Permatic Imperium. Nice to see you posting about such topics again. I love me some crunch. :D
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