Manufacturing on Spaceports

[PsiTraveller]

Chapter 6 of High Guard has rules for Spaceports. Part of those rules are production facilities for making goods. I want to check on whether or not I am reading it correctly.

There are no costs of production, no raw materials to bring in, except the smelter example making common raw materials from common ore.

Looking at an Advanced Manufacturing Facility: Assume TL 13 or better.

Tons of plant per ton of produced goods per day is 25.
1000 tons of plant produces 40 tons of goods per day.
Cost of Plants is 400 Million Credits
Power per ton is 2, so 2000 Power needed. at TL 13 that would be 135 tons of Power Plant, at 134 MCr.
534 mCr needed.
Crew needed is 1 per 2 tons, or 500

BUT: at TL 13 the tons produced is tripled, so 120 tons per day not 40. The crew needed is quartered, so 125 crew are needed.

So lets build a manufacturing base of 4 plants making 4 advanced products, 10 tons each a day.
250 tons per plant, 1000 tons total so the numbers match above.

Products: Advanced Electronics: Price per ton : 100 000 X 30= 3 Million a day
Advanced Machine Parts: Price per ton: 75 000 : 75 000 X 30 = 2.25 million per day income
Advanced Manufactured Goods: 100 000: 3 million per day income
Advanced Weapons: 150 000 : 4.5 million per day
12.75 million in goods produced per day, so payback on the 534 mCr investment is 42 days.

Even if you factor in the cost of housing the employees the production facilities can pay back a huge investment very quickly.

I can see players wanting to sell their ship shares and get a percentage of factory output as a monthly check, or signing on for a shipping contract.

Do these numbers check out, or am I missing anything, (aside from the cost of raw materials, air, water and maintenace, taxes and the cost of defending the facility from raiders).

 

[phavoc]

That's a weeee bit in excess of normal profit margins.

It probably would be better to assign specific profit percentages to production units, as well as set costs per month. Production cycles are based on monthly periods and at the end of the month the player would roll 2D and consult a chart. The chart COULD BE something like:

2 - suffer 20% loss due to (insert reason here)
3 - suffer 10% loss due to (....)
4 - suffer 5% loss
5 - break even
6 - break even
7 - break even
8 - realize 3% profit margin
9 - realize 5% profit margin
10 - realize 8% profit margin
11 - realize 10% profit margin
12 - realize 12 % profit margin
13 - realize 15% profit margin
14 - realize 18% profit margin
15 - realize 20% profit margin
16 - realize 25% profit margin

The numbers greater than 12 would reflect the person using their broker skill to make a better deal (maybe they did it on the front end and got cheaper materials, a break on their rent, etc) or on the back end (market shortages, market manipulation, smooth talker, etc). Something like this would certainly put a damper on the wild profits you might make.

And, if you want to get realistic about it, you could also easily have them roll for purchasing raw materials (extra costs there, or price breaks), roll for the manufacturing portion (wildcat strike! no profit this month), as well as factoring in things like maintenance costs and payroll and stuff like that. Keeping it simple has it's advantages, but if you do that the potential needs to be smoothed out so it doesn't become like Eve Online where you just sit back and make tons of money essentially doing nothing. Businesses in the real world don't get to operate on that principle, so neither should Traveller ones.

All depends how much detail you want to add to station money making.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Well that's why I posted the comment. I am not sure how detailed I want to get and how hand wavy I want to be. I can see players wnting to finance an advanced facility to make spare parts for them, or extra weapons, or declare that the plant is supplying the weapons for the new Drinaxian Navy. (a lot of what I am playing around with for the playtest is influenced by my running the Drinax campaign).

Traveller can easily become playable only with a spreadsheet and calling in a forensic accountant. Some folks like that sort of thing, others... not so much.

I was just pointing out that a Class B starport with a small TL 13 plant can produce a lot of tonnage for sale. And they need to sell something, because a class B Starport costs several billion credits, especially if it is NOT a planetoid hull based port. You are looking at 5 Billion for a 100 000 ton spaceport, plus the cost of the interior modules. I am playing around witha 100 000 ton design and it is just under 30 Billion for a class B starport with Docking space and manufacturing.

The gap in the rules for costs means that if you take the RAW the 30 billion Credit port pays for itself in under 6 years. Then that money could pay for the ships that protect the site.

You need to sell a lot of material to pay off a mortgage on that. This raises the question (to me at least) as to how a low tech planet can maintain and sustain that sort of investment, or how GeDeCo can pay off so many in the Trojan Reach. I am inclined to hand wave it away because that is not the point of the campaign, but players have pointed out that the planets should all be bootstrapping themselves up the tech ladder in order to pay off things. It's something we discuss around the table, because we are all geeks about stuff like this.

 

[phavoc]

Well that's why I posted the comment. I am not sure how detailed I want to get and how hand wavy I want to be. I can see players wnting to finance an advanced facility to make spare parts for them, or extra weapons, or declare that the plant is supplying the weapons for the new Drinaxian Navy. (a lot of what I am playing around with for the playtest is influenced by my running the Drinax campaign).

Traveller can easily become playable only with a spreadsheet and calling in a forensic accountant. Some folks like that sort of thing, others... not so much.

I was just pointing out that a Class B starport with a small TL 13 plant can produce a lot of tonnage for sale. And they need to sell something, because a class B Starport costs several billion credits, especially if it is NOT a planetoid hull based port. You are looking at 5 Billion for a 100 000 ton spaceport, plus the cost of the interior modules. I am playing around witha 100 000 ton design and it is just under 30 Billion for a class B starport with Docking space and manufacturing.

The gap in the rules for costs means that if you take the RAW the 30 billion Credit port pays for itself in under 6 years. Then that money could pay for the ships that protect the site.

You need to sell a lot of material to pay off a mortgage on that. This raises the question (to me at least) as to how a low tech planet can maintain and sustain that sort of investment, or how GeDeCo can pay off so many in the Trojan Reach. I am inclined to hand wave it away because that is not the point of the campaign, but players have pointed out that the planets should all be bootstrapping themselves up the tech ladder in order to pay off things. It's something we discuss around the table, because we are all geeks about stuff like this.

One thing to remember is never dig too deep into the economics of Traveller. There's far too much missing from it to answer many questions. And who wants to do the macro-economics of interplanetary trade and micro-economics of 10tons of deuterium you got for cheap. The whole idea that systems will trade with each other more than INTRA-system, which has much faster and cheaper transport costs, is just economic madness to me. But that's just me.

As far as spaceports go, the primary ones are Imperium funded, so they really don't count. Imperial taxation on a few trillion subjects and thousands upon thousands of worlds is going to be pretty immense. If you capitalize the costs over 50yrs you'd be surprised just how many super-expensive projects are reasonably priced. Though without inflation to take the bite out of future costs it can get a bit hairy.

I think it's safe to say the economics of station-side (or port-side) economics is still a work in progress.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

You are manufacturing Advanced high tech equipment. Where is your R&D department?
You are selling at wholesale prices direct at the factory gate, you'll need Warehousing and Distribution.
To make your products move you need Sales and Marketing.
You now have a lot of people so you need HR and Legal.
You are a company so you need Accounting. And IT Services. And Janitorial.
You can no longer control all your people so you need a bureaucracy of managers to run it all.

I would agree that a factory paying for itself in 42 days is a very good deal, but a factory is only a fraction of the operation.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Everything you mentioned is what is not covered in the RAW. To be honest I am not sure I want to have it covered, you end up with a mess of rules that scares people off. While some gamers may want "Accounting principles, the Galactic Edition" as part of their game I am not one of them. I think it might add a too much detail. At the same time I want to understand what 30 tons of material a day production will mean if players want to argue they are outfitting an advanced Navy with the facilities of the Starport, asteroid field and system gas giant. You can very easily build a manufacturing base that could create a very good navy in a very short time.

I am running the Drinax campaign, One of the adventures involves the planet Tech World wanting protection from out system forces. Tech world wants system defence boats supplied. They have a robotic Class B Starport. They could be building very good defence boats in a few months, and swarms of fighters in weeks. My players pointed this out in the negotiation scene. A short term fleet is all the system really needs, they will be able to build a TL15 force in under a year.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

A, they want to play Sim Shipyard!

Even with robotic factories it won't be easier to build fighters, than it is to build jet fighters today.
First you need to buy complete engineering manufacturing specifications for the fighter and all subsystems. Today you can't, in the Empire you might.
Now you have the specifications for thousands of subsystems, each consisting of subsystems, you can plan to set up thousands of automated assembly lines feeding into each other.
If this is a new massive operation, you will probably find that the local economy can't supply you with exotic materials and alloys in large enough quantity, so you will have to open new mines, ore refineries, and metal smelters.

So you build the mines.
You build the factories.
You train the workers.
This takes a few years and trillions, before you see even a single new fighter, but then you will see swarms of new fighters every few weeks.

Megacorps lika GSbAG already have all the tech and infrastructure and can churn out fighters quickly and cheaply, you don't and can't

Compare with the US gearing up for WWII. Large economy, good tech base, it still took years of massive effort to get war materiel production into full swing.

This is either a massive role playing opportunity or a simple "The beancounters estimate it will take a few years and trillions to start serial production. When can we have the money?"

OK, I'm being to mean to the players. Of course they can work something out, but it should take time to ramp up production.

 

[Condottiere]

Some components need long lead times.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Well that's why I posted the comment. I am not sure how detailed I want to get and how hand wavy I want to be.

In the best of all worlds, we want this part of High Guard to be fairly hand-wavey, with a view to building upon it with Merchant Prince. We just need to make sure there are no silly get-rich-quick gaffs in High Guard. The detail I am happy to sort out later.