Thanks to the person who replied to my last post; I would be more specific,
but my mailer ate the message. I agree with what you said. I would generalize
it as "on high tech worlds, manufacturing has many more capabilities, but these
add complexity and demnad, therefore costs to use."
Last time, I wrote about a few theories I had on why I thought the traveller
technology setup is a bit messed up. I also proposed a fix for the strange
lack of change in the available equipment at any given tech level. I would
like to expand on that in terms of a generic credit rating system.
Mega Traveller claims that a person spends 250cr/month per level of social
standing, regardless of where they are from. I do not agree with this due to
the obvious holes in it. F;oirst off, this means that a Duke spends only about
15 times what a social standing of 1 does. Second, a duke from Regina would
seem to have a richer lifestyle than one from elsewhere. I have started to fix
this in the following way.
First off, define a base per capita GNP. Striker claims that 2000 cr per TL
above 4 is good, thus a TL 15 person has a base GNP of 22000 cr. I personally
woulkd modify this like so:
TL | base GNP
0 100
1 250
2 500
3 1000
4 2000
5 3000
6 4000
7 6000
...
15 22000
This is then modified the trade classes of the world, ranging from 0.8 for
non-agricultural and non-industrial worlds to about 1.4 or 1.5 for a rich
world. This seems reasonable to me, in that the per capita GNP of world with a
tech level below 4 is almost nonexistent compared to that produced at higher
tech levels. Also, the amount of cash flowing through someone's hands when
they are on a rich world will be much higher than otherwise, while a poor world
will tend to have less credit flowing through any one person's hands.
Now, this requires a calculation of how much each social class spends. Here
I could use some help. The other night, I figured out that the average person
gains +0.5 social standing through a typical run through the services. Because
the Navy will tend to boost social standing by a significant amount, while the
pirates will attenuate it, I assumed the following distributions.
After typical service, 24% of the population has SS drop by 1
35% does not change
35% raises by 1
10% raises by 2
1% raises by 3
These are rough numbers; I intend to run a quick simulation to get a more
rtealistic distribution. Anyone with the mustering out tables programmed into
a computer could do me a BIG favor by running a bunch of samples and mailing me
the results.
One then applies this to the normal distribution of stats to get a *real*
spectrum of social standings. From the reading I have done of the dugest group
stuff, there should be a bias towards the low level nobility due to the
Imperial requirement that all civil servants be part of the peerage.
Now, once this is done, I will make an income distribution. I am thinking
of having the lowest social classes live on about a third of the per capita
GNP, while the very highest live on about twenty or thirty times that. I have
arbitrarily decided that the per capita GNP should be earned by social
standings of around 10, mostly because those above them are so profligate in
thier spending that they bias the curve upwards. Suggestions?
Finally, I am hoping to set some sort of "propensity to consume." I am not
sure if this should be related to government type, or just a DM set thing. I
am thinking of a range of 60-100% of production is immediately burned in the
society. This suddenly becomes of interest to a character, as I will expect
them to keep this standard up when they are hired by a shipping company as
crew. I postulate that there is an incredible desire on the part of most
people to get into space, but a great lack of qualified people who can actually
get those jobs, thus the salaries for space workers are generally much, much
higher than those for a ground worker.
Thus, social standing will affect a characters income and spending habits
over a range of two orders of magnitude, also depending on what planet they
come from and the conditions they grew up under. These then may be modified
as needed to produce a real variety of standards of living, as well as a quick
comparison between an adventurer's wealth and the typical planet denezin.
Anyone see any serious flaws? Anything that might make this a bit easier to
compute?
With any luck, I should be able to get this done by semester's end. Those
pesky finals may get in the way...
Scott Ellsworth
[email removed]
[email removed]