I was looking through my books for corporations in the Spinward Marches to use in my new game, as I plan a lot of corporate shenanigans and subterfuge. Looking through Adventure 4: Leviathan, Lanthan Traders caught my eye. They purchased a Leviathan Merchant Cruiser, which was laid down on 085-1096, so they must have been in existence for at least a few years prior to that, possibly a new concern. I can't find any other information on them in any of the Traveller CD-ROMs. Has anybody used this corporation? Anybody know if Dave Thomas has made a logo?
General Lanthan Traders?
- Thread starter AlHazred
- Start date
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Are you requiring that "official sources only" are relevant, or are you willing to branch out?
Not at all, I put it as a "General" thread for the reason that I'd love to see what others have used them for, if anyone's used them. I'd love to not have to invent every single corporation in the setting!
Commander Truestar
SOC-13
Some time ago, I took a year-long contract as an IT Incident Manager for the Maersk Corp. in their North American HQ
(I was told I missed meeting their Captain Phillips [per the movie] by a few months...)
Given the knowledge I gained there,
AND, given there is no other mention of the "firm" that I can find in my records....
.....it could well have been:
1) A financial or other group who raised the Credits to buy the ship....since it appears in Book 4 that the crew is entirely hired on by them
2) a shell corporation formed by a parent Corp (LSP, Imperiallines, etc...) to operate outside the corporate label...
3) a covert group having formed and bought the ship to use as an apparent legitimate business, but with secret black ops missions mixed in
The list goes on.
Perhaps, if GDW had continued the OTU and their operations, we might have seen more later mentions of the firm?
That said, use your imagination! Have fun!
(I was told I missed meeting their Captain Phillips [per the movie] by a few months...)
Given the knowledge I gained there,
AND, given there is no other mention of the "firm" that I can find in my records....
.....it could well have been:
1) A financial or other group who raised the Credits to buy the ship....since it appears in Book 4 that the crew is entirely hired on by them
2) a shell corporation formed by a parent Corp (LSP, Imperiallines, etc...) to operate outside the corporate label...
3) a covert group having formed and bought the ship to use as an apparent legitimate business, but with secret black ops missions mixed in
The list goes on.
Perhaps, if GDW had continued the OTU and their operations, we might have seen more later mentions of the firm?
That said, use your imagination! Have fun!
Lanthan Traders, LIC
Imperial Subsector-Wide Line
Lanthan Traders was started as a syndicate of mining interests when a lanthanum strike was found on Dinom (Spinward Marches 1811) in 856. They anticipated a large lode of lanthanum, and facilities were set up and ships purchased to ensure maximum profitability. Unfortunately, the strike proved to be small, and, in desperation, the new company rapidly expanded its interests to remain in business. The corporation provides freight and passenger service in Lanth subsector.
Due to the presence of the Abyss Rift in the sector, they have a larger-than-normal complement of jump-4 craft. Captains start with smaller vessels on the Lanth portion of the Spinward Main; those who excel are assigned the more-powerful craft after maintaining excellent profits for at least ten years.
Stock Ownership: Dinomn Corp.—23%, Sternmetal Horizons—18%, Hortalez et Cie—21%, private ownership—38%.
Home Port: Lanth (Spinward Marches 1719).
Territory: Lanth subsector.
Imperial Subsector-Wide Line
Lanthan Traders was started as a syndicate of mining interests when a lanthanum strike was found on Dinom (Spinward Marches 1811) in 856. They anticipated a large lode of lanthanum, and facilities were set up and ships purchased to ensure maximum profitability. Unfortunately, the strike proved to be small, and, in desperation, the new company rapidly expanded its interests to remain in business. The corporation provides freight and passenger service in Lanth subsector.
Due to the presence of the Abyss Rift in the sector, they have a larger-than-normal complement of jump-4 craft. Captains start with smaller vessels on the Lanth portion of the Spinward Main; those who excel are assigned the more-powerful craft after maintaining excellent profits for at least ten years.
Stock Ownership: Dinomn Corp.—23%, Sternmetal Horizons—18%, Hortalez et Cie—21%, private ownership—38%.
Home Port: Lanth (Spinward Marches 1719).
Territory: Lanth subsector.
Last edited:
Commander Truestar
SOC-13
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Sounds nice in ad copy ... but the economics of it are pretty brutal (I know, I've tried!).
This is going to put some pretty hard upper limits on what kinds of ships this company can be running.
Why?
Because Lanth/Lanth is TL=11.
That means that even you're using LBB2.81 standard drives, you're limited to A-K drives ... and K drives top out at code: 1 in a 2000 ton hull. That means that any J4 you can build at TL=11 is going to be 500 tons maximum displacement, which gets "kinda cramped" for revenue tonnage (cargo, passengers, etc.). Not impossible to make it work, but definitely very challenging from a starship design standpoint.
Alternatively, a 1000 ton starship could be designed with K/K/K drives (all code: 2 in that form factor) and be built with J2+2 capability using collapsible fuel tanks in the cargo hold. That way you can "flex" your range (high cargo/short range or low cargo/long range).
Sure, I'm thinking they really only have a few J-4 ships, as opposed to scores or hundreds of J-1 free traders. Tricky, but they've also been around 250 years, so possible.
Good points. I originally didn't want to use Lanth, since it's at isolated from the rest of the subsector, but it's also the only Class-A starport in the subsector. They probably have a couple of other major facilities on worlds in the Main, but ad copy has Lanth for the prestige.
Interestingly, I just noticed this here:
This may be where I got the idea in the back of my mind that they build their ships on Lanth. Lanthan Traders probably doesn't run its own starship construction, but could use a company like Xebec to do so, and I would assume they have the means of transporting their ships with less-than-jump-4 to the Main proper. Possibly some sort of really big corporate equivalent of a Battle Tender.
Just because the company is headquartered on and has its homeport at Lanth/Lanth, it does not follow that all of their ships are built and have their annual maintenance done there. If you insist that maintenance has to be done at the A/B starport of a system with the correct TL, Lanth subsector has D'Ganzio at TL13. As for building, there are plenty of systems with class A starports that are Tl13-15 (and if you look back to the OP, Lanthan Traders were named as someone purchasing a Leviathan class merchant cruiser which would have been built at Glisten's Bilstein Yards).
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
The 250 years point is meaningless if you can't build an economical starship for the job within the constraints being offered.
Whatever you come up with needs to be "construction rules legal" rather than just a lot of handwavium getting thrown about (pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain!).
The point still stands that it is HARD to make a J4 starship a commercially profitable transport. Not impossible, but it's going to be a struggle (spoiler alert: ticket sales aren't going to be enough on their own). It CAN be done with speculative goods arbitrage, but that option is most lucrative when you've got a variety of trade codes "within reach" of each other, which the Lanth subsector (much like the Aramis subsector) really doesn't have. Also, Lanth subsector has the lowest population of any subsector in the Spinward Marches, meaning that the commercial opportunities for passengers, cargoes and profit are REALLY constrained.
So not impossible to achieve, but certainly "easier said than done" in my opinion.
The "subsector" is an entirely artificial feature of map making. Broaden the scope a bit more and you've got the following locations for type A starports "around" the Lanth subsector:
- Vilis/Vilis (TL=10)
- Regina/Regina (should be TL=10 in 1105)
- Lanth/Lanth (TL=11)
- Lunion/Lunion (TL=13)
- Paya/Aramis (TL=9)
- Fulacin/Rhylanor (TL=13)
- Risek/Rhylanor (TL=10)
- Rhylanor/Rhylanor (TL=15)
- Fosey/Mora (TL=10)
Are you sure about that ...?
D'Ganzio is TL=13 ... but it has a type B starport, so it can't build starships for private parties.
Good enough for maintenance, but new build construction with jump drives ... not so much.
Because the economics aren't properly adjusted for that area in space. That's the problem with statically modeling a dynamic system like economics. I don't know if Gurps FT can properly compensate for that or not.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
With enough distortion of the market, you can make ANYTHING profitable ...
