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CT Only: Spinward Courier

Spinward Flow

Spinward Flow

SOC-14 5K
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Spinward Courier
TL=13 (LBB5.80)
Ship Type: XP (Express, Provincial)

Tonnage: 100 (custom hull)
Configuration: 6 (Streamlined, Fuel Scoops, 8.1 MCr)
Armor: 0

Jump-2 (3 tons, MCr 12)
Maneuver-6 (17 tons, MCr 8.5, EP: 6, Agility: 6)
Power Plant-6 (12 tons, MCr 36, EP: 6)
Fuel: 26 tons (4 weeks operations, up to 24 weeks powered down)
L-Hyd Drop Tanks (20 ton, MCr 0.03 per use, Jump-1, Maneuver-5, Power Plant-5)
Fuel Purification Plant (5 tons, MCr 0.03) (LBB5.80, p27, 36)

Dual Turret (1 ton)
Missile Rack: 1 (Code: 2, Battery: 1, MCr 0.75)
Sandcaster: 1 (Code: 3, Battery: 1, MCr 0.25)
Bridge (20 tons, MCr 0.5)
Computer: 2 (Code: 2, 2 ton, MCr 9, TL: 7, EP: 0)

Crew: 2 (Pilot, Gunner)
Staterooms: 2 (8 tons, MCr 1)
Cargo: 6 tons (5 ton Mail Vault, 1 ton cargo remaining)

Code: 
Spinward Courier  XP-1626621-030000-00002-0   MCr 61.304  100 tons
    batt bearing              1         1                   TL=13.
    batteries                 1         1                  Crew=2.
Passengers=0 (1 possible). Cargo=6. Fuel=26. EP=6. Agility=6. FPP.
L-Hyd Drop Tanks add 20 tons fuel+displacement (RP-1615521) costing MCr 0.03.

Total Cost (first in class): MCr 76.13
20% Down Payment (first in class): MCr 15.226
Architect Fees (first in class): MCr 0.7613
Construction Time (first in class): 40 weeks
Annual Overhaul (first in class): Cr 76,130 (LBB2.81, p8)

Additional Ships Cost: MCr 60.904
Additional Ships 20% Down Payment: MCr 12.1808
Additional Ships Construction Time: 32 weeks
Additional Ships Annual Overhaul: Cr 60,904 (LBB2.81, p8)

  • Type S Scout/Courier (unarmed) new price: MCr 27.63 (LBB S7, p46)
  • Type A Free Trader (unarmed) new price: MCr 37.08 LBB2.81, p19)
  • Type Y Yacht (unarmed) new price: MCr 51.057 (LBB2.81, p19-20)
  • Type A2 Far Trader (unarmed) new price: MCr 59.56 (LBB S7, p48)
  • Type K Safari Ship (unarmed) new price: MCr 69.307 (LBB S4, p14)

Spinward Marches systems with type A or B starports and Tech Level 13+ in 1105 capable of performing annual maintenance (19 total in the sector):
  1. Chronor / Cronor
  2. Jacent / Darrian
  3. Darrian / Darrian
  4. Collace / District 268
  5. Efate / Regina
  6. Uakye / Regina
  7. Pixie / Regina
  8. Boughene / Regina
  9. D'Ganzio / Lanth
  10. Tenalphi / Lunion
  11. Lunion / Lunion
  12. Strouden / Lunion
  13. Glisten / Glisten
  14. Macene / Rhylanor
  15. Fulacin / Rhylanor
  16. Rhylanor / Rhylanor
  17. Palique / Mora
  18. Mora / Mora
  19. Trin / Trin's Veil

Bank Financing (1st ship): Cr 158,605 per 2 weeks for 50 weeks per year
Bank Financing (2nd+ ships): Cr 126,884 per 2 weeks for 50 weeks per year
Maintenance (1st ship): Cr 3046 per 2 weeks for 50 weeks per year
Maintenance (2nd+ ships): Cr 2437 per 2 weeks for 50 weeks per year

Life Support: Cr 4,000 per 2 weeks (LBB2.81, p7-8)
Crew Salaries: Cr 3640 per 2 weeks (including 2 weeks annual overhaul) (LBB2.81, p8, 11, 16, 23)

Berthing Costs: Cr 100 for 6 days, plus Cr 100 per day after 6 days (LBB2.81, p8)
Surface to Orbit Shuttle Costs: Cr 10 per cargo ton, Cr 20 to 120 per passenger (LBB2.81, p9)
Fuel: Cr 500 per ton (refined), Cr100 per ton (unrefined), Cr 0 (skimmed) (LBB2.81, p7)
L-Hyd Drop Tanks (20 tons, streamlined): Cr 30,000 per jump, unfueled (LBB5.80, p27) requires 10 weeks fabrication time, installation time is only a few minutes (LBB A5, p14)

Mail Delivery (subsidized only): Cr 25,000 revenue per delivery (LBB2.81, p9)
Interplanetary Charters: Cr 100 per hour, minimum 12 hours (LBB2.81, p9)
Subsidy reduces gross revenue receipts by 50% for passengers, cargo and mail (LBB2.81, p7)


New Financing (1st ship): Cr 169,391 per 2 weeks / Cr 504.14 per hour
Break Even (1st ship): Cr 28,232 per ton @ 6 tons carried per 2 weeks
Unrefined Fuel Break Even (1st ship): 22 tons = 4.36 hours​
Paid Off or Subsidized (1st ship): Cr 10,786 per 2 weeks / Cr 32.10 per hour
Break Even (1st ship): Cr 1798 per ton @ 6 tons carried per 2 weeks
Unrefined Fuel Break Even (1st ship): 23 tons = 71.65 hours​
Subsidized Mail (1st ship): Cr 1714 surplus (!) per 2 weeks with 1 delivery
50% Receipts for 1 ton of cargo carried is pure profit(!)
+1 Additional Mail delivery in-system: Cr 12,400 (386.29h between deliveries break even)​



New Financing (2nd+ ships): Cr 137,061 per 2 weeks / Cr 407.92 per hour
Break Even (2nd+ ships): Cr 22,844 per ton @ 6 tons carried per 2 weeks
Unrefined Fuel Break Even (2nd+ ships): 22 tons = 5.39 hours​
Paid Off or Subsidized (2nd+ ships): Cr 10,177 per 2 weeks / Cr 30.29 per hour
Break Even (2nd+ ships): Cr 1697 per ton @ 6 tons carried per 2 weeks
Unrefined Fuel Break Even (2nd+ ships): 23 tons = 75.93 hours​
Subsidized Mail (2nd+ ships): Cr 2323 surplus (!) per 2 weeks with 1 delivery
50% Receipts for 1 ton of cargo carried is pure profit(!)
+1 Additional Mail delivery in-system: Cr 12,400 (409.37h between deliveries break even)​



One Way Nonstop Interplanetary Travel Times at 6G in 12 hour blocks (LBB2.81 p10)
  • 12 hours (0.5d): 27,993,600 km (0.187 AU)
  • 24 hours (1.0d): 111,974,400 km (0.748 AU)
  • 36 hours (1.5d): 251,942,400 km (1.684 AU)
  • 48 hours (2.0d): 447,897,600 km (2.993 AU)
  • 60 hours (2.5d): 669,840,000 km (4.477 AU)
  • 72 hours (3.0d): 1,007,769,600 km (6.736 AU)
  • 84 hours (3.5d): 1,371,686,400 km (9.169 AU)
  • 96 hours (4.0d): 1,791,590,400 km (11.975 AU)
  • 108 hours (4.5d): 2,267,481,600 km (15.156 AU)
  • 120 hours (5.0d): 2,799,360,000 km (18.712 AU)
  • 132 hours (5.5d): 3,387,225,600 km (22.648 AU)
  • 144 hours (6.0d): 4,031,078,400 km (26.945 AU)
  • 156 hours (6.5d): 4,730,918,400 km (31.623 AU)
  • 168 hours (7.0d): 5,486,745,600 km (36.676 AU)
 
Preferred Subsidized Mail Routes of 8, 10 or 12 systems in the Spinward Marches (1-5).
Star systems on the Express Network have an X notation for easy reference.

  • Wonstar/Five Sisters to Mertactor/District 268 (10 parsecs, 8 systems one way, reverse)



  • Tarsus/District 268 to Caladbolg/Sword Worlds (18 parsecs, 12 systems one way, reverse)

  • Efate/Regina to Natoko/Aramis (19 parsecs, 12 systems one way, reverse)
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Preferred Subsidized Mail Routes of 12 systems in the Spinward Marches (6-10).
Star systems on the Express Network have an X notation for easy reference.


  • Regina/Regina to Regina/Regina (19 parsecs, 12 systems, round trip)



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Preferred Subsidized Mail Routes of 12 systems in the Spinward Marches (11-15).
Star systems on the Express Network have an X notation for easy reference.

  • Glisten/Glisten to Glisten/Glisten (19 parsecs, 12 systems, round trip)

  • Glisten/Glisten to Trin/Trin's Veil (18 parsecs, 12 systems one way, reverse)

  • Zivije/Rhylanor to Zivije/Rhylanor (21 parsecs, 12 systems, round trip)


  • Trin/Trin's Veil to Trin/Trin's Veil (21 parsecs, 12 systems, round trip)
    • Annual maintenance can be performed at Trin.
    • Subsidy from Trin.
      1. Trin X / Trin's Veil (jump2)
      2. Ramiva / Trin's Veil (jump2)
      3. Katarulu X / Trin's Veil (jump2)
      4. Pepernium / Trin's Veil (jump1)
      5. Traltha / Trin's Veil (jump1)
      6. Conway / Trin's Veil (jump2)
      7. Squanine X / Trin's Veil (jump2)
      8. Burston / Trin's Veil (jump2)
      9. Edenelt X / Trin's Veil (jump2)
      10. Raydrad / Trin's Veil (jump1)
      11. Zyra / Trin's Veil (jump2)
      12. Prilissa / Trin's Veil (jump 2 return to Trin)
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So … the CHALLENGE … :coffeesip:
Design a starship that can generate profits simply by traveling to star systems and never have to lose money at any port of call as a matter of routine operations.

Sounds impossible right?
Passenger numbers … vary … from system to system.
Cargo availability … varies widely … from system to system.
Speculative cargo … varies incredibly widely … there are plenty of opportunities to ship speculative cargo at a loss, depending on the type of cargo being shipped and the buy/sell price ratios involved.

In other words, relying on passenger service and cargo hauling (standard and/or speculative) can result in a WIDE variety of outcomes, yielding a Feast or Famine pattern of returns, where there are no guaranteed returns on investment (let alone overhead costs on the ship and crew) and the mercantile performance of the ship as a profit venture relies HEAVILY on the context of the interstellar trade in question. This will typically yield highly profitable trade routes (that are all taken, of course, because they're profitable) where competition is not necessarily welcomed by the established interests in that market region … and everything else, from the marginal to the "basket case" economics of a lot of the backwater worlds off the main trade routes.

When everyone is playing "follow the money" then the lucrative interstellar trade routes tend to become hardened around the most profitable lanes for commerce to the exclusion of everyone else. After all, if it's not profitable to go there … why would you go there as a merchant? Short answer, you wouldn't (go there) … because if you do, it's costing you more money than if you went somewhere else (presumably more profitable).

This dynamic then yields a concentration of interstellar traffic that excludes "uneconomic backwater" star systems creating a situation of HAVES versus HAVE NOTS between star systems that is as obviously unequal as it sounds, because that's the reality. But in order to drive interstellar traffic towards these "economic basket case" backwater worlds that are visited less often, there needs to be an opportunity for profit to encourage starships to circulate amongst such star systems. Government administrations at various levels (planetary, subsector, sector) would have various non-monetary incentives for wanting to encourage such circulation by starships, but the challenge still remains … how to do so without incurring unwanted deficits that create a drag on the overall economy of the world(s) involved in order to support the starship operations costs in a way where everyone profits (and thus, everybody wins)?

In other words, how do you find precious metals where everyone else sees nothing but worthless dirt?
And even better yet, how do you manage to do this RELIABLY regardless of any other economic factors in any star system?
How do you "negate" the relevance of things like Industrial/Non-industrial, Rich/Poor, Agricultural/Non-agricultural, Hi-population/Low-population, along with numerous other variables that often dictate the profitability of starship operations in interstellar trade?



The simplest answer to this question is … Subsidized MAIL … which the Traveller wiki refers to as X-Mail.

Rules for Subsidized Mail can be found in LBB.81 on p9 and 11.
A Mail Vault requires 5 tons of cargo capacity must be committed to postal duty on a full time basis, the ship must be armed and a gunner must be a part of the crew.
The vessel is paid Cr 25,000 for each mail delivery, regardless of the actual mail tonnage carried, and such mail tonnage will not exceed 5 tons per trip.
However … when a vessel is subsidized, the subsidizing government receives 50% of all gross receipts, which applies to passengers, cargo and mail.

So what you're left with is an economic paradigm in which subsidized mail deliveries (and yes, I'm using the word deliveries explicitly here for a specific reason that I'm getting to later) yield a 50/50 split of the Cr 25,000 worth of revenue … so the subsidizing government "earns" Cr 12,500 per mail delivery, and the mail vessel's crew earn Cr 12,500 per mail delivery.

The Cr 12,500 the crew earns for each mail delivery then needs to fund all of the vessel's overhead costs … annual maintenance, life support, crew salaries, fuel costs (if purchased at a starport), berthing fees at starports … the lot. This then puts a hard cap ceiling on the operating costs of a Subsidized Mail Courier vessel in order for them to be able to make a profit in every single star system they visit to deliver mail. If a ship's operating costs are lower than Cr 12,500 per 2 weeks, then the crew onboard such as ship can earn a profit no matter where they go … so long as they can make mail deliveries where they're going ... and even "basket case" economy worlds still need to send and receive X-Mail, because there's always going to be a "market" willing to "trade" (so to speak) for the contents of your Mail Vault (if you have one).

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The first way to reduce operating costs is to limit the size of the ship to the absolute minimum needed to get the job (in this case, mail deliveries) done, so as to limit the expense of overhead costs taking a bite out of the crew's profit margin per mail delivery (and thus their incentive to keep making deliveries of mail). The minimum starship size being 100 tons means that a 100 ton starship is as low as you can go in construction costs (larger ships tend to cost more to build and more to overhaul each year).

The second way to reduce operating costs is to limit the size of the crew, which then reduces the demand for life support and the expense of sustaining and maintaining those life support systems. Additionally, a smaller crew costs less in salaries which also helps to improve the profit margin per mail delivery ratio in the (remaining) crew's favor.

The third way to reduce operating costs is through not needing to purchase fuel at starports, since wilderness refueling is "free" when skimmed from a gas giant or dipped from liquid water oceans.

So with all of that in mind, the objective then becomes a combination of:
100 ton starship
Can refuel from oceans and gas giants
Can purify fuel to prevent misjumps
Must be armed
Crew of 2 (Pilot, Gunner)
Minimum of 5 tons of cargo for a Mail Facility
Operating overhead costs need to be less than Cr 12,500 per delivery including maintenance, crew salaries, fuel, berthing fees, etc.



Now, in a LBB1-3 Traveller universe, where there is only 1 mainworld per star system to be bothered with (specified in the UWP), the opportunities for mail deliveries default to being 1 mail delivery per star system and the whole subsidized mail courier scheme becomes a purely interstellar affair. You jump in-system, drop off and pick up mail as a single delivery, refuel and jump to the next system. The point I want to stress here is that we're talking about 1 mail delivery per jump, which winds up being 1 mail delivery per 1-2 weeks. Depending on the details of such a route, if you're making single point deliveries of mail in each star system, a crew could potentially be spending 6.25-7.3 days in jump (150-175 hours), take the obligatory 16 hours after jump preventative drive maintenance checks (so up to 166-191 hours, which is 7-8 days) and then take only 1-2 days interfacing with the starport for mail deliveries and refueling. In other words, with a single world to deliver mail to per star system, you could be looking at a jump tempo of once every 8-10 days per jump, instead of the more common expectation of once every 14 days (2 weeks).

At a jump tempo of 10 days per jump on average, you're looking at making 35 jumps per year (which equates to 35 deliveries per year) and still having 2 weeks left over during which annual maintenance can be performed. 35 jumps per year at 1 mail delivery per jump yields Cr 437,500 per year revenue yield for the subsidizing government. Over a 40 year standard lifespan for a starship, that yields MCr 17.5 of return on investment from 1400 mail deliveries during that time. Obviously this is not enough of a (direct monetary) return on investment for the subsidizing government to justify acquisition of even surplus Scout/Couriers for conversion (they would need to have more than 3 tons of cargo space), since Scout/Couriers cost more than MCr 17.5 per copy (MCr 27.63 unarmed, in fact) to construct new (or acquire cheaper as used surplus).

And this is where the distinction of getting paid PER MAIL DELIVERY comes into the economics of the story.



LBB6 enabled expanded star system generation, with multiple worlds (and moons and planetoids) possible … each of which can potentially be inhabited … and anywhere that there is habitation, there can be a demand for Mail Delivery. As Players and Referees though, we are habitually accustomed to thinking of star systems as having only ONE destination in them, the mainworld detailed in the UWP codes. This blinkered view ignores the possibility of multiple habitations scattered throughout a particular star system (a natural consequence of interplanetary, as opposed to interstellar, travel). Star systems with more than one asteroid belt can have populations inhabiting those multiple belts, which is something actually specified and detailed in the Traveller wiki for no less than the Glisten system, where there are 2 asteroid belts, each of which have populations in the billions of sophonts. This means that there ought to be multiple settled habitats in different regions of the two asteroid belts to accommodate such a large population.

In other words, a star system such as Glisten would not be a "one and done" mail delivery for the entire system, but would instead offer a wealth of opportunities for "local interplanetary" type mail deliveries between habitats in the asteroid belts. Even if the Referee were to rule that you can only get paid for 1 mail delivery per orbit (around the star and/or moons around a planet), that would still mean that for a star system such as the Glisten system a mail courier would have the opportunity to make AT LEAST 2 mail deliveries within the system, no just a "one and done" before jumping out to reach the next star system.

The Regina system would represent another such opportunity for multiple mail deliveries within a single star system.
Orbits 1, 2, 3 and 4 around the main binary stars are inhabited. Orbits 3 and 4 even feature planet plus moon combinations where there is more than one population in those orbits. Regina itself orbits a large gas giant that has FIVE inhabited moons, one of which is Regina. So just around the main binary stars, there are NINE inhabited worlds/moons from 0.4-3 AU distant from the main binaries. That's a LOT of possible mail deliveries at Cr 12,500 each(!) for the subsidizing government and the mail courier crew!

The Regina system even has a distant (5000 AU away!) trinary star (Darida) which has 4 low population (1-4) outpost settlements out there. However, given the distances involved, it would take some ~82 days(!) at constant 6G acceleration to reach them, which is basically 3 weeks of maneuver! If your Referee will allow you to "micro-jump" that 5000 AU distance, you can get there in 1 week and then have 4 settlements to make mail deliveries to … at Cr 12,500 each(!).

And that's not even including the potential of making multiple mail deliveries to worlds with Balkanized Governments (code: 7) where no single governing authority administers the entire world (or moon). In such situations you could (with a ruling from the Referee) make mail deliveries to each of the balkanized governments' territories, racking up revenue for each mail delivery on a single world (or moon).
 
Now, as soon as you start contemplating the possibilities of making more than one mail delivery in-system to multiple population centers and/or governmental entities … suddenly that guaranteed revenue of Cr 12,500 per mail delivery can start looking mighty sweet. However, there's a constraint on how fast you can rack up all of that "easy money" delivering mail to multiple destinations within a single star system … how powerful is your maneuver drive?

For most Free Traders (tramp or otherwise), the usual business plan is to simply make port at the mainworld, conduct your business (disembark passengers, buy/sell cargo, unload/load cargo, embark passengers), leave port and then jump to the next star system. There isn't necessarily going to be a lot of interplanetary travel and trading going on (mainly because it couldn't even be detailed until the release of LBB6). So under those circumstances, a 1G maneuver drive is "all you need" to conduct most (if not all) of your business at type A, B and C starports, and depending on the specifics of the mainworld you can often times manage with a 1G maneuver drive at type D, E and even X starports (although the less said about the X starports the better, eh?). :rolleyes:

But when you're looking at making interplanetary travel a routine opportunity for generating revenue, having a more powerful maneuver drive starts becoming a valuable investment for quick orbital transfers to new destinations. The larger maneuver drive (and power plant for it) will increase the cost of the starship, but it will also hasten the rate of mail deliveries when there is more than one population to make mail deliveries to within a star system. When "Time Is Money" in starship overhead costs, being able to generate more revenue faster can certainly be a major boost to the profitability of a mail courier route.

Yet even that simple insight overlooks a very simple fact. When there are 2 or more populations on separate worlds within a star system, you aren't going to be making a mere single mail delivery to each and then leaving. No, instead you'll be making a mail run between them in one direction before reversing course back to the start in order to make a round trip of mail deliveries to all of them.

Observe.
  • 1 population: 1 then jump = 1 mail delivery in-system
  • 2 populations: 1 . 2 . 1 then jump = 3 mail deliveries in-system
  • 3 populations: 1 . 2 . 3 . 2 . 1 then jump = 5 mail deliveries in-system
  • 4 populations: 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 3 . 2 . 1 then jump = 7 mail deliveries in-system
  • 5 populations: 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 4 . 3 . 2 . 1 then jump = 9 mail deliveries in-system
In other words, take the number of worlds "within maneuver range" of your starship that have populations on them, multiply that by 2 and subtract 1 to calculate the number of round trip mail deliveries you can make in that star system before you've delivered mail "from all and to all" of those populations within the system.

This means that in a star system like Regina, since there are 9 populated worlds within 3 AU orbits of the main binary stars, you can potentially make up to 17 mail deliveries before needing to jump to the next star system to continue making more mail deliveries. If you're exceptionally lucky, you could even have your starship chartered to micro-jump to the far companion star and deliver mail to the 4 populations there, which would be another 7 mail deliveries before jumping to a new star system on your route.

If making 24 mail deliveries for MCr 0.3 in revenue for the subsidizing government AND another MCr 0.3 in revenue for the mail courier crew in the Regina system alone sounds like some sweet sweet guaranteed revenue for what amounts to maybe all of 3-4 weeks worth of shuttle work … you're starting to pay attention to the economic possibilities of what I'm talking about here. But then this is where having a powerful maneuver drive comes in, because the more "coal you can shovel" to speed your way between worlds faster, the quicker that guaranteed revenue is going to rack up into your profit margins. And since "Time Is Money" when it comes to starship overhead and operating costs, there is a significant financial incentive to make all of those mail deliveries in-system as quickly as possible. That in turn raises the importance of having a powerful maneuver drive beyond what you would normally expect in a trading/courier ship, with 6G maneuver drives being the "top of the line" option for this mission profile. Note that having such a powerful maneuver drive also reduces the opportunity and threat of interception by pirates (most of them simply can't keep up long enough to maintain contact), so a powerful maneuver drive has additional safety and security benefits beyond sheer economic concerns.

Of course, in order to really make good use of a high-G maneuver capable ship delivering mail to multiple populations within a single star system … there needs to be extended details beyond the mainworld for the star systems visited, along with an easy method for a Referee to simply calculate distances between planets in their orbits (they aren't all going to be lined up for short flights, usually) to allow a crew to plot their route through a star system to make all their deliveries. Yes, the Traveling Salesman problem, in space, is what I'm talking about here. ;)



Now if you'll notice, every single one of those mail deliveries I've just postulated above is functionally agnostic to all of the usual factors we think of when it comes to merchant captain starship economics. It doesn't matter if the worlds are Rich or Poor, Industrial or Non-industrial, Agricultural or Non-agricultural, high population or low population. All that matters is that the population on each world amount to a population code of 1+ … or if the UWP population code is 0, are there other installations or facilities detailed for the system (like a military base that enforces a blockade on a Red Zone system, for example).

One such example that I found where it would make sense to deliver mail to a system with a zero population is Nirton/District 268, where the Traveller wiki details that although the world is uninhabited, there is an orbiting observation post that enforces the interdiction, so mail deliveries to the crew there could potentially be made. Under those circumstances, I would expect the observation post or the assigned close escort enforcing the interdiction to dock a shuttle with the mail courier to transfer mail, rather than permitting a landing by the mail courier at the observation post, which would then "count" as a mail delivery for revenue purposes. The mail courier crew would then be authorized to refuel at the gas giant and jump to the next system on their route, so Nirton would be an example of a single mail delivery star system before jumping.

But places like Tavonni/Lanth with no population detailed are usually just going to be refueling points with no mail deliveries … unless the mail courier starship is chartered to make a specific delivery to a particular drop point … which in turn could be a plot hook (or a red herring) for either the start of an adventure or as a seed for a Rumor that the mail courier crew could spread (if they don't have an NDA about it, and sometimes even if they do). :p
 
One thing that I'm quite aware of is that Referees and Players might not be that … enthused … about the idea of essentially playing what amounts to living the life of someone who restocks vending machines (planned travel route) or glorified mail carrier (between the stars). However, I'm thinking that such concerns might be inherently shortsighted. The reason that I say this is because if a Referee has a 12 star system mail delivery route plotted out for a crew of 2, that limits the "initial scope" of the campaign into being something manageable for the "terrain details" of each of those star systems, which the Players can then get to know and become familiar with. That level of familiarity can then be parlayed into a kind of "local knowledge" in which the Players can become comfortable with their understanding of those "terrain details" in a way that then creates opportunities for the Referee to pass along Gossip and Rumors to the Players and/or for the Players to spread their own Gossip and Rumors (of varying shades of truthiness) in different star systems along their route. This kind of familiarity then provides plenty of opportunities for the Referee to dangle both plot and adventure hooks within reach of their Players, and then shape the storytelling of their campaigns to following the ones that the Players notice (or trip over).

Remember, as a subsidized mail courier, your Players will only need to spend 70% of each year actually running their mail route (LBB S7, p22). That's basically 36-37 weeks a year need to be spent delivering mail, with another 2 weeks where the starship is laid up for (yet another) overhaul, leaving a total of 13-14 weeks a year during which the Players can "go adventuring" before needing to return to their mail route (and raking in the cash).

Since the Spinward Courier is purposely built to deliver mail as cheaply yet rapidly as possible, so every delivery turns a profit, it is perfectly possible for a crew who has been down on their luck to be given an opportunity to take over a subsidized mail route, build up a nest egg of funds which can then be a springboard to transitioning a campaign in a different direction or phase when Players "pass it on" and hand off the subsidized mail route to a different crew so they can go off and have adventures elsewhere. So if your Players don't want to "just deliver mail" for years (or the rest of their lives), they don't have to … once they've turned a tidy enough profit from doing it for a while and feel like moving on to doing something else. ;)



All of the subsidized mail routes that I've detailed for the Spinward Marches (and there are plenty of other routes possible, I just picked these as the most interesting ones) are set up to send mail courier crews circulating around the backwater and "basket case" economies of the lesser worlds to be found on the sector map. Although there is a (successful!) financial advantage for doing this work, what the subsidizing governments "get" out of the mail delivery services is the influence (cultural, diplomatic, economic) that naturally follows from running these routes. Postal service runs like this mail courier starship are capable of are the kind of thing that can bind communities of worlds together, so they are less likely to drift apart from each other in ways that can lead to disputes, conflicts and even local rebellions against (Imperial) authority.

Incidentally, for anyone who is curious, at a MCr 60.904 mass production cost, for a subsidizing government to be able to recoup that cost just from mail delivery revenue at Cr 12,500 per mail delivery for the subsidizing government … that would require 4873 mail deliveries. Over a span of 40 years, that would amount to an average of 122 mail deliveries per year. If a Spinward Courier spends 50 weeks a year delivering mail (with 2 weeks off for annual overhauls), that would mean a mail delivery rate of 4.88 deliveries every 2 weeks (with a jump being one of those 2 weeks), or 5 deliveries per star system. So if you've been paying attention up until now, you would realize that 5 mail deliveries per star system every 2 weeks simply requires an average of merely 3 populated worlds (code: 1+ population) per star system before jumping to the next star system … and that's assuming it takes a week to visit all 3 populated worlds for a round trip (as detailed above), because it might not (see Regina system and 6G maneuver times). Also, it can potentially be more profitable to "overstay" in a star system with lots of population centers to make lots of mail deliveries than to stick to a strict "jump every 2 weeks no matter what" schedule, but that depends on the details of individual star systems as determined by the Referee. :coffeesip:



For the overhead costs of the ship, I've calculated the crew salaries as needing to be paid for 26 blocks of 2 weeks each per year, but the ship will only be capable of generating revenue for 25 blocks of 2 weeks each per year. This is because the crew must be paid their salaries during the 2 weeks of enforced downtime for annual overhauls, even when the ship isn't able to generate revenue by making deliveries. So accounting for the "2 week overhaul vacation" as part of the overhead crew salary costs when the ship is unable to generate revenue by delivering mail seemed to be the most prudent course. Likewise, annual overhaul costs are divided by 25 blocks of 2 weeks per year, not 26 blocks of 2 weeks per year, so as to account for the withholding needed to pay for annual overhauls out of the revenue earned while mail can be delivered.

Given that a lot of the preferred routes I've provided for the Spinward Marches features only one star system along the regular route where annual overhaul maintenance can be performed, I would fully expect crews to (in effect) overhaul their Spinward Couriers more frequently than exactly every 12 months, with 9-12 month gaps between overhauls being more likely, so as to avoid going beyond the "overhaul expiration date" while in a part of their mail route far away from the overhaul shipyard. Since annual overhauls are relatively cheap for the Spinward Courier (but have to be paid for by the crew) and the starship is so reliably profitable, I can easily envision scenarios in which more frequent than necessary "annual" overhauls become excuses to take a 2 week vacation from shipboard life on the world(s) of the system where the overhaul is taking place. Even that circumstance presents an opportunity for Referees to dangle plot and adventure hooks in front of their Players (and if they don't bite now, they might bite on them later). So with the preferred routes that I've provided, there are LOTS of opportunities for side (and even main) adventures to happen, even with as "boring" a setup as being a humble mail courier. Remember, LBB Adventure 1 is set in the Regina subsector, Adventure 2 is set on Vanejen in the Rhylanor subsector, and Adventure 3 is also set in the Rhylanor subsector. Other canon adventure hooks can be found in other CT releases, so don't assume that mail delivery will somehow "prevent" opportunities for adventures from being offered or happening. :cool:

And just as an aside, if the crew double occupies one of the two staterooms, the other stateroom could potentially be offered as a middle passage to a single passenger, but I wouldn't expect such arrangements to be commonplace.

Last thing I'll mention is that if you look at the revenue return for +1 Additional Mail Deliveries in the starship economics cheat sheet I've provided, you'll see that it offers only Cr 12,400 instead of Cr 12,500 like I've been talking about this entire time. That's not a typo, because the Cr 12,400 amount per additional mail delivery within a star system assumes that docking fees of Cr 100 must be paid at each starport visited, and the cost of those fees are deducted from the crew's side of the revenue as a starship operating cost that is necessarily borne by the ship's crew, not by the subsidizing government.
 
Credit for the thoughts and ideas that formed the basis for this "penny ante" low end bottom of the barrel scraping for profitability in a starship are largely an outcome of having read the Starships Comparative Potential Mercantile Revenue and Jump 1 vs Jump 2 ships in the CT Imperium threads discussing (at length!) various aspects of starship economics under LBB rules.

In this particular instance, I originally started with a Jump-1 starship which had enough fuel to jump 2 parsecs, and thought that would work out just fine … until I started trying to plot actual mail delivery routes through the Spinward Marches and suddenly realized that wasting an extra week in jump space, not generating any revenue because no mail was getting delivered, was simply too high a price to pay. The "freedom of navigation" offered by Jump-2 however more than made up for it because it allowed the ship to, as a matter of routine, never have "double jump weeks" during which no revenue was being generated at all. The "Time Is Money" factor was simply too overwhelming, since the faster mail got delivered the more revenue the ship generated for both the subsidizing government and the crew, keeping everyone in the black on the investment.

I made sure to choose subsidizing governments that had a large enough population base for revenue that they would be able to purchase the Spinward Courier starships outright at construction delivery (rather than through usurious rate bank financing) so the mail deliveries the ships make only have to pay off a mere 1 starship, instead of 2 like you wind up needing to do with bank financing. As detailed above, odds are reasonable that on most mail routes being able to break even (or even make a profit) over a 40 year span of mail delivery operations is a reasonable expectation, during which the crew(s) manning the ship(s) can expect guaranteed profits at every port of call. The margins may be small for each delivery, but they do add up over time … and that kind of consistent return on investment can wind up being reasonably valuable in terms of attracting and retaining crews who are just in it for the money.

Spinward Couriers can be extremely profitable if purchased new and completely paid off upon delivery from the shipyard when used as a private X-mail courier ship. They are still profitable (as detailed above) even in subsidized service as mail couriers. Expecting to be able to turn a profit with a newly bought Spinward Courier financed by a bank however is very nearly a textbook case of a Fool's Errand, although they do make excellent high-G smugglers and blockade runners for high value cargoes of 6 tons or less if a Mail Vault is not installed in the cargo bay (I swear I settled on 6 tons for cargo for this ship before the recent discussion of containerization standard tonnage showed up and I decided it before registering for these forums, actually). Such speculative trading in high value and/or smuggled goods however is exceedingly risky and not recommended for those who are short of cash, faint of heart and/or the poorly connected (and if you're all three, you're going to need more luck than is your fair share! :eek:).



So I hope everyone who has read this far has enjoyed this look into how I would want to build a starship designed to maximize profits on the smallest of cargo margins in this case, basically nothing but X-mail.

Just remember that Spinward Courier crews who don't start out "married" to each other, often wind up eventually acting like they are … simply due to being together for so long. Crews who actually are pair bonded to each other as mates are common enough for such arrangements to be considered normal to the point of being expected (although it's by no means a requirement).

If you're a Referee who has a PC(s) with either Pilot or Gunnery skill who mustered out of their chosen service with no starship and the PC(s) want to play a traveling starship campaign ... you could always start them off with a Spinward Courier. After mustering out, the PC(s) are approached with a business opportunity, where they have to travel to a TL=13+ world with a type A starport by (insert date) to pick up a newly constructed Spinward Courier on behalf of (insert subsidizing government) and navigate their way to an assigned subsidized route determined by (insert subsidizing government). Do the PC's agree? Do they have the means to travel to the shipyard where the starship they've been given papers for is to be picked up? Do they RTFM once they have the ship, so they can operate it properly (and not screw up with it immediately?).

In other words, as a Referee you can even make the acquisition of a Spinward Courier the opening act of a campaign that leads to adventure! :cool:

Have fun!
 
Minor quibble with the intrasystem route- I doubt very much that any governmental entity is going to pay out the full Cr25000 for a non-jump run (except in an Amber Zone system).



That in-system isn't defined technically, but I don't see that as consistent with the risk/reward structure. In any event, the fast small craft would be the cheaper niche filler for that function, so a logical governmental entity setting a subsidy route would pay out and seek to tie up as little capital or operating expense as possible.



The other part is diminishing returns on the time buy with the 6-G M-Drive. I think it would work out better to go 4-G which only adds 1/3 100D time and use the resulting tonnage for either opportunistic freight haul/speculation or load up the fuel and skip refueling for systems that will pick up the mail at 100D or handle D/E/X starport runs on the route.
 
kilemall said:
Minor quibble with the intrasystem route- I doubt very much that any governmental entity is going to pay out the full Cr25000 for a non-jump run (except in an Amber Zone system).
Click to expand...

So let's play with this notion then, shall we?

If my starship picks up a load of cargo (I'm being as generic as possible here with this example) at Regina (the mainworld) ... and then jump 1 parsec to Jenghe, deliver the cargo, pick up a new load of cargo ... and then jump 1 parsec back to Regina to deliver the new load of cargo ... does my starship get paid for that round trip? I'm not talking speculation here, I'm simply talking about bulk cargo hauling.

Most of us here would say "Yes" ... (with many people adding a "Duh!" to that). :p

But if you look at what is actually happening here in this cargo transit, you're really only talking about taking cargo from one population center (Regina) to another population center (Jenghe) and then turning around and going back to the first population center (Regina). The fact that these two places are 1 parsec apart, as opposed to being 1 orbit apart in the same system is irrelevant. In fact, the only way to make the distance to deliver relevant in a jump space context is to bill for cargo space on a per parsec basis ... which the Rules As Written (RAW) in LBB2.81 explicitly do not do.

So if I can deliver a cargo from Regina to Jenghe and back and be paid full price for a 1 parsec round trip (that takes 4 weeks to complete) ... why can't I deliver a cargo from Regina to any of the other worlds in the Regina system (there's more than one to choose from after all! :eek:) and get paid the same price for the delivery? The basic premise is the same, after all. You're delivering from one population center to another ... the only difference is the distance (interplanetary versus interstellar).

In other words, if you make deliveries to anywhere other than the mainworld in a system, why would you be generating revenue at a different price from what you would get from an identical mainworld in a different star system?

Regina system link

Let's look at just the moons around the same gas giant that Regina is orbiting, just to keep this simple.

Stellar orbit 4 (3AU): Assiniboia (Large Gas Giant)
(1) Moon orbit 3: Redes F595269-9 Farming.
(2) Moon orbit 6: Printemps F20036C-A Imperial Navy Base.
(3) Moon orbit 7: Brumaire F564669-9 Farming. Colony.
(4) Moon orbit 30: Harcourt H43556C-A Research Lab. Military Base. Colony.
(5) Moon orbit 55: Regina A788899-A Rich World. Imperial Navy Base. Imperial Scout Base. Subsector Capital.​

For our purposes here, Farming is an additional planet characteristic that is functionally equivalent to an Agricultural trade designation (except it's for an additional world in the system, rather than being the mainworld in the system).

So in terms of speculative cargo transport ... what's the difference between shipping from Brumaire to Regina, without leaving the system, and shipping from Dinomn to Regina, from 2 parsecs away?

Brumaire has a type F (Good quality) spaceport with unrefined fuel.
Dinomn has a type B (Good quality) starport with refined fuel.

Brumaire has atmosphere type 6 (standard).
Dinomn has atmosphere type 7 (standard, tainted).

Brumaire has a population code of 6.
Dinomn has a population code of 6.

Brumaire has tech level 9.
Dinomn has tech level 9.

Brumaire has a trade classification of Farming.
Dinomn has a trade classification of Agricultural. Non-industrial.

So I ask you ... what is the difference between trade goods sourced from Brumaire versus the same trade goods sourced from Dinomn when those goods are being sent to Regina?

The correct answer is ... very close to NO DIFFERENCE aside from the 48 moon orbits away versus 2 parsecs away distance. In all the respects that matter for trading purposes, Brumaire is extremely similar to Dinomn in all the ways that matter. As far as cargo generation is concerned, the economies of Brumaire and Dinomn ought to be remarkably similar (based purely on UWP code similarities).

So what's the economic difference between interplanetary and interstellar travel? Well ... distance ... but the LBB2.81 trade and commerce rules are distance agnostic(!), which is why the same amount of revenue is generated regardless of the number of parsecs you need to jump in order to deliver cargo. If the transport cost for cargo is Cr 1000 per ton (as per Rules As Written (RAW)), no matter if the shipping distance is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 parsecs or more ... why wouldn't cargo that is shipped "zero parsecs" also garner revenue at a rate of Cr 1000 per ton?

In other words, what's so "special" about interstellar trade, as opposed to interplanetary trade within the same star system?

Well ... when you only have mainworlds detailed, the only kind of trade you CAN have is interstellar, simply because all the other interplanetary trading opportunities DON'T EXIST due to a lack of detail. If there's only one world per star system (aside from a gas giant or few), then there's nowhere else to go for trade, so interplanetary trade doesn't happen (because it can't).

It's only once you detail star systems beyond the mainworld that interplanetary trade becomes possible. You can only "go" to places that the Referee has a map for, after all. Those additional worlds beyond the mainworld will then be in "competition" for trade with the mainworld in the system, as well as any other worlds in other systems parsecs away. The only meaningful difference between them in terms of trading opportunities is distance (interplanetary close versus interstellar far).

The only other difference I've been able to find between interplanetary trade and interstellar trade rates of revenue have to do with charters.

LBB2.81 said:
Standard price to charter a non-starship is Cr 1 per ton per hour, usually with a twelve hour minimum. Charter price for a starship is computed based on its revenue-generating capacity. Starships are chartered in 2-week blocks; the charge is Cr900 per ton of cargo hold plus Cr9,000 per high passage berth and Cr900 per low passage berth.
Click to expand...

So an interplanetary charter to shuttle passengers and goods in-system will typically yield a lower rate of return for most ships than an interstellar charter might, since an interplanetary charter will typically require less than 1 week (jump transit) to complete.

But if we start with a Type-A 200 ton Free Trader that can carry 6 high passengers, 20 low passengers and 82 tons of cargo (the LBB2.81 standard design on p19) ... an interstellar charter would yield Cr 145,800 for a 2 week charter. The exact same ship would earn the exact same amount of revenue from a 729 hour (30.375 days) interplanetary charter (at Cr 200 per hour), so in terms of charter service the ship is obviously more profitable with interstellar charters (same money in 46% of the time).

Contrast the above details with a Type-S 100 ton Scout/Courier (LBB2.81 standard design on p19). At best, the Scout/Courier could hire a Steward (so crew of 2) to allow 2 high passengers, no low passengers and 3 tons of cargo. An interstellar charter would thus yield a maximum of Cr 11,700 for a 2 week charter. The exact same ship would earn the exact same amount of revenue from a 117 hour (4.875 days) interplanetary charter (at Cr 100 per hour), so in terms of charter service the ship is obviously more profitable with interplanetary charters (same money in 36% of the time).

In other words, different ship designs are better optimized for interplanetary versus interstellar trade (I know, go figure, right? :rolleyes:). But it doesn't change the fact that from a merchant point of view you're simply transporting goods and/or passengers from Here to There ... the only difference is the distance (and how much you get paid for it).

Or to put it more simply ... Different Worlds Are Different Worlds ... whether they are mere orbits away or parsecs away from where you are now. Deliveries between them still "count" as far as transfers of goods and services go. The only reason why interplanetary travel (and trade!) didn't feature prominently from the start in LBB1-3 is simply because it wasn't detailed in such a way as to be accessible for Referees to use (and Players to abuse!) ... which in turn produces FUN(!). :cool:
 
kilemall said:
That in-system isn't defined technically, but I don't see that as consistent with the risk/reward structure. In any event, the fast small craft would be the cheaper niche filler for that function, so a logical governmental entity setting a subsidy route would pay out and seek to tie up as little capital or operating expense as possible.
Click to expand...

In terms of PURE local in-system mail deliveries, where you never leave the local planetary group ... sure, that is a perfectly reasonable view of the economics. A fast 6G small craft with 5 tons of cargo capacity for a Mail Facility (still need to be armed and have a Gunner though) is going to be the absolute rock bottom cheapest way to transport physical X-mail between worlds locally within a system. But that's a LOCAL solution that is limited to only a single system. What about the X-mail that needs to be sent between star systems?

In order to do BOTH jobs ... interplanetary AND interstellar mail delivery ... you need a starship.

Plus, not every star system is going to be able to afford (or have need of) an interplanetary mail delivery service. Reasonably well populated systems (code: 7+) that have settlements, outposts and/or bases on multiple worlds in-system could use such an interplanetary mail delivery system, but places that are Non-industrial (population code: 6-) may not have the tax revenue base needed to support such infrastructure type stuff as an interplanetary mail delivery system (even at cheap small craft prices). In which case, the only way for them to get mail delivered around their star system is for a starship to jump in and do it as part of their circulation among star systems in the subsector(s), subsidized by one of the more highly populated worlds along that interstellar route ... which is EXACTLY what I've detailed here.

kilemall said:
The other part is diminishing returns on the time buy with the 6-G M-Drive. I think it would work out better to go 4-G which only adds 1/3 100D time and use the resulting tonnage for either opportunistic freight haul/speculation or load up the fuel and skip refueling for systems that will pick up the mail at 100D or handle D/E/X starport runs on the route.
Click to expand...

Ah, thinking like a true Merchant Prince ... already trying to cut corners to maximize profits! Just remember that although you will only "need" a minimum of 2G from your maneuver drives to land on any terrestrial world or moon for ocean refueling, pirate ships tend to operate in the 3-4G range of the maneuver performance spectrum. So although the 6G maneuver drive costs a lot at construction, it tends to pay out dividends when it comes to combat avoidance (and reducing the need to pay for EXPENSIVE repairs of battle damage!).

So my thoughts on that option are ... Caveat Emptor ... let the buyer (of such reduced performance ships) beware. You may think you're saving money "now" on construction, but you'll ultimately wind up "paying for it" somewhere else down the line ... especially if you aren't sticking to places with nothing but type A and B starports (pirates start showing up as a possible encounter at type C and below starport types, according to LBB2.81 p35). Remember, I designed the Spinward Courier to be able to make deliveries to backwater and "basket case" economy systems off the main trade routes, where the competition for opportunities is lower (because, what opportunities? :confused:). If you can profit where others cannot, you can carve out a nice little niche role for yourself in which you and your crew can "corner the market" along a particular route for mail deliveries, contacts and INFORMATION, without needing to worry about a whole lot of competition along the way (profits aren't guaranteed for everyone else like they are for you in your Spinward Courier ship).

Pay now or pay later ... your choice.
 
Intra-system messages (but not physical cargo) don't actually need a ship or small craft -- just good comms and good encryption.

Jump is only needed in-system when the real-space flight time would be longer than a week (this is quite possible, though!)

If Jump isn't required, intra-system cargo rates will be based on the capital and operating costs of non-starships or small-craft, depending on the cargo volume. This may include the cost of transporting non-interstellar craft to that particular system if they aren't produced locally. That said, if the only spacefaring capability in a system is provided by transient vessels, they can charge whatever they need to.
 
Another LBB from Spinward Flow. Good stuff.

Simply put, distance doesn't mean anything, it's time that matters. Normally, time == distance, but Jump throws a wrench in that.

Now, given that, time == resources. Labor, fuel, "mileage". So that's where the raw cost structure comes from.

It would be curious how much a sublight 1 week trips costs in contrast to a 1 week Jump.

At face value, the sublight trip is cheaper. Minimally, you don't have a Jump drive to maintain, but do hours and maintenance on an M-drive cost more than hours and maintenance on a Jump drive?

It may even be that it's cheaper to do the 1 week jump run instead of a 5 or 6 day sublight run because of maintenance. (Not saying it true, just that it's possible).

Similarly, it may be cheaper to do a 10 day sublight run than the faster Jump run.

Obviously, this is only for things where "time != money". Bulk cargos, etc. where folks aren't willing to pay "express" rates for the cargo.

Would be an interesting analysis to see where the breakeven is.
 
Grav_Moped said:
Intra-system messages (but not physical cargo) don't actually need a ship or small craft -- just good comms and good encryption.
Click to expand...

For data transmissions, this is certainly true.
For physical deliveries ... not so much ... and it's that niche market of physical deliveries that is being served here, on both an interplanetary AND and interstellar basis. That's why the Mail Vault is a requirement for this sort of courier work. Not everyone wants to broadcast their communications. Sometimes it will be the proverbial manila envelope "delivered by hand" rather than something uploaded over the interwebs.

Grav_Moped said:
Jump is only needed in-system when the real-space flight time would be longer than a week (this is quite possible, though!)
Click to expand...

Already noted.

Grav_Moped said:
If Jump isn't required, intra-system cargo rates will be based on the capital and operating costs of non-starships or small-craft, depending on the cargo volume. This may include the cost of transporting non-interstellar craft to that particular system if they aren't produced locally.
Click to expand...

If appropriate small craft cannot be produced locally (type C starport and below, for example) then such craft can certainly be purchased (via X-mail order!) from shipyards in other systems and then arrangements made to transship the small craft to the destination system as cargo, a crew gets hired and service begins. THAT is certainly possible, but again, that is an extremely limited and local potential. It can haul X-mail around in-system on a local basis, but it won't be bringing in any X-mail from outside the system (that requires jump drives in a starship), nor will it be capable of sending X-mail out of the system (which also requires a starship) for communications with other worlds parsec(s) away.

Perhaps the best terrestrial analogy would be the difference between a puddle jumper airplane for an island archipelago chain (like say, Hawai'i) that only needs to go a few hundred kilometers to make its rounds ... versus the intercontinental range flights that connect the island chain with the mainland and the rest of the world. The kinds of things you can obtain locally are not necessarily the same as what you can obtain from "far away" ... or if you want to correspond with someone who has left the islands for the mainland, you can't just use the local mail service to send them a letter. In order to the mail to circulate, you need to have both, the local and the distant carriers.

Grav_Moped said:
That said, if the only spacefaring capability in a system is provided by transient vessels, they can charge whatever they need to.
Click to expand...

Let's just say that the occasional visit from "beyond the stars" to deliver X-mail to a number of backwater and "basket case" economy worlds can be the first step needed to open lines of communications to help administrators at higher levels (subsector, sector) be advised of the needs of such worlds to help smooth their development. Leave them isolated and they're going to STAY isolated from their neighbors and the rest of the administrative apparatus of the Imperium.

whartung said:
Another LBB from Spinward Flow. Good stuff.
Click to expand...

We make every pretense of competency around here. :cool:

whartung said:
Simply put, distance doesn't mean anything, it's time that matters. Normally, time == distance, but Jump throws a wrench in that.

Now, given that, time == resources. Labor, fuel, "mileage". So that's where the raw cost structure comes from.

It would be curious how much a sublight 1 week trips costs in contrast to a 1 week Jump.
Click to expand...

Already gave you the numbers for that (bolded here for ease of visiblity).
Spinward Flow said:
Paid Off or Subsidized (2nd+ ships): Cr 10,177 per 2 weeks / Cr 30.29 per hour
Break Even (2nd+ ships): Cr 1697 per ton @ 6 tons carried per 2 weeks
Unrefined Fuel Break Even (2nd+ ships): 23 tons = 75.93 hours​
Subsidized Mail (2nd+ ships): Cr 2323 surplus (!) per 2 weeks with 1 delivery
50% Receipts for 1 ton of cargo carried is pure profit(!)
+1 Additional Mail delivery in-system: Cr 12,400 (409.37h between deliveries break even)​
Click to expand...

whartung said:
At face value, the sublight trip is cheaper. Minimally, you don't have a Jump drive to maintain, but do hours and maintenance on an M-drive cost more than hours and maintenance on a Jump drive?

It may even be that it's cheaper to do the 1 week jump run instead of a 5 or 6 day sublight run because of maintenance. (Not saying it true, just that it's possible).

Similarly, it may be cheaper to do a 10 day sublight run than the faster Jump run.

Obviously, this is only for things where "time != money". Bulk cargos, etc. where folks aren't willing to pay "express" rates for the cargo.

Would be an interesting analysis to see where the breakeven is.
Click to expand...

With the Spinward Courier delivering mail ... the answer is that 409.37h (17 days) in interplanetary travel to earn CR 12,400 for 1 additional in-system mail delivery (including berthing fees to make the delivery) is the break even point for the hourly cost of paying overhead on the ship.

12400 / 30.29 per hour = 409.37 hours (17 days)

So if it takes longer than 17 days to get somewhere in-system with a 6G maneuver drive, you're better off jumping to the next star system on your tour. But if the travel time is less than 17 days (and usually it will be, since 7 days at 6G can cross 36 AU of distance!) in a lot of circumstances it will be more profitable to remain in-system and make that extra delivery, rather than jumping to the next star system on the route ... because while you're in jump, that's a whole 7-8 days in which you're not making any mail deliveries at all.

Bottom line, the Spinward Courier isn't necessarily going to be running on a strict 2 week per jump schedule like a Free Trader would. Sometimes it will be 8-10 days per jump (single population center in the system to deliver to) and sometimes it might take 14-28 days to make ALL of the deliveries in the Regina system (and the associated far orbit companion star 5000 AU away). It just depends on the details and the "terrain" context of where worlds are in their orbits.

Which brings everything back to the Time Is Money™ aspect and realizing that having a 6G maneuver drive monetary costs to build (and maintain) up front, but ultimately saves you a whole lot of Time (and therefore, money!) when making deliveries between worlds, simply because the delivery tempo is that much higher and the risk of pirate attacks being successful is that much lower. So high upfront capital costs, but much faster profit making (and taking) once put into service if paid off (bank loans are usury, plain and simple).
 
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I wasn't arguing against the function of the J-2 packet ship for jump, just the intrasystem portion of your cost analysis.

In most cases the M-drive trip will be less time then the jump. If it takes more time, then the in-system jump will be more time economical and the value of a small craft approach would be far less so.

Jump drive and the tonnage to make the jump possible is a serious sunk capital cost.


As for 4-G, I do agree and get the defensive function of having a high-G ship, but most pirates aren't going to hang with a 4-G target and will go for slower prey. The one exception might be fighter equipped pirates, but even then the problem there is matching course after a power plant/M-drive kill and making off with the mail. One of the fast small craft like the pinnace may be more of a threat.



The opportunity to make serious dough and get out of the guaranteed but never get ahead mail biz IMO argues for the Courier/Trader approach.

That and a content issue- a 4-G packet trader also makes for a fine smuggler....
 
kilemall said:
In most cases the M-drive trip will be less time then the jump. If it takes more time, then the in-system jump will be more time economical and the value of a small craft approach would be far less so.

Jump drive and the tonnage to make the jump possible is a serious sunk capital cost.
Click to expand...

Using a contrived example, turns out fuel cost was the real nut.

Using HG, I made a 1000 ton, M2 ship with just the basic essentials (power plant, Model 1 computer, no armor, no weapons), and crew.

Then I made another 1000 ton ship with a J1 in it, and bumped the hull up to offer the same cargo space as the sublight ship, which made it 1150 (it was off by 1.5 tons, close enough).

I chose 1000 ton simply because I have a spreadsheet for HG ships, and < 1000 ton, the crew rules are different, and it's not set up for Book 2 crew rules.

The sublight ship cost ~224MCr, the Jump ship ~304Mcr ~35% more expensive.

I worked out the costs for a 7 day trip, based on crews, fuel, and maintenance.

The mortgage dominated the expense for the week, 72% for the Jump ship, 79% for the sublight ship. The next was the fuel for the Jump ship: 14%, vs 1% for the sublight.

The rest were similar.

In the end, it worked out to about 63KCr per day for the Jump ship and 43KCr per day for the sublight ship. Which suggests that cross over is at roughly 10 days. That is, if it's an 11 day trip, it's cheaper to Jump than fly.

10 days at M2 is almost 25 AUs. Neptune is 29ish, Uranus is 19ish.

So, an M2 ship can service the bulk of our Solar system "cheaper" than a J ship, if folks are willing to wait a few more days.
 
whartung said:
So, an M2 ship can service the bulk of our Solar system "cheaper" than a J ship, if folks are willing to wait a few more days.
Click to expand...

Correct, but that's just for single system interplanetary, so it doesn't capture any of the interstellar mail delivery market that can bind diplomatic, economic and military spheres of influence beyond a single parsec.

And while a 2G capable ship CAN make 1 delivery faster than a micro "Jump-0" across a system in a lot of cases (depending on planetary alignments in their orbits), in the same amount of time that the 2G ship would take to make that 1 delivery a 6G ship could make 2-3 deliveries (and thus 2-3x the revenue in the same amount of time).

In the context of my Spinward Courier design here, for a proper apples to apples comparison, here's the 2G vs 4G vs 6G drive arrangements in a 100 ton TL=13 Jump-2 ship where everything else is held constant.

2G = 5 tons maneuver (MCr 3.5), 4 tons power plant (MCr 12), 2 tons fuel = 30 tons cargo (MCr 15.5)
4G = 11 tons maneuver (MCr 5.5), 8 tons power plant (MCr 24), 4 tons fuel = 18 tons cargo (MCr 29.5)
6G = 17 tons maneuver (MCr 8.5), 12 tons power plant (MCr 36), 6 tons fuel = 6 tons cargo (MCr 44.5)

First Ship Purchase Cost (2G): 62% of 6G design (25 tons cargo beyond Mail Vault)
First Ship Purchase Cost (4G): 80% of 6G design (13 tons cargo beyond Mail Vault)
First Ship Purchase Cost (6G): 100% of 6G design (1 ton cargo beyond Mail Vault)

Keep in mind that the Life Support, Crew Salaries and (purchased) Fuel cost is going to be relatively fixed and similar in all three variants. As for the annual overhaul costs, the savings amounts to the equivalent of 2-3 mail deliveries per year (we're talking less than Cr30,000 per year), so not a whole lot of savings there either. The only price point that would be really helped, in an operational overhead sense, would be the (usury) bank financing option, but then you're going to be really hard pressed to reliably turn a profit on every delivery when needing to pay off a bank loan that financed the purchase of a Spinward Courier. The starship just isn't profitable under a bank loan, but is quite profitable if paid off or operating under a subsidy.

Now I know that those lower costs and greater cargo capacities look mighty appealing, particularly in a speculative trading sense when all of your overhead costs can be covered by mail deliveries ... but that's missing the forest for the trees. The only thing you're doing with those slower maneuver drives is making your deliveries take longer, possibly a LOT longer to complete, reducing the revenue stream tempo.

Consider that the standard delivery time for a cargo for loading onto a ship is 4 days (LBB7, p42). A surcharge of +10% of the base cost of the goods per 1 day of faster delivery can be added (so +40% for "instant" deliveries) which will then rapidly eat into your profit margin shipping goods around an interplanetary system. This is why most merchant starships spend a week on the mainworld negotiating cargo to be shipped. 1 day to land, 1 day to take off for the jump point, leaves 1 day to negotiate while in port for cargo to arrive for shipment 4 days later (1+1+1+4=7).

But in a mail only delivery context, there isn't any negotiating for cargo to transport ... it's just mail delivery.

So while a 2G ship would have more cargo space to fill (obviously), it's also going to have to negotiate for that cargo to deliver, and the time spent negotiating for it and waiting for it to arrive for loading can dramatically reduce the tempo of mail deliveries. Suddenly, instead of being able to make 2-3 (or more!) mail deliveries per week, instead you're stuck with a delivery schedule that can involve being "stuck" berthed at the starport/spaceport for multiple days waiting for a cargo shipment to arrive for loading on a 2G vessel ... while the 6G vessel has fast interplanetary travel AND quick turnaround times while in port (because there's no cargo, standard or speculative, to wait for) since it's very nearly a "driveby" for drop off and pick up of physical mail to transport.

So it's not just travel times between mail drops you need to be paying attention to, it's also the time spent berthed in port not making those deliveries.

Or to put it another way ... if a crew has to wait 4 days in port to load cargo before spending another 4 days to fly 4 AU at 2G and then spend another day unloading that cargo after making port at the next destination, that's 9 days for a single cargo+mail pickup and delivery.

By contrast, a 6G ship that doesn't need to wait for cargo to arrive for loading can travel 4.4 AU in 60 hours (2.5 days). So the 6G ship can make 3 deliveries of 4.4 AU distance (each!) in those same 9 days (with hours to spare!) without needing to worry about trying to arrange for enough cargo to fill the cargo bay all the time.

So the limited cargo space (because big drives!) variant necessarily pushes the design towards its intended role of rapid mail circulation and delivery between worlds at both interplanetary and interstellar. It also means that the ship really isn't a "rich prize" for pirates to go after, since "physical mail" usually isn't going to be all that valuable for them to steal and then try and liquidate through a fence to generate cash for themselves. Far better then for the pirates to hunt "fatter and slower game" than try and chase down a Spinward Courier that won't really have much of anything for them to loot, steal or salvage. Not being worth the effort and trouble of attacking because the risk/reward just isn't that favorable is about as valuable to a courier ship as having a better computer and a lot more weapon batteries. There is deterrence value in not being worth the effort (and expense) it would take to attack due to being a "slim pickings" target for a pirate.

Your mileage may vary of course.
 
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I think you're mixing apples and oranges there. The speed argument makes sense for 4+ AU in-system type trips, but the difference in transit to 100D is not worth the millions of credits, and you seem to be arguing that it's the jump version you are interested in anyway. Of course a jump shadow of a gas giant or star may intrude, in which case it is relevant. That's not often though.

This is where the rules surrounding jump and velocity and where you come out of jump at what velocity makes a difference. Do you retain vee? Do you have to come to a stop to jump? Do you come out on some predictable 'lane' to the target planet from your source system?

So depending on the answer in YTU, the 4-G vs. 6-G may have differing value propositions.


I do agree the 2-G mail courier is right out. Just a little too pokey, a little too easy to run down. Course if it is a D/E/X starport without significant world defenses, pirates won't bother to chase, they'll just wait at the planet.

Plenty of weapon and drive and computer to part out from the ship itself, the mail is a bonus- unless they got intel something valuable is in this particular shipment. Well there is a reason it's armed. And desperation and frustration at slim pickings may cause an attack that otherwise would not happen.


The more telling argument is the business cycle of the mail courier having no waiting period vs. the cargo hauler/speculator requiring contract/loading time costs- 1-2 more runs done per month is very arguable.

But consider what life you are asking the owner/operator to lead.

To make up those days and get in an extra run, we're talking about maybe 1 day instead of the 5, perhaps 2. Problem is, that period is also the crew and captain 'weekend', 2-3 days out of a 2-week work cycle for downtime.

Two days, mail loaded then go vs. five- that means in a normal month you will squeeze in maybe one extra run- at a cost of virtually no time off, an endless cycle of seeing the same person for months on end, all the planets running together as one big blur of certifying delivery/picking up next/go.

Hardly a Traveller's life. In fact when are the characters supposed to have time for shenanigans and detours?

Now then as part of a subsidized line where say the crew drops off the ship and a new crew jumps in and is gone, in 4 days the next ship comes through, that's doable. But that's not the owner/operator concept, more UPS airplane driver adventure.

Not a life worth adventuring in.


Time to consider the economics of play value in your ship design.
 
kilemall said:
I think you're mixing apples and oranges there. The speed argument makes sense for 4+ AU in-system type trips, but the difference in transit to 100D is not worth the millions of credits, and you seem to be arguing that it's the jump version you are interested in anyway. Of course a jump shadow of a gas giant or star may intrude, in which case it is relevant. That's not often though.
Click to expand...

:oo:

Um ... I spent entire posts in the original write up (back on page 1 of this thread) detailing why "one and done" interstellar jumps to the mainworld only is the default assumption too many Referees and Players have for trade in the Traveller universe due to a lack of detail for star systems beyond just the mainworld. It's the kind of blinkered thinking that the Terra system has only one planet (Terra), the world has no moon, there are no other planets or moons in the system (just Terra), there are no populations on any other planets or moons in the system ... so obviously there is no need or reason to go anywhere else in the system besides just Terra only (because, why would you?).

And yet, if I open LBB6 to page 56 ... there is Sol, Mercury, Venus, Terra (Luna), Mars, the Planetoid Belt, Jupiter (Ring, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto), Saturn (Ring, Janus, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, Hyperion, Iapetus, Phoebe), Uranus (Ring, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon), Neptune (Triton, Nereid) and Pluto (Charon).

That's 5 terrestrial worlds (Mercury, Venus, Terra, Mars, Pluto), 1 Planetoid Belt, 4 Gas Giants and 23 Moons. Total number of separated populations in the system ... 15 separate worlds, moons and the planetoid belt.

So if you deliver to Terra, that means you've delivered simultaneously to everywhere from Mercury to Pluto throughout the system all in one go, might as well leave ... right? Because, I mean ... why would you ever go anywhere else besides Terra? And if you don't need to go anywhere else, you don't need a maneuver drive to get you anywhere else besides the mainworld ... right? Jump in, spend a week at Terra, jump out again ... because Terra is the only place that matters.

Well, in a speculative cargo delivery Merchant Prince sense, that is probably true, because the largest population codes beyond Terra (code: A) are found at Luna (code: 7), Mars (code: 5) and the Planetoid Belt (code: 6) ... but compared to Terra, that's nothing and not even worth bothering with, so ... why bother?

Remember ... if you deliberately set up a Traveller universe in which interplanetary travel is pointless, you're not going to get a whole lot of interplanetary travel happening ... because, why?

kilemall said:
This is where the rules surrounding jump and velocity and where you come out of jump at what velocity makes a difference. Do you retain vee? Do you have to come to a stop to jump? Do you come out on some predictable 'lane' to the target planet from your source system?

So depending on the answer in YTU, the 4-G vs. 6-G may have differing value propositions.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure the LBB Rules As Written (RAW) specify that velocity from before jump is retained after jump.

kilemall said:
I do agree the 2-G mail courier is right out. Just a little too pokey, a little too easy to run down. Course if it is a D/E/X starport without significant world defenses, pirates won't bother to chase, they'll just wait at the planet.
Click to expand...

It CAN be done ... but the safety for doing so essentially requires type A/B starports only in order to "eliminate" the opportunity for pirate encounters (per RAW in LBB2.81, p35). However at that point you're looking at an almost completely different business model where the basis of your profit margins shifts away from the guaranteed return of mail delivery (the advantage of mail) towards the more speculative return on passengers and cargo transport. The vessel then operates in a very different economic climate and you start skewing the incentives away from the backwater and "basket case" economies so as to get back to the more profitable "main routes" for lucrative trading ... in other words, you have a profit motive to abandon the very niche market the Spinward Courier was designed to fill and are instead back to more of a Free Trader type situation and circumstances.

kilemall said:
Plenty of weapon and drive and computer to part out from the ship itself, the mail is a bonus- unless they got intel something valuable is in this particular shipment. Well there is a reason it's armed. And desperation and frustration at slim pickings may cause an attack that otherwise would not happen.
Click to expand...

True, but in order to disable a ship so as to capture it for salvage, first you have to damage it. Sandcasters and Missile Racks do not require drive power, nor does a model/2 computer ... so simply emptying the fuel tanks through damage results isn't going to disable the ship. A no fuel condition would result in an Agility: 0 condition, but the ship would still be capable of fighting. LBB5.80, p43 stipulates that in order to board a vessel it must have no maneuver capability and also not have any offensive weapons. So boarding a Spinward Courier requires surface damage results that ultimately yield zero fuel remaining (1-3 hits, depending on fuel state) AND 2 hits to the missile rack before the ship is disabled and can be boarded.

Combat starts at long range (best case scenario for missiles), the Spinward Courier will presumably be attempting to break off by acceleration at the end of the first combat round (so if the attacker cannot match the Spinward Courier's agility by the pursuit step at the end of the first combat round, the Spinward Courier escapes from combat). Under a lot of circumstances (not always, granted), this will often times mean that an attacker only gets a single combat round to attack and attempt what amounts to a "lucky shot" in order to disable a Spinward Courier. So while it's possible to do, it isn't all that likely an outcome.

kilemall said:
The more telling argument is the business cycle of the mail courier having no waiting period vs. the cargo hauler/speculator requiring contract/loading time costs- 1-2 more runs done per month is very arguable.
Click to expand...

It's the difference between reliable guaranteed profits every single time no matter where you go versus ... well ... speculation in passengers and cargo. Again, to reiterate the point ... the entire purpose behind the Spinward Courier is to make it profitable to go where "normal profit minded" traders would not find it profitable to go. This means the backwater and "basket case" economies of underdeveloped worlds that would not have a thriving passenger and/or cargo market to and/or from them to make it worthwhile to visit them by most traders. If you trace out the preferred subsidized routes that I provided for the Spinward Marches, you'll notice that a lot of those routes aren't about maximizing potential revenue based on passengers and cargo given the route paths involved. Instead, it's about sustaining the spheres of influence of the subsidizing worlds by forging communication links with the other worlds along the route, creating an opportunity for hegemony in that region.

kilemall said:
But consider what life you are asking the owner/operator to lead.
Click to expand...

It's the same life that delivery drivers on vending machine routes live right now, or FedUps drivers live on. The economics are based on the idea of making a lot of deliveries quickly so as to realize a rate of revenue return that keeps you in the black after accounting for expenses.

kilemall said:
Problem is, that period is also the crew and captain 'weekend', 2-3 days out of a 2-week work cycle for downtime.

Two days, mail loaded then go vs. five- that means in a normal month you will squeeze in maybe one extra run- at a cost of virtually no time off, an endless cycle of seeing the same person for months on end, all the planets running together as one big blur of certifying delivery/picking up next/go.
Click to expand...

Ah, I see that you're still ignoring everywhere in a star system beyond the mainworld. If you're going to just ignore all of the other population centers within a star system ... well ... you aren't going to need much of a maneuver drive then, are you?

kilemall said:
Hardly a Traveller's life. In fact when are the characters supposed to have time for shenanigans and detours?
Click to expand...

Already detailed that when operating under a subsidy, a crew only needs to be making deliveries for 70% of each year (LBB S7, p22). 70% of 52 weeks per year is 36.4 weeks, so we'll just call it 36 weeks per year need to be spent making deliveries. 52-36=16 weeks remaining per year to get up to shenanigans and detours. However, 2 of those 16 weeks per year will need to be spent on annual overhauls when the ship is laid up at the starport and not available.

That's 3.5 months (14 weeks) per year the crew can have time for shenanigans and detours away from their subsidized mail delivery route (with the ship). Name another job that would give you 3.5 months off per year to go "do your own thing" on vacation where you could come back after being away that long and still have a job. You can even extend that time to 4 months (16 weeks) if you include the duration of the annual overhaul, provided you don't mind the fact that you won't have a starship at your disposal for 2 of those 16 weeks.
 
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