Let's Play Elite: Dangerous

J.Jameson Jnr
51a South Dormitory
Fish Processing Plant 3142
Sirocco
Merlin
Ross 154
-1/0Rs2a S16
31.12.3199

To whom it may concern

It is our duty to inform you of the death of your grandfather, Commander Peter Jameson.

The wreckage of his ship was found in the Reidquat system on 11 November 3199. He was presumed killed in combat after a "misunderstanding" over some stolen goods according to the local press.

A last will and testament was prepared on 3 February 3199 and section 4.1 has been circulated to all living grandchildren as instructed by our late client.

If you have any queries do not hesitate to contact us. The normal fees of fifty (50) Credits per hour (including service tax) apply.


Yours sincerely


Mr Edmond Sneer

When I was a kid, some computer games made an indelible impression on me. One of them was Frontier: Elite 2. I never played the first one, but Frontier embodied the magic of computers, space and everything just by being a space simulator game that procedurally generated the entire damn galaxy for you to fly around in and fit on a single HD disk. There was no plot as such, and no way to finish the game; you went out there and you made your own plot. It was adventure enough to do some trading and missions to save up for a better ship, and then head out to see the galaxy. I still remember deeply impressive stars like Sirius and Arcturus, finding permits to visit places like the federal prison colony on Ross 128 and the religious fanatics at van Maanen's Star, and eventually making my way to the Empire. So when some irresponsible bastard gifted me Elite: Dangerous on Steam, of course I was going to have to try it. I'm going to ramble about some of the practicalities of getting into the game, and then try to give some kind of verdict on whether it's worth it or not.

**

When you start Elite: Dangerous, you're put through a tutorial of sorts where you get your pilot's license and the title of commando Commander. You're then given a Sidewinder Mk I and let loose in a beginner-exclusive area called the Pilots' Federation District to learn the ropes.

Luckily, there are a lot of resources out there for anyone just starting out. I've gotten a lot of help out of the beginner's guide on the Caffeinated Pixels blog and the wiki, but there's a couple of things that I would have needed someone to explain to me, though. For anyone else venturing into the game, here they are.

First of all, you may have heard of nav beacons. Scanning them gets you information on everything useful in the system, so that seems like something you'd want to do. However, what no-one will tell you is that the nav beacon you can select as a destination on your navigation computer and supercruise to is not the nav beacon. Instead, the nav beacon is a white square that shows up on your scanner when you drop out of supercruise near the beacon. You then have to point your ship at it, target it and wait for it to scan. Simple, but initially incomprehensible.

Speaking of incomprehensible things, there's the mission board. I've played enough Frontier to know that when you're starting out and your ship doesn't have a lot of cargo space, you want to do courier missions and stuff like that. Also, it's good form to check the mission board to see if someone might be willing to pay a premium for whatever cargo you've got on you. Sadly they've made this last bit harder: whereas in Frontier they'd just straight up pay you for whatever you had, here you have to have a specific amount of what they want.

Anyway, say you find something on a mission board where they want you to either take something somewhere else, or bring them something. Below is an example: some folks wanted me to haul two units of Performace Enhancers to this base.

What puzzled the shit out of me was that I would increment the bar so I was delivering them the two units they asked for, but the button at the lower left was still greyed out and said "partial complete" or whatever. It took several Google searches until I figured out that I was supposed to click the "deliver items" button.

Once you've done that, the Complete button activates. I don't know, maybe this is just me being a moron, but the double confirmation required just completely confused me.

Finally, a third thing: beware the Advanced Docking Computer. So far, the landings have been fine, but the departures not so much! Once I found myself sitting in queue for so long that the timer ran out, and flight control very pointedly told me to leave or get fined. Since it was one of my first real flights, I may have panicked a little and crashed. I came away with slightly damaged shields, dented pride and a fine for reckless flying or whatever. Another time I had to cut out the docking computer when it took off from a landing pad and was very determined to rear-end another ship. Given that launching is really pretty easy to do manually, I think it might actually be wiser to leave the computer out of it entirely. You can set this up in the systems panel.

**

Anyway, after a couple of trips between Matet and Dromi, hauling space steroids and whatnot, I made enough profit to advance from Penniless to Mostly Penniless trader rank.

Once you've achieved a rank in anything, you get a "graduation mission" to leave the Pilots' Federation District. As you can see, it's very easy to achieve with just a little trading. My mission took me to HR 8526, a fairly massive trinary system some 75 light years from Sol. Along the way, I made my first proper manual landing at one of those rotating starbases, namely Noriega Port at Arare, and I think my hands shook for the rest of the day.

This experience simultaneously convinced me that I need to play more Elite, and that I needed a joystick. I was quite surprised to find how cheap some of them were; certainly you could spend hundreds, but I got a Thrustmaster T.Flight HOTAS X, i.e. a joystick and throttle, for 70€. I'm old enough to be genuinely shocked that it really was plug-and-play: you stick the USB cord in and it just works. Elite even has bindings ready for all the twelve or so buttons and various other controls, and when you actually use it to fly, it just works. I can't imagine going back to a mouse and keyboard.

Changing the button bindings is theoretically easy, but in practice requires wading through a fairly large menu that isn't always subdivided quite as logically as you might wish; it occasionally took quite a while to figure out.

**

The nearest Imperial system I could find was Ngalkin, so I headed over there to find some courier jobs. There are two major factions in Elite that you can gain ranks in: the Federation and the Empire. Back in Frontier, two of the three starting locations were in the Federation, so the Empire always seemed more exotic and interesting, and they had the coolest ships. My general plan at this point is pretty much to fly around and make some money, so I can get a better ship and maybe do some real exploring.

One thing the game could really do with is at least some geographical structure. Right now, when I left the Pilots' Federation District, I've pretty much been to systems that just feel totally random. There's not much glamour in grinding out courier missions to HR 8526, especially when I barely have any real idea where in the galaxy I am in relation to anything meaningful. I get that grinding is fundamental to MMO's, but in Frontier, two of the starting locations were in the core systems of the Federation, with marked trade routes leading to stars whose names you could actually recognize, so there was something for you to orient yourself by. Here there's nothing.

But then, I guess that grinding out trade and courier missions in unnamed systems does kind of get to the heart of the Elite experience. As in Frontier, so in Dangerous: you very much need to make your own story. I mean you're not going to be swept off your feet by the plot and the setting; there barely are any. Although there is an actual game, as opposed to a roadmap to a roadmap. So I don't know. If you're looking for an immersive, dramatic movie-like experience, this ain't it. Even as an Elite fan with lots of good memories attached to the franchise, I'd be lying if I said Elite: Dangerous captured my imagination. If you're interested in some zen space trucking? See you in the 'verse, commando.

Warhammer 40,000: Imperial reinforcements

We command bread and awe!
- misheard Sisters of Battle line from Dawn of War: Soulstorm

I made a new year's resolution to finish modeling projects, and when most of my teaching work evaporated because of the pandemic, what else was I supposed to do except paint? Therefore, here are some random Imperial units I've picked up over the last few years, finally painted.

Aubrey Beardsley: The Achieving of the Sangreal (1893-94)

**

I got a Scout Sentinel in Ophir colors, because I like Sentinels. They're very handy in Dawn of War: Winter Assault and Gladius! The legs and the inside of the cockpit are in German Camo Dark Green.

We also participated in the Victoria Miniatures charity drive in the wake of the terrible bush fires in Australia by buying a Kangaroo APC, which I'm happy to report is an excellent model. Here it is as a van Diemen pattern Chimera in Chirikov Rad-Guards colors.

I also painted a Jokaero! Delightfully, one of the special resource tiles in Gladius is a Jokaero encampment, and it inspired me to get one for myself.

**

I painted up my old metal Sisters earlier, but even before the new codex came out, I was keen to expand my collection. Or as they put it in Soulstorm: Behold! The Immolator!

Hint to anyone assembling the old Immolator kit: figure out how the frame for the glass dome fits into the turret before gluing any of it together. The instructions really don't make this clear, and it'll save you some trouble. I actually prefer this model to the new Immolator; I mean there's baroque grimdark and then there's that stained glass window...

My Sisters are from the Order of the Sorores Gratiae, and have made an appearance in my Rogue Trader tabletop campaign, where Canoness Julia Aquilia is currently leading a crusade against the foul xenos in the Acheron sector. Their home world is the shrine world of Lavina in Tertia Pars of the Acheron sector, and they wear emerald robes over their black armor.

Eventually, of course, the codex came out. As it happened, the first models I ended up building out of the new range were a Rogue Trader Arch-militant and a Sister Hospitaller, using a Kromlech apothecary conversion kit. I didn't like the new Hospitaller model; I'm all for scenic bases, but when it starts to feel like you're moving an entire diorama around the tabletop, it's too far for my taste. Instead I made her:

However, this highlighted a problem. Compared to the ancient metal figures, the new Sisters are gigantic.

You could maybe get away with having old and new Sisters in the same army, but the same unit? No way. So there goes my detachment idea.

I still made a Preacher from a Raging Heroes Davidian:

**

So, the long-awaited plastic Sisters turn out to be a mixed blessing. I kind of like the squad box, but like I said, the parts aren't as interchangeable as I'd have hoped, so they're actually not that interesting to build. I also get that they needed to scale up the Sisters because of how tiny the old metal models were, but I'm still disappointed the difference was so massive.

Also, of course, we're now in ninth edition, which seems to confirm that the turnaround in editions is now three years. That's just completely absurd, and I can definitely feel my interest in keeping up with Warhammer collapse. It's time to look at other miniature games.

Let's Read Tolkien 71: The Last Debate

The morning came after the day of battle, and it was fair with light clouds and the wind turning westward.

Legolas and Gimli go strolling around Minas Tirith, where they find Merry and Pippin and discuss stonework and seagulls. Legolas tells the hobbits how they passed through the Paths of the Dead and recruited a bunch of ghosts to drive the enemy from Pelargir and set up their dramatic arrival at the battle of Pelennor.

The rest of the chapter is dedicated to a staff meeting in Aragorn's command tent, presided over by Gandalf. He explains to Éomer and Prince Imrahil about the Ring, and they agree on a strategy: lead an army to the gates of Mordor to draw out Sauron's forces and clear the way for Frodo to make it to the volcano.

**

Again, this is a fairly short and simple chapter: it's the second part of the breathing space between the battle at Minas Tirith and the Black Gate, and wraps things up before the climax of this book and the entire story.

The spirits of the oathbreakers Aragorn summons to do his bidding seem more like the classic ghosts with "unfinished business" than Tolkien's wraiths. I somehow really like Legolas's thoroughly matter-of-fact statement that he's not afraid of the ghosts of men, full stop.

A couple of things are worth pointing out in Aragorn's staff meeting. First, there's the simple fact stated by Gandalf that there is no way they can defeat Sauron at war, and that was never the point. This ties in to the theological point of the whole story, but I'll get to that when we get to it! But the point being made quite strongly here is that all the military heroics of the last few chapters are at best a distraction in terms of the real battle.

Aragorn makes a point of saying that he doesn't want to order anyone to march on Mordor, and reiterates that everyone who goes should be a volunteer. It's kind of hard to take this seriously, though, when they move straight on to discussing how many thousands of men they can muster in what time. It'd be one thing to claim that oh, sure, everyone volunteered, but they're not really even trying. It almost feels like Éomer and Imrahil are humoring him.

Anyway that's it: the armies of the Free Peoples are going to march to Mordor and certain defeat, to buy time for a hobbit and his manservant.

**

Next time: Peregrin stabs a troll.

Pandemic diary: July

Everyone is acting like the pandemic is over, and I'm not one bit okay with it.

I mean yes, case counts in Finland are way down, so almost all of the official restrictions have been lifted. Restaurants and bars and so on are operating at lower capacity, but to be honest, I'm seeing people flocking to night clubs and karaoke bars and whatnot on the social mediums, and it looks like a recipe for complete disaster. One person in that karaoke bar has the virus, and in about a week or so you've got a lot of contact tracing to do. I just think we're being reckless with this. We've had such a strange trajectory with this: first the official powers told us we'll be fine and the virus won't affect us; then we shut down everything, including an entire province; and now it's like we're pretending the whole thing never happened.

This affects me personally in that I'm due to resume teaching, well, next week! At this time we're cleared to hold public functions with up to 50 people. Given what we now know about how the virus spreads, I'm going to do what I can to make sure we have good air circulation, and I intend to continue wearing a mask on public transport, even though no-one else is. In September, I'll be restarting some of my lectures that usually get an older audience. I'm not qualified to judge if it's safe for them. I hope it is.

Anyway, this is the thing, isn't it; I'm not so much worried about myself, as I feel like I can take precautions and maintain social distancing and so forth. It's other people I'm worried about: not just myself having the virus asymptomatically or something like that, but someone in my audience having it and giving it to others. Obviously there's nothing I can really do to stop this from happening, but it doesn't mean I'm not worried about it.

We're scheduled to start returning to more or less business as usual in August in general. I just hope it isn't too soon, or we'll have a second wave in the fall.

Gladius: How to Chaos Space Marines

So far, I've thoroughly enjoyed playing Gladius: Relics of War with all factions, and although the Imperial Guard remains my favorite, Chaos has probably been the most fun so far. Since there isn't a lot of documentation out there on Chaos in Gladius, I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts and go through the various units.

Chaos Basics

To be very brief, Chaos plays like a more mêlée-oriented and expansionist Space Marines, with less vehicles but more special rules.

You start the game with two kinds of units: Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Cultists. The Chaos Marines are effectively the same as loyalist Tactical Marines, but like most of your infantry, they have the Champion of Chaos trait. This means that whenever they destroy an enemy unit, they can gain a Boon. These are unlocked in the research tree: they're temporary bonuses to the unit, or at higher levels, permanent bonuses. There's also a very small chance that the unit will turn into a Daemon Prince - or a Chaos Spawn! You can also give most infantry Marks of Chaos once you research them; they're small permanent bonuses that can later be augmented by Icons.

The Cultists are the same unit as the neutrals you'll have encountered a million times if you've played any other faction. As a player unit, they're about as useful as Guardsmen and their flashlights, but with one key difference: they found new cities. Because they're cheap and available from Turn 1, this means you can expand obscenely quickly. If you've ever listened to any heavy metal at all, you can also easily come up with an infinite variety of city names. I don't think you can do Civ-style infinite urban sprawl in Gladius (although I've never tried it!), but building a second city fairly quickly seems like good practice. It's worth noting that whereas loyalist Marines simplify the game's economy quite a bit, Chaos uses all the various resources, so new cities are also very attractive if they can offset a resource shortage in your capital. Because Chaos has lots of high-quality infantry, food is important. Just remember to watch your cities' loyalty!

A final point regarding cities is rituals. They can be triggered in the city view, and involve sacrificing a unit of population to gain production bonuses. Always do this when a city hits its population cap! The quest will walk you through researching and using these.

The faction quest, by the way, is all right. Be aware that completing the bit that tells you to move a Daemon Prince to a certain hex locks you into the quest finale.

Cast of Characters

Like the other factions, Chaos gets three hero units, and they're all quite good.

The Chaos Lord is apparently based on the guy from Blackstone Fortress, seeing as how he has a thunder hammer and everything. The Chaos Lord doesn't have a lot of hit points to start with, but their close combat attack is devastating; once they get kitted out at a Jokaero outpost and get some levels in their damage reduction ability, they can start performing a similar function to the loyalists' Terminator Chaplain: tanking ridiculous amounts of damage and simply destroying the enemy in close combat. An invaluable unit that I think you should build as fast as possible; if you take a little care to get them leveled up, they are amazing.

The Master of Possession is like a Chaos Librarian, I guess? I'm not familiar with all these innovations. What they do in the game is buff your other units, and their special ability summons a random demonic unit for a couple of turns. A pack of throwaway Warp Talons always comes in handy!

The third character is the Warpsmith, who repairs units and boosts your economy. They have a special attack that's called Mechadendrites, but is confusingly a ranged melta attack? But it's very good against vehicles.

Oh, and then there are Daemon Princes, who I haven't really used. I built the one required for the faction quest, and the abilities looked kinda weird.

Infantry

Chaos has an embarassment of riches when it comes to infantry. I already mentioned the Chaos Space Marines you can build from the start; they're excellent basic infantry in the early game, and with stuff like melta bombs, Marks and so on, they can still be useful later on. However, you'll quickly get access to specialist infantry, namely Berzerkers and Havocs. Berzerkers are obviously close combat specialists, and while they will absolutely destroy non-mêlée infantry, they can also be surprisingly vulnerable. Havocs are basically the same as loyalist Devastator Marines: they pack a hell of a punch at range, but need to be protected from enemy assault troops and vehicles. As with Imperial Guard heavy weapon teams and loyalist Devastators, if you level them up succesfully, they are superb.

The other infantry units are Warp Talons and Obliterators. The first I've only used as disposable summoned units courtesy of my Master of Possession, and I wasn't that thrilled with them; they're basically Assault Marines. Like a lot of other people, I was quite disappointed that we didn't get Chaos Terminators (especially since they featured so prominently in the art!), but I suppose I have to admit that Obliterators fill their role. They're tough, they have power fists, and their shooting cycles between assault cannons and heavy flamers, which can be a little bit annoying at times, but given that their role is to get in the enemy's face and punch it, they make good use of both. Excellent frontline troops for the later game.

Also I'd be remiss if I didn't mention everyone's favorite gribblies: the Chaos Spawn! They're Chaos's fast recon unit, and you never have to build them: you get a free unit from the faction quest, and your Master of Possession gets an ability where they can turn enemy units they kill into Spawn. Like comparable units in other factions, they're useful in the early game, but struggle to hold their own against more advanced units. Then again, you got them for free, so who cares?

Vehicles

I have to admit straight up that I haven't used some of the vehicles at all, starting with the Rhino. Rhinos full of Berzerkers is an honorable tradition, to be sure, and you can research Dirge Casters which let them nullify Overwatch, but I haven't tried it. The same goes for the Venomcrawler, which is an innovation I disapprove of anyway. It also seems very similar to the Maulerfiend, which you can research earlier. I built a few and my Master of Possession summoned one; they didn't get a lot done and felt a bit fragile.

Luckily you can get Helbrütes Chaos Dreadnoughts fairly early on, and they're worth it, too. The Reaper autocannon isn't great, but the dread can take some damage and get stuff done in close combat as well. The problem is that if it takes enough damage, it goes into Fire Frenzy where frankly, its shooting is still kinda useless, but it also won't move. I feel like they could have done better with this mechanic, as it usually just leads to the dread being destroyed. It's still a decent unit in the sort of of early-mid game.

Ideally, you want to replace it with the enemy crab, our good friend the Defiler. Another weird loadout, as it has a battlecannon and lascannon which are Range 3, and power fist equivalents for close combat. It's the closest thing Chaos has to a proper tank, though, unless you buy the Assault Pack to get Land Raiders (I did). Deffy is the opposite of the Dreadnought in that it has proper shooting and a bonus close combat ability, and I've found them very useful.

Finally, the Chaos flyer is the Heldrake, which is surprisingly tough and quite strong against enemy flyers. Delightfully, your Master of Possession will sometimes summon one; because it's actually quite resilient, a temporary Heldrake makes for a great blocking unit to annoy and slow down your opponent. I'm still mystified there isn't a Chaos bomber.

**

That's it, I guess! I've found playing Chaos to be great fun, so I highly recommend getting the DLC. Remember to give everyone Marks and Icons, trigger the city rituals when they reach their population caps and look after your Lords and Havocs. I've beaten the game with Chaos several times now, so I'm going to up the difficulty level and see what I can get done. I may also need to get myself a Defiler...

I should say that I'm absolutely delighted that the Assault Pack added the Land Raider for Chaos. I hope there are more DLCs coming, because I'd definitely like to see some demons! Still, though, I feel like I need to repeat myself: Gladius is just a tremendously good game in general, and one of the best Warhammer video games ever.

Let's Read Tolkien 70: The Houses of Healing

A mist was in Merry's eyes of tears and weariness when they drew near the ruined Gate of Minas Tirith.

Merry staggers into the city with Théoden's bier, but gets lost and collapses somewhere. Luckily Pippin finds him and gets word to the Houses of Healing, and Gandalf comes down to find them. Merry is taken to Minas Tirith's lazaret, where he, Faramir and Éowyn are struggling to recover from the Nazgûl. Ioreth, oldest of the healers, complains that if only there was a king, maybe he could heal them: Gandalf immediately fetches Aragorn.

Strider has decided to make camp outside the city, and has declined to claim the throne; Faramir is still officially Steward. He comes to the Houses of Healing, and after an altercation with an overly learned but useless herb-master, some athelas is finally found, and he gets to work reviving the wraith-casualties. Once they're done, he heads out into the city with the sons of Elrond, healing people as best they can.

**

This is a great little chapter. Everybody gets some really good character stuff, especially Aragorn, who has some of the best lines in the whole book here.

The postmortem on Edoras is very good as well. When Aragorn is treating Éowyn, he and Gandalf very patiently explain to Éomer how she, too, suffered terribly from Saruman's corruption of Théoden's court, but because of patriarchy, she suffered far more.

"My friend," said Gandalf, "you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on."

But go on, do tell me more about how Tolkien hated women.

The delightful episode with the herbalist harks back to Aragorn's first conversation with Éomer, where one of Éomer's Riders scoffed at fairy-tales. Both Gandalf and Aragorn praise Ioreth and name her wise-woman, because she remembers the old lore, while the useless herb-master has a great memory for names and rhymes, but understands nothing of them. Seeing as how Tolkien was an academic and a philologist, it seems impossible to not read this as a commentary on his own discipline at its worst: minutely cataloguing words and their appearances, while completely losing touch with the tradition they lived in, and in the end being completely useless.

The great theme of this chapter is, of course, Aragorn's kingship. He did the thing with the athelas at Weathertop already, and here he effectively uses it to prove to the people of Gondor that he's really the king. It's never entirely clear if the herb actually has special powers when used by him, though, or if he's just putting ranger herb-lore into action. I referred earlier to the History of Middle-earth books, which tell us that Tolkien at one point planned for Aragorn and Boromir to contest the rule of Gondor. It would have been interesting to see how Tolkien would have contrasted the two as prospective rulers. Certainly it's difficult to see Boromir going around the city at night healing people.

One of the points that Tolkien made with his analogy of Beowulf as a tower and in Aragorn's destruction of the herb-master was that language and stories are living things, not incomprehensible dead monuments. With that in mind, enjoy this outstanding quote from Ioreth, wise-woman of Gondor.

"Well now! Who would have believed it?" said Ioreth to a woman that stood beside her. "The weed is better than I thought. It reminds me of the roses of Imloth Melui when I was a lass, and no king could ask for better."

Weed fit for a king, indeed.

**

Next time: a board meeting.

Rogue Trader: Thinking about the Imperial economy

To lend some kind of coherence to our Rogue Trader tabletop campaign, I've tried to think semi-seriously about how the Imperial economy works. Rogue Trader abstracts money and business with the profit factor mechanic, which I think is excellent, but in the interests of verisimilitude, I also wanted to form some notion of what actually goes on. So here I'm going to talk about what I think are the two principal drivers of the Imperial economy.

**

The Imperial economy is overseen by the Adeptus Administratum: the administrative arm of the Priesthood of Earth. The Administratum assigns each world in the Imperium a tithe grade and collects the tithe.

If you want a historical analogy, think about the annona system in the Roman Empire, where vast fleets of ships delivered grain to Rome from all around the Empire. Because of the unimaginably vast size of the Imperium of Man, obviously the tithes can't be gathered on Terra, or even in the segmentum capitals. Because the planets the tithes are collected from can be completely different and have very different tithe grades, the actual tithe can be anything from a fully equipped regiment of mechanized infantry to bulk freighters full of grain or ore, or in less typical cases, probably almost anything you can think of. The only constant is that the tithe is that planet's contribution to the business of the Imperium: war.

Because the Imperium is constantly engaged in a multitude of wars all over the galaxy, I would imagine there has to be some kind of sector- and/or subsector-level system for directing the tithes where they are needed. We can think of this as a series of supply chains that culminates in the production of Imperial Guard regiments. The focus of this production is the hive worlds. Vast urban centers housing billions of people, the hive worlds supply the soldiers and manufacture their equipment. To do this, they need gigantic quantites of ore from mining worlds and constant imports of food from agri-worlds; the recruits can be supplemented by tithes of people from feudal or feral worlds. The regiments then need to be shipped out to whatever warzone they are needed in, and provided with supplies and reinforcements.

This massive process, where the tithes from each planet are turned into fighting forces and delivered to the Imperium's field commanders and garrisons, is what I refer to as the Imperial war economy. It's a massive, galaxy-spanning planned economy run by the bureaucrats of the Administratum, so we can only imagine the gigantic inefficiencies this entails. Many of the supply chains would probably not be in any way economically feasible, but like in the Soviet Union, if no-one is counting, who cares? In addition to the regiments, the war economy also has to support the Imperial fleet, and some tithes no doubt go to the Ministorum, the Adeptus Astartes, and other Imperial agencies - not to mention the Administratum itself! But the majority of the traffic will be from planets engaged in primary production to manufacturing and recruiting centers, and from there to war zones.

I assume that the volume of the war economy is so large that it dwarfs all other shipping, and effectively defines trade routes in the Imperium. Since the tithes have to be delivered, there's an opportunity to use any excess cargo space for other exports. As tithes will usually be one-way, they provide huge opportunities for trade in the other direction: transport costs will be almost zero since the ships have to go back anyway! So the tithes are absolutely crucial in shaping the whole Imperial economy.

**

Tithes are only a part of any Imperial planet's economy, of course. It's long been established that as long as a planetary governor delivers their assigned tithes and suppresses witchcraft and heresy, they can pretty much do what they like. So governors and everyone else high enough in the planetary administration are left to enjoy the spoils, and can become very wealthy indeed. On smaller or poorer worlds, this can just mean the governor and his family; a teeming hive world will support entire noble houses.

So all these people have plenty of disposable income. What are they going to spend it on? The luxury economy. Luxury products marketed to a super-rich clientele can easily be valuable enough to ship over interstellar distances, especially if they're in fashion. You could probably do some interesting stuff with how waves of trends propagate across a gigantic interstellar empire, but it probably suffices to imagine that if some obscure luxury product becomes popular in the right circles, they'll have orders pouring in from across the segmentum, if not further.

This is also where mercantile-minded rogue traders operate, in my opinion. Recall that rogue traders are so named because they have an extraordinary license to trade beyond the Imperium, even with the xenos. For what, though? What can a rogue trader trade for that wilĺ be worth the considerable trouble of warp travel outside the Imperium? Possibly some strategic resources, but in most cases, if they're trying to make a profit out of it, surely it must be luxury goods for the Imperial elite. With their warrant, rogue traders can effectively launder xenos luxuries into the Imperial economy. Given how unequal the distribution of wealth in the Imperium is, that's going to be worth quite some money and influence.

**

There will also be other shipping routes, especially ones connected to rogue trader operations. We also know from the tabletop books that there are entire dedicated pilgrim vessels: it'll also be worthwhile to map any pilgrimage routes! In addition, there may be some substances valuable enough to transport over interstellar distances that aren't strictly part of either the war or luxury economy: building or industrial materials of exceptional quality, maybe, or some kind of consumer products that aren't exclusive enough to be restricted to the nobility, but still very valuable; I don't know! It's a big galaxy.

Anyway these were some thoughts I had bouncing around in my head on how the Imperial economy works, and how rogue traders fit into that, which I wanted to set down on virtual paper.