Size of the merchant fleet IYTU?

[atpollard]

Why is the Third Imperium so radically Free Market?

There are certainly few (and possibly none) real world industries that do not receive either direct or indirect government subsidies.

We seem to have far too much microeconomics data (like the game rules for constructing a single ship or filling the hold of a free trader) being used for macroeconomic purposes.

The list of unknown factors dwarfs the list of 'official data'.

Just one example, lower construction costs due to large production runs ...
A player is unlikely to need a very large number of identical ships delivered at a steady production rate, so the rules simply allow for a 10% reduction in cost for units after the first. In the real world, the cost savings would be something more like each doubling of the number of units would cost 95% as much as the previous batch of units.

So 1 ship costs 100% of base price.
2 ships cost 95% of base price.
3-4 ships cost 90% of base price.
5-8 ships cost 86% of base price.
9-16 ships cost 81% of base price.
17-32 ships cost 77% of base price.
33-64 ships cost 74% of base price.

So Al Morai would need to weigh the cost-benefit of building 53 J4 ships at 74% of base price versus [15 J4 ships at 81%, 15 J3 ships at 81%, 18 J2 ships at 77%, and 6 J1 ships at 86% of base price - includes 1 spare of each size.]

From canon, you know that unprofitable worlds subsidize ships to serve them ... so what subsidies does Al Morai receive? How many mail contracts? Contracts to supply Naval Bases and Scout Bases? SPA or sub sector government contracts to transport officials?

All of this falls beyond the scope of filling the hold of a free trader or fledgling merchant line (the typical PC scale that the rules reflect).

From the other side of the equation (using the speculative trade rules), a manufacturer of 10,000,000 credit per ton computers with a market 6 parsecs away can easily afford to pay far more than standard freight rates to get the goods to market and the cash back in the coffers. The opportunity costs of waiting 24 weeks (6 x J1 x 2 weeks x each way) from shipping to receipt of payment makes it profitable to purchase 4 J6 trips per year at a rate that would allow the J6 ship to operate between scheduled shipments at only the cost of crew, fuel and life support - the 4 computer shipments cover the mortgage and maintenance for the year, and the manufacturer still comes out ahead.

It can work if you want it to, or cannot work if you don't want it too. The difference falls outside the starship and trade rules for the game.

[EDIT: J4 ships on a J1 route is suspicious. It is just not as inconceivable as the trade and starship rules suggest.]

 

[robject]

The difference falls outside the starship and trade rules for the game.

QFT. That summarizes the situation nicely.

[...] what subsidies does Al Morai receive? How many mail contracts? Contracts to supply Naval Bases and Scout Bases? SPA or sub sector government contracts to transport officials?

All of this falls beyond the scope of filling the hold of a free trader or fledgling merchant line (the typical PC scale that the rules reflect).

That's one aspect of it. The role-playing pricing does not apply in these cases. There are other rules at work, and we can be sure that they are different. About these the starship trade rules do not inform us.

From the other side of the equation (using the speculative trade rules), a manufacturer of 10,000,000 credit per ton computers with a market 6 parsecs away can easily afford to pay far more than standard freight rates to get the goods to market and the cash back in the coffers.

And that is the other aspect. High-value cargo demands higher shipping costs and faster delivery. The role-playing rules list a few of these, but there are others. Mail and government or military contracts must also be a part of this.

 

[robject]

Han: "It's gonna cost you something extra. Ten thousand. All in advance."
Luke: "Ten thousand? We could almost buy our own ship for that."
Han: "But who's gonna fly it, kid? You?"
Luke: "You bet I could. I'm not such a bad pilot myself."

(Economics for Travellers, p.1)

Extrapolate outward from the subsidized merchant, subsidized liner, and the mail allocation.

Rule 1: It's very hard to break into the main route market.
Rule 2: When you can sell main route contracts, you're in the big time.
Rule 3: Anything attached to an main route contract is high value.

Government, military, and corporate travel and shipping buy "always available" blocks of staterooms and cargo space at contract rates, which may have 65% utilization. This is in addition to any 'business jet' starships these entities own and operate.

I would bet that the contract price for a corporate stateroom on a sector-wide or megacorporate liner/freighter is ten times High Passage -- call it MCr 5 per year. Similarly, I imagine the contract price per ton on cargo is Cr500,000 per year. In short, you pay a steep premium, and you'd better be shipping enough high value to compensate for, say, 65% utilization. No, you will not be shipping xboat pilots on these flights.

So the IISS might buy a contract with Al Morai for 2 staterooms and 10 tons of cargo outbound from Mora to Fornice, and the return flight as well. The cost: MCr 30 per year. Posit that Al Morai sells out 800 of its available staterooms in contracts like this, and it is guaranteed MCr 4000 per year.

It makes me wonder what the interstellar corporate-travel lifestyle is like. Do you spend months on board a starship, working in an office environment, where time lag is always measured in weeks? What would that job be like?

 

[aramis]

I would bet that the contract price for a corporate stateroom on a sector-wide or megacorporate liner/freighter is ten times High Passage -- call it MCr 5 per year. Similarly, I imagine the contract price per ton on cargo is Cr500,000 per year. In short, you pay a steep premium, and you'd better be shipping enough high value to compensate for, say, 65% utilization. No, you will not be shipping xboat pilots on these flights.

I find that rather incredulous - the prices of passage are already high enough that only TL 13-15 worlds will be having much tourism outbound - the price for a round trip is just too high. Even for TL 13-15, the average joe isn't going very far.

IMTU, the lines make their money by doing 3 jumps per month (9 day schedule) and having taken the standard design and multi-ship discounts, which reduces the #1 cost (monthly payment) by 19%. Such reductions can get the cost per cargo-ton down under Cr810/parsec for J4...

Note that the costs for a high passage include a fixed cost ranging from Cr3691-Cr4141/mo plus loss of 5.5 tons of cargo space... (monthly cost includes maintenance share, LS and payment share plus 1/8 of same for the steward, plus 1/8 of a steward's pay). Mids run Cr2913-Cr3125 plus loss of 4 tons cargo. (Low number is StdDesDisc + Multiple Build 10% discount; high is one-off ship).

 

[robject]

I find that rather incredulous [...]

Perhaps the word you are looking for is 'astronomical'?

I think that purely economic reasons are often the last decision made, after requirements frame the overall pricing.

The trade rules are broken when we scale beyond a player and his ship. Similarly, economics breaks when we scale beyond a player and his ship.

Many costs that large bulky organizations pay are incredulous. The rent my company pays for each 6x8 cube here is incredulous. I should be telecommuting from a trailer in Kansas.

It costs my family, oh, say $500 to drive to Phoenix (and back) for the holidays. It costs us, say, $2000 to fly there and back on the cheap tickets. We don't buy first class tickets -- for purely economic reasons. And that's the last decision we make in the process: we always fly, and we always fly on particular dates, which already set the price range high.

I think many seats the government buys might just be middle passage booked on a first-come, first-served manner at Cr8000. But I also prefer to think that "high-availability contract blocks of office staterooms" -- or whatever the requirements were that these astronomically huge budgets decided upon -- will cost Cr100,000, and that high-availability high-value contract cargo space will cost Cr10,000 per ton.

If you make ten million credits per year off of a particular executive, then why for the Sake of Great Strephon's Ghost wouldn't you put him in a Cr100,000 stateroom one week a year?

[...]the prices of passage are already high enough that only TL 13-15 worlds will be having much tourism outbound - the price for a round trip is just too high. Even for TL 13-15, the average joe isn't going very far.

Travellers are rare. The SWAG I came up with was 1 in 1,000,000. So a world with 7 billion people would have 7,000 Travellers per year.

 

[rancke]

Just one example, lower construction costs due to large production runs ...

A player is unlikely to need a very large number of identical ships delivered at a steady production rate, so the rules simply allow for a 10% reduction in cost for units after the first. In the real world, the cost savings would be something more like each doubling of the number of units would cost 95% as much as the previous batch of units.

I've heard it suggested that the extra 10% for the first ship represents the shipyard tooling up for a new design. Do you have Real Life examples that a reduction in cost for multiple units of the scale you're proposing apply to ships?

But even assuming your figures are correct...

So Al Morai would need to weigh the cost-benefit of building 53 J4 ships at 74% of base price versus [15 J4 ships at 81%, 15 J3 ships at 81%, 18 J2 ships at 77%, and 6 J1 ships at 86% of base price - includes 1 spare of each size.

Although the higher cost of a J4 ship does affect operating costs, it's the lower cargo/passenger capacity that is the real killer. If a J4 ship has half the capacity of a similar-sized J1 ship (it's something in that neighborhood), all the operating expenses are spread across half as many units, doubling the cost of transportation even before the increase in operating cost is taken into account. A difference in purchase price between 26% discount and 14% discount does not get anywhere near compensating for that, especially since the smaller discount is on cheaper ships in many cases.

From canon, you know that unprofitable worlds subsidize ships to serve them ... so what subsidies does Al Morai receive? How many mail contracts? Contracts to supply Naval Bases and Scout Bases? SPA or sub sector government contracts to transport officials?

What difference does it make? Whatever subsidies they get, they're still going to be better off using appropriate ship for each link.

All of this falls beyond the scope of filling the hold of a free trader or fledgling merchant line (the typical PC scale that the rules reflect).

The only rules involved are the ship design rules. The trade rules don't come into it at all. Indeed, the assumption is that regular companies (i.e. above the free trader and fledgeling company level) don't operate under the same conditions.


Hans

 

[Dragoner]

Large, high jump ships will also carry a huge military subsidy to be part of the merchant marine. Another reason why a corporation may have ships on incongruent routes, it is the dual purpose of the ship.

 

[robject]

By the way, it's good to get the discussion off of fiat, faith, or furlong currency, or whatever it's called. High altitudes are great for airplanes and warm bodily gases. Let's talk about things which are playable.

 

[aramis]

Perhaps the word you are looking for is 'astronomical'?

No, I used the exact term I meant. See meaning 2: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incredulous - synonym for incredible, which see meaning 1 of http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incredible : : too extraordinary and improbable to be believed <making incredible claims> - with all it's (extremely negative) connotations.

If they could routinely extract that much value, they already would be doing so. And subsidies are noteworthy on their own face, per the rules. And if it were worth doing, passage vouchers wouldn't be pay-upon-use, but would be restricted to major liners whose space was already paid for.

 

[MCEvans]

In A13 p21. Two points are made.

1. Not all subs are government sponsored some are megacorp sponsored.

2. Megacorps will build there own ships at there own yards

Soooooo

why can't Al Moria build and sub 'lesser' routes these would not be 'company' routes but would feed the larger ships, and Al Moria has two shipyards of its own to service ships why can't they be building also as this would cut the cost of contracting out the ship building.

I see the cost of ship building, in cannon, as contract cost for PCs not the cost of construction a megacorp has in there own yards for there own ships at lower prices. Lower construction costs make for lower operating costs and can make unprofitable runs a little more profitable but high profit runs more so. Does all of this make Al Moria profitable? Maybe? It seams to work for them.

Now I could be completely out of the ballpark but, just ideas.

 

[atpollard]

Greetings Hans,

I've heard it suggested that the extra 10% for the first ship represents the shipyard tooling up for a new design. Do you have Real Life examples that a reduction in cost for multiple units of the scale you're proposing apply to ships?

Ships I don't know about for sure, but it applies to military and commercial aircraft, helicopter engines, rocket engines (atlas, delta, STS), spacecraft (Orion CEV, Shuttle), and automobiles. It is one of those empirical rules - like Moore's Law - that just generally seems to be true. In practice, the larger the production run, the more it benefits from framing jigs and automation (mass production technology) ... which reduce the man hours per unit. The fixed costs (like engineering, prototyping, design development and testing) are also divided among more units.

In the real world, fewer than 10 units of a new design are dominated by the development costs and fewer than 3-5 units tend to be hand built as one-of-a-kind prototypes at 2-10 times normal (10 unit) production costs. At thousands of units, the development costs get lost in the decimal points ... but that is way too much 'realism' for a game.
[It does lend some credibility to the LBB2 discounts for very small 'standard' hull designs ... thousands of 100 ton hulls might roll off an assembly line, while each 800+ ton hull is hand made (because the next ship built at that yard will probably be a different size/configuration).]

Although the higher cost of a J4 ship does affect operating costs, it's the lower cargo/passenger capacity that is the real killer. If a J4 ship has half the capacity of a similar-sized J1 ship (it's something in that neighborhood), all the operating expenses are spread across half as many units, doubling the cost of transportation even before the increase in operating cost is taken into account. A difference in purchase price between 26% discount and 14% discount does not get anywhere near compensating for that, especially since the smaller discount is on cheaper ships in many cases.


What difference does it make? Whatever subsidies they get, they're still going to be better off using appropriate ship for each link.

If several J4 ships spend a year popping back and forth along a single J1 link, then you are probably correct.

However, there may be only 1 or 2 ports where all annual maintenance is done. In that case, most ships will spend a fair chunk of their working year just getting to and from maintenance ... especially at J1 with internal fuel tanks to cross the gaps. So what if each ship follows a 25 world travel schedule that places it at the maintenance yard in time for annual maintenance. The money lost on a J1 segment could be made up on a J4 segment. It is also possible that the J1 world offers a small subsidy to offset the loss (guaranteeing that the ship breaks even on a J1 run) to avoid being bypassed by the J3-J4 network.

I am not familiar with the specific ship design that this cannon company uses, but if I were designing it, I would take a look at installing J4 drives and configuring the cargo/fuel to allow a removable/foldable internal tank that would allow the ship to carry less fuel and more cargo on short runs. Granted, it will still be less efficient than a purpose built J1 ship, but it will close the gap a little and save a lot of time traveling 8 parsecs to and from annual maintenance (if it serves only the J1 link).

 

[McPerth]

While I understand not all jumps made by Al-Morai would be profitable, I guess the overall is, due to several factors:

- While it may seem to run at a loss (and probably is) to make a J1 with a J4 capable ship, if you try to make the whole route with the same ship (as for not having your passengers change ship at every port), you may well need this J4 capability even on J1 steps. Those multi jump trips without changing ship may well be worth a little more.

- Being such a large company, I guess most of its ships are already paid up, so the monthly payement may be forfeited. I guess Al-MOray may replace one or two ships per year (and retiring another as too old) and still having all of them paid and not too old, so forfeiting the main cost of a ship.

- While cannon doesn't tell it, maybe they have collapsible tanks that allow them to carry more freight/cargo per jump shorter than J4. This will give some extra profits for such jumps, making them a little less antieconomic.

- They will have storage and brokers at most planets, so cargo and freight just needs to be loaded/unloaded one in system, allowing for more jumps a year (as Aramis said said 3/month instead of 2/month) and buy/sell only when profitable

Actually, since more people can afford J1 trips than J2 trips than J3 trips than J4 trips...

I don't see why. Until MGT, canon says that if you can afford a J1 you can also afford a J6 (if you find such a merchant ship), as any jump costs KCr 10 (HiPsg). I know this has been (and I guess will be) discussed many times, but it's what canon says.

 

[rancke]

Ships I don't know about for sure, but it applies to military and commercial aircraft, helicopter engines, rocket engines (atlas, delta, STS), spacecraft (Orion CEV, Shuttle), and automobiles. It is one of those empirical rules - like Moore's Law - that just generally seems to be true.

That's good enough for me. Let's assume those figures are realistic, then. Now let's look at my main argument.

The Al Morai World class ship has the following listed characteristics:

3000 T
jump-4
1G
Cargo 1200
Passengers 30
3 40T shuttles

The price isn't listed, and I can't be bothered to reverse-engineer the design, but the major difference in cost is going to be the cost of the jump drive, and those are easy enough to calculate. Since cargo space and fuel space costs the same (nothing), any other difference would be due to different numbers of passenger and crew staterooms. I propose to ignore that.

53 jump4 drives with a 26% discount costs 53*MCr600*0.74 = MCr23,532.

15 Jump4 drives with a 19% discount costs15*MCr600*0.81 = MCr7290.
15 Jump3 drives with a 19% discount costs 15*MCr480*0.81 = MCr5832.
18 Jump2 drives with a 23% discount costs 18*MCr360*0.77 = MCr4989.6.
6 Jump1 drives with a 14% discount costs 6*MCr240*0.86 = MCr1238.4

Total for all 54 drives is 19,350, MCr4,182 less than the 53 Jump4 drives.

So the all-Jump4 fleet is not only very inefficient, it costs considerably more. That means greater operating costs for substantially less income.

However, there may be only 1 or 2 ports where all annual maintenance is done.

The writeup explicitly states that such is the case. Al Morai has a shipyard at Mora and another at Shirene and that they operate at full capacity, overhauling one ship every two weeks (Apparently the 53rd ship is out of luck).

It doesn't explain why the company bothers to complicate its sheduling problems massively in order to save a few megacredits. If there's one company that shouldn't have any trouble with maintenance, it's one where 49 out of the 51 worlds it services has shipyard facilities.

In that case, most ships will spend a fair chunk of their working year just getting to and from maintenance ... especially at J1 with internal fuel tanks to cross the gaps.

A jump-1 ship would never do that. It's far too wasteful. It would jump back and forth between the same two systems, skipping one trip per year in order to undergo maintenance at one of its termini.

So what if each ship follows a 25 world travel schedule that places it at the maintenance yard in time for annual maintenance.

You mean let its maintenance shedule dictate its revenue-earning ability instead of letting its revenue-earning ability dictate its maintenance shedule? How unbusinesslike.

The money lost on a J1 segment could be made up on a J4 segment. It is also possible that the J1 world offers a small subsidy to offset the loss (guaranteeing that the ship breaks even on a J1 run) to avoid being bypassed by the J3-J4 network.

That assumes that Al Morai ships are the only ones that ever visits these worlds (Aramis, Capon, Glisten, Icetina, Ivendo, L'oeul d'Dieu, Lunion, Overnale, Resten, and Shirene). It also overlooks that it would be much cheaper to subsidize a jump-1 ship.

I am not familiar with the specific ship design that this cannon company uses, but if I were designing it, I would take a look at installing J4 drives and configuring the cargo/fuel to allow a removable/foldable internal tank that would allow the ship to carry less fuel and more cargo on short runs.

Can't be done with collapsible tanks; fuel in collapsible tanks cannot be used directly to power jump drives. Can be done with demountable tanks, but requires time (I think it it two weeks) at a shipyard facilities wvery time the configuration is changed. It would be much more efficient to pay the shipyard to perform the maintenance during those two weeks.


Hans

 

[rancke]

While it may seem to run at a loss (and probably is) to make a J1 with a J4 capable ship, if you try to make the whole route with the same ship (as for not having your passengers change ship at every port), you may well need this J4 capability even on J1 steps. Those multi jump trips without changing ship may well be worth a little more.

It's quite true that IF there are enough passengers willing to pay for an extra jump and spend an extra ten days on a short jump raher than change to another ship and get to their destination faster and cheaper, then doing a J1 with a J4 ship may make sense. That a very big 'if', however.

- Being such a large company, I guess most of its ships are already paid up, so the monthly payement may be forfeited. I guess Al-MOray may replace one or two ships per year (and retiring another as too old) and still having all of them paid and not too old, so forfeiting the main cost of a ship.

The cost of those new ships are the equivalent of bank loans for companies big enough to be self-financing.

I don't see why. Until MGT, canon says that if you can afford a J1 you can also afford a J6 (if you find such a merchant ship), as any jump costs KCr 10 (HiPsg). I know this has been (and I guess will be) discussed many times, but it's what canon says.

MGT has changed canon on that? To what?

Be that as it may, sticking to canon is fine as long as it works. It's not so fine when it doesn't work. As you say, it's been debated elsewhere, so I won't explain why I think it doesn't work (I just deleted a long paragraph where I did just that ). Note that I'm not saying it doesn't work, after a fashion, for free traders run by PCs under the canonical trade rules. It does. But it doesn't work for the remaining 99.9% of the merchant trade. So I stick to true costs when speculating about regular merchant companies.


Hans

 

[McPerth]

It's quite true that IF there are enough passengers willing to pay for an extra jump and spend an extra ten days on a short jump raher than change to another ship and get to their destination faster and cheaper, then doing a J1 with a J4 ship may make sense. That a very big 'if', however.

If you must make a route of several jumps (let's say a total of 20 parsecs) that Al-Morai makes in 7 jumps, at 9 days per jump being about 10 weeks (allowing for some delays) without changing ship or you may change ship to avoid some lesser jumps (and rarely will make in les that 7 jumps anyway) at 14 days per jump, I guess there will be some people willing to pay a little extra.

MGT has changed canon on that? To what?

Yes. In MGT cost varies with jump number (both passengers and freight).

Be that as it may, sticking to canon is fine as long as it works. It's not so fine when it doesn't work. As you say, it's been debated elsewhere, so I won't explain why I think it doesn't work (I just deleted a long paragraph where I did just that ). Note that I'm not saying it doesn't work, after a fashion, for free traders run by PCs under the canonical trade rules. It does. But it doesn't work for the remaining 99.9% of the merchant trade. So I stick to true costs when speculating about regular merchant companies.

I guess part of the problem is (as someone said) trying to apply small trader rules to a large sized company. As you said, most of those rules work well for small ships like the ones players are likely to have.

So, once more, it seems rules make more game sense than common sense (but this is OK for me, as player or referee when role playing)

 

[atpollard]

Can be done with demountable tanks, but requires time (I think it it two weeks) at a shipyard facilities every time the configuration is changed. It would be much more efficient to pay the shipyard to perform the maintenance during those two weeks.

Hans

How very LBB2 of you.
The definition of Tech Level requires the TL of the starport to match the ship - and High Guard hammers those low TL PPs and fuel purifiers. Your J1 ship may have no choice but to find a TL14 shipyard for maintenence. While the sector in question seems well endowed with starports, the random generation tables make TL 14 worlds with class A or B starports somewhat hard to find [although by the rules, there may only be a hundered people living on the world ... so that eliminates that pesky reality that requires large cities to support shipbuilding].

One small note on your cost analysis - by not building one standard ship design, every component will suffer the increased cost, not just the drives. So you have underestimated the cost difference between the fleets. That said, you may still be correct that the savings do not justify the wasted capacity.

 

[rancke]

How very LBB2 of you.

Actually, I believe demountable and collapsible fuel tanks appear a good while after LBB2.

The definition of Tech Level requires the TL of the starport to match the ship

That's for building ships. The definition of starport class require class A and B starports to be able to provide maintenance for all ships. Doesn't mention tech level at all. Similar to how you don't need a Class A starport to provide maintenance for a jump drive; Class B is enough.

Your J1 ship may have no choice but to find a TL14 shipyard for maintenence. While the sector in question seems well endowed with starports, the random generation tables make TL 14 worlds with class A or B starports somewhat hard to find [although by the rules, there may only be a hundered people living on the world ... so that eliminates that pesky reality that requires large cities to support shipbuilding].

All rules are simplifications of reality and some times do not match reality well when yuo get out in the extremes. IMO a low-population world with a shipyard is a contradiction in terms.

One small note on your cost analysis - by not building one standard ship design, every component will suffer the increased cost, not just the drives.

By the (simplified) rules that is true. It might be slightly more realistic to assume that every component that is the exact same on the four different designs would benefit from economics of scale.

So you have underestimated the cost difference between the fleets. That said, you may still be correct that the savings do not justify the wasted capacity.

I think so. But feel free to reverse-engineer the design and make up J1, J2, and J3 versions and see if I'm wrong.


Hans

 

[Enoki]

All rules are simplifications of reality and some times do not match reality well when yuo get out in the extremes. IMO a low-population world with a shipyard is a contradiction in terms.

Unless the yard is heavily automated using robots and such. That is an alternate possibility.

 

[Dragoner]

Unless the yard is heavily automated using robots and such. That is an alternate possibility.

Either that, or there is another species of sophont there, not included in the pop. There can be a thousand reasons.

 

[aramis]

- Being such a large company, I guess most of its ships are already paid up, so the monthly payement may be forfeited. I guess Al-MOray may replace one or two ships per year (and retiring another as too old) and still having all of them paid and not too old, so forfeiting the main cost of a ship.

The monthly payment is anywhere from 40% to 70% of the total cost of operations of a given merchant vessel. Salaries, LS, and maintenance share are fully an order of magnitude less each; often, combined they amount to under 20% of the total cost. (Minimum payment % comes from multiple ships to a standard plan.)

The thing about that is, even if the ship is owned outright, you still need to amortize its replacement cost. And there we get into various unknowables... so the safest assumption is to presume it's not surviving more than double the financing period - that's generally the expectation for vehicles and other durable non-residences. Not to say that many don't outlive that - but you want the average lifespan, including the whole of σ-1 through σ+∞, past the finance lifespan, and preferably the everything from σ-2 upwards past the end of financing. We don't know the σ value, nor the overall lifespan... but TNE tends to support a σ=10-15 years assessment with a mean of 60-70 for duration baring violence...

So, at best, you're cutting payment in half. But, if that was the standard mode of operation of the megacorps, it would literally undercut the shipping market, as they'd do so routinely, and the company that could routinely do so would be hypercompetitive. They could cut costs, and WOULD cut costs, to be able to keep themselves full... until every route was doing so, or was bankrupt. (barring price-fixing, that is.)

- While cannon doesn't tell it, maybe they have collapsible tanks that allow them to carry more freight/cargo per jump shorter than J4. This will give some extra profits for such jumps, making them a little less antieconomic.

Pulling the extra tonnage won't do that much for the profit margins; it will just less than treble the difference.

Also, collapsible/foldable tanks can't be used for jump under CT (and I don't think so under MGT, either). Demountable hard tanks could... but then you need to leave the tanks behind.

A ship doing Jumps of Rating or Rating-1 doesn't hurt too badly; those J4 liners should be making nothing but J3 and J4 jumps; anything shorter just isn't worth it for a regular routing.