Mating Airlocks to Cargo Hatches
- Thread starter Terry Mixon
- Start date
None of the published deck plans say they are, but otherwise they are a list of components and cargo doors are not a listed component
A crane will still be useful for those 1DTon containers. 14 cubic meters is still larger enough that a crane would be useful. Even something only 1 meter on a side could be heavy enough to benefit from a crane if it were machinery. The advantage should be that it would allow stacking containers internally (and that would be particularly useful if you had many cubic metre containers stacked.
It also allows grabbing something from anywhere in the hold (as log as it was on top) and dropping it into a waiting vehicle using the gib without needing to rely on any portside MHE That might be useful to expedite your unloading in low infrastructure ports or when making "less official" deliveries.
The grappling arm is useful in space. My read is that it cannot be used on land (and it needs the non-gravity to move things). I am also not convinced it can be used to reach into the cargo bay to garb things (whether in gravity or not). At best you might be able to push things out of the hatch and have it pick them up from there.
You can use the RH to design one of these, but the STR of the equipment would be the limiting factor.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
You have to figure out what makes sense, even if only in the context of your version of the setting.
In terms of, what I'll term true containerization, and in context of our deckplans, the smallest standard I have would be a cube, a tad short of three metres by three metres by three metres; internal dimensions vary.
Next would a fortyish footer, which will, of course, accommodate anything what our twenty footers would.
You can probably customize any other size, with laser drills cutting sheets of metal to be assembled.
In terms of, what I'll term true containerization, and in context of our deckplans, the smallest standard I have would be a cube, a tad short of three metres by three metres by three metres; internal dimensions vary.
Next would a fortyish footer, which will, of course, accommodate anything what our twenty footers would.
You can probably customize any other size, with laser drills cutting sheets of metal to be assembled.
I don't have the SOP and my presumption was that containers were the future equivalent of TEU. To make them more compatible with Travellers DTon and deck plan conventions I had them as 2 DTon with the 10ft and 40ft versions being 1 DTon and 4 DTon. All of the real world versions are intermodal shipping containers. It is more efficient to lift them with purpose designed cranes from above, but they can be moved by forklift* if necessary and I don't see the Traveller ones designing that flexibility out.
I still see these as containing sub-packages of either homogenous goods or even random items that have been packed by a shipping company from a variety of sources that only have a destination and broad physical compatibility in common. That I class as the break bulk element. In extremis you with even low capacity MHE you could unload container and move that break bulk and then move the empty container, but in doing so you are then operating in the shippers domain rather than the carrier.
I glossed over the specific dimensions as 14 cubic metres is a terrible number to work from. I also gloss over the cargo deck height as it is not specified. I am going to assume that it is high enough to allow enough space to allow the container to be manoeuvred with MHE available in any port other than possibly Class E.
I think we were talking at cross purposes as I hadn't considered shipping containers in the 5-10 DTon range and they are, in my opinion, out of scope for the 200 Dton merchants and so IMTU they are irrelevant.
*These might be replaced by grav lifters that lock into containers from above (like a delivery drone). They might be very powerful but have a short duration to reduce the overall size (which is an advantage when navigating the confines of a ships hold). It might need to recharge/refuel hourly or even be tied into a fixed power supply. That would make it perfectly useable at a port, but would make it less useful for players to jaunt around a planet (if that is a concern).
I still see these as containing sub-packages of either homogenous goods or even random items that have been packed by a shipping company from a variety of sources that only have a destination and broad physical compatibility in common. That I class as the break bulk element. In extremis you with even low capacity MHE you could unload container and move that break bulk and then move the empty container, but in doing so you are then operating in the shippers domain rather than the carrier.
I glossed over the specific dimensions as 14 cubic metres is a terrible number to work from. I also gloss over the cargo deck height as it is not specified. I am going to assume that it is high enough to allow enough space to allow the container to be manoeuvred with MHE available in any port other than possibly Class E.
I think we were talking at cross purposes as I hadn't considered shipping containers in the 5-10 DTon range and they are, in my opinion, out of scope for the 200 Dton merchants and so IMTU they are irrelevant.
*These might be replaced by grav lifters that lock into containers from above (like a delivery drone). They might be very powerful but have a short duration to reduce the overall size (which is an advantage when navigating the confines of a ships hold). It might need to recharge/refuel hourly or even be tied into a fixed power supply. That would make it perfectly useable at a port, but would make it less useful for players to jaunt around a planet (if that is a concern).
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I also think we need to be careful in ascribing facilities to ports based on their class. The class distinctions are largely focussed on the facilities they provide visiting ships, but they are still ports and the primary means of trade for the entire main world (and possibly a multi world system). The facilities they offer shippers and freight forwarders might therefore be more standard. In Empire influenced ports where TRADE is the main aim then port facilities cannot adversely impact that. They may not be able to attract ships, but they certainly won't be operating in a way that discourages them.
RAW in MGT2 has the port classification making very little influence on the quantity of speculative goods or freight available. The difference between a Class E and Class A is only 3 steps on the freight availability table and that only makes 1D of difference on each of the Major Minor and Incidental cargos. If the planet is not unfavourable to trade due to other factors (low pop, low tech or red or amber zone) you are not talking several dozen DTons available to any random tramp vessel that happens along to any specified destination. My default assumption is that Major cargos are in containers ready to go, minor cargo is break bulk needing MHE (so pallets etc.) and that incidental cargos are man-portable break bulk.
Speculative cargo and mail is of course in addition to this. Your ability to find speculative cargo is more dependent on Starport class, but that is digital (or maybe affects the price if you are using it in a task chain). The amount of cargo available is only affected by the population of the planet. Assuming you can find a seller (and you can try multiple times) there will always be a several tens of DTons of common goods available plus quantities of the other trade code goods, plus a quantity of random goods.
The assumption is these are the goods available to player ships and are in addition to any that might be carried by the professional freight lines (though off the mains this may be nil).
These quantities reset every month (equating to the 2 jumps plus two weeks transit of a ship doing a round trip journey).
This gives us no idea of how much cargo the port handles overall of course since we don't know how many tramps are popping in each week. GURPS Far Trader tried to establish this but after lots of very complex maths you still ended up with only a vague idea of the overall annual freight turn over.
It would be that number plus the type of imports/exports that tells you the sort of facilities a port used or how it tended to operate. If you are moving 100 DTons of washing machines each day via independent carriers then moving each one individually is probably contra-indicated.
RAW in MGT2 has the port classification making very little influence on the quantity of speculative goods or freight available. The difference between a Class E and Class A is only 3 steps on the freight availability table and that only makes 1D of difference on each of the Major Minor and Incidental cargos. If the planet is not unfavourable to trade due to other factors (low pop, low tech or red or amber zone) you are not talking several dozen DTons available to any random tramp vessel that happens along to any specified destination. My default assumption is that Major cargos are in containers ready to go, minor cargo is break bulk needing MHE (so pallets etc.) and that incidental cargos are man-portable break bulk.
Speculative cargo and mail is of course in addition to this. Your ability to find speculative cargo is more dependent on Starport class, but that is digital (or maybe affects the price if you are using it in a task chain). The amount of cargo available is only affected by the population of the planet. Assuming you can find a seller (and you can try multiple times) there will always be a several tens of DTons of common goods available plus quantities of the other trade code goods, plus a quantity of random goods.
The assumption is these are the goods available to player ships and are in addition to any that might be carried by the professional freight lines (though off the mains this may be nil).
These quantities reset every month (equating to the 2 jumps plus two weeks transit of a ship doing a round trip journey).
This gives us no idea of how much cargo the port handles overall of course since we don't know how many tramps are popping in each week. GURPS Far Trader tried to establish this but after lots of very complex maths you still ended up with only a vague idea of the overall annual freight turn over.
It would be that number plus the type of imports/exports that tells you the sort of facilities a port used or how it tended to operate. If you are moving 100 DTons of washing machines each day via independent carriers then moving each one individually is probably contra-indicated.
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
Whoever owns them, they aren't poaying to get them back across the ocean. They are only returned if there is export coming back. And in the case of the majority of such containers there isn't enough cargo traffic the return route to get them back. So, they rot or are sold off for pennies on the $
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
More likely the floor of the cargo hold is covered with omnidirectional rollers and you crank down the gravity so they are easy to move around. And one little fork lift that allows you to stack 2 high.
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
But the cargo rules state that lots come in whole tons per dice. So not likely in "One Cubes"
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
You can also crate your cargo.
I suspect due to fears of biological contamination, wood won't be used, but since energy will be cheap, likely aluminum cases.
I suspect due to fears of biological contamination, wood won't be used, but since energy will be cheap, likely aluminum cases.
The cargo rules don't make any statement of what the cargo comes in. It just gives the total DTons in a lot.
4 DTons could be two 2 DTon containers, four 1 DTon containers, 4 Dtons of loose goods or even a single air raft.
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
Right. NOT cubes of partial DTons
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
What about stout bamboo?
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Dirtside it wouldn't matter.
Depending on cost, maybe carbon fibres.
What you want is something durable and cheap, and plastic might not be enough, despite being used as pallets.
Depending on cost, maybe carbon fibres.
What you want is something durable and cheap, and plastic might not be enough, despite being used as pallets.
The cargo rules say that the final volume is "X". They say nothing about what form that "X" comes in. It could well be crates or barrels or bales or whatever. That's why that stuff is what's called "general cargo".
Fine. You win. Shippers are absolutely constantly sending lots of containers to non-container ports where they can't be processed and will forever be out of the system. I don't know where you got the idea I said that no one ever disposed of excess containers. I was explicitly talking about trading with backwaters not designed for container shipping and where there was no chance of those containers going back into circulation.
Yes and no. E class ports are absolutely not possessing facilities of any meaningful sort. Class D ports are subject to the usual Traveller ambiguity. They might be a largely abandoned large port, they might reflect a substantial private commercial port with only dregs available to public and non commercial vessels, or they might be just an airport with a water tank to refuel starships. The vast majority of Class D starports have no orbital capacity at all, so they are only designed to handle small ships. Most of them are also in worlds with negative importance, so they are probably not handling very many ships in a given week if you use the WBH or T5 charts for that sort of thing.
Containerized shipping in the commercial/logistics meaning is a major industrial level commercial process. It requires a large transport infrastructure to concentrate commercial goods at a port that has the size and infrastructure to handle big ships and heavy containers. And it requires the vehicles and starships to be designed to optimally handle those standardized containers. That absolutely exists in Traveller in some form, though that that form looks like can be hard to say since surface to orbit part of the flow is not something we get any details about in Traveller and the standard assumption is those large ships don't land at the downport.
However, I have been talking about Free Traders as a class (whether you mean Type A, Type R, Serenity, The Millenium Falcon, or any other such ship) this entire time and discussing cargo handling on that kind of vessel. They are not designed to fit easily into that containerized trade paradigm. They are independent, they do not operate to a schedule, they are too small for any economies of scale, and all the examples we have are horizontal loading, which is not great for big awkward containers.
The primary characteristic that makes a good free trader is being cheap (aka small) and able to go anywhere (streamlined, again small). They need to be able to operate at a class E starport or just land at some winery in the boondocks to bypass the Tukera stranglehold on the port. So it makes no sense for them operating as container ships. Their raison d'etre is going places that probably don't have the facilities to handle them. No matter how disposable you think containers are, no one is sending a containerized ship to the Port of Humboldt Bay. It can't process them.
General Cargo still exists as a shipping class even today because there are places that get trade that can't handle containers and because there are goods that are not ideal for containerization. Free Traders thrive on that. That is what they exist to do. It is why they are designed the way they are.
Traveller is a game. It wants plucky free traders in the stars to be a thing, unlikely as that seems. It tries super super hard to avoid post scarcity despite miniaturized fusion power (Fusion+), unlimited reactionless in system transport, advanced robots, and fabricators. The important thing is to design this imaginary trade system to be fun for adventuring. What that means to your table is going to be different than it is at mine.
I think that anti grav so controllable it's TK is not good for adventuring (because of the implications for PCs boarding or being boarded).
I think that exo-loaders are cool even though they (like all mechs) are actually stupid compared to regular vehicles.
I think that a cargo bay full of all kinds of assorted goods is more fun to have a fight in than one with wall to wall containers.
I think that the PCs being able to land and trade with some outback village is more fun than being limited to a proper container port.
I think the purpose of the trade rules and the free trader designs is to get the PCs into adventures, not to be optimal for corporate efficiency.
If you come in with different assumptions about what is fun you absolutely should make different decisions about how free traders work in your game. That is, in fact, the point of the ambiguity that some people hate so much.
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
I "win" nothing. Simply stating fact. No need to get upset about facts
I was talking about container shipping not going to backwater non container ports and why that doesn't happen (lack of facilities, lack of reciprocal trade) and you ran off on some tangent about trade imbalances between container ports. Yeah, that happens. It has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
It does on Earth so why not in space? "Transshipment: This is the primary method where large ships deliver containerized cargo to regional hubs, such as Lomé in Togo, Tema in Ghana, and Djibouti. These hubs are equipped to handle the largest vessels, and then smaller feeder ships transport the cargo to smaller ports in the region".
If we are talking contemporary (i.e. current), containers do make it back across the pond and then back again - at least for half dozen or so trips on average. After that you start seeing a drop-off in getting them back.
The challenge is the US and Europe don't do as much trade TO Asia as they do in the opposite direction. Containers used to go back that direction with trash and other recyclable materials, but that got shut down for the most part. Some of that also depends on the destination of the cargo - containers that are destined for west coast warehouses are much more likely to get returned than those with destinations in the midwest or even East coast. Once you start adding in the cost to ship back an empty container and load it back onboard a ship, the value of it drops precipitously.
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
This is the MAJORITY. The containers from Asia for the most part do NOT make it back. In early 2025 a pileup of hundreds of thousands of empty containers in Los Angeles alone with no way back exists. FAR more than that all across the USA. Most containers coming INTO the USA come from Asia not from Europe.
