More random economics thoughts - Starport Docking Fees

[Sigtrygg]

Two ships side by side with "matched vectors" are at a dead stop relative to each other.

 

[MasterGwydion]

But WBH WTN ends up being GURP WTN x 2 (to avoid the half values and give it a nice 0-15 range) - I even put that right in the text (p. 190).

I do like your way of doing it better. Just for the record. Half numbers were annoying

 

[MasterGwydion]

Well, the UNREP system should only work in space since it's predicated upon that environment. A similar system could work on a planet, however UNREP is meant to be balls-to-the-wall to quickly transfer cargo and planetary ports probably won't operate at such work velocity as a rule of thumb. For regularly scheduled cargo runs you'd expect to have the cargo unloaded and then placed on a transport to get it away from the landing pad to it's ultimate destination - could be a cargo stack, a warehouse, or a trailer (any of these could be intermediate, but they are away from ship and you are done with that part for this question).

Once your cargo is unloaded is when I'd expect the loads to show up to start getting loaded onboard. The UNREP idea is a bit of a edge case here since it's original concept is to transfer to a ship with waiting empty space for cargo. It's not meant really to be a fully sustainable cargo shuttling system (at least that's not how I see it to be - it's meant to be a space-analog of what wet navies do today).

A ships schedule would have to include arrival, and then making it to it's destination (orbital or planet), and at some point clearing customs - which could be protracted or not. With the right infrastructure you certainly should be able to unload a ship pretty fast - but your port has to be structured and staffed to work at those levels too. Modern ports don't always get to operate at max capacity due to other constraints like a shortage of trailers to load on to, or the port is backed up with containers and there are no close places to store them, or the rail lines are congested and movements are slow. All those equivalents could affect your clockwork schedules. Just look at some of the major ports around the world and how, at times, they had ships waiting week(s) or more for things to clear up to dock and unload.

A ship with just 48hrs in port probably won't see much liberty - they will be too busy with other things to get ready to depart again. As a scheduled freighter they won't have to solicit any cargo as they should have a port factor doing all that for them. Crew just has to work with dock to load it (and load it right). Doesn't leave a lot of crew with free time.

It's entirely possible to have very brief, high-energy port visits, but I'd say Murphy should visit often and screw up their perfect scheduling - though some help could be added to making that schedule by having them visit corporate-dedicated terminals to ensure they will have proper and adequate support and not have to share with others.

I agree with almost all of what you said here, but you are talking about real world and ROI instead of what the writers actually wrote and how that effects the campaign world. In this ruleset, an UNREP system is some magical handwavy system that almost teleports cargo between ships, stations, trains, buildings, etc. Warehousing is cheap, so the real bottleneck would be docking space. The longer the ship stays in port, the greater the bottleneck. Which brings Us back to My original point. Why would any port or ship captain want to stay in port a minute longer than is absolutely necessary? If a port has room for 20 ships at a time and each ship stays one week, then that port can handle 20 ships a week. If that same port turned the ships around in a day, then that very same port could handle 140 ships a week. That is a major difference in the amount of traffic a starport handles.

I discussed liberty, aka shore leave, on one of My other posts on this thread. Jump 3 times a week, and have 4 days off each month.

 

[Condottiere]

In theory, you don't actually need to dock at a berth.

Just float close by, and have business conducted by shuttle.

 

[Vormaerin]

If you are going to do that, you don't even need to float nearby. Have the cargo shuttles do the run in from the jump point.

@MasterGwydion Don't forget that a ship still needs a watch, even if in an anchorage or layberth. So any given crew is getting only 2-3 of those 4 days as actual days off.

 

[Condottiere]

Mulling about at the jump point could be considered loitering.

 

[IanBruntlett]

Mulling about at the jump point could be considered loitering.

If mulling around was a regular thing, the ships involved might have to apply for permits to do so.

 

[MasterGwydion]

If mulling around was a regular thing, the ships involved might have to apply for permits to do so.

Mulling around in holding patterns is a real thing while waiting for dock space to free up. At least at some of the busier ports.

 

[MasterGwydion]

In other random economic thoughts, the shipping costs in the CRB per jump per ton. Are those what you get paid if someone pays to ship cargo on your ship or is that what you have to pay to ship cargo on other ships? I hear a lot of this forum about how the rules are designed around the tramp trader game, at least economically, but this situation is a fairly common occurrence. Based on what many people on this forum have said about the rules being written for PCs, I would say that, that is what you are paid by others to ship cargo on your ship. If that is the case, then what does it cost to ship cargo on someone else's ship? Maybe a 10,000-ton freighter.

For example. The PCs are busy on their current adventure arc and can not fly several systems over to get the equipment that they need for the next adventure arc. They won't have time in between arcs to do it, so they order what they need and have it shipped to the local starport. What is the shipping cost?

 

[Nelphine]

For gameplay purposes I always assume it is both. In effect, it's the going rate that anyone who is not utilizing long term corporate shipping plans pays. So since players aren't part of a corporation, it's the amount they can charge. (And similarly, it's what their competition can charge wirh the same amount of notice). And since players aren't planning it years in advance, it's what players get charged.

 

[Vormaerin]

That's the spot rate. It would be cheaper if you can schedule in advance, meet all the requirements like having the merch available at least 24 hours prior to shipping, etc. Whether you want to get into that or not is up to you.

 

[Condottiere]

Speculative.

As regards parking orbits, there's a lot of space between the jump off point, and the starport.

 

[phavoc]

I agree with almost all of what you said here, but you are talking about real world and ROI instead of what the writers actually wrote and how that effects the campaign world. In this ruleset, an UNREP system is some magical handwavy system that almost teleports cargo between ships, stations, trains, buildings, etc. Warehousing is cheap, so the real bottleneck would be docking space. The longer the ship stays in port, the greater the bottleneck. Which brings Us back to My original point. Why would any port or ship captain want to stay in port a minute longer than is absolutely necessary? If a port has room for 20 ships at a time and each ship stays one week, then that port can handle 20 ships a week. If that same port turned the ships around in a day, then that very same port could handle 140 ships a week. That is a major difference in the amount of traffic a starport handles.

I discussed liberty, aka shore leave, on one of My other posts on this thread. Jump 3 times a week, and have 4 days off each month.

The cost of warehousing isn't the issue (and I agree with your point - buildings are cheap). It's getting the cargo TO the warehouse that's complicated and time consuming. From an RPG point of view once the cargo is unloaded it magically vanishes into a fog of "we don't care"... and it magically appears out of the same fog right at the bottom of the ramp for players to get it loaded onboard. It's helpful from a game perspective to understand, or at least have a basic explanation of the process since few people know the ins and out of logistics. However, PC's are notoriously creative and tend to go outside of the GM-designed scenarios and ask questions or look for ways to exploit the situation - often as part of the game and are just being annoyingly clever. Which means to stay the proverbial 1-3 steps ahead of the aforementioned annoying clever players, the GM can find it helpful to know what's going on and set the boundaries. While anything can be handwaved I personally try to avoid it as much as possible. But every set of gamers is going to find some medium they can all agree to.

Most merchant captains are loathe to spend time in port since their bosses/owners are losing money with equipment sitting still and not earning them credits while still costing them money. That hasn't changed since merchants became a thing. Ships typically don't PLAN on sitting around - but stuff happens, and sometimes it happens for a reason other than a plot point.

As far as how fast a port CAN turn a ship around vs. how fast it DOES - those are two entirely different scenarios. Rarely does everything work perfectly as designed, and pretty much everything needs to be taken down for maintenance, or an accident happens. Factor in people (who get sick, go on strike, etc), and your model of perfect port operations goes out the window. Even the ebb and flow of economics will make port authorities short on funds or overwhelmed with business due to a localized economic boom. Every one of these scenarios is cyclically repeated in reality, so it's fair to say we'd see the same thing as part of a game.

Besides, having imperfect worlds makes for far more fun adventuring than everything working exactly as designed. Plus this gives the GM all kinds of excuses to explain or describe the session and help liberate all those extra CR's and neat gadgets that PC's really don't need.

 

[MasterGwydion]

As far as how fast a port CAN turn a ship around vs. how fast it DOES - those are two entirely different scenarios. Rarely does everything work perfectly as designed, and pretty much everything needs to be taken down for maintenance, or an accident happens. Factor in people (who get sick, go on strike, etc), and your model of perfect port operations goes out the window. Even the ebb and flow of economics will make port authorities short on funds or overwhelmed with business due to a localized economic boom. Every one of these scenarios is cyclically repeated in reality, so it's fair to say we'd see the same thing as part of a game.

Besides, having imperfect worlds makes for far more fun adventuring than everything working exactly as designed. Plus this gives the GM all kinds of excuses to explain or describe the session and help liberate all those extra CR's and neat gadgets that PC's really don't need.

This is great, but I don't have rules for that. If they write them, I may use them, as long as they don't suck. lol... The less I have to house-rule things, the happier I tend to be. PCs should on average know how ports works and such, but since there are no rules for it, We get handwavium magic disappearing and reappearing cargo. lol

 

[Alaskan15]

I was building a trade route between two systems and was entering the Dock Fee into the spreadsheet and I realized that this docking fee is for berthing space for a week. (I also noticed that the fee doesn't change based on the tonnage of the vessel, which makes no sense.) Why would any ship stay for a week?

Because finding cargo, and selling cargo are (until TL 8+ where you can do them online faster) are tasks with a duration of 1d6 days. The duration of the task to find passengers or to find freight are not specified in the Core Rulebook AFAIK.

Therefore if you are not looking to buy or sell cargo, or if the planet is TL8+, or if you are willing to take a -2 to your skill check by going faster (1d x 10 hours) you can, and maybe should, take less time on planet. (However, if you are not a BrokerBot or a user of stims than you are going to take fatigue penalties if you try to work for up to 60 hours in a row anyway.)

Also, by RAW, if you are spending your time selling cargo than you are busy and someone else is going to have to do the task of buying cargo, so if you want the person with the biggest bonus to do both without hurrying, than it might well take 2d6 days before TL 8.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Because finding cargo, and selling cargo are (until TL 8+ where you can do them online faster) are tasks with a duration of 1d6 days. The duration of the task to find passengers or to find freight are not specified in the Core Rulebook AFAIK.

Therefore if you are not looking to buy or sell cargo, or if the planet is TL8+, or if you are willing to take a -2 to your skill check by going faster (1d x 10 hours) you can, and maybe should, take less time on planet. (However, if you are not a BrokerBot or a user of stims than you are going to take fatigue penalties if you try to work for up to 60 hours in a row anyway.)

Also, by RAW, if you are spending your time selling cargo than you are busy and someone else is going to have to do the task of buying cargo, so if you want the person with the biggest bonus to do both without hurrying, than it might well take 2d6 days before TL 8.

Weird. In the Trade Chapter pg 241 it says it takes 1d6 days to find a Supplier or Broker. Okay fine, but in the Skills Chapter under Broker, it says it only takes 1D6 hours to find a buyer. That is still both in a week at the same time. No idea why finding people selling is harder than finding people buying, but okay. Still a week. It will take less time if you tell the Supplier that you do find exactly how much you will be buying when you return next month. If he can't have it ready for you, then you need a new Supplier, especially if it only takes 1D6 hours at TL-8+, which is basically every Starport. So, at a Starport, you should never be more than 12 hours selling and buying, unless you fail your rolls.

 

[Vormaerin]

Yes, but then you aren't acting as a tramp trader. You are acting as a scheduled freight hauler. So, naturally, the rules on how tramp trading works start to break down.

 

[Condottiere]

It should vary, in that case.

Once you've secured a payload, you might be in a hurry to leave.

Or, after a job, successful or otherwise.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Yes, but then you aren't acting as a tramp trader. You are acting as a scheduled freight hauler. So, naturally, the rules on how tramp trading works start to break down.

If Tramp Traders only ever buy cargo at the last minute, they will usually be running with only part of their cargo bay full. If that is what you mean then, Tramp Traders have no idea how to run a business. I just ran a spreadsheet starting off with 93,400Cr. I started on Tech-World with a total DM of +1 on My Broker check (+1 Attribute, +1 from Broker/1, +1 from an Expert/1 Broker program on a hand computer, and an average roll of 10 on 3D6), bought 1-ton of Advanced Electronics, paid for a Middle Passage on the same ship. After 9.5 months of that, I break 10MCr cash on hand and have had time to complete 4 Study Periods. It makes Me wonder why anyone would want to take a 2nd term in any career. That is a growth of 10,814% in 9.5 months. At that point, the Fat Trader is running basically full of cargo. As of month 11, I am basically chartering the Fat Trader for 468,000Cr/mo. A new shipping line is born. lol.

 

[Vormaerin]

1) The definition of Tramp trader is "A boat or ship engaged in the tramp trade is one which does not have a fixed schedule, itinerary nor published ports of call, and trades on the spot market as opposed to freight liners".

2) Yes, of course. The Traveller speculative trade rules are absolutely, 100% broken as any sort of stand alone simulation of trade. You have to actively make bad decisions to not become immediately wealthy. That's been true since the first set of them came out in the 70s and they are essentially unchanged today. There is no competition in the mechanics. There is no taxation. There is no friction (as its called in Suns of Gold) of any sort. The GM is expected to introduce all that as part of running the campaign and setting up adventures.

They fail as simulations the same way D&D fails at replicating Conan, Fafhrd & The Grey Mouser, or the The Hobbit. All of those games have the players finding vast wealth, just like those fictional characters do. None of them replicate the way those characters squander that vast wealth before the next adventure. So your characters end up insanely wealthy.

Traveller's Trade rules allow you to make big wealth making speculation runs like famous star traders such John Falkayn. Because they assume that the player characters' prime activity is having adventures. So they are going to battling pirates, crashing on alien worlds, getting squeezed by powerful organizations, visiting planets that should be good trading to instead find a civil war, plague, or other disaster, and otherwise needing that kind of money to stay afloat as a result of their adventures.

Basic tramp freight hauling is deliberately designed to barely cover the rent so characters can have a ship to firefly around from adventure to adventure if they aren't interested in playing trader. Speculative trade is designed so players can make enough money to pay for the inevitable expenses that result from their adventures, whether that's millions in damages from some pirate lasers or paying bribes after being caught smuggling or having to buy secret information and fund expeditions to find the Lost Asteroids of Solomon.

Funding the expedition into the outback of Mirayn in Legends of the Sky Raiders runs about 200,000 credits. As published, the PCs are broke ass hirelings of someone else who is spending that money. But they should be spending that money themselves if they are doing that on their own. And the game assumes you are playing to do that kind of stuff. So it makes it possible for the players to have that kind of money. And to have the possibility of making the MCr 2+ that unlikely crit on their double pulse laser turret is gonna cost them.

As I commented on the Mongoose Discord a few weeks ago, if real world trading behaved like Traveller speculation, we'd all be billionaires. But it isn't written to be a simulation. It is written to be a simple side activity to trigger some stories on its own and let players fund their own adventures if they aren't into always getting patrons if the GM doesn't have ideas of their own already.

A lot of Traveller mechanics are fundamentally closer to the oracles and procedures of modern solo games than they are to any kind of simulation. "Got a cool idea? Use that. Don't have a cool idea yet? Here's some dice you can roll to spark some thoughts."