5FW shipping losses

[Hal]

For what it is worth, I sort of took my own advise about figuring out how much shipping tonnage exists to service worlds based on the GURPS TRAVELLER FAR TRADER rules.

I'm still thinking "I must have done something wrong" because this is the first run through of creating the data, and I need to verify that it worked properly. But on the basis of my initial run - I generated in excess of 28,600 trade pairs where the BTN was 6.5+

Using Lunion as an example, it had 317 trade partners, of which 30 were of BTN value 9+

Those thirty worlds alone, would require tonnage capable of moving 9,000 dTons of tramp freight (not regular scheduled freight for liners, but TRAMP freight!). Using as a measure, the Empress Marava class ships, that works out to nearly 200 tramp freighters servicing 30 worlds on a DAILY basis. Call it roughly 1400 Empress Marava class ships, and that gives you an idea of how many freighters were out there (assuming a 200 dton standard, one could use a 400 dton ship instead, and run those numbers to get a different number of hulls out there).

Note that this is only for one world and 317 partners (Note that I didn't even bother to discuss how much trade is generated for those lesser worlds, of which there would have been some 280 or so).

Just food for thought.

 

[rancke]

Using Lunion as an example, it had 317 trade partners, of which 30 were of BTN value 9+

Those thirty worlds alone, would require tonnage capable of moving 9,000 dTons of tramp freight (not regular scheduled freight for liners, but TRAMP freight!).

I get 7,500 dT, but that doesn't affect your point significantly.

Using as a measure, the Empress Marava class ships, that works out to nearly 200 tramp freighters servicing 30 worlds on a DAILY basis. Call it roughly 1400 Empress Marava class ships, and that gives you an idea of how many freighters were out there (assuming a 200 dton standard, one could use a 400 dton ship instead, and run those numbers to get a different number of hulls out there).

And you should use a different standard. With the amount of tramp freight that your figures imply available on a regular basis, most tramps would be large and company-owned and most of the available tramp freight would be snapped up by company factors. Regular freight is freight a company knows ahead of time will be there. Tramp freight is freight it doesn't know ahead of time will be available. But if a company knows that lots and lots of tramp freight will, statistically, be available, it can shedule ships to take advantage of that near-certainty.

Free traders would still be stuck with the drips and draps.


Hans

 

[Hal]

I get 7,500 dT, but that doesn't affect your point significantly.


And you should use a different standard. With the amount of tramp freight that your figures imply available on a regular basis, most tramps would be large and company-owned and most of the available tramp freight would be snapped up by company factors. Regular freight is freight a company knows ahead of time will be there. Tramp freight is freight it doesn't know ahead of time will be available. But if a company knows that lots and lots of tramp freight will, statistically, be available, it can shedule ships to take advantage of that near-certainty.

Free traders would still be stuck with the drips and draps.


Hans

Page 16 GURPS TRAVELLER FAR TRADER, BTN 9 lists daily (Tramp) traffic as 100 to 500. On average, that works out to (100+500)/2 or 300. 300 x 30 = 9000.

Now, regards to tramp freighters. If they were regularly scheduled, they'd not be tramp freighters, but Liners. In a "target rich" environment (where targets are Freight lots!), you're going to see instances where the larger tramp freighters can make a living - but the nature of the "last-minute" freights needing to be shipped will amount to roughly .01 percent of the annual shipping of worlds with BTN > 8.

In any event, while the numbers seem large, they're going to different locations that are MANY parsecs distant. Checking out the relative distances, the parsec distances are:

10, 8, 5, 6, 16, 15, 9,, 8, 3, 4, 1, 1, 5, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 11, 3, 4, 5, 2, 5, 13 parsecs

The Last four listed here, are for BTN 10, which has a Daily Tramp Freight tonnage of 1,000 to 5,000 (or average of 3,0000 dtons on their own!)

4, 9, 10, and 17 parsecs.

Tramp freighters if they start picking up a regularly scheduled "tramp freight" business, become little more than "Liners" - which in turn, disqualifies them from being "tramp freighters". You can't have it both ways where they are both regular and tramp. <shrug>

In any event - you begin to see the ramifications of the FAR TRADER rules for determining how much "business" is available at any given date in the GURPS Traveller universe where freight rates are on a per parsec standard.

 

[rancke]

Page 16 GURPS TRAVELLER FAR TRADER, BTN 9 lists daily (Tramp) traffic as 100 to 500. On average, that works out to (100+500)/2 or 300. 300 x 30 = 9000.

Right you are.

Now, regards to tramp freighters. If they were regularly scheduled, they'd not be tramp freighters, but Liners.

But they don't have to be regularily sheduled to be owned by a company.

In any event, while the numbers seem large, they're going to different locations that are MANY parsecs distant.

But in many cases they will be going along the same route much of the way.

Tramp freighters if they start picking up a regularly scheduled "tramp freight" business, become little more than "Liners" - which in turn, disqualifies them from being "tramp freighters". You can't have it both ways where they are both regular and tramp. <shrug>

That may be, but that merely means that large aggregate figures for tramp freight is a contradiction in terms.

In any event - you begin to see the ramifications of the FAR TRADER rules for determining how much "business" is available at any given date in the GURPS Traveller universe where freight rates are on a per parsec standard.

I don't see what the freight rates has to do with it.


Hans

 

[Hal]

Right you are.


But they don't have to be regularily sheduled to be owned by a company.


But in many cases they will be going along the same route much of the way.


That may be, but that merely means that large aggregate figures for tramp freight is a contradiction in terms.


I don't see what the freight rates has to do with it.


Hans

If you would like, I can send you the file that lists ONLY the Lunion trade partners for the 30 who are BTN 9+ Then you can see the specifics of the logistics involved. Those locations are as multi-jump locations in multiple directions that will not be able to utilize redundancy of shipping routes (ie going from A to K will not be the same as going from A to P in a different direction, that has a total of say, eight 2 parsec jumps. In addition, many of those jumps are odd distances in parsecs, which can cause issues with jump efficiency where one jumps 3 times at max jump range, and one jump at half max range.

In all? Short of actually DESIGNING the logistics of the worlds in question by having multiple tramp freighter types, and taking into account the actual jump topography - it is something where working in "generalities" isn't going to cut it. Get an actual map out, then look at the actual data, and then see what the implications derive from it rather than talking in generalities.

As for Tramp Freighters being owned by a company - that has little bearing on the logistics involved. Whether all of the tramp freighters are owned by the same company, or all of the tramps are owned by one individual entity (proprietorships, corporations, individual ownerships) - the thing is, you're going to need a given number of hulls present in space to handle the last minute shipping needs. These needs can arise because a hull is out of circulation for two weeks due to annual maintenance, or it could be simply that the hull in question that was depended upon to be present for shipping needs, is late by a day or ten. Then you have those instances where shipments will require hull tonnage that just are not there. I doubt that those waiting freight lots just disappear into thin air, but languish at the warehouses until someone takes it. For those worlds whose average daily freight works out to roughly 2.5 dtons - without traffic to take them to their destinations, the only other way for them to arrive at their necessary destination, is if they are transshipped to another location with funds necessary to pay for their transshipment as well as funds to pay for their shipment to the transshipment point.

Because they are by definition, BTN 6.5 freight lots, they're not supposed to be handled by scheduled liners. Otherwise - the rules for Scheduled liners as written need to be re-examined in the light of expected realism saying "But of course they will ship these items to a trans-shipment point as part of the regularly scheduled traffic to a specific trans-shipment point closer to the client world."

If you do that (and it does make sense by the way), then the artificial label of tramp freight for long distance traffic needs to be dropped - something that SHOULD have come up in playtesting but did not (apparently).

As for large figures for Tramp freight comment above?

You miss the point I think...

Each world will have its scheduled liners already built. In theory, these super tankers will be the most that the system can reliably handle or provide sufficient business for. The Tramp Freight percentages, in case you haven't looked, are equal to 1/1000th of the annual freight overall by volume. That means, if I'm doing my math right, that tramp freight volumes are about 30% that of standard "liner" freight.

For every 2.7 dtons shipped as scheduled, there will be 1 dton shipped as tramp.

Unless you wish to adjust those figures overall, and indicate that those 30% of available freight lots should be half their number or some other variant thereof, we're still stuck with the rules as written. As you might guess, I am not always a fan of "Rules as written!"



I'm starting to think that the rules for FAR TRADER should have had closer scrutiny than they received - but they were supposed to have been written by an Economist using data that we don't normally have access to, let alone, know that it exists. None the less, the actual logistical trade flows as they would have been created by living people, seem to be somewhat different than the rules present them to be - and THAT is what is causing my disconnect as it were (and it appears yours as well)

 

[rancke]

If you would like, I can send you the file that lists ONLY the Lunion trade partners for the 30 who are BTN 9+ Then you can see the specifics of the logistics involved. Those locations are as multi-jump locations in multiple directions that will not be able to utilize redundancy of shipping routes (ie going from A to K will not be the same as going from A to P in a different direction, that has a total of say, eight 2 parsec jumps. In addition, many of those jumps are odd distances in parsecs, which can cause issues with jump efficiency where one jumps 3 times at max jump range, and one jump at half max range.

You seem to be making what I believe is an unwarranted assumption here, namely that all freight has the same owner all the way from origin to destination. But a shipment of Lunionian shugarshrimps (no mistype ) embarking on a trip to Capital will not necessarily (and IMO not very likely) have been ordered by Galactic Imports on Capital. Rather, it will have been bought by Parkol & Harris on Fornice and shipped from Lunion to Fornice via Gandr and Carey. Here it gets lumped into a shipment of other foodstuff bought by Shiigul Luxury Imports on Mora and shipped there. From there it gets bought by someone on Deneb who sells it off to someone in Corridor and so on and so forth until it reaches Capital.

So the tramp freighter that leaves Lunion destined for Fornice with a load of shugarshrimps that will one day end up on Capital can also be carrying shipments from Lunion to Fornice and from Hofud to Mora and a score of other combinations.


Hans

 

[Hal]

You seem to be making what I believe is an unwarranted assumption here, namely that all freight has the same owner all the way from origin to destination. But a shipment of Lunionian shugarshrimps (no mistype ) embarking on a trip to Capital will not necessarily (and IMO not very likely) have been ordered by Galactic Imports on Capital. Rather, it will have been bought by Parkol & Harris on Fornice and shipped from Lunion to Fornice via Gandr and Carey. Here it gets lumped into a shipment of other foodstuff bought by Shiigul Luxury Imports on Mora and shipped there. From there it gets bought by someone on Deneb who sells it off to someone in Corridor and so on and so forth until it reaches Capital.

So the tramp freighter that leaves Lunion destined for Fornice with a load of shugarshrimps that will one day end up on Capital can also be carrying shipments from Lunion to Fornice and from Hofud to Mora and a score of other combinations.


Hans

Which is handled by the Meta-assumption made by the game rules designer, that it falls within the category of "scheduled freight to a given destination". So, if it is to be transshipped via Mora from Regina, then it is included in the scheduled liner traffic from Regina to Mora. IF it is to be transshipped out of Mora towards another location, it is part of that schedule freight, and so on and so on.

What GURPS FAR TRADER did, was create two categories of freight being shipped. Those being carried on scheduled liners in advance - and those that are last minute items not carried by scheduled liners due to lack of shipping space. These last minute freight lots are not supposed to be turned into "liner" scheduled freight, but remained "independent last minute people who pick it up".

Now, if 30% seems high for those "last minute pick-ups" that is the fault of the original rules designer. None the less, the shipment you alluded to, COULD be a last minute freight job that later on, becomes part of the "Scheduled" liner pipeline once it arrives in its Transshipment area (or not). Seems to me, with the communications lag involved, and variable jump speed transits by ships that will be carrying the freight, even long distance transshipments are going to be by definition, unexpected and last minute.

 

[rancke]

Which is handled by the Meta-assumption made by the game rules designer, that it falls within the category of "scheduled freight to a given destination". So, if it is to be transshipped via Mora from Regina, then it is included in the scheduled liner traffic from Regina to Mora. IF it is to be transshipped out of Mora towards another location, it is part of that schedule freight, and so on and so on.

That makes sense as far as it goes, but I think you're up against a big problem here. IMO there is NEVER going to be ANY tramp freight that is picked up on Lunion and carried on the same ship to all the way to Capital. Repeat this assertation for the majority of those 317 trade "partners" you mention. If, as you say, transshipments tend to get included in sheduled freight sooner or later, then there is not going to be any tramp freight between Lunion and places more than X parsecs away, where X is some number not too much more that a couple of subsectors' worth.

This may actually be a fix for the problem you've unearthed: Disallow tramp freight between trade pairs more than so-and-so many parsecs apart. Say 20+ or 30+ parsecs.


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

For what it is worth, I sort of took my own advise about figuring out how much shipping tonnage exists to service worlds based on the GURPS TRAVELLER FAR TRADER rules.

I'm still thinking "I must have done something wrong" because this is the first run through of creating the data, and I need to verify that it worked properly. But on the basis of my initial run - I generated in excess of 28,600 trade pairs where the BTN was 6.5+

Using Lunion as an example, it had 317 trade partners, of which 30 were of BTN value 9+

Those thirty worlds alone, would require tonnage capable of moving 9,000 dTons of tramp freight (not regular scheduled freight for liners, but TRAMP freight!). Using as a measure, the Empress Marava class ships, that works out to nearly 200 tramp freighters servicing 30 worlds on a DAILY basis. Call it roughly 1400 Empress Marava class ships, and that gives you an idea of how many freighters were out there (assuming a 200 dton standard, one could use a 400 dton ship instead, and run those numbers to get a different number of hulls out there).

Note that this is only for one world and 317 partners (Note that I didn't even bother to discuss how much trade is generated for those lesser worlds, of which there would have been some 280 or so).

Just food for thought.

Lunion's a world of several billion folk. Numbers seem big until you consider how much trade is occurring just on the planet itself.

It would be an odd thing for a tramp freighter to ship freight across several jumps to, say, Smoug or Ivendo - but Lunion's a huge economy with lots of room for odd little business needs, and GURPS handles trade very differently. Just that business about charging by the parsec is enough to make the trade conventions very different from what we're accustomed to in CT. I don't know a lot about GURPS trade or ship construction - maybe the economy supports J3 or J4 tramps that can fill the "can't wait for the next scheduled transport" needs for companies shipping across a dozen parsecs.

 

[Dagrill]

Hi,

given the switch from a peacetime to a war footing and the increased patriotism from being attacked by a hostile foreign power I would say all losses would have been made good within 4 years for ships under 100 ktons.

Also given the presence of a depot a few subsectors from the front lines I would suspect that there would be an increased number of previously mothballed units, which would be gradually phased out as new production arrived.

I'd also expect a higher proportion of all types of ships to be allocated to the marches after the event, as governments traditionally maintain higher troop levels for the first few years of peace.

Kind Regards

David

I was flipping through Sector Fleet (MgT) and looking at all the deployments for the Spinward Marches and I noticed this is set circa 1105. I'd like to know the deployments for 1116. Between these two dates there was the 5FW (1107-1112) and I'd be surprised if ship building activity had succeeded in making up all the losses from that war.

So, has anyone (a) done any kind of analysis of 5FW losses, and (b) know what the post-war ship building capacity is? For the second part it's not just a matter of total tonnage capacity, it's the capacity of the large ship shipyards.

(I've not set the MgT prefix as I'd be interested in people's non-MgT thoughts too.)