GT:ISW KARL MARX HEAVY TRADER VARIANTS?

[PoorMerchant]

The definition of greed defaults as a vice.

I quite agree (see Timothy 6:10 from the King James Bible is probably the stand out on that one:

For the love of money is the root of all evil

Often misquoted as "money is the root of all evil".

And let's be honest - greed in it's everyday form is one of those things that is hard to define but we all think we know it when we see it. We've all seen instances where someone behaves in a manner we perceive as "unfair" and "greedy" towards another.

But my Gordon Gekko quotation probably sums up the justification for capitalism as an economic system better than anything else I can think of off the top of my head. And the attitude expressed in that paragraph probably kicked off more anti-capitalist protesters than anything else...(As an aside, I recommend you see this film - it is a perfect example of the zeitgeist of the late 80's and was fairly prescient about some of the causes of the current economic mess we're all in - and it's a bloody good film too!).

Greed is defined as "excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves." Now to me, this implies that there is a zero sum game going on and that my possessing more means someone else will possess less. But what if the striving of large numbers of people for more than they "need or deserve" leads to the cake getting bigger? And who the hell is keeping score anyway? My definition of "enough" might be wildly different to yours - and who is to say which is "correct"?

So I don't necessarily see "greed" as a pejorative term and framed in that narrow definition I'm not sure that "greed" works as a concept for the reasons given above. But I have to say I broadly agree with Gordon Gekko - I probably dis-agree with lots of other things he says in the Teldar speech, but not that.

So poor people migrating are considered greedy? I dont think the Gold Rush people were in a wonderful socio-economic position when hey went to California for gold. I can say the same about those farmers in australia, i don't think they had the same amount of land left behind in their homeland.

See above - you're casting aspersions based upon a narrow definition. I recommend you read "The Age of Gold" by H.W. Brands about the 49'ers - they came from all walks of life, countries, and socio-economic groups. The only thing they had in common was that they were greedy (and probably "greedy" as defined by both Webster's dictionary and Gordon Gekko).

As for the early settlers in Australia a significant proportion were sentenced to transportation there (after the American revolution closed that destination for them off to the British government) - the biggest proportion of the prisoners on the early fleets came from London and had been convicted of theft or housebreaking so they had had no land prior to their arrival in Australia. Funnily enough the biggest spur to the ending of transportation in 1868 was the complaints of "free settlers" (ie non-convicts) moaning about convicts being sent to their community - the number of "free settlers" had swelled hugely after 1850. The reason??? Another goldrush.

Just to show how colonies can "bloom" over time - very roughly 25% of the current Australian population is believed to be descended from convicts. The current population of Australia is about 20 million. Total number of convicts sent from the UK to Australia between 1788 and 1868 - 160,000. Although, to be frank, I'm not sure how widely they are defining "descended" in that estimate. But it is interesting stuff - lots of ideas ripe for mining.

[nik1979]

I see we have a difference in definitions, which completely understandable and reading your explanation of greed, the "good" version greed, it sounds like how I define an active pursuit of self interest.

Would you remember the socio economic break down of the 49ers? What were they majority composed and what was the quality of life in 1848? Sorry I'm not into reading a whole book, and I'm don't need you to read any of the same material I've read to get my conclusions. I checked the wikipedia entry an it was sparse.

My POV comes from the very economic nature of the Philippines being its own diaspora. we are a country that only has 3.6M taxable base while having 9M Oversease Contract workers. 2/3rds of Filipinos leave for jobs overseas just to survive, there was a Wikileak telegraph that said without that population exodus we would have civil war and incredible amounts of unrest. Leaving to escape crushing poverty is something of an over-riding theme over here. Note that as a poor country the PH cannot protect its own people. That is why the motives to leave for a better life over here is very clear and ever present.

I guess you can say all those Indian, Chinese and Filipinos are greedy going to developed nations for work.

[PoorMerchant]

Would you remember the socio economic break down of the 49ers? What were they majority composed and what was the quality of life in 1848? Sorry I'm not into reading a whole book, and I'm don't need you to read any of the same material I've read to get my conclusions. I checked the wikipedia entry an it was sparse.

I don't think there was anyone there interested in doing a survey - everyone had headed for the hills to search for gold. Ships were stuck in San Francisco harbour for because the crewmen had jumped ship to go look for gold.

The population of the US at the time was about 17M. About one person in fifty took off for a place that, at the time, was about as far away from anywhere as you could get - it was one of the places you went to get away from the rest of the world. None of the people who went understood how hard it was going to be to get there. Sutter (the man whose land was the scene of the original strike) was Swiss and had originally gone to California to escape his wife and debtors and make a new life for himself.

Right now I'm looking for an appropriate planet for my little "consortium" to colonise - and it is proving surprisingly difficult.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by nik1979

I guess you can say all those Indian, Chinese and Filipinos are greedy going to developed nations for work.

Yup. They sure are.

My folks were greedy too....we smacked the crap out of our neighbors and took their stuff.

It seems to be a human thing. Go figure.

[nik1979]

Well, i recommend Isomage's page. he has a Planet generator with a hexmap. Donjon also has a useful traveller generator.

What about your colony is hard to make?

My method is imagining walking through the steps, starting with the "Biz plan". I imagine you are going to need a working budget and a system of building a colony. Before any company is gonna pay a dime, there have to be some certainties: who is your market, what are you offering, what are the projected revenue etc of this colony.

Subsidizing an "enterprise" for more than a year without at least an indirect form of ROI is very unlikely and realistic.

[PoorMerchant]

What about your colony is hard to make?

My method is imagining walking through the steps, starting with the "Biz plan". I imagine you are going to need a working budget and a system of building a colony. Before any company is gonna pay a dime, there have to be some certainties: who is your market, what are you offering, what are the projected revenue etc of this colony.

Subsidizing an "enterprise" for more than a year without at least an indirect form of ROI is very unlikely and realistic.

Nik - the process isn't the problem. The problem is that the stellar data in Rim of Fire conflicts with both the data in Rim of Fire and ISW for the planets. Essentially, there are two many red dwarf suns within the two subsectors that I'm looking at - and red dwarves do not produce "garden" worlds.

As Hans put it so succinctly:

The problem is that the characteristics of the world was rolled up separately, then GDW later decided to determine the star types of each system. They rolled them up according to the stellar distribution that was known at the time without considering that some of these worlds were pre-selected to be in the life zones of stars that allowed them to be reasonably Earth-like.

You can either make it a crummy world with a twilight zone that is livable orbiting the canonical star or you can make it a garden world orbiting an F V or G V or K V star.

So right now, I'm leaning towards a garden world orbiting something other than a red dwarf. I don't want it to be easy - but I don't want it to be some ****ty hell-hole that is in permanent semi-darkness because the sun is so old and pale.

[nik1979]

Ok so you are going to change the star? I can't remember if ISW describes the kind of star in the System Data. I guess what ISW can use is a chart of how to decide on the other aspects of the systems based on the pregenerated content.

Your problem is one that I am also experiencing, but I need Gurps Space to fix it and maybe about 10-12 hours (on top of the ISW122's system content creation rules) of planning and creating a spreadsheet and transcribing the tables. Ideally after the spreadsheet of 10-12 hours the process takes a few minutes as long as a create a easy process, and mark the cells out in comments. (Currently overloaded with RL work, wish I can afford to have someone else do this since the instructions are pretty easy to dish out). It would be really nice if I got this done by someone who can program a macro to make it really easy (reseting the variables to 0, and exporting a data table in GURPS statblock format).

the quickest solutions is just to go with the free generators :P Although thats kinda hack job, and doesn't create a repeatable and elegant solution for other GMs in the future.

[PoorMerchant]

Ok so you are going to change the star? I can't remember if ISW describes the kind of star in the System Data. I guess what ISW can use is a chart of how to decide on the other aspects of the systems based on the pregenerated content.

Your problem is one that I am also experiencing, but I need Gurps Space to fix it and maybe about 10-12 hours (on top of the ISW122's system content creation rules) of planning and creating a spreadsheet and transcribing the tables. Ideally after the spreadsheet of 10-12 hours the process takes a few minutes as long as a create a easy process, and mark the cells out in comments. (Currently overloaded with RL work, wish I can afford to have someone else do this since the instructions are pretty easy to dish out). It would be really nice if I got this done by someone who can program a macro to make it really easy (reseting the variables to 0, and exporting a data table in GURPS statblock format).

the quickest solutions is just to go with the free generators :P Although thats kinda hack job, and doesn't create a repeatable and elegant solution for other GMs in the future.

I found this - http://wabcag.wikidot.com/gurps-ss-generator which allows me to specify some aspects of the planet and calculates the rest. So far it seems to work pretty well. The maker "Brett Evil" posts on the forum I believe.

So my next step is to find a planet that hasn't been written up, which will leave me a clear field from the Canon Police. Once I've picked the planet, I'll draft the Colonial Bureau Agreement and think about the companies that will make up the consortium (I've decided that this will be a consortium of "small" companies but have not yet decided how small).

[nik1979]

Originally Posted by PoorMerchant

I found this - http://wabcag.wikidot.com/gurps-ss-generator which allows me to specify some aspects of the planet and calculates the rest. So far it seems to work pretty well. The maker "Brett Evil" posts on the forum I believe.

So my next step is to find a planet that hasn't been written up, which will leave me a clear field from the Canon Police. Once I've picked the planet, I'll draft the Colonial Bureau Agreement and think about the companies that will make up the consortium (I've decided that this will be a consortium of "small" companies but have not yet decided how small).

Thats great and thanks for the link.
Well you can start with what the rules allow as a Patron or Organizations. GURPS City Stats come to mind a potential tool also. GDP per Capita is a great starting point IMO, particularly the part of that equation that has to do with Assets and Infra. I found it was useful to workback the values and assume $0.5M for 1dton of 5stons of supplies to get the Infra Volume and Mass.

Double the density and the quadruple cost for heavy industrial or precision equipment, the density I suggest is for GVC kit of Open Ecology light industrial machinery and modular parts. But those IMTU assumptions. Half the density and cost for various consumable supplies.

IMTU I use the GVC kit assumption, and I use the Workshop metrics and expounded it into those assumptions. a Workshop has one worker and can maintain 400dtons ship or the equivalent of 2,000 stons or TL10 tech. I just used the maintenance costs for ships to derive supplies and replacement for the workshops. So basically a workshop and specialized engineer can be use to maintain X amount of infra based on Stons of equipment.

Sorry for off loading my current system, there is not so much toolset for creating a colony and since ships are already expresses the cost of power, lifesupport, habitation, specialist modules, supplies, and maintenance of the TL it was only reasonable to work back those values and levels of efficiency to create the infrastructure make up of ISW. Drawing from the pricing creates an internally consistent model for the setting.

[PoorMerchant]

Well, after a couple of days looking at various candidates and I'm split between:

Luzon (0231 / Thalassa, later Jardin) a small, cold, low gravity dirtball. Not an appealing place - but it does have the advantage of being only J2 away from two Vilani worlds in the neighbouring Magyar subsector (so I can add some trade possibilities or at least convincingly have Luzon a roundabout route into Vilani space). I'm not too sure just what this world could produce - so I can see it being a struggling colony (which might be interesting in itself).

Cicero (0938 / Capella) An asteroid belt off any J2 route - the only way in is via what later becomes the interdicted world of Haddad (1137 / Capella). Looking at this one my first thought that a prison in a large asteroid might be a possibility - somewhere to ship anyone who seriously objected to the Terran Confederation government. Alternatively, it could be a mining operation - a large asteroid "beehive habitat" producing food, entertainment, warehousing and basic repairs for the mining ships actually doing the work in the belt. This would give traders a reason to come there - deliver fresh colonists on the way out, haul back refined metals or volatiles on the way in.

I thought the Colonial Bureau could justify offering two crumby worlds by saying "well, the good worlds are going to the big companies - if you want to colonise somewhere these are your options."