Brainstorming! What cargo in Vega Trek?

Discuss the Star Trek mod(s) for the Vega Strike Engine

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esgaroth
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Brainstorming! What cargo in Vega Trek?

Post by esgaroth »

What are the cargo types that should be in Vega Trek ?
I guess there are no big problems with food and liquor as there is enough blood wine support in the klingon empire (or Aldebaran Whiskey, Cardassian Canard, Romulan Ale, other suggestions ?), but somehow I cannot imagine starfleet transporting granite or limestone blocks through space.... Also the replicator technology changes the need for a lot of things. What does the community think are the most important trade objects in the Star Trek universe ?
I`ll post my first suggestions in the next days, but maybe someone already has some idea what he would miss. And, please, no tribbles....
Best wishes,
Alex
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Post by Guest »

Perhaps Dilythium mines on planets and asteroids. You cannot have a Star Trek universe without Dilythium crystals. :D
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Post by Guest »

Almost forgot, cannot forget the Romulan Ale either! ;)
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Post by Nevita »

Yes, the Star Trek universe has replicators. But, I can recall any number of episodes of TNG where they were delievering medical supplies and other things. This tells me that some things are hard to replicate, so some things can only be replicated at colonies and bases with more advanced "industrial" replicators.

Mind you, you still have to transport said goods, so I would say that there is plenty of room in the Star Trek universe for cargo missions.
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Post by Guest »

Things replicators can't make:
Living Biologicals (diplomats, slaves, colonists, livestock, expirments)
advanced research equipment
raw sensitive data (courier service)
Dithium/Trilithium
Corbomite :roll:
historical artifacts

If set in TOS time, they only had food dispensers, and they weren't good, so even transporting regular food to a space station or ship would be good business.
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Post by Nevita »

To the above list, I would add:

Rare medical supplies, like biomimetic gel
Matter/Antimatter for reactors
Latinum (since the Ferengi drool over it, I assume it can't be replicated) :wink:

You get the idea. When I get some more time, I'll go through the encyclopedia to get some more.
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Post by pincushionman »

Replicating vs. transport is, as is any choice of methods, a trade-off between the cost of replicating and the benefits of it. I imagine replication is a high-energy process (although I am not a trekkie and don't pay much attention except for general stuff, so I could be wrong), but the benefits provided are in dense storage, wide variety of products, and waste disposal. On an extended-endurance ship, waste disposal and material storage are often high-importance items, and any methods to control them, no matter how energy-intensive, are worth their weight in gold. Now, one can imagine that planetside, where storage and infrastructure concerns are far more easily dealt with, standard transported products could be obtained far more cheaply than demand-replicated items.

Which is a long-winded maner of saying there is probably a market for all kinds of transported goods, even with the advent of replicator technology. You may even want to say there is, even if there isn't. Otherwise it may be tough to justify cargo transport in your mod.

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Post by Nevita »

I imagine replication is a high-energy process (although I am not a trekkie and don't pay much attention except for general stuff, so I could be wrong)
Quite right. The old ST tech manual said that you couldn't just push a button and replicate a starship because of the associated energy cost.
Which is a long-winded maner of saying there is probably a market for all kinds of transported goods, even with the advent of replicator technology.
Like, for instance, planets without replicator technology.
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Post by peteyg »

In my view, there seems to be four categories of goods (not saying we should use these for the actual game, though).

-Unique items, like original art, historical artifacts, gourmet food ingredients. They COULD be replicated... but then they would lose their significance. These are demanded all over, but are biggest on planets with widespread replicator usage (like Earth).

-Unreplicable goods; like phasers, complex computer systems, latinum, fragile medical goods, or any other item or piece of equipment that just cannot be replicated.

-Complex replicable goods; things that CAN be replicated, but for whatever reason are cheaper energy-wise to just manufacture in bulk.

-Simple replicable goods; oatmeal, tricorders, uniforms, etc. Stuff that you can get out of any public replicator on Earth, but might be hard to come by out on the frontier.

Here's an interesting site someone who plays Star Trek RPGs did up, with canon info, and some of his own speculations: http://www.geocities.com/willbswift/costchart2.html
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Post by peteyg »

Tribbles.

We could write a Python script that will cause any tribbles in the player's cargo hold to multiply, while eating any food in the cargo hold. If the player sells more than 10 tribbles at a base, the base will refuse to buy any more. If the player somehow gets rid of them all... the script will cause them to pop back up at random (one of your crew kept one, they were too cute to get rid of), and start the process over again.

This could be a quest-only cargo item... someone hires your ship to take his grain and some exotic lifeforms from point A to point B, and you get stuck with them! Hehe, this would be hilarious.
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Post by hellcatv »

hahaha
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http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/
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Post by esgaroth »

OK, here`s the first draft of what I`ve got so far. With food and so on, I guess the real conoisseur will prefer the original hand-made stuff even in the 24th century (and I cannot imagine the 24th century romeo trying to impress his juliet with something like "darling, i`ve just replicated a bottle of champagne..." javascript:emoticon(':lol:')).
Medical supplies have been mentioned, so I`ve added what I`ve found so far, as well as some technical stuff.
I would also think that bulky raw material like metals etc. are more easily mined than replicated, so that they could also be available.
More suggestions ?


Natural Products/Food:
Klingon Gagh

Natural Products/Liquor:
French Champagne
Scotch Whiskey
Aldebaran Whisky
Klingon Blood Wine
Romulan Ale
Aldorian Ale

Contraband:
Bio-neural gelpacks
Bio-neural fibers
Gelpack processors

Computer Equipment:
Isolinear optical chips
Duotronic drivers
Optical nanoprocessors
Reflex-quintronic systems
Adaptive interface link
Cytherian processor enhancers

Medical equipment:
Medical tricorder
Biomimetic gel
Acinolyathine
Benzocyatizine
Cordrazine
Corophizine
Medical emergency hologram

Valuable natural resources:
Dilithium Crystals
Trilithium Crystals
Monocrystal Cortenum
Polysilicate Verterium
Latinum

Technobabble:
Matter/Antimatter Reactors
Phasers
Tricorders
Translators ?

Artefacts:
Borg biocybernetic neural set

Art/Valuables
Bajoran Earrings
Bolian Crystals
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Post by Guest »

Add an item to the tech catagory:

The famous M-5 computer from TOS. ;)

While the developers are busy building the ST universe, perhaps add the "energy ribbon" from "Generations", the "Nomad" probe from TOS, and if anyone remembers and/or has played the game "Final Unity", add the Chodak Unity Device, along with the Chodak race and their unique compliment of ships and probes.
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Post by peteyg »

The more I think about it, the more a 4-category system seems to make sense.
Type I - Replicable items.
Type II - Items cheaper to manufacture.
Type III - Items produced without replicators to maintain sentimental value.
Type IV - Non-replicable items.

The two funnest categories will be III and IV, I think. But we'll have to fill out I and II decently as well.

One of the current limitations of the Vega Strike economy is that we can only base supply/demand on specific categories of goods, and not on individual goods. This means that we will probably want to have a Human, Klingon, Vulcan, Romulan, Cardassian, etc. subcategories for items like Food or Art.

So an example from the structure might look like this:

Type III (perhaps someone can come up with nice two-three word phrases to represent these categories?)
Anyways...

Code: Select all

Type III
     -Food
           -Human
                -Spices
                -Seafood
                -Fresh_Produce
                -etc
           -Klingon
                -Gagh
                -Serpent_Worms
                -Rokeg_Blood_Pie
           -etc
     -Art
           -Human
                -Contemporary_Paintings
                -Ancient_Sculptures
                -blah
           -Klingon
                -Qkckaqj' candles (.... or whatever the Klingons use for art)
           -etc
     -Alcohol
           -Human
                -Scotch
                -Whiskey
                -etc
           -Klingon
                -Bloodwine
                -Bloodwine
                -Bloodwine
           -etc
You get the idea.

Comments?
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Post by Guest »

On a pre-warp planet, would Type I and Type III foods both be considered "food" or would replicable items just get a huge boost to value?

And what are you using for money? I thought the Federation had evolved past the aquisition of material goods... Replicator Energy Credits?
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Post by peteyg »

Well, you can currently (and likely in any future version of the economy) give base types unique supply/demand settings for each distinct category or subcategory. So, for undeveloped worlds where the people are struggling to make ends meet, there would be a high demand for food of any kind. Type III food MIGHT be a tad bit more spendy, but Type I and Type III food would be roughly the same. People just wouldn't care, because they are busy trying to survive. This would be a foolish thing for a merchant to do, however, since the Type III food is probably going to be a heck of a lot more expensive to purchase.

On developed worlds, however, Type I food would likely be shunned, because people would be all "hey wait, I can just get that from a replicator for free!", but they would absolutely prize Type III food.

There should be some kind of sliding scale of development, however. There are a lot of situations in between Bajor (when things sucked) and Earth. This would most likely be factored into the supply/demand settings, and some effort should be made to make the development level of each world available to players so that they can make informed tarde decisions.


What the heck are we going to do about currency, though? Money is a dirty word in the Federation. People don't need it for day-to-day living. People work to better themselves, and all of humanity.

But then again, how does the Federation distinguish between the inherent value of different items? How does it measure how productive people or planets are being?

In my opinion, it is a generally good idea to avoid money when talking about the Federation economy, and how Federation citizens interact economically with the rest of the galaxy. However, there must be some sort of explanation! Here is mine:

Energy is so free and cheap in the Federation that people don't need to worry about food, clothes, or places to live. This does not mean that there is no money, just that the supply is so much bigger and greater than demand, that people who own stores or eating establishments don't worry about the cost of giving away goods or services. What would it buy if they could? It's the same idea as if you just won the lottery; you wouldn't even think about the money it costs to take your pals out to celebrate. People just don't think about the money, because they don't need to.

When you start to talk about things like buying an old and fancy piece of property, or a merchant starship, or something of that nature, then people probably have some sort of psuedo-credit account. The cost of food, clothing, even normal property ownership over the course of a lifetime is only a fraction of a percentage of a person's actual account (because replicated stuff is cheap), so it's not even figured in.

This is where things get kind of hairy, because people will always want things that are just on the edge of their reach economically. In Star Trek, these are few and far-between, but they do pop up on occaision, so people must dip into funds allocated to them by the Federation, or whatever local planetary government. It doesn't happen a lot, but the mechanism must be present to have a way to deal with edge cases like this. Nobody really talks about it though, because money is a dirty word (in the Federation).

Now, when you talk about Federation people interacting with the rest of the galaxy, that's where things get interesting! For Federation merchants, they are initially attracted to the profession for the adventure, and the necessary part they play in Federation life. They apply for and get a loan/grant from the Federation for a ship, and recieve funding to pay their expenses. They use spare 'credits' to swap for other currencies, like gold-pressed latinum, and trade outside the Federation. Their motivation isn't so much profit (though they do want to be successful), it is doing a good job, taking goods from where they aren't needed to where they are, and experiencing adventure in the wilds of space.

Starfleet officers who go on shore leave on a planet with a primitive money-based economy are probably given some sort of account loaded with the local currency. The Federation is frickin' rich, so they can easily afford to give their people access to some generous funds. Personal restraint on the part of the Federation folks (they are better people than us, after all) keeps them from buying anything that would put the Federation in economic jeopardy.

In Vega Trek, the 'credits' you have are going to be Federation Standard Credits, which are a very stable and solid curerncy (much like the Federation itself). Any transactions in Gold Pressed Latinum will be automatically converted to Federation Standard Credits automagically!
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Post by Nevita »

About the cargo system, I like, I like.

We don't want to restrict ourselves to products from just the major races (human, Klingon, etc.). For instance, Ferengi beetle snuff comes to mind (I don't know why, just go with it :wink: ). Or even more exotic things that I can't think off right now.

As for the Federation economy, I have to agree. Since Starfleet officers seem to have access to latinum even though they apparently don't get paid, tells me that the Federation must allocate resources from its budget to deal with foreign governments that haven't abandoned money. They couldn't really trade with other races, otherwise.

Either way, we can safely have our game Federation, Fed merchants, and Starfleet having money and not worry about not respecting the universe.
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Post by peteyg »

You're totally right, Nevita. Having subcategories for each major species really sets off my lameness alarm... but I don't see any good way to restrict various worlds to different sets of cargo.

Perhaps we could change the categories around.

Code: Select all

Type III
     -Human
          -Food
          -Art
          -Alcohol
     -Romulan
          -Food
          -Blah
     -Vulcan
          -Etc.
     -Miscellaneous
          -Etc.
Would that be a better way to do it? Either way we are going to have a lot of different categories... but this way might make it easier on merchant players who are dealing with the items of a specific species/empire.
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Post by esgaroth »

I dont think the number of categories will be a major problem. Organizing around the major species will be the easiest way to ensure the necessary cargo restrictions. Dont know enough about the way vegastrike manages this to comment more on this.
BTW, type 3 and 4 could easily be combined, because for every practical purpose they are identical (the reason why they are not replicated is irrelevant for trade). Type 2 is not so difficult, too, because most metal resources etc. belong to this group, and I still think that mining some kilotons of iron is cheaper than replicating it. Type 1 will be the real problem, but on the other hand we dont need to produce a complete economy. Maybe the whole emergency stuff (emergency rations, water supply in decent amounts, repair kits etc.) may belong to this category, because when you need it its likely that the replicators may be damaged......
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Post by Guest »

Another interesting thought:
Type III items might need to be distinct from Type IV items in that they both _can_ go through a transporter beam, but Type III items should never be transported, as some people might refuse purchase of them. Maybe some Type IV items can't be transported, making a Type V class?

No! Don't Transport the Corbomite!
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Post by Nevita »

I don't know if non-transporterable (is that even a word?) is a good idea, since it would add quite a bit of complexity. What's the transporter range (that's fairly easy), how do you select what cargo you want to transport from the cockpit (a bit harder I imagine)?
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Post by peteyg »

I don't really think that Type III items will lose any value if transported. Transportation uses some of the same basic principles as replication, however they have very different capabilities.

People have no trouble going through transporters. They send their kids through transporters! They aren't going to care if their Wild Alaska Salmon was sent through a transporter beam or not. The befores and afters of something sent through a transporter are indistinguishable.

Likewise, just because something can't be replicated doesn't mean it can't be transported. There are things that can't be transported for sure, but they are few, and probably aren't worth a whole nother category.

Type III and Type IV items are separated by more than the fact that they aren't replicated. Type III items COULD be replicated, so there is a huge difference between the two on a developed planet... but almost no difference on an undeveloped planet. I think that's an important distinction that will be important in the game, but we won't be able to make without separate categories.
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Post by esgaroth »

I´m not sure about this difference between Type III and IV. Of course, on non-developed planets there is no big difference because they cant even test whether its replicated or not, and the price will be that of the stuff regardless of its origin. Noone would sell the original non-replicated stuff there because the price wont be higher than for replicated stuff. However, i still doubt that on developed planets there is a major difference. When you buy original scotch whiskey (not replicated), then you buy the original that is not replicated and therefore a luxury. The fact that it can be replicated does not diminish the value of the original, non-replicated stuff (it may even rise the value, imagine the 24th century snob trying to impress his neighbor with as much not-replicated stuff as possible, just to show that he can afford it...). Of course, everyone is free to replicate his bottle of scotch everytime he wants, but that is something different. Maybe think of it as a fotograph of a famous photographer. Of course we can nowadays make printouts in the same quality millions of times, but that does not diminish the value of the originals (maybe signed by the artist) as you can see at Christies every month. Provided that there is some label (guarantee, etc.), maybe by some federation authority, that guarantees the quality (not-replicatedness) of the stuff.
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Post by peteyg »

I do not understand. You say you don't think there should be a difference between Type III and IV, but go on to explain exactly how they should be different.
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Post by esgaroth »

Hi peteyg,

I have been trying to explain that for the practical purpose of the game there is no difference between type III and IV. Maybe I should have added that I think of category III as things that could theoretically be replicated, but are not because they would loose their value. Therefore only certified, non-replicated original scotch whiskey would be in this category. Replicated scotch would be in the type I (and I doubt that it would be shipped to a high degree, because a small replicator on a trade station on said planet (or on a trade ship, production on demand) could replicate everything needed very much cheaper than delivered by interstellar transport).....
Maybe you just tell me what do you think is the practical consequence between a type III and a type IV item (higher prices where and why ?).
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