Well, we've not gotten too far after redoing our ship a great deal. And, to make things work, I've decided to throw in a bit of subterfuge to help with the payments: the No Refunds often makes trips back and forth between the Imperium and the League. Part of that is information gathering, and our Captain Lynwood Laux is not above scoring information as well as cargo. However, he is a part of the Antares Ship Builders and Trade Speculators, which is an Imperium corporation. So not exactly a spy but open to passing along information. Not sure there is a a secrets part of Solo (could not find it) but our good Captain and the rest of the crew possibly are always on the lookout for information about the League. Another aspect of playing solo is that I've picked a different character than the captain to be the main character.
But, back to the game! With Cr91,800 in our balance, we spend the 1st two days searching for cargo near the busy and quite large port. Using Mongoose 2e rules, we are at a class B port (though I am wondering if it should be bumped to an A, being one of the gateways to the Imperium plus having the technology to build jump drives. Something to think about, perhaps the ISS files are out of date. Or the League is hiding manufacturing capacity?) Regardless, using the Mongoose rules (which are very similar to Classic) we roll d66: and common industrial goods. Well, we are on a high population industrial world. For some reason that makes the purchase higher (+5) and getting the lot at 80%, the 70 tons would cost Cr560,000. So we don't even have the credits for this. We also need to look at the systems around us, as that also affects the resale value.
This is one of the big issues with trade in Traveller: you need credits to make credits. And while Cr91,800 sounds like a lot, for purchasing goods it is not enough more often than not. Which is why we have the side adventures!
After hitting the ferrocreate a couple of days, the only thing that may have been worth our while was some pumps. Who would need 70n tons of pumps is not something I know anything about! So Ewo and I decide to head out into some of the smaller outland communities: we've heard some rumors about other industries that are not ted as tightly to the port. Looking at the map, there are tubes above ground that hit most of the major cities. Looking at the maps, we see that Leahogstein City, one of many sunken cities, has some autonomous vehicle manufacturers. Getting back in touch with Captain Laux, it seems we're heading to Tryonas next. A non-industrial rich world, we'd get a good price there, However, pricing is still outside of our available funding. Ewo thinks that we may be able to persuade one of the manufacturers to start a more direct selling to Tryonus. We may be able to set up that connection. We have a bit of an issue getting a passport to exit the port [law level 8, rolled a 5, which indicates there is some contact with officials; we'll make this a simple task. With Ewo's skills in admin, advocate and diplomacy, give it the +1. Going with a s solid play so we need 8+ (7+ with her skills factored in: roll a 10, so success in getting our passports. And having good consequences from the success, we somehow find a useful or valuable piece of kit. So, lets make that a League passport, valid for all worlds within the League. We'll each have our own League passport (yay, a chance to make up an ID card!)] With our new passports in hand, we board the tubes and head to Leahogstein City, a tube ride of about 6 hours.
Gotta love old science fiction! And I wish I kept better track of where I find things, though pretty sure this was found in a search for underground cities. a high-tech tube transport will have all the bells and whistles. And could look like this:
A two deck surface transport system. Think Krim is going retro-futuristic. Andhere's where we roll on the world encounter table, and when we get to Psziz Industries, we find that there is another trader that apparently has the same idea as we do. What will happen?
And our Krim visit has gone on already for a few sessions, mostly because I am also going back to updating various things. I do have the character sheets written at least, so those are now on paper. But I am also getting myself into a corner with the lack of funding for a real trade game, which is why we're trying to set up a trade deal that we can broker without tying us down. So, let's make an other plan, though this one may have things that can go wrong as we may not make the deal. Still sticking with the +1 for Ewo's skills, and another +1 for our nifty passport. Apparently the other trader does not have that and is here on a temporary visa, or perhaps is native to the League. But is this a shaky or solid? As we're dealing with a lot of factors, I will go with shaky. And Ewo failed to make our case, and that deal falls through. Now there are consequences to this, but injury for a failed business deal seems a bit harsh. But to make lemonade out of lemons, the executive, impressed by Ewo's plan but preferring to go with a League citizen to broker the deal, has something a bit on the shady side side that may help out (hey, this is a role playing game, not economics!) Malik feels that the exec, one Vax Datas at least seems okay. Apparently, a rival company has been doing some corporate espionage. If we could investigate their systems to find proof, he would continue to make a deal with us.
And now to pause to figure out the plan, and all that. Ewo and Malik may bring in the rest of the crew to make this somewhat risky adventure. But we're sort of cornered, so off to adventure.
I do need to add Vax Datas as a contact now on Krim. I've not been good at tracking the contacts per world so will have to go back through the posts to find them.
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