Long Distance Trade

[whartung]

How do you think trade is manifest over long distances? At the commercial level, not the "players will do whatever players do" Free Trader model.

If a cargo requires more than a single jump to arrive at a destination, do you think special routes are made that send the ship over several jumps, or that the cargo is unloaded and transferred to another ship, bouncing it's way to the destination?

Do you think most commercial freighters simply bounce back and forth between 2 systems?

Simply, ship arrives at a system, and unloads. It's now empty waiting for cargo.

Do you think that ship will take any practical cargo (this is commercial freight, these crews are paid salary, and just go where they're told), to any system? Or will they wait until there's cargo for their "home" system, or the next system on their route? Or would it simply return empty (like many of our modern container ships)?

 

[Nathan Brazil]

IRL There are usually 3 parties involved: the buyer, the seller, and the shipper. Many scenarios have the shipper belong to the one of the other two parties. I don't know about those. I worked in the office of a trucking company at one time, so I know from experience what happens when the shipper is a third party.

Like everyone else, the shipper wants their money for as little risk as possible. The company I worked for had a fleet of at least 50 locally labelled trucks (plus all the drop offs and pick ups). Because of our scale, we had truck berths, but not have a proper standalone warehouse per se. We had armed guard watching cargo that had to stay overnight and stayed locked in the cargo trailers.

We were in Chicago just south of downtown and we acted as a distribution point. Cargo would come from all sort of companies all over the country to us and our company placed cargo into the trucks designating by zip code. This way we reduced the number of trucks/trips the same locale.

Maybe this anecdote can be modelled for Jump transport?

 

[Enoki]

I devised a set of tables to determine an economic value of each system based on using the UWP values. Testing it on subsystems it almost invariably produces a result where there are 2 to 5 large markets in the subsystem, about 5 to 10 smaller markets, and the rest of the worlds are "basket cases."

When you run it for what loads and cargo are available (outside speculation), the few large markets would be the only ones larger ships go to. These would be corporate owned types that trade on a fixed route with mostly known buyers and sellers.
The smaller markets would be provided for mostly by regular small merchants running in a mostly fixed set of goods and picking up whatever exports those worlds have. They'd be congregating these at the major trade centers either for use there or further export in larger quantities with a corporate trade ship.
The one exception to this scheme would be the subsector capitol which for political reasons would have more trade and ships going to and from it.
The basket cases are all that's left to free and far traders that aren't part of the corporate scheme. It'd be a hard life to make a profit from unless you had some real good luck. An organized company hiring independent small ships to make runs to these would likely be the only way to make a steady if small profit off them. Aggregated by servicing many worlds that have small economies you could make money steadily. But one ship running random routes? Forget it. The big ones are taken and you'd be left with the scraps.

Oh, the other thing I discovered from it was that the X-boat routes are often messed up. These would definitely hit the economic powerhouses and never be routed through a basket case unless there was absolutely no other choice. But they often appear to be arbitrarily set at almost random...

 

[kilemall]

Oh, the other thing I discovered from it was that the X-boat routes are often messed up. These would definitely hit the economic powerhouses and never be routed through a basket case unless there was absolutely no other choice. But they often appear to be arbitrarily set at almost random...

I disagree. Railroad routes in the US were often arbitrary and political, often settled by where a bridge was built or various patrons forcing a route serving their interests both voters and speculative. I expect the same sort of thing happened in the 3I with a nobility flair to it.


Also, the state of a planet at the time of setting X-boats may have been promising. The minerals played out, ecological or social disaster, or other conditions changed to the basket case you see "today".


I could see X-boat traffic also staying to an outpost if it gives the local subsector leadership time to deal with major events before they hit the more important worlds.

 

[Grav_Moped]

World-pairs on routes that need high jump numbers (4+, maybe 3+) will have ships dedicated to going back and forth between those pairs. You might see cargo cross-loading for lower-Jn routes, but you will always see it when you need J4+ as part of a longer route.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

One about markets is that there will indeed be destination planets that see traffic very frequently and some that will not see a shipper for months. A shipper will not care what is shipped if they can do it properly (refrigerated, hazardous, liquified gasses, etc.). Less liability.

In a simple buyer/seller situation, neither will keep dedicated shipping to the said low pop world unless there other profit made (like fresh produce for a small world that only has 1 mining town because the seller owns the mine).

But with a third party shipper, they might have dedicated service to a system, for multiple/many sellers or government run like the mail service. in extreme cases, the starship only comes in once every season. In this real life example, someone is paying for the ship to make the seasonal trip.

The UK Overseas Territory Tristan da Cunha. Only about 300 people live there and they only get a boat with supplies once a season

YouTube - Life on Tristan da Cunha – the World's Most Remote Inhabited Island
YouTube - Have you been to Tristan da Cunha?

 

[Enoki]

I disagree. Railroad routes in the US were often arbitrary and political, often settled by where a bridge was built or various patrons forcing a route serving their interests both voters and speculative. I expect the same sort of thing happened in the 3I with a nobility flair to it.

That has to do with terrain. The railroad couldn't exceed a certain slope, tunnels were to be avoided due to cost, that sort of thing. You have none of that here.
Aside from that, the only reason a railroad might go through a certain town was usually for political reasons. Again, you don't have that here.
The closer analogy would be airports, not railroads. Starships only need a place to land at both ends of their flight. The actual flight route is flexible since you don't have any fixed system they have to move on like a road or train track.

Also, the state of a planet at the time of setting X-boats may have been promising. The minerals played out, ecological or social disaster, or other conditions changed to the basket case you see "today".

The system I devised simply uses the UWP as presented. The X-boat route is again highly flexible. Moving the boats and station gear would be a relatively easy process to accomplish. It's like opening a new airport with really minimal fixed infrastructure.

I could see X-boat traffic also staying to an outpost if it gives the local subsector leadership time to deal with major events before they hit the more important worlds.

The major purpose of X-boats is to move information. Those that need the information the most in the largest and most up-to-date quantities are going to get the X-boat route to their location. How would the leadership know what's going on in a timely fashion if the X-boat went to a nothing system first then that information had to travel by courier ship to the end users. You lose at least a week in doing that.
Business and finance operations would never stand for that, they risk losing huge sums of money in the delay.

 

[Enoki]

On the "basket case" worlds, a ship carrying a known tonnage arriving on a regular schedule would still work. But the tonnage might be 200 to 1000 tons of freight.
The cost of delivery would be higher because the shipping company knows that at the delivery end there's little outgoing freight. If the shipper knew that local business had something to ship on the return leg, then the cost would drop for delivery. But going in loaded and coming back nearly empty would definitely raise the cost of delivery.

Now, if a shipping company can sucker in an independent ship and crew to make the delivery and bring back little at standard cost even if that crew lost money in doing so, then they're likely to be some unscrupulous ones that would do just that.

 

[Condottiere]

Pretty much depends on demand and return on investment.

If there's competition, then having something to fill the empty holds is more relevant; otherwise, the rates double.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

I started thinking because I have been reading how in IRL, the reduction of shipping cost was the key to lowering the price of beef in the 1800's. Cheap refrigeration was they key. The sooner you could kill the cow, the sooner you dont have to pay for extra cost to keep it alive for distribution. Which is why Chicago had the Stockyards. Kill the cows here then ship them on huge ice rafts through extensive canal system to get to the East Coast in "fresh" condition. Efficiency and volume reduced to shipping cost to negligible amounts (on the order of 1 cent per hundred pounds of cow!). My point is how can you reduce shipping cost?

Also the airport analogy comes into play again as infrastructure. Airports need better facilities and longer runways to handle larger shipping.

Similarly starship design dictates costs. You do this now with free traders applying speculation. Regular trade will involve fixed costs beyond the goods themselves. There are ways to reduce these cost,

To transport X tons of cargo 1 parsec (or 2 or 3, etc.) requires a ship of y tons along with those fixed percentages associated with engines and so on. It boils down in the end to Fuel, Crew, Ship maintenance. Anything which reduces these costs is a plus.

My point is a dedicated shipper will not necessarily want a fancy ship. A distributed unpressurized configuration will do nicely because the annual maintenance is based on price and what is the cheapest hull?. The configuration may require a cost analysis of requiring interface facilities/vehicles vs a ships capable of landing on its own. Don't think Age of Sail, think trucking before CB radios and no po-dunk diner towns along Route 66.

Like an x-boat on regular service you do not need a full standard crew on board, on staff, at all times. If maintenance can be done at ports do you need more than a skeleton crew onboard for each ship wasting environment and salary costs? Or any maintenance crew at all? Again This may require larger port facilities, but maybe that is cheaper than staff onboard?

 

[Spinward Flow]

If you want to go "full containerization" you wind up with a large ship that acts as a "jump tender" (dispersed structure works fine for this, since armor is Not The Point™) and the cargo capacity turns into standard modular cutter shipping containers. All you need then is 1-4 Modular Cutters which can have the standardized shipping modules slotted into them for delivery once in port (effectively working like "cranes" for loading and offloading). Set aside some of the standard shipping modules as being used for fuel tankage for wilderness refueling (gas giants, oceans, you know the drill) so your Modular Cutter(s) can just pick up a fuel module to do tanking runs for you and you're good to go.

With Modular Cutters doing the "shunting" of cargo from the "jump tender" ship to deliver them to ports of call and handling wilderness refueling operations, the "jump tender" can become as bare bones low crew as you really need. Design the Modular Cutter shipping containers to be large enough to hold accommodations for passenger staterooms and you can even get a convertible passenger liner rather than a mere cargo hauler (just swap out the containers). On a large enough scale, you would even be able to do things like 9 staterooms per container (so 8 high passengers plus 1 steward) with the "jump tender" medic being able to cover for up to 15 containers of 8 high passengers each (120 total passenger) before you would need a another medic.

 

[Enoki]

I'd expect most cargo to be containerized. It makes shipping stuff much easier for the shipping company, thus reducing their costs of loading and unloading.

For this, I'd expect most freighters to load and unload in orbit. Landing to do this would add time and require more fuel than just emptying in orbit. The exception to this would be those smaller worlds again where the cost of an orbital station would be prohibitive.

For moving containers, I designed a "barge." It was a less than 100 ton flat surface with a cab at the front and the power system next to it sort of like a windscreen across the surface. Behind this you could stack 12 containers in two courses, six each. The barge has a 1G propulsion system and once loaded would move to the orbital to unload.
You'd have enough present that there's one alongside the freighter loading or unloading at all times, one waiting to load, one unloading or loading at the orbital, and several moving between the two such that the process of loading and unloading is as continuous as possible.
The objective is to unload the freighter as quickly as possible, load it, fuel it, and get it moving to its next destination ASAP. That keeps the cost as low as possible.

 

[coliver988]

There are several rules in GURPS:Far Trader that cover a lot of ideas for cargo across long distances (posting the large ship universe though).

The cutter module trader is covered in GURPS: Cutters for a variety of options on a configurable trader.

And somewhere in the art library someone made a really cool ship that was like a revolver, having 30 or so cutter modules in a rotating track.

The key I think, as mentioned, is commodifying the transport: standardized container systems and transport mechanisms. Could help explain why the Vilani don't like changes: it does keep things simple if it is the same across the Imperium.

 

[Fovean]

1800 dton Module Transporter. Love this ship

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Gallery/index.php?n=647

 

[Condottiere]

Containerization is a given, but suspect there would be three stages:

1. Palletization.

2. Normal containers.

3. Vacuum proof and temperature controlled large containers.

 

[Spinward Flow]

I'd expect most cargo to be containerized.

Aye ... but then the question needs to be asked ... what is the standard size for those containers? I mean, 30 tons is a nice round number, but doesn't divide evenly by 4 to translate into starship staterooms. As far as that goes, I'm thinking that 32 tons would be a better displacement to standardize on (more possible combinations beyond just cargo).

A minimalist 50 ton Cutter could have Maneuver-2G to drop containers away from the starport's downport on high gravity worlds (size code A means 1.125g) by VTOL for precision drop placement and then take off again. In a 50 ton Cutter context, at a bare minimum under LBB5.80 you would have up to 42 tons of displacement that can be towed at 2G acceleration.

Standard shipping containers of 42 tons each would let you do a LOT of cargo and passenger (re)combinations.

 

[Enoki]

Aye ... but then the question needs to be asked ... what is the standard size for those containers? I mean, 30 tons is a nice round number, but doesn't divide evenly by 4 to translate into starship staterooms. As far as that goes, I'm thinking that 32 tons would be a better displacement to standardize on (more possible combinations beyond just cargo).

A minimalist 50 ton Cutter could have Maneuver-2G to drop containers away from the starport's downport on high gravity worlds (size code A means 1.125g) by VTOL for precision drop placement and then take off again. In a 50 ton Cutter context, at a bare minimum under LBB5.80 you would have up to 42 tons of displacement that can be towed at 2G acceleration.

Standard shipping containers of 42 tons each would let you do a LOT of cargo and passenger (re)combinations.

I use the one shown in LBB 7 Traders and Gunboats on the Subsidized Merchant drawings. It is 3.85 tons and takes up six of the standard 1.5 meter squares by a height of 2 squares. I would think there could be larger ones as well just as there are several sizes of shipping containers today. So, I could see one that's say twice as long for example. The objective would be that each is large enough to take most items shipped but small enough that they are convenient to move around planet-side and sized so they don't take forever to load or unload while usually carrying a single shipment to a single destination. When you start mixing shipments to various places having to breakdown the load is taking more time you could save if the whole load went to the same place.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Aye ... but then the question needs to be asked ... what is the standard size for those containers?

And thus the T4 Milieu 0 Office of Calendar Compliance and its Bureau of Standards comes into play. I do not know what would be the standard size, but they would be the ones who have a hand in determining what the standard size would be. Like our current International Standards Organization, ISOs have been made for everything measurable/definable. They developed standard units for use throughout the the 3I and used adherence to those as one requirement to admittance into the 3rd Imperium and for trade.

This would likely extend to minimum standards for safety and labelling (liquified gasses poisonous/hazardous materials, dead cows and refrigeration :rofl as done with trucks now.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Note that a 30 ton container is a "perfect fit" for 6 cargo lots of 5 tons each to fit into a single container.

Why is 6 x 5 = 30 a useful size?

1D6 of 5 ton cargo lot quantities can max out at 30 tons.

 

[whartung]

Note that a 30 ton container is a "perfect fit" for 6 cargo lots of 5 tons each to fit into a single container.

Why is 6 x 5 = 30 a useful size?

1D6 of 5 ton cargo lot quantities can max out at 30 tons.

That's just much too big.

A standard 20 foot container (1 TEU) (20ftx8ftx8.5ft) is about 2.75 dTons.

Round that out to 6mx2.5mx3m, and you get 3.2dTons. 6mx2.5mx2.8m is 3 dTons on the nose.

These are much more "human" sized.

The 40 foot container is a common extension that they just drop on to trucks and flat cars.

Apparently the standard is for width and length, not height. With the 8.5ft height being the most common.

So, standardizing on a 3 dTon container isn't an unreasonable idea.