Refined Fuel?

[MasterGwydion]

Militaries train their personnel to mitigate risks.

As far as fleet movements, there’s canonical precedence that military vessels can use unrefined fuel without penalty. Specially tuned drives or something, goes back to 80’s era CT. So there’s that, but I don’t use it IMTU.

I like a gritty, rough’n’tumble feel to space travel and fuel processors everywhere make it feel safe and mundane. Obviously YMDV

J-Drives specifically designed for unrefined fuel would be a good way to do it as well. Price them so that they are never economical to use and therefore only used by polities and/or megacorps on very select vessels. Then you get your rough and tumble feel, because Travellers will rarely be able to afford such a J-Drive as long as you control their cash flow... One idea could be decreasing the monthly maintenance period from every month to every month + every jump, or every month + every parsec jumped. That way using a J-Drive designed for unrefined fuel would have sky-high maintenance costs and require maintenance to be performed after every jump as described in a lot of CT material.

 

[Condottiere]

The Scout Service feels like fan fiction, specifically the Han(dyman) Solo solo scoutship.

The difference is, they tend to have far more capable starships, as I recall from those pulp novels.

Essentially, Starfleet is the more efficient way to explore, to seek out new life, and keep tabs on, strange new worlds and civilizations.

 

[phavoc]

My view is that this is one of those ideas that never got rationalized from the beginning of CT. The original scout ship description stated that the power plant was specifically designed to run on unrefined fuel (which didn't mesh with the rules as written). The idea of unrefined fuel matched the idea of frontier refueling, though the fuel processor wasn't around at the beginning.

Then fuel processors got shoe-horned in with High Guard. But the concept was never looked at and designs updated after that. And iterations of Traveller never really took another look at what was already done.

Your question is a valid one, and if you combine common sense with it, then yeah, no merchant would bother with trying to buy the much more expensive refined fuel. The idea that Class A/B starports don't even offer unrefined fuel is, in my view, an extreme stretch of reality. To install a water line is, well, pretty basic. And a ship that has landed and is taking on passengers/cargo could easily top off it's tanks and begin refining fuel. For the most part, by the time it's ready to lift off and makes it to the 100D limit, it would be refined. Only those ships that have super-tight schedules wouldn't be able to do that.

 

[CthulhuStig]

I had to try and figure some of this out when adding fuel based route planning to Auto-Jimmy. I've looked through the source books I have and have a theory.

The Mongoose 2e Traveller Companion clarifies some of this, but it also makes things less clear at the same time. In the section covering starports and spaceports (p125) it says that class A starports sell refined and unrefined fuel. Where it makes things less clear is that the description for class B starports makes no mention of fuel at all, however, the description for class C starports say unrefined _and_ refined fuel is usually available. That last part seems particularly unexpected as it's quite a big deviation from the 1e, 2e & 2022 core rules.

As others have pointed out, the CT rules may be relevant here. The oldest copy I have access to is from 1982. In it, the description of A/B starports (p84) just has "refined fuel available", but if you also factor in the wording for C/D class starports where it says "only unrefined fuel available", my interpretation would be that this implies unrefined fuel is available at A/B starports otherwise their descriptions would state "only refined fuel available". This seems to be further backed up by the fact the example adventure included in those rules says Alell Down Starport is class B and sells refined and unrefined fuel (p141).

It's also worth noting that the T5 core rules have clarified things further by explicitly stating that A/B star ports sell refined and unrefined fuel, whereas C/D only sell unrefined.

This is pure speculation, but my theory is that the Mongoose rules were always meant to be the same as CT where A/B starports sell refined and unrefined fuel with C/D only selling unrefined, however, a subtlety in the wording from the CT rules was lost when Mongoose updated the rules and switched to having this information in a table. An attempt was made to clarify this in the Traveller Companion, but a mistake was made, and refined fuel was added to the description for class C star ports rather than unrefined being added to class B starports. Like I say, it's pure speculation and there are a few leaps of logic, but (to me at least) it makes more sense than the Traveller Companion intentionally adding refined fuel to class C starports. It would be really intereasting to hear from someone at Mongoose if that was actually the intention.

In an actual Traveller universe, I expect there wouldn't be a hard and fast rule, but I would think the vast majority of A/B class starports would sell unrefined fuel if they could. As others have mentioned, the prevalence of ships with fuel refiners, risk/time involved in wilderness refuelling and the difference in cost between the two types of fuel would mean there would be a market for purchasing it in most systems. Even if the starport themselves didn't sell it, then some other entrepreneur in the system would fill the gap.
One exception to this might be systems where the main world has a lot of surface water, so wilderness refuelling is low effort _and_ low risk. At that point the demand for unrefined fuel might be lower, although I expect there would still be demand from ships that can't (or don't want to) go into atmosphere.
The other exception I could think of would be systems where wilderness refuelling isn't possible at all. At that point it's a seller's market, so a starport could get away with only selling the premium fuel. In that kind of situation, it might be harder for a smaller entrepreneur to fill the gap, as the cost of getting fuel shipped in may be prohibitively expensive. However, I'm not sure if a starport doing that would be in their own best interests. If every ship going there is forced to pay exorbitant fuel prices in order to leave the system, then a lot of them are just going to decide to not go there. This would seem counter productive from the starports point of view.

 

[phavoc]

I had to try and figure some of this out when adding fuel based route planning to Auto-Jimmy. I've looked through the source books I have and have a theory.

The Mongoose 2e Traveller Companion clarifies some of this, but it also makes things less clear at the same time. In the section covering starports and spaceports (p125) it says that class A starports sell refined and unrefined fuel. Where it makes things less clear is that the description for class B starports makes no mention of fuel at all, however, the description for class C starports say unrefined _and_ refined fuel is usually available. That last part seems particularly unexpected as it's quite a big deviation from the 1e, 2e & 2022 core rules.

As others have pointed out, the CT rules may be relevant here. The oldest copy I have access to is from 1982. In it, the description of A/B starports (p84) just has "refined fuel available", but if you also factor in the wording for C/D class starports where it says "only unrefined fuel available", my interpretation would be that this implies unrefined fuel is available at A/B starports otherwise their descriptions would state "only refined fuel available". This seems to be further backed up by the fact the example adventure included in those rules says Alell Down Starport is class B and sells refined and unrefined fuel (p141).

It's also worth noting that the T5 core rules have clarified things further by explicitly stating that A/B star ports sell refined and unrefined fuel, whereas C/D only sell unrefined.

This is pure speculation, but my theory is that the Mongoose rules were always meant to be the same as CT where A/B starports sell refined and unrefined fuel with C/D only selling unrefined, however, a subtlety in the wording from the CT rules was lost when Mongoose updated the rules and switched to having this information in a table. An attempt was made to clarify this in the Traveller Companion, but a mistake was made, and refined fuel was added to the description for class C star ports rather than unrefined being added to class B starports. Like I say, it's pure speculation and there are a few leaps of logic, but (to me at least) it makes more sense than the Traveller Companion intentionally adding refined fuel to class C starports. It would be really intereasting to hear from someone at Mongoose if that was actually the intention.

In an actual Traveller universe, I expect there wouldn't be a hard and fast rule, but I would think the vast majority of A/B class starports would sell unrefined fuel if they could. As others have mentioned, the prevalence of ships with fuel refiners, risk/time involved in wilderness refuelling and the difference in cost between the two types of fuel would mean there would be a market for purchasing it in most systems. Even if the starport themselves didn't sell it, then some other entrepreneur in the system would fill the gap.
One exception to this might be systems where the main world has a lot of surface water, so wilderness refuelling is low effort _and_ low risk. At that point the demand for unrefined fuel might be lower, although I expect there would still be demand from ships that can't (or don't want to) go into atmosphere.
The other exception I could think of would be systems where wilderness refuelling isn't possible at all. At that point it's a seller's market, so a starport could get away with only selling the premium fuel. In that kind of situation, it might be harder for a smaller entrepreneur to fill the gap, as the cost of getting fuel shipped in may be prohibitively expensive. However, I'm not sure if a starport doing that would be in their own best interests. If every ship going there is forced to pay exorbitant fuel prices in order to leave the system, then a lot of them are just going to decide to not go there. This would seem counter productive from the starports point of view.

Personally I would expect all Class A/B star ports to sell refined and unrefined fuel, and MOST C ports would have refined fuel as well. It's just too easy to have it available (or even refine on demand) for ships. Plus, as the rules for fuel and fuel refining are written, it seems just about EVERY ship would have at least some fuel refining capability by default. It just makes logical sense to do so in order to save on the cost of fuel. Assuming your ship is going to be in port more than a few days even token fuel refineries would be able to purify the tanks prior to needing them by the time you make it to your jump point.

 

[Sigtrygg]

CT canon - type C starports have no refined fuel.

This makes it dangerous for civilian ships to go to those worlds.

HG introduces the fuel purification plant instead of rules for military standard drives.

Fuel purification plants are so cheap civilian ships can equip them, or better yet build them at the worlds you visit.

Unintended consequence - it no longer makes any in setting sense to have any starport not be able to provide refined fuel.

 

[Vormaerin]

CT canon - type C starports have no refined fuel.

This makes it dangerous for civilian ships to go to those worlds.

HG introduces the fuel purification plant instead of rules for military standard drives.

Fuel purification plants are so cheap civilian ships can equip them, or better yet build them at the worlds you visit.

Unintended consequence - it no longer makes any in setting sense to have any starport not be able to provide refined fuel.

What annoyed me at the time was that the solution didn't actually solve the problem. The Scout/Courier was supposedly a "scout" ship which got the unrefined fuel benefit. At least in the '77 edition. In the '81 edition, it said "military and quasi-military" instead of "military and scout". *shrugs*

But the smallest you could get a purifier in HG '80 was 6 tons at TL12.

 

[Shadowblayde99]

It's worth looking on the Traveller map at which systems have class A,B or C star ports. Especially look at the Trojan Reach and compare with District 368. There are quite a few systems with class C star ports but have a lower TL compared to most A and B ports that have a TL of 8 or above.

Would TL 5 or 6 systems have fuel processors to be able to sell refined fuel? They would be able to provide unrefined fuel but not necessarily have the tech to refine it.

I reckon there would always be someone on class A or B high ports or downports who would sell unrefined fuel though.

A player might have the idea to set up their own fuel refining facility on C class systems which may lead to some interesting adventures.

 

[Anstett]

GeDeCo would like to have a word with your wildcat fuel refinery.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The Imperium has the monopoly on civilian starport fuel processors, nothing else makes sense.

 

[Condottiere]

Someone has to regulate gas prices.

 

[phavoc]

The question of refined/unrefined fuel has remained a headshaker since the beginning. Traveller has a long history here of so much bolt-on ideas and concepts that were never rationalized during the rewrites of the game. It remains illogical. The same goes for power plant fuel consumption. These things should have been fixed at least in the MegaTraveller rewrite. All other explanations are simply stinky biological waste thrown into the oscillating fan.

That said - I use a very different trade system IMU. The ships of the large (sector/empire wide) and medium (subsector wide) cargo shipping companies never land on a world. They jump in near an out-system station and either off-load there of drop and take up sublight cargo barges in a LASH style. The station refuels them, maybe exchanges crews and off they jump. Only local freight lines (serving a cluster etc) and tramps will land on the planet, only backwater worlds will see regular landings or orbital docking. Yes, my HighPort is more often than not quite a bit away from the main world. Makes the setting saver since IMS Never Taken is less likely to ram planet Gizeh (Foreven sector 0815)

The characters are the "bottom feeders" in this trade system. Taking the cargo no one else wants to the places no one else goes. And that makes those targets less well patrolled (Since the never enough escorts go where political influence is) and more dangerous.

For major transit hubs I 100% agree with you - it makes a great deal of economic sense to put your trans-shipping orbital infrastructure at about 95-98D from the planet so that ships do not waste time. Though there are the other questions about moving personnel, fuel and other items out that far (as well as the ongoing costs associated with maintaining it since it would be too far from La Grange points and would require constant orbital maintenance via thrusters). Fusion power and 52nd century propulsion make it look more operationally and economically viable - at least on paper. As we've seen throughout history though there are always other points to be considered in such major decisions.

The question of LASH being used is one that sounds good on paper, but may not work out economically. The same arguments were made when LASH came about. There were a number of reasons why LASH failed (some would be applicable in the future, others not so much). Ultimately containerization efficiences killed LASH moreso than anything else. Containers became the defacto standard for moving cargo, and railroads/trucks are able to move a container faster and with more utility than barges. That reality would not change in the future. The question would be more of how those containers would get loaded/unloaded to cargo ships. But, for a game, one can do a lot to avoid the peaks and pitfalls of reality.

 

[Vormaerin]

If they invent space railways, I'm sure that would be true. A lot is going to depend on how you envision your systems. If the systems are like "it's the mainworld and a lot of wasteland" and you can unload a super freighter as fast as we can unload a container ship, LASH is unlikely to make sense. The hub and spoke model will likely better.

If you have a lot of systems that look more like the Solar system in Eclipse Phase or the Expanse, where cargo will be going by spacecraft all over the place, it makes it less clear that unloading a ship onto a space station to load it onto a bunch of lighters makes more sense than just sending the lighters out while docking new ones.

Are Shanghai Container port style highports even feasible? Does the Feeder spokes to Shanghai to Rotterdam to spokes style make sense when you can't actually sail straight from Shanghai to Rotterdam directly, but have to refuel at all the ports in between?

The reality is that every GM can and should go with what seems cool to them because we absolutely lack anything resembling the necessary information to determine what the best way to do it actually is. Most of Traveller's world building flavor text is made to sound like the players are operating in the back of beyond, but most of the gameplay seems to be inside the Imperium.

 

[Condottiere]

Push and pull.

You have to find the rationale why these facilities exist, and how were they financed.

 

[Anstett]

From Starports page 49 (https://www.mongoosepublishing.com/products/starports-ebook?_pos=4&_psq=startp&_ss=e&_v=1.0)

Refuelling Facilities

Module Type Cost (Cr.) Size TL
Storage Tank 100,000 0 (100) 7
Refueling Station 150,000 10 7
Fuel Processor 250,000 25 8
Fuel Collector 1,000,000 50 7

So for upgrading a Type C port or below would need the fuel processor (else where in the section noted to refine 500D-tons per day) at 25 tons of space.

 

[phavoc]

If they invent space railways, I'm sure that would be true. A lot is going to depend on how you envision your systems. If the systems are like "it's the mainworld and a lot of wasteland" and you can unload a super freighter as fast as we can unload a container ship, LASH is unlikely to make sense. The hub and spoke model will likely better.

If you have a lot of systems that look more like the Solar system in Eclipse Phase or the Expanse, where cargo will be going by spacecraft all over the place, it makes it less clear that unloading a ship onto a space station to load it onto a bunch of lighters makes more sense than just sending the lighters out while docking new ones.

Are Shanghai Container port style highports even feasible? Does the Feeder spokes to Shanghai to Rotterdam to spokes style make sense when you can't actually sail straight from Shanghai to Rotterdam directly, but have to refuel at all the ports in between?

The reality is that every GM can and should go with what seems cool to them because we absolutely lack anything resembling the necessary information to determine what the best way to do it actually is. Most of Traveller's world building flavor text is made to sound like the players are operating in the back of beyond, but most of the gameplay seems to be inside the Imperium.

Tugs, lighters, etc would be the equivalent of space railways. Just that in space there are no tracks.

Main trade routes would, I suspect, be handled by the larger ships (LASH or otherwise) and they would be point-to-point. Secondary routes would be handled by smaller ships that make more stops to pick up and drop off. Some may need to stop and refuel, though the specifics would depend on the particulars for the local worlds. There's lots of variants out there on how all this might work out.

Assuming you'd follow the LASH principle, then you'd have your LASH container that would be holding the smaller containers. It's hard to determine what size(s) would get standardized on - is a 500 Dton container holding 50 10Dton containers the right size? Or would you have different sizes for different routes/load factors? The economics and efficiency questions remain as true in the future as they are today. Any cargo ship has that issue - it's just that a LASH ship doesn't have the same flexibility as a standard cargo ship in that sense.

Rotterdam/Shanghai cargo levels are a good question to ask, and I think the honest answer is "probably" - at least in some places. I'd suspect any non-poor world with the credits is going to have a vibrant orbital economy - though we have nothing to base that speculation upon except terrestial past and present. Many hundreds, if not thousands of freighters ply the route between China and US/Europe (population around 2.5 billion) carrying all kinds of cargos. I think a bigger question is how much would a star system need / afford to import from another? At current spot market rates it's about $3,500 - $4,500 to move a 40' container from Shanghai to LA (and roughly the same for Shanghai to Rotterdam) with a transit time of around 30 days average. I'm pretty sure that's a direct route.

Since we have no interstellar economy upon which to model things, we can only rely upon what we have today. Granted one can imagine anything from free basic everything in society (aka Star Trek) to the something like Warhammer 40k. Personally I try to find parallels to past and present human history since there is less fantasy modeling and more realism. I prefer that method since it allows everyone to come at it from at least some reasonable base of complexity and understanding. Interstellar trade with FTL drives and no radio is a close parallel to the age of sail. Since we've all paid for our rules we are all free to modify/discard as we see fit. Though too much hand wavium and IMTU does seem to take away from the game.

As terrible as it sounds, I do like modelling these sorts to things to try and make the system reasonable - I find that then it makes it easier to explain, for players to try and exploit and for GM's to corral the players back on to the path.

 

[Vormaerin]

Regardless of what you do, if you want to dive into the interstellar trade instead of establishing it as background flavor text, you'll have to confront the generally low populations of worlds in the Imperium, the lack of infrastructure at many ports, and the uneconomic pricing of cargo haulage. The way jump drive works, especially the fuel requirements.

Age of sail is a good parallel in some ways, but it doesn't have the fuel problem.

It's going to be handwavium. Some Refs will want to add infrastructure, others will adopt "good enough sounding" solutions like LASH, or throw out the cargo pricing in the books so long jump ships actually make sense. Or some combination of the above. And decide what is actually worth shipping across interstellar distances.

 

[Vormaerin]

The clear intention of the Traveller system generation for sectors is to create frontiers and backwaters for adventure. Which is why it doesn't produce the kind of infrastructure of interstellar trade suggested by a lot of later Imperial flavor text. I feel that idea of the original generation system, which hasn't changed much, is that your tramp freighter is one of a small number of ships visiting the majority of these worlds. That is not the impression I get from the flavor text these days.

Btw, the factor I think makes for the biggest disconnect with terrestrial shipping is the lack of terrain. One significant reason LASH isn't economical on Earth is that you still have to have railheads and trucking depots, because the lighters can't get to Berlin or Vienna or Chicago. Rotterdam does take some cargo from the container ships and put it on smaller ships, but most of it is going by train or truck to inland destinations. That infrastructure has to exist with or without LASH and centralizing it is just more efficient. Which kind of defeats the purpose of LASH.

With Interstellar Trade, that kind of change in kind for your transportation never happens. If you have a highport, it is just moving cargo from one space craft to another space craft. So the question is just which is more efficient: a big cargo ship that unloads onto a space station that then reloads everything onto lighters to go to all the destinations in the system or carrying the lighters on the ship and having them go directly to their various destinations while new ones dock. We would have to know things we don't know, like how affordable are huge highports, how many different destinations exist in typical systems, are refueling stations near the 100D limit feasible? And probably other things.

 

[Geir]

We would have to know things we don't know, like how affordable are huge highports, how many different destinations exist in typical systems, are refueling stations near the 100D limit feasible?

Yeah, that is the biggest issue. If you do a J3 map from Terra, you have 10 possible systems. A central highport makes more sense than a bunch of 100D stations, unless 80% or more of the traffic comes from one world. And then there's the whole (generally ignored) issues of the star's 100D limit and jump masking that moves around as the world circles it's star.

 

[Vormaerin]

Yeah, it quickly gets complex. If you have a highly developed system, so that incoming cargo may be going to Terra, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and the Jupiter moons, does it make the most sense to jump near Earth and then ship the rest out to the other locations? Arrive somewhere more central? Have the main port cargo port at Jupiter because that's where the fuel is? Terra's probably much larger than any of those other places, so closer to Terra likely makes sense. But I can imagine a lot of systems where that's not true, if the "mainworld" is rather marginal.

No idea if you could have a situation where exporting large quantities of L-Hydrogen off world would be an environmental problem. If so, would make orbital refineries and/or refueling stations around a gas giant more relevant.