General What would general purpose freighters look like?

[Condottiere]

Generally speaking, allocate cargo space to take the likeliest amount of cargo available at any point in time or port to be visited.

Allocate number of staterooms for the likeliest number of high passages to be booked.

If there's any remaining capacity, divide amongst cargo, low berths and staterooms, as the owner thinks most likely to bring in income.

 

[Proneutron]

Note also that a higher jump number allows more chance of getting more freight, since you roll for freight available to each world in range of your jump number.

For being a freight carrier & passenger ship rather than speculating, Jump drives above J1 don't work economically as you cannot charge more for the cargo and passengers. In the OTU no one who has to stay in business takes freight or passengers more than a J1.

 

[mike wightman]

For being a freight carrier & passenger ship rather than speculating, Jump drives above J1 don't work economically as you cannot charge more for the cargo and passengers. In the OTU no one who has to stay in business takes freight or passengers more than a J1.

It's better than jumping empty.
Too many people forget that the trade rules limit the amount of freight and passengers to a random roll, you have no guarantee to having a full hold or passenger complement.
Build your ship to always be able to ship the minimums you will roll on the tables and enough additional space for the speculative goods you will carry.

Jump1 ships are for freight, passengers and the occasional speculative trade item until you have paid off your mortgage.

Once you have paid your mortgage you start considering replacing some cargo space with fuel tankage so that you can reach more worlds with your speculative trade items via empty hexes, and you also consider carrying the speculative trade for more than one jump but you still end up filling up the gaps with freight and passengers.

Eventually you will want a jump 2 or jump 3 ship to maximize the potential profit from your speculation - note you should not take out a mortgage on this upgrade you should wait until you have made enough spare cash to buy outright.

 

[Proneutron]

It's better than jumping empty.

It doesn't work that way. There would be NO J2 freighters built. No bank would finance their construction to begin with. So it wouldn't be an option for the captain. Hold empty or not.

 

[mike wightman]

Of course it works that way. No trader will jump with space that they could be making 1000Cr from
You are missing the point of the trading minigame. It is not an economics sim, it is a trading game that you can use to get rich and upgrade your ship.
Rich PCs that outright own a jump 3 ship can continue to make a profit from speculative trade, but will continue to fill up spare cargo capacity and passenger staterooms for 'free money'.

The megacorporations can easily make a profit from jump 2 all the way up to jump 4 - you know why? Because they exist in the setting. Governments subsidise trade which allows jump2+ merchants.

The trade minigame is not and never was meant to model their trade economics.

Paying off the mortgage is a major milestone in a PC free trader's life, it means they can start making real money and begin the process of self financing their own ships.

Have you ever run a game for a group of players that actually play the trade game? It is a long game in terms of time passing within game, it can take several game years to make enough money to afford to buy your own second ship.

If you are after what a general purpose megacorporation freighter would look like the answer is simple - Z drives and the biggest hull that will give you the jump performance you want. You fill the entire cargo hold and passenger staterooms every trip - and the cargo you are carrying are 'speculative goods' that were manufactured by the megacorporation so they are very cheap, they sell very well, and they make you so much profit that they cover the costs of the higher jump numbers.

Governments will, in a similar way, construct general purpose freighters that they subsidise and may again be carrying government 'speculative trade' at full cargo capacity.

The PC scale mini game involves carrying the scraps the big lines have left behind, or providing a distribution network away from the regular trade lanes.

 

[Proneutron]

Of course it works that way.

Shipyards build and banks will finance ships that cannot make a profit and pay back the loan?

 

[Grav_Moped]

Is that mid-passage double occupancy?

Single occupancy, 4 tons per passenger.

I'm leaving out the opportunity cost for cargo that would have been carried instead, since there is revenue-generating cargo (the passenger) in that space.

 

[Timerover51]

Shipyards build and banks will finance ships that cannot make a profit and pay back the loan?

That is why subsidized merchants exist. Governments basically guarantee the loan.

You are also assuming that Jump-1 is acceptable. If the stars are a bit sparser, Jump-1 ships might not fill the bill. The Egryn Subsector of the Leviathan adventure would not work for Jump-1 ships at all.

 

[mike wightman]

Shipyards build and banks will finance ships that cannot make a profit and pay back the loan?

That's not what I said - I agree that banks would not do such a thing.

What I said was that trade ships will not jumpy with empty space that they could have filled up with freight.

In setting megacorporation ships are built to high jump numbers and do make a profit - we have just never been given the details.
Many continue to make the mistake that the trade minigame models the entire economy of the Imperium. It doesn't.

The trade mini-game does not model the megacorporation or governmental level of trade, it only models the tramp trade of a jump 1 PC owned ship as they strive to get enough money to upgrade.

 

[Grav_Moped]

That is why subsidized merchants exist. Governments basically guarantee the loan.

You are also assuming that Jump-1 is acceptable. If the stars are a bit sparser, Jump-1 ships might not fill the bill. The Egryn Subsector of the Leviathan adventure would not work for Jump-1 ships at all.

The problem is that at LBB2 cargo rates (Cr1K/ton/Jump) and stated operations tempo (1 Jump per 2 weeks), the only ship that can cover its costs for Jump-2 is TL-15 and has a 3439Td cargo bay (out of 5KTd) -- which under the trade mini-game, it can't possibly fill. Nothing smaller can, nor can any of a higher Jn.

In regions such as Egryn/Trojan Reach, this means that either there is no market for transport of freight except within the clusters of adjacent worlds, or freight rates are higher than Cr1000/ton/Jump. However, the rules do not provide for this possibility.

The thing about Subsidized Whatevers is that they set a ceiling on freight costs where they operate. A shipper can find ships that would haul freight for less than Cr1000/ton profitably (even a Type A Free Trader can!), but no ship can find a shipper willing to pay more than Cr1000/ton because shippers can wait for a subsidized freighter.

And while there's a de jure rate of Cr1000/ton/jump, there won't be many ships willing to eat the losses (let alone financed and built in the expectation of doing so) of taking that rate on jumps above Jump-1. So, in practice, freight costs would eventually approximate Cr1000/ton/parsec, though there is no mechanism in the rules to support breaking up a freight shipment into multiple J-1 legs.

This is a case of the rules not only not matching the setting, but also not even matching their own implications.

The setting description implies that there are indeed shippers that pay more than Cr1000/ton/jump (if only as internal bookkeeping), but for some reason these shippers will never contract with the player characters for shipping except by referee fiat.

(Again, LBB5 may produce ships that could do J-2 at less than Cr1000/payload ton/Jump (2), but I haven't checked yet.)

 

[mike wightman]

That's because such trade ships do not play the PC scale trade game - they ship vast amounts of goods and make a significant profit for the megacorporations and their noble shareholders.

The trade minigame is not an economic model - it is for PC scale shenanigans only.

How much money does a megacorporation make on selling its manufactured goods? Enough to pay for the transport costs to get them to market, not to mention their manufacturing costs and their resource harvesting costs.

 

[Condottiere]

Jump One? Star clusters, just jammed together.

Micro jumps becomes an option, as well.

I think the Sword Worlds is the most prominent example of the tramp trolley.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The fundamental problem is that there should be shippers within the scale of the PC trade game that would pay more than Cr1000/ton/jump for J-2, might be some willing to pay for J-3, and perhaps even for J-4. At the very least, there would be non-ship-owners who buy goods within the speculative trade minigame and want to get their goods to a destination before someone else does, or before they spoil. PCs can do that! Why wouldn't NPCs?

But, again, the rules don't allow for that. The rules do strongly suggest that pretty much anything not being shipped by a megacorp as part of their integrated supply chain would move by a series of Jump-1s because that is all that the market supports.

One might get lucky and find a Far Trader (or Far Fat Trader) going your way so you can slip in a few tons of your stuff cheap as "filler" around their speculative trading loads, but that's not reliable enough to build an enterprise around -- if you need Jump-2 and have to wait more than a week for it, you may as well have sent it as two legs of Jump-1 each. And there won't be a lot of J-2 capable traffic, let alone anything higher, in those size ranges, because nobody's paying them enough to do it.

And that's how you get per-parsec pricing. Which, coincidentally, makes J-2 viable and J-3 almost so.

 

[Vile]

The fundamental problem is that there should be shippers within the scale of the PC trade game that would pay more than Cr1000/ton/jump for J-2, might be some willing to pay for J-3, and perhaps even for J-4.

I don't think that should happen within the PC scale. Commercial exporters engage large, reputable shipping companies to move their goods, they wouldn't risk a dodgy free trader (more to the point, their insurers wouldn't). I see the cargo rate as being for people who are desperate to ship goods but can't afford real freight rates. Those are the customers who have no choice but go with free traders.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I don't think that should happen within the PC scale. Commercial exporters engage large, reputable shipping companies to move their goods, they wouldn't risk a dodgy free trader (more to the point, their insurers wouldn't). I see the cargo rate as being for people who are desperate to ship goods but can't afford real freight rates. Those are the customers who have no choice but go with free traders.

But that gets to the other side of what I was saying: If you're only using free traders, you're only going to have Jump-1 available because nothing else is profitable to operate. If you need to move your goods more than 1 parsec, it'll be as a series of Jump-1s.

Which, as I pointed out, means that freight costs become per-parsec pricing by default.

Per-parsec rates make higher Jn ships viable (to Jump-3), at which point they will enter the market and you get something other than the rules-as-written for rates beyond 1 parsec.

 

[Proneutron]

The fundamental problem is that there should be shippers within the scale of the PC trade game that would pay more than Cr1000/ton/jump for J-2, might be some willing to pay for J-3, and perhaps even for J-4. At the very least, there would be non-ship-owners who buy goods within the speculative trade minigame and want to get their goods to a destination before someone else does, or before they spoil. PCs can do that! Why wouldn't NPCs?

But, again, the rules don't allow for that. The rules do strongly suggest that pretty much anything not being shipped by a megacorp as part of their integrated supply chain would move by a series of Jump-1s because that is all that the market supports.

One might get lucky and find a Far Trader (or Far Fat Trader) going your way so you can slip in a few tons of your stuff cheap as "filler" around their speculative trading loads, but that's not reliable enough to build an enterprise around -- if you need Jump-2 and have to wait more than a week for it, you may as well have sent it as two legs of Jump-1 each. And there won't be a lot of J-2 capable traffic, let alone anything higher, in those size ranges, because nobody's paying them enough to do it.

And that's how you get per-parsec pricing. Which, coincidentally, makes J-2 viable and J-3 almost so.

That's the rub. The Imperial gov't price setting ruined interstellar commerce. At least compared to what it could be.

 

[mike wightman]

The fundamental problem is that there should be shippers within the scale of the PC trade game that would pay more than Cr1000/ton/jump for J-2, might be some willing to pay for J-3, and perhaps even for J-4. At the very least, there would be non-ship-owners who buy goods within the speculative trade minigame and want to get their goods to a destination before someone else does, or before they spoil. PCs can do that! Why wouldn't NPCs?

Because the megacorporations and the government subsidised ships will carry it for 1000Cr per jump. They make their profits from their 'speculative trade', the freight haulage cost is fixed by that.
A PC scale jump 4 ship can make a profit - but only from speculative trade.

But, again, the rules don't allow for that. The rules do strongly suggest that pretty much anything not being shipped by a megacorp as part of their integrated supply chain would move by a series of Jump-1s because that is all that the market supports.

The rules for such megacorp trade do not exist in the basic game. A megacorporation can make a profit shipping computer parts with a jump 4 ship no problem. There is a reason for all those free traders and subsidised merchants - the majority of 'Amazon deliveries' are for jump 1.
The rules are for a trading minigame where the PCs start with a jump 1 ship.

One might get lucky and find a Far Trader (or Far Fat Trader) going your way so you can slip in a few tons of your stuff cheap as "filler" around their speculative trading loads, but that's not reliable enough to build an enterprise around -- if you need Jump-2 and have to wait more than a week for it, you may as well have sent it as two legs of Jump-1 each. And there won't be a lot of J-2 capable traffic, let alone anything higher, in those size ranges, because nobody's paying them enough to do it.

Actually it is, and there was an article in JTAS 5 about it - how to get rich from speculative trade without your own starship.

And that's how you get per-parsec pricing. Which, coincidentally, makes J-2 viable and J-3 almost so.

I get it. You want per parsec pricing in your game. So do it.
But the rules as written and the trade minigame will not change.

Try getting a group of PCs to play in a trading game with per parsec pricing and see what happens - my guess will be that they will become ridiculously rich very fast, since they will get to the building their own ship sooner and engaging in a majority of speculative trade sooner.

To paraphrase - a spreadsheet never survives contact with the enemy

 

[Clone95]

I think that Megacorp GP Freighters would probably operate like Battletech jumpships. They'd have a dozen shuttles or big towships sitting out at the standardized target dropout point, quickly offload the cargo, refuel the boat, and reload it with the outgoing cargo before jumping again.

These ships would continually pop between high-value destinations, rarely seeing a port except for emergencies or manual maintenance. You never see this kind of thing with Free Traders because they need to deal with portside stuff: speculation and haggling, missions ashore - but in a corporate fleet you're just pinging into reality briefly between jumpspace dips. Shaving the average week in a solar system down to only hours or a day means 4 trips in 32 days versus 56 days, and the support craft handle all fuel dipping, cargo and personnel transfers, etc.

Not unlike the X-Boat net, really, but with large bulk cargo carrying.

 

[kilemall]

Note also that a higher jump number allows more chance of getting more freight, since you roll for freight available to each world in range of your jump number.

Wouldn't that assume you roll the freight before and determine your destination after that datum point? THEN you issue the departure and destination for ticketing and take on passengers?

 

[kilemall]

I think that Megacorp GP Freighters would probably operate like Battletech jumpships. They'd have a dozen shuttles or big towships sitting out at the standardized target dropout point, quickly offload the cargo, refuel the boat, and reload it with the outgoing cargo before jumping again.

These ships would continually pop between high-value destinations, rarely seeing a port except for emergencies or manual maintenance. You never see this kind of thing with Free Traders because they need to deal with portside stuff: speculation and haggling, missions ashore - but in a corporate fleet you're just pinging into reality briefly between jumpspace dips. Shaving the average week in a solar system down to only hours or a day means 4 trips in 32 days versus 56 days, and the support craft handle all fuel dipping, cargo and personnel transfers, etc.

Not unlike the X-Boat net, really, but with large bulk cargo carrying.

Has to be a busy route, otherwise whatever you are saving in live profitmaking ship runs you are costing in contracted/bought support facilities/boats back to the world.