Trade is too expensive.

[Spinward Flow]

Then they can takes their stacks of millions and buy High Passage tickets, let someone else worry about maintenance and staffing.

That's what the Travellers' Aid Society is explicitly FOR.
If you're budget conscious but still want to travel (a lot), the cheaper option is a TAS membership ... rather than buying/owning/operating a starship.

The price for a TAS membership (MCr1, don't get blackballed) is still somewhat steep, but even if you sell off the high passage tickets (at Cr9000 each) after receiving them it will only take (1000/9=111.11) 112 months (8 years, 8 months imperial calendar) to recoup the cost of your membership fee. In other words, TAS membership is a FANTASTIC DEAL for anyone with the Traveller Gene who still worries about money and profits.

In fact, I would even go so far as to say that one of the most profitable paths towards being a merchant prince would be through a TAS membership as a mustering out benefit leading into being a "part time Traveller merchant" during a portion of each year!

Think of it this way.
There are 13 months per Imperial year (since the months are 28 days each, not 30 days, as 4 weeks of 7 days).
That means 13 high passage tickets per year.

There are 52 weeks per year.
Starships jumping on a 2 week cycle cadence will jump approximately 25 times per year (with the last 2 weeks being down for annual overhaul maintenance).
So, basically, those 13 high passage tickets per year grant you "free passage" on half the jumps that could be expected during any given year.

With TAS membership, you can basically spend 1 week per month in jump space and the rest of your time vacationing while wheeling and dealing for speculative cargo opportunities before moving on to the next system.

With TAS membership, you can "take a year off" to stockpile 13 high passage tickets in reserve and then spend the next year spending down 1 high passage per 2 weeks looking for speculative cargoes to flip where all you need to pay is cargo space transportation costs for an entire year. The only upkeep you need to pay for is going to be hotel and food when not aboard ship.

TAS membership is the "gateway" to earning megacredits in just a few short years without needing to own/crew/maintain/sustain a starship, because the starships are just "transport" for you, as opposed to being something that "controls your business" per se. It's the merchant prince equivalent to hitchhiking.
What a deal!

 

[Grav_Moped]

Being the Captain of a trader is a fundamental trope of the game, as much as, or more so, than any of the others. The "trader campaign" is one of the "What makes Traveller". Don't see much about grabbing cargoes, loading camels and trudging across the deserts in search of fortune in D&D folklore. Not counting equipment descriptions, there's more rules on economics and trading than there is on combat in the LBB.

This.
"All this science I don't understand -- it's just my job, eight days a week."

Traveller lets you do that: hauling cargo in your starship is a job that you can do, rather than being something about the character that's just there to put him/her in a spaceship and set up the plot. I mean, it could just be that -- but Traveller provides the option of it being a lot more than that.

(This isn't to say the trade rules aren't flawed, but they're there and they work within their intended scope.)

 

[Straybow]

Modern commercial ships are built for $4k-10k per register ton, while jet aircraft are $500k-1M per register ton. Traveller puts starship construction costs on par with airframes rather than being comparable to surface ships.

Aircraft and spacecraft at this tech level are built of expensive high-strength low-density materials. Reducing mass is paramount. Trav ships are built of thick (super advanced) steel more like surface ships, or of titanium. Trav ships can be armored, for which great mass is paramount. Shift construction cost complete ship (apart from small craft) to the kCr50-100 per Td range. At 5 reg tons per Td and $4 per Cr, that's about 10x civilian wet ship cost.

For comparison, the USS Ford cost somewhere around $25k/ton (not including cost of aircraft). Trav starships would be 2x-3x per ton.

 

[Dragoner]

When I went back to school to get a degree in business ten years ago, I remember sitting in one of the graduate level macro econ classes, and a woman sat besides me and opened her text, and paled: "It's full of math!" I replied, "Yes, it's like physics." Meaning it has a lot of it's own equations, to which she responded, "I've never had physics ..."

The book says that normal hard work won't get you by, players have to carry out bold plans for the acquisition of wealth and power. They better get at it too, if the bank don't get ya, the space pirates will.

 

[Condottiere]

In theory, you could have a zeppelin configuration.

Steel frame, or aluminum if weight is still an issue, covered by a fuel bladder.

Drives attached.

 

[whartung]

The book says that normal hard work won't get you by, players have to carry out bold plans for the acquisition of wealth and power.

Well, that's the thing.

What is power in Traveller? Arguably, it's Social Standing if you can get in to the nobility. Otherwise it's wealth.

By the time someone has enough wealth to start trading, they have to give it all up to buy the ship and start trading, with a very high chance of failing, and thus losing said wealth and power.

Perhaps there's 3 classes of people. The poor ("poor"). Lower and middle class people. Then there's the "rich", but powerless. They have enough money to buy most anything they want. I guess we're talking middle class "rich". They can buy most any house they want, any car or toy they want. And they can do it with little concern as to that impact on their future stability and security. But they don't have power. They have material freedom. Freedom from hunger, material need, etc. Outside of larger political donations, not so much power as the really, powerful rich.

In order to transcend in to the powerful rich, perhaps they'll risk their entire fortune on buying a ship and playing cargo lotto, hoping to hit it big. Big enough to sustain a trading career. Because that's how it plays out. Windfalls followed by precipitous declines, and to survive you need enough capital to survive those declines. But if you can, the more you can accumulate, the steeper and longer the declines have to be until you've "beaten the odds" and can rocket your way to profits.

Is that your view of the scruffy trader captain? Someone looking for "more than they need(tm)" wealth and power? Or is it more a hardscrabble crew, struggling hand to mouth, jump to jump, living on the edge, cutting corners, hoping for a payday?

It's hard to imagine someone successful (by many measures) effectively giving up everything and going back to the land, on the remote hope that they'll break through.

In truth, perhaps it's not that much of a gamble. Assuming they don't get killed, they should still have the equity in their ship from the down payment that they can partially recover if worse comes to worse. They just need to sell the ship off for more than they owe the bank, and recover any excess. Perhaps after they hit 500K in the bank, they may see the writing on the wall and start trying to sell the ship, and hopefully recover half their investment.

The problem there is that in the 6 months to a year that most of the enterprises fail within, they don't have that much paid off on the ship. Now it depends on how hard they depreciate.

But, all told, the whole enterprise is effectively inaccessible to the vast bulk of the population. Price of entry is still very high.

 

[Spinward Flow]

But, all told, the whole enterprise is effectively inaccessible to the vast bulk of the population. Price of entry is still very high.

As it should be ...

 

[Grav_Moped]

In theory, you could have a zeppelin configuration.

You need radiation shielding.

For that, since mass isn't an issue, they'd probably use lead.

 

[Dragoner]

Well, that's the thing.

What is power in Traveller? Arguably, it's Social Standing if you can get in to the nobility. Otherwise it's wealth.

By the time someone has enough wealth to start trading, they have to give it all up to buy the ship and start trading, with a very high chance of failing, and thus losing said wealth and power.

Perhaps there's 3 classes of people. The poor ("poor"). Lower and middle class people. Then there's the "rich", but powerless. They have enough money to buy most anything they want. I guess we're talking middle class "rich". They can buy most any house they want, any car or toy they want. And they can do it with little concern as to that impact on their future stability and security. But they don't have power. They have material freedom. Freedom from hunger, material need, etc. Outside of larger political donations, not so much power as the really, powerful rich.

In order to transcend in to the powerful rich, perhaps they'll risk their entire fortune on buying a ship and playing cargo lotto, hoping to hit it big. Big enough to sustain a trading career. Because that's how it plays out. Windfalls followed by precipitous declines, and to survive you need enough capital to survive those declines. But if you can, the more you can accumulate, the steeper and longer the declines have to be until you've "beaten the odds" and can rocket your way to profits.

Is that your view of the scruffy trader captain? Someone looking for "more than they need(tm)" wealth and power? Or is it more a hardscrabble crew, struggling hand to mouth, jump to jump, living on the edge, cutting corners, hoping for a payday?

It's hard to imagine someone successful (by many measures) effectively giving up everything and going back to the land, on the remote hope that they'll break through.

In truth, perhaps it's not that much of a gamble. Assuming they don't get killed, they should still have the equity in their ship from the down payment that they can partially recover if worse comes to worse. They just need to sell the ship off for more than they owe the bank, and recover any excess. Perhaps after they hit 500K in the bank, they may see the writing on the wall and start trying to sell the ship, and hopefully recover half their investment.

The problem there is that in the 6 months to a year that most of the enterprises fail within, they don't have that much paid off on the ship. Now it depends on how hard they depreciate.

But, all told, the whole enterprise is effectively inaccessible to the vast bulk of the population. Price of entry is still very high.

All of what you say is true, I am only quoting from page 48 of LBB3: The typical methods used in life by 20th century Terrans (thrift, dedication, and hard work) do not work in Traveller; instead, travellers must boldly plan and execute daring schemes for the acquisition of wealth and power.

So one would say that the system is working as it was designed to? That the PC's have to go on adventures or go broke. Though if one merely wanted to mirror reality, most of the wealthy are simply born into it. Which granted, does not make for much of a game. Though if one wants a more realistic economics, I did write up a base system in my setting, except going back to the physics example, there is a frame of reference. I think that there could be a lot of competing systems, even large countries here on Earth are broken up into economic zones, generally formed around urban areas. So say the planets do similar, they are going to expand, and dominate a little space, a few jump numbers away, and that is being super lenient, because I have a feeling looking at gross transportation weights, that almost all interstellar trade in incidental.

 

[vegas]

But, all told, the whole enterprise is effectively inaccessible to the vast bulk of the population. Price of entry is still very high.

I agree. The cost of entry into interstellar trade is unrealistically high for the kinds of characters we imagine engaging in it. And someone who could afford it, wouldn't do it.

So how do we tell a story that makes sense given this? Let me offer my take on this problem by making a couple more economic observations: one from the rules and the other from history.

First, from the rules, the return on capital is VERY low, with a risk free rate near or below zero. We know this because risky debt capital backed by a starship that can skip, take incredibly expensive damage in combat, or just plain lose money on operations is only 5%. Back in the real world, a far safer real estate debt costs more than 5% except when the risk free rate is at or below zero. Clearly it is very difficult for capital holders to get positive returns on capital in the Traveller far future if they take 5% on such risky debt.

Then, the second observation from history... actually I'll interrupt myself and quote you again

I have no idea how much a ship cost in the past, but they weren't owned by the Captain. Ships were owned by companies with shareholders that hired captains and crews.

There were hired crews, but in the Age of Sail and earlier the Captain was also an entrepreneur who earned a share of the profits greater than their capital contribution as "carried interest", typically 20% of the profit of the vessel.

While the CT rules only talk about debt payments a ship needs to make, let's add those other two ideas too. If rates of return on capital are very low causing there to be equity investors willing to make risky investments for fairly low returns (but above 5% that debt gets) but to get that chance they incentivize the operators with a share of the profit (not just wages). Now we can make sense of how the middle-class-and-lower scoundrels in space we imagine got there. They are using other people's money to get access to a ship for the the chance to get rich. These off-screen partners can also serve as patrons, provide additional capital if vessel needs investment, but make demands too, especially if the financial statements haven't looked great lately...

 

[Spinward Flow]

I'm still of the opinion that external cargo loading (jump tug/maneuver tug) is the "secret sauce" needed to make ends meet on the profitability of trade.

A Type-S Scout/Courier that can only carry up to 3 tons in an internal cargo hold at Jump-2 can carry 100 tons externally plus those same 3 tons internally with what amounts to a "slung load" outside the ship through a Jump-1 (no jump-2 with external loading on this ship class).

Being able to go from 3 tons of cargo transport capacity @ Jump-2 over to a 100+3 tons of cargo capacity @ Jump-1 can make a tremendous difference in a ship's profit potential. After all ... 100 tons of cargo transport per Jump-1 for 25 jumps per year (taking 2 weeks off for annual overhaul maintenance) is a cool MCr2.5 per year just in transport revenues. Limit the external cargo load option to Major Cargo Only and suddenly there is plenty of cash flow to take care of the bills, even with bank financing on the line.

Note that external "jump tug" loading is not available as an option on a Jump-1 ship. You need to have Jump-2+ in order to externally load up and still be able to jump.

I just finished up a test case of a TL=11-12 300 ton design (yet another 5G Courier type because I like to outrun Corsairs and Type-T Patrols) that has either J2 or J3 under LBB5.80 depending on tech level.

• The TL=11 J2 design has a 2+2 parsec range, 65 tons of internal cargo capacity plus 150 tons of external capacity @ J1.
• The TL=12 J3 design has a 3+1 parsec range, 35 tons of internal cargo capacity plus 100 tons of external capacity @ J2 and 300 tons of external capacity @ J1.

So in terms of cargo capacity (and thus, revenue potential) the balance looks like this for interstellar trading potential:

• TL=11 (internal+external)
  • J2=65+0=65 @ 5G
  • J1=65+150=215 @ 3G
• TL=12 (internal+external)
  • J3=35+0=35 @ 5G
  • J2=35+100=135 @ 3G
  • J1=35+300=335 @ 2G

Now, the usual way we would look at and calculate these things is purely and exclusively on the basis of internal cargo capacity only (because it's easy and it's simple and it's "always been done that way") but look at the excess "towing capacity" available with larger drives than what is "strictly needed" (per se). A 300 ton J1 ship would find it difficult to achieve a 215 ton internal only cargo fraction (and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be able to achieve a 335 ton internal only cargo fraction) ... and yet when built as a "jump tug" (with a 5G maneuver drive so it can "maneuver tug" too!) a 300 ton starship can haul 3.3x to 9.5x its internal only cargo capacity @ Jump-1.

In other words, oversized drives for "pulling external loads" through jump space can pretty obviously be seen to increase potential cargo capacity rather dramatically (and with that increase, the potential for profit margins that can satisfy creditors/accounting department bean counters).



I therefore submit to these forums the notion that low internal/high external cargo capacity for "jump tug" operations is the niche market that higher jump capacity starships ought to be angling towards serving, because it means that the ships get "rewarded" for investing in more powerful drives, rather than penalized due to increased construction and crew costs combined with the reduction to internal cargo fraction as a result of choosing larger drives than are "strictly necessary" (per se) for every jump.

Being able to "flex" your cargo capacity depending on how far you need to jump in order to reach your next destination adds an entirely new dimension of potential and complexity to the spreadsheet analysis of different competing starship designs intended to be used as ACS traders.



Oh and I'll post the designs in The Fleet forum once I've finished wringing them out for every last fraction of a ton and credit cost that I can.

 

[Straybow]

Except the idea is that the hull is necessary for the jump field to "contain" everything. The jump field can't envelop a huge pile of junk strapped to the outside. Hmmm, maybe if you add a new hull configuration, called "donut" configuration, that has a large empty area surrounded by regular hull. Nah, dumb idea.

Why don't you just propose cutting jump fuel in half, a la GURPS? That would accomplish the same thing but to a less extreme extent. That Type S would gain 20 tons of cargo space. Cut bridge size down to 2% (10 minimum), and ships under 1000 gain a few more tons to reassign.

 

[Condottiere]

1. Depends on edition; you could always drape the jump net over the exterior cargo pods.

2. Radiation effects could be neutralized with fabric designed to do so, or maybe an onboard nuclear damper.

3. Outside of megatonne freighters, there are probably a number of sweetspots that minimalizes costs and maximizes capabilities; again. this depends on edition, but I think I'll have a more comprehensive go at it at the lower end.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Except the idea is that the hull is necessary for the jump field to "contain" everything. The jump field can't envelop a huge pile of junk strapped to the outside.

LBB S9, p23:

The previous page ... LBB S9, p22 ... details the Jump Ship.
It even has multiple external pods that can be attached to it for jump tug operations, including:
Cargo Pod (1000 tons displacement, 950 ton internal cargo capacity)
Passenger Pod (1000 tons displacement, 225 passenger staterooms)
Low Pod (1000 tons displacement, 1900 low berths)

Comments: The jump ship is designed to provide maximum flexibility in interstellar transportation. As built, it is capable of jump-6 and 1-G. Special field cables attached to the rear of the ship extend the ship's jump field to include this additional cargo. Alterations in displacement will affect the size of the jump itself, but the amount of cargo carried can be varied to fit the needs.

Capabilities: For each 1,000 tons of cargo carried in the mesh cables behind the ship, jump is decreased by one. Thus, if the 5,000-ton ship carries 1,000 tons behind it, it can only perform jump-5. If it carries 5,000 tons behind it, it can only perform jump-1. In all cases, the internal fuel tankage of the ship (3,300 tons) is sufficient to support the jump.

Jump Pods: The jump ship can transport valuable raw ores, planetoid chunks, and other materials directly in its jump mesh. Only durable goods can be carried in this manner because they are exposed directly to the vacuum of space.

---

---

Except the idea is that the hull is necessary for the jump field to "contain" everything. The jump field can't envelop a huge pile of junk strapped to the outside.

Except ... it CAN.
You just need a jump mesh of cables to extend the field beyond the confines of the hull.

Jump Drive

Jump Bubble
A Jump Bubble creates a spherical, or egg-shaped oblate spheroid, field around the ship and centered on the jump drive. Jump Bubble is the standard for generating a Jump Field; it does not interfere with armor and produces a standard jump flash. Jump Bubble allows a ship to vary its effective tonnage from mission to mission (which makes Drop Tanks and Variable Jump Container Ships possible).

---

---

1. Depends on edition; you could always drape the jump net over the exterior cargo pods.

It was done in CT in LBB S9, p22-23 ... so I'm thinking I have precedent on my side.

Of course, the math used for the Jump Ship's range reduction as external loading was added makes no sense as written (it doesn't "flow through" the LBB5.80 jump drive % formulas properly) but there you go.

 

[whartung]

There were hired crews, but in the Age of Sail and earlier the Captain was also an entrepreneur who earned a share of the profits greater than their capital contribution as "carried interest", typically 20% of the profit of the vessel.

While the CT rules only talk about debt payments a ship needs to make, let's add those other two ideas too. If rates of return on capital are very low causing there to be equity investors willing to make risky investments for fairly low returns (but above 5% that debt gets) but to get that chance they incentivize the operators with a share of the profit (not just wages). Now we can make sense of how the middle-class-and-lower scoundrels in space we imagine got there. They are using other people's money to get access to a ship for the the chance to get rich. These off-screen partners can also serve as patrons, provide additional capital if vessel needs investment, but make demands too, especially if the financial statements haven't looked great lately...

Yea, this is essentially what seems to happen with the crab boats in Alaska. Many of the Captains are not owner operators, they're hired by owners and get a share of the catch, just like the crew does.

Private ownership to contract crews seems to be the way forward. If you have an owner that's open to risk, then you can have a more "adventuring" Captain and crew. Otherwise, it could be much like the subsidized ships -- set route, safe areas, perhaps a policy on cargo types. "No radioactives, last time we did that they leaked and it took 3 months to decontaminate the ship -- plus that mutant crew member wreaking havoc."

 

[McPerth]

The cost of entry into interstellar trade is unrealistically high for the kinds of characters we imagine engaging in it.

Despite it may be too high for our characters (and so not game wise), I would not use the term "unrealistically", as Iguess it's one of the more realistic parts of the trade game in Traveller...

 

[Dragoner]

Yea, this is essentially what seems to happen with the crab boats in Alaska. Many of the Captains are not owner operators, they're hired by owners and get a share of the catch, just like the crew does.

Private ownership to contract crews seems to be the way forward. If you have an owner that's open to risk, then you can have a more "adventuring" Captain and crew. Otherwise, it could be much like the subsidized ships -- set route, safe areas, perhaps a policy on cargo types. "No radioactives, last time we did that they leaked and it took 3 months to decontaminate the ship -- plus that mutant crew member wreaking havoc."

I did a adventure called "Demise Charter" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bareboat_charter there are various types that work well for some sort of arrangement.

 

[Condottiere]

1. You can't really average this out.

2. Having said that, you start off with the average flow of trade between two average planets, and your expectation of how much that you can capture and retain.

3. You have to account seasonal variation, since you want to go with a full cargo hold either way, unless you can afford to maintain some buffer in the event you attract the extra trade; conservative tendency would be to be under capacity, not over.

4. Since in theory you don't want to gift competition with any possibility they can slip in, this would be where exterior cargo pods comes in.

 

[vegas]

Despite it may be too high for our characters (and so not game wise), I would not use the term "unrealistically", as Iguess it's one of the more realistic parts of the trade game in Traveller...

The key part of my quote is "unrealistically FOR THE KINDS OF CHARACTERS WE IMAGINE" you know, Han Solo, Malcom "Mal" Reynolds from Firefly. The kinds of characters that would actually get involved in adventures.

 

[kilemall]

Hmmm perhaps we should look to the real thing for inspiration? The Tramp Trade?

Tramp trade - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Seems pretty clear the ships are more chartered under various terms then picking up spot market lots, otherwise they are doing speculative too.

6000-10000 ton ships, so not exactly uprated fishing boats.

Perhaps we need to gin up a charter table to get more pay options. This also gives us another form of patron, and a market for when we are gentlemen traders and/or looking to stir up some merc/mischief.