General What would general purpose freighters look like?

[Grav_Moped]

While i agree with your characterization of the principles of shipping in RL, I don't agree that CT shipping RAW follows that or that my house rules break them.


CT shipping rules with the Cr1000 the same whether J-1 or J-4 should at the very least mean everyone is clamoring to ship as far as fast as possible, just on the principle that they can save costs. So the multiplier of lots available works on that principle and simulates demand for that advantage.

It simulates demand for a service on which the providers lose money. That might be acceptable if freight is intended to just be "filler" around speculative cargo that was going their way anyhow, but the minigame doesn't explicitly frame it that way. It seems more a "can I get enough freight to fill my ship's hold?" challenge.

Per-parsec house ruling alone makes sense too on the principle of no shipping entity is going to operate on a losing money basis (unless subsidized).

As a general rule -- general enough for the formalized practices embodied in the trade minigame -- that's where I see it. Sure, there will be the occasional A2 or R2 coming through running spec cargo that would be happy to cut the loss from their otherwise partly-empty hold, but this wouldn't happen often enough for it to affect standard practices.

What I gather your objection/observation is oriented to is using both at once, without a concurrent loss in interest in the faster costs.

Exactly. The service provided is both "ton of payload to X distance" and "delivery in T weeks". The rules as written conflate the two, to the detriment of higher-Jn ships.

I considered going through hoops for a simulationist dynamic shipping market and variable rate structure before I settled on these, but ultimately I just don't think it's worth play value. That alone is good enough reason to keep it simple IMO.


As far as justification, I did that whole analysis on the LCL/parcel economics on Reddit and copied it here where I got into the velocity of cargo AND money. There are payoffs in speed in terms of getting paid faster, getting goods to customers faster, and having less inventory 'in flight' and having less capital/shrinkage/pirate risk tied up in fewer packets of product in the pipeline. More reaction to unexpected demand, more efficient warehousing arrangements per sector, which means more products 'travel better' from the sector's industrial worlds.



Plus, per-parsec means you will pay the same or maybe more going on the slow boat J-1 circuit, and some worlds/routes may literally not be available at J-2. That further justifies a 'norm' of 'going to have to pay for each parsec anyway, might as well get it there faster' and therefore not so much fall-off in paying for the big jumps up front.

That makes sense, and is a reasonable justification for cargo volumes not dropping off by Jn.


The problem with per-parsec pricing (or any pricing scheme) is what its benchmark ship is. Most of my work so far has been on figuring out how economies of scale affect costs, but it looks like the freight game doesn't support the ships most advantaged by that effect. Actually, it looks like those rules were constructed to support the Type A at a slight profit, the R at a slight loss, and the Type M at a significant loss -- with the latter two built so that they didn't end up with more cargo space than the freight game could supply from an average-pop world.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Actually, it looks like those rules were constructed to support the Type A at a slight profit, the R at a slight loss, and the Type M at a significant loss -- with the latter two built so that they didn't end up with more cargo space than the freight game could supply from an average-pop world.

...and there's actually nothing wrong with that.

On its own terms, within the context of this being an RPG where the cargo-hauling is primarily a pretext to move the PC party along to the next world down the line, and the marginal profitability is a push to get the PCs to do interesting things to make their fortunes, it's good enough.

It breaks down because the setting isn't constructed from those rules. To be fair, the original Traveller setting was, though.

 

[Proneutron]

It breaks down because the setting isn't constructed from those rules. To be fair, the original Traveller setting was, though.

Yes, rules weren't updated to justify the new ship ecosystem. What did they "eat". Much like big bad monsters stuck deep in a dungeon without visible means of support That reminds me of a joke about the B-26 Marauder being called the ""Baltimore Lady of the evening"...

 

[Grav_Moped]

Yes, rules weren't updated to justify the new ship ecosystem. What did they "eat". Much like big bad monsters stuck deep in a dungeon without visible means of support That reminds me of a joke about the B-26 Marauder being called the ""Baltimore Lady of the evening"...

I wonder if the Merchant Prince rules align better with a Large Ship Universe?

I'll get around to them at some point, after I finish working through the implications of the LBB2 system and then how LBB5 interacts with it.

 

[aramis]

I wonder if the Merchant Prince rules align better with a Large Ship Universe?

I'll get around to them at some point, after I finish working through the implications of the LBB2 system and then how LBB5 interacts with it.

They were intended to, and there's a spot around 20KTd where it's actually plausible to make money at it...

 

[Proneutron]

I wonder if the Merchant Prince rules align better with a Large Ship Universe?

Never played with those rules.

 

[Grav_Moped]

They were intended to, and there's a spot around 20KTd where it's actually plausible to make money at it...

I'm not seeing how you get to 20KTd. The Cargo Available at Source World table on LBB7 p.39 looks to be a copy of that from LBB2, which in the best case* generates a maximum of 2466Td of cargo. Maximum passengers on this run are 37hi, 45 mid, 57 lo, taking up 6689Td for passenger accommodations (+20Td for the stewards). Total payload is 9175Td including the stewards.

At 20Ktd at TL-9 through 12, that won't fill the hold and staterooms of a J2/1G ship, which has payload of about 40% of the total tonnage. At TL-13 it's close for J3/1G (49% left for payload). That said, this is the absolute best-case maximum payload generated by the table.

I must have missed something. It's not that the ship won't be profitable -- there's a lot of +DMs for cargo value. It's that there still won't be enough cargo to fill a ship that size!



*Origin: TL-15, Pop A. Destination: TL-1, Pop 8+. Every die rolled comes up 6, all applicable skills at level 2.

 

[aramis]

Pop A world.
Large lots: 1D+6
Small Lots: 1D+7
Incidental Lots: 1D

I'll analyse with a range - low at 3 per die, high at 4.
So large lots at 1d×10
Small Lots at 1d×5
Incidental at 1d

Pop A world thus typically has 9x30 to 10x40 tons in large lots of cargo.
That's 270-400 tons
The Small Lots run 10 to 11, so 150 to 220 tons
Incidentals add 9 to 16 tons
So we are looking at 429 to 676 tons cargo.

But, in Bk 7, we also have freight lots in similar numbers.
So we can fill 840 to 1500 tons that way.

The thing is, while one can only roll once per week... there's no actual prohibition on booking freight to multiple destinations. So, you're booking jumps along the route.
The problem is, that's clearly not intended, otherwise a negative modifier would be ipresent for doing so.

Even if the GM allows booking only two jumps ahead, you get another set of freight lots. And you have the space to arrive, used trader 3+ to predict sale a jump ahead...
So you now have about 4000 tons potentially aboard...

As I said, plausible, not practical. It relies upon having sufficient skills to maximize, and a good route. Plus, you max the income by converting some to passengers.

Plausible, but not likely, and involves multiple loads and maxed skill, between multiple high pop worlds

 

[Grav_Moped]

There isn't a prohibition on booking cargo to multiple destinations?
I thought you could only book for one Jump, which is one destination.
LBB7 doesn't say it though, and that may have been intentional.

That's rules as written, of course.

Your interpretation matches mine, though perhaps through different reasoning: since only Jump-1 is profitable for generic cargo*, Jump-1 is all that's on offer for generic cargo (with rare exceptions). This means most cargo going beyond one parsec will accept through-shipment with intermediate stops, and pays per-parsec rates. In fact, some portion of cargo going to any given destination originated elsewhere and is in transit to its eventual destination. (This implies that some cargo to distant destinations might accept shipment to intermediate ports that are closer to, but not the, eventual destination as well -- that'll need extra rules though.)

Some will pay more for shipment via minimum jumps, though I haven't worked the numbers on that yet.


*LBB2-only rules, excepting Size-Z Drive ships which will almost never run at capacity out in the boonies where the PCs ply their trade.

 

[BlackBat242]

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).

The issue is that many ships do NOT have that option of connecting staterooms, and may well have all the rest of their staterooms filled, leaving the spoiled rich couples you are describing to choose between sharing a stateroom or not making the trip - at least not until another ship comes by (not everyone can wait, and another ship being available within a few days might not happen).

It seems you are looking at passenger-liner standards and clientele, and applying them to the far smaller and less-well equipped ships that PCs can actually afford to own/operate.

Remember, the thread is about general purpose freighters - whose main commodity (occupying most of the non-machinery/fuel volume) is cargo, and which have only a limited number of staterooms which are placed, in the design work, after the cargo bay was laid out.

 

[Grav_Moped]

A high passenger can 'bump' (outbid) a mid passenger (LBB2, 2nd ed., p.5).

The displaced mid passenger gets a refund, but has no recourse other than to then buy a high passage to displace a different mid-passenger.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Pop A world.
Large lots: 1D+6
Small Lots: 1D+7
Incidental Lots: 1D

I'll analyse with a range - low at 3 per die, high at 4.
So large lots at 1d×10
Small Lots at 1d×5
Incidental at 1d

Pop A world thus typically has 9x30 to 10x40 tons in large lots of cargo.
That's 270-400 tons
The Small Lots run 10 to 11, so 150 to 220 tons
Incidentals add 9 to 16 tons
So we are looking at 429 to 676 tons cargo.

But, in Bk 7, we also have freight lots in similar numbers.
So we can fill 840 to 1500 tons that way.

The thing is, while one can only roll once per week... there's no actual prohibition on booking freight to multiple destinations. So, you're booking jumps along the route.
The problem is, that's clearly not intended, otherwise a negative modifier would be ipresent for doing so.

Even if the GM allows booking only two jumps ahead, you get another set of freight lots. And you have the space to arrive, used trader 3+ to predict sale a jump ahead...
So you now have about 4000 tons potentially aboard...

As I said, plausible, not practical. It relies upon having sufficient skills to maximize, and a good route. Plus, you max the income by converting some to passengers.

Plausible, but not likely, and involves multiple loads and maxed skill, between multiple high pop worlds

Ok, that's what I missed -- the rolls for cargo and freight are both done on the Cargo Available at Source World table, but they stack (you roll for the cargo available at Cr1000/ton, then roll for the freight valued as per the origin/destination tables and mods).

That makes the average outbound tonnage (excluding passengers) about equal to the maximum tonnage from a single pass through the cargo generation rolls.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Ok, that's what I missed -- the rolls for cargo and freight are both done on the Cargo Available at Source World table, but they stack (you roll for the cargo available at Cr1000/ton, then roll for the freight valued as per the origin/destination tables and mods).

I don't think so.

The Cargo table (LBB7, p39) is the same table as LBB2 p11 (with added skill DMs) and refers to freight, not speculative cargo. The Ship Revenues table on the same page states Cargo is carried for kCr1/Dt, so freight.

Note the example LBB7 p41 describes buying trade goods without rolling for available quantity. The checklist (LBB7, p37) does not contain any step to limit the amount of trade goods that can be bought or sold. I can't find anything in the LBB7 rules that limits the amount trade goods that can be bought or sold.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I don't think so.

The Cargo table (LBB7, p39) is the same table as LBB2 p11 (with added skill DMs) and refers to freight, not speculative cargo. The Ship Revenues table on the same page states Cargo is carried for kCr1/Dt, so freight.

Note the example LBB7 p41 describes buying trade goods without rolling for available quantity. The checklist (LBB7, p37) does not contain any step to limit the amount of trade goods that can be bought or sold. I can't find anything in the LBB7 rules that limits the amount trade goods that can be bought or sold.

That's... odd.

If there's no limit, then there ought to be no limit to cargo either since trade goods can become cargo once someone buys them for shipment offworld. PCs can do it, so the locals should be able to do it as well.

Perhaps the assumption is that the cargo presented by the LBB2 tables consists of all of the trade goods the locals could afford to buy up to ship offworld to sell on their own, and the PCs' speculative purchases are on top of that. Seems a bit difficult to support, especially on higher-pop worlds, but it's all I can come up with.

 

[mike wightman]

The assumption of the LBB2 trade rules is that the freight available and the speculative goods you can find (only one roll per week remember) are what is available to a tramp trader run by ethically challenged merchants - PCs in other words - after the big boys have taken all the big stuff.

The merchant lines - the ones you generate a character's previous experience from and then leave to begin adventuring or living the life of a free trader - will ship goods using a far different economic model, one that can not be determined from the free trader minigame of LBB2.

Look at the chapter in The Traveller Adventure detailing the major shipping companies, their ships and their routes.

 

[Proneutron]

The assumption of the LBB2 trade rules is that the freight available and the speculative goods you can find (only one roll per week remember) are what is available to a tramp trader run by ethically challenged merchants - PCs in other words - after the big boys have taken all the big stuff.

Yes, they have agents embedded into the business culture of that planet. Long term deals, new deals heard about first on the "golf course", etc., etc. Tramp freighters cannot compete with that at all.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The assumption of the LBB2 trade rules is that the freight available and the speculative goods you can find (only one roll per week remember) are what is available to a tramp trader run by ethically challenged merchants - PCs in other words - after the big boys have taken all the big stuff.

The merchant lines - the ones you generate a character's previous experience from and then leave to begin adventuring or living the life of a free trader - will ship goods using a far different economic model, one that can not be determined from the free trader minigame of LBB2.

Look at the chapter in The Traveller Adventure detailing the major shipping companies, their ships and their routes.

So megacorp trading model is a matte painting behind the players -- it's there, but never interacted with. That's fine for the LBB2 small-ship universe and its play style, but doesn't provide anything for playing above that level. I can understand that, because Traveller doesn't simulate (future) reality, it simulates science fiction. The "you can't get there from here" effect makes some sense in that context, in that the cargo mini-game isn't meant to be an accurate model, merely a playable and plausible game within a Sci-Fi setting. Extrapolation from a broken model yields meaningless results.

The problem comes in with LBB7. It does seem to extrapolate from that model, apparently without limit.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The main flaw in LBB2's cargo rules is the economics of shipping.

Cr1000/Td/jump pricing only makes sense for Jump-1 (no higher Jn ship can make a profit on it, at the quantities provided in the trade game). Since that's the only profitable Jn, then it will be the only Jn the market provides. As such, any cargo that moves more than 1 parsec pays Cr1000/Td/parsec.

This can be capped by saturating the market with J-3 subsidized liners (and J-2 far fat traders, though those are merely implied by the build rules, not canon themselves) to force Cr1000/ton/jump rates over J2 and J3. It still wouldn't result in a fleet of independent ships of more than Jump-1, though.

But it could explain the link between LBB7 and LBB2. The cargo in LBB2 is what comes from the locals buying freight under the LBB7 rules. They then ship it at the LBB2 Cr1000/ton/jump rate, which is usually supported by subsidized shippers. The PCs can carry it on their ship instead if they're willing to lose money on it -- which they might be, if it'd otherwise be empty space around their own speculative goods. But this is rationalization, and assumes active intervention (at what may be considerable expense) to force shipping costs below what's profitable for ships above Jump-1 capability.

 

[mike wightman]

Higher jump number PC ships - and NPC free traders - make their money from speculative trade and 'odd jobs'.

 

[BlackBat242]

A high passenger can 'bump' (outbid) a mid passenger (LBB2, 2nd ed., p.5).

The displaced mid passenger gets a refund, but has no recourse other than to then buy a high passage to displace a different mid-passenger.

IF there is any stateroom occupied by someone who purchased a "mid passage" ticket!

If all of the few staterooms but one have been booked with HIGH passage tickets, then apparently either the couple "take out" one of the others or they don't take the trip, apparently in your world.