Cost of Shuttles

[Pyromancer]

The 95t-shuttle in the rulebook has 71t cargo space and costs 33MCr.

If I use a 100t hull and build a non-jump cargo ship with 71t of cargo space, it costs ~16MCr. I even have space for a roomy 10t bridge, weapons, a fuel processor and slightly better electronics.

Why this difference?

 

[simonh]

Why this difference?

What is it in the rules that makes it different?

Simon Hibbs

 

[Pyromancer]

What is it in the rules that makes it different?

I don't know.

The 95t shuttle from the rulebook:
95t hull
drive A
power plant A
computer model 1
standard sensors
2 crew stations
(1t fuel, 71t cargo)

33MCr.


My shuttle:
100t hull
drive A
power plant A
bridge
computer model 1
civilian sensors (better than the standard ones)
2 crew cabins
fuel processor
(2t fuel, 71t cargo, empty hardpoint)

~16MCr.

The only possibility is that a 95t hull with two crew stations costs 8 times more than a 100t hull with a bridge. And that doesn't sound plausible.

 

[rust]

I think the shuttle in the core rulebook has been designed with High
Guard rules for small craft design, and the maneuver drive listed in
the shuttle's description in the core rulebool is the wrong one (accor-
ding to High Guard it would probably have to be a sL drive).

Besides, according to the core rules your shuttle would hardly be able
to reach 3 G with a maneuver drive A, and the maneuver drive and
power plant B would make it 12 MCr. more expensive.

 

[simonh]

Yep, drive rating A doesn't give equivalent performance. There are revised small craft designs in High Guard. The shuttle comes out at MCr 29 and with a little less cargo space.

Simon

 

[Pyromancer]

Yep, drive rating A doesn't give equivalent performance. There are revised small craft designs in High Guard. The shuttle comes out at MCr 29 and with a little less cargo space.

Which is close enough to the 28 MCr my shuttle would cost with drive B (but it would still be cheaper and faster, with thrust 4).

But why would anyone pay almost 100% more only to reach orbit 5 minutes faster?

 

[Jame Rowe]

I've always been of the opinion that small craft should be about one-tenth of the listed price anyways...

 

[rust]

But why would anyone pay almost 100% more only to reach orbit 5 minutes faster?

It depends on whom he chases or who he is chased by ... :lol:

 

[GypsyComet]

I've always been of the opinion that small craft should be about one-tenth of the listed price anyways...

Depends on your definition of 'small' I suppose. A Shuttle is pretty big, being only 5% smaller than the smallest starship.

If you wanted to make small craft cheap but keep starships expensive, shift pricing around a bit in engineering and make the jump drive cost more than the rest of the drives put together by a couple times.

 

[simonh]

But why would anyone pay almost 100% more only to reach orbit 5 minutes faster?

Few published Traveller ship designs make good practical or economic sense, I suppose it's part of the game's charm as it's a great incentive to come up with your own designs. Unfortunately most fan designs are even less practical.

One of my bugbears are streamlined small starships, often traders, that somehow also need to carry sub-craft.

The shuttle would make more sense if there were thrust prerequisites for landing or taking off from high-gravity worlds, but that's never been a consideration in the game.

As an aside, starships are much more expensive than equivalent small craft when you consider that such a large proportion of the ship must be wasted on jump fuel. This increases starship cost per ton of 'payload' quite a bit.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Infojunky]

The shuttle would make more sense if there were thrust prerequisites for landing or taking off from high-gravity worlds, but that's never been a consideration in the game.

Maybe not in your games, in early editions of the game you need more than 1g to get off the deck of larger (more than 1g worlds). I generally am moving back to that standard as is I find it more consistent. But as always YMMV.

 

[simonh]

Maybe not in your games, in early editions of the game you need more than 1g to get off the deck of larger (more than 1g worlds). I generally am moving back to that standard as is I find it more consistent. But as always YMMV.

Interesting, so Free and Far Traders are actually quite restricted as to which planets they can land on.

If that's not the case in MGT I can think of a few rationalisations - maybe the performance of gravitic drives increases marginally in higher gravity fields, just enough to take off. Also ship drives are rated in whole gravities of thrust and perhaps they can actually pull a little more, up to 1.5G for a short while would be enough to make it off all but the largest habitable planets.

Simon

 

[AKAramis]

Maybe not in your games, in early editions of the game you need more than 1g to get off the deck of larger (more than 1g worlds). I generally am moving back to that standard as is I find it more consistent. But as always YMMV.

Interesting, so Free and Far Traders are actually quite restricted as to which planets they can land on.

If that's not the case in MGT I can think of a few rationalisations - maybe the performance of gravitic drives increases marginally in higher gravity fields, just enough to take off. Also ship drives are rated in whole gravities of thrust and perhaps they can actually pull a little more, up to 1.5G for a short while would be enough to make it off all but the largest habitable planets.

Simon

pushing a Type A (200Td) Free Trader from 1G to 2 costs you:
1 Td for MD B instead of A
3 Td for PP B instead of A
4 Td for extra fuel for the month for the increased PP.
===
8 Td

Pushing the Type A2 Far Trader:
1 Td for MD B
It already has PP B and fuel for it.

And the Type R (400), going to 2G,
2 MD C to MD D
3 PP C to PP D
4 Td Fuel for 4 weeks.
===
9Td

 

[atpollard]

For the love of all that is Traveller, don't open that Pandora's Box!

Either a 1G ship can fly off a 1.25G world or it cannot - just pick one and use it, but don't discuss why ... Reactionless drives are fiction, arguing the 'physics' of 'impossible' drives is madness.

 

[rust]

Reactionless drives are fiction, arguing the 'physics' of 'impossible' drives is madness.

Well, since we have already done jump torpedoes, near-c missiles and
empty hex jumps ... why not ? :twisted:

 

[Jame Rowe]

I've always been of the opinion that small craft should be about one-tenth of the listed price anyways...

Depends on your definition of 'small' I suppose. A Shuttle is pretty big, being only 5% smaller than the smallest starship.

If you wanted to make small craft cheap but keep starships expensive, shift pricing around a bit in engineering and make the jump drive cost more than the rest of the drives put together by a couple times.

That's what I've been thinking; IMNHO most components ought to cost a few tens of thousands of credits while MDrives and PPlants should never cost more than a few million each.

 

[GypsyComet]

I've always been of the opinion that small craft should be about one-tenth of the listed price anyways...

Depends on your definition of 'small' I suppose. A Shuttle is pretty big, being only 5% smaller than the smallest starship.

If you wanted to make small craft cheap but keep starships expensive, shift pricing around a bit in engineering and make the jump drive cost more than the rest of the drives put together by a couple times.

That's what I've been thinking; IMNHO most components ought to cost a few tens of thousands of credits while MDrives and PPlants should never cost more than a few million each.

Depending on scale, of course.

The one other component you don't want to skimp on is the hull itself. Keeping all that vacuum outside is not something you want handled by the lowball bidder...

 

[Infojunky]

Part of the problem with Hull cost in relation to drive costs is that hull is a nebulous cost. i.e. what are you paying for?

The other thing that always surprises me it how expensive ships are for their size. In that Traveller uses the ship model instead of the aircraft model for starships.

 

[kristof65]

The other thing that always surprises me it how expensive ships are for their size.

That's not as surprising when you can actually come to grips with how big even the smallest starships really are.

For kicks, if you have a park, field, etc around you, use something (stakes and string work well if you won't get in trouble) to mark out the size of a Type S scout ship. It's bigger than most people imagine.


But cost versus size really isn't a good ratio. The number built is a huge indication, and one only needs to look at the automotive industry to come to terms with it. Cars like the Chevy Malibu and Honda Accord are rolling off the assembly lines by the thousands, while Ferrarris and Rolls Royces are at most hundreds at a time, and the gap in price between them is mostly explained by that.

While the cost of the material's used is part of their cost difference, if you add up the material's costs alone, they aren't far enough apart in cost for that to be the entire reason.

The price of some ships in Traveller should probably have more than the head nod consideration of "10% standard" given to that reality. Truly standard designs like a ship's boat and the modular cutter should really have their price reduced by as much as 50% to reflect those smaller ships that could truly be made on an assembly line, rather than laid down in a ship yard.

 

[Infojunky]

The other thing that always surprises me it how expensive ships are for their size.

That's not as surprising when you can actually come to grips with how big even the smallest starships really are.

I am fully aware of their scale, and in terms of the ship's they are analogs of they are dinky. Your average Free Trader is the equivalent of a Dhow.

For kicks, if you have a park, field, etc around you, use something (stakes and string work well if you won't get in trouble) to mark out the size of a Type S scout ship. It's bigger than most people imagine.

Heh, we did that years ago, and they are still dinky when compared to small commercial vessels

But cost versus size really isn't a good ratio.

Actually it is, the materials are pretty much gonna be a linear cost, and the labor costs go down somewhat as the size increases, but this is really in relation of the end function of the ship. Bulk carriers being the cheapest and military the most expensive in terms of the man power need to build them.

The number built is a huge indication, and one only needs to look at the automotive industry to come to terms with it. Cars like the Chevy Malibu and Honda Accord are rolling off the assembly lines by the thousands, while Ferrarris and Rolls Royces are at most hundreds at a time, and the gap in price between them is mostly explained by that.

While the cost of the material's used is part of their cost difference, if you add up the material's costs alone, they aren't far enough apart in cost for that to be the entire reason.

Yes, and no. You are comparing cars that are largely built buy by machines to cars that are largely built by hand. That and they vastly different materials in both their construction and finishing. Yes part of that equation is the number produced, but Malibu's and Accord's don't have a complete second dash and woodwork completed for them at the time they where put together. (Rolls Royce stores these replacement parts for specific cars for decades, my uncle found this out when he was restoring a '48 rolls a few years ago).

The price of some ships in Traveller should probably have more than the head nod consideration of "10% standard" given to that reality. Truly standard designs like a ship's boat and the modular cutter should really have their price reduced by as much as 50% to reflect those smaller ships that could truly be made on an assembly line, rather than laid down in a ship yard.

I believe we are in agreement here.

Most of my point is the classic "tramp" steamer looks a lot more like 1000 tons than 200tons.