TraderRiders

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

Ben and Womble,
Firstly thanks for weighing in. As I said earlier, I thought the ideer had "died on the Senate floor" and I appreciate the discussion.

Your posts were mainly about economic viability so lets stay with that... Firstly, I'd still like to point out that even I don't think this idea would work on the Spinward Main. Rather, it would work fairly well in a smaller environment like a cluster.

Insofar as the operating costs for the lighter captains go, fuel is free via wilderness refuelling. Assuming that he uses 5% of his tonnage to haul fuel for the tender, he still is ahead by half over a Type A, and ahead by three-quarters over a Type A2. That is to say his 200-ton lighter hauls 10 tons of fuel instead of 20 or 40 tons for Jump-1 or -2, and is further ahead, less the tonnage of the absent jump drive. All this extra space goes to cargo.

Next thing is that most merchant captains, free or corporate, haul freight at a standard rate of Cr1000 per displacement ton. This gives them a standard to judge income over costs. What makes free traders possible at all is their chance to carry speculative cargo. This amounts to being the first guy at the mall with a truckload of the fad-of-the-month. The potential profit is HUGE, but the potential deficit is also substantially larger. I would point out that the Type A2 Far Trader cannot make it's mortgage payment strictly hauling cargo and passengers. It must take on speculative cargo to survive. Lighter captains have no such worry. If that sounds boring, that's because it is. Trader captains are not in it for adventure, they're in it to make credits. "Exciting" is bad for business, and they only smuggle if it's REALLY worth their while and they REALLY need the money.

As an aside, since the Tenders are generally outside 100-diameter limit, they are not subject to local laws but rather to Imperial regulations. Once a lighter is attached to the tender, whatever beef the locals have will have to wait until the next time the ship comes by. One tag line from the story that started all this is "Local law ends at the starship hatch".

As to loan payments, lighter captains would have it cheaper by 15% to 25%. Why? The single most expensive component in a space vessel is the jump drive, considering the cost of fuel space as lost cargo space. Since skipping is non-existant, insurance will be cheaper for the lender and those savings passed on. Some lighter captains would have mail contracts, personnel transfer contracts, independant hauling contracts and so on. These would assure him of income.

Now, are TraderRiders appropriate for Player ships? Depends. Some GM's like the the "travelling without a starship" effort that many players go through. Some GM's like to freewheeling open nature of player ship owners. I rather think the TraderRider concept as a middle step.

Thanks for pitching in.

 

[jrients]

Captain O'Flynn,

Great concept you have going here! I think perhaps liquidity would be an issue. As a owner/trader captain I might be able to secure financing for my 200-ton free trader, but that doesn't necessarily mean I can come up with 200,000 cash each time I wanted to ride a tender. After all, month-to-month liquidity is one of the great risks of being a free trader.

Now if the tender is government sponsored, maybe they would allow participants to operate similarly to a subsidy: split monthly profits for access to the tender.

 

[Anthony]

Two comments on the economics:

1) The chance to carry speculative cargo is only useful because the standard trade rules are broken. Note that you can accomplish the _exact_ same thing as the TraderRider by simply paying the owner of a large ship to transport you and your speculative cargo from world A to world B.

2) Wilderness refueling is not free: it costs time, and it costs cargo space. A 60 MCr ship costs Cr 5,000 per day just for paying off the mortgage; total cost is probably Cr 6,000 or more. If ocean refueling is possible, this may not matter. Gas giant refueling is only for the foolish, however. Note that fuel costs are also broken: refined fuel should be very cheap.

 

[Falkayn]

Another possible place of savings is in Astrogator salary, licenses, etc. If you are only ever going to be piloting from the Jump point to the inner system, then you don't need an expensive Astrogator ... who is primarily useful for their Jump skills. Sure, Pilots will still need some T/Astrogation skill to avoid hazards insystem, but it's not like they will be exploring brand new worlds is it?

Cutting one more salary off each lighter, will make them all a bit cheaper, and lets the tender charge more for its Astrogators. Just another thing that helps the economics of the whole thing.

After all, nowadays you could run a tramp freighter from one country to another, but people would rather just pack their stuff in a container and give it to a nice safe container line to work with - they don't even care what ship it's on, just that that company guarantees to get it there.

Where free traders come into their own in Traveller is visiting small population worlds that a large tender would never be tasked to visit.

 

[Mythmere]

It doesn't make sense if you look at a single planet to planet connection, because under Traveller technology there is no increase in efficiency. Where it makes excellent sense (depending on the design sequence) is in a cluster where major worlds are separated by different jump lengths, and if, instead of a single jump 1 tender there are jump tenders for jumps of 2-6. This gives you the efficiency of paying for jump 6 transit when you need it, and for only jump 2 transit when you need it. In other words, you don't overinvest in jump capability.

In other words, a single tender makes no sense, but a system of them at several jump lengths makes good sense.

All that said, and kudos for a good idea, my creativity runs out when I have to think how these behemoths could be used to improve the role playing part of the game, unless it is to ferry low jump craft over long distances fast.

But there's a lot of creativity on these boards; I'm just hitting a block.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by RabidVargr:
I don't like it. We can handle 2 or 3 at a time, but 8 ships at once? Makes piracy too dificult. Bad Idea...



RV

(actually a really good one, just bad for my line of work)

Are you kidding RV? This is tailor made for hijacking. All those eggs in one basket, some of them with no jump capability. You just sign up for a ride and take your time through jump to plunder all those plump pigeons in the roost then when you come out of jump you just clear the carrier and hit your Jays for base. What could be eaisier

I think you're going soft. Hanging around with TJ and his schemes may have dulled your sense of bravado. Maybe I need to shop around for a new 'insurance' provider

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Mythmere:


All that said, and kudos for a good idea, my creativity runs out when I have to think how these behemoths could be used to improve the role playing part of the game, unless it is to ferry low jump craft over long distances fast.

But there's a lot of creativity on these boards; I'm just hitting a block.

I agree and should add my thanks to all the contributions on this subject. I'm just trying to find a nice place to make it work, and figure out the details.

As soon as I saw this I had one nasty idea (well two if you count the hijack). Just get the PC's to sign up for a ride and have the carrier misjump way off the beaten track. They'll have to cooperate with the other riders to make their way back across x-parsecs. Maybe sacrificing some of the ships, maybe even the PC's ship, along the way. Either for parts or as fuel caches that have to be left behind. Lots of fun

 

[GBoyett]

Originally posted by Ganidiirsi O'Flynn:
Further, and I had not thought of this, what if the operator of the tender was in fact a cluster government? It would be a great way to move mail and personnel from one system to another, and is lower in overhead to keep such clusters in communication. Rather than having to maintain 15 jump drives for it's couriers or x-boats and their tenders, PLUS all the commercial traffic, it could maintain 2 jump drives (for probably double cost) and still keep the wheels of civilization turning....

That is similar to the setup I did for one of the pocket empires in my Two Clusters Subsector. Early in it's history the Scadus Union had limited jump building capacity. The way around it was to build government run tenders, and allow various third parties to own lighters that fit a prescribed tonnage (600dtons). Benefit allow flexibility, including aux. status for the military and emergencies.

One interesting outgrowth was the grandchild effect. I have some lighters, like SDBs, that also carry fighters and gigs. So you can have a Tender, carrying a SDB, which in turn has 1 or 2 subcraft.

 

[Ran Targas]

^ Very similar to heavy lift aircraft or ships (like the one that brought the USS COLE back to the U.S.). These ships wouldn't be common, but those that were built would find enough work to make it worth while.

 

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

Dan,
OOOHHH! I LIKE IT!!
Ugly twist time.... what would happen if there was a Complication? Anti-government exiles or prisoners get loose, a Thing That Hunts Men, an illness so some of the needed ships are quarentined... the possibilities are limited only to the evil of the referee... BWAAAAhahahahaha

**cough-cough** Must-regain-control.....

George,
How did that work out in your Two Clusters thing? Did it work as player transport? I'd rather imagined the players owning a Type A2 running like bunnies trying to get to market ahead of the tender with the fad-of-the-month.

As to the small-craft-within-small-craft thing, a friend of mine watched several turns of a TCS game I played with another guy. My opponent spent his budget on several capital ships. I spent mine on TONS of riders and fighters. My buddy called it Task Force Shotgun...

My opponent never even got CLOSE to my tender...

Again, I appreciate all the input, but this is SO not my idea. For some reason I think it was Steve Barnes, but I'm very likely wrong.

 

[GBoyett]

Originally posted by Ganidiirsi O'Flynn:
George,
How did that work out in your Two Clusters thing? Did it work as player transport? I'd rather imagined the players owning a Type A2 running like bunnies trying to get to market ahead of the tender with the fad-of-the-month.

There wasn't that much competition from Free Traders because the Scadians were mildy suspicious of outsiders that sometimes was viewed as light xenophobia. Along with this suspicion there was travel restrictions. So most trade with outsiders was conducted in non-Scadus systems. The tenders were used for internal trade and connection with the interface worlds.

Now you may ask "Why would anyone trade with the Scadus?" Being a spaceborn society, they excelled in space tech like construction, medicine, radiation treatments, and space agriculture. What the Scadus got out of foreign trade was mostly luxury items and variety of agroproducts.