Cargo Capacity and volume and mass

[kilemall]

Yes and if you look at their main holds the are often less than half full volume-wise. Well sealed hatch covers are also standard, as the bulk of the cargo lays at or below the water line.... Draft is often the limiting size to how big they can be.

Which again is relevant to waterworld or other liquid downports.

So assuming you are not going to just ignore all this and further assuming you are going with mostly volume but extreme mass counts, reasonable use cases for mass being an issue is

* flotation/buoyancy on surface liquids,

* extreme density loads,

* mitigation of heavy loads from violent shifting and consequences of same if not mitigated,

* greater limits on higher gravity worlds, and

* heavier capacity when lifting from low gravity worlds.

I wouldn’t seek to have rules that impact all shipping, more like 10-15% of the time when I want it as a plot element.

I would tend to make it more an issue about planetary gravity fields and only a space borne issue at extremes.

That begs the question, do lighter/empty ships around low grav planets ‘go faster’?

 

[kilemall]

For mitigation of shifting, my main mechanism is requiring everything to be in containers.

A ship dedicated to a particular commodity could be specialized to handle that without containers but for ACS probably a rare thing except for say high value things like radioactives. Most ACS will want hauling cows this week/merc squad the next flexibility.

 

[Badenov]

For mitigation of shifting, my main mechanism is requiring everything to be in containers.

A ship dedicated to a particular commodity could be specialized to handle that without containers but for ACS probably a rare thing except for say high value things like radioactives. Most ACS will want hauling cows this week/merc squad the next flexibility.

My campaign has embraced the container as well. It solves so many problems. Of course we don't use the good old random cargoes table, which would work against it, though I suppose someone could pick up a mix of stuff adding up to the container capacity, pack it themselves, and carry it that way. A 100-ton single container hauler is probably more likely to do this than a 2000-ton 45-container craft. Of course that's more cargo (45x30T=1350T) than a skipper can scare up, generally, but a permanent in-system office that can roll every day can get that monster filled with no problem. I imagine this is how all the major corps work.

 

[kilemall]

My campaign has embraced the container as well. It solves so many problems. Of course we don't use the good old random cargoes table, which would work against it, though I suppose someone could pick up a mix of stuff adding up to the container capacity, pack it themselves, and carry it that way. A 100-ton single container hauler is probably more likely to do this than a 2000-ton 45-container craft. Of course that's more cargo (45x30T=1350T) than a skipper can scare up, generally, but a permanent in-system office that can roll every day can get that monster filled with no problem. I imagine this is how all the major corps work.

I make it simple- the containers come in 10-dton/5-dton/1-dton sizes to match the CT major/minor types.

 

[Rupert]

My games tend to be set in the New Era. Containers might've been the go 70+ years back, but now they are an expense. Also, a ship's crew want to know what they're shipping, so one of the big selling points of containers (security of the contents) isn't any more. Besides, most people have better uses for all those containers, as houses, sheds, etc.

Palletisation of loads is still popular, though. However, if you're landing on a world and buying random stuff that happens to be going cheap, it's often not going to be on pallets and won't be unless the crew feel like doing that themselves and it'll seldom be worth it.

The result is that a trader's hold probably has some containers in it, but they're fixtures, used to hold loads, to store stuff that won't fit in the 'ship's locker' (like some dirt bikes and their tools, fuel, etc.), plus assorted stacks of cargo, some on pallets, some not, divided up by temporary partitions and secured as best the crew could manage.

 

[warwizard]

So we have the edge cases of the seeker and mobile refinery ships where most of the cargo is going to be high density metals and ores, and all the transfers of the cargos will happen either in the microgravity of an asteroid or the zero g of an orbital station, and there is not going to be containerized ores and the metals will likley be on pallets. If destined for planet side the pallets will be under loaded to not cause problems with the gravity of the destination, and labeled for no stacking of the pallets if not underloaded. Now if you have TL-9 or lower ships (looking at you T5), and lack artifical gravity and grav based thruster technology, then the maximum load with these cargos becomes an issue of trading fuel for time. So a custom 100 DT seeker under T4 rules, with no jump drive, can manage to carry 80 DT of cargo (1120m3), loads some 11,000m3 of a dense metallic ore, and starts maneuvering... at 1/9th of a g. I can see where they may decline to fill the hold with ore and put in perhaps 20 DT of fuel so that they can get to market before the food and air run out.

 

[casquilho]

Of course we don't use the good old random cargoes table, which would work against it, though I suppose someone could pick up a mix of stuff adding up to the container capacity, pack it themselves, and carry it that way.

For a few years after high school I worked for a company here near LAX that did just that. Every afternoon/evening trucks would roll in, we would take the loads, break them by destination, and pack aircraft cargo containers with the stuff, then take them to LAX and stick them on planes heading to those destinations. If the shipments were slower movers, we packed 40 foot trailers and sealed them and long haul truckers would pick them up. There were several freight consolidators working near LAX just like us. I don't see why they would not continue as it made moving large volumes of stuff easier and faster.

 

[Badenov]

I make it simple- the containers come in 10-dton/5-dton/1-dton sizes to match the CT major/minor types.

You know, that gives me an idea. We could totally put fittings on the 1-, 5-, and 10-dton boxes to attach them to each other into 30-dton cargo 'modules'. Known technically as a clump or pile. And cargo handlers could tell at a glance where there was room by which 30-ton assemblages were visibly incomplete. "Hey, Boris, that pile needs another 5-ton box." Given that a ton is about 14m^3, even a missing 1-ton box is pretty noticable.

 

[warwizard]

You know, that gives me an idea. We could totally put fittings on the 1-, 5-, and 10-dton boxes to attach them to each other into 30-dton cargo 'modules'. Known technically as a clump or pile. And cargo handlers could tell at a glance where there was room by which 30-ton assemblages were visibly incomplete. "Hey, Boris, that pile needs another 5-ton box." Given that a ton is about 14m^3, even a missing 1-ton box is pretty noticable.

Tetris in space.

 

[BlackBat242]

I was pointing out that T4 FF&S can have the players track the actual masses when it will be significant to the plot, the radioactives was just something dense, could have been osimum, did not matter about the point. When in space, and accellerating using reaction thrusters, (non-grav) the rules say to use the loaded mass. In most cases 1mt/m3 is fine. But when all you are doing is taking metal ores from an asteroidal mining site to an orbital refinery, with no need to land on a planet, why not fill every m3 you got with that 15mt/m3 metal ore instead of only 1/15 th. of your m3?

This started the "filk song" disorder (I can identify which song to use easily, but have issues actually writing the lyrics)...

There are a lot of bulk cargoes with higher densities than water - ores, coal, gravel. Liquid cargoes ideally need to be split into several smaller tanks and/or have baffles installed to reduce free surface effect due to motion of the ship (note - solid cargoes can suffer free surface effect too, particularly if there is fine powder).

This just added to the imperative...

So we have the edge cases of the seeker and mobile refinery ships where most of the cargo is going to be high density metals and ores, and all the transfers of the cargos will happen either in the microgravity of an asteroid or the zero g of an orbital station, and there is not going to be containerized ores and the metals will likley be on pallets. If destined for planet side the pallets will be under loaded to not cause problems with the gravity of the destination, and labeled for no stacking of the pallets if not underloaded. Now if you have TL-9 or lower ships (looking at you T5), and lack artifical gravity and grav based thruster technology, then the maximum load with these cargos becomes an issue of trading fuel for time. So a custom 100 DT seeker under T4 rules, with no jump drive, can manage to carry 80 DT of cargo (1120m3), loads some 11,000m3 of a dense metallic ore, and starts maneuvering... at 1/9th of a g. I can see where they may decline to fill the hold with ore and put in perhaps 20 DT of fuel so that they can get to market before the food and air run out.

And now we have reached the full territory...

Assignment: Re-write "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" to be about a group of belters who forget the difference between volume tonnage and mass tonnage, and pack a normal in-system freight hull (it can hold so much more than the licensed ore hulls, forget the restrictions some ground-pounder made up to keep us poor) with all the mineral ore they can fit in, then get it heading for the main refinery zone (lots of refinery "factory ships" in a small volume of space), only to realize too late that it took ALL their fuel to get it up to speed!

 

[Condottiere]

Or, hit by a rogue gravity wave.

 

[warwizard]

The legend lives on from the Aki down port
Of when the big ship Getchie went blooie
The ship they say, never gives up her dead
When the skies turn red and gloomly <Note: red dwarf companion star is closer than the yellow primary>
With a load of pig iron at 7 tons per, seventy thousand tons was loaded more
Than the Gitchie Gitchie Gooi weighed empty
That good ship and true was stressed to the max
When the ship did a gravity assist 'round the red spot

The ship was the pride of the Aki side
Coming back from some smelter in the belt
As the big ships go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel mills
When they left fully loaded for Aki
And later that night when the eight bells rang
Could it be the red spot they'd been feelin'?

The cargo in the hold made a tattle-tale sound
As the tide swept thru the ship
And every man knew, as the captain did too
T'was the gravity of the red spot come stealin'
The four bells came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gravity o the red spot came slashin'
When afternoon came it was 6g's at the ends
In the face of a red wall a growin

When suppertime came, the old cook came on speaker sayin'
"Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya"
At 7 PM, the hull started splitting, he said
"Fellas, it's been good knowing ya"
The captain wired in he had lost all his air
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his power went out
Came the wreck of the Gitchie Gitchie Goo

Does any one know where the God's love goes
When the tides turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they'd have made Aki orbit
If they'd put fifteen more miles from the red spot
They might have split up or they might have broke up
They may have split the fuel tanks and froze
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

gas giant one rolls, Soupy sings
In the rooms of her ice-cloud mansion
Old Millionair steams like a young maiden's dreams
The ice mountains and rocks are for the prospecting
And farther below the main star
Takes in what the red spot can send her
And the iron ships go as the spacers all know
With the tides of the red spot remembered

In a musty old hall in Aki they prayed
In the space sailors' cathedral
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Gitchie Gitchie Gooi
The legend lives on from Aki down
Of the big ship they call Gitchie gitchie gooi
they said, never gives up her dead
When the tides of red spot come early

 

[warwizard]

With the tides of the red spot rememberedGitchie Gitchie Gooi

oops that should just be "With the tides of the red spot remembered"

I changed the demise of this TL-9 in system hauler to going too close to the secondary star during a gravity slingshot maneuver, and getting torn apart by tides.

My computer choked due to a memory leak as I was writing that next to last stanza. Pulled it up on my phone and rebooted the computer. Missed the error till after the edit period was over.

 

[mike wightman]

Repost it. The whole thing.

I would love to know what I can edit my posts with not time restrictions on the MgT forums and yet her on CotI there is this ridiculous restriction.

 

[warwizard]

The legend lives on from the Aki down port
Of when the big ship Getchie went blooie
The ship they say, never gives up her dead
When the skies turn red and gloomly
With a load of pig iron at 7 tons per, seventy thousand tons was loaded more
Than the Gitchie Gitchie Gooi weighed empty
That good ship and true was stressed to the max
When the ship did a gravity assist 'round the red spot

The ship was the pride of the Aki side
Coming back from some smelter in the belt
As the big ships go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel mills
When they left fully loaded for Aki
And later that night when the eight bells rang
Could it be the red spot they'd been feelin'?

The cargo in the hold made a tattle-tale sound
As the tide swept thru the ship
And every man knew, as the captain did too
T'was the gravity of the red spot come stealin'
The four bells came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gravity o the red spot came slashin'
When afternoon came it was 6g's at the ends
In the face of a red wall a growin

When suppertime came, the old cook came on speaker sayin'
"Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya"
At 7 PM, the hull started splitting, he said
"Fellas, it's been good knowing ya"
The captain wired in he had lost all his air
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his power went out
Came the wreck of the Gitchie Gitchie Gooi

Does any one know where the God's love goes
When the tides turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they'd have made Aki orbit
If they'd put fifteen more miles from the red spot
They might have split up or they might have broke up
They may have split the fuel tanks and froze
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

gas giant one rolls, Soupy sings
In the rooms of her ice-cloud mansion
Old Millionair steams like a young maiden's dreams
The ice mountains and rocks are for the prospecting
And farther below the main star
Takes in what the red spot does send her
And the iron ships go as the spacers all know
With the tides of the red spot remembered

In a musty old hall in Aki they prayed
In the space sailors' cathedral
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Gitchie Gitchie Gooi
The legend lives on from Aki down
Of the big ship they call Gitchie gitchie gooi
which they said, never gives up her dead
When the tides of red spot come early

 

[whartung]

I would love to know what I can edit my posts with not time restrictions on the MgT forums and yet her on CotI there is this ridiculous restriction.

Prehaps MgT doesn't have/had the bad actors that we have/had.

It was put in place because people would get all grumpy and then go back and, essentially, delete all of their old posts. So Management deemed it necessary to prevent that from happening. Maybe the MgT forum folks don't care.

Perhaps the policy should be revisited, but as they say, policy is the scar tissue of an organizations life.

 

[casquilho]

... but as they say, policy is the scar tissue of an organizations life.

I used to say the same thing about the documents a company has you sign when hired. Check out those beyond the normal ones and you will already know some of the history of that organization and their fears.

 

[warwizard]

Perhaps if the Gitchie Gitchie Gooi was a sphere configuration instead of a cylinder they could have kept the drives pointed aft and completed the burn for the slingshot. As designed, the ship's mass was in a cylinder and the tide defeated the attitude control system due to the overload of mass in the cargo. Without the slingshot burn the close orbit of the class M star put the Gitchie into a close , REALLY close pass of the class G star. Once the cargo had phase changed into a liquid, tidal forces would have scattered the remains across the system.

 

[Timerover51]

The "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is one of my favorite songs, and I also worked on analyzing the loss of the ship after a request from the insurance company. I cannot say that I am a fan of any parody of the wreck, which did cost the lives of 29 men.

 

[warwizard]

The "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is one of my favorite songs, and I also worked on analyzing the loss of the ship after a request from the insurance company. I cannot say that I am a fan of any parody of the wreck, which did cost the lives of 29 men.

Assignment: Re-write "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" to be about a group of belters who forget the difference between volume tonnage and mass tonnage, and pack a normal in-system freight hull (it can hold so much more than the licensed ore hulls, forget the restrictions some ground-pounder made up to keep us poor) with all the mineral ore they can fit in, then get it heading for the main refinery zone (lots of refinery "factory ships" in a small volume of space), only to realize too late that it took ALL their fuel to get it up to speed!

Timerover51, sorry, I suppose I could have sent BlackBat242 a PM with this. Instead of a parody think of this as an updated song in the traveller universe warning about the dangers of overloading ships doing gravity slingshot maneuvers.