[hal]

Regards to "filler" materials being sold, etc - and the fact that goods aren't always going to be uniform, I'd have to agree with that assessment Swordtart.

MERCHANT PRINCE attempted to get away from the Classic Traveller Trade system with respect to having generic cargo worth a given amount, without specifying what that generic cargo may have been. But where MERCHANT PRINCE gained over the original black book #2 with respect to trade, it lost ground in having speculative goods that were not realistically valued for the goods they carried.

As originally demonstrated with the M1 Garand example, this would be a simple "Firearm(Rifle) at Traveller Tech 5 most likely - results in something that retail value is around 220 credits. Multiply this value by 600 per dton, and the value at retail value is 132,000 credits. Contrast this with 30,000 per dton in Book 2. If we use MERCHANT PRINCE for the system for trade, the goods would start at 4000 credits per dton, lose 1,000 credits if an industrial world, gain 1,000 credits for a class C starport, and gain an additional +600 credits if it were a TL 6 world. Final cost/value of the goods? 4,600 credits.

As for FAR TRADER - I wrote a rough draft program to generate freight lots at any given world, and also generated all of the available freight between trade partner worlds and based upon BTN values. The problem wasn't that it was impossible to code or anything. It meant that at high WTN worlds, not being able to fill your cargo hold with freight to nearly 100% capacity was exceedingly difficult. Finding freight based on its "difficulty to handle" (ie fragile, life creatures, dangerous chemicals etc) became almost insignificant if one had sufficiently large amounts of freight lots to choose from.

And get this...

If I had to go from World A to B to C to D to E - my profit margins were better if I chose to go to a port that was further away than closer up. Why?

Suppose my freight contracts from A to E were not sufficient to fill my hold to more than say, 60%. But since I had to go to world B as well as C and D in order to reach E - I could pick up freight for world B, C, and D. If I were lucky, when I got to B, there might be freight available for worlds C and D. When I got to C, there would hopefully be freight to world E.

But that wasn't the really odd part as far as how much FAR TRADER changed my perception of trade in the GURPS TRAVELLER universe...

A merchant makes more money and profit by travelling between worlds that are further apart than are closer together in that he's always better off travelling at least five jumps worth of travel distance away. Why? Freight is paid on a per parsec basis. So you get paid the same whether you make 5 single jumps for 5 separate freight cargo lots, or travel 5 jumps worth with a single cargo lot.

Simply jump to the gas giant at your hopping points, refuel via wilderness refueling - and spend ZERO time in port or anything else. No port fees, no refueling fees, and because you're not spending any down time in port - no delays in getting freight off your ship or aboard your ship . No problems with having to spend time in the main world's normal space getting to and from the 100 diameter limit (although the same issue remains in that you spend a bit more time dealing with 100 diameters for gas giants instead). The point is - you spend 7 days in jump space, 1 day in normal space, and jump 4 times to reach your destination that is five jump units away (ie 5 Jump-1 distances for a Jump 1 ship, 5 jump-2 distances for a jump-2 ship etc.)

32 days in space for an income equal to what you'd normally make in your normal jumps - but without the wasted time looking for new freight to load up, new freight contracts to negotiate, etc.

That approach also takes away many chances of adventure - doesn't it. :(