LBB 3 Tech level

[spank]

For 1D-1D and 2D-2D they are the same on average, 0.
For 1D-1D and 2D-2D, bounded at zero they are not bell curves, they are a cliff-and-half bell curve.
The lower result may stay at zero, but the occurrences of it increase as well.
For 1D-1D zero will occur 21 of 36 times, 58% of the time
For 2D-2D zero will occur 721 of 1296 times, 55% of the time.
There is some difference, but the end results don't differ that much, an average of .9 for 1D-1D and 1.4 for 2D-2D

The 1d6-1d6 range is 0-5, the 2d6-2d6 range is 0-10, and 3d6-3d6 is 0-15. The bell curve tendency is for 0-1. Anything higher is a bonus. But there are higher highs baked into the RAW rolls, improbable as they may be.

1D-1D is not the same as 2D-2D is not the same as 3D-3D.
The minimum stays the same (zero) while the maximum rises (5, 10, 15) ... shifting the bell curve(s) into new shapes of possibilities.

 

[kilemall]

For 1D-1D and 2D-2D they are the same on average, 0.
For 1D-1D and 2D-2D, bounded at zero they are not bell curves, they are a cliff-and-half bell curve.
The lower result may stay at zero, but the occurrences of it increase as well.
For 1D-1D zero will occur 21 of 36 times, 58% of the time
For 2D-2D zero will occur 721 of 1296 times, 55% of the time.
There is some difference, but the end results don't differ that much, an average of .9 for 1D-1D and 1.4 for 2D-2D

View attachment 5614

That’s still potentially 5 high passages for extreme low pop, and 10 for middling. A lot better then max 2 or max 4.

 

[spank]

5 high passages, 2.78% of the time....
But 0 passengers 55.63% of the time.
You don't make money planning for the exception.

That’s still potentially 5 high passages for extreme low pop, and 10 for middling. A lot better then max 2 or max 4.

 

[kilemall]

5 high passages, 2.78% of the time....
But 0 passengers 55.63% of the time.
You don't make money planning for the exception.

Sure, but it’s not that simple. You’ve got Middle Passages, a more likely positive result. So I’d say 4-5 staterooms minimum for the mids, and cash in on high passages when they show. Keeps the investment overhead low if it’s going to work the lean stretch and profits when higher pop planets are on the menu.

Maybe put that steward stateroom in the guest area, and can all be middle passage while skipping out on paying a steward position and life support. Or go Spinward Flow and double duty the medic or navigator for steward depending on ship size and crewing requirement.

 

[spank]

It's not that you are limiting yourself to "only" 3-4 high passengers, You would presumably have 8-10 cabins, 3-4 would be occupied by high passages, and 4-5 would be occupied by middle passages. You will have more potential high passage cabins than that, because if there are "extra" high passengers they will bump the middle passages. But without the steward you can't take any high passengers at all.
Or choose your route more carefully to move into an region you can expect 8-9 high passages on average, and modify your ship accordingly.

If you go as broad spectrum as possible, you're going to want 3-4 high passengers and no more so as to meet your accommodations capacity of 3-4 staterooms. However, 3-4 high passengers gets hard to justify in terms of crew salaries+life support overhead expenses. This is going to require a bit of modeling, so bear with me for a moment.

 

[spank]

But in the end the 1D-1D and 2D-2D for high passages on 2 and 3 Pop are more similar than different,
Compared to the change from 2D-2D at Pop 3 to 2D-1D at Pop 4 which is a move from 1.4 passengers to ~3.7
So, even though there are 6 different way to roll the dice you are only really getting 4 results:
the 1D-1D and 2D-2D group of .9 and 1.4
the 2D-1D and 3D-2D group of 3.7 and 3.9
then 3D-1D
and 3D
Changing the way 2D-2D rolls, for example to 2D6-5 would give a result that is better positoned betwen 1D-1D and 2D-1D so your results would average 0.9, 2.28, and 3.7 instead of 0.9,1.4, and 3.7.
Changing 3D-2D to 2D6-2 or 3D6-5 would give a smoother transition to the upper part of the scale,
3.7,~5,7 instead of 3.7,3.9,7

 

[Rupert]

2D-2D is effectively 4D-14, so unsurprisingly it has a very steep drop-off. 1D-1D is 2D-7, and 2D-1D is 3D-7

 

[kilemall]

But in the end the 1D-1D and 2D-2D for high passages on 2 and 3 Pop are more similar than different,
Compared to the change from 2D-2D at Pop 3 to 2D-1D at Pop 4 which is a move from 1.4 passengers to ~3.7
So, even though there are 6 different way to roll the dice you are only really getting 4 results:
the 1D-1D and 2D-2D group of .9 and 1.4
the 2D-1D and 3D-2D group of 3.7 and 3.9
then 3D-1D
and 3D
Changing the way 2D-2D rolls, for example to 2D6-5 would give a result that is better positoned betwen 1D-1D and 2D-1D so your results would average 0.9, 2.28, and 3.7 instead of 0.9,1.4, and 3.7.
Changing 3D-2D to 2D6-2 or 3D6-5 would give a smoother transition to the upper part of the scale,
3.7,~5,7 instead of 3.7,3.9,7
View attachment 5615

It’s your project so do as you will, if that makes more sense to you or eases your spreadsheet super project.

But it just isn’t the same potential range, period.

 

[Spinward Flow]

There is some difference, but the end results don't differ that much, an average of .9 for 1D-1D and 1.4 for 2D-2D

I would consider moving the average by +55.5% to be statsistically significant.

I’d say 4-5 staterooms minimum for the mids, and cash in on high passages when they show. Keeps the investment overhead low if it’s going to work the lean stretch and profits when higher pop planets are on the menu.

This is the approach I would want to take as well.

An additional wrinkle is that for interstellar charters, the revenue per high passenger is Cr9000 (so, 90% of base ticket price) and the revenue per middle passenger is ... Cr0. (LBB2.81, p9).
The interstellar charter price for low passengers is Cr900 each (90% of base ticket price again) and for cargo is Cr900 per ton (once more, 90% of base ticket price).
The deal with interstellar charters is that they basically "sell out" the transport capacity of the starship to a third party (who then fills the manifest). The actual occupancy rate (passengers/cargo) does not HAVE TO BE 100% ... but it's more profitable for the third party if they do (for somewhat obvious reasons), otherwise you've got the "18 wheeler goes to pick up a gallon of milk" type of load mismatch going on. However, for third parties that are interested in "concealing" what they need moved, chartering a starship and then not using the entire load capacity is one possible way of throwing unwanted pursuit off their tail.

After all, who charters an entire J1 Free Trader to transport 1 ton of specialty cargo and 2 passengers?
Answer ... someone who wants to "avoid any Imperial entanglements..."

Or go Spinward Flow and double duty the medic or navigator for steward depending on ship size and crewing requirement.

The "traditional" mix is Steward-1/Medic-2+.
Since a passenger service "needs both" to service high passengers, just go ahead and combine the two crew positions into a single crew member (Steward/Medic).

• 2 people (steward, medic) require 2 staterooms (8 tons), have crew salaries of Cr2500 per 2 weeks and life support overhead costs of Cr4000 per 2 weeks.
  • So the starship "pays" 8 tons and Cr6500 in overhead operating expenses per (single) jump to support these 2 crew.
• 1 person (steward/medic) requires 1 stateroom (4 tons), has a crew salary of Cr2062.5 per 2 weeks and a life support overhead cost of Cr2000 per 2 weeks.
  • So the starship "pays" 4 tons and Cr4062.5 in overhead operating expenses per (single) jump to support this 1 crew.

Do the (economics) math and it becomes really easy to see why 1 person skilled enough to fill 2 crew positions is significantly cheaper on the accounting, but much more vulnerable to battle damage and security compromises (more eggs in fewer baskets problem).

In point of fact, the J2 Far Trader does this in LBB S7, p23-27 and is explicitly detailed on p24 ... so there is certainly precedent for the option of having a steward/medic aboard.

It's not that you are limiting yourself to "only" 3-4 high passengers, You would presumably have 8-10 cabins, 3-4 would be occupied by high passages, and 4-5 would be occupied by middle passages. You will have more potential high passage cabins than that, because if there are "extra" high passengers they will bump the middle passages. But without the steward you can't take any high passengers at all.
Or choose your route more carefully to move into an region you can expect 8-9 high passages on average, and modify your ship accordingly.

Correct.
High passengers get priority, bumping middle passengers (if any).

As I previously pointed out upthread, if you declare multiple destinations in advance (because you are committing to a plotted route) you can gather up all of the tickets going to multiple destinations (not just the single "next" one) in order to basically roll "multiple times" on the passenger and cargo tables in ways that can keep your manifests 100% full at all times with ticket sales. However, doing so requires commitment, in advance, of going to those destinations and following your plotted course.

This is where having a "regular route" to run that has been plotted in advance is advantageous, relative to the alternative of just turning up and finding out which way the ticket winds are blowing (right now) the way that a tramp would. Following a pre-plotted route makes it possible to take on passengers and cargoes for multiple destinations and "roll over" your transport capacity selectively (rather than entirely) at every destination you stop at.

Kind of like connecting flight stopovers where as a passenger (with luggage) you stay onboard the plane while some people disembark and new people get on and get seated before departing again. Substantially the same idea in Traveller terms ... except that if you're traveling "2 destinations" down the plotted route of a starship, you're buying 2 tickets, not just 1.

This is then what makes multi-jumping through empty hexes practical in economic terms (if you can manage the fuel requirement to do so).
The empty hex is an "intermediate destination" (LBB2.81, p9) but no passengers or cargo depart the starship. All passengers and cargo remain aboard (except for the REALLY unruly ones who need to "take a long walk out a short airlock" ) and have a second ticket for the jump to the "final destination" where they disembark.

So in business model terms, being a tramp merchant is "riskier" since you aren't following a pre-planned course and therefore can't sell tickets to multiple destinations at each starport, making it more difficult to keep your shipping manifest 100% full at all times for every jump. Conversely, tramp merchants are more "agile" than planned/pre-plotted trade route business models can be, because the tramp merchants are "always on the lookout" for speculative goods opportunities (which are random, when they appear, and thus random in "where the best place to go to sell them" for arbitrage markup is likely to be).

If a collection of disparate trade codes are clustered together closely enough, it's easy to set up a regular route that hits all of them on a routine basis, so even pre-plotted routes can take good advantage of speculative goods arbitrage (if the astrogation is favorable). But when those disparate trade codes start getting separated by 3+ parsecs to each one, it gets harder and harder to use a pre-planned route to "hit them all" in a favorable sequence, so at that point tramp traders (with no preset destinations) have an advantage over their competitors running "on rails" through pre-planned routes. Very much a risk vs reward type tradeoff.

And there's nothing which says that a wily operator "can't do both" ... such that they've got what amounts to "2 trading lobes" with an "economic dead zone" in between them. So the merchant operates as a tramp in the 2 "favorable lobes" on either end of their territory range, but switches to a plotted/pre-planning when needing to move through the low population region between the 2 favorable regions. This kind of "shuttling back and forth" would presumably be a good idea if trade codes in one region only match up advantageously with trade codes in the other region (Agricultural in area 1 shipping to Non-agricultural in area 2, for example) when dealing in speculative goods. So only when a speculative goods opportunity turns up that can be best taken advantage of by "crossing the economic dead zone" (to get to the other side) would a tramp be (profit) motivated to do so.

However, those kinds of details only start becoming relevant once you've got a MAP that shows you all of the population brackets (low, non-industrial, mid, high) and trade codes, at a glance, so you can make easy decisions on where to take your merchant starship next to optimize your profit potential.

 

[Condottiere]

Stewardess nurse.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Stewardess nurse.

Basically, yes.

 

[kilemall]

Stewardess nurse.

They originally were exactly that.

The first flight attendants were all registered nurses, this requirement disappeared when many nurses left to enlist during WWII | The Vintage News

The role of a flight attendant derives from that of similar positions on passenger ships or passenger trains, but it has more direct involvement with

www.thevintagenews.com

 

[kilemall]

I would consider moving the average by +55.5% to be statsistically significant.

This is the approach I would want to take as well.

An additional wrinkle is that for interstellar charters, the revenue per high passenger is Cr9000 (so, 90% of base ticket price) and the revenue per middle passenger is ... Cr0. (LBB2.81, p9).
The interstellar charter price for low passengers is Cr900 each (90% of base ticket price again) and for cargo is Cr900 per ton (once more, 90% of base ticket price).
The deal with interstellar charters is that they basically "sell out" the transport capacity of the starship to a third party (who then fills the manifest). The actual occupancy rate (passengers/cargo) does not HAVE TO BE 100% ... but it's more profitable for the third party if they do (for somewhat obvious reasons), otherwise you've got the "18 wheeler goes to pick up a gallon of milk" type of load mismatch going on. However, for third parties that are interested in "concealing" what they need moved, chartering a starship and then not using the entire load capacity is one possible way of throwing unwanted pursuit off their tail.

After all, who charters an entire J1 Free Trader to transport 1 ton of specialty cargo and 2 passengers?
Answer ... someone who wants to "avoid any Imperial entanglements..."

The "traditional" mix is Steward-1/Medic-2+.
Since a passenger service "needs both" to service high passengers, just go ahead and combine the two crew positions into a single crew member (Steward/Medic).

• 2 people (steward, medic) require 2 staterooms (8 tons), have crew salaries of Cr2500 per 2 weeks and life support overhead costs of Cr4000 per 2 weeks.
  • So the starship "pays" 8 tons and Cr6500 in overhead operating expenses per (single) jump to support these 2 crew.
• 1 person (steward/medic) requires 1 stateroom (4 tons), has a crew salary of Cr2062.5 per 2 weeks and a life support overhead cost of Cr2000 per 2 weeks.
  • So the starship "pays" 4 tons and Cr4062.5 in overhead operating expenses per (single) jump to support this 1 crew.

Do the (economics) math and it becomes really easy to see why 1 person skilled enough to fill 2 crew positions is significantly cheaper on the accounting, but much more vulnerable to battle damage and security compromises (more eggs in fewer baskets problem).

In point of fact, the J2 Far Trader does this in LBB S7, p23-27 and is explicitly detailed on p24 ... so there is certainly precedent for the option of having a steward/medic aboard.

Correct.
High passengers get priority, bumping middle passengers (if any).

As I previously pointed out upthread, if you declare multiple destinations in advance (because you are committing to a plotted route) you can gather up all of the tickets going to multiple destinations (not just the single "next" one) in order to basically roll "multiple times" on the passenger and cargo tables in ways that can keep your manifests 100% full at all times with ticket sales. However, doing so requires commitment, in advance, of going to those destinations and following your plotted course.

This is where having a "regular route" to run that has been plotted in advance is advantageous, relative to the alternative of just turning up and finding out which way the ticket winds are blowing (right now) the way that a tramp would. Following a pre-plotted route makes it possible to take on passengers and cargoes for multiple destinations and "roll over" your transport capacity selectively (rather than entirely) at every destination you stop at.

Kind of like connecting flight stopovers where as a passenger (with luggage) you stay onboard the plane while some people disembark and new people get on and get seated before departing again. Substantially the same idea in Traveller terms ... except that if you're traveling "2 destinations" down the plotted route of a starship, you're buying 2 tickets, not just 1.

This is then what makes multi-jumping through empty hexes practical in economic terms (if you can manage the fuel requirement to do so).
The empty hex is an "intermediate destination" (LBB2.81, p9) but no passengers or cargo depart the starship. All passengers and cargo remain aboard (except for the REALLY unruly ones who need to "take a long walk out a short airlock" ) and have a second ticket for the jump to the "final destination" where they disembark.

So in business model terms, being a tramp merchant is "riskier" since you aren't following a pre-planned course and therefore can't sell tickets to multiple destinations at each starport, making it more difficult to keep your shipping manifest 100% full at all times for every jump. Conversely, tramp merchants are more "agile" than planned/pre-plotted trade route business models can be, because the tramp merchants are "always on the lookout" for speculative goods opportunities (which are random, when they appear, and thus random in "where the best place to go to sell them" for arbitrage markup is likely to be).

If a collection of disparate trade codes are clustered together closely enough, it's easy to set up a regular route that hits all of them on a routine basis, so even pre-plotted routes can take good advantage of speculative goods arbitrage (if the astrogation is favorable). But when those disparate trade codes start getting separated by 3+ parsecs to each one, it gets harder and harder to use a pre-planned route to "hit them all" in a favorable sequence, so at that point tramp traders (with no preset destinations) have an advantage over their competitors running "on rails" through pre-planned routes. Very much a risk vs reward type tradeoff.

And there's nothing which says that a wily operator "can't do both" ... such that they've got what amounts to "2 trading lobes" with an "economic dead zone" in between them. So the merchant operates as a tramp in the 2 "favorable lobes" on either end of their territory range, but switches to a plotted/pre-planning when needing to move through the low population region between the 2 favorable regions. This kind of "shuttling back and forth" would presumably be a good idea if trade codes in one region only match up advantageously with trade codes in the other region (Agricultural in area 1 shipping to Non-agricultural in area 2, for example) when dealing in speculative goods. So only when a speculative goods opportunity turns up that can be best taken advantage of by "crossing the economic dead zone" (to get to the other side) would a tramp be (profit) motivated to do so.

However, those kinds of details only start becoming relevant once you've got a MAP that shows you all of the population brackets (low, non-industrial, mid, high) and trade codes, at a glance, so you can make easy decisions on where to take your merchant starship next to optimize your profit potential.

You could do the 199 ton free trader as a dodge for the medic. On a practical basis though I would dock some passenger numbers as one’s risk goes up, especially for low passage.

 

[Spinward Flow]

You could do the 199 ton free trader as a dodge for the medic. On a practical basis though I would dock some passenger numbers as one’s risk goes up, especially for low passage.

This is where an appreciation of nuance comes into play.

My understanding of the LBB2.81 crew requirements is that starships that are under 200 tons (Hull code: 1) do not require a medic to be a member of the crew ... but ALL starships which carry passengers (high/mid/low) are REQUIRED, regardless of hull displacement to have 1 medic crew position per 120 passengers (all grades), round fractions up to next integer.

So a 200 ton starship requires 1 medic (check) ... and can accommodate up to 120 passengers served by that 1 medic. This could mean 60 tons of low berths for the transport of 120 low passengers (for example).

A 150 ton starship does NOT require a medic ... but until a medic is added to the crew, the starship can carry ZERO passengers.

This is how you wind up with sub-200 ton cargo only/delivery van type starships, because the Hull code: 1 (100-199 tons) displacement bracket allows the navigator, engineer(s), steward and medic crew positions to be dropped. Less opportunities for patron encounters (because, no passengers) but also less security risk (lower chance for cargo to attempt an "inside job" hijack), so there is something of a tradeoff in opportunities for "exciting" stuff to happen .

 

[spank]

When you consider an average of .9 vs 1.4 as 55% in isolation, it sound like alot, But it's not.
Because it's at the extreme, an advancement from .1 to .2 is a 100% increase, A "better" amount of increase, but it's worse than progressing from .9 to 1.4
Or consider it in comparison to the advancement on the LBB table, The advancement from POP 2 to POP3 it is worse than the advancement from POP 3 to POP 4; 41% vs 167% and the advancement from POP 5 to POP 6 is only 5%.
All in all it's a very uneven progression, because 1D-1D and 2D-2D provide very similar results.
I think you get a better progression by changing 2D-2D to 2D6-5 and 3D-2D to 2D6-2,
It's smoother and more linear.

I would consider moving the average by +55.5% to be statsistically significant.

Picking the "best" cargo at a given port may provide a short term gain, but that doesn't mean it will pay off long term. Consider leaving a TL 8 world; you can go to a TL 8 world, a TL 3 world and a TL13 world. The TL 3 world will probably give the best results, because there is a +5 modifer due to the TL difference. The TL 13 world will provide the worst rolls due to the -5 modifier, and the TL 8 world will provide middling results.
So you roll cargos and the TL 3 world provides the "best" opportunity for profit, and you take that trip. But....... When you arrive at the TL 3 world your departure options will more likely than not have a negative DM for going from a low TL world to a higher TL world. You could go back to the TL8 world, with a -5 DM, or maybe go to another world, Say a TL 6 world with a -3 DM, Or maybe there's a TL 0 world you can go to with a +3 DM. None of these are good options, if you pick the best option again you are even further in the hole, the best you can hope for is to shuttle to another TL 0 world. Maybe you'll get lucky and the rolls with a -3 DM will be better than the rolls with a +3 DM, but odds are against this.
Your either going to have to bounce around between lower TL worlds until you get a good set of rolls and can move up the ladder again, or bite the bullet and take a hit on the outbound load to get back to a more beneficial position.
The smart money may have been to go to the TL 8 or TL 13 world especially if their rolls were better than average for that route.
And the smarter money would be to run a ship that is profitable based on the expected average cargo, instead of hoping to get a better roll, because if the better roll is driving your think then your are likely flying atleast partly empty. In which case you are losing money on un-used capacity. Empty berths don't earn money, neither does empty cargo space.
You should be running a ship that can choose the destination with the best potential, rather than letting the amount of freight dictate your route.

As I previously pointed out upthread, if you declare multiple destinations in advance (because you are committing to a plotted route) you can gather up all of the tickets going to multiple destinations (not just the single "next" one) in order to basically roll "multiple times" on the passenger and cargo tables in ways that can keep your manifests 100% full at all times with ticket sales. However, doing so requires commitment, in advance, of going to those destinations and following your plotted co

 

[whartung]

And the smarter money would be to run a ship that is profitable based on the expected average cargo

The smart money is to use those average cargo profits to maneuver your ship to a Goldilocks star cluster, then milk it.

The smartest money is if you have one of those Free Traders that's partly paid off is you get a second mortgage on it to finance your maneuvering to that Goldilocks star cluster.

If you don't have a trader, but think about getting one, you instead use those funds to travel to that Goldilocks star cluster, then buy the trader.

Within 5-10 years, it's all paid off, sell the ship, and you're off to Fiji V.

 

[spank]

In the end,
goldilocks clusters are where you find them, & don't really need to that exceptional or rare.
If you find a few worlds that are POP 5+ and TL 7-10 You're going to do much better than just wandering randomly.
That is about ~25% of all worlds, so finding a pair or cluster that fits these restrictions isn't going to overly difficult.
Even low two TL worlds will do, so long as their Pop is 5+
At that point you are going to be getting an average of ~5.5 high passages, and 6.5 middle passages, in addition to the cargo. For just the Major Cargo is going to be an average of 210 Tons. {I think} With 70% of the Major Cargos being between 150 and 350 tons {I think}
This is more than enough to support a free trader. Or something larger like a 400 ton Fat trader.

The smart money is to use those average cargo profits to maneuver your ship to a Goldilocks star cluster, then milk it.

The smartest money is if you have one of those Free Traders that's partly paid off is you get a second mortgage on it to finance your maneuvering to that Goldilocks star cluster.

If you don't have a trader, but think about getting one, you instead use those funds to travel to that Goldilocks star cluster, then buy the trader.

Within 5-10 years, it's all paid off, sell the ship, and you're off to Fiji V.

 

[spank]

In the end,
goldilocks clusters are where you find them, & don't really need to that exceptional or rare.
If you find a few worlds that are POP 5+ and TL 7-10 You're going to do much better than just wandering randomly.
That is about ~25% of all worlds, so finding a pair or cluster that fits these restrictions isn't going to overly difficult.
Even low two TL worlds will do, so long as their Pop is 5+
At that point you are going to be getting an average of ~5.5 high passages, and 6.5 middle passages, in addition to the cargo. For just the Major Cargo is going to be an average of 210 Tons. {I think} With 70% of the Major Cargos being between 150 and 350 tons {I think}
This is more than enough to support a free trader. Or something larger like a 400 ton Fat trader.

If you lock in on something even as uninteresting as two POP 5 worlds within 1-2 TLs of each other you're going to getting 3-4 High passages, 3-4 middle passages, 7-9 Low passages ~45 tons of Major cargo, and 25-30 tons of major cargo. Which would suit a free trader fairly well. There is some risk that you'll roll poorly a few moths in a row, but considering you are going to be rolling ~4-5 major cargos plus 5-6 minor cargos the odds of a poor outcome are are somewhat blunted.

 

[spank]

If you lock in on something even as uninteresting as two POP 5 worlds within 1-2 TLs of each other you're going to getting 3-4 High passages, 3-4 middle passages, 7-9 Low passages ~45 tons of Major cargo, and 25-30 tons of major cargo. Which would suit a free trader fairly well. There is some risk that you'll roll poorly a few moths in a row, but considering you are going to be rolling ~4-5 major cargos plus 5-6 minor cargos the odds of a poor outcome are are somewhat blunted.

Actually that's wrong,
Your cargo prospects are going to be even better,
Not 1D6+1 *10 tons of cargo, for major cargos,
1D6 +1 dice *10 tons of cargo. for major cargos.

 

[Spinward Flow]

All in all it's a very uneven progression, because 1D-1D and 2D-2D provide very similar results.
I think you get a better progression by changing 2D-2D to 2D6-5 and 3D-2D to 2D6-2,
It's smoother and more linear.

Consider that the very fact of that "unevenness" is not a bug, it's a feature.
It means that the demand for tickets to depart do not rise/fall in a steady (predictable) way. Instead, the demand for insterstellar transport is "lumpy/bumpy" rather than "smooth" as population codes increase.

An analogous way to think of this is that different population codes are at different phases of economic growth waves. Just like with an export business, if you plot growth of exports on a curve over time, that curve is not going to be "smooth" ... instead there's going to be some noise in the results and there are going to be "growth waves" where exports rise and fall as conditions and circumstances change. When there is a major capital investment going on to develop new facilities for new products (for example), exports can potentially fall ... until the new facility center can be brought online and ramped up to full capacity, at which point export potential can "spike" relative to what was happening previously. My point being that growth is not "smooth/linear" but rather "spiky/lumpy" if you plot it on a graph (like you have).

Note that the results you're complaining about also happen to be consistent with the notion that populations tend to plateau at various points. Low demand for outbound interstellar tickets can simply be a sign that a world simply has a balance of trade oriented towards imports over exports (of people, goods, etc.). If a world is more of a "draw" for people to come in and less of a "push" for people to leave, because of "phases of growth wave" the world population is in, that will be reflected in the demand for outbound tickets on starships.

The charts that you've drawn for the 1D-1D and 2D-2D, etc. are consistent with this sort of "lumpiness" in demand for interstellar transport services. Some worlds are going to be more of a "draw" for people and goods to come in and stay "in" the world economy, while others are going to be more favorable to exports and thus generate more demand for tickets to interstellar destinations. That "unevenness" of demand that you're complaining about (and wanting to statistically erase from happening) is what adds to the ... texture ... of variability around the (sub)sector map in economic opportunities. It means that +1 population isn't always automatically better from a ticket demand perspective, which keeps the "trader game" more interesting and complex than it otherwise would be (and which your simplifications are intended to result in). That "lumpiness" in ticket demand as population codes vary has all kinds of knock on consequences for "success" as a merchant (free trader, tramp or otherwise), which make the challenge more interesting to succeed at.

Picking the "best" cargo at a given port may provide a short term gain, but that doesn't mean it will pay off long term.

This is why designing starships that are capable of making a profit from low(er) population/technology destinations is crucial. Revenue tonnage design factors need to be mindful of the minimum AND the maximum demand potential wherever they go ... as well as the "chain" potential of further destinations beyond the immediate next one.

As you point out, it's possible (in theory) to craft a route that starts high tech, steadily moves down the TL range each time (increasing cargo passenger and cargo ticket demands) until bottoming out at a low tech level, low population world before returning (loop style) back to the starting point. So if you've got (say...) 6 systems to visit and the "last one" has an unfavorable "cliff" of demand fall off back to the point of origin ... so long as you're making enough profit on 5 of the 6 jumps, you can amortize the loss on the 6th of 6 jumps.

Being able to DO that kind of thing depends on the map ... and the plot for your trade route.

You should be running a ship that can choose the destination with the best potential, rather than letting the amount of freight dictate your route.

The trick is to design a starship that can make profits with less than 100% full manifests. The challenge then is to work out how to operate your starship in ways that keep your manifests "full" and the profits rolling in. It isn't necessarily about finding places with the "most" passengers+freight that needs transportation ... but rather finding places with "enough" passengers+freight to keep your shipping manifests full.

If your starship has a "high" capacity for passengers and freight, you're going to need to stick to "big markets" (high population) OR have a pre-planned plotted route that allows you to carry passengers+freight for multiple destinations simultaneously and just keep "rolling over" the contents of your capacity manifest at each destination along your route.

If your starship has a "modest" capacity for passengers and/or freight, but is still profitable so long as your manifests are nearly full, you can operate in "lower end" markets with more modest demand for interstellar transport services and still make a profit on your voyages, keeping your starship (and your crew) financially solvent and out of bankruptcy. Lean pickings require a "lean" and efficient starship class design that can survive (and thrive) where the "big boys" don't go, in order to carve out an economic niche role that other starship classes will struggle to survive in. You use the "austere economic environment" to your advantage in ways that deter competition, helping you to corner these low end/marginally profitable market conditions where others fail.

Knowing the "average" yields of passengers and freight cargo lots is useful to know before starting the process of designing starships, but averages are not "all circumstances in all locations at all times" ... so just "building for the average" is not necessarily the Best Play™ in all contexts.

Actually that's wrong,
Your cargo prospects are going to be even better,
Not 1D6+1 *10 tons of cargo, for major cargos,
1D6 +1 dice *10 tons of cargo. for major cargos.

The result rolled on the Major/Minor/Incidental cargo tables is the number of cargo LOTS.
Each cargo lot can be 1D x 10(major) or 5(minor) or 1(incidental) tons of cargo PER LOT of cargo wanting to buy a ticket.

So a single Major Cargo Lot can be 10-60 tons for just that one single cargo lot.
A single Minor Cargo Lot can be 5-30 tons for just that one single cargo lot.
A single Incidental Cargo Lot can be 1-6 tons for just that one single cargo lot.

The trick is that these cargo lots cannot be subdivided, creating a sort of "cargo hold tetris" problem to be solved.

If you've got a 50 ton cargo hold, if a 60 ton major cargo lot gets rolled ... too bad, you can't take that major cargo lot (your cargo hold is too small for it to fit). You can take a 50 ton major cargo lot ... or a 30 ton major plus a 20 ton minor ... or whatever else adds up to 50 (total), but you can't "slice and dice" or otherwise subdivide the size of the cargo lots in order to make them "fit" inside your cargo hold.

This is where the Amber Zone restriction of "No Major Cargo" can be a really huge factor ... since that will often times mean a reduction of ~2/3rds in the total volume of cargo bound for a destination relative to what would have been available if the destination were a Green Zone. For "small time" operators, the Minor+Incidental Cargo Only may be sufficient to fill their manifests ... but for high volume merchants, that reduction in demand for services may be "too much" for them to bear (so the "big boys" don't go there).

This is one of the reasons why the Five Sisters in the Spinward Marches is such "interesting market terrain" to work in as a setting for a merchant campaign (in addition to the max TL=12 factor). There are a number of medium to high population worlds that are coded as Amber Zones, dramatically shifting the "balance point" for the types of merchant class starships that "want" to be operating (profitably) in that region.