The J4 passengers might be a political gain for the line. Or might charging more.
But the moment you're willing to break the canonical rules, you're no longer justifying your fixed prices on the grounds that it preserves canon, you're stating a personal preference. Which is just as good as my personal preference, but not a whit better. And suddenly unsupported by canon.
I've shown the COSTS, not the prices... but so long as those costs are under the prices (which for J3 passengers, they are, and for J4, they are not) then there is no issue.
Yes, there is, since J4 is canonical.
And the Rules don't require a 14 day cycle; they state that 14 days is both the norm...
And that's not requiring a 14 day cycle?
"Commercial starships usually make two jumps per month." [TTB:49] Not a word about
"...unless they're run by companies". On reflection, your willingness to ignore that canonical statement is just as much a violation of canon as my willingness to do the same.
...and comprised of 7 days ±1 day in jump, and 5 days to find cargoes. That leaves 1 day on either side for travel, which only takes half a day in most systems...
Yes, indeed. not a word about factors and warehouses and long-term freight contracts. Which IMO is solid proof that the trade rules are simplifications of a complex situation. So is there any real reason to believe that the fixed prices isn't a simplification too? I admit that if you could come up with something that adhered strictly to canon and explained everything, it would be good enough reason to stick to it. But you can't. you have to invoke a three jumps per month cycle to make jump-3 work. The fact that it's a very reasonable thing to invoke is besides the point.
It's not canon. And you can't make jump-4 work at all.
(Nor do I know yet that you can make jump-3 work. You didn't answer my question about allowing for a return on the owner's own invesment. Did you allow for that? Please don't overlook this question again. It makes quite a difference to the required profit.)
But the costs for a fledgling are rather high. You need a facility at each serviced port to make the shift to 3/month. The warehouse needs maintenance and maintenance crew (probably about Cr1000/mo, low soc), brokers and traders (Cr2000 each or more, tho' the brokerage fees pay most of that). You also need your own cargo rousts, because local port ones take 1d6 days to deliver... and the cargo-movers to enable their work. And a chunk of tarmac. Same for fuel delivery. Starts to add up really fast.
A fledgeling line with two canonically financed 400T type R merchants has invested MCr40 in its fleet. If it's two type M liners it's a bit over MCr100. Just how much does those costs of yours mount up to?
Now, granted, my fledgling lines would use obsolescent 40 year old ships and thus invest only a quater the sum, but that's not canon. And it would still be a double-digit megacredit investment
Subsector-wide lines are another matter. Oberlindes own 130 ships (in 1105; goes up to 200 in 1106) ranging up to 5000T. I think it can afford factors.
I've never had a group with adequate up front cash fail to turn a profit in a J2 ship by tramping.
Well, that's just another bit of evidence that the trade rules are unrealistic. According to canonical background information, 9 out of 10 fledgling lines fail in the first ten years. Yet if the trade rules are to be belived, all you need is enough money to buy a ship and provide adequate up front cash and you can't fail to turn a profit. And there must be thousands of multi-millionaires on each high-popualtion world with the money to finance such an operation.
As for a black market: if breaking the maximum price regs gets your ship seized, you're unlikely to risk it.
But if the profits to be made on a black market are high enough, you're unlikely to have your ship seized, since you will have the money to corrupt and kill anyone who tries to get in your way. Real life example: The Sicilian Mafia.
Moreover, you won't be able to finance a ship unless you can show a profit is likely.
And you won't be willing to finance it yourself unless you believe a profit is likely. So far we agree.
The black market in shipping isn't that high... the additional costs of providing the service drive demand down, and the price already requires a large standing investment of capital (more in liquid and cargo than in ships).
But here you're stating unsupported assumptions. If a jump-3 ship can make money over three parsec distances, a jump-1 ship that charges the same rate over one parsec distances is making HUGE profits.
Akerut maintains a fleet of 50 5000T ships with a cargo hold of 2911T. They make 35 jups per year (your assumption), which means they move 50*2900*35 = 5,075,000 (let's round that down to 5,000,000) dT per year at Cr1000 per dT and at an operating cost of... what, Cr400 per dT? That's a profit of
MCr3000 per year. Anyone who could undercut that and charge Cr900 per dT could earn a profit of MCr2500 per year. And that's just one of the companies in a pretty low-population subsector; unfortunately the information about the other companies is less exact. But take that and scale it up for the the trade between Rhylanor and Porozlo alone and we're talking many billions at stake. So Rhylanor-Porozlo Lines sets up a daughter corporation on Rhylanor and another on Porozlo; the one on Porozlo buys, sells to RPL, who transports it as speculative trade and sells it to the one on Rhylanor (and vice versa) for a "profit" of Cr900 per dT, and all three companies pay dividends to the same owners. And any ship trying to charge Cr1000 per dT between Rhylanor and Porozlo is going to find a dearth of freight. And the Imperium won't care, because the people who own RPL are the exact same
kind of people as the ones who own Tukera stock. So clamping down on RPL will please Tukera stockholding nobles but anger RPL stockholding nobles.
Come to that, the owner of RPL is just as likely to be one of the other megacorporations.
Gotta have the finances to be able to break that law, and the people who NEED to go faster have cost-prohibitive means of getting there anyway, usually integral. But if you have the finances to be able to break it, odds are, you have the finances to be able to comply with it at a profit anyway... we're talking MCr100+ to make a go of a single J3 ship... which, tramping with a trader 3+, can cherry pick sale worlds from usually 12-18 destinations.
It doesn't work like that. If you artificially distort the market, it will put pressure on it. There is only so much profit to be made, and there will always be people who aren't getting what they consider to be their fair share. It's all very well to say that the megacorporations have an interest in keeping prices fixed, but they're competing against each other, so they have a countervailing interest in getting a bigger market share. 20% of a slightly smaller pie beats 8% of a slightly bigger one any day.
One other benefit of no J5+ civil traffic: you can't outrun the Navy.
You can't anyway. The Navy has jump-6 couriers. On the other hand, there are a large number of people who can afford to pay for jump-6 travel by passenger liner but not to have a private jump-6 yacht. They'll want jump-6 liners to travel on.
Hans
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