Al Morai and Implications

[robject]

Using Al Morai as a typical sector-wide transport corporation, what limits, if any, can you set on the amount of interstellar traffic in the Imperium?

The bare facts:

Al Morai, a sectorwide corporation, supports 53 Type MK transports (3000 tons each, appx 1300dt freight, plus a bunch of passengers, too), two orbital starports, and 20+ Gazelles. It wanders among about 50 systems along the Xboat route, spending more time in some places than others. [Spinward Marches Campaign].


SUMMARY - Important Conclusions reached in this thread

Per Merchant Prince, it looks as though Al Morai is a subsector line which has expanded into sector-wide transport and shipping. LBB7 says they still maintain routes in Mora, so they've got more than 50 ships, that's for sure. Their 50 cargoliners mentioned in the Spinward Marches Campaign therefore must represent their sector operations.

Bottom line: there's not enough money to break into long-haul shipping, until you factor in government/military contracts. That's where the long-haul money is.


(There's also a lot of discussion in this thread about the reliability and usefulness of UWP data, but with the T5SS I think most of that has been rendered moot.)

 

[robject]

Reasonable Assumption The 10 most important worlds along Al Morai's route probably don't see more than 5 Al Morai ships per week, for a total of around 6000 dtons of freight per week.

Strange Assumption It's more cost-effective for Al Morai to spread out its fleet among 50 worlds than to concentrate them exclusively on a few major world-pairs (like Lunion and Strouden).

Reasonable Assumption Megacorporate transport companies concern themselves with inter-sector arteries; sectorwide corporations worry about sector Xboat routes; subsector and small independent companies worry about interface routes.

So...

Assume an abstracted Type MK as a 'standard unit of traffic measure'.

Assume there are four sectorwide corporations of comparable sizes. That yields about 12 MK-equivalents per subsector average.

Assume Tukera runs freight and passengers between the main links on the Xboat route in the Spinward Marches, implying that its presence in the Marches may be smaller than that of Al Morai. Let's assume it's equal. So that's another 3 MKs per subsector.

Assume Oberlindes runs interfaces off the Xboat route, mainly in Regina subsector. Assume 12 MK-equivalents per subsector per interface company, and assume four interface companies, for a total of 48 MK-equivalents per subsector.

Assume a host of small companies and tramp traders. I'll guesstimate 25 more MK-equivalents (a hundred each of ships ranging from S to R).

So the wild-eyed guesstimated average is 88 MK-equivalent volumes of freight and passenger traffic in each subsector... about 115,000 tons total freight moved around every subsector per week.


If I quadruple the number of trade concerns, that brings the freight traffic numbers up to around 370 MK equivalents, or appx 500,000 tons total freight moved around every subsector per week.

but

I suspect quadrupling subsector line numbers doesn't really "work" well if Al Morai really only has 53 transports. Sector lines start to get seriously dwarfed by the local players.

in other words

For Al Morai to be considered as a reasonable company, other companies must be similarly equipped, smaller companies must be therefore similarly scaled back, even larger companies must not have an overwhelming presence, and there must not be a too-large number of similar companies. In other words, there is a fuzzy upper and lower limit drawn to the amount of traffic running through an average subsector, and hence the Imperium.

And those upper and lower limits are probably not separated by an order of magnitude.

 

[far-trader]

Meant to ask when you first posted but got distracted. Where did you find 20+ Gazelles? SMC only says 4 Gazelles. An inadequate number certainly but not the only questionable one in the book.

Another number being the number of Type MK transports. The book says 1 per serviced world plus 2 others. Problem is that doesn't total 53. By my count there are 48 serviced worlds plus 2 others making 50 total. That is if the two mentioned class C starports are the only ones on the route that see visits. There might be 53 IF there are more private ports besides Carey and Roup but it's not needed, the ships can skip right over the others.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by robject:
Reasonable Assumption The 10 most important worlds along Al Morai's route probably don't see more than 5 Al Morai ships per week, for a total of around 6000 dtons of freight per week.

I think it's closer to a monthly visit by a single type MK with the SMC numbers.

Originally posted by robject:
Strange Assumption It's more cost-effective for Al Morai to spread out its fleet among 50 worlds than to concentrate them exclusively on a few major world-pairs (like Lunion and Strouden).

Probably something to do with their military shipping contracts and mail service subsidies.

 

[robject]

Dan - let's review SMC and see what those numbers really are. There are errors in the book, and I picked the most likely mix of ships.

If I recall correctly, the count of Gazelles is on the second or third paragraph of the right-hand page of the Al Morai section. (I need to create a table of contents for SMC).

I don't remember the wording of the worlds served, either. I'll look at that, too, though it's a trivial enough difference to wave one's hands at.

I think it's closer to a monthly visit by a single type MK with the SMC numbers.

Spread out evenly, maybe? I squinted at the routes and thought, surely, surely those ships would spend a bit more time running goods to the larger ports.

Probably something to do with their military shipping contracts and mail service subsidies.

Thank you - those are excellent points.

In fact, those are such excellent points that I have to ruminate on them a bit. Mail contracts are nice -- they subsidize ship payments, plus pay KCr5 for 5 dtons per ship, don't they? Do you suspect that military contracts are even sweeter?

Simulationists do worry that the CT trade rules are very hard to make money off of, unless you stick with a good route. Contracts take the burden off, which means interstellar transport could be largely subsidized.

 

[far-trader]

Oh, another quick note, the type MK as presented (the big one, supposed to be 3KT) does not work in High Guard. It comes closer in Book 2 design but even there is a little short. It does however work very nicely in HG if you use a 4KT hull.

 

[Whipsnade]

Robject wrote: Using Al Morai as a typical sector-wide transport corporation, what limits, if any, can you set on the amount of interstellar traffic in the Imperium?

Short answer? Nothing.

Long Answer? How to begin...

First, the Spinward Marches is in no way indicative of the Imperium as a whole. Both in an in-game sense and in a meta-gaming sense. In-game, the Marches are continually referred to as a 'frontier', 'provincial', and very much different from the Imperial Core. Canon; especially CT canon, drives this point home time and again. You can find examples of it scattered between adventures, library data, amber zones, JTAS articles, and the like. The same 'apartness' attributed to the Marches is very much present in a meta-game sense too. The Marches were not generated using LBB:6. In fact, portions of the Marches even predate LBB:3!

The Marches are different and deliberately were meant to be different, so their use as a 'guide' or 'template' for the rest of the Imperium are neccessarily limited. The ill-suited nature of the Marches as a guide to the Imperium brings us to the next point we so often forget; We know nothing about the Imperial core.

We all know about the many, many, many problems with the Genii/Sunbane data. We also all know about the many. many, many problems with the DGP maps too. Other than the list of system locations, starport codes, and hi-pop world names in CT's Atlas of the Imperium, we know nothing about the Imperium beyond a very limited data set. How limited? How does two out of twenty two sound?

We have precisely three sectors; the Spinward Marches, the Solomani Rim, and Gvurrdon, that are described at the UWP level and nothing more. Making matters worse, those three sectors are all outliers. The Marches and Rim were deliberately generated differently from LBB:3 and 6, while Gvurrdon lays outside Imperial space. Depending on how you count them, the Imperium has ~22 sectors. We have two out of ~22 sectors as an example and both of those were deliberately designed to be different. How many inferences do you think we can really make in that situation?

(Yes, the Memory Alpha reprint does include the Corridor Sector. However, we do not have the original MA convention handout. What we have is a recreation of MA years after the fact. A recreation that uses the DGP map of Corridor and not the Corridor map that was part of the original handout. And, yes, TNE's RSB did give us a look at Deneb, Reft, Trojan Reach, and parts of Corridor. However, because TNE takes place after the fall of the Imperium, that data is useless to us also.)

Look at things from a statistical or quality control standpoint: Your sample size is under 10% and you know your samples are markedly different from the norm. What can you really learn about the whole from just a tiny, 'weird' portion of that whole? IMHO, you cannot learn or infer much and you especially can't learn or infer what you seem to want to learn or infer.

Okay, leaving the meta-game issue aside. As Dan points out, your description of Al Morai seems to be a little off. First, they have no where near the number of Gazelles you quote. Second, Al Morai owns an entire world; Shirene, so you'd expect them to have defense forces there. Next, SMC also speaks rather clearly about Al Morai's route and scheduling. The players are told they can expect an Al Morai Type-MK to visit each world shown on its route monthly or close to monthly. SMC also states that the MK might not be travelling in the right direction' and that the players wold then have to wait for another month to pass.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by thrash:OT or not, this I have to hear. You want to justify that claim, Bill? [/QB]

Ask LKW.

Portions of the Marches, like the layout of the Regina and Sword Worlds subsectors effectively predate LLB:3. The polities, the worlds, their locations, a rough idea of their relative importance, all predate the completion and adoption of LBB:3's UWP system.

Certain aspects of the Marches setting in particular and the overall setting in general were decided on before Traveller's RPG 'engine' was completed. The Sword Worlds having 24 out of 28 systems laying on the Spinward Main is one example of this. The idea of an 'imperium' surrounded by six potential enemies predating the Third Imperium surrounded by six Major Races is another.

This means that the Marches was not 'generated', it was 'crafted' instead. GDW didn't 'roll up' a sector and then say Okay, those must be the Sword Worlds here or That's a good place for the Zho border there or That world must be Regina. All that stuff was settled on before the first UWP got cranked out, it was 'crafted'. It also means that inferences derived from a 'crafted' sector like the Marches and Rim can only be applied with the greatest caution to 'generated' sectors elsewhere.

One can easily see the economic 'house of cards' Robject's seemingly innocuous question was destined to build:

- Al Morai is a 'typical' sector-wide line.
- We know it operates a certain number of ships.
- We can price those ships and figure their operating costs.
- A typical sector will have X number of 'Al Morai' type lines with Y number of vessels and Z amount of costs.
- Therefore we can total all the Zs and derive a shipping estimate for the entire Imperium.

Logical, right? Actually, it isn't.

Al Morai may be a 'typical' sector-wide line as Robject suggests. However, the Marches in which it operates is not a 'typical' sector at all.

If I hadn't short-circuited this chain of 'reasoning' by reminding people of that fact again, in the next few days you would have found yourself defending the assumptions in GT:FT again.

It's like to continuing attempts to get creationism taught in science classes; one method gets exposed and thwarted, so they dress up the same old pig in a different costume to try and slip it in some other way.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[aramis]

The marches have significant chunks defined in TTA far beyond UWP. Mostly upon the Spinward Main.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

OK. Now that last bit needed to be in the Political Pulpit, Bill. I don't dress my pigs up at all. And, if you're too much of a bigot to lay off about me and my pig.... Oh wait, you mean something else. Sorry.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
We have precisely three sectors; the Spinward Marches, the Solomani Rim, and Gvurrdon, that are described at the UWP level and nothing more. Making matters worse, those three sectors are all outliers. The Marches and Rim were deliberately generated differently from LBB:3 and 6, while Gvurrdon lays outside Imperial space. Depending on how you count them, the Imperium has ~22 sectors. We have two out of ~22 sectors as an example and both of those were deliberately designed to be different.

We also have the four sectors of Gateway Domain. But only ~1 of those is part of the Imperium, and again it is on the fringe. And as you said, it tells us nothing about the Core.

Three out of ~22 sectors is still woefully inadequate.

 

[robject]

Flog, flog.

OK, first off, Bill, your statements are reasonable. But I'm not deterred. I can rethink the composition of the Imperium, but in the end, I still have a sectorwide corporation fitting into a frontier sector. In the light of other data, I feel safe enough to make some assumptions about it.

And anyhow, I'm not a defender of GTFT. Unless you meant "in kind" or "in spirit". I don't give a flying flip for micromanaging the Imperium. I do give a flip about poking holes in the vast, humongous, tightly woven, cosmopolitan intersteller trade mesh that some want the Spinward Marches to be. I'm trying to look for a reasonable contrarian position. Yes, I seem to be looking rather hard for it. So back off, man!

First, we can actually pin a relationship to Book 3 and the Marches.

Second, it seems reasonable to assume that Book 3 is a good place to start when deciding on the average composition of Imperial space as a whole.

By George, they are quite different. Here are world profiles which represent at least 1% of the total sample. There are bunches that are below that threshold, by the way.

OK, let me filter out all but worlds that have Ag, In, Hi, Ri codes.

Reading Spinward Marches.
Generating 50000 Random UWPs.
Code           Spinward %   Random %     Variance
Ag             0.04         0.02         0.02
Ag Ni          0.08         0.06
Ag Ni Ri       0.03         0.02
Ag Ri          0.02         0.01
De Hi In       0.00         0.03         wow
De Ni Ri       0.00         0.02         -0.02
De Ri          0.00         0.04         wow
Hi             0.02         0.02
Hi In          0.02         0.03
Hi In Cp       0.01         0.00
Hi In Na Va    0.00         0.01
Ni Ri          0.00         0.01
Ri             0.02         0.02

Woops! I see that Hi, In, and Ri worlds are LOW compared to 'Imperial' proportions.

As Wild Bill says, I don't think I can use this as a basis for Imperial traffic.

But I can make some assumptions about traffic in the Spinward Marches.

 

[robject]

For my next trick, I'm generating one million random UWPs to use as an 'average resovoir'.

 

[far-trader]

Peripherally related questions for the GT:FT knowsits:

There is mention in a SJG TAS news brief c1116 of a 10,000-dton passenger liner (S.S. Sundance, one of Al Morai's Sunfarer class of luxury express liners) carrying 3,084 passengers (2,054 in cold sleep), 577 crew, and 419 dtons of cargo.

Was this ship "invented" to support the trade levels suggested in GT:FT? Or was GT:FT built to support this prior ship design? Or was neither even a consideration? Does anyone know or have a hunch?

I bring it up because before one starts making assumptions it would be helpful to state for what era, rules set, and such they are meant to apply too. The example of Al Morai being one beast in CT SMC vs another beast entirely in GT(?) Rebellion era points out the absurdity of applying one set of assumptions to too broad a tableaux. The whole Small Ship/Big Ship issue is another with SMC being on the fence between the two.

Not that I'm against the effort, just suggesting it be more defined to be useful and focus on the elements to address.

 

[jrients]

Robject,

I like where you're going with this line of inquiry. Please keep up the good work! I didn't know SMC had such interesting info on Al Morai. Now I want a copy more than ever.

I find it interesting that your rough estimates (in the second post in this thread) are on the same order of magnitude as the results I got when I applied the Quick Interstellar Trade System to District 268. The big difference between your and Eaglestone's assumptions is that his method doesn't involve lengthy trade routes. For District 268 and a couple of random subsectors, QUITS produced independant collections of nearby trading partners. For example, almost all the freight traffic in District 268 flows along two tiny routes: Collace/Mertactor and Collace/Trexalon. I like Eaglestone's simple methods, but I'm not sure what even a subsector-sized line would actually do under his system.

 

[robject]

Thanks.

I guess you didn't know that he and I are the same.

It seems that a multi-world line would seek to link a series of high-value worlds together. I'm not sure how that would work, either. Sectorwide lines apparently cruise the Xboat lanes, while megacorp lines may simply aim for the biggest ports on the Xboat route.

Now, back to Bill, who is worried that the Marches just aren't representative of anything other than itself.

Bill's main worry hinges on the reliability of the Genie, Sunbane, DGP, what-have-you data. Granted, they are messed up.

Star data is messed up in some sectors; i.e. badly generated with buggy code. World names are hosed or downright stoopid. Allegiences vary between milieux... as do TLs.

And yet, in many instances, the data themselves are, for the most part, reasonable ... and generated according to Book 3 rules. I can show this reasonably well. Or at least, well enough for my purposes.

I scraped several sectors for "important" worlds, and compared the percentage with the "random average".

And in fact, using this method, I've found the sectors where the data has been monkeyed with.

The Spinward Marches has been seriously monkeyed with: it's significantly more industrialized than ALL of the other sectors, as well as the average. (If you'd like to browse my random UWP data, it's here: http://eaglestone.pocketempires.com/survey/rand1000000.zip)

If that's not enough, Deneb and Vland (Vland! Can you believe it?) are incredibly, seriously underdeveloped. Vland... (shakes head in disbelief).

But the other sectors more or less fall into the average.

 

[jrients]

Originally posted by robject:
[QB] Thanks.

I guess you didn't know that he and I are the same.

Hah! That's great! Let me take the time to thank you for the great system! I had tremedous fun working out the QUITS trade results for 268.

Having you gotten similar results with QUITS, where trade is mostly local?

 

[robject]

I've stolen my chart from a related thread to show y'all what I've boiled out of UWP data.

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Source Important Worlds
Spinward Marches 25/5%
* Zarushagar 23/4%
100,000 Random UWPs 3258/3%
* Core 19/3%
* Dagudashaag 12/2%
* Deneb 7/1%
* Vland 2/0%</pre>[/QUOTE]A slightly more detailed version is here: http://eaglestone.pocketempires.com/survey/ImportantWorlds.html


As you can see, Deneb and Vland are obviously too sparse with "important worlds". Granted, this metric may be too specific, but I'm not so sure.

And also, note how many "important worlds" the Marches has. 5% isn't necessarily too high, until it's noted that this is a frontier sector, as Bill mentioned. It shouldn't have this much going on.

But all this tells me is that, if the random UWP generation system is Imperiocentric, then even sectors with errors (Zarushagar, Core, Dagudashaag) are within reason as far as powerful worlds go, and therefore it's not unreasonable to use their data as a general yardstick.

The conclusion I'm reaching, which has to be a wrong one, is that traffic is leaner on the average than in the Marches.

That's backwards, in my mind. Of all sectors, Core and Vland have to be the busiest. Don't they?

 

[robject]

Originally posted by far-trader:
Oh, another quick note, the type MK as presented (the big one, supposed to be 3KT) does not work in High Guard. It comes closer in Book 2 design but even there is a little short. It does however work very nicely in HG if you use a 4KT hull.

I actually did build it in CT; it fit fine. I remember having to make a stateroom adjustment, however -- I believe a number of the staff were grouped two to a stateroom.

I had to use that rule I'd never used before: a fixed number of crew per 1000 dtons...

 

[robject]

Back to funky sector data: I can get even more specific:

The Spinward Marches probably has 3 too many "Hi In" worlds, and one too many "Ag Ri" worlds.

Core probably doesn't have enough "Hi In" and "Ag Ri" worlds. 'Give' it three more of each... or not. I could see this kind of thing being sort of "clumped together" in the middle of the Imperium.

Otherwise, Zarushagar can stand to lose four "Hi In" worlds. Give a couple to Dagudashaag, along with another "Ag Ri" world or two.

And Deneb... and Vland. (Sigh). They need four of each, I'd say.

That, or set a policy about where the Industrial worlds "tend" to be. Even so, two worlds per sector probably ought to be tweaked a bit.


I can see it now. Zarushagar is the industrial powerhouse of the Imperium. If so, then it's a force to be reckoned with.


Oh... my... goodness. Ilelish. The industrial seat of the Rebellion. Not One Single "Important" World. Unless I count the sector capital, which I'm currenly not doing (it works against the "average", which has no capitals).