Worlds without Roads

[kilemall]

One starport version I have worked up has no buildings, everything is underground and pops up through openings in the tarmac. Done because of storms? Excessive earthquakes? Solar storms? I'll figure out something.

Since I have tailfin-sitters there is a lot more finny gantry pulp this is the future ship scenery going on.

More Cape Kennedy, less JFK.

 

[aramis]

Let's compare some busy second rate Alaskan airports...

PANC/ANC - Ted Stevens International (yes, they did rename Anch Int'l for him.)
2 passenger terminal buildings, 34 total gates, parking for over 100 small aircraft, parking away from gates for 20 passenger airliners, at least 3 freight terminal buildings 5 or 6 maintenance hangars, plus a postal distribution center. Just off the property, 5 largish hotels, 2 bars, 4 auto rental shops (3 more have offices in the airport and parking in the parking structure. South end of Spenard is several dive bars, a strip club, restaurants, a several massage parlors (which are brothels is not something i know), a TV station, and a lot of residences... most of the surround is actually parkland...
2 towers, plus a seaplane lake on premises. Rigidly controlled airspace. 7 runways plus 2 designated floatplane "runways"...

PABV/BCV - Birchwood - not far outside the PANC TCA.
2 parallel strips - second closed to non-emergency landings, and used as taxiway. Fuel, engine shop on field. 4 hangars (1 CAP, 1 repair, 2 for rental parking). 3 other buildings on premises, including portmaster's office. Fuel is pay at the pump.
"Startown" equivalent - Pilot's Bar and Grill, Isaac Walton's Firing Range, a few residential properties, a dental office, and a realtor.

PAMR/MRI Merril Field.
3 runways, no passenger terminal, 15 or so businesses on field, max strip 1200m - bit short for widebodies, but it's had 707's and 727's land in the past - takeoff was another matter - had to be fitted with JATO and flown empty. Major repairs, system repairs for P/F/R on electronics and engines. FSS has life support refills available (O2, filters, CO2 scrubbers; boxed lunches and sandwiches from across the street). 7 or 8 hangars, tower, 1 hangar owned by CAP. Parking for over 100 small aircraft. Heliport has two pads - one civil, one for the adjacent hospital. Field opens to regional fire training center grounds...
North edge of property on major highway. Multiple restaurants, no-tell-motels, 2 strip clubs, a sex-toys shop, Peggy's Restaurant (great pies, decent greasy spoon), hospital, elementary school and multiple residential neighborhoods, plus a shopping mall. 2 miles from downtown Anchorage, 1 from "downtown Mountain View", 3 from EAFB/JBER.


PAIG/IGG Igiugig
uncontrolled 3000' gravel strip - public, but near to lodge. (Lodge about 200m past the west end of runway...), and village about 1km away, SSW. Fuel available. No businesses except fuel pump at airport. If you land and want to eat, head to the lodge. Good fishing spot just off the lake, if you can avoid miring yourself in the tundra.

Iggiugig shows the folly of airport comparisons - it's got food and fuel, but nothing else...

Meanwhile, i happen to know that one of the A&P's out at BCV built a homebuilt on site, with tools in his A&P shop. So, technically, a construction-yard. But no LS available...

 

[GypsyComet]

There's no roads, airplanes, trains, or ships. It's all grav.

I consider this a regional thing. The central Imperium has had grav tech for thousands of years. Six thousand at least. A few spots in the Marches and Deneb may have as much as two or three thousand years with grav tech. Most of the area behind the claw runs closer to one thousand years or less.

Because of the Long Night, the pattern might actually be flipped from what you might expect. Much of the central Imperium went pastoral for 1700 years. If they didn't have access to grav manufacturing or lost it at some point, worlds would return to other forms of transport. It is part of the basic definition of the setting.

By comparison, the vast majority of the Marches and Deneb were settled by a *rising* civilization. The young Third Imperium was just the last wave, after two groups of Solomani and a pile of "he's not remodeling, he's looting" Vargr. Whether or not they brought the grav infrastructure with them, they were coming from an established TL11-13 source.

That said, those new colonies were probably not entirely gravitic. You want wheels or tracks for breaking ground, or in nasty weather. You may still want long haul heavy cargo on wheels, depending on a variety of economic reasons. So there may indeed by some roads. They'll be carefully considered roads, though. Not until a world population heads into the widely dispersed billions, or had a footloose native culture to seed towns all over the place, will a young colony be likely to have the infinite seeming web of asphalt we see now on Earth.

 

[Enoki]

It also depends on what your definition of "road" is...

That's the Rubicon Trail, an actual named road, and what's shown is one of the better parts...

 

[kilemall]

Big factor, grav cost.

Early Traveller had it very expensive, later versions with the retro two types, personally I prefer keeping it expensive due to it's greater utility and suborbital nature and using all that fusion power in the mid-tech range for duct fans.

 

[tjoneslo]

I'm going to start this from another angle.

Biter GWP is MCr 9,000, and assuming 1% is spend on maintaining the transportation infrastructure, this gives us MCr 90 to support all the transport needs. 75% of the GWP is spent on stuff, like food, basic supplies, consumer goods, tools, industrial goods, etc. At Cr10,000 per dton, this amount to 675,000 dtons per year to move from one place to another.

There are four things a transport infrastructure moves, in order of importance:

1. Bulk Goods, like food, basic living supplies, etc.
2. Bulk people mover, mass transit
3. Light goods movement, last mile delivery of stuff
4. Light people movement, last mile delivery of people to home

In general a transport network is built to transport bulk goods, and the other uses are added on later.

The following are methods of doing the bulk transport, with assumptions:

• Water transport, assuming open water or rivers.
• Land Transport, assuming roads
• Air transport, assuming an atmosphere
• Grav Transport, assuming TL availability

This list is, generally, in order of least expensive to most expensive.

And this is where I ended up smacking my head into a wall. The cost of buying and maintaining a vehicle varies widely across the various Traveller build system by an order of magnitude or more. If you pick a system, the collective gearheads can build vehicles. My preferences for building are (in order) GURPS Vehicles, An alternative T5, and T20 with extensions.

With Water and Air transport, most of the infrastructure cost goes into maintaining the vehicles (boats, airplanes, dirigibles, etc). For an estimate, assume 75% for vehicles, 25% for the port(s). You only need a port at each end of the journey to support them. This allows for a more population centers. However, the availability of water limits the ability light goods/people transport to spread too far. Air transport tends to be very expensive for smaller vehicles, and will limit the spread from the port centers.

With Road transport, the split of infrastructure funding is closer to 50% for roads, 50% for vehicles. Road transport assumes both truck/paved road and railroad style designs. Railroads (including mono-rails) cost as much as a good paved road (use Cr 1,000,000/km to build and Cr 50,000/km/year to maintain). The advantage of roads is you don't need either water or air to build or use them. Because there is more being spent on road building and maintenance, this leaves less money for vehicle building and transport. This will force fewer separate population centers, and they will be closer together.

With Grav transport you get the advantage of Air vehicles (single port at each population center), but with smaller port requirements, split the difference 80% vehicles, 20% port. Since we're assuming a low TL world (4 to 8), importing the Grav tech is expensive. A world at TL-A you would expect to see the transition from the other types of transport. At TL-B and above almost all of the transport should be grav based.

To sum up. If you primary transport mode is:
Water -> Population centers spread along navigable waterways with larger or smaller ones at random.
Air -> Population centers spread widely, but tightly clustered around the port center.
Road -> Fewer, and closer population centers, but may be slightly more spread than air or water.
Grav -> Widely spread population centers, with looser clustering.


In most case they will be mixed, and you can decide how to mix them.

 

[atpollard]

There's no roads, airplanes, trains, or ships. It's all grav. Using roads for hauling is as obsolete as using 1800s tall ships for hauling or copper-line telephone networks for phone service in our world. Discussing the economics of roads in the OTU would be like showing up at an urban housing development planning meeting in the 21st century Western world and shouting about "But where will stable the carriage horses?"

Low local TL means that they can't maintain the high TL components and depend upon interstellar trade to bring in the required spare parts. High volumes of trade means that these spare parts are not as expensive as you might think; it's good enough to keep these worlds going. The more dependent a world is on off-world imports, the lower TL the world is. Grav may be expensive as listed in the sourcebooks, but Vilani thinking towards devices means they're intended to last - a good utility grav vehicle with reasonable maintenance will last you your entire lifetime and probably your children's lifetime and their grandchildren's with an low to affordable rate of maintenance costs; many people buy used grav utility vehicles.

Locals might use airplanes, boats, or off-road vehicles for relatively light duty (like hunting, foraging, or just visiting the next village over) but nobody uses them "industrially" for scheduled hauling or anything like that; so dirt roads or paths are fine.

I think the Adventures tend to agree with you. Whatever the TL of the world, the party seems to have no trouble finding an Air Raft to borrow or rent.

It is one thing that encourages me to take the advice in the original LBBs and just create my own game based on what I want (VIVA IMTU! ). I don't see how the Scout arrives on a world, sees imported air rafts flying everywhere, has a pint in the local Pub and checks TL 4 on the Survey box. [shrug]

Only the prohibitive price of the CT Grav vehicles suggests otherwise.

 

[kilemall]

Tjones, just a word on your railroad assertions.

Monorail, maglev/gravlev may be the thing for high speed passenger transit, but does not suit the economics of bulk rail shipment. Somethng like modern rail today, or at least a cheaper slow moving version of maglev, would be the order of the day for something like Biter.

So again, half the cost of roads- UNLESS mountains or hills are involved. Then railroads need 2% or less grades to be economical, a road may well be cheaper on initial build due to less tunnel and bridgework due to cheaper route options.

Other economics favoring rail for overland grain shipment over trucks include less labor (likely by a factor of 10), less motive power per ton required (this would translate in fusion Traveller to fewer power plants to buy and maintain)

Trucks provide flexibility of land use/location, distribution and timing, and getting higher value items to a place first more cheaply then flight, grav or otherwise.

So, likely pattern for Biter would be roadnet in a grain production area carrying to a centralized collection/loading point, rail shipment directly to downport or seaport to forward to downport.

I would further hypothesize that Russia's Far East would be a good model for what Biter transport should look like.

• 2 major seaports like Vladivostok, one of which hosts the major downport and the other would ship to the downport (could be 1-2 riverports too depending on geography), half the planet's pop at these locations,
• smaller towns at the actual production locations or their collection points for grain,
• fast high value shipment and passenger traffic goes by plane/grav,
• major railroad like the Trans Siberian < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway > that handles bulk shipment and slower passengers unable or unwilling to pay for air transport.

 

[Enoki]

There are two major reasons (well, rational ones) for building a road or transportation link:

A. It connects two nodes that have some dependent relationship. For example, a road going between where workers live and the place where they work.

B. To gain access to an otherwise inaccessible area for economic expansion. Roads in the Brazilian Amazon basin usually serve this purpose for example. Settlement follows the economic development. Say, a mine is built to extract some valuable mineral. The mine's presence leads to a town being built and a road for access to the mine. This in turn leads to more development along the route.

Just because there are two cities on a world doesn't necessarily mean they need to be connected by some transportation means. They might well function independently of one and other.

There's also the "If we build it, they will come" often used by government and sometimes by developers to draw people to an area for settlement and such. This is usually a fail, but that doesn't stop it being tried...

 

[McPerth]

There's no roads, airplanes, trains, or ships. It's all grav. Using roads for hauling is as obsolete as using 1800s tall ships for hauling or copper-line telephone networks for phone service in our world. Discussing the economics of roads in the OTU would be like showing up at an urban housing development planning meeting in the 21st century Western world and shouting about "But where will stable the carriage horses?"

Low local TL means that they can't maintain the high TL components and depend upon interstellar trade to bring in the required spare parts. High volumes of trade means that these spare parts are not as expensive as you might think; it's good enough to keep these worlds going. The more dependent a world is on off-world imports, the lower TL the world is. Grav may be expensive as listed in the sourcebooks, but Vilani thinking towards devices means they're intended to last - a good utility grav vehicle with reasonable maintenance will last you your entire lifetime and probably your children's lifetime and their grandchildren's with an low to affordable rate of maintenance costs; many people buy used grav utility vehicles.

Locals might use airplanes, boats, or off-road vehicles for relatively light duty (like hunting, foraging, or just visiting the next village over) but nobody uses them "industrially" for scheduled hauling or anything like that; so dirt roads or paths are fine.

I disagree.

I myslef showed how grav vehicles may be quite cheaper tan shown in most Traveller books (at least in MT, the only sistem I know to design them), but this is mostly for the utilitarian car/bike, while heavy loaders would be quite more expensive (though far from the prices shown).

And here is where the value of local currency takes effect. Such a low pop low tech planet is likely to have little in hard currency. If we look at TCS (while it may be as decanonized as lla its budgetary matters), the value of a TL 6-7 planet's currency is only about 35-60% ot Imperial one, depending on exact TL and Starport.

See that the selling modifier for air-rafts in a Ni planet (pop 6-) in CT trade rules is +2, so making the aerage selling price 120%, hinting that they should be more expensive tan usually on them, even without considering the local currency value. And this is bulk selling, not retail one...

While I agree many low Tl countries in RW are buying celular pones to avoid having to ser up a copper cable network, the times for any command and the transport prices are not anywere like Traveller's.

What I want is to land in a Starport that feels nothing like an airport, and step out into a world that feels nothing like Tampa, Florida or greater suburbia.

I envision a starport more like a seaport tan an airport. Seaports are mainly for bulk cargo traffic, while airports are more for passenger traffic.

Also, I envision a startown more like a Docks Quartier than like the surrundings of an airport. Docks Quartiers use to be poor, unsafe ones. Seamen (unlike aircrews) use to spend several days at sea, and the docks quartiers are full of R&R facilities for them (usually unsavory ones, like taverns and brothels). Traveller ship's crews will also spend several days isolated, and reach port in search of this same R&R.

And we have more examples of what could be low level ports with bulk cargo traffic...

Just because there are two cities on a world doesn't necessarily mean they need to be connected by some transportation means. They might well function independently of one and other.

If those several population clusters are not connected someway, odds are the world's government will tend to balkanized quite son, as each of them follows its own path...

 

[whartung]

If those several population clusters are not connected someway, odds are the world's government will tend to balkanized quite son, as each of them follows its own path...

It also means they're likely at war, either hot or cold, with each other.

Foolish to not trade if there's something worth trading for. Heck, everyone knows that the Potential Spouses from Over There look better than the ones Here.

 

[Condottiere]

At three million, they're just as likely to be a confederation of autonomous states who are too far apart to bother each other, unless there's a single vein of Unobtanium that's greatly in demand by megacorporations.

 

[Timerover51]

Biter GWP is MCr 9,000, and assuming 1% is spend on maintaining the transportation infrastructure, this gives us MCr 90 to support all the transport needs. 75% of the GWP is spent on stuff, like food, basic supplies, consumer goods, tools, industrial goods, etc. At Cr10,000 per dton, this amount to 675,000 dtons per year to move from one place to another.

If the Biter population is 3 Million, and and you use 9 Billion Credit for the Gross World Product, that amounts to only 3,000 Credits per capita. If you assume an exchange rate to Dollars of $4.50 Dollars to the Credit, that is equal to $13,500 per capital. That equates to something like Macedonia, Columbia, Serbia, the Northern Mariana Islands, and South Africa, per the current CIA World Factbook. None of those are world wealth spots, and all have significant numbers of people engaged in subsistence farming. My estimate of simply how much food would be required by the people came out at about 2.4 million tons. For a wide range of perishable and non-perishable food stuff, you will get about 5 mass tons per Traveller dTon, that is from TM 55-15, Transportation Reference Data, U.S. Army, December 1963. Assuming the 2.4 million mass tons represents the minimum amount move, and only covers current world consumption, that accounts for 480,000 Traveller dTons of food supplies being moved. If you have large agricultural exports, that estimate of 675,000 Traveller dTons of material to be moved is going to be a bit low.

With Water and Air transport, most of the infrastructure cost goes into maintaining the vehicles (boats, airplanes, dirigibles, etc). For an estimate, assume 75% for vehicles, 25% for the port(s). You only need a port at each end of the journey to support them. This allows for a more population centers. However, the availability of water limits the ability light goods/people transport to spread too far. Air transport tends to be very expensive for smaller vehicles, and will limit the spread from the port centers.

The cost for maintenance for Great Lakes Cargo carriers is about 2.5 per cent of the cost of the ship every 5 years, based on the 5 year survey requirement. Then figure maybe 0.5 per cent of the cost of the ship every year for routine maintenance. I would have to get out my data on maintenance costs per flight hour for commercial aircraft, but probably a minimum estimate of $1,000 per flight hour would be on the low side.

With respect to Grav vehicles, that low per capita income would appear to preclude widespread use.

 

[Timerover51]

Foolish to not trade if there's something worth trading for. Heck, everyone knows that the Potential Spouses from Over There look better than the ones Here.

Just a side note, but there were quite a few Liberty ships and other transports used after World War 2 to bring war brides to the US. So there is more than a bit of truth in your statement.

 

[Enoki]

If those several population clusters are not connected someway, odds are the world's government will tend to balkanized quite son, as each of them follows its own path...

Not necessarily. It is entirely possible that there are several locations on a low population world that have specialized functions but have no reason to interact on a regular basis. Think of this the way a frontier area, like the Western US, was settled.

You might have one location where the government and military are concentrated. Being at a centralized location makes control and use easier and less costly. Another location might be extracting resources for export. Their only need from the government location is protection if and when necessary. That could be the government sends a system defense ship or other ship with troops to defend the location when necessary. No need for roads or regular transport otherwise.
A third location might be developing and not yet sufficiently economically viable to rate a road or fixed transportation route.

There is no reason that just because they are not closely linked that they will balkanize politically. We don't see that in the colonial era. Where colonies broke away and gained independence distance, not routes of communication, were the primary driver along with culture and such.

 

[Whipsnade]

Let's assume that the 3 million people of Biter fall into three population groups.

Okay, understood.

1 million people live in one of ten urban areas of 100,000 people scattered around the globe at critical locations to take advantage of major Economic Sectors.

No, most definitely not. Those scattered regions will exist, but their locations are going to depend on the availability of transportation more than any other factor.

Those farming centers in both hemispheres will not exist if they can't get their grain to market. As you've already pointed out, they're not going to be able to build/afford continent spanning interstates or railways. No roads or rails means those grain producing regions will depend entirely on their proximity to water-based transport routes. That in turn means those regions must enjoy navigable rivers emptying into a sea which borders the starport.

Any other prospective grain producing regions will be just that; prospective. There will be no extensive settlement in them because no one farming there above the subsistence level can get their goods to market. No transport, no settlement. It's really just that simple.

The hurdle imposed by transportation requirements will be present for mining, manufacturing, or any other kind of human activity.

Now you need to fund thousands of kilometers of rail to transport the grain to the Downport for export.

No you don't. Because you cannot afford to build or maintain such a railnet, it will not exist. You'll be using rivers and seas instead and any region without access to rivers and seas will not be populated in any significant manner.

Another 1,000,000 people might live in 100 towns of 10,000 people that still need to get goods to and from those cities that can't afford the rails. They have almost as far to go and a smaller population to pay for it.

Again, your perspective is completely wrong because you've put the cart before the horse. You're insisting that Biter's three million people be scattered about will-nilly and are addressing the transportation issue after the fact. Without a planet-wide transportation net, however, your population will not be scattered across the planet.

Those 100 towns are going to be linked by rail to the larger centers, but those railnets will not be the transcontinental systems you want to assume while also insisting they cannot be built. Those 100 towns will be market towns, much like the towns around NYC, Chicago, and Philly which used to feed those urban centers and which now are bedroom communities for commuters.

A final 1,000,000 people probably live on 1000 small isolated communities of 1000 people that directly support agriculture.

If they directly support such activity they'll be both close by and linked. Again, there will be no thousands of kilometers of rail strung between small towns haphazardly scattered across a continent because it cannot be funded.

I may be wrong, but the population density involved is orders of magnitude less than Alaska or North Dakota with no high population areas to subsidize them.

Your perspective is wrong. You're insisting on "smearing out" the planet's population across the entire planet and then expressing shock when you can't somehow link that artificially scattered population. The fact that you can't link your scattered populations is why those populations won't be as scattered as you want to believe.

Population density is going to vary wildly across Biter with much of the planet essentially uninhabited.

I could see roads within a city, but then no way to move goods between cities.

Certainly, and those roads will quickly drop in number and become unpaved the further they travel from the city - just as it used to be in the US prior to the 1920s. Moving goods between cities will depend on the distances involved.

Ships seem ideal, but only 40% of Biter is water.

Ships are ideal, ships are how Biter will move goods and people between the various centers you propose, and access to those ships will determine where or if those centers even exist.

That leaves a lot of people with no port access.

No port access only if they're stupid enough to live too far away from rivers, lakes, and the planet's seas. Are the people of Biter that stupid? Even if there had been some world-wrecking apocalyptic event centuries ago, would the generations of survivors be stupid enough to live where they can't access Biter's sole, planet-wide, post-apocalyptic, transport network?

The people of Biter are going to live where their transportation capabilities allow them to live and not in some artificially imposed "scattered to the winds" model.

Whether you limit yourself to Proto's LBB:1-3 or embrace the "full" 3I/OTU doesn't even matter in this case (although the "big trade" OTU would allow Biter to import a bit more technology.)

Apart from tiny numbers of hermits, trappers, isolationists, and the like, people are going to live where they're linked to the rest of the world.

 

[Timerover51]

Not necessarily. It is entirely possible that there are several locations on a low population world that have specialized functions but have no reason to interact on a regular basis. Think of this the way a frontier area, like the Western US, was settled.

You might have one location where the government and military are concentrated. Being at a centralized location makes control and use easier and less costly. Another location might be extracting resources for export. Their only need from the government location is protection if and when necessary. That could be the government sends a system defense ship or other ship with troops to defend the location when necessary. No need for roads or regular transport otherwise.
A third location might be developing and not yet sufficiently economically viable to rate a road or fixed transportation route.

There is no reason that just because they are not closely linked that they will balkanize politically. We don't see that in the colonial era. Where colonies broke away and gained independence distance, not routes of communication, were the primary driver along with culture and such.

Hmm, with respect to the English North American colonies, Vermont broke away from New Hampshire, Maine broke away from Massachusetts, and you had the State of Franklin in what is now eastern Tennessee. Aside from the US Civil War, you also had several rebellions in Canada during the 1800s. Then there was the Chinese Warlord period, and the number of wars in the Balkans in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I will not go into anything more modern, but the tendency to Balkanize is alive and well. I would tend to go with McPerth in this case. The problem is one of communication lag, not so much distance, and the feeling that the people in charge a long distance away do not really understand how things are locally.

The location of Biter is still in the area of the Sword Worlds, which I assume are still around. If you spread the population widely over the planet, you are likely going to have some visitors seeing what they can acquire that is not extremely firmly nailed down. With a population of 3 million, there is a question of exactly how high a Tech Level they can maintain. My feeling is that Biter may have the ability to support, by its own production, a Tech Level 8 society, maybe 9. Higher than that, and it needs to be imported.

As for the population, I would figure that those 3 million with be for the most part in about an area of 100,000 square kilometers or 30 persons per square kilometer, which would give a lower population density than the U.S., which is roughly 35 persons per square kilometer. If you go with Australia's population density of just about 3 persons per square kilometer, then they would occupy an area of 1,000,000 square kilometers. The later figure is getting pretty thin on the ground.

 

[Enoki]

None of that argues that such conditions must or will create balkanization. Yes, it could happen, and it could not happen too just as easily.

 

[Whipsnade]

None of that argues that such conditions must or will create balkanization. Yes, it could happen, and it could not happen too just as easily.

Balkanization on ATPollard's Biter could hinge on how important access to the starport is for any potential break-away regions.

A "hermit kingdom" or other type of isolationist community bent on some form of juche or economic autarky for any number of reasons could find quite a bit of land on Biter in which to be left alone. For the inhabitants of such a community, the lack of substantial, long distance, transportation links is a good thing.

A lot has been posted about Biter's 40% hydrographic rating, so much so that I believe the rating needs to be put in context. A forty percent HYD rating is rough equivalent to two Indian Oceans.

Assuming that half of that, or one Indian Ocean, makes up one sea with the other half scattered across the globe in lakes, ice caps, and what not, the various "critical" locations of ATPollard's Biter could still be rather distant from each other.

Looking at our Indian Ocean, we could place:

• One grain producing region north of the equator in "India".
• Another grain producing region south of the equator in "South Africa"
• Ores being dug out of western "Australia"
• Oil being produced in the "Arabian" peninsular
• The starport/capital sited near "Mombasa"

Each of those regions would be linked to each other by ships, each would have limited road and rail nets for purely local transport needs, and each would be distant from the other. The air distance between Perth and Mombasa, for example, is about 8000 km.

 

[tjoneslo]

If the Biter population is 3 Million, and and you use 3 Billion Credit for the Gross World Product, that amounts to only 3,000 Credits per capita. If you assume an exchange rate to Dollars of $4.50 Dollars to the Credit, that is equal to $13,500 per capital. That equates to something like Macedonia, Columbia, Serbia, the Northern Mariana Islands, and South Africa, per the current CIA World Factbook. None of those are world wealth spots, and all have significant numbers of people engaged in subsistence farming.

This would be a correct assessment. Biter is, like most mid to low tech worlds with a small population not a very rich place.

My estimate of simply how much food would be required by the people came out at about 2.4 million tons. For a wide range of perishable and non-perishable food stuff, you will get about 5 mass tons per Traveller dTon, that is from TM 55-15, Transportation Reference Data, U.S. Army, December 1963. Assuming the 2.4 million mass tons represents the minimum amount move, and only covers current world consumption, that accounts for 480,000 Traveller dTons of food supplies being moved.

I find this a very interesting confirmation of my original results. I would think that for a poor world, most of the effort goes into feeding the population, including moving food around for everyone.

If you have large agricultural exports, that estimate of 675,000 Traveller dTons of material to be moved is going to be a bit low.

Biter's trade volume is MCr1,812 or about 181,200 dtons per year. The assumption in Far Trader is Half is coming in, half is going out. But it may be shipping out cargo containers of food, and simply sending money back. It's more likely that food and other raw materials are shipped out and parts, supplies, and consumer goods are shipped in.

Plus the 480,000 dtons of food distributed locally, leaves about 13,800 dtons per year of local good for local distribution. This would indicate the transport network is used for 1) Food, 2) Serving the export market, and little else.

With respect to Grav vehicles, that low per capita income would appear to preclude widespread use.

The costs for grav vehicles in CT (ie. from whole cloth) would seem to indicate grav vehicles cost 10x to 100x what a boat or car costs. That is, in line with an airplane. However, if you build vehicles with the different design systems, grav vehicles are not that expensive. The do cost more, but not two orders of magnitude more.

Granted, Biter does not seem to have a lot of industrial capacity, so locally built vehicles will not be a thing. And importing them imposes a severe transport tax. I think they will come into the Uncommon, rather than Rare category.