zwerg said:
Therefore either:
a Cargo Space should be Tiny at about 2.5 TEU and hold about 4,000cr of grain/food
or
at Medium at about 20TEU and hold about 32,000cr of grain/food.
Hope this helps, and I am sending to my home GM
OK. This may seem strange that I keep quoting myself, but hey, whatever.
In the game I have a Trader who, for his "Investment" received a Civilian Trader.
Going over the various ships I recall seeing in the series I have come to the conclusion that the Corporate Frieghter should actually be the ship with the 6-16 pods attached to it (Early in the series has 6 or 8 pods, later some with 12-16 are seen). Either that or the 6 pod transport should be the Medium Civilian Trader and the one shown should be a Small spacecraft.
I base this on a few different factors:
1) the observed size of the diamond shaped Cargo Pods.
A fairly reliable (to me) source has estimated each pod as aboyt 4720c.m internal volume, another put TEUs (Twenty-footer Equivalant Unit) at 33c.m, and I know standard for a TEU is about 25 tons. that would make each Pod roughly 140 TEU.
2) Apparent size of a Starfury.
Same source puts a SF at 9.86mx17.87mx8.08m or basically needing more than 1423c.m of Hangar space (probably twice that or more per ship), and runs 48m.tons.
3) The basic size and tonnage of the small freighter shown
Same source lists it as 60m long and 1,152m.tons
Since a Huge can handle 2 Tiny ships per Hangar Space and a Large can only handle one, then, based on Cargo spaces, the pod ship should probably be Large and each Cargo Pod consist of 2 Cargo Spaces for the ship (since a corporate freighter has 20 cargo spaces, that would allow for up to 5 pods per side. 3-4 per side is less than 20 CS total so it is good.
So, what does that leave the litle Civilian trader?
Two ways to look at it:
1) Well, it is roughly 4 times the size of a SF's largest measurement so that would tend to put it in Small to Medium category in my book. Interpolating the chart on page 182 and assuming Cargo and hangar spaces are of equivalent volume then each CS should hold 1/4 to 1/2 respectively what each space on a Large ship can hold. If we go with a CS on a large yielding 1/2 a 140 TEU Cargo Pod then a CS on a Large is 70 TEU. That would make a Med maybe 30-35 TEU and a Small about 15 TEU. Given 6 CS that would put it at 180-210 TEU if a Large and about 90 TEU if small. Given each TEU can hold 25 tons then even the small would be 2250 tons (or nearly twice that of the ship's estimated tonnage) so that doesn't quite seem to work
.
2) Ship tonnage divided by two is roughly 575, and 3/4th of ship tonnage is about 800 tons, therefore cargo should be somewhere in this range. If we go with 5 TEU per cargo space we end up with 30 TEU total for the ship, or 750 tons for cargo. Therefore I estimate that the cargo space for a medium spacecraft is either 2.5 TEU or 5 TEU or 62.5 to 125 tons. This works but does not give a why.
The "why" come when you upscale the Cargo Unit from "Tiny" to "Large", with T = 2.5 TEU, Small 5 TEU, Medium 10 TEU, Large 20 TEU. That is how Hangar spaces appear to upscale but limits to increase to one dimensionality. Spacecraft should be increasing in three dimensionsbut since a Starfury has 6 Structural spaces, a Civilian Trader is listed with 15, and the Corporate Frieghter with 35 it is obvious that one dimension is already covered. Therefore size in TEUs should change by 4 per level and thus if a Small is 5 TEU per Cargo Space than a Tiny should be 1, a Medium 20 TEUs, and a Large 80 TEUs. This fits with the 2 Cargo Spaces per Cargo Pod (140 TEU +/-) for a Large and but 5 TEUs for the Civilian Trader (its spaces are actually on the Small scale (4x length but not upscaled as much in other dimensions maybe?).
Yup, lots of suppositions and dodgy conclusions, but what may work for the game ... At size Sm-Med 5TEUs oper Cargo Space, at Large 80TEUs per cargo space, based on design.
Still puts the ship at 750 tons cargo +/-. I got 300 from somewhere so <shrugs>. Larger ships should carry much larger quantities of stuff since trying to find a few hundred seperate cargos would be insane (too much downtime or requiring specific purchasing agents to arrange for mixed cargos per Cargo Space.
So, that leaves the question of what the heck are the vaules on the Cargo & Trade Table (p.272) and how con/do we use it in the game. Based on the price/value of grain (see last post and above) the only thing I can figure out is that it refers to a single smallest unitof cargo of the type. In other words, per bushel of grain, per Slave, and so forth, and the "per Cargo Space" must then be a misnomer of sorts. Given a bit of research on current prices in our world (food is sold in 5 bu or cf units, base metal by the hundred weight (80cr/100 lbs), etc. I base this on the 1cr=$1 and $1.21/lb aluminum, $3.17/lb copper, $3.55/bu corn, $1.09/lb coffee, $4.28/bu wheat, $7.79/bu soybeans in today's paper.
Given 1 TEU = 25 tons, 1 ton = 40-42 cf then there are about 1000cf/TEU or 50,000+ lbs/TEU and therefore 200 units for food (5cf/unit), 500 units for base metal (1hwt/unit) and thus about 4,000cr per TEU of food, and about 40,000cr per TEU of base metal. Therefore for a Civilian Trader a Cargo Space of food would Base Cost at about 20,000cr and base metal 200,000cr. Other vaules (or sizes of Cargo Spaces) can likewise be determined.
