very right
OTU's star trade and travel is much like Earth circa 1910
have fun
Selandia
General What would general purpose freighters look like?
- Thread starter Proneutron
- Start date
very right
OTU's star trade and travel is much like Earth circa 1910
have fun
Selandia
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
That is not the Megacorps described in CT at least. Only Tukera and Sharurshid has shipping as a core operation.
Shipping lines like Tukera or Oberlindes are not vertically integrated. They ship other corps goods, either as freight or speculative cargo.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Presuming there is a chain of convenient class A or B starports every single parcek, which is not very likely...
You have to adjust for actual terrain.
That's where I started going with this. My idea was to figure out what ships the big players used and what their costs were, then construct comprehensive trade rules (or at least the cargo rates) from those. I hit a wall when I realized that the cargo generation table was built for for 400-600Td ships, and on the heaviest possible trade routes could only support ships of 1000Td or so with improbably high cargo quantity rolls.
The nice thing about those rules is that they support what's in LBB2: the low end of a small-ship universe. The annoying thing is that they stop there. This leaves the high end of it (800-5000Td) and anything in the large-ship (LBB5, over 5KTd) universe to arbitrary canon descriptions and referee fiat.
What's needed, and I may get there at some point, is how the market for shipping works in the zone between having a fleet of a few Fat Traders and megacorporation fleets of dozens of 2000-20,000KTd freighters and liners. Basically, the feeder lines that do the "last mile" part of the logistics chain because there's not enough traffic to make it worthwhile to use the more-efficient large ships out in the boonies. Something that makes 600-800Td ships and Jump-2 and -3 viable, and explains how Jump-4 and Jump-5 could be viable under specific narrow circumstances. (Or, rather, what you'd have to pay for them if you needed the capability and they happened to be available because they usually wouldn't be.)
Something I need to run the numbers on later:
Which is more cost-effective? Carrying a fuel processor, carrying extra fuel to skip lower-grade starports, or having a Jump drive that lets you bypass them altogether? Or is the cost-weighted risk of a misjump from dirty fuel low enough that it's cheaper to take your chances?
It might even be cheapest to set up your own fuel refining facilities at the intermediate stops, if security isn't an issue.
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Useful info. The point of my original statement is that freight costs derive from the (rules for the fictional) engineering constraints on ship design. If a corporation is big enough to vertically integrate, it's big enough to support multi-month lead times and therefore can do everything by Jump-1 or -2 to save on shipping costs.
Mercedes could probably still turn a profit on their highest-end cars if they airlifted them to the US. They can make a much bigger profit by shipping them in roll-on/roll-off car carrier ships, so that's what they do.
Given that a misjump might well be fatal, "cheaper" is not the half of it.
This is a major headache that appears to usually be simply glosssed-over. :CoW:
As to purification, it depends on the rules version. In CT/BT there is no additional cost -- in terms of money or displacement -- to build-in military-grade drives capable of using unrefined fuel at no penalty instead of commercial-grade ones which require refined fuel to operate reliably. Therefore, IMCTU any bank that has even the remotest intent of remaining solvent will require milspec drives on any Free/Far Trader it is asked to underwrite -- otherwise they are throwing away their money on a ship that is statistically unlikely to survive long enough to get paid off.
I reserve "refined fuel ONLY" commercial-grade drives for subsidized vessels running regular routes, specifically as a piracy deterrent. A 1000-dt freighter makes a poor target for hijacking and subsequent repurposing as corsair mothership if it has finicky fuel requirements and therefore a limited number of starports that can support its long-term operation. If a subbie absolutely must regularly frequent a Class C or less starport, I let the subsidy underwriter arrange to make refined fuel locally available at that port, reserved exclusively for the regularly-scheduled vessel's use. (See also lessor policies requiring the use of Jump Cassettes -- once you think about the risk-management side of it, banks do not want to have to put their trust in the competence and/or good intentions of some non-loan-signatory Navigator/Astrogator the operator recruited from a startown bar less than two hours before departure.)
The unrefined fuel danger is clearly another broken and/or underplaytested rule designed to create "adventure opportunities" for PCs by making backwater-frequenting Trader misjumps pretty much inevitable. Remember, this is a game system that routinely killed off PCs in character generation in the name of realism -- given that in the RAW there is no guarantee that a misjump ends anywhere with fuel for the scrounging or with time left on the powerplant to even sustain the crew long enough to begin the search for some, the non-zero probability of a TPK during routine operations by a responsible-but-out-of-options a starship crew right in the middle of an ongoing campaign is apparently a feature, not a bug.
So I wa(i)ve it, and let unrefined fuel be the ubiquitous default (like it is for small craft), with refined fuel most often seen as a contractual requirement to protect the bank's investment from cheapskate operators or ambitious pirates... or both.
Otherwise, in pretty much everything after CT HG2, at-need fuel refining has the effect of (maliciously) adding unnecessary overhead to the ship's operating margins to avoid adding any extra deadly peril. I note that on-board fuel purification is absurdly bulky at midrange TLs, and is typically as slow as molasses, too.
[You might want to spawn a new thread just address this separate-but-equally-intractable mess...]
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Since misjumps tend to be a matter of probability, monojumping allows some leeway, and if it's a matter of course, it becomes a question of cost benefit analysis, though I believe a fuel purifier is usually priced relatively dirt cheap.
Good observations.
Some quick comments:
- So that's what the extra space in the Fat Trader's drive bay is for... a fuel purifier. Or maybe that's why it has oversize drives? LOL.
- The milspec drives thing seems arbitrary (no cost or extra space, but PCs can't buy it?)
- I sort of get why they did it: force merchant PCs to decide whether or not to take risks, but don't stop Scouts from going into the wilderness. It'd be awkward for battle fleets to have to factor in losing some ships every time they Jumped in hostile territory. Still, it's way too arbitrary.
- IMTU the Type S has that stupidly-huge fuel tank so it can have a 3-parsec (J2+J1) range*; but, more than that, so it can Jump-1 at the 10D limit and take its chances with a misjump then jump to a fuel source after exit (Run the numbers -- the odds are much better than you'd think.)
* Justifiable exploit of the power-down rule from JTAS#14/TCS, plus slicing the monthly power plant fuel requirement into weeks. (Yeah, it's my personal dead horse and I'll beat it if I want to.)
Proneutron
SOC-13
In a game I played in long ago players did this on a few planets on a good route. I believe they did this by upgrading the existing fueling facility of the Class C by purchasing some fuel processors and a storage tank and constructing the little out building themselves. In exchange for allowing the small space needed at the port and hook ups to the unrefined fuel supply the port was allowed to use & sell the refined fuel. The PCs ship had priority access. The Port maintained the equipment as they made the profit.
Proneutron
SOC-13
If I have a hijacked ship (no loan payments) I'll use a small amount of cargo space for processors.
I think the deal with the Fat Trader is a compromise. At 400dt, it is technically too small to generally qualify for a subsidy (restricted to 600dt and up, as per the LBB), and most financers realize that it will end up leaving its fixed route in favor of going Trading once it is paid off. Thus, the demountable tank fittings as built: the trader is expected to plan ahead and arrive already carrying the Jump fuel necessary to safely depart any low-rated-starport world they seek to visit.
In practice, collapsible tanks would make even more sense (so one can free up the extra hold space upon making planetfall), but they had not been thought of yet when S7 was written, I guess. Easy-enough retrofit.
There is no explicit prohibition in the rules. Given that civilians can arm their vessels to the teeth, I see no implicit objection to buying decent drives as well. Ditto sensors, with the same caveats for Traders versus Subbies with respect to avoiding or deterring piracy, respectively. "What's good for the goose..."
I rely upon the fuel use table in Beltstrike, because it is both realistic and simple. Just assume that power plants operate in standby mode during Jump, since the j-drive is doing the actual work and the plant is merely regulating at that level (as per BT). You can really improve your power plant endurance that way, and it produces a result consistent across all hull and drive sizes.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Which begs the question of why this isn't done on every world...
Megacorp payoffs through Imperial nobility to the local governments to outlaw it, most likely (he said, cynically).
Looks like an excellent business opportunity slash adventure hook to me: Fuelwar as a variation on Tradewar. Anyone looking score some Black Market Hydrogen?
:file_22:
Proneutron
SOC-13
It looks to me like they created the Fat Trader and Sub Liner because they were good RPG platforms (or useful in RPG settings) rather than because they were economically viable. The subsidization mechanic was included because those ships weren't actually economically viable, and they wanted cargo rules to stay simple. In that light, the Standard Hulls (in the lower end of the range) serve to enable viable merchant ships by reducing ship cost without having to rewrite drive costs and performance stats across the board.
I like the idea of requiring demountable -- or, especially, collapsible -- tanks to bypass bad fuel stops. Proneutron's "Ok then, we'll build our own truck stops!" idea makes for a fun campaign concept too.
Beltstrike's fuel rules work well enough, and I can see using them.
My own take is that the powerplant runs at Pn=Jn for 9/10 of a week to keep the ship in Jump Space, then shuts down. The Jump field (other than in a misjump) collapses on its own schedule (the +/- 10% variation). Cutting power to the jump field early is risky, and letting the field collapse by itself once you realize you're stuck in Jump Space longer than a week is also risky -- you wait a week then power it down again and see if you get out that time. Repeat until out of Jump Space or out of fuel, whichever comes first.
Getting ahold of some aftermarket demountable tankage is a crucial plot point in TTA -- the storyline is not really workable without them.
In that scenario, it's to get a 2-parsec range so the travellers can leave the Spinward Main... but it got me thinking, back in the day.
Yo be classified a a cerain level you must meet the minimum requirement, on every factor to be accouned for. I mean that a D class safari world starport may have refined fuel and a passenger lounge with a Guide, Tour & Souvenirs Shop, but not whatever else would be needed for a C classification.
Actually the fuel is likely the first upgrade a D would get on its way up
Have fun
Selandia
Actually the fuel is likely the first upgrade a D would get on its way up
Have fun
Selandia
Proneutron
SOC-13
Based on all your valuable calcs and input I created a new small trading ship for MTU. I tried to make it a logical outgrowth of the RAW as analyzed here.
