Far Trader cargo/Freight manifest questions

[BetterThanLife]

If you want to go with bank loans and them making sense, how do you get a loan on a ship that can't break even with a loan. (Even under your 30-35 jumps a year scheme.) A Far Trader, a Liner can't make their payments under the per jump rules. I have yet to find the right combination for any jump-2 or higher ship that can make the payments running a full load.

As for Piracy being rare. True independent pirates should be rare, but I have yet to play in or see a setting where the Imperium was at peace. CT was set against the backdrop of the Fifth Frontier War, Mega Traveller- The Rebellion, TNE well there are plenty of pirates and no Imperium, T4, and Gurps, never played so I honestly don't know, T20- Solomani Rim War. One person's Pirate is another's Privateer/Commerce Raider. Look at the Spanish Main for a historical parrallel.

Originally posted by Anthony:
We can, from the loan terms granted by banks in Traveller, safely conclude that the odds of an incident causing total loss of a ship are no more than 1/1000 per jump; anything above that and banks don't make money. This means piracy is darned rare; anything above 1/216 is ridiculous.

 

[Anthony]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
If you want to go with bank loans and them making sense, how do you get a loan on a ship that can't break even with a loan.

You don't. This is one reason the per jump rules are bad.

 

[BetterThanLife]

I know T20 says so specifically, I looked for the CT reference but have yet to find it, that says the jump drive is required to maintain the jump field in Jump space. Where did you read that it isn't? In every Science Fiction story line that puts forth any idea on how drives work, with the exception of Jump Gates in B5 I have yet to read anything that doesn't require a field of some type to be kept in order to stay out of normal space. Jump drive must be functioning in Jump space.

As for discussing Historical Dirtside civil wars, Show me one historical war that involved even low orbit combat? Obviously it hasn't happened because we lack the technology to do it. Besides I have yet to see a Traveller setting that wasn't in a war zone. Forget about the small planetary wars, (Once technology allows it you know it will include the space around the world.) Just show me a stable planet with one government. What is your frame of reference? (Ooops haven't seen that either.)

On the other hand virtually all Science Fiction written has pirates. (Even Star Trek where the Federation is one government over thousands of worlds.) Pirates are easy to explain even with system defenses. Space is a big place. You can't be everywhere at once. Especially since distances that we are talking about means Communication is slow. You can guard key points but you can't be everywhere. And there are always bribes to go around, especially to make sure that a Patrol craft isn't where it is supposed to be. Lets pick a similar circumstance, the highest security crack down in the world at one time was Moscow. Lots of Police all over the place, the KGB having all sorts of powers just to open your home and all your documents at any time for any reason. You could be investigated for anything at any time. Do you really think that at any time there was no Street Crime in Moscow? Or better yet no Espionage going on in Moscow? We now have progressed in all sorts of technological means of keeping track of things. There is a serious amount of Security and Police presence in and around Baghdad right now. Does that stop the attacks? The Israelies have been dealing with the same thing for more than 40 years. How long did the IRA operate, and that was just two small islands. Just because you have cops doesn't mean you don't have robbers. How can you say, given the potential profit of Piracy, the backdrop of war and the size of a Solar System that Piracy wouldn't exist in a Civilized system? In a Higher Volume system it would be more likely than some backwater system. There are more places to hide, and more targets. More oppertunity. If the cops are around you do your best to look like a Legitimate businessman, if they are someplace else then you take down a Merchant. (Having a Purpose built Pirate ship that doesn't look like it belongs there is a stupid concept but otherwise.... I would think the best Pirates operate Scout Ships (which are a dime a dozen) or an Armed Merchant. Get several of them and when the cops are around you just act like the rest of the traffic, if the cops aren't around you take down your target.

I'll give you an even simpler situation. On any toll highway in this country there are literally dozens of ways to figure out who is speeding and who isn't. There are laws and there are fines. But people still speed. (Even though when your toll ticket gives you the time you entered the road, and when you left which with a little math, that any pocket calculator can handle, will tell who is speeding and who isn't.)

BTW Maintenance Failures of drives is on page 6 of book 2 CT.

It isn't often, especially if you keep up on maintenance, but it is possible.

Originally posted by rancke:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bhoins:
The Powerplant and Jump drive are both online and required to be running to maintain your ship in Jump space. You can do maintenance on a running powerplant?

The power plant, yes, the jump drive, no. The jump drive is only used for the twenty minutes it takes to get the ship into jumpspace. As for the power plant, it is off line at least one day every 10 if it is a single power plant. If, as is a much safer concept, it is actually several separate power plants, they can be taken off line one at a time even in jump.

The same apply to the life support system. The rules doesn't state how much maintenance it requires. I will say that if it takes five days out of every 14 to flush it, it would be economic to have two separate systems and use them alternately. Jump drives are the one really expensive part of a ship. Keeping a jump drive in real space one minute longer than absolutely necessary is wasteful. Shpping lines will come up with all sorts of dodges to minimize it.

As for the US Navy disrupting NY Harbor. First of all New York doesn't have a Government that the Federal Government wants to keep in line, it also doesn't happen to have a Naval Base, and third New York Harbor hasn't seen Pirate activity since the war of 1812.

Well, if you believe that pirates would really operate in any system large enough to maintain a system defense force, go ahead. I don't. I barely manage to swallow them operating in backwater systems, mostly because pirates are fun. Realistic they ain't.

As for naval exercises, a system is a big place, you know. Naval bases don't have to be physically co-located with starports, and the massed Imperial Navy could schedule exercises in a single system without having to get within range of the mainworld.

Civil wars happen much more often that 500 years. Big ones happened on this continent 4 times in the last 230 years. (In this country twice.) Not counting the Islands of the Caribean or the Banana republics of Central America. And we are a "stable country."

Oh, you were thinking about dirtside civil wars. I don't count anything that doesn't actually affect high orbit.

As for my competetion offering things at 40% of what I am? There definitely isn't anywhere where you said taking those extra 9 jumps a year you are doing it for less than standard rates.

That's because I don't believe in standard rates if you're talking about the flat per-jump rates. But I did make a mistake when I said that the company will earn 40% more. It can't both earn 40% more and undercut the competition by 40%. But it can do one or the other (or more likely, a bit of both), and either will allow it to outperform its 25-jumps-per-year competition.

But if you want to undercut the rates between a couple of systems and can take up all the loads there then I can always go someplace else. What would kill your scheme is if a couple of Tramp Traders undercut your rates substantially.

If a tramp could do that to me, it would be even better able to undercut a line that only jumped 25 times per year.

And I don't think your profit margin will be that much higher, though I will do the math with the rules and see. Just because you are making more jumps with a higher overhead and serious restrictions on your load where to maintain your schedule you will be forced, by the very nature of the tables, to jump with less than optimal loads you might make a little more profit but I don't believe the math will hold for that much of a profit difference.

True. I was wrong there. My profit won't be that much higher. But I can outcompete you (I'm going to use 'you' as shorthand for 'any competition that only jumps 25 times per year'). You see, more than half our overhead is the cost of the ship. By jumping 35 times a year I spread that out over more jumps, which lowers my per-jump overhead substantially.

As for less than optimal loads, the whole point of having a factor is to ensure that my loads will be a lot closer to optimal that the random ones you can scrounge up in five days.

As for the rules allowing it, make sure you properly use the encounter tables at each stop.

I'm going to stick to servicing worlds with proper system defenses. Hence I'm not going to use encounter tables geared to 200 T Free Traders roaming haphazardly around universe having way more adventurous encounters than the average ship would have.


Hans </font>[/QUOTE]

 

[BetterThanLife]

And I think it was covered earlier in the thread.

Originally posted by Anthony:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bhoins:
If you want to go with bank loans and them making sense, how do you get a loan on a ship that can't break even with a loan.

You don't. This is one reason the per jump rules are bad. </font>[/QUOTE]

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
I know T20 says so specifically, I looked for the CT reference but have yet to find it, that says the jump drive is required to maintain the jump field in Jump space. Where did you read that it isn't?

It's implied in the fact that all jump fuel is used up before the jump begins. IIRC it is explicit in the description in Starship Operator's Manual that the jump drive puts the ship into jumpspace while the power plant maintains the protective field around the ship. Which in turn is backward compatible with the fact that in CT a ship's power plant had to be the equal of either the maneuver drive or the jump drive, whichever was the largest. Why would the size of the jump drive affect the size of the power plant if the power plant didn't have a function that related to it in some way?

As for T20 changing that, I'd better refrain from commenting. I wouldn't want Hunter to throw me off these boards .

Just show me a stable planet with one government.

Every system that doesn't have a type 7 government.

On the other hand virtually all Science Fiction written has pirates. (Even Star Trek where the Federation is one government over thousands of worlds.)

Sure, because pirates are fun and many SF writers value fun above consistency. And those that do value consistency simply create a background where piracy works. I don't recall any Star Trek episod having pirates routine operate in Earth orbit, BTW.

Pirates are easy to explain even with system defenses. Space is a big place. You can't be everywhere at once.

No, but the system defenses doesn't have to be everywhere. The situation in the TU is analogous to an Age of Sail where ships can teleport from just outside one harbor to just outside another. Just how successful do you the the Buccaneers would have been if the Spanish had been able to teleport from Spain to Havana? And how many ships do you think the Spanish would have needed to suppress piracy if the only place in between they had to patrol was one of the Canary Islands?

Especially since distances that we are talking about means Communication is slow. You can guard key points but you can't be everywhere. And there are always bribes to go around, especially to make sure that a Patrol craft isn't where it is supposed to be. Lets pick a similar circumstance, the highest security crack down in the world at one time was Moscow. Lots of Police all over the place, the KGB having all sorts of powers just to open your home and all your documents at any time for any reason. You could be investigated for anything at any time. Do you really think that at any time there was no Street Crime in Moscow?

No. But then, muggings in Moscow presumably didn't take place in wide-open parking lots where the muggers had to cross a wide expanse of well-lit tarmac with armed guards watching them all the time.

How can you say, given the potential profit of Piracy, the backdrop of war and the size of a Solar System that Piracy wouldn't exist in a Civilized system?

For the same reason that I can say that muggings are rare in the lobby of the United Nations building.

In a Higher Volume system it would be more likely than some backwater system. There are more places to hide, and more targets. More oppertunity.

That's just it. In space there are no places to hide.

I would think the best Pirates operate Scout Ships (which are a dime a dozen) or an Armed Merchant. Get several of them and when the cops are around you just act like the rest of the traffic, if the cops aren't around you take down your target.

A camouflaged pirate will have to act like a legitimate merchant, which means it has to move toward the mainworld from the point it arrived very soon after it arrived, proceed straight to a starport, conduct legitimate business[*], and leave again, move towards the jump limit, and jump out again. Meanwhile, the 'cops' are always around. There's no where for them to go and have a cuppa. Those system defense boats and ships are there all the time.

[*] Which means that even if its disguise isn't penetrated, the authorities will collect numerous clues to its true identity (after all, starships are not quite as common as cars; there is a quite limited number of each class).

Originally posted by rancke:
[My entire post.]

Is there any reason why you don't trim your quotes to a minimum and add your comments at the appropriate places? Or at the very least cut the entire post you're responding to?


Hans

 

[BetterThanLife]

Turning quotes to minimum. I haven't learned how to.

But that is for another day.

No place to hide in space? there is plenty of place to hide in space. Just like Submarines hiding without bottoming the boat in most of the Ocean. (Much of the ocean is too deep to bottom the boat anyway. You just go quiet and make like a hole in space. They hide stealth Fighters in the sky. (My favorite is the Predator though, they hung lights on it so it wouldn't be darker than the sky around it.) If you aren't looking in the right direction and I am not telling you where I am you won't see me. I go full EMCOM maneuver at very little power or just coast and I am really difficult to find. Unless you are going active have great sensors with lots of power trained in the right direction. (And just turning those on tells everyone where you are, exactly.) It is like going active with Sonar. It is generally only done from remote platforms so you don't get shot up by someone out there outside of your detection range but inside weapon range.

 

[mike wightman]

IIRC it is explicit in the description in Starship Operator's Manual that the jump drive puts the ship into jumpspace while the power plant maintains the protective field around the ship.

True, the power plant provides the power but it is the jump governor (part of the jump drive) which directs this power throughout the jump to the lanthanum hull grid (also part of the jump drive) to maintain the jump bubble (SOM - the supplement that gave us Zuchai crystals ).
Therefore the jump drive is required to maintain the jump field.
T4's FF&S2 goes on to say that hydrogen remaining in the jump drives surge tanks is used to maintain the jump bubble, therefore not all jump fuel is used up at the start of the jump.
Don't forget that in CT 1st edition jump ships didn't need a power plant, just look at the X-boat , and original Book 2.
T20 hasn't changed anything, just clarified it a little

.

 

[mike wightman]

No place to hide in space? there is plenty of place to hide in space.

I like the idea of silent running and sneaking about. The trouble is I would think all systems with type A and B starports, possibly C, will maintain an extensive system of remote active sensor platforms in order to monitor shipping lanes. The first thing a ship jumping into one of these systems gets is a ping from the nearest sensor platform as it checks the transponder and asigns an approach vector.
The good news is the sensor platform probably provides the incoming ship with data on all other ships within the sensor net, subject to military/police restrictions of course.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
No place to hide in space? there is plenty of place to hide in space. Just like Submarines hiding without bottoming the boat in most of the Ocean. (Much of the ocean is too deep to bottom the boat anyway. You just go quiet and make like a hole in space.

No you don't. The heat your ship produces in order for you to live is a big infra-red beacon. And even if you could lower your signal to that of a hole in space, you first have to get to a lurking spot that will do you some good. If you start in outer space outside detection range and move inwards it will either take you years to get there or you will arrive with a movement vector that will take you through the useful lurking area in very short time.


Hans

 

[pennshome723]

Hmmm hidding in a system....

Well I would say that might be rather easy, depending on the types of systems a ship is carring...aka...ECM / ECCM / other jamming type of systems and types of armor coating and etc. Also lets not forget if there are other natural background radiations, dust clouds, asteroids, solar flares, and other such things that can also be used.

Remember a single solar system is a BIG place, with alot of natural stuff happening all the time. So the chances of hidding or sneaking in should be rather good.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> IIRC it is explicit in the description in Starship Operator's Manual that the jump drive puts the ship into jumpspace while the power plant maintains the protective field around the ship.

True, the power plant provides the power but it is the jump governor (part of the jump drive) which directs this power throughout the jump to the lanthanum hull grid (also part of the jump drive) to maintain the jump bubble (SOM - the supplement that gave us Zuchai crystals ).</font>[/QUOTE]Read it again. The energy in the Zuchai crystals are discharged while putting the ship into jumpspace, which means that the jump governor's work is done when that has happened.


Hans

 

[Morte]

Originally posted by Penn Eckert:
Remember a single solar system is a BIG place, with alot of natural stuff happening all the time. So the chances of hidding or sneaking in should be rather good.

Hiding is easy, because there are lots of things to hide behind. Hiding close to a 100D jump point or transit route is hard, because the usable cover is probably tens of millions of kilometers away.

"BIG" is bad news for pirates trying to spring from cover, not good.

If you want to make piracy feasible, your best bet is to rig the sensor rules so pirates can come close undetected and provide plenty of systems with no naval presence.

If I were a pirate, I'd switch to hijacking.

 

[mike wightman]

Read it again. The energy in the Zuchai crystals are discharged while putting the ship into jumpspace, which means that the jump governor's work is done when that has happened.

I've read it again and your right, the exact wording in the SOM does suggest the jump drives job is done once in jump space

SOM also introduces the jump bubble but suggests it is some sort of force field maintained in some way that isn't defined. T4 defines the jump field as being a bubble of hydrogen maintained by the jump drive, so canon is ambiguous and contradictory, just for a change.

 

[kaladorn]

Originally posted by Morte:
If you want to make piracy feasible, your best bet is to rig the sensor rules so pirates can come close undetected and provide plenty of systems with no naval presence.

If I were a pirate, I'd switch to hijacking.

Enough stealth might cut it, but having a Quisling aboard or having ground crew plant a timed bomb or the like to take out sensors, drives and weapons (or at least temporarily disable drive controls) makes more sense. I suspect much piracy is halfway hijacking.

 

[kaladorn]

Being a SOM devotee (in the interest of disclosure), I'd always sort of thought the energy and the lanthanum grid were used to tear the hole between normal space and jump space. The field established around the ship had energy pumped into it, and decayed over time (why ships that botched a jump exit sometimes appear as dead ships later). The field decays as you travel through jump, and if you stayed in jump for say a month, you'd be in real trouble. So, there is a maintenance to this field, the energy input you put there from the jump engines as you went in.

This static nature and pre-load helps to explain why you can't change jump destinations in mid-jump.

Or so, using a feat of ledgerdemain, do I tie together a couple of facets of the game.

YMMV. OVW. IMO. etc.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Penn Eckert:
Hmmm hidding in a system....

Well I would say that might be rather easy, depending on the types of systems a ship is carring...aka...ECM / ECCM / other jamming type of systems and types of armor coating and etc. Also lets not forget if there are other natural background radiations, dust clouds, asteroids, solar flares, and other such things that can also be used.

Remember a single solar system is a BIG place, with alot of natural stuff happening all the time. So the chances of hidding or sneaking in should be rather good.

A jamming type system will work as a beacon. It would make it more difficult to get a weapons lock on the ship, but it would shout "Here I am!" even more effectively than the ship's heat alone.
As for hiding behind a moon or a planet, sure you can do that, but it isn't going to do a pirate any good at all to hide in a place that the merchants don't go near.


Hans

 

[pennshome723]

Well what if you had a special type of jammer rockets/ probes/ beacons that you launched to help mask or spread the area? One could either have them stationary or moving in different directions to confuse a tracker making it possible to escape. They could shut down after a while and then seem to disapear and etc, to possibly be picked up at a future time or etc. Maybe even they have a special trap set up that will make them explode if someone tries to retrieve them without giving off a signal first, maybe a time delay as well so that it explodes inside a patrol vessel. Rather nasty surprise I would think, and a good way to protect ones property from falling into anothers hands that should not have it.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Obviously you aren't going to be quieter than the background. It was a flaw discovered in both the Ohio Class Submarines and the Predator RPV. You match the background. As for being a Becon in space just because you are there? IR signatures are masked today. Even the lowly tech 7-8 soldier has IR masking. (The BDU uniform has IR masking characteristics.) Will it make you invisible? Absolutely not. But it does cut your signature down. In a Technology where Chameleon Armor is available I don't see how it would be difficult to hide your IR signature. Besides if you insulate your ship you have less power requirements when it comes to heating the interior and making it habitable. M1 Tanks, provided you are using the APU and not the Jet Engine, are virtually invisible to IR. (You do have to be parked.

If your ship is made out of the TL14-15 equivalent to Stealth Materials You could coast along all you want and get rather close to things that weren't actively looking for you. And if they were looking for you then you couldn't get as close but you could still be fairly close. Granted 20 years ago the concept of Stealth Materials was a very closely guarded secret and the stuff Science Fiction is made of, today they hide Huge Aircraft in the sky and nobody knows they are there. The F-22 has the Radar Cross Section of a Tennis Ball (A Seagull is a bigger radar target.) the difference between a rock travelling through a system and a stealthed ship is nill. And there is plenty of crap out there. Space is not a true Vaccuum. As long as you aren't too close using low powered maneuvers should be possible as well. In the Submarine Service this is called Creep Speed. Once you run up your active defenses and/or active sensors or open fire, damn right you are lit up like a Christmas tree. But until you give your position away in that volume of space it is a bitch to see you. A Merchant is unlikely to locate you even under full power unless you are close or you light him up. Detecting a ship running silently, maximum range is (according to Book 2) 75,000 KM. (1/4 Light Second) According to MegaTraveller you are dealing with, for a Merchant, less than 50,000 KM. T20 is about the same. Higher powered sensors are possible in both of those but Merchants don't tend to carry all that much sophistication when it comes to avionics, sensors, agility, maneuver drive etc.

75,000 KM isn't that far and is in the weapon envelope of, again depends on which version of the rules you are using, virtually all the weapons available to a starship. In many cases this is point blank range. It is certainly less than 5 hexes in Mayday. (Which is close range if you are using the High Guard rules for combat.) 50,000 in Mega Traveller is considered short range for Starship weapons in MT and in T20 at these ranges the only weapon that isn't in Short range or less is the Plasma/Fusion weapons.

To make sure there are no Pirates out there you need a whole bunch of ships, more than any Traveller Planetary Navy I have ever been shown.

Between the Earth and the Sun there are 144,000,000 Km on average. The volume of space contained in that radius is Pi R cubed! Even if you remove the Sun's volume that is still an awfully big place. If your Patrol ship's vector is in the wrong direction, and it isn't there when the pirate is attacked it will take a while to get to the site of attack. It will even take time for the message that there is an attack going on. If the Pirates are prepared to deal with an SDB. It could take a long time before any additional help arrives. If you plan it right and pick and choose your targets. (Like have a Merchant ship send out a distress call to draw away the patrols from your target.) You can hit the target, get what you want and jump before the local forces respond.

Piracy works. Even in patrolled systems. Perhaps not in YTU but given the official rules, it works. Remember a couple of light minutes is a long way to go if you don't have the right vector in the first place. And you won't have the information that an attack is going on in the first place until after it happened.

Originally posted by rancke:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bhoins:
No place to hide in space? there is plenty of place to hide in space. Just like Submarines hiding without bottoming the boat in most of the Ocean. (Much of the ocean is too deep to bottom the boat anyway. You just go quiet and make like a hole in space.

No you don't. The heat your ship produces in order for you to live is a big infra-red beacon. And even if you could lower your signal to that of a hole in space, you first have to get to a lurking spot that will do you some good. If you start in outer space outside detection range and move inwards it will either take you years to get there or you will arrive with a movement vector that will take you through the useful lurking area in very short time.


Hans </font>[/QUOTE]

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
Obviously you aren't going to be quieter than the background. It was a flaw discovered in both the Ohio Class Submarines and the Predator RPV. You match the background. As for being a Becon in space just because you are there? IR signatures are masked today. Even the lowly tech 7-8 soldier has IR masking. (The BDU uniform has IR masking characteristics.) Will it make you invisible? Absolutely not. But it does cut your signature down. In a Technology where Chameleon Armor is available I don't see how it would be difficult to hide your IR signature.

The background is 4 degrees Kelvin. The interior of your ship had better be about 300 degrees higher. Unless you come up with some place to put the heat (like a subspace heat sink) there's really no way to mask a spaceship.

Detecting a ship running silently, maximum range is (according to Book 2) 75,000 KM. (1/4 Light Second) According to MegaTraveller you are dealing with, for a Merchant, less than 50,000 KM. T20 is about the same. Higher powered sensors are possible in both of those but Merchants don't tend to carry all that much sophistication when it comes to avionics, sensors, agility, maneuver drive etc.

I mentioned that earlier. You don't get to a spot near a trade arrival spot by running silent. Not unless you spend months doing so. And if you do, you will zip right past that spot in a few hours.

Then, I'm not talking about being detected by your prey. I'm talking about being detected by the system defenses.

To make sure there are no Pirates out there you need a whole bunch of ships, more than any Traveller Planetary Navy I have ever been shown.

The pirates can by out there all they want. It's getting in near that's the tricky bit.

Piracy works. Even in patrolled systems. Perhaps not in YTU but given the official rules, it works.

Well, then, please give me a detailed plan for making piracy work. Include financing and support, and a plan for getting near your prey, capture it, getting away again, and turning a profit. Please assume the presense of one squadron (8) of patrol vessels of a reasonable size and an acceleration of 4G+.


Hans

 

[BetterThanLife]

OK. 8 patrol vessels. Pick a system in Canon without a Naval Base. Still possible but much more complicated and dangerous. Probably won't be a sufficeint profit margin to justify the risk. What do you want? Patrol Cruisers or 1000T DE's? And probably a new thread. I think we have hijacked this one long enough.