Trader sizes
- Thread starter whartung
- Start date
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
I was going to mention the GURPS LASH idea, but someone beat me to it.
When I first read your post, it screamed to me of the 19th century railroad system. Equate your "jump frame" with the locomotive and your barges with individual rail cars and there you are.
I HIGHLY doubt there is significant % (if any) that are privately owned. However, in days past there were many.
You probably won't find privately owned Tramps in the 'Core' area but, in frontier areas, yes.
I guess I cut my quote too much. I'm sure there are privately owned tramps in the Marches. All Free Traders are privately owned tramps. It's in the definition. Greylond had just claimed that there were purpose-built tramp steamers and I was asking if any of them were privately owned tramps purpose-built with bank loans for individuals with no other collateral than the ship?
Hans
DangerousThing
SOC-13
If you could provide a pointer to this data it would be nice.
Does this relate to the colonies trade? I'd be curious how much trade in basic foodstuff there was back then. All the reference materials I have are in my day's house and currently unavailable to me.
During the Tramp heyday, with 20% down, there would be no real reason that there wouldn't be. That's how most freight was moved in much of the world during that time.
So you say. I'm asking for concrete evidence. If banks did regularily assume that sort of risks back when trade was reasonably analogous to Traveller trade, I'm obviously wrong and will change my mind[*]. If they didn't, or only did so very rarely, I'll continue in my belief that it is implausible.
[*] Mind you, I will still think that for PCs a 40 year old ship with smaller or non-existent bank payments and greater maintenance and repair costs is better than a newly-built ship with the canonical bank payments. It makes it much easier to park the ship for a while and go on side adventures without having to worry about loan payments piling up. But that's a different issue.
Hans
Yes, I say. I'm asking YOU for concrete evidence of the opposite as my view is supported by financial logic...
Start.
Oh, my mistake. I thought that when you wrote "During the Tramp heyday, with 20% down, there would be no real reason that there wouldn't be. That's how most freight was moved in much of the world during that time", you were making what you believed to be a statement of fact. I was hoping you'd share the evidence you based that statement on with me.
It seems implausible to me that a bank would finance a multi-million credit loan with no collateral other than an extremely movable asset.
You know, the original statement I made. Personal belief. Common sense. Sure, I know that common sense sometime isn't, but then again, sometimes it is.
Hans
Again, look up the references at the bottom of that wiki page for all the answers to your questions. In particular check out the book, "The Triumph of the Tramp Trader" published in 1922 and avaliable on Google Books;
http://books.google.com/books?id=2K...wXExYGQBA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 167 has a relevant quote;
There's a wealth of really good info in that book. I suggest anyone interested in the subject look it up. In fact, you can download the entire thing as a PDF from Google Books.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
The data comes from a book called American Husbandry, published in 1775 in London, author unknown, and reprinted in 1939 with a new introduction by Lyman Carrier. To the best of my knowledge, it is not available online. I would need to transcribe the data for posting. I covered the trade from each colony from Canada south, and includes the West Indies sugar trade. The principal commodities shipped to England were agricultural products.
That's a good analogy, but my idea came more from the 2300 AD Shps of the French Arm (pag 44) Metal Modular Freighter, just exchanging the cargo modules by barges and upgrading sizes (in the 2300 AD design, the modules are about 50 Traveller dtons and unpropelled).
See that even fule could be on such barges (treating them as drop tanks, even if they're not detached before jumping), so speeding also the refuelling time. As the ship arrives to system, the loaded barges take off to wait for it at orbit (the passenger ones may take some time to assemble the passengers, but if the route is scheduled they will know aproximately the time, so being already at starport waiting); when the ship arribes to orbit they attach themselves as the incoming ones detach and the ship may leave orbit adn go for a new jump probably in less than 24 hours.
Off course, this can only be done by large companies in scheduled routes...
I'm green with envy. I've got some data on the medieval period but not much on that period. If you're willing to share tidbits, I'd be thrilled.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
The following definitions are taken from The Book of the Ship, by A. C. Hardy, published circa 1948. Although dated, it is an excellent introductory book on shipbuilding and ocean trade, the cargoes carried, and the various specialized types.
Basically, a Tramp is a ship that goes wherever there is a cargo, and delivers it where directed to.
As for samples of charter contracts, I will get out my copy of Ocean Freights and Chartering it their is sufficient demand. That dates from 1980, and also goes into a discussion of common cargoes, along with stowage factors and port requirement.
I also found the following work cited in one of my sources, and I will be getting in probably next week. This was published in 1874, so should give some of the earlier ocean commerce data.
History of Merchant Shipping & Ancient Commerce: Volumes 1-4.
W.S. Lindsay
Basically, a Tramp is a ship that goes wherever there is a cargo, and delivers it where directed to.
As for samples of charter contracts, I will get out my copy of Ocean Freights and Chartering it their is sufficient demand. That dates from 1980, and also goes into a discussion of common cargoes, along with stowage factors and port requirement.
I also found the following work cited in one of my sources, and I will be getting in probably next week. This was published in 1874, so should give some of the earlier ocean commerce data.
History of Merchant Shipping & Ancient Commerce: Volumes 1-4.
W.S. Lindsay
Star Frontiers Knight Hawks had the idea of the tracer implant. Surgically implanted at the bank's behest, not legally removable til the loan is paid off, and it acts as a transponder, so if you go somewhere civilized, it beeps as you go through Customs. If you update it from the KH canon idea of a bug in the neck to one attached to the spine or medulla, where most black market surgeons are liable to cripple or kill a captain trying to have it removed, it might work for enough cases to be economically feasible as an enforcement mechanism.
Yup. And I assume that the major star nations (and some of the minors) have a sort of x-boat exchange system, so you can still send and receive messages in other polities. It's just slower and less reliable for most. Regina to Arden? Quick, easy, just subject to gov't censorship. K'Kree worlds to Sword Worlds? Too many intermediaries, too many chances to mess up. Long, slow, and low chance of getting through. So our hypothetical skipping skipper has a decent chance of staying ahead in a different pocket empire, but has enough risk to still be looking over his shoulder a lot...
Far future tech, my system was the ship's transponder included a provision for coding in the loan and payment information, so that any customs official at any halfway decent starport could "chirp" the thing and find out if you were up to date on payments or paid off. Could you fool it? A mobster with the right connections could, but I don't see the average shipmaster being any better at it than the average modern is at hacking his own bank account to alter the balance. The captain who falls behind can either limit himself to D/E starports until he can raise the needed amount - and hope it doesn't take so long that the bounty hunters find him before then - or put himself in bed with a well-established crime family with the criminal resources to hack that transponder, which invites its own dangers.
Or negotiate with the bank: he does have a chunk of equity there, they can maybe negotiate an extension for a small fee, or he can hope to get a bit of it back after they claim and sell the ship. There are worst fates than to be grounded with a couple million or so credits. Given his equity stake, my banks are generally pretty reasonable, for a price, as long as it doesn't go more than 6 months or so. Equity counts for a lot, especially if the bank can claim a big chunk of it as penalties by playing fair with you. And if you'd rather scamper than settle for a fraction of your equity, well, that fraction will make an excellent bounty, and the bank still comes out ahead. A couple million credits will fund quite an intensive manhunt.
Your notion of 'plausibility' is based on a single planet... TUs like the OTU are pretty darn large - a bank loan for a far trader could be the equivalent of a loan to a private owner of an 18-wheeler...
Banks do lend money to private individuals for maritime enterprises - even though their primary security can indeed potentially sail away at anytime... sure, other collateral is likely required in typical cases, but in others the risk can be taken based on the individual's background (factoring in credit rating, prior successes, references, how good a marketing plan is, etc.).
Quick Google: http://www.maritimelawcenter.com/html/maritime_finance.html
Not sure where in Traveller rules it says that Banks routinely give loans for starships with no other collateral, assurances or insurances in a given setting... Traveller PCs generally come with appreciable background and while not super-heroes, could hardly be considered representative of the majority of a setting's population. You're also discussing an obvious meta-game mechanic related to providing PCs with a starship (speaking of plausibility...) and providing an ingame motivation for adventuring (paying the mortgage). <shrug>
*Personally, I was never into this 'Accountants in Space' motivation - if my game needed PCs to have a starship they got one (owned or not).
Many banana boats still are privately owned, buying in the village, and selling to the corps in central depots.
In Alaska, fuel speculators fly in fuel oil on spec when some village or another is noted to be running low. They usually make a killing... and a bad name. A few limit themselves to a reasonable markup (costs +10%), and get quite a passable name. Almost all the speculators own their planes (most are financed), tho' a few are charters.
