On 1/3/2019 8:55 PM, Greg Nokes wrote:
> I’d love for some non-economic reason for a small ship/CT77 universe.
> But at the scale of the imperium I’m not sure it really makes sense.
>
> Even if you hand-wave jump drive as the limiter it makes attacking
> impossible, as I will just build a huge station or monitor, and your
> small ship attack force will die a quick death.
>
> So convince me! :)
>

Other than certain luxury items and unique foodstuffs, other than
technologically advanced goods, why would there be trade in physical
goods?  This thought came to me when I was looking at the videos that
Spacedock did to support their new serialized animated/voice series, The
Sojourn.  They did several videos (links to the videos below) where they
discuss how a cluster wide famine and depleted resources are causing
severe issues.  This is for a "world" where everyone was on one world
300 years ago and now there are close to two dozen settled systems and
resources are "depleted".  Not sure how much I agree with that, but...as
I was watching the videos I started to think about the immense amount of
materials in one solar system and how all it takes is the ability to
reach them to be able to recover them.

Then, since being able to build large space structures is doable, the
next question was why don't they move to agricultural stations using
hydro- and aeroponics?

Now, dragging this back to Traveller and trade, it comes back to my
original question; just how much would be moved between systems?

All we get in the books (granted, my detailed reading ended with MT, so
they may have rectified this in a later edition) is "small package"
cargo, the stuff you'd expect a gypsy or independent trucker to try and
contract to carry here in the States.  How much do the big companies carry?

--
Kurt Feltenberger
xxxxxx@thepaw.org/xxxxxx@yahoo.com
“Before today, I was scared to live, after today, I'm scared I'm not living enough." - Me