Class B Starports all over Sindal Sector

[PsiTraveller]

I am looking at the rules for Starport construction and saw the minimums required for a class B designation.

50 000 ton docking space 500 Crew
1000 tons of refined fuel production ( that takes 67 tons of processing units at TL 13) 2 Crew
Civilian sensors (4.3 million Credits on a 'ship; of 50 000 tons of docking space.
5000 tons commercial space
2500 tons residential space
10 000 tons of shipyard construction 1000 Crew

With Officers and Engineers and mechanics you are looking at 1700 people fitting into those 2500 tons of residential space.

The cost of these Starports is in the Billions. There are a lot of Class B ports in the Sector, attached to planets with really low tech levels. GeDeCo better have some way of paying for all these spaceports.

Anyone else looked at the Spaceport/Starport numbers?

 

[MongooseMatt]

Would be interested to hear more thoughts on this.

 

[phavoc]

In Imperial space it would work since it would be supported by the Imperium. But that's not the case in the Sindal subsector. The sub-sector company charged with maintaining startports would not operate them in the same fashion as the Imperium would. The ports would have to be self-supporting because private enterprises, especially nefarious ones, are loathe to give their profits away. IF the local trade as a destination would support a higher TL starport, that makes sense. But even higher tech places, without sufficient trade and/or population, would not keep a B starport busy enough to exist on their planet. It would most likely be dropped to a C.

Has any review of the inter-system trade routes and planetary economies been done to justify these?

 

[PsiTraveller]

It depends on what sort of economy these starports would generate, and the answer is pretty large depending on what processing modules are attached to the Starport. You have a base population of 1700 workers, plus kids (I think the residential modules will be a little cramped, or you will need more. Plus the workers for the 5000 tons of commercial space, 2 per 100 tons would be another hundred workers.
Your docking space will mean hundreds of visitors. 50 000 tons of docking space. Assuming 500 ton ships that is 100 ships at a time, 5 crew members per ship is 2500 more customers, plus passengers, averaging 2 per ship is another thousand at any given time, and that is probably a low estimate.

So you have 2-3000 people living and working on a starport serving a population flow through that requires 1000 tons of fuel a day.
Assume Jump 1 mains, so 1000 tons of fuel means 10 000 tons of shipping a day is passing by the starport. 10 ships of 1000 tons a day. They spend a few days unloading and loading at port and head off to the Jump point, so there is your 50 000 tons of docking space.
Fuel for use in system is pretty small, so cutting back a few percentage points would cover it. M-Drive on Power Plants use very little fuel.

For pirates this could be either a target rich environment, or the ships could be charge enough tax and docking fees to pay for escort patrols to protect the money flowing through a system.

My thread on Starport production modules shows that production modules could support this level of shipping. 100 tons a day of processing could supply a few lots of Common Ore shipments on the Trade chart each month.

 

[phavoc]

It depends on what sort of economy these starports would generate, and the answer is pretty large depending on what processing modules are attached to the Starport. You have a base population of 1700 workers, plus kids (I think the residential modules will be a little cramped, or you will need more. Plus the workers for the 5000 tons of commercial space, 2 per 100 tons would be another hundred workers.
Your docking space will mean hundreds of visitors. 50 000 tons of docking space. Assuming 500 ton ships that is 100 ships at a time, 5 crew members per ship is 2500 more customers, plus passengers, averaging 2 per ship is another thousand at any given time, and that is probably a low estimate.

So you have 2-3000 people living and working on a starport serving a population flow through that requires 1000 tons of fuel a day.
Assume Jump 1 mains, so 1000 tons of fuel means 10 000 tons of shipping a day is passing by the starport. 10 ships of 1000 tons a day. They spend a few days unloading and loading at port and head off to the Jump point, so there is your 50 000 tons of docking space.
Fuel for use in system is pretty small, so cutting back a few percentage points would cover it. M-Drive on Power Plants use very little fuel.

For pirates this could be either a target rich environment, or the ships could be charge enough tax and docking fees to pay for escort patrols to protect the money flowing through a system.

My thread on Starport production modules shows that production modules could support this level of shipping. 100 tons a day of processing could supply a few lots of Common Ore shipments on the Trade chart each month.

Producing anything from the processing modules doesn't mean the products automatically find a market. The cost of interstellar trade means that unless you have a cost of goods advantage or some other advantage over another planet, it's cheaper to make them locally in your own market. "If you build it, they will come" doesn't work when you are trying to modeling economics (just ask Spain, or China, where they have airports that are abandoned (Spain), and entire cities (China)). So while the books state some broad production and costs, it's NOT an economic model.

To address your population/working statement - Imperial starports are operated and paid for by the Imperium. Therefore they are insulated against normal economic modeling because they serve multiple purposes. Sindal starports aren't. Each one would be operated for the benefit of the local planet. So it needs to justify making enough money servicing the local economy. Without a local economy it's just a rest stop and gas station. B class starports build spacecraft and repair space ships. Your docking fees would be only a few hundred credits/day per ship. So the starport wouldn't, most likely, be able to support itself with just handling local trade unless there was a large enough population on the world or in the system to justify it.

So long as you don't want to look under the covers for this topic, it's not a big deal. But if you do like to see some reasons behind some things, then you'll want to see at least some basic justification for a remote sector like this to have what it has.