Time to Travel from...

[Captain Midnight]

why would they make such journeys? surely there is no reason for any material good to be shipped such distances, and the only passengers who might have a need to spend half a year in transit would be dukes and archdukes, and perhaps imperial inspectors - and they would have their own transportation and would not use commercial passenger liners.

I agree, there's probably not enough call for "Made on Mora" products on Capital to justify anything besides the occasional shipment -- artworks, handcrafts, wines, that sort of thing. (I'm using that as an example, just because I know it's a long route and people will have heard of the endpoints.) It certainly wouldn't sustain trade, as the value of the entire shipments won't be high enough to allow for enough profit.

You might have ships that have regular routes that extend that far, but the vast majority of their cargo and passenger loads will be picked up or delivered to points along the route. Keeping to a schedule will become very important, and managing the presale of cargo space or passenger accommodations is going to get very dicey -- what if someone two stops earlier in the route booked all your available staterooms, and there's no place for the passengers who bought passage? There are solutions, some of them developed by present-day shippers, but they're not very neat or elegant. Much will depend on communication coming along the route, and determining what frequency other ships will be traveling the same route.

Transferring passengers and cargo from one ship to another is certainly possible, but it's a hassle for all involved. It's not so much of a hassle that you'd rather commit your ships to being on that route from start to end, but it's still not inconsequential. A particular shipper may handle goods or passengers, but it's doubtful that they would stay with a specific ship.

 

[pendragonman]

Why would they make such journies? Why did many European traders speculate on tea every year in the age of sail? Hitting it big and becoming rich, of course!

 

[flykiller]

Why would they make such journies? Why did many European traders speculate on tea every year in the age of sail? Hitting it big and becoming rich, of course!

the comparison doesn't map well.

1) it's hard to imagine any manufactured or agricultural good that's twenty parsecs away that isn't one or two parsecs away, or even on-planet.

2) clipper ships could be paid for in, what, five runs? I can't imagine a 400 dton trader carrying a cargo that will generate 20MCr profit in one run - that would be about 200,000 Cr / dton!

 

[aramis]

If planet A can produce left handed widgets for Cr 20, while locally on L they are produced for Cr 22, and you can shipp more than 500 per Td, a single jump wil make a profit.

If L can't make them for less than 100 apiece, ship then sell them for 50, and your Cr3K investment just jumps to Cr25000, for KCr23 profit, AND if you can supply them regularly enough to be absorbed by the economy as a reliable, it's better for most of the planet to import them... and you keep selling them for Cr50 until the local suppliers give up, then bring it up to about 90 to keep them from coming back in...

Now, if the shipping cost is KCr 10 instead of KCr1, but it's stil locally costing Cr100 per widget, those 500 per ton-cargo will still be shipping, since it's cheaper to import than to build.

The Tea analogy is quite apt. British grown tea is NOT the same flavor nor aroma as Indian tea, nor either as Alaskan tea... differences in soil, insolation, water, and local air contaminants do make subtle but taste-able differences in the end result tea. (Alaskan Wild Tea is NOT good to one accustomed to British blended Indian teas.)

Indian teas sold well because the teas there do not taste at all like the native teas in the areas being sold to, AND they appealed to the palates of the end consumer, AND the cost of growing an equivalent was prohibitively expensive... and six months shipping time didn't hurt it... so the investment could and did pay off in rather huge markups by the speculators who could afford to send a ship, buy silk, spices, or tea, and make it back. ANd about 2/3 of ships trying made it back with a profit, while about 1/9 didn't make it back at all... but a ship could pay off in one trip with a good load of fine teas and/or spices and arriving at the right time.

Heck, history shows many a company expected to pay off the investors in a ship in a single trip to china or india... and often did! Often quite handsomely.

 

[atpollard]

How many TL 15 worlds are there? (rhetorical question)

All TL 15 goods desired by any wealthy individual or corporation MUST be imported by every other world. Model 9 computers, high efficiency fusion reactors, neural chips, anti-aging drugs are all the "Silk and Tea" of the Imperium. A 1 million Cr per ton cargo can be shipped 100 jumps/parsecs for only 10% of the base cost and might sell for 200% of the base cost.

 

[flykiller]

If planet A can produce left handed widgets for Cr 20, while locally on L they are produced for Cr 22, and you can shipp more than 500 per Td, a single jump wil make a profit.

I understand the principle, and I can see it being applied planet-side or across one or two parsecs. But not twenty, and certainly not across an entire sector.

The Tea analogy is quite apt. British grown tea is NOT the same flavor nor aroma as Indian tea, nor either as Alaskan tea....

understood, and agree. but given modern scientific agriculture and modern communications and tech 9+, I can't see that same situation exisiting across multiple parsecs.

Heck, history shows many a company expected to pay off the investors in a ship in a single trip to china or india... and often did! Often quite handsomely.

I don't think the economies scale the same. any cargo that will fit in a 400 dton fat trader's hull that is worth as much as the fat trader would be one mightily impressive cargo. 500,000 Cr/dton to the _ship_? before the investors get their cut? drugs maybe, or the lastest star-boyz album. but nothing on any kind of regular basis. with that kind of money involved you can bet that entire planets will be trying to duplicate the effort, and certainly they will succeed. at the very least any system passed-through will want its tax cut just like the robber barons of old - anybody thought of that?

on the other hand, it would make a great way for players to obtain their ships free and clear. and the adventure involved - getting that kind of cargo, keeping that kind of cargo, delivering that kind of cargo - hey, maybe that's why cargo ships in civilized areas are armed! lot of action for the ship's security officer.

 

[aramis]

having had, in t20, cargo loads that exceeded the value of the Type R in base value... multiple high value lots.

It can happen in T20.

 

[flykiller]

All TL 15 goods desired by any wealthy individual or corporation MUST be imported by every other world. Model 9 computers, high efficiency fusion reactors ....

true, but that's a low-volume by-arrangement trade. most importing worlds won't be able to afford more than a few, and likely the buyer or seller would ship it themselves, not hand it off to a third party in hopes that it would arrive and not disappear ....

... neural chips, anti-aging drugs are all the "Silk and Tea" of the Imperium.

... now those are good possibilities.

anti-aging drugs and similars from Rhylanor to Junidy, Louzy, and Rethe might make such a system work.

and there's the support, basis, and reason for piracy. the recipients won't care where the drugs came from, just so long as they arrive.

(smile) might even be a lot of cross-border smuggling to the zho's ....

 

[rancke]

2) clipper ships could be paid for in, what, five runs? I can't imagine a 400 dton trader carrying a cargo that will generate 20MCr profit in one run - that would be about 200,000 Cr / dton!

That's probably why Traveller starships are financed over 40 years. That's 1400 trips over which to make the necessary profit ((Yes, I calculate with 35 jumps per year for non-tramp freighters and liners).


Hans

 

[deniable]

I finally got my routing tool to work. These may be sub-optimal and I haven't accounted for fuel availability but I get the following number of jumps for jump 2/4/6:

Vland -> Capitol 31/15/10
Capitol -> Terra 72/33/26

As for Terra -> Vland at J2, I'm getting about 94 jumps. Given fuel availability and the need to locate annual maintenance GT:IW may not be far off the mark.

 

[aramis]

Under Bk 2, several of the cargos have base values in the MCr1 per ton range, and up to 10 tons. Acquire a few cheap (KCr300 or so) and sell at MCr 1+, and you're making SCADS of money... up to MCr3 per ton on a lucky sale. Given a fat trader is about MCr50-70 (edition dependent), and the possibility of having 10 tons of comuters at MCr10/td... it's quite possible to have a 10 ton lot worth more than the ship.