Fuel/Cargo Containers from Deep Space Exploration book

[RogerMc]

By the way oif anyone was mad enough to offer you mortgage finance on the J6 2,500 ton type TJ Imperiallines ship in the Aramis Adventure it would cost 1.1 BILLION credits to build

Which divided by 240 is 4.6 million credits per month to finance the loan

However it has 267 tons of cargo space so at 84,000 a ton so it can potentially make 22.4 million credits a trip or 45 million a month - ten times the mortgage payment (or to look at it another way even if you only fill about 15% of the hold you are probably still making a decent profit).

And yet the TJ is supposed to only be operable at all due to a massive secret subsidy from the Imperium which needs it as a secret J6 courier service.

Which does make me want to re-examine the calculation that gave 84,000 a ton as a freight rate which sounds actually as if could be out by a factor of 10.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

And yet the TJ is supposed to only be operable at all due to a massive secret subsidy from the Imperium which needs it as a secret J6 courier service.

Since the J-6 capability is secret it can't really go advertise for J-6 cargo? Hence not profitable, hence needs subsidy.

Which does make me want to re-examine the calculation that gave 84,000 a ton as a freight rate which sounds actually as if could be out by a factor of 10.

I agree something is off. Any high-jump, especially J-6, ship is a license to print money...

 

[phavoc]

This assumes someone is willing to pay Cr84,000/ton for shipping.

Just because you can charge it doesn't mean someone is around to pay for it. If we look at real-world economics a ship like that would most likely be unprofitable because you'd be challenged to keep it running.

Now, if you picked it up from a bankrupt company for Cr.01 on the Cr, you might be able to turn a profit.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Don't forget they changed the cargo pricing to allow ships to make money on trade. First edition was a loss if I recall.

You can spec a 1000 ton freighter that ends up with 100 tons of cargo space at Jump 6. The cost (no armour, no guns no frills) is 438.8 Million. 1.8 Million a month mortgage. 100 tons of cargo is 8.6 million. You can break even with 22 tons of cargo a trip.

Now if you could transport 700 tons of cargo using drop tanks you could clear 60 million a trip and pay for the ship in 6 months. Crazy numbers.

Even if you spent 15 million credits per Jump on a new Drop tank at 25000 per ton, that is still 61 000 credits profit per ton of fuel saved and converted to cargo.

This assumes there is that much cargo that needs to be moved in a week. It would have to be worth millions per Dton to justify the expense. At a million a ton you are paying 8.6% transport fee to the cost of the goods.
That's why I like the lower level J4/J3 routes. Smaller profits but more possible cargo.

 

[Condottiere]

There's little doubt that the Imperium would operate a jump factor six courier service connecting it's sector naval headquarters with the Capital, and as I recall when I was interested enough to design such a vessel, it did need a four hundred tonne hull without drop tanks, pretty much the same as fleet couriers.

Current design rules might lower or increase the volume.

In any case, expense would not be an issue.

A sector wide communications network, especially along a frontier with a near peer competitor, would seem ripe to create one acting both as early warning, and alerting local commanders.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Shift to a Collector based system and you do not need fuel at all. The Deep Space explorers handbook has the fancy science ship. That thing would be stripped down and converted so fast.

 

[RogerMc]

And its 86,000 not 84,000 per ton at J6 - I was quoting from memory.

Which completely upends the old reality that only Jump-1 ships could make a reliable living from freight and passengers alone - now find the money to build a Jump 6-ship and two hi pop hi tech worlds 6 parsecs from each other and even without messing about with drop tanks you've paid off the ship and are a billionaire in a few months.

i.e. I think that spreadsheet they based the giant step change between J5 and J6 on must be wrong somewhere.

 

[Condottiere]

I'd also have a one shot factor one jump drive onboard.

Just in case.

 

[phavoc]

Don't forget they changed the cargo pricing to allow ships to make money on trade. First edition was a loss if I recall.

You can spec a 1000 ton freighter that ends up with 100 tons of cargo space at Jump 6. The cost (no armour, no guns no frills) is 438.8 Million. 1.8 Million a month mortgage. 100 tons of cargo is 8.6 million. You can break even with 22 tons of cargo a trip.

Now if you could transport 700 tons of cargo using drop tanks you could clear 60 million a trip and pay for the ship in 6 months. Crazy numbers.

Even if you spent 15 million credits per Jump on a new Drop tank at 25000 per ton, that is still 61 000 credits profit per ton of fuel saved and converted to cargo.

This assumes there is that much cargo that needs to be moved in a week. It would have to be worth millions per Dton to justify the expense. At a million a ton you are paying 8.6% transport fee to the cost of the goods.
That's why I like the lower level J4/J3 routes. Smaller profits but more possible cargo.

That would (a) have to be some damn valuable cargo that just HAD to get there, and (b) the number of planet pairs that could afford that sort of thing would be relatively limited. Merchants are all about making money the most efficient way possible. Let's say you were able to move 20tons of cargo in one jump for Cr8million. That makes the charge alone Cr400,000 per Dton. Emergencies or military emergencies would potentially make a need for this. Or you just HAD to get these new components to the shipyard to bring the battleships back on-line in 1 week instead of 2.

Economically speaking the usage of this for cargo would be ruinous. Only luxuries could command that sort of expense, and they'd have to be HUGELY time sensitive to justify it. Otherwise a merchant could take a J-3 ship and pay a passage cost far lower and make a lot more money by adding 1.5 weeks on to the delivery schedule.

As the rules are written now, J-6 ships would be pretty damn rare due to their costs and the limited ability to make money. Even the X-boat network is in question since mail is dirt cheap (electronically speaking), and J-6 ships would make transporting data via the J-6 network outrageously expensive. The Imperium has to eat that cost, and they are still limited in tax revenue like any other government.

To build a capital ship with J-6 engines would be cost prohibitive, though I'm sure there would be a few cruisers/destroyers out there designed for deep raids.

 

[baithammer]

The other elephant in the room is the higher jump drive for short jumps loses displacement for cargo by the actual jump drive itself.

J2 - 2.5% / J-3 5.0% / J-4 7.5% / J-5 10% and J-6 12.5%

 

[Condottiere]

You can tweak the drive for efficiency.

At the other end of the scale, less capital outlay for a budget variant.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Economically speaking the usage of this for cargo would be ruinous. Only luxuries could command that sort of expense, and they'd have to be HUGELY time sensitive to justify it.

Note that the prices in the Passage and Freight Costs table is for Free Traders, not necessarily for major trade routes.


http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?p=899558#p899558
Here I estimated J-6 passage to something like kCr 30 - 40 on a major trade route, based on cost. Of course that was in beta, before drop tanks were so short lived.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Shorter Jumps allow more cargo to be carried, both inside the ship or towed. There is an opportunity for a longer range ship to make more money jumping shorter distances.

1000 ton ship J4 need 10% tonnage in drives: 100 tons (+5 but lets ignore the 5 tons)
100 tons of drives Jumps J4.
100 tons of drives/7.5% allows for 1333 tons to be Jumped J3. So the F/C cargo bay we are focusing on could have 100 tons of space filled with cargo the other opportunity would be to keep the 400 tons of fuel and use it to move 1330 tons of volume J3. This would need a Jump net or external mounts obviously.

So there are still 2 was of looking at increasing profitability.

 

[baithammer]

Better idea, take the 1,000t vessel with jump-4 drive and use external cargo mount for 2,000t of cargo which reduces to jump-1.

 

[PsiTraveller]

4000 Tons total, so 3000 tons of cargo at Jump 1. That's where the money is.

 

[RogerMc]

OK lets take a trip in actual canonical J6 ship:

You are captain of a Type TJ Imperiallines Frontier Transport which somehow has been built and allowed to operate as an actual transport rather than a covert J6 courier.

The Aramis Adventure where this ship appears uses 1st edition design but the High Guard 2nd ed version would be in much the same ballpark re costs and cargo space so lets just use that.

Operating as a courier it has no available passenger staterooms as the 21 on board are needed for the rather large crew of 21 - but 14 are designed as double occupancy so this means they can squeeze in some passengers if they want.

It does however have 267 tons of cargo space.

So using the Corebook rules as written lets say they start at Mora and J6 themselves to Palique and back again staying a week on each.

So in that one month they will on Mora roll for major freight lots of 1dx10 tons - I'm going to assume all the rolls they make are average so they roll 2D with DMs of +4 for world pop 8+, +2 for Starport A and +2 for TL 9+ = 7+8 =15 - 4 for major lots on the table = 4D major lots.

So if they roll average on the 4d6s that is 14 major lots of on average 35 tons = 490 tons tons of freight available - so no problem at all on filling the 267 ton cargo hold from major lots alone.

For minor lots the average available will be 7 + 8 = 15 on table = 6D = average 21 minor lots of average 17.5 tons each - another 367 tons of freight you could have shipped if only you had the space for it.

And then are incidental lots which at Cr86,000 per ton are more than worth bothering about at J6 - on average you get 7D or 24.5 lots of 1D or 3.5 tons each = 86 tons.

So ON AVERAGE the rules as written say that with two worlds J6 apart that are both hi-pop, hi-tech and starport A you can assume there will be 490+367+86 = 943 tons of freight available at 86,000 credits per ton per - that is a potential 81 million credits worth of freight fees PER TRIP or 162 million per month or just under a billion credits a year if you could somehow build a J6 ship with 1,000 tons of cargo space.

But even as designed this Type TJ's 267 ton cargo nets them a cool 22,962,000 in freight fees for one trip.

As Palique has exactly the same DMs as Mora they are also guaranteed over time an average 23 million credits from filling their hold on the trip back - so that is 46 million credits average income per month.

Repeat this journey every month and you will pay off the 1.1 billion cost of the ship in not 40 but two years.

Use drop tanks every trip not even caring if they survive and can be collected for you to be used again and you can convert half of your 1500 ton fuel tankage to dual use cargo/fuel space and fill your hold with 162 million credits worth of freight per month at an additional cost of 750 x 25,000 x 2 or 37Mcr per month - so you still clear 125MCr (or 140Mcr if someone is collecting those abandoned drop tanks for re-use or just resale).

All using corebook rules as written which are again quite clearly broke at J6 level.

One obvious fix: calculate available freight as per corebook and divide by jump distance to destination - this would for our Type TJ mean they can only calculate on getting an average of 943/6 = 157 tons of J6 freight per trip and make 'only' 27 MCr per month - so you pay off the ship in three and a half-ish rather than two years.

So still broken...

To make the type TJ or any J6 commercial ship as uneconomic as common sense tells you it should be you really do have to tackle not just the availability of freight (passengers is not such a big deal as you'd be looking at just 10 high passengers between Mora and Pailique under RAW) but that Cr86,000 per ton charge and reduce it by say a factor of 10 - which means our Type TJ would make around 2.6MCr per month freight income rather than the 46MCr the rules as currently written guarantee it.

And on two very hi-tech worlds with billions of citizens an average of 157 tons super-premium cost time sensitive freight going each way between them per month doesn't seem unreasonable - these worlds contain thousands of billionaires and probably a few trillionaires on Mora including the Sector Duchess for whom 8,600 credits shipping a ton is a tiny incidental expense.

Apply both rules changes and as a mortgage on a 1.1 billion credit ship = 4.6 MCr per month you could not operate a type TJ without a 50%-ish government subsidy - which is in fact effectively what the Imperium does with Imperiallines so it can maintain a secret fleet of J6 couriers pretending to be J2 transports.

So this is how I would amend the rules in the extraordinarily unlikely event of players being able to afford to buy a J6 merchant ship.

(Plus it is also absurd that in RAW the characteristics of the destination world has zero impact on how much freight and how many passengers are available to go there - but fixing that needs more thought on my part).

Or just ignore the whole Corebook trade chapter and use the GURPS Free Trader rules - which I used to think were way too fiddly but I now see have to be to deal with all these issues...

 

[Condottiere]

Only one thing is worth getting as fresh as possible.

Otherwise, what can't wait another week?

 

[RogerMc]

Which is why I mentioned the existence of people on hi-tech, hi-pop planets so unfeasibly rich and spoiled that they are damned if they are going to wait an extra week and probably would pay even 86,000 credits to ship a ton of bananas from Palique to Mora.

But I am actually recommending we radically reduce both the J6 freight charge and the availability of J6 freight even at that reduced charge to address the plausibility gap.

Because the freight rules as written DO allow you to fill a J-6 hold of up to around 1,000 tons and become a billionaire very quickly as long as you find two suitable worlds with the right availability DMs (of which there are many) to shuttle between...

 

[phavoc]

I think the question is more of design. Was the outrageous cost of J-6 put in there to discourage it's use from the designers perspective? It's certainly a major canonical switch from previous versions. So something like this would (most likely) have to have come from and been approved by He Who Owns the Canon.

 

[baithammer]

Could be that J-6 is at the limits of TL15 and so isn't that common.