I've noticed that even using book 2 only, you can improve the subbie's available tonnage by going with a custom hull and B-drives instead of the hardier Cs. What I haven't dones is calculate how much money the smaller drives save versus the increase in cost for the custom hull.
Book 2 economics, again! Beating the dead horse...
- Thread starter Cymew
- Start date
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Yep you're right Imperium Festerium . I think I did one like this at one point. Just ran the numbers quick for fun and you gain 25tons at a cost of only MCr2 more. That breaks down to just over Cr8,000 per month added to the payments. More than made up for by the potential Cr50,000 per month for the extra freight.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Nitpick
Using High Guard, "Smallcraft are carried at their own tonnage on ships 1000t and under..." page 32.
Straybow
SOC-14 1K
Oh don't worry about offending me. I've put myself in the crosshairs here.
Anyway, the other side of the point is, how the heck does the A2 get to be a "standard design" if it is only going to be custom built? Look at the standard hulls listed in LBB2. The fixed size engineering sections don't match up with drive sizes. That might start out as some bureaucrat's standard design in the hidebound Vilani empire of old.
20 minutes after the Earthers take over that changes. Any wrench monkey can do the math in the above posts and realize the B engine does better and saves XXdT to make it profitable, then that's what will soon become a standard hull.
If shipyard A continues to make the old one, shipyard B will advertize the efficiency of the new design and draw off an ever-increasing number of their customers. Shipyard A either changes to keep up with B or goes under. One way or the other the better designs outcompete in Darwinian fashion.
Only if you discount regulation, the absolute perversity of which can make all kinds of unprofitable things happen, like making alaska ship crude oil when we could easily refine it all and make more money off of it in so doing!
Economics doesn't always win. Sometimes paranoia does.
Economics doesn't always win. Sometimes paranoia does.
Straybow
SOC-14 1K
Whoever said politics is the last refuge of scoundrels underestimated the potential of reform... [attach credit later]
Anyway, the idea of immovable regulatory inertia would again only work with the Vilani. Unless you are proposing that some bizarre form of religious fervor attaches to starship design.
[Edit: the reason refining isn't done in Alaska is because there are over 100 regulated regional gas formulas and blends. Regional refining is a must. What doesn't get regulated is the design of the cars using the gas. The "standard" designs are the ones that sell best.]
Anyway, the idea of immovable regulatory inertia would again only work with the Vilani. Unless you are proposing that some bizarre form of religious fervor attaches to starship design.
[Edit: the reason refining isn't done in Alaska is because there are over 100 regulated regional gas formulas and blends. Regional refining is a must. What doesn't get regulated is the design of the cars using the gas. The "standard" designs are the ones that sell best.]
Maladominus
SOC-14 1K
3 jumps per month is how I assume most commercial liners operate profitably IMTU.
Other ways to maximize profit for passenger liners IMTU:
1) The liner carries "Incidental Mail" (or government-subsidized mail) every time it jumps.
2) IMTU, luxury liners provide "value added services". This means that aboard the ship, there are gift shops, mini-stores, cafes, and there are even massage services, personal Swedish masseuse, etc etc. These are extra services that the High Passengers pay for, in addition to the Cr10k that they already paid for their high passage ticket.
For each passage, these value added services will boost the revenue of each trip. For a typical 600ton to 1000ton starliner, this may be another 100k or 200k in extra revenue. Helps pay for the fuel, huh?
3) IMTU, the starliner crew gets rid of "unnecessary sophont crewmembers" and replaces them with dumbots. Yes, that's right. Those "assistant stewards" are not always human Pursers. They are often robots. They serve as ship valets and stewards. They clean the laundry, they clean the toilets, they make the beds, they serve dinner to the passengers, and they help unload the cargo, etc. Get rid of some of the crewmates and replace them with cheap subsidized robots that do not ask for salaries and do not require their own staterooms.
4) IMTU, starliners that are subsidized by local governments or huge local corporations are more likely to be profitable. One extra benefit of the subsidy is that the monthly PAYMENT of the ship is lower, because the interest rate is lower. The ship is subsidized by the local governments (perhaps the local subsector government), and therefore they are given significant tax breaks and/or paying at lower interest rates as accorded by the local fananciers (wrt financing plans).
5) IMTU, subsidized ships traveling thru subsidized (pre-approved) trade routes are given STEEP DISCOUNTS for refined fuel cost. Instead of paying Cr500 per ton of fuel, they pay a mere Cr300 per ton of fuel.
Not so, Straybow...
Even in the mostly-capitalist US, education of children is primarily a government monopoly. Sure, there are private schools, and in many places the private schools are better, but because of the way the system is set up, the private schools are not usually in direct competition with the public ones. Further, by requirements for meeting state standards for certification, several states are placing the costs of hiring beyond the survivable for non-religious education systems other than government funded.
Economics as the "Explanation for everything" is more religious than "On the 1st day, god said 'Let there be light.'" Economics is a major factor, but religions, political manipulations, and the psychology of fear often preclude sound or valid economic decisions. Just look at the "Black Monday Correction" of a few years ago. (Now they would shut the exchange down before it could collapse like that. That is NOT the laizze faire capitalism upon which the exchange was built!)
Likewise, if all the jigs in existence in the 1I were set to specific sizes, and the 2I takes over those yards, it's far less likely that new jigs will be installed, when the crew can use the surplus space in Engineering for "Crew Purposes" and the savings in cost for those hulls is noticeable in the monthly payments!
The costs of destandardizing never drop; so unless it is immediately beneficial, since it isn't going to even get cheaper to do, it won't get done until the jigs wear out. For the yards, it isn't beneficial to do so; it increases labor costs. It increases hull costs dramatically. For the shipowner, reducing the costs is more important than exact min-max on the holds. You can always install an FPP in the dead engineering space once your Ref gets Bk 5...
And as to less inertia winning the cold war, Bullsh*t. We simply outspent them into the ground. Which is why we have a trillion dollar debt. Quite simply, we had credit, and they couldn't match it. We're as inertia heavy as the soviets were, if not more so; command economies have the advantage that bureaucratic inertia is easily overcome from the top, especially when resistant bureaucrats disappear into gulags. (What they lack is valuable, tho': accurate reporting up the chain about the realistic progress towards goals and the net costs of the changes.) Our great grandchildren in the US will be paying for that so-called victory!
Truth is, inertial motion of business tends to keep it going until it collapses, despite being uncompetetive. Look at Sears. Nearly bankrupt, but still going strong. They sold off their credit department to glean operating capital. They cut their warrantees to less than that of the manufacturer of the sears-labelled powertools. (EG: a B&D drill I bought had a 3 year warrantee. The identical drill with the sears branding had a 2 year warantee, and cost 6 cents more!) But there are plenty of people who will buy the sears brand since they know it better than B&D, despite B&D making many of the Sears power tools. If Econ were the prime motivator, sears should have changed business models already....
Even in the mostly-capitalist US, education of children is primarily a government monopoly. Sure, there are private schools, and in many places the private schools are better, but because of the way the system is set up, the private schools are not usually in direct competition with the public ones. Further, by requirements for meeting state standards for certification, several states are placing the costs of hiring beyond the survivable for non-religious education systems other than government funded.
Economics as the "Explanation for everything" is more religious than "On the 1st day, god said 'Let there be light.'" Economics is a major factor, but religions, political manipulations, and the psychology of fear often preclude sound or valid economic decisions. Just look at the "Black Monday Correction" of a few years ago. (Now they would shut the exchange down before it could collapse like that. That is NOT the laizze faire capitalism upon which the exchange was built!)
Likewise, if all the jigs in existence in the 1I were set to specific sizes, and the 2I takes over those yards, it's far less likely that new jigs will be installed, when the crew can use the surplus space in Engineering for "Crew Purposes" and the savings in cost for those hulls is noticeable in the monthly payments!
The costs of destandardizing never drop; so unless it is immediately beneficial, since it isn't going to even get cheaper to do, it won't get done until the jigs wear out. For the yards, it isn't beneficial to do so; it increases labor costs. It increases hull costs dramatically. For the shipowner, reducing the costs is more important than exact min-max on the holds. You can always install an FPP in the dead engineering space once your Ref gets Bk 5...
And as to less inertia winning the cold war, Bullsh*t. We simply outspent them into the ground. Which is why we have a trillion dollar debt. Quite simply, we had credit, and they couldn't match it. We're as inertia heavy as the soviets were, if not more so; command economies have the advantage that bureaucratic inertia is easily overcome from the top, especially when resistant bureaucrats disappear into gulags. (What they lack is valuable, tho': accurate reporting up the chain about the realistic progress towards goals and the net costs of the changes.) Our great grandchildren in the US will be paying for that so-called victory!
Truth is, inertial motion of business tends to keep it going until it collapses, despite being uncompetetive. Look at Sears. Nearly bankrupt, but still going strong. They sold off their credit department to glean operating capital. They cut their warrantees to less than that of the manufacturer of the sears-labelled powertools. (EG: a B&D drill I bought had a 3 year warrantee. The identical drill with the sears branding had a 2 year warantee, and cost 6 cents more!) But there are plenty of people who will buy the sears brand since they know it better than B&D, despite B&D making many of the Sears power tools. If Econ were the prime motivator, sears should have changed business models already....
Aramis, our grandchildren will not be paying off the dept caused by the Cold War, if you remember that dept was balanced in 94ish... the current dept has come due to 9/11 and the GWOT... but the funny thing is, it keeps shrinking every year from what ppl always advertise it to be... sooo just sit back and enjoy it
I'll trust the GAO over you, Starflash... sorry.
The Balanced Budget was an end to adding to the deficit, not an end to the debt accrued. It is gone.
(BTW, Cash accounts for about 900 Billion of the almost 5 trillion debt.)
Here's the Treasury Department's Historical List of Annual National Debt (link), from 1951 to 2005...
... and the last time it wasn't in the trillions was presumably in 1981... since the last shown is in 1980.
Which reinforces the point of bureaucratic inertia.
The Balanced Budget was an end to adding to the deficit, not an end to the debt accrued. It is gone.
(BTW, Cash accounts for about 900 Billion of the almost 5 trillion debt.)
Here's the Treasury Department's Historical List of Annual National Debt (link), from 1951 to 2005...
... and the last time it wasn't in the trillions was presumably in 1981... since the last shown is in 1980.
Which reinforces the point of bureaucratic inertia.
Straybow
SOC-14 1K
Must... ignore... political... content...
Bad examples. Education isn't driven by economics. Education is driven by government subsidy as a public service (and political factors we can't bring up). Yet it still responds to performance pressures (very slowly). We didn't reject computers in the classroom just because the flannelboards haven't worn out yet and are cheaper than computers.
In this century we close down outdated plants and build modernized ones if the ROI is a few percent higher. Heck, I can show you one case in which Alcoa built a new plant and never opened it because unionized labor costs pushed the potential ROI below their acceptable threshold.
Can you still keep the standard hull discounts? Standardization saves on naval architect fees, and maybe a few percent on physical manufacture and QA costs. Add in a couple percent for marketing incentives and it might reach the hand-wave 10 percent.
Solomani build their own spaceyards, make their own ships, and use near-infinitely flexible computer automated robotics rather than primitive "jigs." With this and other economic and technological advantages they conquered. Some salvage company might keep old Vilani jigs for making third-rate replacement parts for old Vilani rustbuckets.
As somebody pointed out, if they were a bank they wouldn't loan money for anything but an A1. Again, perhaps one could say the Vilani had a different way of looking at credit, but that would pass with the 1I. A tenth-century Venetian merchant would understand and use credit more profitably and with better preservation of principal. Perhaps Vilani megabanks would persist a few centuries until they finally went bankrupt or were bought out by their competition.
I suppose if the Sylean-based economies retreat to old Vilani ways then the Earth-based economies will rise exponentially and the 4I will come very soon.
Bad examples. Education isn't driven by economics. Education is driven by government subsidy as a public service (and political factors we can't bring up). Yet it still responds to performance pressures (very slowly). We didn't reject computers in the classroom just because the flannelboards haven't worn out yet and are cheaper than computers.
In this century we close down outdated plants and build modernized ones if the ROI is a few percent higher. Heck, I can show you one case in which Alcoa built a new plant and never opened it because unionized labor costs pushed the potential ROI below their acceptable threshold.
The idea of a 10% discount for standardization may be based on such TL7 ideas as "jigs." You might even claim that's how the Vilani did it. The creators of Trav had no idea what computer aided design and manufacture would become in just a decade, much less centuries. But let's kick the outdated concepts to the curb.
Can you still keep the standard hull discounts? Standardization saves on naval architect fees, and maybe a few percent on physical manufacture and QA costs. Add in a couple percent for marketing incentives and it might reach the hand-wave 10 percent.
Solomani build their own spaceyards, make their own ships, and use near-infinitely flexible computer automated robotics rather than primitive "jigs." With this and other economic and technological advantages they conquered. Some salvage company might keep old Vilani jigs for making third-rate replacement parts for old Vilani rustbuckets.
This thread is about economics, and you want to say that credit and baseline economic growth are somehow not germaine? It is the means by which the Earth-centered economies rose to power in the OTU.
As somebody pointed out, if they were a bank they wouldn't loan money for anything but an A1. Again, perhaps one could say the Vilani had a different way of looking at credit, but that would pass with the 1I. A tenth-century Venetian merchant would understand and use credit more profitably and with better preservation of principal. Perhaps Vilani megabanks would persist a few centuries until they finally went bankrupt or were bought out by their competition.
I suppose if the Sylean-based economies retreat to old Vilani ways then the Earth-based economies will rise exponentially and the 4I will come very soon.
I've never said anything other than Type A1's have been financed. What I have said is that the A1, under all the rulesets (with the exclusion of GTFT, which I haven't put through the paces, but am assured that it is less true, not untrue), with a competent crew can and will make a bundle of money by spec. If one can pay it off early, it rapidly can finance the Type A2's for cash purchase. At which point, spec and tramping readily make a decent amount of money. (Profit is more consistent when one has longer legs.)
Of course, Narrow-minded "Earth runs by demand" thinking is the classic argument against spec. But at some level, SOMEONE is speculating in most of that.
As to inertia and the debt.... education is a buisiness, and yes, I've seen principals refuse to update to new computers (iMacs) because their Apple II labs were working just fine.
Of course, Narrow-minded "Earth runs by demand" thinking is the classic argument against spec. But at some level, SOMEONE is speculating in most of that.
As to inertia and the debt.... education is a buisiness, and yes, I've seen principals refuse to update to new computers (iMacs) because their Apple II labs were working just fine.
Straybow
SOC-14 1K
A principal who makes such a decision will soon have to answer for it. Such short term, small scale decision isn't the same as an entire multi-kilo-planet empire stuck in an economic straight-jacket for several thousand years of growth, massive war resulting in regime change, collapse, regrowth, more interstellar war, rebellion...
The standards, whether hull compartmentalization, whole ship designs, trade and transport pricing, etc, should be things that at least work well.
The standards, whether hull compartmentalization, whole ship designs, trade and transport pricing, etc, should be things that at least work well.
If they've lasted, there is a reason.
It may not be obvious at the scale of resolution you have, Straybow.
Just because it doesn't make sense from your PoV doesn't mean it doesn't make sense, merely that you're missing data.
The Standard Hulls usually wind up with a few extra tons. I'm certain the engineers like having the extra room in which to work. But, even under a strict Bk2 universe, the standard hulls are not universal.
It may not be obvious at the scale of resolution you have, Straybow.
Just because it doesn't make sense from your PoV doesn't mean it doesn't make sense, merely that you're missing data.
The Standard Hulls usually wind up with a few extra tons. I'm certain the engineers like having the extra room in which to work. But, even under a strict Bk2 universe, the standard hulls are not universal.
Similar threads
