Proto-Traveller

[Marchand]

I haven't put a whole lot of thought into it, but the same logic seems to apply: For a given volume of trade and passengers, you'd need more small ships than you'd need large ships.

Agreed. Even ignoring the fact large ships are off the table, my point is there a range of factors that can be adjusted to decrease the volume of trade and passengers so that the number of small ships needed is low.

There is no reason to assume a given volume of trade and passengers.

 

[Timerover51]

Just wondering, when did Classic LBB/Starter Edition/The Traveller Book Traveller turn into Proto-Traveller?

 

[mike wightman]

We started using the term about a decade ago to represent a setting put together using the original LBBs and the early adventures.

 

[rancke]

Agreed. Even ignoring the fact large ships are off the table, my point is there a range of factors that can be adjusted to decrease the volume of trade and passengers so that the number of small ships needed is low.

And if you adjust that range of factors then you get low numbers of small ships even in a big ship universe.

There is no reason to assume a given volume of trade and passengers.

There's every need to assume that if you're trying to counter the argument that everything else being equal, a small ship universe will have many more ships, because that's the assumption that the argument is predicated upon.

It's like you're trying to counter the argument that if a and b are both 5000 then a+b is 10,000 by arguing that if a and b are both 5 then a+b is 10.

You're arguing against a claim that no one has made.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Maximum ship size actually does have a definite effect on total trade volume, though.

True, but I understand that the effect is fairly small. So instead of getting four 5000T ships instead of a 20,000T ship, you get three. It's still more.

Besides, price is not the only determinant for demand.


Hans

 

[rancke]

The number of ships you can build in a small ship LBB1-3 based universe has three limiting factors:

class A starport.

number of hulls per year a class A port can build.

availability of exotic materials to make the jump drive.

According to the proto-Traveller rules there is no limit to the number of ships a class A port can build.

This also disposes of the third factor.

The proto-Traveller Imperium of the early adventures is most definitely a small ship universe, and one where the total number of ships is limited, probably due to the latter two points which are setting specific but never mentioned (there are no rules).

I think it's because no one at GDW had sat down and figured out how many ships a high-population world can afford.

If the limit really is the number of ships that can be built, they become precious resources and would never fall into the hands of wandering adventurers -- or any civilians. If, on the other hand, any Tom, Dick, and Eneri can show up at a starport, plunk down their money, and take delivery a couple of years later, then there is no significant limit to the number of ships that can be built.

Original proto-Traveller universes really are inherently self-contradictory.


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

It is more correct to say there is nothing to say if there is or isn't a limit.

The limited number of ships in the PTU setting suggests there is.

A high population world with no A class starport can build no ships. Similarly a high population world with no lanthanum deposits or zuchai crystals (insert unobtaininum of your choice here) can build no ships.

Rationalising a small ship verse with a limited number of ships is doable. You may not like the reasoning, but no one is forcing you to play or ref such a setting.

 

[rancke]

It is more correct to say there is nothing to say if there is or isn't a limit.

No, that's not true. Rules have ramifications for the setting. If those ramifications are contradictory, the setting becomes self-contradictory. That's basic logic.

The limited number of ships in the PTU setting suggests there is.

See my previous post for refutation of this.

A high population world with no A class starport can build no ships.

Or it choses not to. Perhaps it buys its ships from someone else.

Rationalising a small ship verse with a limited number of ships is doable.

Yes. And the way to do it is to reduce the average population. Which means you have to break the world generation rules.

You may not like the reasoning, but no one is forcing you to play or ref such a setting.

What does that have to do with anything? No one is forcing you to play or ref in the sort of setting I'm talking about here either. So what's your point?

You're doing an awful lot of jumping to conclusions. I'm engaging in the intellectual passtime of arguing about whether a proto-Traveller setting (using the proto-Traveller rules) can be self-consistent. That says absolutely nothing about my preferences for the sort of setting I enjoy playing in and reffing.

I've written up low-budget settings, you know. Would I do that if I didn't like that sort of settings? No, I would not. So can we drop the irrelevancies and get back to the discussion? Or, in case you don't like the discussion, will you let those of us who do enjoy it to get on with it in peace?


Hans

 

[salochin999]

Maximum ship size actually does have a definite effect on total trade volume, though.

Economy of scale means that a large cargo vessel will always have a lower operating cost per ton of cargo than a small cargo vessel - meaning that the large ship will charge less per ton for cargo if there is competition for the load, so trade costs will drop, which will increase trade volume.

So identical subsectors will automatically see a larger volume of trade in the "large-ship universe" than in the "small-ship universe".

On the margin yes but only if these larger freighters are full.

A vessel with a 10,000 ton cargo bay carrying 100 tons will have a very high operating cost per ton.

Having a lower base operating cost will encourage *more* cargo but if the difference is 110 tons of cargo instead of 100 tons then it won't be enough to make up for being mostly empty.

#

What you're effectively saying is larger freighters would have lower enough operating costs to increase volume of trade enough to keep the larger freighters full and therefore economic.

That may be the case on earth and by analogy it's probably true inside the systems but I don't think supply and demand works the usual way *between* systems because they are systems and not just single planets i.e. a world with no copper doesn't necessarily create an interstellar demand for copper if they can mine if from a moon in their own system.

#

I agree economies of scale would mean that the average size of merchant ship on each route would vary with the volume of trade on that route - the largest size that could reasonably guarantee being full would become the default size over time.

So yes if you're running a big ship universe and there's a route with a high enough volume then there's no reason the freighters couldn't go above the 5K limit on that route. The 1K to 5K thing is mostly a habit on my part.

I'll edit the original post to reflect that.

#

edit:

the circuits in my brain force me reluctantly on the side of a big ship universe logically but i want the actual game to mostly play as a small ship universe hence rigging MTU into being a hybrid of the two. sometimes i forget i'm *allowed* bigger ships hence the habitual use of 1K to 5K for freighters.

at least as far as merchant ships go you can easily make a reasonable case why half of each sub-sector is a small ship universe even if the other half of the sub-sector is a big ship universe. then you only need a reason for the navy to only use small ships in the small half of the sub-sector also and you have 20-ish systems per sub-sector for small ship adventures.

#

edit2

This is only necessary for people with a certain type of brain

 

[salochin999]

...

availability of exotic materials to make the jump drive.

...

As an aside that's one way to set up a Dumarest style universe with no empires. If jump capable ships are limited then orbital and in-system defenses can easily defeat invaders.

 

[aramis]

It is more correct to say there is nothing to say if there is or isn't a limit.

The limited number of ships in the PTU setting suggests there is.

A high population world with no A class starport can build no ships. Similarly a high population world with no lanthanum deposits or zuchai crystals (insert unobtaininum of your choice here) can build no ships.

Rationalising a small ship verse with a limited number of ships is doable. You may not like the reasoning, but no one is forcing you to play or ref such a setting.

The other ways to rationalize a small shipping tonnage universe include...

• Only a tiny fraction of people can tolerate J-Space travel
• Most worlds are culturally and or politically insular
• Some form of pacification virus makes most of humanity incapable of intellectual pursuits
• Post-collapse - people are unwilling to become dependent upon outside sources.

 

[Timerover51]

the circuits in my brain force me reluctantly on the side of a big ship universe logically but i want the actual game to mostly play as a small ship universe hence rigging MTU into being a hybrid of the two. sometimes i forget i'm *allowed* bigger ships hence the habitual use of 1K to 5K for freighters.

at least as far as merchant ships go you can easily make a reasonable case why half of each sub-sector is a small ship universe even if the other half of the sub-sector is a big ship universe. then you only need a reason for the navy to only use small ships in the small half of the sub-sector also and you have 20-ish systems per sub-sector for small ship adventures.

You appear to be thinking in terms of wet displacement tons with respect to cargo capacity, and not the volume of the Traveller Displacement Ton.

Assume that a 5,000 Traveller dTon freighter has 3,000 dTons of cargo volume to fill. Depending on how you load in terms of Mass Tons per dTon, you could be carrying anywhere from 15,000 mass tons to 37,500 mass tons of cargo, and not even exceed the average specific gravity of the cargo being that of Water. It you haul really dense cargo, pig iron goes about 5 cubic feet per ton, so 100 tons per Traveller dTon or 300,000 tons for 3,000 Traveller dTons. Wheat is 48 pounds per cubic foot in bulk, so you could easily carry 10 mass tons per Traveller dTon, or 30,000 tons of wheat for 3,000 Traveller dTons. Basically, what are you thinking of hauling.

By the way, ammunition generally runs about 40 cubic feet per ton, or 12.5 mass tons per Traveller dTon for 37,500 mass tons for a 3,000 dTon cargo hold or holds. That would be enough to keep a US World War 2 infantry division supplied for 37 days of combat.

 

[robject]

I think [the total number of ships in Proto-Traveller are small and few] because no one at GDW had sat down and figured out how many ships a high-population world can afford.

[As opposed to figuring out that a high TL Industrial world is quite capable of churning out oooodles of ships]

Of course the Proto-Traveller concept was surely built on the players' experience and the Age of Sail, rather than economic analyses.

And I think that's the right way to write a game: for all its hard Science Fact shell, Traveller has a nice gooey Science Fantasy soft center.

 

[rancke]

Of course the Proto-Traveller concept was surely built on the players' experience and the Age of Sail, rather than economic analyses.

But the Age of Sail comes with built-in self-consistency, because Real Life History. I don't know about your players, but mine would feel a strain on their suspension of disbelief if I told them that the Imperial Navy couldn't muster more than four 1250T patrol ships for the Regina Subsector and that Regina and Efate between them didn't seem able to supplement that.

(And so would I if I was a player -- I don't mean to blame it all on my players. )

And I think that's the right way to write a game: for all its hard Science Fact shell, Traveller has a nice gooey Science Fantasy soft center.

Science Fiction soft center. The science may be soft, but Science Fantasy tropes are not acceptable.

Me, I think the right way to write a game or a setting is to decide on the feel you want and then shape the rules to logically provide that.

For example, if you want a frontier, you maybe put in a few ultra-tech pop 8 worlds on the edge towards the civilized interior and then make sure the highish-tech worlds further out in the frontier have lowish populations and the highish-population worlds have lowish tech levels. No plopping down high-population ultra-tech worlds at random all over the frontier.

I'd also make sure the number of places that pirates can intercept merchants was way more than a couple per star system... :devil:


Hans

 

[aramis]

Science Fiction soft center. The science may be soft, but Science Fantasy tropes are not acceptable.

And yet, they're in the core rules of CT. Traveller is not now, and never has been, the game you seem to think it is.

 

[Marchand]

And if you adjust that range of factors then you get low numbers of small ships even in a big ship universe.



There's every need to assume that if you're trying to counter the argument that everything else being equal, a small ship universe will have many more ships, because that's the assumption that the argument is predicated upon.

It's like you're trying to counter the argument that if a and b are both 5000 then a+b is 10,000 by arguing that if a and b are both 5 then a+b is 10.

You're arguing against a claim that no one has made.


Hans

But I'm not trying to counter the argument that everything else equal, a small ship universe has more ships etc. In its own terms, it's clearly correct. It's just not a very interesting or useful observation, because everything else manifestly need not be equal.

Perhaps we should have split this off into a separate thread some time ago - I hope the OP hasn't run off in despair.

 

[rancke]

And yet, they're in the core rules of CT.

Science Fantasy tropes that are not also Science Fiction tropes? I don't think so.


Hans

 

[rancke]

But I'm not trying to counter the argument that everything else equal, a small ship universe has more ships etc. In its own terms, it's clearly correct. It's just not a very interesting or useful observation, because everything else manifestly need not be equal.

What's the point of comparing the two then?

I think it's a very useful observation, because it cuts both ways. If you make whatever changes you need to make the small ship universe work as you prefer, and then switch back to the big ship universe (keeping everything else as you have worked out (a.k.a. equal)), you get the same or a better result. The things that need not be equal does not depend on the maximum size of ships possible. Hence the concept that these differences are available for small ship universes but not for big ship universes is a fallacy, although an amazingly common one. Whatever the background, you can get the same, or rather a better, adventurer-friendly result in a big ship universe than in a small ship universe.

That doesn't mean you can't have backgrounds where the adventurer-friendly aspects are a tad low, whatever the size of ships.


Hans

 

[RandyB]

Science Fantasy tropes that are not also Science Fiction tropes? I don't think so.


Hans

I think that depends on how you, personally, classify psionics - Science Fiction (albeit of the softer variety), or Science Fantasy?

 

[rancke]

I think that depends on how you, personally, classify psionics - Science Fiction (albeit of the softer variety), or Science Fantasy?

I use the definition used by numerous SF authors. Psionics is definitely an SF trope, albeit one of the ones it shares with Fantasy.


Hans