I think you may have touched upon the reason (secret?) why Trav has managed to endure well enough to inspire the sort of recent exchanges.
(Heck, in the past, a gigantic flamewar broke out while debating the issue of 'piracy' in the TU. A 'peace treaty' of sorts was finally required to settle thing down)
The TU's all-encompassing nature is what I believe inspires us.
It truly has something for everyone.
From: Catherine Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
Cc: Tim <xxxxxx@little-possums.net>
Sent: Tuesday, January 8, 2019 1:39 PM
Subject: Re: [TML] Economics [was] J3
The whole Traveller background falls apart if you examine it too closely. The physics get you perpetual motion machines and causality violations, the post-scarcity economy implied by limitless fusion power and easy access to a galaxy full of raw materials is strangely absent, wars are unaccountably never fought with near-c rocks, and so on and on. Traveller is 20th-century Earth awkwardly transposed into a 1950s-era hard SF matrix, with a few bits and pieces from even older historical eras -- the naval ages of sail and steam, the British and Roman Empires, and so forth -- tossed in without much thought to how they all fit together.
Traveller is fun. It has immense scope for both adventure and world-building. But in the latter area, you have to recognize that there are limits beyond which all attempts at logic and consistency are doomed to failure.
On Sat, Jan 5, 2019 at 3:56 PM Evyn MacDude <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 10:36 PM Tim <xxxxxx@little-possums.net> wrote:
As I stated in a previous post, I believe this should be a consequence
of Traveller technology. But according to canonical price lists and
wages, it isn't. Despite the advanced technology allowing automation
and nearly free energy, basic material goods are still just as
expensive as on today's Earth, or in some cases even more so.Most of Traveller economics modeling suffers from the Guess-estimate process. In that prices and costs were set arbitrarily. At best said numbers chosen to facilitate game play. I have found that ship prices and the Trade rules are overpriced by about a order of magnitude.Honestly the specific numbers often get in the way of how things like trade routes are laid out. In that the amount money involved in in trade is less important than the sizes of the populations involved in trade. Also consider that Tech Level more defines what sorts of products a world is trading rather than quantity just as Star Port class defines the sorts of trade the world is engaged in through the form of what sorts of ships can call at that port.Now when we get to Energy, the question isn't the Amount of available energy, more the question is do you have the social infrastructure to support the benefits that the abundance of energy provide? The case of the Tomato, energy isn't the limiting factor there, for production, but the skill of the farmer and processor of the fruit control the cost.--Evyn-----
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