Mating Airlocks to Cargo Hatches

[Vormaerin]

All remaining empty space is Cargo space. It doesn't cost anything to designate empty as Cargo space (as opposed to say Common space) and the as you say the configuration is irrelevant.

If trade goods or freight came in sub DTon quantities it would be nice. Though I suppose that as it doesn't come in Lots (like it does in GURPS Far Trader) there is nothing to stop you buying half a Dton of something. I also suppose you might ship fractional DTons of freight for a proportional cost of a full DTon.

My point is that the Traveller rules just say "what's being shipped and how" is not worth thinking about. But if you decide to think about it, then you immediately realize that you need completely different "cargo holds" to ship oil vs grain vs bulk ore vs commercial goods vs vehicles vs steel girders. They require different facilities at the port too.

Too much complexity for a game about adventuring, so they just say "the space that can ship petroleum is also good for shipping live geese. For reasons." And that's fine for gameplay, but not for extrapolating "how things work if you do zoom in on the details".

Lots of things are handwaved for simplicity of play. Airlocks and what exactly fills the "common space" are another example. Firing arcs for turrets are yet another example. But just because the game doesn't bother to track them does not mean that one can reasonably extrapolate as if they have no actual cost.

Not tracking a few airlocks per ship is fine as an abstraction, but the idea that they don't actually take up space and cost money *in universe* rather than from the player's abstraction is false. Although the game doesn't bother tracking vectors and firing arcs in space combat, it doesn't mean that those things don't exist.

 

[swordtart]

My point is that the Traveller rules just say "what's being shipped and how" is not worth thinking about. But if you decide to think about it, then you immediately realize that you need completely different "cargo holds" to ship oil vs grain vs bulk ore vs commercial goods vs vehicles vs steel girders. They require different facilities at the port too.

Too much complexity for a game about adventuring, so they just say "the space that can ship petroleum is also good for shipping live geese. For reasons." And that's fine for gameplay, but not for extrapolating "how things work if you do zoom in on the details".

Lots of things are handwaved for simplicity of play. Airlocks and what exactly fills the "common space" are another example. Firing arcs for turrets are yet another example. But just because the game doesn't bother to track them does not mean that one can reasonably extrapolate as if they have no actual cost.

Not tracking a few airlocks per ship is fine as an abstraction, but the idea that they don't actually take up space and cost money *in universe* rather than from the player's abstraction is false. Although the game doesn't bother tracking vectors and firing arcs in space combat, it doesn't mean that those things don't exist.

At the player end of the game we are talking small cargos and small holds (usually a few hundred DTons). At that level you might well be shipping petroleum products in barrels or container tanks.

In conventional oceanic shipping we have bulk tankers, but we also have container tanks that are carried on container ships. You can offload a tank container with standard container handling equipment, bulk liquids need special equipment that can only be used for liquids (and generally only a single type of liquid unless you intend to clean it after every delivery and that is inefficient. At some point you need to move out of the starport and a container tank can go by rail or road to anywhere the rail or roads go. If you are bulk liquid handling you need a network of pipelines. If you are equipped for bulk liquid you need to collect a bulk liquid at each port and it is not often that the sort of place that exports petroleum also imports petroleum. That means you are just shipping ballast back the other way. A container tank of petroleum can be swapped for a container tank of another liquid and a non-tank container of anything else. Small ships will not be specialised tankers as they are not efficient. A tramp freighter might take break-bulk but it could equally be a small container ship (as not all containers are 40 footers).

We do have a cost for extra airlocks but that is it. I would have preferred that we either ignored it as part of the infrastructure of the ship (and saying 1 per 100 DTons of ship does that fine) or since Mongoose decided to put in an entire side bar to discuss it and a specific entry on the components they could have actually addressed it rather than doing half a job and leaving more questions than they answered.

Common areas also hint at an in-game effect but again it is talked about elliptically in fluff paragraphs but not actually metricised. DMs to skill rolls due to fatigue are hinted at but not actually set out. There is about a page dedicated to specific options that count as common areas with costs but most have no specified effect on crew morale, fatigue or passenger satisfaction, so why would anyone bother with them. If that was to be left to referees to make up that is fine, but we could do without the baggage it forces on us to no benefit.

The Gourmet Kitchen is a notable exception. It gives both a cost and space requirement and also provides a tangible game effect. If all the common area options had be set out like this they would have been useful additions to the rule set. As it is they read like filler and many of the space requirements are just random numbers.

 

[Vormaerin]

Which is why Traveller elides the whole topic of how cargo works. It only cares about the scraps of trade that PC adventurers might be doing and even that only barely. You can containerize all sorts of things at the cost of efficiency. Shipping bulk goods as container goods is substantially more expensive. The real shipping lines are not shipping stuff that way. It is why extrapolating a big picture from how things seem to work for PCs is not effective, because the PCs are very clearly dealing with the low end inefficient side of the business.

The kinds of ships that PCs have are frequently going to Class D and Class E ports which don't necessarily have any capabilities to handle containers, much less specialized bulk terminals. So those petrochemicals for Noctol are almost certainly barrels or drums. A Type D port might have container cranes, but they probably don't want to store your weird arse specialized containers for liquids or cattle or whatever that will take weeks, months, or years to be needed for outgoing trade. Which could be an interesting plot point if you take a trade knowing you have to then haul the empty cattle car containers to somewhere you can get rid of them. Or your cargo master gets to figure out how to store breakbulk in a mobile kennel. That might be fun flavor for your group or boring detail.

As far as common areas ago, T5 just has a ratio of sleeping & common areas (of whatever sort) to passengers to determine what level of comfort the ship provides, which affects whether they can attract high paying passengers or not. I personally think the difference between that being a hot tub or being a fancy kitchen is flavor text and any effort to "mechanize" it is a waste of time.

It does the same for crew comfort, but unless your players are specifically trying to overload the ship routinely or engaged in a really long deep space mission with little in the way of planetfalls, I also think that's not worth the price of admission.

I generally don't think giving stuff game mechanics benefits beyond "you can do stuff you otherwise couldn't" is actually a good idea. Character skills are relatively few and their base die roll effect is relatively small, so they are extremely easily swamped by "gear" modifiers. And I prefer my games to be about what my characters skills are than what their gear is. If you dedicate space to having a workshop, you can do workshop things instead of having hot tub scenes or impressing that NPC with your fancy kitchen.

 

[swordtart]

Which is why Traveller elides the whole topic of how cargo works. It only cares about the scraps of trade that PC adventurers might be doing and even that only barely. You can containerize all sorts of things at the cost of efficiency. Shipping bulk goods as container goods is substantially more expensive. The real shipping lines are not shipping stuff that way. It is why extrapolating a big picture from how things seem to work for PCs is not effective, because the PCs are very clearly dealing with the low end inefficient side of the business.

Agreed

The kinds of ships that PCs have are frequently going to Class D and Class E ports which don't necessarily have any capabilities to handle containers, much less specialized bulk terminals. So those petrochemicals for Noctol are almost certainly barrels or drums. A Type D port might have container cranes, but they probably don't want to store your weird arse specialized containers for liquids or cattle or whatever that will take weeks, months, or years to be needed for outgoing trade. Which could be an interesting plot point if you take a trade knowing you have to then haul the empty cattle car containers to somewhere you can get rid of them. Or your cargo master gets to figure out how to store breakbulk in a mobile kennel. That might be fun flavor for your group or boring detail.

Agreed.

As far as common areas ago, T5 just has a ratio of sleeping & common areas (of whatever sort) to passengers to determine what level of comfort the ship provides, which affects whether they can attract high paying passengers or not. I personally think the difference between that being a hot tub or being a fancy kitchen is flavor text and any effort to "mechanize" it is a waste of time.

MGT2 doesn't do that though. It says you need extra common space but then gives no penalty if you don't or bonus if you do. They could have left the description of common areas as an example list but instead they started specifying tonnage requirements and costs for particular items that have little to no game effect, but you already pay a baseline cost for common areas anyway.

It does the same for crew comfort, but unless your players are specifically trying to overload the ship routinely or engaged in a really long deep space mission with little in the way of planetfalls, I also think that's not worth the price of admission.

I generally don't think giving stuff game mechanics benefits beyond "you can do stuff you otherwise couldn't" is actually a good idea. Character skills are relatively few and their base die roll effect is relatively small, so they are extremely easily swamped by "gear" modifiers. And I prefer my games to be about what my characters skills are than what their gear is. If you dedicate space to having a workshop, you can do workshop things instead of having hot tub scenes or impressing that NPC with your fancy kitchen.

I think we are agreeing. I would prefer pages in HG to be spent on actually useful information. Any page space used for "quality of life" modifications needs to have a game effect, but frankly then it is just another component. I am not interested in things that may or may not be bundled in with the not-really mandated "Common Decency" rule.

I can make up any fluff I want to describe common rooms if it is not going to offer any game effect. I don't need Mongoose to tell me what a wet bar or an entertainment centre is. If it has no in game effect then it has no place in the game rules. They can put it in a separate fluff book if they want, but I won't be buying it because I have free on-line access to the IKEA and Argos catalogues for inspiration on common room furnishings and other clutter.

 

[Vormaerin]

For the longest time, they didn't. I think there was a JTAS article on the topic that got good feedback, so they just added more. I don't really care one way or the other. There's lots of elements of the game that I don't need, but others like. And doubtless the reverse is true. So I don't really worry too much about stuff like that.

If they started being prescriptive about it, like "you have to have a wet bar and a hot tub if you want Luxury passengers" or something, then it would get annoying. Not because I'd have to listen to them, but it would show up in deckplans and arguments about deckplans

 

[rinku]

The actual cost or construction for a normal Space Shipping Container is rarely important, as the freight and cargo arrives already packaged. Even in the event that a character has loose cargo that needs to be loaded into one, you'd likely hire use of one rather than buy it outright and hand it in to the container hire place after you've finished with it. Otherwise it's going to clutter up your cargo hold.

But I guess sometimes you might need to buy one.

A Fuel/Cargo container is Cr5000 per ton, but pays for the utility with a 5% tonnage and cost overhead. That would be a ceiling for the cost of a regular cargo container, I'd have thought. External cargo mounts are Cr1000 per ton, but appear to be just frameworks you strap cargo onto (i.e. they aren't cargo bays). So... Cr2000 per ton for a standard, vacuum proof container?

 

[Vormaerin]

My point was not that the players would own the containers, but that most of the small backwaters they trade at wouldn't HAVE anywhere to take the non-standard containers. That port isn't busy enough or developed enough to have a container yard that needs all those containers. So they are probably going to expect the PCs to take it back where it came from. Or people are gonna know not to send stuff there in containers and just do breakbulk.

 

[rinku]

If it's the player's own speculative cargo that's fair. But if it's freight, it has a paid-for destination there. Up to the receiver to deal with it. Extra charge to haul away empty containers.

But a backwater port cluttered with empty shipping containers? Surely not!

 

[Vormaerin]

Containers require specific types of equipment to deal with them at the port, not just the ship. In CA, several of the smaller ports (San Diego, West Sacramento, Eureka, Stockton, and some others) do very little or no container shipping at all. Those are the equivalent of D or C ports in Traveller. San Diego's a pretty big port, but it specialized in RO/RO and bulk cargo. It can do some spot container processing, but it isn't a priority. Stockton and Eureka (humboldt bay) don't do containers at all.

What I said was that the people shipping stuff to these Class D and Class E ports are going to know that they don't have container processing. They aren't going to want to lose the containers or to pay for them to be shipped back empty. Or just flat have the cargo rejected. Which is why I said several posts back that most PC shipping is likely to be breakbulk. They might have containers if they are running between C/B/A ports, but those ports get lots of traffic from the big guys who can ship containers and bulk goods more efficiently, leaving the breakbulk scraps for the tramps. The real work for free traders is the backwaters anyway. You might once in a while get some fun out of the character's speculative goods or a misinformed shipper sending containerized freight to a port that isn't designed for it, but mostly it just won't be a factor.

And, to bring it back to original issue that brought up cargo types, because you are regularly dealing with breakbulk, tramp traders are probably not dealing with depressurized cargo holds very often.


Btw, a Fuel/Cargo container is not a shipping container. It's a specialized set of equipment for extending the Fuel tanks into the Cargo hold on an as needed basis. I would expect it to be substantially more expensive than any container because it includes all the machinery to allow that area of the cargo hold to maintain L-HYD fuel and to pump it into the jump drives. Which all the other kinds of "fuel in the cargo hold" options do not allow.

 

[Vormaerin]

Oh, as a side note.. I would tend to think that starships designed primarily for containerized cargo hauling would have a roof top cargo hold so that ports could use cranes to load and unload them directly instead of having to unload everything first.

But, it's the far future, we might have anti grav stickies or technokinesis or something to just move containers around. *shrugs*

 

[rinku]

The Subsidised Merchant - which is the start of the serious cargo ships - is a rollon/rolloff design with front and rear bay doors. That suggests that maybe we're looking at more of a grav assisted conveyer belt setup.

In general, they do resemble cargo aircraft a lot more than they resemble cargo watercraft. And that's not too surprising when you think about it. Instead of thinking of the Free Trader as a Liberty Ship turned tramp steamer, perhaps it's better to go with a surplus Dakota operating in a bush airline?

From a pure spaceship point of view, bulk cargo transfer is better done with external cargo pods from a dispersed structure ship that never lands. The Adventure class end of things (even the bigger ones) are more for local distribution from the shipping hubs, where the cargo needs to be delivered to surface.

Have you considered that the size of containers we've been discussing here actually ARE breakbulk?

 

[swordtart]

Containers require specific types of equipment to deal with them at the port, not just the ship. In CA, several of the smaller ports (San Diego, West Sacramento, Eureka, Stockton, and some others) do very little or no container shipping at all. Those are the equivalent of D or C ports in Traveller. San Diego's a pretty big port, but it specialized in RO/RO and bulk cargo. It can do some spot container processing, but it isn't a priority. Stockton and Eureka (humboldt bay) don't do containers at all.

I wondered about the practicalities of not being able to handle containers as it seemed short sighted given their ubiquity. According to their annual report (the most readily accessible source document), in 2005 at least Stockton handled containers. It is not its main business but it still has (or at least at some point had) the capability.

We also need to remember that many world only have a single port. All the ports you mention form part of port infrastructure and even if a specific port in CA doesn't handle containers, it is because there are other ports in the area that do. If a world has many space ports they may choose to avoid the infrastructure investment and may only deal with low volume cargo, but then they will be handling small craft who likely cannot handle containers either. The only port I can see that credibly won't be able to handle containerised cargo may be the class E, but as the only requirement is a suitable powerful fork lift or rolling crane even that seems unlikely with the amount of cargo moving though class E ports.

Getting the cargo off the ship could be stipulated is the carriers responsibility. I hate to think how long it would take to physically move 20 Dtons of break bulk common goods and whether we want the Travellers spending days just humping sacks and cases each time they drop off a cargo.

To be clear I do not think containers are always 4 DTon monsters. I think a 1 DTon container or smaller is perfectly reasonable and might be the more common low end size. If you consider these as break bulk then I think we are in broad agreement, but if you are talking break bulk as individual cases/sacks of goods each of which is notionally man portable then I cannot see that being sustainable for any starport larger that the class E of a pop 3- world.

I also don't see there being exotic container types such as live animal containers with their own life support unless they are some sort of cryo-berth but that will be too expensive for a one way trip as what would you be filling them with on the return leg (maybe Dumarest level passengers). There are a few basic container types most of which are for packaged dry goods and can be refilled at the other end. Raw materials may well be break bulk as there isn't much point in putting a roll of sheet steel in a box. Container tanks for liquids are reasonable but there will possibly be a few dedicated types as you can't easily refill petroleum tanks with consumable liquids for example. Reefers are also likely for perishables. Grain and the like might well be bagged up inside a container, but tanks can also be efficient. Ore is likely to be something only carried by bulk carriers, but it could be put in open containers (as can the processed product for return).

What I said was that the people shipping stuff to these Class D and Class E ports are going to know that they don't have container processing. They aren't going to want to lose the containers or to pay for them to be shipped back empty. Or just flat have the cargo rejected. Which is why I said several posts back that most PC shipping is likely to be breakbulk. They might have containers if they are running between C/B/A ports, but those ports get lots of traffic from the big guys who can ship containers and bulk goods more efficiently, leaving the breakbulk scraps for the tramps. The real work for free traders is the backwaters anyway. You might once in a while get some fun out of the character's speculative goods or a misinformed shipper sending containerized freight to a port that isn't designed for it, but mostly it just won't be a factor.

I have to disagree here. The container is the shippers responsibility. Many containers in real-life are one-way. They leave the port still filled and only get unloaded at the point of consumption. Break bulk will likely still need to be loaded onto something for onward shipment or at least stored in something in the interim unless you see the port as some sort of bazaar where speculative cargos are sold in break bulk quantities to end users a case of scotch at a time (which might be appropriate for a space port), but even class E Starports are supposed to be busier than that (if the trade rules are deemed canon).

Even if the port doesn't have a customer base that will refill general purpose containers with other goods for export, those surplus containers are themselves a free resource. They will either being repurposed or cut up for scrap. Even if that scrap has no domestic market (which seems un-likely) it is an export opportunity.

The reason containers revolutionised shipping is that it reduced losses from offloading. Less things got dropped whilst unloading and there was less opportunity for casual theft "The shipment was one case of scotch short boss". It simplified customs procedures as a sealed container is clearly the responsibility of the shipper rather than the carrier etc. I can't see this going away in anything other than a class E port.

And, to bring it back to original issue that brought up cargo types, because you are regularly dealing with breakbulk, tramp traders are probably not dealing with depressurized cargo holds very often.

Btw, a Fuel/Cargo container is not a shipping container. It's a specialized set of equipment for extending the Fuel tanks into the Cargo hold on an as needed basis. I would expect it to be substantially more expensive than any container because it includes all the machinery to allow that area of the cargo hold to maintain L-HYD fuel and to pump it into the jump drives. Which all the other kinds of "fuel in the cargo hold" options do not allow.

 

[Vormaerin]

No, I have not considered that because it makes the term functionally meaningless in this context. If it's not a standardized shipping container used for mass commercial cargo shipping, then there is no actual reason to call it out as a separate thing. Breakbulk covers a variety of loose or separable transport methods. Some of which are containers. A barrel is a "container" and so is a drum or a crate. But that is not how the term is used in the discussion of shipping.

Personally, I would not waste a starship on shuttle duties. I would expect it might jump straight to Mars or land at the downport directly instead of docking at the high port. But I would not expect anyone to waste space on a jump drive and jump fuel on a vessel designed to transport goods from the high port to secondary spaceports or downports. That's just a way to reduce profit margins.

I expect that tramp traders do what tramp traders have always done: pick up awkward or last minute cargoes and cargoes destined for small ports that don't support the more efficient ships.

Space is different than terrestrial transport because we do logistics by hub and spoke, so you bring huge container ships to places that deliver by train and truck. It is unclear how efficient or cost effective it is to have starships unload onto a starport and then have the cargo reloaded onto shuttles to take down to the surface. That depends enormously on how "cheap" space real estate and infrastructure is, which we don't really know.

So it might be that dispersed hulls with cargo pods that are picked up by in system or transorbital tugs may be the best way to go. Or maybe it's full on LASH, where that dispersed hull transports system freighters that scatter to their myriad destinations directly from the ship. It might be that the starport should be at the L2 Earth-Sun lagrange point so ships can jump close to it, refuel and leave without spending hours going from 100D to orbit. Just rotate crews, load new outbound freight (in whatever form that takes) and go. The every other week jump thing might just be a standard for tramps because they won't have the ability to change out crews.

But that's not even remotely close to the topic. At least a discussion of how tramps haul freight might relate to cargo airlocks Distantly.

 

[Vormaerin]

The reason containers revolutionised shipping is that it reduced losses from offloading. Less things got dropped whilst unloading and there was less opportunity for casual theft "The shipment was one case of scotch short boss". It simplified customs procedures as a sealed container is clearly the responsibility of the shipper rather than the carrier etc. I can't see this going away in anything other than a class E port.

Yeah, and even with that only about 60% of the world's sea trade goes in containers because lots of things are not suitable for containerization and many destinations do not accept container ships. The fact that we can ship everything to Amsterdam and put it on trains and trucks from there means that we can really go hogwild on containerization because a few large ports can handle the vast majority of trade. It's not clear that a high port has that equivalency. A downport obviously would, but downports don't handle big ships.

Containers don't, btw, just get dumped and they don't belong to person whose cargo is inside. The container belongs to the transport company (who is often, but not always, the same entity that owns the ships) and gets used for other shipping because there's that much volume going through that port that this is reasonable. For example, when I order things from the mainland USA, they are shipped by truck to Long Beach, where they are containerized and loaded onto one of the ships belonging to the companies that ship between CA and HI. Once here, it's unloaded into that company's container yard and then then the container is driven to my receiving facility, where it is emptied out. The container then goes back to shipping company and they use it to export stuff.

It's not at all clear that these D and E ports are getting enough shipping to actually make companies keep someone on site to run a container yard. D ports are not much to look at. Some of them can barely handle a fat trader, though most are a bit more capable than that. Nor is it clear that futuretech containers are so cheap that they are considered disposable. It's also not clear that any free traders would be connected to a shipping company in that fashion.

As far as specialty containers for live goods, maybe they are low berth containers in the future. But we have cattle car containers today for shipping livestock overseas, so I expect that we'll be doing the same in the future unless the cattle freezers are cheaper and more reliable. Which may or may not be true. But I'll bet no wagyu cows or their beef are getting frosted.

Anyway, as I said pages ago, there is so little information on how trade works 3500 years in the future that you can literally decide anything you like and it would be potentially workable. If you think that there's so much gravitic tech that we basically have TK to move containers in and out of free traders, go for it! If you think the Type D starports should have cranes, container yards, and all sorts of other infrastructure, nothing says they don't and you can ignore what it says anyway.

There's no right answer. We know zilch about the economics or the logistics. I am just saying what I think makes the most sense to me, based on my understanding of what D & E starports are like, how real world shipping works (which may turn out to be an utterly incorrect model for space), and what the deckplans of the starships look like. I do not think the PC scale freighters (free/far/fat traders) are container ships in a commercial sense. They aren't laid out right, they don't fit the commercial ecosystem of container shipping, and they don't primarily operate in large ports. One of their key advantages is that they are streamlined and small enough that they can land whereever the heck they need to.

Do I normally spend much time on whatever stevedoring is involved in landing in some backwater? Not unless it's part of an adventure. But I do think that those ships are breakbulk: so pallets, crates, drums, bales, bundles, boxes, and other non-standardized size stuff. YMMV.

 

[Condottiere]

At the lower end, it's like packing your stuff for sale at the local flea market.

 

[swordtart]

Yeah, and even with that only about 60% of the world's sea trade goes in containers because lots of things are not suitable for containerization and many destinations do not accept container ships. The fact that we can ship everything to Amsterdam and put it on trains and trucks from there means that we can really go hogwild on containerization because a few large ports can handle the vast majority of trade. It's not clear that a high port has that equivalency. A downport obviously would, but downports don't handle big ships.

Containers don't, btw, just get dumped and they don't belong to person whose cargo is inside. The container belongs to the transport company (who is often, but not always, the same entity that owns the ships) and gets used for other shipping because there's that much volume going through that port that this is reasonable. For example, when I order things from the mainland USA, they are shipped by truck to Long Beach, where they are containerized and loaded onto one of the ships belonging to the companies that ship between CA and HI. Once here, it's unloaded into that company's container yard and then then the container is driven to my receiving facility, where it is emptied out. The container then goes back to shipping company and they use it to export stuff.

It's not at all clear that these D and E ports are getting enough shipping to actually make companies keep someone on site to run a container yard. D ports are not much to look at. Some of them can barely handle a fat trader, though most are a bit more capable than that. Nor is it clear that futuretech containers are so cheap that they are considered disposable. It's also not clear that any free traders would be connected to a shipping company in that fashion.

As far as specialty containers for live goods, maybe they are low berth containers in the future. But we have cattle car containers today for shipping livestock overseas, so I expect that we'll be doing the same in the future unless the cattle freezers are cheaper and more reliable. Which may or may not be true. But I'll bet no wagyu cows or their beef are getting frosted.

Anyway, as I said pages ago, there is so little information on how trade works 3500 years in the future that you can literally decide anything you like and it would be potentially workable. If you think that there's so much gravitic tech that we basically have TK to move containers in and out of free traders, go for it! If you think the Type D starports should have cranes, container yards, and all sorts of other infrastructure, nothing says they don't and you can ignore what it says anyway.

There's no right answer. We know zilch about the economics or the logistics. I am just saying what I think makes the most sense to me, based on my understanding of what D & E starports are like, how real world shipping works (which may turn out to be an utterly incorrect model for space), and what the deckplans of the starships look like. I do not think the PC scale freighters (free/far/fat traders) are container ships in a commercial sense. They aren't laid out right, they don't fit the commercial ecosystem of container shipping, and they don't primarily operate in large ports. One of their key advantages is that they are streamlined and small enough that they can land whereever the heck they need to.

Do I normally spend much time on whatever stevedoring is involved in landing in some backwater? Not unless it's part of an adventure. But I do think that those ships are breakbulk: so pallets, crates, drums, bales, bundles, boxes, and other non-standardized size stuff. YMMV.

Plenty of data points in there.

I assumed the shipper owned the container based on the ones badged up with manufacturers logos I see on UK roads, but that is probably observer bias as I am only noticing the one unusual one, rather than the dozens of Maersk ones that I fail to notice on the same journey.

The unusual case of the shipper owning the container might need to happen (in my Traveller scenario) if the container is genuinely single use as it isn't worth shipping it back (likely consisting of mostly end-of-life containers on their last trip before being condemned). I confess I made a conflation error here as I assumed one-way container meant single use, where as it simply means it is rented one-way and it will be rented out from that port to another customer and may make many such one-way trips in its life.

Thank you for taking the trouble to explain your thinking. It made me think and has modified my view somewhat. I'll still have a level of containerisation (I love a nice containerised life) but at least it will be supported by an appropriate infrastructure requirement and some credible backstory if and when it becomes an on-table topic.

 

[Condottiere]

Collapsible.

Five percent?

 

[MarcusIII]

In conventional oceanic shipping we have bulk tankers, but we also have container tanks that are carried on container ships. You can offload a tank container with standard container handling equipment, bulk liquids need special equipment that can only be used for liquids (and generally only a single type of liquid unless you intend to clean it after every delivery and that is inefficient. At some point you need to move out of the starport and a container tank can go by rail or road to anywhere the rail or roads go. If you are bulk liquid handling you need a network of pipelines.

Well, space transport could be different. One could put a flexible form fitting tank in a "container" ship for liquid cargo. Get to high port and just hook up to pipes at starport for off loading. They collapse down to 1% of volume so starports will have them available for different types of liquids so no need to clean out hold.

 

[Vormaerin]

Plenty of data points in there.

I assumed the shipper owned the container based on the ones badged up with manufacturers logos I see on UK roads, but that is probably observer bias as I am only noticing the one unusual one, rather than the dozens of Maersk ones that I fail to notice on the same journey.

Some are owned by the shipper, though shipper in that case usually means leasing companies rather than the actual manufacturer. Also, some are owned by freight forwarders and shipping companies that don't own any ships. But carrier owned is the by far the most common situation.


Edit: If you see containers with manufacturer's logos, they are probably leased from a company that owns the containers. Not saying there's never a case that the contents and the container have the same ownership, but it's vanishingly rare.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

My point was not that the players would own the containers, but that most of the small backwaters they trade at wouldn't HAVE anywhere to take the non-standard containers.

Those back waters will use things you would never imagine. Even in the U.S. there are people turning shipping containers into HOUSES. You think a poor back water world wouldn't do that? How about stables, garages, chicken coops, grain silos that the local rodent (equivalents) can't get into? The backwater ports will make extra money off them. PC's travelling about the world will see them everywhere.