Interstellar Trade

[Vormaerin]

There's a lot of different ways space trade could be done than what is published in Traveller materials. The random generator is designed to provide a wild and woolly frontier for crazy space opera adventures, not a sensible developed region. The plethora of C and D starports makes little sense in a region of space with solid interstellar trade volumes and long histories of settlement. I can't really see how the merchant corporations don't armtwist planetary governments into building proper space ports if there's actual trade. Why is unrefined fuel for sale even a thing? Who is going to risk losing a ship to misjump or waste cargo space and idling time on refining fuel themselves when running a safe route between established tradeports? That's a thing for wild frontier trade pioneers, not massive shipping cartels.

IRL, cargo is stacked on top of the ship and you are operating in breathable atmosphere, so you are just craning stuff around and the speed is basically how many cranes you can bring to bear. (The Rotterdam report on ultra large freighters commented that an issue with ultra wide freighters is that the lack of significant additional length meant no additional cranes could be brought to bear, not crippling or anything, but an issue).

Traveller Space ships store cargo inside like an airplane, which seriously limits how much cargo you can unload at once unless you have multiple cargo doors and a docking bay that can allow access to all of them. Ideally not in an "unload in vacuum" operation that's pointlessly risky and requires more expensive spaceworthy cargo containers. I mean, its fun that traveller allows all kinds of shapes and configurations of ships. But that's a clusterscrew for port planning. Merchants and ports should have pretty quickly decided "this is what shape freighters look like and what cargo berths look like." And I'm pretty sure "sphere" is not what it would have decided (looking at you Galika...).

And the trade rules are designed to simulate what's available on the spot market for tramps, so there's little indication of how much (or even IF) there is major freight volumes going out on fixed route liners.

And you can certainly do a lot more with virtual crew and "lean manning" than Traveller does, even with just its latest version of virtual crew rules. Capital ship freighters do save some space on crew quarters and a few other fixed size assets. But where in the fiction are the Traveller starports that can unload a 50,000 TEU spherical mega freighter and still do anything else?

Okay, trade chefs, here's your weird list of ingredients! Make a meal!

 

[Vormaerin]

Btw, my main point about ports was that, yes, in real life you match large freighters to large ports and small freighters to small ports. Honolulu doesn't bother with freighters larger than 3600 TEU because that's enough for what it needs given that it can and does handle multiple per day. The 24000 TEU ships sail right past for LA (I assume LA or LB can handle 24k ships, never checked. I know they can do 18k but that's not actually relevant )

In Traveller space, you can't really do that. Whether you are 400 dtons or 200,000 dtons, you have to go to whatever planet is jump 2 from where you start. That Shanghail to LA megafreighter in Traveller has to go to Manila, Guam, and Honolulu (as an example). Whether they can handle a ship that size or not. So you could just refuel and move on. Or you could design your ship to be able to soak up some of that intermediate trade as you go.

Smarter people than me (and their computers) would figure out the most profitable way to do that based on all the information we don't have. We GMs just get to make it up in a way that feels right and creates fun.

 

[Condottiere]

Traveller engineering works on a linear model.

Crewing has some potential of economies of scale.

 

[phavoc]

There's a lot of different ways space trade could be done than what is published in Traveller materials. The random generator is designed to provide a wild and woolly frontier for crazy space opera adventures, not a sensible developed region. The plethora of C and D starports makes little sense in a region of space with solid interstellar trade volumes and long histories of settlement. I can't really see how the merchant corporations don't armtwist planetary governments into building proper space ports if there's actual trade. Why is unrefined fuel for sale even a thing? Who is going to risk losing a ship to misjump or waste cargo space and idling time on refining fuel themselves when running a safe route between established tradeports? That's a thing for wild frontier trade pioneers, not massive shipping cartels.

IRL, cargo is stacked on top of the ship and you are operating in breathable atmosphere, so you are just craning stuff around and the speed is basically how many cranes you can bring to bear. (The Rotterdam report on ultra large freighters commented that an issue with ultra wide freighters is that the lack of significant additional length meant no additional cranes could be brought to bear, not crippling or anything, but an issue).

Traveller Space ships store cargo inside like an airplane, which seriously limits how much cargo you can unload at once unless you have multiple cargo doors and a docking bay that can allow access to all of them. Ideally not in an "unload in vacuum" operation that's pointlessly risky and requires more expensive spaceworthy cargo containers. I mean, its fun that traveller allows all kinds of shapes and configurations of ships. But that's a clusterscrew for port planning. Merchants and ports should have pretty quickly decided "this is what shape freighters look like and what cargo berths look like." And I'm pretty sure "sphere" is not what it would have decided (looking at you Galika...).

And the trade rules are designed to simulate what's available on the spot market for tramps, so there's little indication of how much (or even IF) there is major freight volumes going out on fixed route liners.

And you can certainly do a lot more with virtual crew and "lean manning" than Traveller does, even with just its latest version of virtual crew rules. Capital ship freighters do save some space on crew quarters and a few other fixed size assets. But where in the fiction are the Traveller starports that can unload a 50,000 TEU spherical mega freighter and still do anything else?

Okay, trade chefs, here's your weird list of ingredients! Make a meal!

Refined vs. Unrefined fuel has always been a bit contradictory in Traveller. Fuel processors more than pay for themselves, so it's really just a matter of installing enough to convert your tanks into refined fuel in the average time it takes to land, begin fueling, unload, load and then travel to the 100D limit. Ships that stay in orbit or do "hot" cargo drops would not have the time to refine a full tank (especially if they are mega-freighters) so they'd take on refined fuel - but maybe at a discount or by their own fueling ships. Hard to say without any actual models to compare to. Once you get to a certain size then self-supporting supply systems become a thing where smaller ships/lines simply don't have the capital to handle such a thing. And space isn't like a terrestial waterport with limited space and essentially two-dimensional operations (one hopes to never make it to the 3D model where you have to consider being UNDER/over water... .

Yes, container ships stack them vertically for maximum efficiency, as well as above the waterline (hence we see so many containers lost every year due to weather and oopsies over the side). Unloading of them has been made more efficient by adding more cranes that can simultaneously remove a container and drop it on a trailer. Usually it's the ground crew that drives the unloading of a ship and not the cranes themselves. Modern ports like Shanghai or LA/LB have the capability to unload a 24k TEU ship (that's roughly 12k containers for the uninitiated reading the thread - 1 TEU is equivalent to an approximate 20 ft container). Planes using containers are also quite efficient at getting cargo off. I used to work holiday air sort for UPS and we'd do the shipping containers (manually loaded and unloaded). One person can move a 4,000lb container when the floor is nothing but wheels every 10-12 inches. Plane cargo decks are the same, and when they are done loading the wheels are withdrawn into the deck and the container is now flat on the surface. It's very simple and quite efficient really.

Unloading in zero-g has advantages, as well as disadvantages. Newtons' 1st Law comes to mind as a possible bug-a-boo. The other thing is that to unload in vacuum you'd need cargo that can take vacuum (making every container airtight sounds OK, but in practice I think it would be cost inefficient unless you had some very cheap disposable liner. Airtight containers would not then be cheap like common containers are today. And while floating them to a lighter of some sort could occur, all that time and effort in zero-G vacuum could quickly add up in expenses for operation. It would be much easier to have a longer cargo ship that stored containers in a manner that would allow for automatic loading / unloading. There are a couple of different design versions possible - rotary style, or long and slim where there is a main corridor that all containers move along and are then shoved into waiting racks. A good purser would load the cargo destined to be unloaded next in the cargo corridor so no wastage of storage occurs.

Since we haven't really seen any ships and have no real equivalents to go by all we can do is speculate. History has shown us time and again that standards change as technology and innovations change. And, of course, human cleverness.

Personally I'd think most small traders would carry their cargo in 3-5 dton containers. It makes it easier to move and store on a smaller ship. While they could take bigger standard containers, they have less capability to maximize storage capacity since they typically aren't bendable. The subsidized merchant, with it's forward and aft openings and higher cargo bay could store them atop one another easily enough - that that potentially lends itself to difficult unloading. Not impossible, but you'd need some sort of long side or underbelly forks on your unloader (and it would be potentially load un-balanced since your center of gravity would be odd. Though being able to control gravity also makes something like a top-of-container drone style lifter possible, kind of like a container crane without the cables.

Unfortunately what we see in Traveller is conceptual designs for large megafreighters and warships, but everything else in the literatur is really sized for the original 5k dton ships or smaller. This is a regular thing in Traveller though - often contradictory and hand-waved. There is no reason in logic or reality to have a large merchant crew when that problem was solved quite some time ago. Automation and improvements in tech mean you don't need stokers or oilers for you fusion plant or M-drive. That's one of the more annoying things with the continued republishing of the same material that has annoyed me - if they are removing room-sized computers why not improve the crewing rules as well and take them out the early 1900s?

 

[Vormaerin]

Yes, if I was writing the rules to try to simulate the future rather than to create a space operatic playground there would be a lot of things done differently. But most people are not into logistics so I don't know that it would make the game more fun

Personally, I prefer the small ship game anyway. I run my campaigns in a heavily customized version of the Islands subsectors so I can say "yeah, the Empire's over there with their big stuff. Over here in the middle of the rift, we play with small ships. I've never actually had a use for the stat blocks or floor plans of any big ships in 40+ years of playing Traveller. Literally, the only thing I ever used out of Trillion Credit Squadron in the decades that I've owned it was the couple pages of original version of the Islands subsectors in the back

 

[Condottiere]

Subcontainerization is likely.

Ad Infinitum.

Bar codes and GPS trackers, to locate a specific item for delivery.

 

[J. L. Brown]

Canonically from classic Traveller the mass limit of a cargo ton is 1000kg.

That's silly. It would mean that a Trader would only ever be able to haul liquid hydrogen, or lighter cargoes. Just filling a dTon with water masses 14x this much.

 

[Danestar]

That's silly. It would mean that a Trader would only ever be able to haul liquid hydrogen, or lighter cargoes. Just filling a dTon with water masses 14x this much.

Not entirely, you just need to accept that your not going to be hauling much for the size of your cargo hold.

Personally I am happy that it doesn't appear in later traveller rules, and if a GM does want to play with the idea I would recommend looking at the gurps spacecraft rules and provide an overloaded thrust value.

 

[Zenny]

That's silly. It would mean that a Trader would only ever be able to haul liquid hydrogen, or lighter cargoes. Just filling a dTon with water masses 14x this much.

I think the problem is that the writers are using displacement tons and tons interchangeably. Sadly, there is no easy fix for this that doesn't break something else. So, we just have to run with it. So, even if you have a far trader that has the room to fit 200 tons of tungsten engine blocks you would see the big red warnings above the cargo bay doors that says "Cargo load not to exceed 65 tons, etc."

 

[Geir]

A related problem is with trade lot sizes and container sizes. I just assume that a 5 ton lot is 'Twenty Foot Equivalent Unit or TEU' - or about 3m x 3 x 6 (2 x 4 squares) container and 10 tons is a forty-footer (done as 2 x 8 squares) - yes that's 4 and 8 dtons, but a 4 dton stateroom is generally 2 x3 squares.

This allows room for aisles between containers and such and keeps the space more or less in line with the cargo bay sizes and trade rules. It implies a slightly higher ceiling I suppose, if you use a crane (or the actual standard height for a TEU is not-so-standard at 2.6ish metres, but now we're getting picky).

And then going back to the actual mass, the 32.5 / 65 metric ton 'limit' of said containers works well enough - even if that limit is likely low for hi-tech materials - I doubt (but really have no clue) most containers actually approach that max limit though. Liquids and such are probably in cylinders in a 'container' frame. And 1 ton lots are odd-sized pallets that you have to Tetris into the hold somehow.

 

[Condottiere]

Half tonne lots, more likely.

 

[Sigtrygg]

In CT one cargo ton was 1000kg by mass but the ship displacement ton is 14 cubic metres or 500 cubic feet.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Lol, your usual aggressive style.
Learn to read.
LBB2

When determining the contents of a cargo, the players and referee must be
certain to correlate the established price of goods with the cost per ton. For example,
the base price of a shotgun is Cr150, while a ton of firearms as trade goods
has a base price of Cr30,OOO. A strict weight extension of the shotgun (3.75 kg per
shotgun) would indicate 266 shotguns. Extension should be instead based on
price, with weight as a limiting factor. Thus one ton of shotguns would contain 200
guns, at Cr150 each. The extra weight can be considered packing and crates. Similar
calculations should be made to keep prices in line on other trade goods.

So 1 cargo ton is 1000kg, I won't wait for your apology.

Just so you know 77 CT didn't mention displacement tons, they came in with the 81 revised rules.

Try again.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Nope, that passage remains all the way from 77 to TTB and Starter, including 81.
It isn't until Merchant Prince that things become silly.

If you can fill 14 cubic metres with gold how heavy is your ship?
Better yet fill it with water, it is a more efficient way to carry hydrogen than in liquid hydrogen form
77 LBB2

When determining the contents of a cargo, the players and referee must be certain
to correlate the established price of goods with the cost per ton. For example,
the base price of a shotgun is CR 150, while a ton of firearms as trade goods has a
base price of CR 30,000. A strict weight extension of the shotgun (3.75 kg per shotgun)
would indicate 266 shotguns. Extension should be instead based on price, with
weight as a limiting factor. Thus one ton of shotguns would contain 200 guns, at CR
150 each. The extra weight would be considered packing and crates. Similar calculations
should be made to keep prices in line on other trade goods.

81 LBB2

When determining the contents of a cargo, the players and referee must be
certain to correlate the established price of goods with the cost per ton. For example,
the base price of a shotgun is Cr150, while a ton of firearms as trade goods
has a base price of Cr30,OOO. A strict weight extension of the shotgun (3.75 kg per
shotgun) would indicate 266 shotguns. Extension should be instead based on
price, with weight as a limiting factor. Thus one ton of shotguns would contain 200
guns, at Cr150 each. The extra weight can be considered packing and crates. Similar
calculations should be made to keep prices in line on other trade goods.

TTB

When determining the contents of a cargo, the players
and referee must be certain to correlate the established
price of goods with the cost per ton. For example, the base
price of a shotgun is Cr150, while a ton of firearms as trade
goods has a base price of Cr30,OOO. A strict weight extension
of the shotgun (3.75 kg per shotgun) would indicate
266 shotguns. Extension should be instead based on
price, with weight as a limiting factor. Thus one ton of
shotguns would contain 200 guns, a t 0150 each. The extra
weight can be considered packing and crates. Similar
calculations should be made to keep prices in line on other
trade goods.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Which is why I said "Canonically from classic Traveller the mass limit of a cargo ton is 1000kg."

I am well aware of how things changed for the worse.

MegaTraveller was not written by Marc, it was written by the folks at DGP. A lot of the wiki is fanon not canon,.

You are conflating two different things - weight and mass. Weight is a force due to a mass being acted on by gravity.

The gravitics of Traveller are a magic technology that only take volume into account, mass is irrelevant which leads to 14 cubic metres of gold in a cargo displacement ton.

 

[Sigtrygg]

MegaTraveller was written by Marc he only ask DGP to create more material for it.

I don't know who told you that but if you read the interviews with Joe Fugate it was DGP who wrote it all.
A lot of the errors were introduced when they had to copy it from one computer system (DGPs) to GDW standards - why they didn't use the same computers and software...
different times I suppose.

If things have change for the worse why are you here?

I like Traveller, in all its iterations. There is good an bad in every edition. Mongoose is doing a great job with Traveller, but I don't agree with everything they print - I still buy it though and use what I want.

Weight is a measure of mass which is variable depending on the local gravity so no I’m not conflating two different things. You measure mass in Kgs or other units of weight tho they are different for all intents and purposes they are effectively the same. Physics 151
Gravities are a key to the Traveller universe which is soft sci-fi.

No. Just no. You need to go back to physics 101.

mass - a measure of the resistance of an object to being accelerated by a force, the amount of "stuff" (bad definition), the curvature of spacetime - measured in kg
weight - a force due to the mass of an object accelerated by gravity - correctly measured in Newtons, pounds etc.

mass is a resistance to a force, weight is a force.

W=mg, or F=ma

As for canonically I suppose you don’t think any book other than LBB 1,2 and 3 as being canon Traveller. Again I ask if you think only these books are legitimate Traveller especially since Mongoose Traveller doesn’t a hear to your version of canon Traveller why are you here?

I consider everything published by GDW, IG, FFE to be primary canon. Mongoose, GURPS etc are licenced and have difference to primary canon, so let's call them secondary. Primary canon trumps secondary.

I'll let you in on a secret, my Third Imperium setting doesn't adhere to classic or Mongoose - I use what I like and ignore the stuff I don't, as do many others.


Why am I here?

Same reason as you, I like Mongoose Traveller.

 

[J. L. Brown]

I don't know who told you that but if you read the interviews with Joe Fugate it was DGP who wrote it all.
A lot of the errors were introduced when they had to copy it from one computer system (DGPs) to GDW standards - why they didn't use the same computers and software...
different times I suppose.

I consider Joe Fugate an unreliable resource, Considering the ongoing difficulties with getting copies of DGP MT material, I think that is justified. Here is the 'Credits' page from my copy of MT, and it looks like Joe Fugate was one source among many:

 

[tytalan]

I don't know who told you that but if you read the interviews with Joe Fugate it was DGP who wrote it all.
A lot of the errors were introduced when they had to copy it from one computer system (DGPs) to GDW standards - why they didn't use the same computers and software...
different times I suppose.

I like Traveller, in all its iterations. There is good an bad in every edition. Mongoose is doing a great job with Traveller, but I don't agree with everything they print - I still buy it though and use what I want.

No. Just no. You need to go back to physics 101.

mass - a measure of the resistance of an object to being accelerated by a force, the amount of "stuff" (bad definition), the curvature of spacetime - measured in kg
weight - a force due to the mass of an object accelerated by gravity - correctly measured in Newtons, pounds etc.

mass is a resistance to a force, weight is a force.

W=mg, or F=ma

I consider everything published by GDW, IG, FFE to be primary canon. Mongoose, GURPS etc are licenced and have difference to primary canon, so let's call them secondary. Primary canon trumps secondary.

I'll let you in on a secret, my Third Imperium setting doesn't adhere to classic or Mongoose - I use what I like and ignore the stuff I don't, as do many others.


Why am I here?

Same reason as you, I like Mongoose Traveller.

Maybe also read this. Also maybe read T5 which you can see the MegaTraveller as a major part of it

 

[Sigtrygg]

Strawman much?

I have not said those things.

Learn to read.

I have said primary canon is the work of GDW, IG and FFE, not just LBB1-3.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Which bit of it is classic Traveller canon do you not understand? I never claimed it to be canon for MT, TNE, T4, T5, only CT. I have not dismissed MT et al.

1 cargo ton in CT from 77 to SE is 1000kg. This was not changed until Merchant Prince.