Large ship economics (that old can of worms...)

[MR TEK]

I have been toying with tools to make deck plans for a while. I have an old design I played with for a true luxury liner, but I need some opinions.

Based on the recent thread listing real world cabin sizes, I have some MTU decisions to make.

1: Life support. Should it be based on equivalent standard cabin spaces (1/2 dt for every 4 dt of passenger and crew space)? Or is it strictly 1/2 dt per body?

2. I have always thought of the standard passenger rates a little differently.
(cargo the same for that matter). The Imperium guarantees you can get a high passage from world a to world b for 10,000cr per jump. They do NOT guarantee that every ship will sell every cabin for that rate. This is of course MTU, and directly contradicts the assumptions made in all other discussions of economics.

As I see it, in a large ship universe, even if 99.99% of all passengers and cargo travel at the standard rate, there is many times over the cargo and passengers either waiting for space or in too much of a hurry, or just plain doesn't have the papers that every tramp hauler should never have less than a full load in any but the smallest ports.

With these heresies in place I am working on the QUEEN VICTORIA fleet of super luxury liners.

30,000 dt
Jump 2
maneuver 1
Roughly 4500 passengers.

Tourist class, (roughly 1st class on lessor vessels 10,000cr per parcect
Luxury class, 25.000cr per parcect aan
Master class deluxe Suites at 45,000cr per parcect.

Full meeting rooms and conference facilities, Lounges, night clubs, gambling halls and a promenade featuring the most exclusive retailers in the Imperium.

If every thing works the way I have it assembled, there will be ffull deck plans in Campaign Cartographer.

Each ship will make a six month loop up and down the most prosperous mains.

They feature conferences that cannot be leaked until the end of jump, Private corporate and government negotiations, one of a kind Concerts, and shows that are truly once in a lifetime extravaganzas.

Lower decks feature cafes port and starboard that have transparent floors leaving diners suspended in space, and offering spectacular views of the destination worlds.

It is ambitious, but then I have been sketching and calculating and designing tools specifically to aid large scale deck plans for almost two years, and I think I am ready to debut now.

 

[Icosahedron]

Whenever I've messed about with deck plans (usually very small ships as I've found larger ones to be a PITA with the available software) I've found the accommodation to be too cramped to include life support systems in a cupboard. IMTU, they're stuffed out of sight in the false ceilings. The plumbing and wiring is never seen on the deckplans.

 

[flykiller]

Life support. Should it be based on equivalent standard cabin spaces (1/2 dt for every 4 dt of passenger and crew space)? Or is it strictly 1/2 dt per body?

with that many people, economy of scale should kick in. say half that.

Tourist class, (roughly 1st class on lessor vessels 10,000cr per parcect

steerage.

They feature conferences that cannot be leaked until the end of jump, Private corporate and government negotiations, one of a kind Concerts, and shows that are truly once in a lifetime extravaganzas.

major beauty contests, high-profile professional prize fights, tournaments, poker championships, religious retreats, major auctions.

in the ship design include some notion of damage control, and disaster control. also crowd control - master-at-arms, security force, crime scene investigation. major medical facility, brig, and some holding cells.

m1 is slow, suggest m2. it could save many days of transit time over the course of a year and won't require any extra power plant capacity. failing that, suggest the excess power be used for some massive passenger holographic entertainment system.

 

[jawillroy]

As far as the price of passage is concerned, I don't think I'd ever have a problem with a ship-line charging premium for providing ultra-luxurious service - as long as there was a toe on the 10kcr high passage base, as you have instituted. (Neatly.) I do think you'd have to have a big liner for that, if only because your smaller merchant craft won't be able to support the staff or the sheer comfort-space necessary to supply that level of luxury.

 

[robject]

Just to add some confusion: the Keith brothers estimated life support to be 10kg per person per week; happily, then, 1 ton of the stuff supports 100 person/weeks at Cr200,000.

 

[jawillroy]

TANGENT ALERT Ooo! I've actually been thinking elsewhere about long-term supply:
10kg per person per week
100 person/weeks per ton
figure on crew size, do a little dance, and you've got a warship's logistical tonnage figured. Yay!

 

[aramis]

ISTR 50 person weeks per Td being the standard in the JTAS article on asteroid mining. (Best of JTAS vol 1)

 

[robject]

ISTR 50 person weeks per Td being the standard in the JTAS article on asteroid mining. (Best of JTAS vol 1)

Ah, an early, canonical source, very close to the Keith Constant. I vote for that. Likely to be all-inclusive, too.

In fact, that's appx one ton / person / year / Cr100,000. Oooh yeah, very nice, that, lots of 1's.

 

[MR TEK]

I like yhose numbers too.

The other idea, and I think I suggested earlier, in other threads, I will calculate promenade, and entertainment spaces as cabin equivalents. Then passages, freshers, and life support processing can all be accounted for at once. ( while those spaces don't add to the number of people breathing air, they clearly add to the volume of air needed to be maintained.)

There has been a lot of back and forth on whether or not cargo space maintains an atmosphere. Even if it dose, there would not be enough people in that space to require the air be recirculated. If a dozen people walked into that area each for a 30 minuet task during the week in jump, there would be no need to even stir the air, let alone replenish it. The entire volume would either be open to space at every port, or completely open to hanger air space. Either way, if it is pressurized it would be filled with air from the tacks, and there would no need to scrub it, so I can't see it requiring filters or our replacement stores to maintain that air.

Now if the area is climate controlled, and passengers have access during the trip, that is a different matter. I will therefore include open cargo space calculated as if it were cabin space, and closed cargo space that does not consume life support.

There are also two atrium, that I will count as cabin spaces to determine life support needs.

Just as the lounges on the lower decks have transparent floors, the promenades feature two story atrium's that are clear to the stars. Actually the big show lounge would also be two stories and have a transparent celling.

These ships would never journey outside the mains, and would never be out of the main traffic lanes. No pirate would ever attack, and no route would ever come with 20 parsecs of any potential hostilities. Kidnappings and hostages are always a danger, but the ship will all carry their own marines and passengers are free to provide their own security staff.

Full stats to follow soon. these are about the last loose ends to be settled.

 

[atpollard]

The other idea, and I think I suggested earlier, in other threads, I will calculate promenade, and entertainment spaces as cabin equivalents. Then passages, freshers, and life support processing can all be accounted for at once. ( while those spaces don't add to the number of people breathing air, they clearly add to the volume of air needed to be maintained.)

HVAC systems for buildings are sized based on the occupant load. Large empty spaces might need slightly larger fans to circulate all of that air, but the CO2 and water vapor and BTUs of body heat that need to be removed/scrubbed are based on the number of people that are in the building.

In Traveller terms, 100 people might need 50 tons of 'Life Support Equipment' in a crowded 200 dTon living space and 51 tons of 'Life Support Equipment' in a palacial 2000 dTon living space.

I would make Life Support 'per person' rather than 'per dTon'.

Arthur