Making a Jump 2 freighter profitable

[zakrol]

Originally posted by far-trader:
What do I fear from a simple per parsec rule? Unintended consequences I can only half imagine and more contradictory rules required to cover them...

How long can I carry freight? Can I sign a shipment to a world 6 parsecs distant even though my ship is just J1? Do I still get paid the full rate even if it takes me 12 weeks to get there? How about 12 months?

How far can I contract freight? 4 parsecs? 40 parsecs? My jump rating? My jump destination?

The simplest idea would seem to be to mirror the official system and contract per jump. It's just the charge made that will be different. Multi jump contracts would have to be negotiated individually as regards timescale as they would in the per jump model.

Will there be the same amount of cargo going 4 parsecs from any world as going 1 parsec? Even if that 4 parsec jump is on the scheduled route of a megaton freighter for some megacorp or a government subbie?

This strikes me as the area that would see the biggest change. Common sense suggests that as the transport costs are now four times as great for jump 4 as for jump 1, the market would reduce considerably. It would have to be for goods where the difference in price could justify the extra cost. The rules for determining how much cargo was available would have to be looked at for the higher jumps.

The effect would be that trade volumes would be much greater for shorter jumps. Jump 3 and up might start to tail off dramatically.

Further I think I've seen numbers that suggest the profit margin to operational cost increases dramatically with increased range in a flat per parsec model, especially in design systems where the power plant is both smaller and cheaper at higher TL. So why are there any J1 or even J2 Free-Traders if the way to make money is at J6? I have my own limits for this kind of runaway trade but they aren't shared by many from the feedback I've gotten.

Market forces would limit this. Jump 6 traders would have relatively small cargo space as few routes would be able to fill large ones. Jump 6 might well be profitable, but only if you can fill the hold and how many goods are worth trading at six times the cost?

And just how are PC's supposed to come up with the 20% down-payment on the much higher priced long legged ships? Is the financing easier because the profit is that much more? Oops there goes the market for the short jump ships again. Either they won't be made becuase no one wants them or they'll be so cheap that it won't pay to build them. That changes the whole Traveller universe. No small traders, everybody is operating big ships and crews. That can be a fine game, but it's not the one we started with, or the one still pictured, even in GURPS, of small PC ships scratching a living at the edges.

PCs are not expected to come up with the costs for high jump ships. As is mentioned elsewhere, they are the bottom end, struggling to get a foot on the ladder. The Mega-Corporation would be the ones that could accurately identify the genuinely viable high jump routes and then have the funds to buy the needed ships. There might be the odd exception, but this would be the rule.

Just a few thoughts off the top of my head. Largely my opinion of course so you're welcome to ignore it. Whatever rocks your world is the way to play the game.

You do make strong points and have made me think more about the possibilities of a per jump system that just seemed to be plain broken at first look.

Lastly I've said it before, the canon Far-Trader type seems to be the broken bit if you're trying to prove economic sense with the per jump trade rules. Either it needs a redesign or it needs to be dropped altogether as a PC ship, at least as brand new with a first mortgage.

That may well be the case, but a profitable jump 2 ship would be little more than a large cargo bay with engines. There would be no room for the other parts of a ship that make the Far Trader of use to adventurers. Everything would have to be geared towards minimising cost of operation.

PC's are the bottom of the food chain in interstellar trade. It should be tough to make a go of it independantly and that's what the rules seem designed to reflect. To the point that they can only make a sure business with the lowest end ship possible, a simple J1 trader, and that only if they don't have bad luck. The kind that leads to depserate contracts to cover the unanticipated shortfall. The kind that get the PC's labled "adventurers" by the legitimate merchants

I agree it should be tough. And it's upto each referee to work out how to do that - if the per jump method can be made to work then great. Per parsec is not a panacea, but problems will tend to stem from lack of available cargo rather a systemic inability to make profits with a reasonably sensible ship design.

My new player group happily went to Fulacin in the Spinward Marches seeing the A class starport but not really looking at the population level and were most distressed to see the profits from the previous month go up in smoke when they couldn't fill the cargo hold.

'nuff rambling for now. I'm not trying to defeat the per parsec movement, just make sure any issues are addressed or at least considered by anyone thinking of using it.

.. which can't be a bad thing.

Chris

 

[Maynard]

With all the HooHah in some canonical texts about this or that planet being 'the industrial hub of the subsector', or even the sector, I would say that plenty of freight is indeed being carried through multiple jumps, so clearly the rules are broken, and homebrews are necesary to get interstellar commerce and travel up and affordable. I like the GURPS Far Trader supplement.

In any case, I avoid a lot of that fudging by making everybody Imperial Postal Employees, which gives them a reason to be just about anywhere, and for no particular reason, other than bureaucratic assignments that only make sense to higher level Bureaucrats.

The whole idea that some guy with a few terms of service can suddenly get a multi-million CR line of pull at an interstellar bank is rediculous on it's face, which is why none of my characters ever get a starship unless they score big enough to buy it, wich is very rare.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Dan,
Still contract for Freight per Jump, but pay per parsec. (The rest of the rules stay the same that way.) However planning the trip, for the consumer, now makes more sense. The Consumer, (passenger, person contracting for the freight, etc) can figure costs in a more reasonable and consistent manner.

Further, if you consider the fact that the ship loses carrying capacity as the jump number goes up, you will find that the higher jump ships, especially the Jump 4 and higher ships will only work in specialized circumstances. (High Jump/Full routes.) There is still a place for the Jump-1 and Jump-2 ships, they work the mains and clusters. The problem for the per parsec rules for the high jump ships is they can't go Jump 1 and still make a profit.

The Problem in saying use used ships, is you can't new build used ships. If the ships don't work at new ship prices, then there won't be used ships, because nobody will buy them new in order to sell them used.

As for how to come up with the 20% down? How do they come up with the 20% down for a Free Trader? It works the same way. 20% down for a Fat Trader, SubLiner, or Far Trader is a goal not neccessarily something to start with.

As a GM will I occasionally allow a Far Trader instead of a Free Trader as the Mustering out Benefit instead ofa Free Trader? Yes. IMTU that can happen. There are few places you can't get to with a Jump 2 ship, makes some adventuring easier. The ship not being always able to travel full or at full jump capacity is another adventure hook. However the ship is no longer a liability.

Bruce

 

[Anthony]

Under most rulesets, the optimal jump capability for ships which will be carrying cargo more than one parsec is either J2 or J3; J1 ships wind up being a bad choice for carrying cargo more than one parsec, and J4 and higher are only useful for cases where the extra jump capability is really needed (because of some gap or another), or where the customer cares a lot about speed.

 

[Chuck Anumia]

Perhaps Passanger travel should be made to cost double for each parsec traveled?

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by cweiskircher:
Perhaps Passanger travel should be made to cost double for each parsec traveled?

Why? Simply charging per parsec is enough. The only problems you run into, in this regard, is free passages. (Travellers Aide Member or Mustering Out Benefits.) The way I handle it is that if you cash it in then it is a one jump ticket, if you use it then you get one ticket on one jump and the association or the Government picks up the tab.

 

[Straybow]

Hmmmm, nine pages and still nobody looks at mass versus volume and spec pricing...

[returns to lurk mode]

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Straybow:
Hmmmm, nine pages and still nobody looks at mass versus volume and spec pricing...

[returns to lurk mode]

Well in all honesty in a contra grav society, with artificial gravity fields, there is no real concern about mass. Mass and density matter less, much less when dealing with starships, than how big the object is. Granted inertia would still be a mother, but unless you are moving things around by hand and they break loose, it isn't really a concern.

Unles you have a different view you care to share?

 

[Fritz_Brown]

You know, there is the question. (And, I think it has been bandied about on one of these threads.) With contragrav, does inertia still have meaning? If not, then why do your M-ratings get related to how large the ship is? (Yeah, I know that's volume in TU, but it is connected.) If the answer is that the size of the M-drive is related to size/mass, but once turned on it makes mass irrelevant, then adding mass to the cargo bay should have an effect (until it is turned on, of course).

Or am I just blowing smoke, here?

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Fritz88:
You know, there is the question. (And, I think it has been bandied about on one of these threads.) With contragrav, does inertia still have meaning? If not, then why do your M-ratings get related to how large the ship is? (Yeah, I know that's volume in TU, but it is connected.) If the answer is that the size of the M-drive is related to size/mass, but once turned on it makes mass irrelevant, then adding mass to the cargo bay should have an effect (until it is turned on, of course).

Or am I just blowing smoke, here?

Actually things like variable AG fields and Contra Gravity negate weight not mass. So inertia would still be a bitch. However, when you are dealing with Maneuver Drives, remember that the cargohold of a ship is inside the ship, usually, so Inertia compensators would tend to keep stationary objects in place. (The problem is if you are moving it, then it still has mass.) The ship itself is not in such a field, so it has mass and size. Though how it would work with the Supp-9 Jumpship is another matter.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
... remember that the cargohold of a ship is inside the ship, usually, so Inertia compensators would tend to keep stationary objects in place. (The problem is if you are moving it, then it still has mass.)...

Yeah, that was my thought. Which is why, in a "real world" I wouldn't be shipping inflated balloons to that 500th anniversary commemoration j3 away. "You want me to pay what?! But, it's just air!" "Yeah, but you filled my cargo hold, man."

 

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Bhoins:

Originally posted by Straybow:
Hmmmm, nine pages and still nobody looks at mass versus volume and spec pricing...

[returns to lurk mode]

Well in all honesty in a contra grav society, with artificial gravity fields, there is no real concern about mass. Mass and density matter less, much less when dealing with starships, than how big the object is. Granted inertia would still be a mother, but unless you are moving things around by hand and they break loose, it isn't really a concern.

Unles you have a different view you care to share?

Well, "no real concern about mass" except that it effects what you're paying for. When you pay for a meal at the starport you don't really care if you get a 50g hamburger patty or a 300g steak? The difference between mass-based and volume-based standards have greater disparity than that in many cases.

*Points to many discussions on economics, ergonomics, and other considerations that seem to have been left out when Traveller was designed.

Far Trader cargo/Freight manifest questions
Price-Fixed Travel
Making a Jump 2 freighter profitable (ie, go back to the first couple of pages in this thread)
Traveller Cargo Standards (This one I started)
Starship Economics, Book 2

To summarize: the value of usable space on the ship must be clearly defined, and the standard that evolved sometime after the original LBBs were published is the "(hydrogen) displacement ton" (dT). However, the use of dT to define ship components and systems is inconsistent at best, stupid at worst. (see above links for examples)

Commodities are not priced in dT but in more nebulously defined "tons" which sometimes conform to metric tons, other times to dT, but usually to neither. The pricing of cargo shipping was also not proportional to either metric tons or dT, but was scaled to the arbitrary measures of the original LBBs.

The economics can't be fixed while ignoring the proverbial elephant standing in the way.

 

[BetterThanLife]

To butcher an old Next Generation episode.

"You can carry twice your designed cargo mass. Provided they are canaries and you can keep half of them flying at all times then you are alright."

 

[aramis]

Straybow: The typical modern shipping unit for naval use is the "Container"; said containers are both a volume and weight limit (and despite varying container sizes, the ratio remains fairly proportional).

I see the 1Td (1.5x3x3m) 2Td (3x3x3m) and 4 Td (3x3x6m) containers as standards. A shipping ton is (IMTU, and derived from TNE sources and the specified dimension, per TTA) 13.5KL of goods , or 10Mg of goods, which ever weighs less.

Volume, by the way, is really the disposable commodity in realistic ship design, not mass. The problem is that traveller never reconciles mass and displacement until TNE (MT did mention them, but FF&S correlates them to performance).

CT Bk2 was a better design system than it's contemporaries had....
CT Bk5 was a more flexible system than bk2
MT was more realistic still than CT Bk5
TNE was even more realistic than MT.

But at this comes a price: playability.

Now, when we wrap our heads around the T&C systems of Traveller, we have, really 3 (Ignoring for the moment GT)
Bk2 was simple, and playable.
Bk7 was a tad bit less simple, and far less useful information
MT added details to Bk7.
TNE used MT's.
T4 used MT's

So the evolution stopped at MT. GT is a ground-up, for the most part unrelated, new system of resolving trade. (I found it too cumbersome to use in GURPS, let alone port to MT, but it is more relistic; it is a different set of assumptions, however.) And T20 drops back to Bk 2, then expands again in different directions from Bk7, but adds the innovations to make Bk 7 profitable for even J2.

Realistic T&C is difficult to do simply, and simple T&C is seldom going to be realistic.

The main Traveller simplification is that one follows the pre-modern purchase most cargos model, rather than the work for hire model of the 20th century.

If you accept that (the purchase model), then profitability is based upon being able to acquire sufficient lots at a good price. Bk7 does that. T20 does that. GT makes the Work for hire model work (by most accounts) well; it is a different assumption on the nature of trade in the 3I tho'.