Universal Corporate Profile

UCP (Economics) Synopsis

The Universal Corporate Profile (UCP) is a method to describe companies and other corporate entities in Traveller.

Please see Megacorporation for more information.

UCP (Economics) Profile Description

It is represented by a string of hexidecimal digits as below:

• 111-111-222-222-333-333-444-444-55-5555-666-66666-777-7777-888-8888-999-999
• 11D-548-3RD-IMP-PUB-LST-SEC-TOR-EE-6^10-MCr-10^10-MCr-008%-R&D-030%-MFG-004

Followed by a comments field to expand upon the raw UCP

The UCP is being developed as a part of the Imperial Ship Builders Association. And much of the discussion is taking place on the ISBA mailing list. Many of the concepts and ideas expressed here are from the fertile minds of the participants on that list and full credit must go to them.

UCP (Economics) Corporate Descriptive Datapoints

• 1. Basic Description (See below)
• 2. Nationality (Empire) (abstract number - see below)
• 3. Nature (abstract number - see below)
• 4. Range (abstract number - see below)
• 5. Employees (Log. scale)
• 6. Operations Budget in MCr (log scale)
• 7. Profit Margin (Straight scale)
• 8. Research & Development (See below)
• 9. Area of Operations (This section based on the real-world Standard Industrial Classifications, and is thanks to Tim Reynolds.

1. Basic Description

• Influence (abstract number - needs to be defined)
• Tradition (abstract number - needs to be defined)
• Public Relations (abstract number - needs to be defined)
• Company Politics (abstract number - needs to be defined)
• Corporate Paranoia (abstract number - needs to be defined)
• Research and Development (abstract number - see below)

2. Nationality (Empire)

• Imperial (3RD-IMP)
• Vilani (VIL-ANI)
• Solomani (SOL-MNI)
• Zhodani (ZHO-DNI)
• Julian Protectorate (JUL-PRT)
• Aslan (ASL-ANN)
• Vargr (VAR-GRR)
• Hiver (HIV-ERR)
• K'kree (KKR-EEE)
• Droyne (DRO-YNE)
• Minor Human (MIN-HUM)
• Minor Non-Human (MIN-NHM)

3. Corporation Nature

This is the way the corporation is "owned."

These are some ideas:

• Public Listed Company (PUB-LST)
• Family Business (FAM-BUS)
• Partnership (PRT-SHP)
• Private non Limited Liability (PRI-NLL)
• Mutual Company/Friendly Society (MUT-CNY)
• Private Trust (PRI-TRS)
• Employee Trust (EMP-TRS)
• State Sponsored (semi state owned) (STE-SPO)
• State Owned Enterprise (STE-OWN)
• Self-owned (SLF-OWN)

4. Corporate Range

This is how widely spread the companies operations are:

• Village (VIL-LGE)
• Town (TOW-NNN)
• City (CIT-YYY)
• Large City/Province (LRD-CTY)
• National (NAT-ONL)
• Continental (CNT-NTL)
• Single lo pop World (LOW-POP)
• Single mid pop (6-8) World (MID-POP)
• Single hi pop World (HIG-POP)
• Multi World/Cluster (MLT-WLD)
• Single Subsector (SGL-SUB)
• Multi Subsectors (MLY-SUB)
• Sector (SEC-TOR)
• Domain (DOM-AIN)
• Imperial (3RD-IMP)

5. Employee Codes

This is how many employees (EE's) the company has working for it:

Employee Codes

Code	Description	Employees (where E is the employee quantity multiplier)
0	Low	<10 (E)
1	Low	10 to 100 (E0)
2	Low	100 to 1,000 (E00)
3	Low	1,000 to 10,000 (E,000)
4	Moderate	10,000 to 100,000 (E0,000)
5	Moderate	100,000 to 1,000,000 (E00,000)
6	Moderate	1 Million to 10 Million (E,000,000)
7	Moderate	10 Million to 100 Million (E0,000,000)
8	Moderate	100 Million to 1 Billion (E00,000,000)
9	High	1 Billion to 10 Billion (E,000,000,000)
A	High	10 Billion to 100 Billion (E0,000,000,000)
B	High	100 Billion to 1 Trillion (E00,000,000,000)

6. Operations Budget

This is how much of an operating budget the company has in (MCr):

Operations Budget (MCr)

Code	Description	Budget (where MCr is the operating budget)
0	Low	<10 (MCr)
1	Low	10 to 100 (MCr0)
2	Low	100 to 1,000 (MCr00)
3	Low	1,000 to 10,000 (MCr,000)
4	Moderate	10,000 to 100,000 (MCr0,000)
5	Moderate	100,000 to 1,000,000 (MCr00,000)
6	Moderate	1 Million to 10 Million (MCr,000,000)
7	Moderate	10 Million to 100 Million (MCr0,000,000)
8	Moderate	100 Million to 1 Billion (MCr00,000,000)
9	High	1 Billion to 10 Billion (MCr,000,000,000)
A	High	10 Billion to 100 Billion (MCr0,000,000,000)
B	High	100 Billion to 1 Trillion (MCr00,000,000,000)

7. Profit Margin

This is how much profit margin the company earns:

• 1%
• 2%
• 3%
• 4%
• 5%
• 6%
• 7%
• 8%
• 9%
• 10%
• 15%
• 20%
• 25%
• 30%
• 40%

8. Research & Development

This is how much research and development the company conducts:

• 1%
• 2%
• 3%
• 4%
• 5%
• 6%
• 7%
• 8%
• 9%
• 10%
• 15%
• 20%
• 25%
• 30%
• 40%

9. Area of Operations

And yes the real world does have eleven classifications, which fits nicely with a 1d12 roll)

• (1d12) 1. Agriculture
• (1d12) 2. Mining
• (1d12) 3. Construction
• (1d12) 4. Manufacturing
• (1d12) 5. Transpiration, Communications, Utilities (Power, gas, sanitation, etc.)
• (1d12) 6. Wholesale trade
• (1d12) 7. Retail Trade
• (1d12) 8. Finance, Insurance, Real Estate
• (1d12) 9. Service
• (1d12) 10. Public Administrative
• (1d12) 11. Non-classifiable (Other)
• (1d12) 12. Roll again (The company has multiple areas of operation)

UCP (Economics) Example

As an example, I'll give Phoenix Corporation:

Phoenix Corporation, LIC

• 111-111-222-222-333-333-444-444-55-5555-666-6666-777-7777-888-8888-999-999
• 11D-548-3RD-IMP-PUB-LST-SEC-TOR-EE-6^10-MCr-10^10-MCr-008%-R&D-030%-MFG-004

Phoenix Corporation, LIC

The following UCP, for the Phoenix Corporation, LIC, is broken down:

• 1. Basic Description: This ("11D-548") shows that Phoenix can exert a lot of influence, doesn't hold too much to tradition, has a large degree of internal infighting, is moderately paranoid, has good public relations

• 2. Nationality (Empire): This ("3RD-IMP") gives an Imperial company.

• 3. Nature: This ("PUB-LST") gives a publicly-listed company.

• 4. Range: This ("SEC-TOR") gives a company that operates over a sector.

• 5. Employees: This ("EE-6^10") shows that the company provides for hundreds of thousand employees.

• 6. Operations Budget: This ("MCr-10^10") shows that the company torns over an operations budget of tens of billions of credits.

• 7. Profit Margin: This ("MCr-008%") shows that the company has profit margin of 8.0%.

• 8. Research & Development: This ("R&D-030%") shows that the company has a 30% R&D budget.

• 9. Area of Operations: This ("MFG-004") shows that the company is very heavily into manufacturing (Code 004), with a minor interest in the Service industry.

Please see Limited Liability Imperial Charter (LIC) for more information.

UCP (Economics) Author Notes

The Comments field would include the information that the company's interests in manufacturing was mainly in shipbuilding with other capacity in power systems, electronics and small arms; and that its service industry interests was in the field of Chandler and Providor. It might go on to describe that it's R&D was focused on the unproven field of Stutterwarp Drives and that this is a cause of strife between the CEO and Board.

Obviously all this is **very** rough and still needs a lot of polishing (witness all those values still to be defined). But it is a start and I would really appreciate comments. The most obvious change likely in the final version is going to be that all the values will probably be ordered in a much more logical fashion.

..

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Far Future Enterprises or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Author: Andrea Vallance

UCP (Economics) Reading Suggestion

Please see 101 Corporations for a reference with a similar premise.