Since Capital is already a deliberate abstraction of resources, anyway, I'm obviously not looking for a firm answer, here. After all, Goods Capital can consist of anything from mithral ingots to "all that lumber you bought," so there really can't be a specific answer that applies to all situations.
Rather, I want to ask (since I haven't been able to find any suggestions or guidelines): For those GMs and players who have made extensive use of the downtime system, what is a good rule of thumb for using standard wagons, basic cargo ships, etc. to transport Goods Capital when moving resources between locations? I'm sure that a lot of games don't need to go into specific details at that level, and handwaving the method via which Goods are moved from city A to village B is perfectly fine in 99% of situations. For myself, though, I'd like to ballpark roughly how many wagons, horses, teamsters, and so on will be required to move some Goods a long distance.
The Capital in question is primarily construction materials for various buildings, including large quantities of masonry stone, timber, and similar, if that helps get the wheels turning. But, as I said, I don't need or expect something mathematically precise; I'd just like to get a feel for how big this caravan needs to be in order to cart all this stuff the 200 miles it needs to go, based on what other people might have done.
I'm not sure about the Downtime Rules, but I believe it is in the Kingdom Building Rules that it takes 1d3 wagons to transport each Build Point.
Possibly in the Trade Route Edicts from Ultimate Rulership.
This is all abstract, to say the least. And it's completely guesstimate. After all, there's significant difference between types of skilled labor/capital in the Downtime system.
But let's say you are a woodcutter chopping trees. Using an axe, how many trees could you cut in a day? 5? 10?
Whenever I see a wagon load of lumber in pictures, it often has somewhere between 5 and 10 logs.
So I would say 1 capital = 1 wagon load. It's also pretty simple that way. You could argue that you should be able to get more, so I would probably be fine as a GM with 2 capital = 1 wagon load. But moving capital inherently should cost some capital.
@Queen Moragan: That sounds pretty close to what I'm looking for. I combed through the kingdom building and trade edicts rules and can't find any specific reference; if you happen to come across it, I'd be grateful. Regardless, it's a good start; BP isn't quite the same as Capital, but the two conflate enough that I can wing it and feel pretty confident that it makes sense.
@Bradley Mickle: Yes, all guessing, pretty much. You present a pretty good baseline, though; I'm not uncomfortable with the idea of, say, wagons approximately equal to one-half the amount of Goods Capital being moved. That still figures out to way more wagons than I (or the player) originally projected, but it's not at all unrealistic when considering something like construction materials.
Under the actual downtime rules, moving Capital costs time and nothing else; I agree with you that it should cost something, anyway; but, in this case, it's going to cost a lot of money for all those wagons, which I suppose is close enough.