Adventure-Class Ships
- Thread starter Terry Mixon
- Start date
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
A 757 that seats ~230 people has an internal volume of the cylindrical fuselage of about 38 dTons
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Not so much space, but space over time.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
According to canon, if you want to see what typical shipping looks like than go to the only resource that covered it in any depth, The Traveller Adventure.
The main trade lanes map on top of xboat routes, hardly surprising because the xboat routes were originally mapped on top of the major trade lanes. These are the routes where the megacorporations and sector wide lines deal with the vast majority of trade and passenger transport.
Tukera (megacorporation):
1,000t jump 4 liner
3,000t jump 4 freighter
Imperiallines:
2,000t jump 2 transport
Akerut (Tukera subsidiary):
5,000t jump 1 heavy merchant
Oberlindes:
1,000t jump 3 cargo carrier.
PC ships in the 100 to 600 range feed from the scraps the real companies leave behind. They are cessnas...
another analogy, the megacorporations et al are the freight trains and container lorries, PC ships are amazon delivery vans.
There are many references to interstellar travel being as common in the 57th century Imperium as international air travel was back in the early '80s
The main trade lanes map on top of xboat routes, hardly surprising because the xboat routes were originally mapped on top of the major trade lanes. These are the routes where the megacorporations and sector wide lines deal with the vast majority of trade and passenger transport.
Tukera (megacorporation):
1,000t jump 4 liner
3,000t jump 4 freighter
Imperiallines:
2,000t jump 2 transport
Akerut (Tukera subsidiary):
5,000t jump 1 heavy merchant
Oberlindes:
1,000t jump 3 cargo carrier.
PC ships in the 100 to 600 range feed from the scraps the real companies leave behind. They are cessnas...
another analogy, the megacorporations et al are the freight trains and container lorries, PC ships are amazon delivery vans.
There are many references to interstellar travel being as common in the 57th century Imperium as international air travel was back in the early '80s
WHULorigan
Emperor Mongoose
I wonder if that quote was originally intended to be an Imperium-wide reference, or more characteristic of the Imperial Core in particular, as distinguished from the "Frontier", "Marches", and or other backwaters and borders?
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
Well a mid passage is what Cr8,000. That's = to about $40,000 in today's money. So that statement would have to be a mistake.
The Imperial Core didn't actually exist except notionally at that time. But this is the THIRD Imperium, so space travel has been reliable enough to have large interstellar polities for millenia. Lots of things that Mongoose 2e makes into rather challenging tasks requiring gear, extra time, and higher skill levels were no such thing in Classic Traveller. Jumping was so safe it wasn't even a roll unless you intentionally did something stupid (used unrefined fuel, lacked enough engineers, didn't maintain your ship, or jumped too deep in a gravity well). Skimming fuel was dangerous because it made the ship vulnerable to hostile ships getting between the skimmer and deep space, not because you might crash doing it.
That said, it is certainly unlikely that easy peasy space travel is true everywhere in Charted Space, much less any other setting you choose to make. And Traveller's overall design mechanics push you towards making backwaters, frontiers, and other less than organized areas of space.
That said, it is certainly unlikely that easy peasy space travel is true everywhere in Charted Space, much less any other setting you choose to make. And Traveller's overall design mechanics push you towards making backwaters, frontiers, and other less than organized areas of space.
To be fair, it's fairly trivial to make the jump roll a 2+, and even missing it by one or two is still a safe arrival, just late or a bit distant.
I don't see Mongoose 2e as ignoring the CT canon, just giving it a little flavour. And it may be worth pointing out that the tasks were MUCH more fraught in MegaTraveller.
I don't see Mongoose 2e as ignoring the CT canon, just giving it a little flavour. And it may be worth pointing out that the tasks were MUCH more fraught in MegaTraveller.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
It's mostly catering to First and Business Class passengers.
Premium Economy are low berths.
Premium Economy are low berths.
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
At the equivalent of $10,000 in today's money that is not economy. It is a rate that makes such travel rare not common. As I stated, it is an incorrect characterization and a mistake. Plus a chance of dying in each trip makes it even less used option.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
That's why its Premium.
Basic Economy is just defrosting.
Basic Economy is just defrosting.
4+distance for the Astrogator. So a typical far trader jump is 6+ for the Astrogator. So, yeah, you can do various things to get a +4 modifier on that roll. Of course, you didn't even need an astrogator on a far trader in CT. Your vessel had to be more than 200 dtons before that crewperson was needed. On the other hand, your military ship are an 8+ and your rift cruisers and fast tranports are 10+. Before any of the various other modifiers.
Sure, you can say "oh, guess what, they can have computer friends and spend hours on the task and whatever", so the roll is actually still irrelevant. Okay, then the roll is still irrelevant and space travel is super easy. Which was the point. If that's the mechanics of jump, then it's not specific to the Imperial Core. In its inherent in jump drives and the only reason space travel would be problematic is lack of ships regardless of where you are.
Anything that has a failstate that can be represented on a 2d6 roll is catastrophically dangerous by commercial travel standards
Where are you getting these equivalents from? In your earlier post you said that KCr8 was equivalent to $40,000 but here you say Cr700 is equivalent to $10,000. Surely it would be $3,500?
I am not sure you can equate a single flight on an airline with a 2 week cruise. You also need to consider the other costs in the game. Normal monthly living costs are KCr1.5 so that mid-level passage is certainly a big price tag, but Cr700 looks far less challenging. If your journey is the typical 2 week jaunt then the low berth actually saves Cr50 over your living costs for the same period.
The chance of death in Low Berth is not a real thing anymore. In CT it was a flat chance, now it is a function of Medic skill and we have shown time and again that it is trivial to make all Low Berth travel survivable for a healthy person. By the time there is a realistic chance of it happening you are so medically vulnerable that you are as likely to die through a papercut. Referees can of course load the dice in favour of killing their players characters arbitrarily in squalid ships with inconsiderate medical staff, but that is a story choice (and in my opinion a bad one).
We also need to consider how much international air travel people did in the 80's.
For the average pleb in the UK a holiday abroad every other year was probably the only flight they undertook and that was by no means universal.
CAA figures for 1981 are 15 million passengers uplifted on scheduled international services. The total population at the time was 55 million so that equates to the average individual having an international flight every 3 years.
That is not a high bar.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
Looks reasonable compared to peoples salaries, see starship crews.
A Mid Passage is about two months salary for an Engineer, compare with an American making $5k per month ($60k pa) that would be $10k one-way, one jump. Roughly comparable to intercontinental first class flights?
The only detailed estimates of world trade we have (GURPS Far Trader) suggest that hi-pop important worlds handles tens of millions of interstellar passengers per year for a population of tens of billions, up to hundreds of millions of passengers for really important worlds like Vland.
A regional hub like Regina handles a few millions a year.
A reasonable estimated average of roughly 1 interstellar passenger per 1000 pop per year, up to 1 in 100 pop in hubs and capitals? Nothing like current air-travel...
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
NOLATrav
Emperor Mongoose
Ok so I don’t really get the tonnage breakpoints either and quite frankly I don’t like the kludge of certain high tonnages being immune to Crits, getting addl Hull, etc.
IMTU I am using these breakpoints:
100 - 1,000 tons: Operator Class. These ships are workable with small crews and individual owners or as light duty governmental or organization craft; basically ACS. They are most useful off the main trade routes, servicing worlds that rarely see larger trade and patrol vessels.
1,000 - 10,000 tons: Organization Class. These ships are regional anchors, essentially serving individual subsectors by connecting the middling secondary hubs with major trade centers. They may be operated by large governments and Megacorps but are often run by local Nobles, smaller companies and pocket empires.
10,000 - 100,000 tons: Fleet Class. These ships are the anchors of large scale interstellar commerce, focusing on the major trade lanes throughout individual sectors. Militarily they form basis of subsector and sector fleets. They are the purview of Megacorps and large interstellar governments, basically BCS.
100,000+ tons: Capital Class. Rare and specialized, these ships exist only where needed and truly warranted.
IMTU I am using these breakpoints:
100 - 1,000 tons: Operator Class. These ships are workable with small crews and individual owners or as light duty governmental or organization craft; basically ACS. They are most useful off the main trade routes, servicing worlds that rarely see larger trade and patrol vessels.
1,000 - 10,000 tons: Organization Class. These ships are regional anchors, essentially serving individual subsectors by connecting the middling secondary hubs with major trade centers. They may be operated by large governments and Megacorps but are often run by local Nobles, smaller companies and pocket empires.
10,000 - 100,000 tons: Fleet Class. These ships are the anchors of large scale interstellar commerce, focusing on the major trade lanes throughout individual sectors. Militarily they form basis of subsector and sector fleets. They are the purview of Megacorps and large interstellar governments, basically BCS.
100,000+ tons: Capital Class. Rare and specialized, these ships exist only where needed and truly warranted.
Starship crew salaries are only a single datum point. We have no idea how much the "average" star citizen earns a month. We cannot even extrapolate from the living expenses as that presupposes that the percentage spent on that mirrors the current world. Not all nationals spend the same percentage of their income on living expenses and not all individuals in any specific nation spend even similar proportions of income on living expenses.
The comparison to international air travel was specifically pegged to the 1980's not today. Internet tells me 0.8B international passengers globally in 1980 growing to 1.2B in 1990 so across the 80's 1B sounds like a good number with a global population of 5B in round numbers. So 1 in 5 (much like the UK case in 1981).
The quote about equivalency was from CT not GURPS (and CT never bothered saying where the numbers came from). Far Trader gave you some plausible numbers and a toolset that gave the appearance of rigour and I liked to use it for that reason, but they were not the same numbers as other versions of Traveller and any conclusion drawn from them is therefore only applicable to the GURPS implementation. Ticket prices for example are very different to other versions with a Middle Passage on a Liner being only KCr2 per parsec. The per capita income was similarly low in many cases. In some TL10 systems Cr2000 could be 6 months wages but in an Rich Industrial TL13 system it might as little as 2 weeks wages. It was also quite involved as trade/passengers was determined system to system so to know the total traffic from a system you needed to calculate it to all other systems. It was a great solo game, but there were a lot of assumptions built in.
It is entirely possible to have a pair of decent worlds with combined populations in the millions with a BTN of in 8-10 range with 10's to 100's of thousands of passengers per year moving between them. In a cluster where there were several such favourable trade pairs then any specific system might have total passengers between its various neighbours that get to 1 in 10 of it's total population or lower. In my favoured sector District 268 there are 5 worlds clustered round Collace that are WTN 4+ and 1-3 parsecs away from each other. As each world can trade with the others there are in the order of half a million passengers a year passing through each port, most have populations in the millions so they are seeing traffic in the same order of magnitude to 80's international air travel. Ironically it is Collace the hub that is seeing a much lower percentage per capita of passengers as its population is so high. A high proportion of the populations in the smaller systems in the cluster visit Collace (to negotiate trade, or visit the "capital", shop for high tech goods etc.) The majority of the population of Collace don't travel out of system, possibly as Collace has it all and what it doesn't have is brought to it from the other systems.
This is not implausible as there are parallels to capital cities. Lots of people visit the capital from the provinces but most residents in the capital will have little reason to go to a smaller city routinely. Head offices are in capitals and people from regional branches tend to go to head office in the big smoke vs. sending people from head office out to the regional branches in Podunk. City dwellers often don't even own cars and so may not even travel outside their city district very often.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
If you have to take an interstellar passage because of your work, the corporation, or institution, pays.
If it's tourism, I think I'd rather let that amount of money simmer in my pension fund.
If it's tourism, I think I'd rather let that amount of money simmer in my pension fund.
