Just a random thought

[PsiTraveller]

Anyone else thinks that it is strange that
a: a ship can make more money per day making 20 tons of refined fuel than using the refined fuel to actually jump car to the next system over? Especially true is you have more than 1 fuel processor

anyone have any others?

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Anyone else thinks that it is strange that
a: a ship can make more money per day making 20 tons of refined fuel than using the refined fuel to actually jump car to the next system over? Especially true is you have more than 1 fuel processor

You mean park on a lake and sell liquid hydrogen to the natives everyday?

If you have Makers that maker things for you. I guess you don't have to ever travel to buy stuff.

 

[Hopeless]

I noticed that too, I just assumed they used that to help pay the bills after all you may as well make full use of your ship given how much it costs to run! :wink:

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I noticed that too, I just assumed they used that to help pay the bills after all you may as well make full use of your ship given how much it costs to run! :wink:

In Cirque, they use the ship as a strip mall almost, with its own gift shop.

 

[Hopeless]

Heh reminds me of an episode of Andromeda where Kevin Sorbo forcibly recruits the avatar played by his former Hercules co-star Iolas to become the avatar for a new Commonwealth warship whose avatar was being played by Teal'c!

Sorry geeking out a bit there but Iolas's previous ship was turned into a casino so you can see why that last message struck a chord!

 

[Condottiere]

The path to riches is over the bodies of others.

You make money by selling pickaxes, supplies and services to gold prospectors.

 

[Reynard]

Probably could be a money maker somewhere if the locals aren't already cornering the market and probably doing it cheaper and keeping the difference. I would assume most local operations such as stations and outposts or even cities have plants planetside and cost efficient tankers in space processing more quantity than a few dozen tons. There could be frontier use where supply and demand in emergencies could be profitable in the short term. If a society has the means and technology to use hydrogen as fuel they also have the mean to get it better than you.

 

[Hopeless]

But what if they want to keep that quiet?

No records, nothing to show what's really going on and during a war you have to take what advantage you have especially if your enemy either controls all the official outlets or you don't want to be found!

 

[Condottiere]

It's probably hard to keep a large scale operation hidden, from Internal Revenue.

Besides, you're not smuggling liquor, starship tanks are hungry hungry hippos.

 

[Reynard]

One thing I see making it viable is receiving a distress that a ship misjumped to a point they are going to be close to running out of fuel before reaching a gas giant or destination world and you just happened to have topped off. You charge them for fuel taken plus a little extra since you now have to run back and refuel whatever you lost. Get out those bargaining skills.

The ones not fortunate to have you coincidentally in the are become those dead ships happened upon now and then when the lights finally go out.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Well this is the interesting point about the Traveller universe. The TL of a planet may be low, but there is likely a spaceport offering some high tech services. The U.N. equivalent, even on a balkanized world would likely want to attract ships to the system because those ships can bring in high technology goods and information as well as currency from services. They would also likely want to control the import of high tech weapons to prevent a T.E.D. scenario. That's the scenario, or versions of it that I tend to follow. It is just another service that GeDeCo offers to a planet. (for the Drinax campaigners)

 

[alex_greene]

It depends on whether you can find someone who will pay the going rate because they cannot refine the fuel themselves. It'd be a long, slow grind but yes, you could do just that and make a modest profit, just wilderness refuelling for weeks with a collapsible fuel tank in the cargo hold.

It wouldn't be a quick way of making a profit, but given enough fuel in your cargo hold you would bring in more cash than your ship costs to run in that time. It would be a good way of raising the funds to pay for annual maintenance if your ship has not got enough cash in its coffers.

 

[Condottiere]

Like salt, you could make refined hydrogen a Crown Monopoly.

 

[alex_greene]

Like salt, you could make refined hydrogen a Crown Monopoly.

That is quite impossible. Hydrogen is the commonest element in the entire universe.

 

[Condottiere]

Salt's not uncommon either.

 

[alex_greene]

Salt's not uncommon either.

Of all the baryonic matter in the universe, 75% is hydrogen, and 23% helium. What's left is all the other elements. Sodium is the 15th most abundant element, making up an estimated 0.002% of baryonic matter; chlorine, the 22nd most abundant, makes up 0.0001% of the estimated matter in the universe. Salt really is not that uncommon - not in some systems. But hydrogen and helium are pretty much ubiquitous.

 

[Hopeless]

Like salt, you could make refined hydrogen a Crown Monopoly.

Or the Corporates do.
After all if they have the monopoly or make sure they have access to the most supplies they can pretty much guarantee what the price for that will be.
Wouldn't be the first time multiple companies have colluded together for their own profit margin now wouldn't it?

Not the first time I've noticed salt being ignored! :wink:

 

[alex_greene]

Corps can't go everywhere. If they did, there'd be no point in the trade game.

There's no restriction on who can refine fuel, and how much fuel they can refine, beyond time and the vagaries of the markets.

If one ship captain does it, it makes him money. When they all start doing it, that's when the market gets glutted and all the planetside vendors tell newcomers to just burn up the fuel for themselves because they can't accept more hydrogen - their storage tanks are all full to capacity.

Hydrogen isn't like hydrocarbons: it's not its scarcity that is the problem, but its abundance.

For instance, someone with a few sublight-only ships could convert a space station in the inner system, equip it with huge solar panels for power and a modest-sized fusion plant, have huge million-dt or even billion-dt fuel tanks, and massive fuel processors. He could then shuttle those ships to ice asteroid fields and gas giants, skim them for fuel and offer that fuel and energy to the passing trade practically for free, once he has recouped all his losses.

It's a matter of knowing how big the numbers are - the amount of energy being pumped out by a typical main sequence star, the amount of hydrogen there is the universe, and how popular the waste products are: iron, silicon, nitrogen, sodium ... oh, and oxygen.

 

[Hopeless]

You'd think there would be a market for space stations especially habitats including hydroponics wouldn't you?

 

[alex_greene]

You'd think there would be a market for space stations especially habitats including hydroponics wouldn't you?

In any Traveller universe, there is always the potential for an untapped market somewhere.

There's a Patron and an adventure, or even a campaign, in there somewhere - a rich local merchant who wants to set up an agri space station to grow a crop on a world which cannot grow its own food, granting the world independence; someone with socialist leanings who wants to corner the local refined fuel market by giving ships a chance to top up on the good stuff for free; a psion who wants to set up a colony of telepaths away from everybody, and who will share food, shelter and fuel with passers-by, as well as taking in anyone who wants a place far from the aggro of mundanes.

Of course, there is conflict - the fuel vendors don't want their market undercut; there is a corp which is deliberately keeping the colony under its thumb by controlling the supply of its staple food crop; and there is a faction of psion-intolerant normals which has just found out about the psion colony.

But that's where the Travellers come in - either building the station, supplying it, defending it or helping the Patron to demolish it.

If it can be made to work, it can be turned into an adventure, or even a full campaign.