This is part of an ongoing series about the preparations I've made to
run Mongoose's revised edition of the Bayern campaign for 2300AD.
Spoilers for Interlude 3.
At 231 days in (356 light years from Earth), we've passed
improvement points 3 and 4.
This is a very talky scenario, and doesn't need a lot by way of stats,
though it does give a way of running negotiations with die rolls. As I
see it, Messenger isn't actually very interested in the concept of
exchange, but it has some priorities and velues.imposed by its makers.
The cloud's size is given as both 400km and 100km (thanks, Mongoose
editing!), but it's worth bearing in mind that it has a very low
object density (you could fit in a billion 50m spheres into the 100km
space, and there are only a few thousand objects, mostly smaller than
that.)
Correct your text on page 33: 1 is not a prime number. (It is to some
extent an arbitrary choice, but a whole lot of useful things don't
work if it is counted as prime.)
Messenger is sending seeds only to a few nearby stars; after that,
those seeds will have arrived and started their own operations, and
Messenger can work purely on information gathering. Why don't we see
any other Messengers in other star systems? Perhaps the sphere of
expansions of the probes is just grazed by Bayern's flight path, and
other systems that might be visited haven't yet been reached by their
designated seeds. (There's probably a bit of redundancy, perhaps a
target of about two or three seeds per system sent from different
places, and any that arrive later can just be incorporated into the
one that's already there.)
If the PCs are particularly paranoid, another option short of Envoy
would be for Messenger to place the instructions for building an
Envoy-grade computer, and the necessary software for it, on a passive
data storage device, so that the buck can be passed on returning to
Earth. Messenger does not feel sentimental about this putative
offshoot, and would feel only a mild disappointment if it were never
instantiated. (Even if it is, Messenger is unlikely ever to find out.)
The computer plans would be a low-value exchange item.