The nearest shipyard to me isn't a commerce-heavy port. In fact, it has only two bays, both 300'. (Seward, Alaska) It has built a few ships keel up.
Reality says that small but high-service ports can and do exist.
How canony is this?
- Thread starter Drakon
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The nearest shipyard to me isn't a commerce-heavy port. In fact, it has only two bays, both 300'. (Seward, Alaska) It has built a few ships keel up.
Reality says that small but high-service ports can and do exist.
Having a shipyard is not in itself enough to get a class A rating. That's kind of the point.
Rules say you can go have a ship built at any class A starport. If you can't get a ship built there, it's not a class A starport, even if there is a shipyard.
Hans
Though I wonder if there might be a crucial difference between:
A, a small shipyard on a world generally capable of industrial-scale shipbuilding
and
B, any shipyard on a world dependent on imports for finished goods.
It doesn't seem plausible to me for a non-industrial world to maintain a shipyard, any more than a low-tech world; everything would have to be imported.
Seward is utterly dependent upon outside goods - its only industry is the yard, and its economy is fishing and tourism. It is, in every way I can think of, the archetype for a Class A port on a world with 30K people. If has full chandlery services, a repair yard for small ships (≤120'), two construction/overhaul berths (300'), hostelry aplenty, banking, fuel, and plenty of ammo.
Hans' insistence that class equates to traffic is bogus on its face in the setting, given that there are pop 0 worlds with class A starports (around 1/432, IIRC). The axiomatic defitinions are "can build ships" "has fuel" and "has banking"... Nothing at all in CT, MT, TNE, T4, nor T5 directly links the port class to traffic volume. (GT does so in GTFT - yet another strike against GTFT; GTFT does so clearly because GURPS Space does so, and GT uses GS starport ratings, not Traveller.)
It's not an insistence on traffic per se, although I admit that it comes to the same thing. It's an insistence that the economic underpinning ought to make sense. Somebody has to pay for anything that can't pay for itself. If you have enough traffic to support a shipbuilding industry, that's one problem solved.
Which contradicts the information from TCS that shipyard capacity is <population>/1000 T. So your shipyard capacity on worlds with a population of 0 would be... umm... 0. Pop 0 worlds with Class A starports is not evidence that you can have a Class A starport on a world with a population of 0. It's evidence that the writers failed to make sense.
So when logic shows that it can't build ships, there's a problem.
Incidentally, one axiom you missed is "you can have a ship built there".
Nothing except economic logic.
Hans
No, it just means a pop zero is either below 1000Td capacity or below 500 Td capacity, depending upon one's view on rounding.
implicit in having a shipyard that isn't (part of/colocated with) a navy base or scout base.
Your claim of logic is inherently flawed. Namely, you haven't been applying it to understanding the integerization of ratings. Take your strawman elsewhere.
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Drakon
SOC-14 1K
The whole line of this discussion started because I was asking about restoring Lemish's Imperial Starport back to a class A rating. The starport, I believe, would be badly damaged, either from the Vargr attacks or the Virus attacks, or both. And if Vland and Deneb want to use Lemish as a battleground, they can at least chip in to upgrade the star port. I would hope a competent member of the former Imperial nobility would be able to negociate a deal with either or both sides to achieve whatever repairs are required.
Traffic is a bit of chicken and egg kind of thing. You need to have the port to get the traffic. A lot of times, you have to roll the dice, and build the port in hopes the traffic will come. And, as most starports are established by the Imperium, the reason for a particular system has a particular class of starport might have less to do with economics and more to do with politics.
Traffic is a bit of chicken and egg kind of thing. You need to have the port to get the traffic. A lot of times, you have to roll the dice, and build the port in hopes the traffic will come. And, as most starports are established by the Imperium, the reason for a particular system has a particular class of starport might have less to do with economics and more to do with politics.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
The war between Vland and Deneb wasn't really *between* them, as such. Vland decided to punish the Regency for not rolling over to diplomatic demands, so most of the war that followed was Vland's raiders in Regency space being really large pirates.
No, it means that a handful of people can't support the necessary infrastructure to build ships.
No, it's implicit in having a starport that qualifies for a class A rating. A world can have shipyards (and thus be able to build starships) without having a class A starport. What's the difference between a world with a class B starport where the government builds warships for itself and a world with a class A starport? Why, it's not that one can build ships and the other can't, because they can both do so; it's that the one with the class A starport will build one for you and the one with the B starport won't.
Hans
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And the answer depends on just what you mean by that. If it's 'having a shipyard that can build ships if someone (like the government) is willing to pay for them' then the answer is different from the answer if it's 'having a starport with enough economic activity to support a civilian shipyard industry'.
That sounds like the first option.
First you need the traffic. If it's not there to be attracted, your starport facilities won't be able to attract them. And it isn't really starport facilities that attract traffic (except occasionally as the deciding factor between going to one world to trade and going to another). It's trade. The prospect of unloading a cargo of stuff and loading a cargo of more valuable stuff.
Then, as the traffic increases, it becomes economically attractive to build fuel purification plants and warehouses and brokerage firms and repair shops and maintenance facilities and boatyards and shipyards. Once you hit that sort of trade volumes, you won't need to build a class A starport; your own entrepreneurs will pay you for the opportunity to build it.
Now, if you were playing a game, there might be rules for upgrading your starport and consequent greater trade. But in "reality", it's the trade goods that attract the foreign traders/inspire your own people to try their hand at trading.
Hans
I don't want to get overly involved in "economic" discussions since economics barely makes sense in the real world let alone in a fictional one... And I took years of micro and macro-economic academic courses... Thought that astrology was nearly as useful when you get past the fundamentals and basics, which people still argue about it (... with astrology, meteorology, or economics... LOL ).
The Traveller Wiki has this to say: [http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Starport]
The canon specifies differences between (A: SHIPYARD-manufacturing-production-fabrication) and (B: REPAIR-replacement-overhaul-upgrade)....
Either A. SHIPYARD or B. REPAIR tracks can produce new vehicles... The distinction to me is how much can be done from scratch and raw materials... In an age of 3D Printers, microfacs, autofacs, etc., I would think that on a non-profit level, just about anything could be fabricated or produced with enough work and the proper supply of raw materials (...and a disregard for profit). Here we go Metal Shop 101...
In real life, I picture it as the difference between a factory-produced mass-market vehicle and a "kit car." Both work perfectly functionally as vehicles, but one makes mass-market economic sense and the other is more suited to niche markets for people who pay more.
So, I would suppose that the relationship between starports and shipyards would be dependent on what kind of understandings of interstellar trade exist within the OTU. I think that Interstellar trade, without an ansible or FTL communications, would be limited in the banking (financial) and trade (shipping) senses... That's why Traveller, in my humble opinion, has such a lore of tramps, merchants and low-level trading... Only Megacorporations and really large entities can really make large-scale interstellar trading work on a decent profit level... And such trading would still only work with large volumes or high profit portable items...
But, of course, we're talking fiction... Just throwing out my ten cents...
Positive vibes to all!
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
The Traveller Wiki has this to say: [http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Starport]
The canon specifies differences between (A: SHIPYARD-manufacturing-production-fabrication) and (B: REPAIR-replacement-overhaul-upgrade)....
Either A. SHIPYARD or B. REPAIR tracks can produce new vehicles... The distinction to me is how much can be done from scratch and raw materials... In an age of 3D Printers, microfacs, autofacs, etc., I would think that on a non-profit level, just about anything could be fabricated or produced with enough work and the proper supply of raw materials (...and a disregard for profit). Here we go Metal Shop 101...
In real life, I picture it as the difference between a factory-produced mass-market vehicle and a "kit car." Both work perfectly functionally as vehicles, but one makes mass-market economic sense and the other is more suited to niche markets for people who pay more.
So, I would suppose that the relationship between starports and shipyards would be dependent on what kind of understandings of interstellar trade exist within the OTU. I think that Interstellar trade, without an ansible or FTL communications, would be limited in the banking (financial) and trade (shipping) senses... That's why Traveller, in my humble opinion, has such a lore of tramps, merchants and low-level trading... Only Megacorporations and really large entities can really make large-scale interstellar trading work on a decent profit level... And such trading would still only work with large volumes or high profit portable items...
But, of course, we're talking fiction... Just throwing out my ten cents...
Positive vibes to all!
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
Drakon
SOC-14 1K
This sounds good. Perhap a lower ranked star port can build a ship, or rather assemble it from imported parts. It just takes 10 times as long or is in some other way economically unfeasable as a long term or permenent situation. But one off or kit ships might be feasable.
Smaller trade volumns, smaller ships. With the collapse of the 3rd Imperium, my neck of the woods doesn't get as much traffic as it once did. Trade wars could be interesting.
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