Karagin
03/30/14 08:41 PM
70.118.139.48
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How do each of you see interstellar trade in the BT universe?
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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KamikazeJohnson
03/30/14 09:15 PM
50.72.218.68
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Quote:
Karagin writes:
How do each of you see interstellar trade in the BT universe?
I would imagine it would have to be fairly limited as far as consumer goods are concerned...it would be FAR cheaper to manufacture most things domestically than to import them via JumpShip. Food would likely be a major import for major urban worlds, but what would they trade back to the agricultural worlds?
I can see a few high-end goods being manufactured at the more heavily populated/industrialized worlds. BattleMechs, IndustrialMechs, etc. would need to be imported if not deployed by TPTB.
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Karagin
03/30/14 09:39 PM
70.118.139.48
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So no British East Indies like companies or larger merchant guilds?
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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BobTheZombie
03/30/14 09:51 PM
184.63.108.73
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Quote:
Karagin writes:
So no British East Indies like companies or larger merchant guilds?
I wouldn't rule it out... actually that would probably be one of the better ways to go about it
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His_Most_Royal_Highass_Donkey
03/30/14 10:05 PM
172.56.16.177
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In some of the novels it says that key components are transported via jumpship. For example a computers mother board is shipped in but the rest of the computer is built locally.
Why argue if the glass is half full or half empty, when you know someone is going to knock it over and spill it anyways.
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But I got a promotion.
I am now a General *pain*
Yay for promotions!!!
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Karagin
03/30/14 11:47 PM
70.118.139.48
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How much trade is going to be actually going on? Do we see numerous ships landing hourly or daily at the major planets or is it so many per month? Would general cargo be handled via orbiting docking stations and then shuttled down to the planets or are the drop-ports actually 24 hour operations?
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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ghostrider
03/31/14 02:08 AM
66.27.181.1
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depends on the planet itself. The defiance main plant would have a whole lot of dropships coming in constantly. Ores, food, components, maybe even complete weapon systems. The fluff for the hunter says they are not made on world at the plant.
Now some place on the periphery border might see one dropship a month or two.
New colonies would have to import alot of things, while an old colony might have to import a lot as well, since land and resources may well be depleted.
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Frabby
03/31/14 06:33 AM
87.164.155.165
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We've got trading houses in canon such as House Mailai or the entirety of the Jarnfolk culture. We've also got the New Earth Trading Corporation, Isesaki Shipping, Clan Sea Fox/Diamond Shark, and others. So there is a significant amount of trade going on, with the number of available JumpShips forming the bottleneck.
I've always maintained that ComStar runs a significant merchant fleet of JumpShips, on par with any of the great Houses and possibly exceeding their fleets. After all, not only are there dedicated JumpShip/DropShip crew service branches in their greek letter code, they managed to maintain an entire WarShip fleet (even building a number of WarShips and refurbishing many others) which was somehow covered up in their merchant navy business.
My take on things is that ComStar maintains regular "bus lines" of JumpShips throughout the Inner Sphere and hires hardpoints out on these bus lines in a strictly neutral fashion, to the point where even combat DropShips can hitch a ride and be safe from enemy attacks.
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ghostrider
03/31/14 06:15 PM
66.27.181.1
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That seems to have missed their explorer fleet of jumpships. And you know ROM has their ships on top of all that.
It should be very much like the world today. If someone in north america wanted a lambergini, they would have to import it.
Now it is possibly like frabby is saying, they use dummy corps to rent out space on their jumpships. It would make sense on how they can support alot, even with the monopoly on communications.
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Cray
03/31/14 06:24 PM
71.47.122.85
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Quote:
Karagin writes:
How do each of you see interstellar trade in the BT universe?
I got to say my piece in A Time of War, which discusses interstellar trade on pages 366 to 373, "Economics and Industries." (That section goes through a normal planetary USIIR Code: technology, industry, resource and food independence, etc., and discusses the various code levels.) I tried to acknowledge the core BT notion that JumpShips are rare, thus impairing a lot of interstellar transport for all but vital or high-priced goods.
Quote:
KamikazeJohnson writes:
I would imagine it would have to be fairly limited as far as consumer goods are concerned...it would be FAR cheaper to manufacture most things domestically than to import them via JumpShip.
Agree wholeheartedly.
Quote:
Food would likely be a major import for major urban worlds, but what would they trade back to the agricultural worlds?
Food is needed by the megaton daily by "major urban worlds" (1kg per person, assuming the water comes from local sources). That food needs to be generated locally since BT's small DropShips aren't going to deliver millions of tons of food every day for a major urban planet unless the planet is on the receiving end of thousands of DropShips (and hundreds of JumpShips). Since BT makes DropShips and JumpShips relatively rare, that sort of food importing won't happen often.
Such food shipments do happen. It's canon that some major urban planets import a lot of food. But they monopolize a noticeable fraction of the Inner Sphere's JumpShip and DropShip fleet. See p. 366-373 ATOW for details. Most planets dependent on food imports died out in the Succession Wars.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
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Frabby
04/01/14 04:25 AM
87.164.152.126
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Quote:
ghostrider writes:
That seems to have missed their explorer fleet of jumpships. And you know ROM has their ships on top of all that.
It's the other way around. ComStar must have had a massive fleet in operation already when they set up the Explorer Corps, which was pretty much formed out of thin air complete with an all-new JumpShip design that suddenly entered production. For me, that goes to show what a massive fleet and fleet maintenance infrastructure were in place already.
Also, the ComStar merchant fleet (sailing under ComStar colors, thus treated as neutral everywhere, instead of some front firm that might invite attacks) nicely answers a lot of questions about FASAnomics. Especially why merc units or novel protagonists never seem to have a problem getting from A to B even without having submitted a travel plan months in advance. Or why stealing a DropShip is frequently enough to guarantee that somebody will make it off a hostile planet alive. What JumpShips except ComStar could he hope to ride on?
Or who operates all those Monoliths (besides the fifty or so operated by the successor states, invariably by their armies)?
Last but not least, I don't know how much money ComStar makes off HPG communication but they continue for quite some time after the blackout. Again, them being a large shipping and technology powerhouse would go a long way to explain their economic endurance.
I think we agree that ComStar always had JumpShips. The question is, how many, and for what purposes did they use them? My argument is that their fleet was huge, and thus way too large for ComStar not to become a mainstay of interstellar traffic. ROM may have used front firms, but I reckon the largest part of that fleet flew ComStar colors straight.
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ghostrider
04/01/14 05:00 AM
66.27.181.1
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the other way around? The explorer fleet is comstar, as well as rom being comstars intellegience agency.
Now jumpships being in system seems to happen alot for some systems. They are traders routes. Not everytime someone runs into a dropship or jumpship do they pirate it. Most of the stories and scenario packs seem to have you 'pirate' it for a specific amount of time, then release it. Very few commercial ships are taken forever. Combat or house owned is another story.
I can see come companies being well connected enough to run on both sides of a border, just because they are the main business in the area. I know davion would not rely on comstar during the fourth succession war, especially after the interdict. They did use commercial ships to move troops around. Yes all side confiscated ships, but they returned them after the war was over.
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