LASH Tender
- Thread starter Pwyll
- Start date
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I think you are both being harsh on yourselves 
.
Mr. Whipsnade, you yourself in previous posts have said that the threads on these boards tend to morph over time. As long as they stay vaguely on topic then a lot of creativity is often expressed within these ramblings.
At the begining of this thread I was looking at designing a low to mid TL LASH system and then Pwyll said have you done an economic analysis. Do you know that I never had in the past?
All of my ship designs were either government or mega corp and the economics of their operation didn't interest me.
Now it does.
Hence the tender/tug and the pod carrier, both designs to test the economics of book 2 bulk trade.
And I'd like to thank the Oz for explaining the pod carrier operation better than I could.
I fully understand Mr. Whipsnade's arguments concernining who owns the individual components but it is at this point the LASH system falls apart in the OTU, IMHO, because the revenue generated is 1000Cr per ton of cargo carried through jump.
There are no costs listed for cargo transport insystem, so how much do the lighters charge? How much do the tugs charge to move the cargo pods?
Do these costs come out of the 1000Cr per ton payment?
Put bluntly, do the book 2 trade rules work without resorting to speculative trade?
(And should this be a new thread?)
.Mr. Whipsnade, you yourself in previous posts have said that the threads on these boards tend to morph over time. As long as they stay vaguely on topic then a lot of creativity is often expressed within these ramblings.
At the begining of this thread I was looking at designing a low to mid TL LASH system and then Pwyll said have you done an economic analysis. Do you know that I never had in the past?
All of my ship designs were either government or mega corp and the economics of their operation didn't interest me.
Now it does.
Hence the tender/tug and the pod carrier, both designs to test the economics of book 2 bulk trade.
And I'd like to thank the Oz for explaining the pod carrier operation better than I could.
I fully understand Mr. Whipsnade's arguments concernining who owns the individual components but it is at this point the LASH system falls apart in the OTU, IMHO, because the revenue generated is 1000Cr per ton of cargo carried through jump.
There are no costs listed for cargo transport insystem, so how much do the lighters charge? How much do the tugs charge to move the cargo pods?
Do these costs come out of the 1000Cr per ton payment?
Put bluntly, do the book 2 trade rules work without resorting to speculative trade?
(And should this be a new thread?)
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
And now back to the theme of the thread.
Have you noticed this progression:
TL10, 200t tender, 800t lighter, total 1000t
TL11, 400t tender, 2x 800t lighter, total 2000t
TL13, 600t tender, 3x 800t lighter, total 3000t
TL15, 800t tender, 5x 800t lighter, total 4800t
The same, standard design, TL9 lighter can be used throughout.
This has now got me thinking about how the second hand ship market should function. What do you recon the lifespan of a tender at the different TLs should be, bearing in mind that there are 50+ year old warships still operating in the real world?
Have you noticed this progression:
TL10, 200t tender, 800t lighter, total 1000t
TL11, 400t tender, 2x 800t lighter, total 2000t
TL13, 600t tender, 3x 800t lighter, total 3000t
TL15, 800t tender, 5x 800t lighter, total 4800t
The same, standard design, TL9 lighter can be used throughout.
This has now got me thinking about how the second hand ship market should function. What do you recon the lifespan of a tender at the different TLs should be, bearing in mind that there are 50+ year old warships still operating in the real world?
The Oz
SOC-14 1K
I've always imagined that starships/spacecraft would have very long useful lifespans, on the order of centuries, even. Given annual refits and their strong structure (an unarmored TRAVELLER spaceship has a STRIKER armor value 40, which is equivalent to over 33cm of steel) I allow starships IMTU to be very, very old and still going strong.
It would depend on their operating environment. I think atmospheres and gravity would put the most routine wear and tear on spacecraft hulls. Ships that never enter atmosphere or land on a surface would last forever, given good maintenance. Since cargo lighters go up and down gravity wells and into and out of atmospheres all the time, their functional life might be shorter, but still probably very long.
It would depend on their operating environment. I think atmospheres and gravity would put the most routine wear and tear on spacecraft hulls. Ships that never enter atmosphere or land on a surface would last forever, given good maintenance. Since cargo lighters go up and down gravity wells and into and out of atmospheres all the time, their functional life might be shorter, but still probably very long.
Several tidbits:
One: Someone said he'd need three sets of lighters...
actually, if you use two tenders, you only need 4 sets of lighters (two per jump frame).
Two: I'll reiterate: COACC (for MT) establishes that canonically, worlds only have rights to 100 diameters, after which juridiction is Imperial (including Subsector and Sector navies). System navies can only enforce out to 100 diameters a given worlds laws, but they can enforce imperial laws in system...
three: (reiteration again) There is absolutely no need for the true lighter aboard ship to have the ship enter the 100 diameter limit. True lighters can get there on their own.
4: under any TNE or later design sequence, lighters need not be designed as Non-Starships, but can be designed as large interface vehicles... with vehicle crew and station requirements. Under CT, you can do likewise with Striker... if you really wanted to.
(Under MT, you can do it, to. But you can't then get it past bout 10 diameters....)
5: LASh and PASh attains maximum load throughput via minimal maneuvering times between jumps. Hence, either the lighters or pods need to carry the fuel, or the drop tanks for the fuel, or a fuel tender needs accompany the lighters or pods.
6: Since, under normal operations, we can't be certain whether jump will take 6, 7, or 8 days until we exit jump{1}, we have to assume no faster than one jump per 8 days. At this rate, that is 3.5 jumps per month.
7: While fuel transfer times are not established in canon (to my knowledge), we should assume that there is in fact a time requirement for fuelling , and that, in general, it will be measured in hours for multi-hundred ton transfers.
some personal asides:
1) I dislike the idea of drop tanks being self-mobile craft... I'd rather see real tankage requirements, or at least modular designs. (IE, swap the empty for a full when loading lighters.)
2) I suggested putting fuel in the lighters and quarters on the jump frames for reasons of speed. On J4+ ships, this is the speed of courier networking, rather than the economy of max volumes throughput.
3) I see lighters being able to charter space on a jump frame. A jump frame network will probably run fastest{2} solely with proprietary lighters on a tight schedule; round trip requirements for charter space are likely (Even if the lighter is NOT returning, unless another one way is waiting for a berth back in the displaced proprietary lighter's spot, a minimum lighter network will be forced to deadhead one leg.
4) The big mains are probably served by multi-dozen kiloton displacement major cargo haulers; lighters could probably go aboard one of these AS CARGO, if a discount for space available is made. (IE, ROLEPLAYING REQUIREMENT! ) for a typical M1 400-800 Td 1G lighter, a discount of 15% or more can make the cost of jump affordable, at 25%, possibly profitable, with the addition of the lighter possibly remaining extraterritorial to the mainliner.
One: Someone said he'd need three sets of lighters...
actually, if you use two tenders, you only need 4 sets of lighters (two per jump frame).
Two: I'll reiterate: COACC (for MT) establishes that canonically, worlds only have rights to 100 diameters, after which juridiction is Imperial (including Subsector and Sector navies). System navies can only enforce out to 100 diameters a given worlds laws, but they can enforce imperial laws in system...
three: (reiteration again) There is absolutely no need for the true lighter aboard ship to have the ship enter the 100 diameter limit. True lighters can get there on their own.
4: under any TNE or later design sequence, lighters need not be designed as Non-Starships, but can be designed as large interface vehicles... with vehicle crew and station requirements. Under CT, you can do likewise with Striker... if you really wanted to.
(Under MT, you can do it, to. But you can't then get it past bout 10 diameters....)
5: LASh and PASh attains maximum load throughput via minimal maneuvering times between jumps. Hence, either the lighters or pods need to carry the fuel, or the drop tanks for the fuel, or a fuel tender needs accompany the lighters or pods.
6: Since, under normal operations, we can't be certain whether jump will take 6, 7, or 8 days until we exit jump{1}, we have to assume no faster than one jump per 8 days. At this rate, that is 3.5 jumps per month.
7: While fuel transfer times are not established in canon (to my knowledge), we should assume that there is in fact a time requirement for fuelling , and that, in general, it will be measured in hours for multi-hundred ton transfers.
some personal asides:
1) I dislike the idea of drop tanks being self-mobile craft... I'd rather see real tankage requirements, or at least modular designs. (IE, swap the empty for a full when loading lighters.)
2) I suggested putting fuel in the lighters and quarters on the jump frames for reasons of speed. On J4+ ships, this is the speed of courier networking, rather than the economy of max volumes throughput.
3) I see lighters being able to charter space on a jump frame. A jump frame network will probably run fastest{2} solely with proprietary lighters on a tight schedule; round trip requirements for charter space are likely (Even if the lighter is NOT returning, unless another one way is waiting for a berth back in the displaced proprietary lighter's spot, a minimum lighter network will be forced to deadhead one leg.
4) The big mains are probably served by multi-dozen kiloton displacement major cargo haulers; lighters could probably go aboard one of these AS CARGO, if a discount for space available is made. (IE, ROLEPLAYING REQUIREMENT! ) for a typical M1 400-800 Td 1G lighter, a discount of 15% or more can make the cost of jump affordable, at 25%, possibly profitable, with the addition of the lighter possibly remaining extraterritorial to the mainliner.
