Starship Economics

[Bob Weaver]

I was just reading an essay over at Freelance Traveller (Great site, BTW) analyzing hull strength on super-large starships in TNE. Now that got me to thinking. How much raw material does it take to build a 300,000 ton battleship? (under whichever rules set you are using) And how much economic infrastructure is necessary to provide it? What does it take (materials, tools, equipment, skilled workers) to supply, fund and run that Class-A starport that's cranking out the ships?

Now, the economics of all this was probably glossed over when Traveller was invented as being irrelevant detail and not very adventurous stuff. But it seems to me that with some thought, there are lots of adventures/campaigns that could be based on such things.
For example, we are all familiar with Lanthanum, that canonical inner transition metal that makes Jump Drives possible. Doesn't that make locating and controlling available sources of lanthanum a priority for your planetary government? And haven't governments gone to war to control resources? Keeping lanthanum sources secret (or locating your enemie's) could be the basis for a lot of espionage adventures. Or, how well will your (or your enemies') shipyard function if the chief naval architect is kidnapped/killed?

So two questions, what is needed to run a shipyard, and how do you build adventures around it?

 

[TKalbfus]

Here is a link to web elements Lanthanum.Lanthanum
Lanthanum turns out to be a soft metal that oxidizes quickly when exposed to air. I don't know how rare this metal is. I didn't feel like filling out a form to get a quote from a supplier.

One thing I did notice about Traveller is that it's starships are extremely expensive. A far trader for instance costs almost Cr70,000,000. In order to start out adventurers in a Merchant campaign, the referee has to drop the equivalent of Cr70,000,000 on their laps, either as an inheritance, or as the unlikely receipient of a huge loan. Try borrowing $70,000,000 from your bank someday, not an easy feat. If a bank is going to lend you that amount of money, its a good bet that your worth at least several million dollars in the first place, and you'll need a good business plan to convince the bank that you'll be able to repay the loan.
I recently had my player's character's wandering the surface of a planet and discovering a crashed starship containing 14 metric tons of 10 kg platinum bars. (1400 bars all together) I had to modify the Air/Raft that came with the ship so it could carry 14 metric tons instead of 4 tons. Of course the starship has been there a while and is inhabited by dangerous creatures that must be dealt with first. The starship is on a low population world a long distance from civilization and the player characters arrived on foot, but that is one huge treasure to award beginning players don't you think?

 

[Whipsnade]

"So two questions, what is needed to run a shipyard, and how do you build adventures around it?"


Sir,

To answer your excellent questions in order:

One - Everything, including stuff you'd never imagine.

Two - Think 'nail' missions, i.e. for the want of a nail...

I've spent too much time involved in a variety of heavy industries, ranging from petrochemicals, to nucs, to ship building, to pipelines, to mining, to... well you get the picture. The amount of supplies, specialized or not, plus 'precursor' materials is mind boggling. The economic web of specialized items and materials that supply our modern world is damn near incomprehensible.

Take petroleum refining, pretty simple right? You heat crude in a tower and pull off various products at various heights, right? Wrong. There're natural (oolites) and man made resins used throughout the process and that's just the beginning. All the complications have been added with an eye towards getting the most products out of every barrel of oil pumped into that tower. Believe me, if that barrel of oil were a pig, they'd find a way to make a dozen somethings out of the squeal and a half dozen somethings out of the residue of the squeal.

Returning to your shipbuilding focus, no shipyard within the last few centuries has created everything it needed within the yard's confines. Even the yards along the Maine coast in the 1700s and 1800s that used all that local pine needed paints, tars, oakum, linens, glass, lead, and hundreds of other materials. Timber, pine oils, tars, turpentine, and the like were strategic materials from the Baltic that Napoleon tried to deny Britain in the early 1800s!

This supply stream simply became more pronounced as technology advanced. The old US Steel yards in Baltimore did have a steel mill attached to them, but steel was only one of a thousand materials needed and the steel mill needed plenty of precursor materials itself. Coal, ore, various refined elements and compounds used as steel additives, they all needed to be shipped in just to make the steel and we haven't even begun to figure out all the supply requirements for building the ships yet. Try and imagine how many welding rods would be needed!

Now add all the requirements of computer manufacturing, your starships are going to have lots of them, big and small.

When you start to add the 'needs' of the yard's workforce, the number and kinds of materials you need skyrocket. Look at a town of 10,000 inhabitants and imagine EVERYTHING they need every day just inside their homes. Then add all the materials they'll need on the job.

I don't know about you, but it sure gives me a headache!

When you need to plan some adventure, pick a material, resource, manufactured item, or skill(!) that could be in short supply. Strategic materials like lanthanum are a sure bet, but really anything can be the bottleneck the PCs are hired to clear.

How about a shipment of chromium that has gone astray? The stuff is needed to make tool steel, just a bit is required for each ton, but if you don't have it you don't have any tools.

How labor unrest at a polymer facility? (you wouldn't believe the intricate and specialized chem plants I've visited). Someone is riling up the workforce and all the material needed at the yard isn't being produced on time and launch dates are slipping as a result. What's the story and how can the PCs fix things?

Just pick something, anything, it's all completely plausible in a heavy industrial setting.


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[Father Fletch]

Larsen;
Well said.
In addition I would add since nanomolecular self-replication of 500,000-ton battleships looks like a non starter there is an even greater demand for multiple parents to birth a starship. If you read the Genie busters article above there is a speculative exercise in what it takes to reproduce a country or planet. The minimum size the author suggests is Japan, at 40+million sophonts. I would make a WAG that at least a Japan sized economy is needed to make even ONE starship. Even if J drive and M drive are possible, it will still take LOTS of people and tech to make a true Class A starport, or even a class B, possible.
I realize that this discussion is about ships but I want to digress for a moment.
I would have to say for a tech above TL 4 to be self sustainable would require a population rating of 7 or greater. Otherwise the local tech level represents some specialized goods locally produced, and the rest are imports, even if assembled on planet.
YMMV IYTU

 

[Whipsnade]

"Larsen; Well said."

Father Fletch,

Thank you, sir, and thank you for that link. I intend to fully explore it as soon as time permits.

"If you read the Genie busters article above there is a speculative exercise in what it takes to reproduce a country or planet. The minimum size the author suggests is Japan, at 40+million sophonts."

The minimum number of sophonts required to maintain a given tech level, along with a mature economy capable of producing the fulll range of goods at that tech level, has been a hotly debated topic for all of Our Olde Game's existence. Like you, I would peg the number required very much towards to high end; tens of millions. For whatever reasons, 'santa claus' machines do not exist in Traveller. All the necessary stuff needs to be built in some manner.

"I would have to say for a tech above TL 4 to be self sustainable would require a population rating of 7 or greater. Otherwise the local tech level represents some specialized goods locally produced, and the rest are imports, even if assembled on planet."

Given the canonical difficulties; primarily population and tech loss, all worlds had during the interruptions of interstellar trade in OTU history; the Long Night, Hard Times, Viral Era, etc., imports and trade to pay for those imports seems to be an important part of any world's economy. Only a very few systems, no matter what their population or tech level, seem to produce each and every thing their economies need.

This doesn't mean that they cannot produce the missing pieces of their economic puzzle. However, it does mean that they currently aren't producing every piece and are importing those pieces they do not produce.


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[BMonnery]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
Here is a link to web elements Lanthanum.Lanthanum
Lanthanum turns out to be a soft metal that oxidizes quickly when exposed to air. I don't know how rare this metal is. I didn't feel like filling out a form to get a quote from a supplier.

One thing I did notice about Traveller is that it's starships are extremely expensive. A far trader for instance costs almost Cr70,000,000. In order to start out adventurers in a Merchant campaign, the referee has to drop the equivalent of Cr70,000,000 on their laps, either as an inheritance, or as the unlikely receipient of a huge loan. Try borrowing $70,000,000 from your bank someday, not an easy feat. If a bank is going to lend you that amount of money, its a good bet that your worth at least several million dollars in the first place, and you'll need a good business plan to convince the bank that you'll be able to repay the loan.
I recently had my player's character's wandering the surface of a planet and discovering a crashed starship containing 14 metric tons of 10 kg platinum bars. (1400 bars all together) I had to modify the Air/Raft that came with the ship so it could carry 14 metric tons instead of 4 tons. Of course the starship has been there a while and is inhabited by dangerous creatures that must be dealt with first. The starship is on a low population world a long distance from civilization and the player characters arrived on foot, but that is one huge treasure to award beginning players don't you think?

It's about $2,500 per kg, or $2.5m per ton.

Since it's built into the hull in jump nodes (or somesuch) I expect you'll need quite a lot of it.

ISTR That 1/3rd of the drive is the capacitors for the jump drive, leaving 2/3rds for the jump nodes. Ignoring the fact that 1 dton = 14 cubic meters, and if they were real tons something like $15m of the price is the lanthanum.

Bryn

 

[TKalbfus]

I do like to have a space based Traveller campaign though. In Traveller Supplement 7 though The Empress Marave 200-ton Far Trader costs Cr66,175,000 to construct, it is not that large of a starship, it has a crew of 3 plus seven more staterooms for passengers. You need 20% or Cr13,235,00 down to get a starship loan for the rest and you need to pay Cr275,729 a month for 40 years. Expensive isn't it? There are 7 staterooms (4 tons each), and 4 low berths (0.5 tons each) and 61 tons for cargo. We have 91 tons out of the 200 ton ship available to generate revenue. Lets pay the crew of 3 Cr4,000 per month so we have a monthly cost of Cr287,729 divide by 91 tons equals Cr3,161 per ton. The starship owner should charge at least Cr12,647 for each passenger (to break even), he needs to find 7 paying passengers to fill all his staterooms for a total of Cr88,532, he needs to fill all 4 of his low berths (Cr1,580 each) for Cr6,322. The remaining 61 tons of cargo space needs to carry a cargo worth Cr192,821 just to make the monthly loan payment and pay the crew's salaries. Hopefull the starship owner can do better than this because these figures don't include starship maintenance or refined fuel, also the owner might like to earn a profit on this in addition. A Cr is worth $3 each so the Cr12,647 is more like $37,941 for standard passage in one of the staterooms on the far trader. For a profit at least $60,000 or Cr20,000 should be charged per passenger as there is no guarantee that all staterooms will be filled. A far trader can travel 4 parsecs in 1 month assuming 1 week for travel through jump space, a 1 week stay at a system, another 1 week jump, and another week at another system. This comes to about Cr10,000 per jump per passenger plus a cargo worth Cr200,000 per jump in order to run the ship profitably, remember thats like $600,000 to us or roughly the value of a brand new home in Westchester County, NY.

 

[sandman]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
This comes to about Cr10,000 per jump per passenger plus a cargo worth Cr200,000 per jump in order to run the ship profitably, remember thats like $600,000 to us or roughly the value of a brand new home in Westchester County, NY.

Or like the value of six brand new condo in Montréal (about 150K CAD/each, +- 105K USD)

Oy! those are PRICEY toys!. and unfortunately, there is *NO* way to be profitable by doing only legit trading. A Big cattle prod to push the players into many adventures!

 

[Smiling DM]

Originally posted by BMonnery:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
[qb] Here is a link to web elements Lanthanum.Lanthanum
Lanthanum turns out to be a soft metal that oxidizes quickly when exposed to air. I don't know how rare this metal is. I didn't feel like filling out a form to get a quote from a supplier.

It's about $2,500 per kg, or $2.5m per ton.

</font>[/QUOTE]Real life cost of lanthanum depends a lot on purity and quantity purchased. At 100's of kg, price is around $50-500 per kg (ranging from 96% pure lanthanum to 99.9% pure)

As I recall, there was a discussion of the cost of Lanthanum for jump grids about a year ago - went back and forth several times, with discussions of currency exchange as well as the true availability of lanthanum on Terra.

In the end, I think the consensus was that very high purity and highly processed lanthanum was needed, and extrapolating from the real world, turn out to be 1 Mcr per ton for use in trade.

Sorry, but this doesn't address how much you'd need for an actual jump-grid.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
A far trader can travel 4 parsecs in 1 month assuming 1 week for travel through jump space, a 1 week stay at a system, another 1 week jump, and another week at another system. This comes to about Cr10,000 per jump per passenger plus a cargo worth Cr200,000 per jump in order to run the ship profitably.

The solution is to cut down on the time spent in real space. Don't spend a week insystem for each week spent in jump. Hire a factor at each of two worlds lying 2 parsecs apart and schedule 35 jumps per year (Or make up a circuit of more than two worlds). You may even be able to make it 40 jump per year.

Hans

 

[TKalbfus]

True, but there's not much adventure to be had in Jump space. The player characters are going to want to make as many jumps as possible, while the referee is going to try to detain them in each system with an adventure or too. Unfortunately the very nature of jump space is that there is nothing to encounter out there. The only things there are too deal with are what the PCs brought with them.