colonising - how do they move all those people ?

[Peter Schutze]

In the 2300 rules they talk about heavy colonisation efforts moving 50000 people inititally yet there doesnt seem to be any mass transport ships .... the brazilian one is a converted livestock ship and the other choices are cruise liners for a couple of hundred ships

in 2320 there are a few new colonies so the problem must still exist .... despite the colonisation hiatus of the later 2200's

Then again there is the troop movement requirements of the kafer war.

Obviously there are a lot of bulk passenger ships that have not been spoken about

 

[aramis]

In the 2300 rules, we see mostly the military craft, and very little in the way of Civilian shipping at all. The military seems to have be a GDW fixation at the time 2300 (and T2K) were in development.

 

[hunter]

In the 2300 rules, we see mostly the military craft, and very little in the way of Civilian shipping at all. The military seems to have be a GDW fixation at the time 2300 (and T2K) were in development.

At the time? They were always fixated on the military aspect of things. It even shows in Traveller. Not necessarily a bad thing, just their POV.

Much of it stems from their wargaming roots.

So in other words, yeah what Aramis said

There wasn't much given on civilian ships and transports. Something maybe we can address with 2320.

 

[Perseus]

How effective would the low berth version be for a colony ship do you think. I've only just touched on 2300. do they have cold sleep? too much power? to high a tech? or just not workable for other reasons?

Which bring another question, how big would a ship have to be to cram in say close to 50,000 low berths?

 

[Colin]

Low berths are used, but are not common. Medically-speaking, it is a lot more difficult to freeze and thaw people in 2320 than in Traveller.

Bulk colony transports will be covered in a subsequent ship book, including the venerable Yorktown.

 

[epicenter00]

GDW's military obsession did show up in some pretty strange ways in the Traveller games - in particular their obsession with the world circa late 1700s ~ late 1800s. The concept of "bigger is better" in naval vessels, leading to the renewed dominance of the battleship slugging it out with naval cannon (laser cannon but still cannon), the economically infeasible Empire serviced apparently only by swarms of tramp freighters, and so on.

One of the things I really am looking forward to about 2320 is Colin's take on the 2300 universe as an alternative to 2300 as the "Continental System In Space."

As a side note, I tried designing a Tarawa-style Marine Landing Ship able to ferry about a full Marine force for 2300 due to some player questions when I was running them through the 3W supplement "Overlord."

It's when I discovered how broken Star Cruiser's design sequences really were - I mean, I knew that Star Cruiser was broken from the fact that it allowed starships that could outrun missiles and many one-man fighters had more hull hits than a frigate ... but this was some magnitudes worse. Taking into account the rules for cargo bays and small craft, my Tarawa ended up literally having enough room so that on the flight deck you could hold simultaneous games of rugby, ice hockey, American football, and football (soccer) so that everyone's "manly" sports needs could be satisfied. The hull hits sheet literally went on for like nine pages of those tiny boxes...

 

[Peter Schutze]

>Low berths are used, but are not common. Medically-speaking, it is a lot more difficult to freeze and thaw people in 2320 than in Traveller.

I should hope so ! Can I suggest cyber-hybe or similar per Ian Douglas's Marine books rather than deep freeze ?

>Bulk colony transports will be covered in a subsequent ship book, including the venerable Yorktown.

A few examples of anything carrying over 100 passengers either civilian or military are obvious holes

 

[Peter Schutze]

>and many one-man fighters had more hull hits than a frigate

the Kafers were badly ripped off ! I build a small human ship with similar armour (8) and screens and ended up with MANY more hull hits than an alpha. Im sure the problems with starcruiser have been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere.

>on the flight deck you could hold

wouldnt there be several seperate flight decks ? for blast control / decompression if not from typical design habits eg LC well / helo deck / roro hold on current wet marine ships

>Colin's take on the 2300 universe as an alternative to 2300 as the "Continental System In Space."

yep and true differentiation between nations eg the Chinese / Manchurians / Canton are "technologically backward" and "happier with crowding" but that didnt really get reflected anywhere I've seen

 

[joi_sourcebook]

Like this?

In the 2300 rules they talk about heavy colonisation efforts ...
Obviously there are a lot of bulk passenger ships that have not been spoken about

Like this ...

http://www.geocities.com/joi_sourcebook/Asterie/Asterie.html

I also produced an article on interstellar war on the Etranger site dealing with "starlift" amongst other things.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~dheb/2300/Articles/RWJSI/JPLec02.htm

Hope some of this makes sense - or at least helps continue the discussion.

 

[Anders]

the Kafers were badly ripped off ! I build a small human ship with similar armour (8) and screens and ended up with MANY more hull hits than an alpha.

Those Ylii beta contractors! Always overcharging and stealing hull plates!

 

[Peter Schutze]

http://www.geocities.com/joi_sourcebook/Asterie/Asterie.html

Brilliantly thought out ! Love the pictures that go with it.

 

[epicenter00]

I was having a discussion with a friend last night about this topic. He had an interesting observation that I'll write out here as if they were my own ideas (mostly so I don't have to keep using "my friend" as the frame of reference):

Though we in the modern day think of massive container ships and such doing all of cargo shipping and so on, in 2300's Late-Age-Of-Sail / Early-Steam era that they've pattern their universe after colonization doesn't actually have to occur using dedicated transports. The colonization of North America or the horn of Africa was mostly done at the rate of a few hundred colonists per ship, right? It's just that these ships were constantly coming in and going, picking up new colonists and bringing them in. A small flotilla of such ships, even the small liners covered in Ships of the French Arm would be able to bring in like 1,000 people, which is easily enough to start setting up a colony. Adding a few hundred more colonists every week or so (averaging things out) - you'd only need a handful of ships for movement of people, in fact, given the conditions on a lot of worlds, you'd need larger cargo vessels for the movement of supplies to the colonies than anything else.

 

[Peter Schutze]

>a few hundred colonists per ship

the problem is that unlike the historical examples, there arent supposed to be that many small ships available in comparison to what needs doing for those in Ships of the French Arm to cover it. That also ignores the age of colony vs ships build date differences.

You are probably right though about how they keep growing once established .... which the rules cover with the few thousand immigrants per year (after the first 10 years from memory) rather than the tens of thousands initially delivered.

 

[jcrocker]

...A small flotilla of such ships, even the small liners covered in Ships of the French Arm would be able to bring in like 1,000 people, which is easily enough to start setting up a colony. Adding a few hundred more colonists every week or so (averaging things out) - you'd only need a handful of ships for movement of people...

Some of the colonies are sufficiently distant that travel time with the ships given in the basic set or Ships of the French Arm is measured in months, one way. So while your idea is correct, I don't know if other information given about the game 'verse supports it.

Not that it matters, plenty of handwavium to go around. You'd either have to posit more ships than seems to be provided for, or there are a few great big ships 'off camera' somewhere.

 

[mbrinkhues]

The nuke jobs

in "Ships of the French Arm" there where two nuke-powered cargo ships with quite a decent loaded speed mentioned as "build for service along the long Chinese Arm"

 

[jcrocker]

I went digging through the Ships of the French Arm and found all of the ships that could carry passengers.

Here is the ship type, listed passenger capacity, and warp efficiency empty/loaded.

Commercant, 6 passengers, 2.07/1.26
Shenyang, no passengers, 3.34/1.73
Maiduguri, 20 passengers, 2.95/1.36, 'often travels at less than capacity' due to low comfort
Hudson, 25 passengers, 1.36/0.63
Guiana, 20 passengers, 1.46/0.59, all 3 in service on French Arm
Vaca animal transport, 628 passengers when converted, 1.00/0.42
New Orleans, 1000 passengers, 0.80/0.62, 5 ships in service but none in Chinese Arm
Thorez, 7 passengers, 1.99/1.12

[I also found that the Mammoth freighter and the Emilon Gheni seeker have listed crew requirements greater than the listed life-support capability. Oops.]

[edit - I also left out a couple of the couriers that could, in theory carry 2 passengers each in great discomfort.]

Only two of the listed ships could deliver a large number of people to a colony at once, and they are very slow. For a colony to receive an average of 'hundreds per week' would require an awful lot of hulls - more ships than you would expect.

You could convert some of the cargo ships to carry more passengers, like Brazil did with the Vaca, but since those ships aren't listed in the SotFA in their passenger variants, then those would be considered 'off stage'.

Some of the travel times will be very large. I don't have the numbers for all of the above ships [since I really don't have that much free time, sadly] but I do know that a couple of years ago I figured out the distance and travel time for the Hudson to make it to the Canadian colony of Doris, and the travel time was about six months one way. Since a loaded Hudson can make 150% of the speed of a loaded Vaca, and the Procyon colony is at the end of a very long, roundabout path, I would bet it would take a Vaca even longer to make it to Procyon from Terra.

With a fleet of passenger Shenyangs or equivalent, the Cold Mountain colony could grow quite well. But I maintain that colonies farther out would need more ships than you'd expect or larger passenger ones than are listed in the book.

[edit - oops. Accidentally left out the Marseilles liner. Up to 500 passengers, 1.94/1.35 So it's a great ship - for moving people like a liner.]

 

[rfmcdpei]

Some of the travel times will be very large. I don't have the numbers for all of the above ships [since I really don't have that much free time, sadly] but I do know that a couple of years ago I figured out the distance and travel time for the Hudson to make it to the Canadian colony of Doris, and the travel time was about six months one way. Since a loaded Hudson can make 150% of the speed of a loaded Vaca, and the Procyon colony is at the end of a very long, roundabout path, I would bet it would take a Vaca even longer to make it to Procyon from Terra.

With a fleet of passenger Shenyangs or equivalent, the Cold Mountain colony could grow quite well. But I maintain that colonies farther out would need more ships than you'd expect or larger passenger ones than are listed in the book.

A long shot here, but could Ships of the French Arm cover only the ships of the French Arm? Maybe the Manchurians were simply building their colonial empire in the Chinese Arm according to a long-term plan, building up Delta Pavonis and laying the skeleton of an empire elsewhere while building up a sufficiently large passenger fleet?

That still might leave the further French Arm, beyond Niebelungen or Beowulf, hard to explain. Many of those worlds were only recently colonized but have still accumulated populations in the millions, if not in the tens of millions.

 

[jcrocker]

A long shot here, but could Ships of the French Arm cover only the ships of the French Arm? Maybe the Manchurians were simply building their colonial empire in the Chinese Arm according to a long-term plan, building up Delta Pavonis and laying the skeleton of an empire elsewhere while building up a sufficiently large passenger fleet?

That still might leave the further French Arm, beyond Niebelungen or Beowulf, hard to explain. Many of those worlds were only recently colonized but have still accumulated populations in the millions, if not in the tens of millions.

That is definitely what the SotFA covers - but even so, there's not a really large ship in it for moving *colonists* on the French Arm.

The New Orleans Liners are great, but the routes listed in the description seem to be confined to the older colonies.

The Vaca has the next most, but it's slow and a converted cattle car. If you wanted to get picky you could point out that it's Brazillian, and Brazil sends it to the far end of charted space from the French Arm - but it was still good to include anyway, since they never did a 'Ships of the Chinese Arm' or 'Ships of the American Arm'.

But like I said a few posts back, "You'd either have to posit more ships than seems to be provided for, or there are a few great big ships 'off camera' somewhere."

It would have been perfect if they could have put the British "York" Colonizer in the SotFA book, since it

a) carried a lot of people as a Colony Ship, not a liner
b) belongs to a nation that has colonies in the French Arm and might more reasonably be seen there than the Vaca, and
c) is mentioned in more than one colony write-up in the Colonial Atlas but was removed from editions after the first one, Traveller 2300.

A few years back, on one of the other 2300 discussion boards, I asked what the stats of the York were, and a couple people were kind enough to post the info. I've got it on my website - I don't know how to put it in as a link, but here's the address. It's down under "York". [Yes, a shameless plug, but it does relate to the discussion.]

http://www.geocities.com/canada2300vj/

Ah, it's a link automatically. Double plus good, citizen!

 

[Colin]

Look for the 2320AD stats for the York sometime in the next week. Think of it as a preview for the now-in-planning 2320AD: Ship Book 1

Later

 

[BMonnery]

Moving people isn't a problem. There are limited cryogenics ISTR, but they aren't used for transport generally. People move via spinship if they're lucky, or live in steerage in a hold at Comfort -2 if not (and a typical bulk transport can move over 1,000 people in steerage, but it would be a bit of a nightmare with life support etc.*)

The problem is getting them down again at the other end. I did a thought experiment years ago, showing the bulk of the cost of colonisation was getting things up and down the gravity well, the shipping was cheap (see: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/9292/2300/Trade2k3.htm )


* On that note, note that the life support listed in the NAM is actually bottled oxygen. Food and water requirements aren't factored in to LS, and need carrying as extra mass. CO2 scrubbing we can assume is a function of the engineering, and no large banks of Lithium Hydroxide are carried.