CT Only: The overwhelming utility of grav vehicles

[Tobias]

I think at the point at which Striker stuff was being integrated into CT adventures and CT rule booklets, GDW pretty much decided it was CT enough to use as source material, but there's a difference between using it for source material and using it for rules. As you said, it was a miniatures combat game. A game master might mine it for some useful things, but in that context it was invisible.

Striker was the only source for new vehicles in CT other than a few mentioned in adventures. I actually did not have or use it when starting with CT (in fact, I was barely aware of its existence), but instead soon moved on to MT. But when playing CT it never occurred to me that the vehicles listed in Book 3 described the full spectrum of standard transportation. My friends and myself just naturally assumed that "flying cars" were the norm of high-tech worlds.

 

[mike wightman]

If you build Air/Rafts instead of roads ... how many km of roads do you NOT NEED TO BUILD in order to "pay for" all of the Air/Rafts?

Depends on if it is an african air/raft or a european air/raft.

More seriously the price of air/rafts is all over the place in the various editions, anywhere from 60,000 to 6,000,000 credits

That said the current number of motor vehicle worldwide (according to Elon Musk) is of the order of two billion, with a replacement rate of one hundred million new builds per year.

 

[Condottiere]

Road costs depend on how wide and how much weight they're expected to support.

I would suppose you could use a fusion gun to glass large sections.

 

[Carlobrand]

Here's some statistics for people to have fun with.

The cost for building a 2 lane road (in the US) currently runs $700,000 to 1.4 million per km.
The cost for building a multi-lane highway (in the US) is currently around $12 million per km.

Trick question.
If you build Air/Rafts instead of roads ... how many km of roads do you NOT NEED TO BUILD in order to "pay for" all of the Air/Rafts?



Even assuming that inflation since 1977 to 2024 results in a $1 then = $5 now (to keep the math simple for this example) ... that would mean that a Cr600,000 Air/Raft would "cost" the same amount as $3 million worth of roadway construction.

That's basically equivalent to 3-4 km of 2 lane road construction per Air/Raft ... of 0.25 km of multi-lane highway construction per Air/Raft.


Now think about how many km of road construction there is in any "medium size" urban area in a place like the US.
Call it 1000 km of highway and 10,000 km of 2 lane surface streets (just for simplicity).

The cost to build all of those roads is ... 1000*12,000,000 + 10,000*1,000,000 = 22,000,000,000
That's $22 billion dollars to build all of those roads, using my napkin math.

For $21 billion dollars ... and not needing to build ANY roads ... you can construct 7000 Air/Rafts instead. If those 7000 Air/Rafts are operated by a "ride sharing" service operating in that urban area ... ... do you see the picture that I'm sketching?



Point being, Air/Rafts CAN become ubiquitous ... even if most "normal middle class working people" do not own one as a daily commuter vehicle. All that needs to happen is that the community builds Air/Rafts instead of roads. The transportation step change cannibalizes the road infrastructure budget in favor of a gravitic lift budget.

Very true. I live off of a dirt road because the area's unincorporated and the few families here don't have enough money to maintain paving, much less pay the upfront cost. We pay for someone to come around every now and then with a bulldozer to deal with potholes and ruts and with gravel to keep it passable during rain.

Unstated though is the traffic that the road is expected to bear and the cost to maintain the road. An old study - 1994 - put usage at under 2000 vehicles per day. Average annual per lane-mile maintenance was $14,546 in 2020; highways cost substantially more but also saw more and heavier traffic. Highways are paid from a variety of tax sources, a lot of it from gas taxes. Bottom line is the cost of a road or freeway is distributed among a whole lot of people in different ways, and clearly they're affordable since we've got the things everywhere. If $3 million air/rafts were suddenly available (7000 air/rafts for $21 billion), private citizens would still be clamoring for road maintenance because we can't afford $3 million for an air/raft. We can't afford $300,000 for an air raft. We CAN afford $10-30,000 for a car along with the average $622 per person tax burden for maintaining the roads and highways, so those roads are going to keep being maintained unless they can get us more affordable grav vehicles or a better alternative, or unless it's a despotic government that doesn't care that our tax-generating capacity will drop to nothing if we aren't given an affordable means to get around.

Now, if that infrastructure WEREN'T there already - say we're a decent-size town, the only settlement so far on our comfy little world, and someone started up a mining concern a hundred kilometers off and wanted a road into town to get stuff to and from the starport - then the story might be different. $140 million for a 2-lane road might be more than we're willing or able to swallow and more than the new mining concern can pay for - not to mention we might have to import the machines and supplies and possibly the talent to build it - but a few million for grav vehicles to transport product every day might be affordable. We might even subsidize the purchase to help the new company get off the ground so we can have more jobs around here.

 

[Condottiere]

Could be a variant of hub and spoke.

Depends on the actual population density, but let's say ninety percent is frontier.

You have a township, where surrounding freeholds are loosely connected to.

The townships serve to cater to them, and where air/rafts make deliveries to, pick up cargo and/or passengers.

 

[kilemall]

Could be a variant of hub and spoke.

Depends on the actual population density, but let's say ninety percent is frontier.

You have a township, where surrounding freeholds are loosely connected to.

The townships serve to cater to them, and where air/rafts make deliveries to, pick up cargo and/or passengers.

Think Alaskan bush pilot model.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Air(/Raft) Taxi service.

 

[casquilho]

Air(/Raft) Taxi service.

Grav-Car drives by with a Lyft light in the back window.

 

[Condottiere]

I always thought it would be community property, or private enterprise.

 

[atpollard]

I always thought it would be community property, or private enterprise.

1 Grav Bus would replace 33 individual Grav Cars for intercity transport (anything that would have required a Highway) and transport up to 50 people. That just leaves LOCAL transportation to be worked out and most cities are car unfriendly already.

The classic 4dT air raft is the size of a U-haul truck, so smaller “taxis” would be needed anyway (which should be much less expensive). I think “ubiquitous” is obtainable, but private ownership (like a family car) would be the exception rather than the rule … like living in NYC today.

 

[Carlobrand]

1 Grav Bus would replace 33 individual Grav Cars for intercity transport (anything that would have required a Highway) and transport up to 50 people. That just leaves LOCAL transportation to be worked out and most cities are car unfriendly already.

The classic 4dT air raft is the size of a U-haul truck, so smaller “taxis” would be needed anyway (which should be much less expensive). I think “ubiquitous” is obtainable, but private ownership (like a family car) would be the exception rather than the rule … like living in NYC today.

I agree with that for several reasons:
1) Learning to pilot in three dimensions is harder than in two.
2) Individuals can be smart, but people as a class are stupid. Operations in three dimensions on a population-wide scale present opportunities for risky, negligent, and occasionally wantonly destructive behavior with damages at a level not previously seen. For that reason:
3) The government will insist on controlling the vehicles, either with a central traffic control computer or with individual bot brains coordinating with each other, likely both, so
4) If the government controls it, why bother to own it. You can contract with some entrepreneur to send you a vehicle when you call for it, or pay more to have it standing by at your home, and not have to worry about maintenance or repair. For that matter, you can order what you want online, have them send the vehicle to the seller to put it in the vehicle, then have the vehicle deliver it to you at home - or use drone delivery or some similar method; you don't even have to leave the house. You can work from home, get your needs delivered to your home, and take your entertainment at home other than those occasions when you just have to get out of the house, so for most people the need for transportation is sharply reduced and it's simply cheaper to order up a car on demand than to own one.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Could be a variant of hub and spoke.

Municipal bus service. (Doesn't need to be personally owners, after all.)

Or, what @Carlobrand just said.

 

[mike wightman]

I agree with that for several reasons:
1) Learning to pilot in three dimensions is harder than in two.

Can you fly a flight simulator on your PC? You can fly an air/raft.

2) Individuals can be smart, but people as a class are stupid. Operations in three dimensions on a population-wide scale present opportunities for risky, negligent, and occasionally wantonly destructive behavior with damages at a level not previously seen. For that reason:

Don't worry the autopilot has you covered.

3) The government will insist on controlling the vehicles, either with a central traffic control computer or with individual bot brains coordinating with each other, likely both, so

Regulate, not control. The future doesn't have to be a socialist authoritarian state.

4) If the government controls it, why bother to own it. You can contract with some entrepreneur to send you a vehicle when you call for it, or pay more to have it standing by at your home, and not have to worry about maintenance or repair. For that matter, you can order what you want online, have them send the vehicle to the seller to put it in the vehicle, then have the vehicle deliver it to you at home - or use drone delivery or some similar method; you don't even have to leave the house. You can work from home, get your needs delivered to your home, and take your entertainment at home other than those occasions when you just have to get out of the house, so for most people the need for transportation is sharply reduced and it's simply cheaper to order up a car on demand than to own one.

See the previous answer, I want my own car. I don't want to lease, I don't want to share. It is mine.
I live in a society where I am allowed to own my own stuff (at least for now).

 

[Krikkitone]

Ground Cars need Roads (unless ATV)
Grav Vehicles need ATCs and Lots of them in an urban area (and probably higher insurance/repair costs for accidents)

One other thing to consider is what the average income is. Perhaps 150,000 Cr Gave vehicles are ubiquitous on TL 13 worlds because the average income is 136,000 Cr. After all, higher TL worlds would be expected to have higher incomes because they regularly have high TL stuff…which is more expensive.

 

[Condottiere]

You can always put a gravitational module into a pickup.

Or wheelize your air/raft.

 

[Tobias]

I often try to defend, both to myself and others, CT against accusations of being too pedestrian and mostly being a mental playground for accountant types than an actual RPG, compared to something like MgT.

Discussions like this aren't exactly making that easy.

 

[atpollard]

I often try to defend, both to myself and others, CT against accusations of being too pedestrian and mostly being a mental playground for accountant types than an actual RPG, compared to something like MgT.

Discussions like this aren't exactly making that easy.

Here you go ... BACKWATER (CT PbP) ... a small group of Spacers are temporarily stranded on a backwater planet (TL 11; LL 7; Civil Service Bureaucracy) and decide to take a job advertised on the local news. A relay station at the Arctic Circle has gone off-line and needs to be repaired. The repair crew from the Corporation that owns it disappeared without a trace ... well, except for a large frozen blood stain on the tarmac. Given the -40C temperatures and Predator Megafauna, most arctic locals and all Corporate Repair crews refuse to go near the JOB. Given the offer of One Million Credits to the first independent contractor to repair the station and reestablish the Satellite Link, lots of "individuals" are racing to claim the prize.

Arctic, snowstorm, winter, mega-fauna, winner take all contest ... what could go wrong! That MCr 1 is just the nest egg to help buy a ship and get off this BACKWATER. All using CT Rule 68A and LBB2/S4 Characters.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Grav Vehicles need ATCs and Lots of them in an urban area (and probably higher insurance/repair costs for accidents)

LBB3.81, p21:
Most ground cars require a driver, although at higher tech levels the car will steer itself (and on highly civilized worlds driving under human control is illegal in cities).



Self-driving is a "less environmentally complex" problem for a grav vehicle than it is for a ground vehicle.

You aren't going to have "millions of air traffic controllers" needed with a mostly grav vehicle transportation network. The grav vehicles are all "high tech enough" to have computers piloting them autonomously through the skies. In urban zones, driving under manual control is illegal (unless you have a specific license to do so).

 

[Condottiere]

 

[whartung]

Self-driving is a "less environmentally complex" problem for a grav vehicle than it is for a ground vehicle.

Particularly if you're in an era where all of the vehicles are in a cooperative network, that is, without legacy vehicle having to be taken into consideration. For example, those drone shows - the drones know where everyone else is.