Antares Administration
SOC-12
Or 200 meter long chunks of asteroidal debris start getting mysteriously lobbed through gates headed straight for your homeworld!
Paul Nemeth
AA
Heavy Haulers-Big Rigs of Space
- Thread starter Abbodon
- Start date
Paul Nemeth
AA
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Sorry for missing this earlier kaladorn. Kcr10 may be too much each time but it may cost something to have your crates loaded and unloaded and then maybe Kcr10 is a reasonable flat fee no matter how many crates are being popped or packed? Any idea how real world lighters handle it? Like who pays and how much? I guess it could be one of two ways. The old delivery to orbit is all you have to do, they have to pick it up there, you just park where they say and release the pods. Or maybe you have to hire cargo handlers (or do it yourself) as per T20's rates for the actual popping and packing.
Just to clarify, the rate of cr1,000 per T of crate volume to build them is still good right? I'm looking at T20's container modules (p. 351) and they are 10x that but maybe we can assume a big economy for scale here (maybe only for containers bigger than the 8.0T shown?) Hmm, looking at those, to build a standard fuel drop tank would cost more like Kcr20 per T rather than Kcr1 per T. Or is this yet one more example of not meshing the rules well enough. Back to the drawing board time?
So maybe the Kcr1 per T is good for single use, drop only, disposable tanks. 10x that for reusable carry or drop tanks and cargo pods? Or would it be more sensible and easier to say the costs on the container modules table are off by a decimal point and need to be divided by 10? I mean at those rates is anyone going to buy them? I always figured they had to be cheap and that all or most cargo would be shipped in them as a standard. Of course then the PC's don't need to buy it at all but it would still be good to have the cost so it is a known factor.
The extra initial Kcr10 normally for the explosive bolts and such still sounds fair for the mag clamps, I guess?
Yes I realise all this adds to the cost and weight of a Lighter design but there have to be fair trade offs and building a 60T hull that can strap on 240T of cargo and haul it through normal and jump space should cost more (a lot more) than building a 60T hull that is all its going to be in that hull form.
My thought is, based on the need for the lanthanum grid, you are going to end up building a 300 ton hull, not a 60 ton hull. Where you save money is:
1. In the nature of the ops (fast turn around)
2. In the standardization of packing
3. In mass production of the pods
As for external fuel tanks, the cheapest drop tanks might be some sort of tough, inflatable bladder and this shouldn't be too expensive. But it should, in combat terms, be fragile, even if multi-celled. A rigid hulled, safer, demountable tank (internal or jettisonable) will be constructed similarly to an internal tank - with cell partitioning and whatnot.
I don't do T20, so I can't speak to pricing.
Now, another question: I've always assumed 1 ton of displacement = displacement of 1 ton of hydrogen. That seems to match the assumptions about fuel. It should therefore match the weights for fuel (hydrogen) too. Why am I carrying the fuel in this format? Put it under a couple of five atmospheres, and my volume requirements go *waaay* down. I can allocate and expansion chamber to get it to STP if need be for use. But you'd think this would take a lot less space.
1. In the nature of the ops (fast turn around)
2. In the standardization of packing
3. In mass production of the pods
As for external fuel tanks, the cheapest drop tanks might be some sort of tough, inflatable bladder and this shouldn't be too expensive. But it should, in combat terms, be fragile, even if multi-celled. A rigid hulled, safer, demountable tank (internal or jettisonable) will be constructed similarly to an internal tank - with cell partitioning and whatnot.
I don't do T20, so I can't speak to pricing.
Now, another question: I've always assumed 1 ton of displacement = displacement of 1 ton of hydrogen. That seems to match the assumptions about fuel. It should therefore match the weights for fuel (hydrogen) too. Why am I carrying the fuel in this format? Put it under a couple of five atmospheres, and my volume requirements go *waaay* down. I can allocate and expansion chamber to get it to STP if need be for use. But you'd think this would take a lot less space.
I've always wondered a bit about that myself. Why not compress the hydrogen to 20,000 psi or something and save space?
I don't know if the facts match up in real life, but IMTU hydrogen is similar to acetylene(used in welding). Acetylene, when compressed past 200 psi, becomes physically reactive. What's that mean? It explodes if you drop the canister. So acetylene tanks are made with this honeycombed structure, that makes it into a sort of gel, which negates that effect.
IMTU, hydrogen compressed too far will just plain explode, eventually. The honeycomb structure is used simply to hold it in its liquid state safely.
I think changing the universe to allow fuel to be compressed into 5 gallon tanks would create some vast differences in how the world works. Not merely in that you'd be able to pack your ships with that many more other components, but also deep space jumps and such would allow easy traverses of stellar bodies that traditionally pose great obstacles.
On the note of jump hardware and cargo pods, two things come to mind: First, as someone said make the tractor a large hangar with a jump drive. Second, isn't there a ship from CT that's basically a jump drive that evelopes another ship with a netting, and jumps with both? I don't know the various tonnage, but I imagine that would work.
I don't know if the facts match up in real life, but IMTU hydrogen is similar to acetylene(used in welding). Acetylene, when compressed past 200 psi, becomes physically reactive. What's that mean? It explodes if you drop the canister. So acetylene tanks are made with this honeycombed structure, that makes it into a sort of gel, which negates that effect.
IMTU, hydrogen compressed too far will just plain explode, eventually. The honeycomb structure is used simply to hold it in its liquid state safely.
I think changing the universe to allow fuel to be compressed into 5 gallon tanks would create some vast differences in how the world works. Not merely in that you'd be able to pack your ships with that many more other components, but also deep space jumps and such would allow easy traverses of stellar bodies that traditionally pose great obstacles.
On the note of jump hardware and cargo pods, two things come to mind: First, as someone said make the tractor a large hangar with a jump drive. Second, isn't there a ship from CT that's basically a jump drive that evelopes another ship with a netting, and jumps with both? I don't know the various tonnage, but I imagine that would work.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Yep the Jump Ship from Supplement 9 but I think it's a fudged and broken design, never worked it through to check though. It lists the cost of cargo pods at Mcr0.1 per T and usually available in 1,000T increments. That's using the presumably already paid for jump field cables to wrap them up in for towing about in normal and jump space but it's the same cost as a standard hull so why do you need the cables? For those times when you haul just ore and big rocks? Doesn't quite work for me.
