Mating Airlocks to Cargo Hatches

[phavoc]

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.

Free traders are more akin to semi-trucks than the smallish freighters that ply the waterways of today. You'd have to go back to the early 1900s to really get into the tramp freighter model, where smallish freighters (in the 5k displacement ton class) plied the worlds oceans and carried the cargo everywhere. Norway, for example, had the fourth largest merchant fleet at the beginning of WW1, but by per capita it was the largest in the world.
Like you I don't see free traders as being equivalent to the bigger container ships that will haul the bulk of cargo in Imperial space. Free traders would carry much smaller containers in the 3-5dton class, or even just palletized cargo - though that might be a bit of a stretch even for them. Containerization works great for cargo movement and also allows for transhipment without all the hassle of tracking a single pallet. Though as you point out, free traders would be able to deliver cargo directly to smaller ports that bigger container ships would never be able to do, thus they would have the ability to do so, though it seems unlikely.

I do think, however, that free traders and smaller ships would still operate on somewhat of a fixed schedule. We have to remember that in the Traveller universe schedules are, at best, guidelines. With the vagaries of jump space it's simply impossible to have exact schedules unless you build in a great deal of buffer time. And the farther you go the more inaccurate the schedules get due to increasing random travel times. In this case it's also more likely to adopt ye olde schedules of freighters, or even sailing ships, whereby you have a generalized time frame for when you expect the ships to arrive and depart. Which is easily handled by freight forwarders knowing which ships generally ply which routes, and shippers knowing that they would need to have cargos ready to go or even already at the local port or orbital warehouse waiting for the ships when they arrive. That means ships can spend less time in port looking for cargos since they are already on the board waiting to be picked up by a certified hauler (or purchased on spec - though I have to wonder just how much cargo is going to move that way... seems terribly inefficient and risky).

Ambiguity is fine, up to a point. After all, why buy a game system that defines very little? We are paying for a game framework that is mostly already pre-defined. Otherwise too much ambiguity results in a waste of gaming dollars. Most of us here have fertile enough imaginations to create this stuff ourselves - but its much easier to buy something with most of the heavy lifting done.

 

[phavoc]

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.

Where are you getting your data from, and what period are you referring to? As I stated it's an up and down issue depending on numerous factors. Just a few years ago, during Covid, Chinese shippers were desperate for containers and they could not manufacture them fast enough, so prices were skyrocketing. At the moment trade is a bit bolluxed, and US importers started stockpiling goods ahead of today, which is also helping to create an imbalance in movement.

And yes, most Asian cargo does NOT flow through Europe to get to US - but I never said that. Asia exports heavily to BOTH Europe and the US - that's what the statement of US and Europe trade was referencing. It's parallel, not serial pathing.

 

[Vormaerin]

A TEU is about 3dtons (40 cubic meters) and is a 1x4 tile element that, when full, is quite heavy (20 to 30k in kg, IIRC). That's just too big and awkward for the ships the game gives us and the kinds of ports they are expected to be going to. Unless you assume that anti grav is cheap and ubiquitous at the TL 10-12 range that covers the vast majority of planets in the Imperium (which I absolutely don't). A free trader is too small to even make the cut as a feeder ship in the containerization game.

My argument has always been that they are "General cargo" carriers.

Traveller's "Free traders" are absolutely an anachronism in modern trade. The assumption of the system is that space trade is not as amenable to the systemization that modern real world trade is. This assumption is made for gameplay purposes, not because it necessarily reflects any idea of what future trade would look like.

There are small feeder ships in the container game. But they would not look like or behave like the "Free traders" that the Type A and similar ships is trying to model. The Subby does do some "liner" work on routes that are not profitable for the commercial freightlines. But the very fact that they are unprofitable argues against them having what we'd call containerized cargo vs general cargo.

 

[Vormaerin]

Where are you getting your data from, and what period are you referring to? As I stated it's an up and down issue depending on numerous factors. Just a few years ago, during Covid, Chinese shippers were desperate for containers and they could not manufacture them fast enough, so prices were skyrocketing. At the moment trade is a bit bolluxed, and US importers started stockpiling goods ahead of today, which is also helping to create an imbalance in movement.

And yes, most Asian cargo does NOT flow through Europe to get to US - but I never said that. Asia exports heavily to BOTH Europe and the US - that's what the statement of US and Europe trade was referencing. It's parallel, not serial pathing.

*Shrugs* There is a current well documented issue with empty containers due to heightened trade imbalance in the US. But it is a problem to be addressed, not a business as usual practice. No one intentionally creates that problem if it can be avoided.

 

[Condottiere]

If the containers are cheap, it's cost of business, and subsumed in the freight charges.

Salvage could be melting them down, and repurposing the steel.

 

[phavoc]

A TEU is about 3dtons (40 cubic meters) and is a 1x4 tile element that, when full, is quite heavy (20 to 30k in kg, IIRC). That's just too big and awkward for the ships the game gives us and the kinds of ports they are expected to be going to. Unless you assume that anti grav is cheap and ubiquitous at the TL 10-12 range that covers the vast majority of planets in the Imperium (which I absolutely don't). A free trader is too small to even make the cut as a feeder ship in the containerization game.

My argument has always been that they are "General cargo" carriers.

Traveller's "Free traders" are absolutely an anachronism in modern trade. The assumption of the system is that space trade is not as amenable to the systemization that modern real world trade is. This assumption is made for gameplay purposes, not because it necessarily reflects any idea of what future trade would look like.

There are small feeder ships in the container game. But they would not look like or behave like the "Free traders" that the Type A and similar ships is trying to model. The Subby does do some "liner" work on routes that are not profitable for the commercial freightlines. But the very fact that they are unprofitable argues against them having what we'd call containerized cargo vs general cargo.

1 TEU in today's world is a 20' container (half the size of the 40' standard). The weight you have is about right. I think that would be at the upper limit for a free or far trader to deal with. The ship itself would be able to easily have it's own grav equipment to load/unload cargo. Any port that is worth its salt if going to import the necessary equipment for port handling of the cargo - but beyond that it's going be a hodge-podge of tech. For the most part I don't see any issue with a TL-5 world having access to TL-8-10 tech. We see 787s in Ethiopia getting basic maintenance done locally. The tech is imported, the tools, spares and training manuals are all imported. Ethiopa can't build it's own cars or trucks but still manages to have them locally. They also have donkey-carts.

Yes, we do have smaller container ships that transport cargos from the bigger ports to smaller markets. There's a plethora of smaller container ships in the 100 TEU (and +/- range) that ply the smaller trade routes. In Traveller terms they'd be bigger than the free trader, more akin to 1k - 2k dton freighters.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

There are folding containers with an integrated pallet. For the ones I am familiar with (haven't seen one in years) they would be about 9 per dton and would stack 3 high. Made from resin (based on their appearance). Folded I'd say about 1/5th the volume. They would work pretty well for a Free/Far Trader. With higher TL I'd assume you could make them fold flatter and waste less volume.

The issue with various sizes of containers not fitting the odd shapes and dimensions of smaller freighter/trader ships cargo holds has a simple solution - design ships that have the right cargo hold shapes/dimensions. Same of course for their cargo hatches. With gravity control moving even the largest should be pretty simple. Pick a maximum size container for each size of cargo hold and shape the holds to match. The ships might not be as "pretty" (not that all are) but they would make more sense.

 

[Vormaerin]

Sure. The Traveller "Free trader" concept is trying to model a certain trope. The tiny crew running a freelance ship ala the Millenium Falcon or the Serenity. And shippers like Harry Mudd in Star Trek. Or trade explorers like John Falkayn. And a plethora of characters in older sci fi.

If you are not trying to model that (and no professional business person would set out to do that) then you would make different decisions about what ships look like. If you imagine vastly more fancy tech is available to these marginal traders than the genre typically showcases, things would again be different.

That's the key element. These are NOT part of the corporate trade structure. They are probably considered parasites by the shipping companies, who would want their feeder ships and their chartered freelancers to be more structured than the trope allows for.

Part of that trope is wild boonies landings and other things that are not at all how a sensible commercial trader works.

So this poses a problem when you look at the rules and then try to say "how do sensible commercial traders do things?". Because that's not the trope the rules are about.

 

[Condottiere]

The gantry crane should be able to pick up and deposit any reasonably sized container inside the cargo hold, and just outside it, upto sixty five tonnes.

 

[Vormaerin]

Yes, we do have smaller container ships that transport cargos from the bigger ports to smaller markets. There's a plethora of smaller container ships in the 100 TEU (and +/- range) that ply the smaller trade routes. In Traveller terms they'd be bigger than the free trader, more akin to 1k - 2k dton freighters.

Yeah, which is part of what I've been trying to point out. The corporate freighting world is different. There ARE small ships in Traveller doing all these things people are talking about. Running containers to smaller ports and having all this stuff. That's what the Merchant 'Marine' career is.

That's not the ships the players get and not the role the players or the NPC operators of those types of ships are intended to play in the economy. Charted Space assumes there are lots of worlds that barely do any interstellar trade. A few ships a week or whatever and not enough money involved to get anyone to run the route in a professionalized fashion.

The Type R exists in the middle of that space. Bigger than most pure freelancers, but not big enough to interest the corporate shippers. Nicknamed the subby because these ignored worlds need to guarantee someone comes semi-regularly. Since they otherwise might not.

The Free Traders show up when they show up and, often, land wherever they need to land. Whether that's some deep woods lumber yard or a distant vineyard. Or some rancher's field. Or the official government-controlled patch of hardened dirt. They might parasitize some trade from the bigger ports, but they generally avoid them because of the much higher fees and increased paperwork.

"Any port worth its salt" is exactly right. These ports aren't worth their salt, not to commercial shippers. Not to anyone who cares about economies of scale and containerization processes. That's why they have to pay for a jumped up space plane that can land on basically a runway and can be unloaded without any special equipment. Because importing the special equipment isn't affordable or isn't worth it.

There probably are D ports with enough volume to have commercial grade cargo facilities that for whatever reason don't make the cut for "Class C". But that's not really the expected norm.


Now, that might not be your vision of Charted Space or whatever campaign you are running. But that was the vision that created the trade rules and the design of the "Free trader" type ships. A different vision calls for different ships, frankly.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

The gantry crane should be able to pick up and deposit any reasonably sized container inside the cargo hold, and just outside it, upto sixty five tonnes.

Or at least drop it on a loading belt that does go out as far as the loading ramp where it would be accessible to local equipment.

If they can't handle the larger containers why would they not have a cheaper lower capacity cargo crane? If few of them have 150 ton cargo holds why would their cranes be designed for that capacity as its base unit? Why not a 50 ton (or even 25 ton) cargo hold crane with a 10 (or less) dTon capacity?

 

[Vormaerin]

They originally didn't have a crane at all. Someone at some point said "how can they unload without a crane?" and added one to the design.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

How about this:

Light Cargo Cranes: Basically the same as the Cargo Crane except lower capacities and prices. The lift mechanism consumes .5 tons but the gantry jigs require a further .1 tons per 25 tons of cargo space. Light cargo cranes cost .2 MCr/ton. It can lift 10 dTons. Usable for 500 ton holds and smaller.

So a Subsidized Merchant with a 200 ton cargo hold using this would be .5+.8 =1.3 tons and a price of .26 MCr. A standard crane would consume 3.5 tons and 3.5 MCr but be able to handle 65 dTon units that wouldn't likely be shipped on it.

 

[swordtart]

Now, that might not be your vision of Charted Space or whatever campaign you are running. But that was the vision that created the trade rules and the design of the "Free trader" type ships. A different vision calls for different ships, frankly.

I don't know about any vision. The trade and freight rules we have in MGT2 indicate no port is shipping a few DTons per week. Even the non-ports (Class-X) seem to be able to rustle up substantial cargos for anyone who rocks up.

Your vision of containerised transport may be wedded to an entire empire wide infrastructure but that is not necessary. All that is required to have a regular movement of containerised goods is two factors on two worlds with complementary trade codes and some containers. Each buys local goods to export to the other. They load them up in containers as a container in a locked yard is as good as a warehouse and it means as soon as a tramp comes in they can pay them to freight them to their opposite number quickly. They don't need an impressive schedule they just need to fill the containers as soon as possible and ship them once they are filled You can get them sealed and anti-tamper marked so you can ensure any interference is obvious. Once other people realise there is a semi-regular service smaller companies might rent any spare capacity and the service might become more frequent. The factors might decide they make more money renting out containers and negotiating with captains than on the speculative trade side and become shipping agents instead. The amount of trade they do is still not enough to justify the time of one of the big freight companies as they would just be moving back and forth along a 1 jump route. Before long there is a mail* route as well for private individuals.

I cannot see a Free Trader with the majority of it's cargo bay empty enough for a fun gun battle being able to make its payments every month. You need that KCr80 every trip to take the sting out of the mortgage. I do not believe that in that 1120 cubic metre hold that you cannot fit a dozen or more TEUs. You would expect to be putting in 30 or more. There will certainly be plenty of occasions where individual packing cases are loaded by hand onto the cargo deck and lashed down, but that hold is going to need to be packed most trips one way or another.

Some bands of semi-piratical murder hobos might use a trade ship as a cover for their nefarious deeds, or bimble around the spacelanes buying up a few tons of fine wine here and there, but those people don't need a Free Trader. They would be better served with a scout. Free traders are flown by merchants and they make their money in trade or low volume freight and only way to do that is to fill it to the gunwales in the most efficient way possible.

*Mail uses 5DTon containers which are expected to go on the tramps. The containers I am talking about are nearly half that size.

 

[swordtart]

Right. NOT cubes of partial DTons

How much cargo is a ship carrying 20 1/2 Dton containers carrying. I would say 10 Dtons, not 20 half-DTons.

 

[Terry Mixon]

How about this:

Light Cargo Cranes: Basically the same as the Cargo Crane except lower capacities and prices. The lift mechanism consumes .5 tons but the gantry jigs require a further .1 tons per 25 tons of cargo space. Light cargo cranes cost .2 MCr/ton. It can lift 10 dTons. Usable for 500 ton holds and smaller.

So a Subsidized Merchant with a 200 ton cargo hold using this would be .5+.8 =1.3 tons and a price of .26 MCr. A standard crane would consume 3.5 tons and 3.5 MCr but be able to handle 65 dTon units that wouldn't likely be shipped on it.

I like these.

 

[Condottiere]

The smart ones will want machine tooling, fusion reactors, and pharmaceuticals.

Otherwise, boomsticks, firewater, tupperware; possibly gold and jewels.

 

[Vormaerin]

I'd have to look again at the current phrasing, but the original phrasing on mail was that you had to have an armed ship and a designated mail vault of 5dtons to be eligible for a mail contract. That may have morphed into "mail comes in 5dTon Containers" at some point.

And, yes, you can fit a bunch of 20' containers in a cargo hold with a vertical loading mechanism. Like basically every container ship in existence. But sliding them horizontally through a side cargo door and then maneuvering them around to where they fit will not be nearly so easy. Plus, the Free Trader has the cargo bay in the middle of the ship. You can't get to the Engine room from the main cabin without going through the cargo bay.

The cargo bay doesn't need to be "empty" to have a good fight. It just needs narrow pathways, piles of things that can be knocked over, weird things to hide behind, and so on. That's what you have with general cargo.

I'll just say this: There is a certain amount of confusing what's in the game about adventurers with what's in the game world in general going on here. There are all kinds of trade ships in universe that are not written up because the game rules are designed to model the lives of adventurers, not the lives of normal sensible freighters. This is like how when D&D first came out, the only "priest" was a spell casting holy warrior modelled on Templars and Archbishop Turpin, but that was the only priest in the rules so suddenly every village vicar was a spell slinging warrior.

Yes, you can always get cargo on a world, because that's important for players to be able to do, not because it was some kind of model for the economic system at large. If you look at the adventures written at the time, it was assumed that the cargo wasn't necessarily innocently sitting at the port waiting to be picked up. It was nearly impossible to make a profit carrying freight and passengers back in the day, because the assumption was that you would be doing adventuring things to make up the difference. Whether that was going to the outback to get speculative cargo before the big guys got it or some other kind of adventure. Mongoose did make some changes to the freight and passenger pricing to make that actually profitable on its own, for better or worse.

But the reality is that people doing normal, sane, hohum business stuff weren't intended to be operating a "Free trader." And, since players weren't expected to be dreaming of being corporate wageslaves or running a scheduled liner back and forth between two big ports, those regular freight ships didn't get written up and published. Mongoose has published some better "professional tradeships" recently, which is nice. The Type A free trader is designed to function like the 70s sci fi version of the Serenity from Firefly, not like a professional merchant marine vessel.

It (and the whole trade system) was designed to produce adventure situations, not to model the economy.

Anyway, that's enough. I'm just going to be repeating myself. I've already said all this and made my point. I don't expect everyone to want to play that style of game. But if you want to know why the ships are not designed "optimally" for standard corporate merchant shipping, that's why. And if you want to know why your attempts to extrapolate from PC-facing rules to general economy comes to tears, that's why. If you want to do other styles of play, that's great. There are a lot of them and Traveller should not be limited to a single vision. However, you really need to build ships suited for that.

Mongoose really really needs to put out a "Merchant Prince" for this edition that explains how this stuff is intended to be used. Whether that's like the original design I described above or some new conception that they like better with suitable changes to the rules & ship designs to match.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Anyway, that's enough. I'm just going to be repeating myself. I've already said all this and made my point. I don't expect everyone to want to play that style of game. But if you want to know why the ships are not designed "optimally" for standard corporate merchant shipping, that's why. And if you want to know why your attempts to extrapolate from PC-facing rules to general economy comes to tears, that's why. If you want to do other styles of play, that's great. There are a lot of them and Traveller should not be limited to a single vision. However, you really need to build ships suited for that.

Mongoose really really needs to put out a "Merchant Prince" for this edition that explains how this stuff is intended to be used. Whether that's like the original design I described above or some new conception that they like better with suitable changes to the rules & ship designs to match.

Yes, they do.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

The Harry Turtledove book Earthgrip has some good ideas for a style of Traveller adventure.

They range from stopping a forest from dying (for the arboreals you trade with) to stopping a horde of barbarians from invading a "civilized" land and if you don't help out win or lose your trade with that world dries up. Then there were the high TL aliens needing your different thinking to solve their problem. Very like Traveller.

I'd offer the PCs chances to find ways to make a world so unprofitable that no one has gone there in centuries into a profit centre. Then of course others would try and take it away from them, get a rock solid long term contract. Do it right and you could make two fortunes one local and one Imperial while getting statues made of you and places named after you. Do it wrong and you get burned in effigy and shot at in person not to mention arrested by the Imperials for the trouble you've caused.