General Cargo Load times?!

[Honken]

Hello fellow Travellers!

I think this is my first post (i think) on this site, though I have been a member for a looong time.

Anyway, I am playing Mongoose Traveller 2nd ed. And we are playing a Free Trader type campaign.

My question to the combined wisdom of CotI is how do you handle freight loading/unloading time? I don't want to make it overly complicated, but I am looking for some useful guidelines.

TIA
/Honken

 

[Supplement Four]

I don't know if Mongoose has a specific rule. It may. But, in Classic Traveller, which MGT is based upon, Cargo handling happens in about a day.

A ship makes port, pays docking fees, and spends the rest of the work day unloading cargo and working with the broker/traders to alert them that the cargo is at the starport ready to be warehoused or moved to its next destination. The ship is also refueled and consumables are restocked. Someone alerts the starport booking service of the ship's next destination in order to get a listing to attract passengers. Or, someone starts looking at the listings and talking with the brokers/traders for new cargo lots or speculative trade ideas.

Random roll for time specifically with just the cargo? I'd go with 1d3 + 3 hours, or 1d3 + 2 hours.

Remember, though, on some worlds, the ship does all its cargo transfer in space. The cargo handlers suit up. The hold goes into zero G. And, the cargo modules are floated out to a holding area in orbit.

 

[The Pakkrat]

Without referencing any Edition of Traveller, I always held unloading Freight, Mail, speculative Cargo and Passengers and the loading new hauls to take approximately 24 hours. That is without Maintenance, Life Support, repairs or the alternative annual Overhaul. For me, a set of rolls for Trade & Commerce takes at least 24 hours.

There are TL-8+ ways to cut corners of course. Online shopping while on final approach is one. Arbitrarily deciding to exclude a type of haul is certainly another.

From the Hangar at the Highport high above Roethoeegaeaegz, this is the Pakkrat for Net-7 News.

 

[flykiller]

you could make your own rule. take a base of 36 hours and subtract d6 hours for each level of broker skill, d6 hours for each level of liaison skill, d6 hours for each level of deckhand skill, d6 hours if an A or B port. etc. whatever suits you and your game.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

My question to the combined wisdom of CotI is how do you handle freight loading/unloading time?

Depends on how the characters are role-playing. Nothing is etched in stone.

 

[MThompson016]

For those willing to brave Customary units, GT: Far Trader has the following table on page 58.

Type       Rate (dtons/hr)       Remarks
Breakbulk      30                   Less than 1 dton/unit or non standardized
RO/RO          120                  Includes 50% wastage for vehicles
Container      180                  One D/ton or more per unit, standardized
Dry Bulk       360                  Loaded by conveyor/pipline, otherwise treat as container
Liquid Bulk    540                  Loaded by pipeline

Increases in stevedores and equipment may increase the speed, but not by more that 1/2 (pesky space limitations!).

 

[Supplement Four]

For those willing to brave Customary units, GT: Far Trader has the following table on page 58.

Type       Rate (dtons/hr)       Remarks
Breakbulk      30                   Less than 1 dton/unit or non standardized
RO/RO          120                  Includes 50% wastage for vehicles
Container      180                  One D/ton or more per unit, standardized
Dry Bulk       360                  Loaded by conveyor/pipline, otherwise treat as container
Liquid Bulk    540                  Loaded by pipeline

Increases in stevedores and equipment may increase the speed, but not by more that 1/2 (pesky space limitations!).

What is Breakbulk and RO/RO?

 

[aramis]

What is Breakbulk and RO/RO?

Breakbulk: paletted, boxed, crated, or in barrels, rather than in standard containers.

RO/RO: Roll On/Roll Off. Either in wheeled containers (freight cars) or in vehicles.

 

[Timerover51]

For those willing to brave Customary units, GT: Far Trader has the following table on page 58.

Type       Rate (dtons/hr)       Remarks
Breakbulk      30                   Less than 1 dton/unit or non standardized
RO/RO          120                  Includes 50% wastage for vehicles
Container      180                  One D/ton or more per unit, standardized
Dry Bulk       360                  Loaded by conveyor/pipline, otherwise treat as container
Liquid Bulk    540                  Loaded by pipeline

Increases in stevedores and equipment may increase the speed, but not by more that 1/2 (pesky space limitations!).

Having worked in a warehouse, plus time as an Army Supply Officer who still studies logistics, a few comments on your list.

The 30 tons an hour for break-bulk is quite high, unless all of the cargo is palletized and you have a fair amount of material handling equipment. If you have to first palletise the cargo, then you are looking at maybe 30 tons an 8 hour shift.

For Roll-On/Roll-Off, that is low, unless you have a limited opening allowing only one vehicle at a time to exit. LST unloading times in World War 2 with loaded 2 and a half ton trucks with trailers could be a low as 15 minutes. They did have the motivation of avoiding air attack though.

Container unloading is going to be restricted by how many opening you have to unload them through. If you have 3 or so large unloading doors, you might reach the 180 tons, otherwise, it is going to be slower. Those large Traveller containers are not going to be the easiest things to manage.

As for dry bulk cargo and liquid cargo, current unloading times run into thousands of mass tons per hour. For the big Lake bulk carriers of dry cargo, 60,000 tons unloaded in 10 hours is about average. Now, that does include unloading through multiple hatches.

For liquid bulk carriers, that 540 Traveller dTons equates to about 270,000 cubic feet per hour, or a bit over 2,000,000 gallons per hour, rounding 7.5 gallons per cubic foot. An 8 inch terminal pipeline can handle 1,135,000 gallons per day, while the T2 tanker, which could handle 5,922;000 gallons of liquid, could discharge at 4,000 gallons per minute, or 240,000 gallons per hour. You are going to need either a lot of pumps, or some very large ones to make that discharge rate, and whatever you are discharging to has to be able to handle it. One problem with the current supertankers is the limited number of locations that can handle extremely high discharge rates, as the fuel has to go into some sort of storage medium, along with the ability to handle such a large ship.

Remember, a cubic meter of water weighs one metric ton. so a discharge rate of 540 Traveller dTons at 14 cubic meters to the dTon means that your ship is carrying at least 7560 tons of liquid, using water as the liquid.

 

[kilemall]

For liquid bulk carriers, that 540 Traveller dTons equates to about 270,000 cubic feet per hour, or a bit over 2,000,000 gallons per hour, rounding 7.5 gallons per cubic foot. An 8 inch terminal pipeline can handle 1,135,000 gallons per day, while the T2 tanker, which could handle 5,922;000 gallons of liquid, could discharge at 4,000 gallons per minute, or 240,000 gallons per hour. You are going to need either a lot of pumps, or some very large ones to make that discharge rate, and whatever you are discharging to has to be able to handle it. One problem with the current supertankers is the limited number of locations that can handle extremely high discharge rates, as the fuel has to go into some sort of storage medium, along with the ability to handle such a large ship.

Remember, a cubic meter of water weighs one metric ton. so a discharge rate of 540 Traveller dTons at 14 cubic meters to the dTon means that your ship is carrying at least 7560 tons of liquid, using water as the liquid.

Just a bit of perspective on Traveller tech, remember those jump drives are getting fed up to 60% of the ship's volume in L-Hyd in 20 minutes, using the CT:HG rules particularly with drop tanks.

We can safely presume some X fraction of the jump drive is specialized pumps and that few ACS will have pump tonnage devoted to their cargo bays, but clearly specialized ships can and would have that pump capacity for rapid turnaround.

 

[kilemall]

As for OP's question, I would look at the game effect I want and work backwards to a rule and justification that sells to the players.

My mantra is player resource choice and environmental differentiation so they have a sense of place wherever they are.

To achieve that, I would apply modifiers to the tech and starport level to skew time from a baseline, and allow for spending extra to get loaded faster. The idea is that the better the starport facilities and the higher the tech, the faster automation/starport services and cargo tools can get it done.

I think I would want a 'fastest' to be 4 hours, longest 48 hours, mean 24 hours, so that gives us a range.

Let's make it simple, start with 48 hours and subtract.

-1 hour per TL of starport, or the ship if higher or at an E starport.

-24 hours for A starport, dividing in half for each level below
-12 hours for B starport
-6 hours for C starport
-3 hours for D starport
-0 hours, no support at E/X beyond any local contracted assistance
-1 hour per Cr10000 spent per 100 tons cargo for additional expedited services, 24 hour notice required
-1 hour per Cargo Handling skill level of dedicated crew in lieu of starport support

So fastest a native move for an A-15 starport would be 48-(24+15) or 9 hours, a more typical B-12 starport load would be 25 hours, and a D-7 would be 38 hours.

 

[MThompson016]

Having worked in a warehouse, plus time as an Army Supply Officer who still studies logistics, a few comments on your list.

The 30 tons an hour for break-bulk is quite high, unless all of the cargo is palletized and you have a fair amount of material handling equipment. If you have to first palletise the cargo, then you are looking at maybe 30 tons an 8 hour shift.

Not my list, but this is interesting. It does seem that with break-bulk the assumption is the cargo is already on pallets and ready to load.

For Roll-On/Roll-Off, that is low, unless you have a limited opening allowing only one vehicle at a time to exit. LST unloading times in World War 2 with loaded 2 and a half ton trucks with trailers could be a low as 15 minutes. They did have the motivation of avoiding air attack though.

Container unloading is going to be restricted by how many opening you have to unload them through. If you have 3 or so large unloading doors, you might reach the 180 tons, otherwise, it is going to be slower. Those large Traveller containers are not going to be the easiest things to manage.

I'm thinking of Beowulf or Empress Marava design here. The big issue is going to be unloading doors to move stuff through. As both have under 100 dTons of cargo, it shouldn't be that long to unload them completely. The standard look of the Fat Trader though, it's laid out like a big cargo aircraft, and would easily take RO-RO and containers.

As for dry bulk cargo and liquid cargo, current unloading times run into thousands of mass tons per hour. For the big Lake bulk carriers of dry cargo, 60,000 tons unloaded in 10 hours is about average. Now, that does include unloading through multiple hatches.

For liquid bulk carriers, that 540 Traveller dTons equates to about 270,000 cubic feet per hour, or a bit over 2,000,000 gallons per hour, rounding 7.5 gallons per cubic foot. An 8 inch terminal pipeline can handle 1,135,000 gallons per day, while the T2 tanker, which could handle 5,922;000 gallons of liquid, could discharge at 4,000 gallons per minute, or 240,000 gallons per hour. You are going to need either a lot of pumps, or some very large ones to make that discharge rate, and whatever you are discharging to has to be able to handle it. One problem with the current supertankers is the limited number of locations that can handle extremely high discharge rates, as the fuel has to go into some sort of storage medium, along with the ability to handle such a large ship.

Remember, a cubic meter of water weighs one metric ton. so a discharge rate of 540 Traveller dTons at 14 cubic meters to the dTon means that your ship is carrying at least 7560 tons of liquid, using water as the liquid.

Considering the size of most Traveller ships, the maximum rate means the cargo bay is empty really quick. Also, your typical PC's ship won't have the setup for bulk cargoes as I see it. More than a few use the cargo bay as an access to things like the engine room or Low Berths.

Pump capacity shouldn't be much of a problem, considering how much Hydrogen gets fed into a power plant. For high capacities, the storage areas are going to be the limitation.

But then, what liquid would you be pumping over 500dtons of frequently unless it's Liquid Hydrogen?

 

[infojunky]

If this helps the Mongoose book Starports give a average transfer time of 5 minutes per dTon.

 

[whartung]

Just a bit of perspective on Traveller tech, remember those jump drives are getting fed up to 60% of the ship's volume in L-Hyd in 20 minutes, using the CT:HG rules particularly with drop tanks.

We can safely presume some X fraction of the jump drive is specialized pumps and that few ACS will have pump tonnage devoted to their cargo bays, but clearly specialized ships can and would have that pump capacity for rapid turnaround.

I was bumbling around with this one day, I forget the details. It was one of those drop tank/fuel shuttle threads. It got to the point that on the larger ships, the volume of fuel that had to move was comparable to what goes over Niagra Falls.

There must be some very large pipes in those starships.

 

[Timerover51]

I was bumbling around with this one day, I forget the details. It was one of those drop tank/fuel shuttle threads. It got to the point that on the larger ships, the volume of fuel that had to move was comparable to what goes over Niagra Falls.

There must be some very large pipes in those starships.

That is one reason why I use a "Small Ship" universe. I did the number crunching and did not like the results.

But then, what liquid would you be pumping over 500dtons of frequently unless it's Liquid Hydrogen?

A low population, say under 100,000 that is also Tech 3 to 5 that would be importing liquid fuels for vehicles may be importing a couple of hundred dTons of fuel. That would hold especially true for Water Worlds, with limited land surface.