Diasporan Star Empire & Kide

[rancke]

Just slow their pace of naval shipbuilding and you'll pretty much pull the fangs from the RC. If you drop the RC's highest level Starport from an (unrealistically IMO) bustling A-class Starport to perhaps a barely A-class or maybe even some starport in a nebulous region between A and B, it'll change everything about the RC as a threat.

I don't know. It seems to me that there must be a pretty thin line between not being able to build ships at all and being able to churn out as many as you can afford. Just think of historical examples of countries gearing up for war. Building speed and volume goes up rapidly. To keep a country hovering just on that line for more than a few years seems unlikely to me. Contrieved.

Admittedly, I haven't spent a lot of time studying TNE material, so I'm not saying it can't be done. But it sounds unlikely to me.


Hans

 

[savage]

That sounds like a major pocket empire in the making! Why diod you abandon the concept?

My campaign rotated around one depot surviving the apocalypse with a mothballed fleet. Corridor is the most viable candidate. The more i researched Diaspora, the more difficult it became. This Rimward depot is not viable. However, Diaspora was one of 4 possible locations.

I'm not trying to "rain on the parade". Promise is only a few pages of background. Recreate the feel without canon at a neighboring location. I think cutting back on the only big player in Diaspora is a mistake. RC has "pie in the sky" ambitions and should continue being the consensus builder with a "smash and grab" backup plan.

Having the players with a moderate side of a more aggressive protagonist is interesting.

Suffren is weak. The 300dt/100dt merged concept ship is interesting. It shows they had a supply of older ships. Perhaps Margaret setup a small ship repair center on Suffren during the war. That makes it more interesting. Perhaps they have a couple big, non-jump assets to hold off Virus. But like Promise they're only a few pages of TNE canon. I think they need about 50 300dt/100dt hulls to build up 15-20 good warships. Also they should monitor space around their J1 neighbors putting a few of those ships in each system. A few ships for exploration and a few freighters. Then their viable and interesting.

Promise is a small antagonist that can annoy RC in the future. It would be interesting if they had planted spies on a few local worlds. RC needs a lot of those antagonists. RC also has the Hiver, but never should establish relations with the Regency. I would not hinder RC development, for Promise, with two better J1 clusters in the sector. I also like the RC modular ship designs.

When i did Corridor Depot, I gave them 2 major protagonists (Regency and a Virus pocket empire) and one loose ally, Vland. I put their TL at Regency and higher than Vland making it interesting for Vland. Their leader is charismatic noble with ambition.

Yeah, i should write up a couple more pocket empires. Canon left some very boring landscape.

 

[epicenter00]

To keep a country hovering just on that line for more than a few years seems unlikely to me. Contrieved.

That's precisely the issue. It is only a few years.

The Hivers arrive at Vras (which would later become Aubaine) in 1193. They set up a Hiver Technical Academy, which is considered to be such good fortune that the inhabitants rename their world Aubaine. By 1201 they're building lots of new ships, talking about exporting "shipbuilding expertise" in the form of experienced shipbuilders being sent to other worlds to aid them to upgrade their starports from B to A. This is the part that stretches belief.

1. Vras did have an A-class starport pre-Collapse, but by 1193 I don't think Vras could have made starships as at all - if they could, they wouldn't celebrate the establishment of a Hiver technical school on their world.

2. It takes a tremendous amount of experience to build large, high-quality, and safe oceangoing ships in our current world; it's why there's so much angst in places like the US or the UK about closing down their last shipyards and preserving shipbuilding skills. I get the impression that starship-building in Traveller requires that level of experience and specialized technical infrastructure as well or else Traveller wouldn't make such a big deal between B and A starports (and they do make a big deal about it, particularly in Rebellion-era materials), nor would starships cost so much. I don't think there'd be that much emphasis put on shipbuilding if anyone could get plans, link up a bunch of CAM autofabs together and crank out a Free Trader.

When you take 1 and 2 into account, there's a bit of eye-narrowing that goes on. In 1193, Vras couldn't build starships at all and felt it was such a big deal that the Hivers showed up to set up a technical school they renamed their world. Seven years later, they're building 2000-ton starships they designed from scratch themselves. It takes a lot longer than that on Earth and I'd think it'd take a lot longer than that Vras - they're not just assembling pre-made parts into starships (difficult enough) but instead have to integrate and likely develop every single technology for every subsystem that goes into the starships - something they haven't been making for the last 70 years.

I have no problems with the RC being a shipbuilding power, I just think it'd take longer than 7 years to go from, "yay we got a technical school" to "we've designed a starship from the blueprint level and are cranking them out."

I do agree that once the RC gets most of the kinks worked out they could probably expand rapidly (something they could do faster than normal since they're bringing back pre-Collapse equipment to plug into their factories instead of developing it themselves, though I think there's a lot of problems with that development model and I think it'd collapse on itself a lot faster than presented in the TNE materials) but I think the beginning would be slower and more painful than just seven years.

 

[rancke]

That's precisely the issue. It is only a few years.

The Hivers arrive at Vras (which would later become Aubaine) in 1193. They set up a Hiver Technical Academy, which is considered to be such good fortune that the inhabitants rename their world Aubaine. By 1201 they're building lots of new ships, talking about exporting "shipbuilding expertise" in the form of experienced shipbuilders being sent to other worlds to aid them to upgrade their starports from B to A. This is the part that stretches belief.

OK, I can see that. I agree.

1. Vras did have an A-class starport pre-Collapse, but by 1193 I don't think Vras could have made starships as at all - if they could, they wouldn't celebrate the establishment of a Hiver technical school on their world.

Presumably they can't even repair any wrecks they may have.

2. It takes a tremendous amount of experience to build large, high-quality, and safe oceangoing ships in our current world; it's why there's so much angst in places like the US or the UK about closing down their last shipyards and preserving shipbuilding skills.

True. Bootstrapping after losing all expertise is going to be a bitch. Once you've built the first ship, though, things could go very fast. Look at how many ships the US geared up to building during WWII. Though Aubaine would never throw an analogous amount of resources at their shipbuilding program, not being at war.

I get the impression that starship-building in Traveller requires that level of experience and specialized technical infrastructure as well or else Traveller wouldn't make such a big deal between B and A starports (and they do make a big deal about it, particularly in Rebellion-era materials), nor would starships cost so much.

Agreed, though I've always felt that differentiating between class A and B starports in the Classic Era is more down to the wargaming heritage of the original writers than to any in-setting reason.

In the New Era there is, of course, a tremendous importance to being able to build starships. But according to HG, a government can build ships on their own world as long as it has the requisite tech level, regardless of starport class. Somehow later writers overlooked that bit and conflated the civilian starport ratings with the existence of government-funded ship-building industry.

I have no problems with the RC being a shipbuilding power, I just think it'd take longer than 7 years to go from, "yay we got a technical school" to "we've designed a starship from the blueprint level and are cranking them out."

Agreed.


Hans

 

[savage]

1. Vras did have an A-class starport pre-Collapse, but by 1193 I don't think Vras could have made starships as at all - if they could, they wouldn't celebrate the establishment of a Hiver technical school on their world.

2. It takes a tremendous amount of experience to build large, high-quality, and safe oceangoing ships in our current world; it's why there's so much angst in places like the US or the UK about closing down their last shipyards and preserving shipbuilding skills.

I have no problems with the RC being a shipbuilding power, I just think it'd take longer than 7 years to go from, "yay we got a technical school" to "we've designed a starship from the blueprint level and are cranking them out."

They started with a dozen pre-collapse vessels. They sent out the dozen vessels and none (or few) returned. So, yes, they had time to work on the Aurora designs. By simplifying what was being built (replicating ships they had and focusing on a couple new designs) they we're able to bootstrap and put the "smash and grab" campaign in full swing. Aubaine started out being nice with their dozen merchant vessels. We can assume they started the RC and then pushed out into deeper space.

There is no reason to assume Suffren is not on the same path. We know little about Suffren. It may not have Hiver assistance, one of the original 12 could be there and offered the crew a deal they could not refuse. We can assume they sent out some scout vessels and close escorts. And we can assume these vessels we're beaten. Or that they hand so many scouts and close escorts that they decided on a merged design for a better edge. In wolf packs they could actually take on a virus destroyer.

 

[whartung]

True. Bootstrapping after losing all expertise is going to be a bitch. Once you've built the first ship, though, things could go very fast. Look at how many ships the US geared up to building during WWII.

It's one thing to scale an existing design (and refine it), it's another to continually create new designs. The Liberty Ship, for example, was a capable ship at its task, but certainly not a spectacular ship by any means, and was designed for a singular purpose of massive, basic sea lift capability. Consider the engines used in the Liberty Ship.

But when all you need is capability, even lots of less perfect designs are better than few perfect ones.

In the end, build early, build often, fail fast leads to faster design expansion and building of experience. The only thing that slows down the growth of experience is simply the time of construction. The faster you can turn ships around in a ship yard and get them in to service (from which you can learn from the design errors), the faster you can grow.

Of course, today we rely heavily on computer simulation to get things "better" the first time than in the past where we combined actual design with just bolting them together and seeing how they came out. Once the simulators and analysis tools are built, design can expand much more rapidly.

Though Aubaine would never throw an analogous amount of resources at their shipbuilding program, not being at war.

There are other reasons for investing in a program than simply war. Now, one can consider the early American space program to be a "cold war" program, but I think it was more than that. If interstellar shipping is important, then it will be subsidized and sponsored.

Consider how much the US spent on the Transcontinental Railroad, or of course the work projects during the Depression. And even later, the Interstate highway system (again you could consider that a cold war program if you want).

So, there are other societal motivators than simply raging wars that can motivate a society to invest heavily in infrastructure.

 

[epicenter00]

It's one thing to scale an existing design (and refine it), it's another to continually create new designs. The Liberty Ship, for example, was a capable ship at its task, but certainly not a spectacular ship by any means, and was designed for a singular purpose of massive, basic sea lift capability. Consider the engines used in the Liberty Ship.

They started with a dozen pre-collapse vessels. They sent out the dozen vessels and none (or few) returned. So, yes, they had time to work on the Aurora designs.

That is part of the problem for me with the RC. Their first ship design is the modular clipper. Modularity is one of those design concepts that sounds really great; it's simply more efficient. You can swap out mission modules to reconfigure your ships so you don't have to build a large number of specialized ships. As new needs are identified, you can simply build new modules to plug into your existing ships instead of having to send them to the shipyard for long and expensive overhauls.

The problem is that modularity in design is that it is an extremely advanced and infamously difficult design concept to implement. While the modern United States Navy may be a poor example of it (due to bureaucracy), it's the latest one that comes to mind - the tribulations of the USN to design modular warships is telling, and the USN has lots of experience designing ships. Aubaine isn't the United States - they don't have experienced naval architects drawing up designs that can be built in small riverine shipyards along the Mississippi to ramp up shipbuilding capacity beyond existing shipyards. They don't have any experienced naval architects at all. And they're not starting small. They've gone from no ship designs at all to designing a modular vessel in just seven years ... I simply can't buy that.

If the RC were building pre-Collapse TL12 designs, that's one thing. Someone else has done all the design work. Given the slow pace of major innovation in the 3I, the designs would probably be marvels of design efficiency factoring in all kinds of things that only occur when you're building a model of a ship for centuries on end; ease of building, ease of maintenance, low material cost. I could see the RC building things like spaceships (things without Jump Drive) as well ships like the Victrix and Jayhawks and so on to get experience in shipbuilding.

There are other reasons for investing in a program than simply war.

The RC would be effectively on a war footing for shipbuilding. So no disagreement there. They'd be throwing lots of resources at shipbuilding because they need to.

Their economy is like those scam banks where they use money from new customers to pay the interest on the existing accounts. It's based on the idea of using relic machinery for everything because it's faster than developing it themselves. Meanwhile, they're developing the manufacturing technology themselves, but until they do, they're using relic machinery (again, a people who are so short on resources they're using this really unsound economic model of relic machinery as the backbone of their industry instead of developing themselves are developing modular starships from scratch?). To keep the relic machinery going, they need to constantly get new examples of those machines because they're cannibalizing an increasing number of the new examples to provide spares for the existing ones they're using, as well as using whatever is left to expand their production. Without an ever increasing number of salvage teams bringing back an ever increasing amount of relic machinery, the RC grinds to a halt in a disastrous way.

There is no reason to assume Suffren is not on the same path. We know little about Suffren.

Suffren's more believable to me. They're not creating entirely new designs from scratch. They're slowly getting experience in shipbuilding by first making small changes to existing ships, then larger changes. The Covenators are probably their largest project to date.

At the same time, if they're starting with small, low endurance spaceships (again, stuff without J-drives) like various shuttles, ship's boats, to expand the ranks of their experienced shipbuilders, then moving on to very simple TL10 "box with a J-drive" cargo ships as their first experiment in shipbuilding (and still useful for distributing capital to where it's needed) before building more ambitious ships, I could see that. But it wouldn't be in seven years.

 

[savage]

That is part of the problem for me with the RC. Their first ship design is the modular clipper...
The problem is that modularity in design is that it is an extremely advanced and infamously difficult design concept to implement. While the modern United States Navy...
If the RC were building pre-Collapse TL12 designs, that's one thing. Someone else has done all the design work. Given the slow pace of major innovation in the 3I, the designs would probably be marvels of design efficiency factoring in all kinds of things that only occur when you're building a model of a ship for centuries on end; ease of building, ease of maintenance, low material cost. I could see the RC building things like spaceships (things without Jump Drive) as well ships like the Victrix and Jayhawks and so on to get experience in shipbuilding.

TNE has inadequate descriptions of RC and its growth. Can we really say it's 7 years? Of course you know this. RC starts putting a dozen pre-collapse ships back into space. We must assume that they learn how to build those ships. The designs are available in the game system. RC moves onto develop modular ships as a cost savings measure. I don't think there is a comparison. The soviets built pseudo-carriers with multi-function roles but the US targeted a purpose built ship design. They we're not hurting on budget after Teddy Roosevelt made his Great White Fleet go half way around the world and not come back without budget. Or when the Allies needed to stand up to the Axis Powers. It's a different situation for RC. RC is TL12 and the US Navy is far, far from that level. We need only assume that development processes also mature with Tech Level. The first modular ships we're 600t and later upgraded to larger versions of the same design. Certainly, this is not a stretch.

The Ref is free to call the first modular ships junk, as well. Traveller has not been strong in rolling out upgrade levels on ships. We know from the real world that the wet navy, air forces, armies, and private vehicle industry all use different upgrade paths for vehicles in production as the production matures. IMTU i am very clear that production upgrades have resulted in modifications to "known" designs. The Kinunir is my favorite example. It's still flying in TNE. Yet, the design was hated in CT.

 

[savage]

The T20 supplement for Solomani ships describes the crushing of Diaspora Depot during the Solomani War and surrounding systems.
It is very possible a couple heavy hitters are drifting in the Verse without Virus after the Rebellion, if you apply similar backgrounds. And no reason to assume they're coffins. The crews could have abandoned ship or accidentally been spaced during a battle. Also, no reason to assume they're 3I designs in RC or another Diaspora/Old Expanse pocket empire. Could've been a Solomani design. I'd put a couple damaged vessels at Suffren to justify their existence. No reason not to assume RC doesn't have one. Once a major cache is discovered it skyrockets development of the culture.

RC may have the ability to fix their 12 3I ships. But in today's world many countries buy ships/subs from builders like the US, France, Germany, etc. They may have no building capability left. So, the RC finds a 20kdt cargo ship floating out system packed with tech. Perhaps it was carrying Depot booty.

 

[epicenter00]

TNE has inadequate descriptions of RC and its growth. Can we really say it's 7 years?

I've already explained why I've concluded it's only been 7 years a few posts above. There's a timeline in the PoT book. It appears these worlds already had some sort of loose trading or at least contact going on using relic vessels. For whatever reason, whomever the technicians were kept these ships running were loathe to share their secrets. Maybe they wanted job security. However, it doesn't change that Vras renamed their world Aubaine because the Hivers set up a technical academy.

Obviously you can choose to interpret what it says there differently. You can also insert events not described in the timeline to explain things; what I described above is my conclusion from the "strict" reading of the timeline. You can add your own events surrounding it to make something broken function -- I did it myself. However as-written the RC makes no sense. I think that's the difference between "OTU" and "IMTU."

 

[mike wightman]

IMTU the RCS Clipper was an obvious ship design because it was based on pre-collapse LASH tenders.

The Clipper was going to be phased out as greater shipbuilding skill and facilities allowed for purpose built warships etc.

The Longships - the missing book for TNE I would most like to have seen

 

[Kilgs]

I never liked the 7 years bit either. I think I came up with 12 years for some reason...

But the ship-building concept I did tackle... No one said they weren't building ships prior to this, they just weren't building jump-drives. A polity could easily have an advanced space program without the J-drive.

Add the J-drive and complete knowledge (via Hivers) and it would not take long to retool production to get the lanthanum grid on new hulls. AFAIK, that's the only real structural difference.

 

[san*klass]

Having just fully digested my recently bought copy of "The Traveller Book" I am back witha few more observations about how a DSE campaign might be run.

-The Yacht design is looking like a good J-1 PC Explorer (leaving the other J-1ship in Arturo's "fleet" to be a Free Trader workhorse supporting the plan in Lefigurra). It already has fuel for a second J-1, so imagining it being an originally custom built streamlined version, I can lose the Ships Boat and Air raft. This frees up 34 tons for another J-1 (20) and a computer upgrade to model 3 (+2) and a near doubling of the cargo bay. The 15 staterooms allow for a five man crew (Leader/Pilot/Navigator, Second Pilot/Nav NPC?, Electronics/Computer, Engineer & Gunner) and an army officer (PC?) in single occupancy, plus 18 grunts in double.

- I am going to want a wider skill base for the PC's so I am imagining two skill choices prior to 18 from Vehicle (Wheeled), Streetwise, Computer, Brawling, Leadership, +1 to an attribute, Blade etc. Also the last term being at a sort of "Starship crew Academy", giving two levels in position vital skills. So, at the least, the Pilot actually has a level in Pilot! And at least 0 in Vacc Suit and Gun.

- Having also been studying PoT, the Mains that Kide is on is a treasure trove of potential goodies, both scenario hooks and recovered tech.

Two Virus, Vampire haunted systems Coreward -Possin and Darainne.
Two ex-Naval Bases (find the Patrol Cruiser mentioned in PoT?) -Keipes and Gorky
Ex-Research station - Sittahr.
Many worlds with relic tech at, or just above Kide's own TLA - Sittahr, Execute, Poznan, Keipes, Bikar, Montezuma.
Guild slavers - Bikar.
Ex-Scout base - Lefiguura.

Plus tribal, xenophobic, technophobic groups on many of the 20 main worlds sharing the Mains with Kide.

All in all, worthy of further development, I think

 

[savage]

The classic traveller yacht design never made much sense to me. It think the revisions we're better. Converting one into a liner of some sort is amusing.

 

[san*klass]

The classic traveller yacht design never made much sense to me. It think the revisions we're better. Converting one into a liner of some sort is amusing.

I can only agree - it seems way too slow in both jump and maneuver to really be a Noble's pretty party plaything. I assume that it is more a generic corporate senior managers transport, and they called it a "Yacht" to stoke a few corporate egos

With Kide being a Rich Agricultural world prior to the collapse it makes sense to me that one of these Corporate buses would be sitting unused at the starport for Arturo to utilize. And the fuel storage for two consecutive J-1's also made sense for a NE Explorer since you never know what you are jumping into, and a swift exit might be useful. Also allows larger total jump distance since it can jump again without refueling.

I think, given the J-1 restriction in PoT, it makes the best equipped player ship (until they find the Patrol Cruiser!).

 

[savage]

I like sailing. So, it surprised me to find out, when i lived in Playa Del Rey, that Marina Del Rey is one of the least used harbors for transit. Meaning southern Californians buy their pretty boat and maybe, just maybe sail it out of harbor once a year. More than likely they're high in live boards and the "i have a pretty boat, i never use" status symbol types.

It would be extremely funny if your world had been one of these locations and had a lot of these useless yachts. Too many. So, fixing up a couple was doable.
:rofl:

 

[aramis]

I can only agree - it seems way too slow in both jump and maneuver to really be a Noble's pretty party plaything. I assume that it is more a generic corporate senior managers transport, and they called it a "Yacht" to stoke a few corporate egos

With Kide being a Rich Agricultural world prior to the collapse it makes sense to me that one of these Corporate buses would be sitting unused at the starport for Arturo to utilize. And the fuel storage for two consecutive J-1's also made sense for a NE Explorer since you never know what you are jumping into, and a swift exit might be useful. Also allows larger total jump distance since it can jump again without refueling.

I think, given the J-1 restriction in PoT, it makes the best equipped player ship (until they find the Patrol Cruiser!).

In a pure book 2 universe, with average TL 12, the J1 yacht is plenty fast.

Few ships in such a setting exceed J3...

 

[san*klass]

I like sailing. So, it surprised me to find out, when i lived in Playa Del Rey, that Marina Del Rey is one of the least used harbors for transit. Meaning southern Californians buy their pretty boat and maybe, just maybe sail it out of harbor once a year. More than likely they're high in live boards and the "i have a pretty boat, i never use" status symbol types.

It would be extremely funny if your world had been one of these locations and had a lot of these useless yachts. Too many. So, fixing up a couple was doable.
:rofl:

To be honest, and reading both the 1129 and 1201 UPP's, and the world description in PoT, Kide does seem to have been a bit like that. TLA Rich Agricultural to me summons up images of Farmer Hayseed with a giant plot of land, with hundreds of crewed farm machines and acres of food storage bins. And Hayseed with a big mansion on the top of the hill.

There are loads of Barren, low atmosphere, low (or no) water worlds nearby -perfect for Hayseed to sell his produce to. And to cruise over to, in his J-1 "Yacht" for business meetings/sales meetings.

Multiple that set up ten or so times and you have how I see Kide, post-Collapse.

Maybe the TED's are descended from Hayseed and his rich landowning chums or , more likely, their chiefs of security?

 

[san*klass]

In a pure book 2 universe, with average TL 12, the J1 yacht is plenty fast.

Few ships in such a setting exceed J3...

Very true, and J-1 is always better than J-0!!

 

[epicenter00]

It would be extremely funny if your world had been one of these locations and had a lot of these useless yachts. Too many. So, fixing up a couple was doable.
:rofl:

There's a technology/universe implication in the Traveller universe that's rarely considered:

What really happens to these old starships? Perhaps they end up on civilized worlds like Agricultural worlds, by the hundreds to be used basically as grain barges. Seriously.

Some J-1 ship on its last legs shows up at such a world, they remove the Jump Drive, knock down all the interior walls and make the interior of the ship into a cargo bay equipped with contra-grav, fusion reactor, flight computers, and the reactionless maneuver drive. If these systems aren't removed on the Agri-world perhaps they're removed elsewhere, then loaded onto a surplus Battle Tender which can handle dozens of these Free Trader hulls which are then brought to agri-worlds for sale.

Farmers could use them to transport grain or cattle from their farms to the nearest market. If the hull is space-rated (not jump worthy but worth enough to fly up to LEO and back) that market could very well be in space; perhaps farmers fly their "prime movers" up to orbit to meet the huge megacorporate haulers to make their grain deliveries. They could even be used as tractors to plow fields and other heavy moving.

I can think of a few reasons why it wouldn't work, but I don't think they're serious objections:

1) They'd be expensive. As threads elsewhere on the CotI and other Traveller boards have pointed out, these old, old ships would have long since been paid off. Their value would essentially be pure profit beyond reconditioning and transport. For whatever reason they have no worth as starships. So they could be sold cheaply.

2) They'd be radioactive. Doing a bit of extrapolation, in TNE it states that ships in the Free Trader Network are old. They were "old" when the Rebellion began. They're still flying in 1200 which means they're over a century old. Probably two. Maybe more. Their hulls should be fairly irradiated and a hazard, yes. However, these old ships in TNE aren't radiation hazards, so there's some mechanism (even if it is handwaving) that prevents this from being a problem. So it wouldn't be a problem for these ships, either.

3) They'd be hazardous. They must have some reason why they're not starships anymore, right? These junk dealers could easily purchase large numbers of "condemned" starships and simply swap around parts and sell some hulls as "orbit-worthy" (safe enough for jaunts less than 24 hours in orbit, but wear a spacesuit anyway) for more cash and "atmosphere-only" hulls for a markdown. Such ships might be banned on heavy populated worlds since if worse comes to worse they might be forced to make an emergency landing -- probably not a crash landing, but it'd be problematic in a densely-populated city. On a world where that forced lading is in a pasture or a field, much less so.

4) They'd be worn. Well of course they'd be worn. The old fatigued hulls are probably the reason why the ships are no longer spaceworthy (or economical to operate). However, Traveller starship hulls are stupidly tough, but a starship used as a to-orbit freight hauler or a pure in-atmosphere hauler doesn't have to do 2G turns. Even if it fails, an "atmosphere flight only" ship could be safely landed quickly on a shirtsleeves world.

5) They'd be expensive to upkeep. Given they're no longer starships, they don't have to pay for annual maintenance. Even "tramp freighter" starships regularly have machine shops (it's implied in T4 rules in the flavor text); it can be assumed that many repairs to these ships could be done by someone with a machine shop. It'd be quite atmospheric to have every farmer own 3-4 of these old free trader hulks, possibly only 1-2 actually working, the others in various states of "in repair." Possibly even a few more cannibalized for spare parts and the hulls used as barns or sheds. Fuel costs would be negligible with fusion power.

6) They'd be huge and clumsy. Contra-grav, reactionless thruster technology, and low density rural areas say otherwise.

So perhaps these worlds have hundreds of starship hulls for the purposes of TNE where there's no longer an "Imperial Ministry of Starship Safety."

Possibly not all the hulls are Free Traders. Subsidized Traders would be even more common. But ship hulls like Liners, Far Traders, ... and Yachts may end up on these worlds as well.