General What would general purpose freighters look like?

[kilemall]

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.

Can't quite buy that as the Free Traders can also haul passengers, and that's going to have standards of functional safety. In CT, I look at the VERY expensive computers/software and bridge controls as being avionics/space grade (astronics?), very significant proportion of total cost, and a signal that they are at least DESIGNED to be safe.


Now a ship with dodgy maintenance records/past and/or known to frequent Amber/Red Zones, that might be different....

 

[Vile]

Can't quite buy that as the Free Traders can also haul passengers, and that's going to have standards of functional safety.

Well, given the accepted chance of dying in in low passage, I think the OTU has different ideas about health & safety than we're used to ...

 

[mike wightman]

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?

Yes, have you read the CT rules for this?

You roll for freight for all worlds within jump range, once you have selected you then announce your destination world and look for passengers.

Passengers: After a starship has accepted cargo for a specific destination, passengers
will present themselves for transport to that destination.

 

[kilemall]

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.

I look at that as a feature set- you come up in your mercantile trade dodging it out with jump tapes and dreaming of the day you can actually run Generate and go where you will, maybe speculating in lower end commodity items you can afford just to claw your way to that point.



Then you bulk up, arm the ship possibly for those juicy mail runs, upgrade the software a bit, and save up to buy a ship outright. Without the mortgage monkey on your back, that new ship can have a custom-designed mix of passengers and cargo suited to the subsector you want to operate in, including longer jump to more profitable mixes of worlds.


Or go small shipping line fast with the subsidized merchants and work out a scheme of your own mix of ships that do ship speculation in a network of value.



Another factor that won't be quite as spreadsheet friendly to figure out is that originally the 1977 CT ship encounter tables had the more profitable A/B starports have more pirates. So an unarmed Trader would tend to eke out an existence on the periphery and have to work up armament and software PRIOR TO going to the high profit planets.


So to get to that point and have the edge of profitability, the game had the built-in money sink of combat and better computers/software in the millions- or risk homegrown software..


So, taking these rules out of context can undo the whole scheme and expose what looks like weird choices, when we aren't seeing the whole picture.


However, there are only so many sessions we can run and the full bootstrapping up mercantile style can take a LOT of time to do. Just remember the whole adventure biome when pulling out things like the computer software rules or using 1981 encounter tables.


Personally I'm inclined towards the jump multiplier 'fix', roll number of lots/passengers x jump number (either way, multiply number of dice rolled or roll the results normally and multiply them), AND per parsec. That gives you a progression to larger higher jump ships, likely custom designed for specific routes to support them. Fun part? They HAVE to run high profit high jumps, each little adventure side trip is costly.

 

[kilemall]

Yes, have you read the CT rules for this?

You roll for freight for all worlds within jump range, once you have selected you then announce your destination world and look for passengers.

Of course I have, but I usually ignore that part. That's a lotta die rolling.

 

[mike wightman]

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.

This is pretty much the same conclusion the GT crowd came to - hence their LASH trade model.

 

[kilemall]

Well, given the accepted chance of dying in in low passage, I think the OTU has different ideas about health & safety than we're used to ...

Point taken.


I have a thread about a subgame where mercantile captains can have a supplemental income providing the containers that the different lots come in. So there are 1-ton, 5-ton and 10-ton containers.



It's a capital investment, can add big bucks to each run, BUT then the captain becomes liable for the containers holding up and for loading them safely with the right cargo to container hazmat ability. We can pull that up if you are interested.

 

[kilemall]

One other point- on most of the Free/Far Trader plans I've seen, the Steward's quarters is on the crew side of the ship, there is a separation there between that and the passenger side. Taking on the extra passenger puts him/her/whatever on the wrong side of that hatch.



Mid passenger/no steward may make sense on a spreadsheet, but it will involve a potential breach of security for your crew and ship. How much do you trust..... The Seventh Passenger.

 

[Condottiere]

Funny thing is, back on Earth, you would create demand in order to fill cargo and passenger slots.

 

[Proneutron]

Funny thing is, back on Earth, you would create demand in order to fill cargo and passenger slots.

Really? Cross country truckers create demand to fill their rigs? I've never seen that but I have seen lots of under employed independent rig owners...
But you are thinking of large companies filling cruise ships and the like right?

 

[Grav_Moped]

Really? Cross country truckers create demand to fill their rigs? I've never seen that but I have seen lots of under employed independent rig owners...
But you are thinking of large companies filling cruise ships and the like right?

There's something there, and I seem to recall GURPS addressed it somewhat (don't have the books). Traveller cargo and spec goods are "supply-push" items, in that it seems to be "this is what piled up dockside needing to go somewhere". There isn't a "demand-pull" cargo generation mechanism, wherein for example a destination that is non-agricultural causes more cargo to be generated for it from an Ag-coded world. (This happens indirectly in the spec game.)

 

[Grav_Moped]

I look at that as a feature set- you come up in your mercantile trade dodging it out with jump tapes and dreaming of the day you can actually run Generate and go where you will, maybe speculating in lower end commodity items you can afford just to claw your way to that point.



Then you bulk up, arm the ship possibly for those juicy mail runs, upgrade the software a bit, and save up to buy a ship outright. Without the mortgage monkey on your back, that new ship can have a custom-designed mix of passengers and cargo suited to the subsector you want to operate in, including longer jump to more profitable mixes of worlds.


Or go small shipping line fast with the subsidized merchants and work out a scheme of your own mix of ships that do ship speculation in a network of value.



Another factor that won't be quite as spreadsheet friendly to figure out is that originally the 1977 CT ship encounter tables had the more profitable A/B starports have more pirates. So an unarmed Trader would tend to eke out an existence on the periphery and have to work up armament and software PRIOR TO going to the high profit planets.


So to get to that point and have the edge of profitability, the game had the built-in money sink of combat and better computers/software in the millions- or risk homegrown software..


So, taking these rules out of context can undo the whole scheme and expose what looks like weird choices, when we aren't seeing the whole picture.


However, there are only so many sessions we can run and the full bootstrapping up mercantile style can take a LOT of time to do. Just remember the whole adventure biome when pulling out things like the computer software rules or using 1981 encounter tables.


Personally I'm inclined towards the jump multiplier 'fix', roll number of lots/passengers x jump number (either way, multiply number of dice rolled or roll the results normally and multiply them), AND per parsec. That gives you a progression to larger higher jump ships, likely custom designed for specific routes to support them. Fun part? They HAVE to run high profit high jumps, each little adventure side trip is costly.

The "jump multiplier fix" would be non-linear. Someone might pay the cost for getting their stuff there quicker, but not all shippers will. And the higher the marginal cost for fast shipping, the less of it there will be.

Higher-Jn ships are costly when not run at maximum Jn. So you'll see the longer-range ships stuck on their dedicated routes (or perhaps even dedicated world-pairs).

The point I've been trying to make all along is that things that aren't economically viable won't happen. So if the rules say something isn't viable, while the setting materials say it is, that implies there's a hidden (or perhaps never-written) rule set (or justifiable house rule set) that makes it viable.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I'm also skeptical that a bank would loan money on a ship that can only be profitable doing speculative trading.

This suggests that in a rules-as-written setting, most higher-jump merchant ships would be worn-out surplus mega-corp ships.

 

[Proneutron]

The point I've been trying to make all along is that things that aren't economically viable won't happen.

In other words, as my Econ Prof. said, "The market is always right."

 

[Proneutron]

Traveller cargo and spec goods are "supply-push" items, in that it seems to be "this is what piled up dockside needing to go somewhere". There isn't a "demand-pull" cargo generation mechanism, wherein for example a destination that is non-agricultural causes more cargo to be generated for it from an Ag-coded world. (This happens indirectly in the spec game.)

Yes, I figured that out when I read the rules. You dock at the space port and see what is awaiting shipment by next available transport. Nothing? Wait a week and see what gets delivered for shipment.

 

[aramis]

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?

One can, if one wants to get that into the weeds, apply the actual value table to pricing.. Players set their asking price, and roll for each N passengers, and see what they're willing to pay... players can either lower to meet, or forego...

Likewise, each freight lot. Gets to be a hassle unless automated, but it's doable and allows for a range of outcomes.

 

[BlackBat242]

IMTU, High Passengers wouldn't book double-occupancy, though Mids could and probably would. Double-occupancy doubles LS costs per SR, Steerage would quadruple it (and would require purpose-built SRs or the equivalent; regular SRs would be impractical at quad occupancy and wouldn't have the LS capacity in any case).

So in your TU married High Passage couples would NOT travel in the same stateroom, but would always use separate staterooms?

Interesting social dynamic there.

 

[boomslang]

So in your TU married High Passage couples would NOT travel in the same stateroom, but would always use separate staterooms?

Interesting social dynamic there.

If double occupancy is prohibited in commercial service (by safety regulations, price-fixing, or what-have-you), there should be a shipboard (and deckplan) provision -- much like hotels all over this planet -- for some staterooms to be "connecting" via private doorways, to accommodate couples or families travelling together but paying single-occupancy rates.

Likewise, big spenders could book a "suite" of (for example) four connecting staterooms for their own individual use, open all the connecting doors, and really stretch out -- converting each stateroom into a single purpose rather than constantly reconfiguring one multipurpose room to its various uses.

I see no issues with this; the ship owner gets paid for each stateroom in use, and no passengers are travelling double-occupancy. Win-win.

 

[Proneutron]

So in your TU married High Passage couples would NOT travel in the same stateroom, but would always use separate staterooms?

Interesting social dynamic there.

So in your TU couples would pay for two high passage tickets and NOT use the two adjoining staterooms but stay confined to only one even though they paid for two?

Interesting econ dynamic there

 

[Grav_Moped]

So in your TU couples would pay for two high passage tickets and NOT use the two adjoining staterooms but stay confined to only one even though they paid for two?

Interesting econ dynamic there

I see High Passage as a luxury good with very little demand elasticity by price. People who can afford it at all don't care too much about how much it costs.

They're paying a 25% premium (Cr10,000 vs Cr8,000) just to have someone wait on them since the accommodations themselves are essentially the same for mid and high passage.

If I were designing the rules (and I will eventually work out a set of house rules), High Passengers always book single occupancy except maybe for children, and they always pay the cost premium to minimize the number of jumps to their destination. Mid passengers may be willing to accept double occupancy and may be willing to pay the cost premium to minimize number of jumps. This will need its own set of rules, which may require splitting mid passengers into Mid and Economy (Mid being single-occupancy, Economy being double-occupancy). Then there's Steerage, which will never pay to minimize number of jumps.

Economy can't be booked for more than two jumps in a row, Steerage can't be booked for more than a single jump (keeping passengers cooped up for too long leads to trouble).