Adapting "Pocket Empires" for "2300 AD"

[marginaleye]

I'm currently trying to adapt Traveller's "Pocket Empires" system to the social and technological assumptions of the "2300 AD" universe.

One of the biggest such differences is that the Traveller universe has antigravity, which makes getting things into orbit obscenely cheap and easy by modern standards. In the Traveller universe, it costs less than a present-day U.S. penny per kilogram, based on the Cr10/dton shuttle fee and the assumptions that (1) a Credit in the Classic Traveller universe has the same buying power as a 1977 U.S. dollar, and (2) the cargoes transported by starships in the Traveller universe have the same average density (kilogram/cubic meter) as the cargoes transported by maritime freighters on Earth (the average mass for a standard "TEU" cargo container is about 14 tonnes).

I know that in the "2300 AD" universe there are several methods of getting cargo into orbit: beanstalks, electromagnetic catapults (for durable cargoes only), SSTO shuttles, and old-fashioned rockets. Are there any figures for how much each of these methods costs, per cubic meter and/or per tonne?

Also, am I correct in thinking that a Livre has the same buying power as $3.00 in 1986? (I got that from http://web.me.com/pentapod2300/best/livre.htm).

 

[Peter Schutze]

in the T20 / 2320 rules it says the MCr is half a MLv

 

[D. Foxx]

I scanned through the 2300AD rules, source books, and adventures and couldn't find anything that talked to the economics of moving cargo to and from orbit. 2300AD didn't really focus on economics the way CT does so that doesn't surprise me.

However, I did come across an article by Andy Slack in the "2300 AD Archive: Articles and Handouts for 2300 AD" document that has an article titled "Social Class in 2300 AD". The article contains a chart that provides a chart for monthly salary and monthly upkeep in Lv per month. You may be able to extrapolate a cost for cargo transportation using thesde as a cost of living basis.

You can find the article at this link: http://andyslack.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/2300ad.pdf

Hope this helps

 

[marginaleye]

I did find this document

http://ad2300.tripod.com/cargos.pdf

which offers prices for transportation to orbit (and from orbit) using various methods. It's *almost* what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, much of this document seems to be an adaptation of the Traveller trade-and-commerce rules to 2300AD, and when the author refers to "tons," I'm not sure whether he means "tonnes" (thousands of kilograms), or "dtons." I don't have the 2300AD rules themselves -- does 2300AD even use tons/dtons as a unit of volume? Or, in a 2300AD context, does "tons" always mean mass/weight, and never volume?

 

[epicenter00]

From the somewhat difficult to procure Challenge 29 which has a trade system for 2300.

Caveat: I'm not sure exactly how accurate this is. The author is Gary Thomas, which I'm sure some grognard on here has heard of. I'm not sure who he is - ergo I'm not sure how "canon" it is for 2300 or where Mssr Thomas got his costs - if they're researched or simply arbitrary.

Method              Cost/ton                     Special
Beanstalk           Lv500                        Limited access, advanced booking
Rocket/Shuttle      Lv3000
Space Plane         Lv2000
Rocket Plane        Lv2000
Scramjet            Lv2000
Catapult            Lv500                        No passengers or fragile cargo

* Table lists for LOW GRAVITY worlds.
* Multiply by 1.5 for average gravity worlds; multiply by 2 on high gravity worlds.

There's more to it - there's a discussion about an entire trade system, but I don't think I can really copy more in good faith.

If any mods feel this is too much to show already, please feel free to edit the post.

 

[Peter Schutze]

2300 used tonnes (1000kg) and m3 rather than displacement

That challenge 29 article was not canon and seems to contradict other canon items eg the errata confirming that shuttle & scramjet prices are switched ie scramjets are more expensive per tonne. Earth's stats was the standard measure so you would be adjusting pricing from 1g anyway .... on the minority of worlds that weren't fairly close to earth normal

I'll have to go reread the article now

 

[marginaleye]

Thank you, everyone, for the information.

I'm thinking, in particular, about the "Foreign Investment" formula that turns up again and again in the "Pocket Empires" rules.

Whenever you want to do something in another star system (e.g. build its Infrastructure, increase its Tech Level, improve its Starport), you need to multiply the normal cost of the project by a "Foreign Construction factor," or "FC":

FC = 1 + (Distance / 2)

Where "Distance" is the number of parsecs between the donor world and the recipient.

I'm thinking this formula needs to be modified for "P. E. 2300 AD," so in addition to distance (measured in 7.7 light year units, rather than parsecs), there should be a flat fee for getting into, and out of, orbit. If you wanted to get really fancy, the size of the orbit-and-reentry fee would be based on the gravities of the donor and the recipient.

 

[aramis]

I did find this document

http://ad2300.tripod.com/cargos.pdf

which offers prices for transportation to orbit (and from orbit) using various methods. It's *almost* what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, much of this document seems to be an adaptation of the Traveller trade-and-commerce rules to 2300AD, and when the author refers to "tons," I'm not sure whether he means "tonnes" (thousands of kilograms), or "dtons." I don't have the 2300AD rules themselves -- does 2300AD even use tons/dtons as a unit of volume? Or, in a 2300AD context, does "tons" always mean mass/weight, and never volume?

Probably neither; a real world naval cargo ton is whichever gives larger measures of mass in tons metric or volume in hundreds of cubic feet; the railway ton is 40cu ft or 2000 lbs. That naval ton is very likely to remain the standard for shipping.

Here's an extract from Rowlett's to confuse you further, :smirk:

ton (tn or T or t) [1]

a traditional unit of weight equal to 20 hundredweight. In the United States and Canada, there are 100 pounds in the hundredweight and exactly 2000 pounds (907.185 kilograms) in the ton. In Britain, there are 112 pounds in the hundredweight and 2240 pounds (1016.047 kilograms) in the ton. To distinguish between the two units, the British ton is called the long ton and the American one is the short ton. In old England, a "tun" was a large cask used to store wine. Because these tuns were of standard size, more or less, the tun came to represent both a volume unit, indicating the capacity of a cask, and also a weight unit, indicating the weight of a cask when it was full. The best symbol to use for this unit is tn. In the U.S. mining industry, T is used to distinguish the traditional ton from the metric ton, but T is the SI symbol for the tesla. The symbol t, traditionally used for the long or short ton, is now reserved for the metric ton.​

ton (t) [2]

a metric unit of mass, equal to 1000 kilograms, or approximately 2204.623 pounds avoirdupois. This metric ton is a bit smaller than the British long ton. The metric ton is now known officially as the tonne (see below).​

ton (RT or rT) [3]

a unit used traditionally to measure the cargo capacity of a merchant ship. During the Middle Ages, merchant ships were rated by the number of tuns of wine they could carry. Today the merchant marine ton is defined to be exactly 100 cubic feet, or approximately 2.8316 cubic meters. This unit is often called the register ton, since it is recorded in official registers of ships. The symbol RT seems to be in wide use for this unit, but it is also used for the refrigeration ton (definition [7] below).​

ton (DT or dT) [4]

a unit of volume used traditionally to measure the "displacement" of ships, especially warships. One way to describe the size of a ship is to state the volume of sea water it displaces when it is afloat: in other words, the volume of that part of the ship below the waterline. The actual weight of sea water varies somewhat according to its temperature and how salty it is, but for this purpose it has been agreed that a long ton of sea water occupies about 35 cubic feet. Accordingly the displacement ton is defined to be exactly 35 cubic feet, or approximately 0.9911 cubic meter. Since this is a much smaller unit than the register ton, warships have a much higher "tonnage" than merchant ships of approximately the same dimensions. The symbol DT is recommended for this unit.​

ton (FT) [5]

a traditional unit of volume used for measuring the cargo of a ship, truck, train, or other freight carrier. This freight ton is exactly 40 cubic feet, or approximately 1.1326 cubic meters. However, the term "freight ton" is also being used to mean a metric ton of freight, volume not specified. Perhaps because of this confusion, the 40 cubic foot unit is often called the measurement ton (MTON). But the confusion seems impossible to dispel; some shippers are now using "measurement ton" to mean a metric ton of freight. To further complicate the situation, the freight ton is also called the U.S. shipping ton; the British shipping ton is 5% larger at 42 cubic feet (1.1893 cubic meters).​

ton (tn or T) [6]

a unit of energy used for measuring the energy of an explosion, especially a nuclear explosion. In this usage, one ton is supposed to be the amount of energy released by the explosion of one short ton of TNT. This is defined in the U.S. to equal exactly 4.184 gigajoules (GJ) or roughly 4 million Btu.​

ton (RT) [7]

a unit of power used in refrigeration engineering. One ton of refrigeration is intended to be the power required to freeze one short ton of water at 0°C in 24 hours. This is assumed to be exactly 12 000 Btu per hour (Btu/h or "Btuh"), which is equivalent to 200 Btu/min, 3.516 853 kilowatts, 4.7162 horsepower, or 0.8396 (kilogram) Calorie per second (Cal/s). The symbol RT seems to be in wide use for this unit, but it is also used for the register ton (definition [3] above).​

ton [8]

British slang for 100, especially the sum of 100 pounds, a speed of 100 miles per hour, or a score of 100 in darts or cricket. The origin of this usage is not clear.​

(http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/dictT.html)
​

 

[aramis]

From the somewhat difficult to procure Challenge 29 which has a trade system for 2300.

Caveat: I'm not sure exactly how accurate this is. The author is Gary Thomas, which I'm sure some grognard on here has heard of. I'm not sure who he is - ergo I'm not sure how "canon" it is for 2300 or where Mssr Thomas got his costs - if they're researched or simply arbitrary.

Gary is, IIRC, one of the DGP guys.

DGP tended to do decent research. For example, they used NASA's volume rates for LHyd (0.07 T/m³), resulting in a 13.5m³ Td, instead fo the looser 14m³ Td of CT, but kept the 250MW per Td... They used a 250MW Striker Laser for pen, but then chopped the size down to fit in the standard turret.

If any mods feel this is too much to show already, please feel free to edit the post.

Not even close, IMO. It's well within fair use.

 

[marginaleye]

On multiple sites relating to maritime cargo, I've encountered "14 metric tons" ("tonnes") as the average loaded weight of a standard TEU container. The volume of a TEU is 1280 cubic feet, or 36.25 cubic meters, or 2.56 dtons. The average weight of a dton of cargo, therefore, is 5.41 metric tons.

It costs Cr1000 to ship 5.41 metric tons of cargo (1 dton) one jump.

Therefore, it costs Cr184.84 to ship one metric tone of cargo one jump.

If you assume that Cr1 has the same buying power one 1977 U.S. dollar, and if you adjust for inflation, shipping one metric ton of cargo one jump would cost $656.71 (in 2008 dollars).

According to http://ad2300.tripod.com/cargos.pdf, it costs between Lv5 and Lv20 to ship one metric ton of cargo one light-year by stutterwarp. For simplicity, let's just assume that the average cost of shipping is Lv10 per metric ton per light-year.

According to http://web.me.com/pentapod2300/best/livre.htm, Lv1 as the same buying power as three 1986 U.S. dollars, so if you adjust for inflation, shipping one metric ton of cargo one light-year by stutterwarp would cost $58.93 (in 2008 dollars).

If you assume that "per jump" is roughly synonymous with "per parsec" (admittedly, a questionably assumption, but not a totally unreasonable one, since the bulk of cargo-hauling is along "mains" of worlds that are mutually accessible by jump-1 freighters), then in the Traveller universe, it costs $201.44 to ship one metric ton of cargo one light-year ($6.56.71 / 3.26).

The formula from Pocket Empires for the Foreign Construction (FC) factor is:

FC = 1 + ( DistanceP / 2 )
where "DistanceP" is in parsecs

If you measure "Distance" in light-years, rather than parsecs, then the formula for the Foreign Construction factor should look like:

FC = 1 + ( DistanceL / 6.52 )
where "DistanceL" is in light-years

The cost, per light-year, of shipping in the Traveller universe is 3.42 times greater than the cost of shipping in the 2300 AD universe ($201.44 versus $58.93, after converting Credits and Livre to 2008 U.S. dollars).

The cost, Foreign Construction factor formula, therefore, for a 2300 AD version of Pocket Empires should be:

FC = 1 + ( DistanceL / ( 6.52 * 3.42 ) )
FC = 1 + ( DistanceL / 22.30 )

Ta-da! The only dubious assumption I see is "1 jump = 1 parsec," but (a) I stand by my assertion that most serious shipping (apart from passengers and small valuable cargos) is along "jump-1 mains," and (b) in Pocket Empires, the FC formula is always measures distance in parsecs, not in terms of jumps.

Thoughts? Criticism?

However, there also needs to be a huge additional correction for hauling the cargo up out of the gravity well of the "donor" planet, and gently lowering it down into the gravity well of the "recipient" planet. I'll try to get to that in the near future.

 

[aramis]

You have two assumptions that can be readily questioned, tho' they are not questionable as in "right or wrong" but merely in some details overlooked.

1 is the mass of the 1 TEU container (or half of a 2 TEU container, the rather more ubiquitous 40' container), which would be included in the above, so the actual cost per ton of Cargo, as opposed to containerized mass, should be somewhat higher for bulk or breakbulk in container.

2 is your J1=1Pc; that's actually quite reasonable, except that stutterwarp can hit speeds of jump 2 equivalence, not just J1.

Further, and its not YOUR error at all, is that the pricing may not reflect costs of operation of the ships.

 

[marginaleye]

I did some detailed calculations regarding Traveller's astonishing Cr10/dton for getting cargo into orbit and discovered that while it's optimistic, it's within the realm of reason.

Given (1) a deliberately "sub-optimal" sample fleet (one shuttle, one slow pinnace, one slow boat, and a launch), and making very modest assumptions about (2) how often they run (each one makes 10 trips to orbit per day) and (3) how full they run (75% loaded), and (4) including the cost of fuel, life-support consumables, maintenance (including lost revenue for down-time), crew (three pilots working on 8-hour shifts, plus a maintenance technician for each spacecraft), and 40-year mortgages, I got a "break-even" price of about Cr15-16/dton.

At a busy starport, where there are more big cheap shuttles and fewer small expensive launches, everything runs on tighter schedules, and cargo holds are packed tighter, Cr10/dton might be possible.

I'm reluctant, however, to reverse-engineer the Cr1000/jump price. I'm sure other people have pulled on that particular thread before, and ended up unintentionally unravelling the entire sweater.

Thanks for bringing the empty mass of the cargo containers to my attention -- it's not trivial (Wikipedia says an empty TEU container masses about 2,200 kg).

I'll try re-doing the calculation with a more optimistic jump-distance. Perhaps, assume the average of four jump-1 ships, two jump-2 ships, and one jump-3 ship? (which works out to an average of about 1.57 parsecs/jump).

 

[aramis]

Actually, marginaleye, the 1pc cost is pretty close to (with a type A or Type R) 700Cr/Td... (look here); a nearly 50% return over expenses (including standard financing).

Now, times to low orbit are, given 2G (pretty typical for small craft) are 5-30 min, and to 10 diam another 10 to 240 min. (MT IE, for reference; it's the best set of tables I have to hand)

So LEO is easily 10 trips a day, sure, but that doesn't account for loading and fueling times.

I suspect, however, that a 200Td hull might be able to do so cheaper. Using MGT, since I have it to hand.

000 008.80 SL 200Td Hull
003 008.00 MD B (3G)
007 016.00 PP B
010 001.00 Bridge
000 000.03 Model 1
004 000.00 Fuel, 2 Weeks
008 001.00 2x SR (crew)
168 000.00 Cargo
===========
200 026.03 Total

I come up with costs of
108459 Payment, per month
002169 Maintenace
004000 Fuel (2x/mo)
010000 salaries (pilot, engineer)
===============
124628 total
__÷168 divide by cargo tonnage (rounding up)
===============
000742 Cr/Ton/month.
___÷28 divide by days per month
===============
000027 Cr/Ton/day

I can do a triple trip per day at Cr10/Td and make payments on this beast... Even if I go to 4 crews, I only need 4 trips a day... as that's only Cr1.1 per extra crewman per ton.

Even using a Type A still runs under Cr50/Td/Day... 6 trips a day can pay off a type A.

 

[Starviking]

British slang for 100, especially the sum of 100 pounds, a speed of 100 miles per hour, or a score of 100 in darts or cricket. The origin of this usage is not clear.​

Ah, doing the ton, AKA driving at or over 100 miles per hour - quite a rite of passage in my youth.

 

[marginaleye]

The cost of getting into orbit

Regarding those figures for the cost of putting something into orbit by various methods from Challenge magazine: Is there a definition of a "Low," "Medium," and "High" gravity?

Would Earth, for example, be a "Medium" or a "High" gravity world by these standards?

For Pocket Empires purposes, what about this:

Low = UWP 1-3 (up to 0.375 G)

Medium = UWP 4-7 (up to 0.875 G)

High = UWP 8-A (up to 1.25 G)

Regardless of just where you draw the lines between "Low," "Medium," and "High," it looks like the belters ought to inherit the universe -- with no gravity well holding them in, they're in far, far better position to plant colonies, build up their Infrastructure, and uplift them technologically.

 

[epicenter00]

Yes, there's a definition of low, normal, and high gravity worlds - it's in the 2300 rulebook when you're doing the stat adjustments for chargen.

I think Low gravity is like .75G (or maybe .65G?) and under, Normal is .76G - 1.24G, and High is 1.25G and above or something to that effect. I don't have my rules in front of me, sadly. EDIT: It might be 0.5G gradients, so .49G and below, .5 to 1.5G, and 1.51G and above.

 

[Peter Schutze]

for 2300AD rather than per parsec or 6.52 you probably should divide by 7.7LY since thats how far they can go before finding a gravity well (effectively the jump range)

because 2300AD reports G and atmospheric pressure for a world rather than using the UWP, trying to base it directly off the Traveller system is going to require conversions back and forth all over the place.

Perhaps something like 2/3 of the total g and atm pressure ratings for the pair of worlds (round up) + 1 per 7.7LY (round up)

for some ratings eg size 2300ad could easily convert to traveller (diameter / 1000) but you have to look at the assumption behind it .... is size being used in PE as a proxy for gravity or available land area in the formula ?

resources rating in PE is a problem that comes to mind immediately .... the 2300ad planetary density rating should be factored in

 

[marginaleye]

I had envisioned taking the "7.7 light-year limit" into consideration elsewhere, in the initial step of tracing the route from the "donor" planet to the "recipient" planet (that's the "Distance" that you plug into the Foreign Construction formula). Presumably, in-system pauses to let the drives cool down is built into that "5-20 Lv per ton, per light-year" figure I pulled out of http://ad2300.tripod.com/cargos.pdf.

Diameter, in Traveller, is indeed used as proxy for gravity -- although planetary density is addressed in "Book 6: Scouts," the usual assumption is that all inhabited planets have more or less the same basic composition.

Actually, interface costs seem to almost totally dominate the 2300 AD version of the PE "Foreign Construction factor" equation -- the distance between the donor and the recipient only starts to come into play when (a) the distance is huge (dozens of light-years), or (b) one (or particularly both) parties involved has a beanstalk.

 

[Peter Schutze]

>Presumably, in-system pauses to let the drives cool down is built into that

actually its more likely to be built into the standard in-orbit loading etc time .... conveniently the point a drive can cool down roughly corresponds to the middle of the habitable zone and IIRC its also roughly geosynch orbit.

The traveller trade code effects on resources etc are going to be hard to convert over .... although since most 2300 worlds will start as barren being colonised they might not matter too much

in any case since 2300 records things like planetary density I think a whole additional / alternate set of mods might be appropriate

 

[BMonnery]

Essentially the price per ton is:

Beanstalk: Lv750 *g
Catapult: Lv900 * g
Spaceplace: Lv3,000 *g
Rocket: Lv4,500 *g

Down from orbit is 10% of this value (with "catapult" literally meaning dropping it in a drop pod).

The price to orbit utterly dominates the trade barriers. Distance hardly gets a look in.

For traveller ships, they average about 1 dton/ 8-10 tons of mass.