d(sqrt(-1))
Mongoose
Hi,
Just in case it proves useful, here are my notes from a game a few years ago that as a side thread featured a Gas Giant (GG) fuel scooping company. The idea was to introduce the company as possible useful contacts. Sorry if the notes are a bit disjointed, I'm sure that you'll get the idea:
Fuel scooping from gas giant. robot tankers (5000dt+?) haul out to ContraGrav station in GG orbit, fuel up and head back. Continuous cycle of them, 6 days apart. Mostly automated, but specialised small (20dt) modified Launches can dock to take over steering etc if necessary. Nonstandard docking ring to allow remote control from the smallship. Can dock with it, but you won't get control of the tanker without the correct docking ring type. 5000dt = 70000 m^3. => sphere radius 25.5m.
Company is Jolly Gas Giant Fuel Inc. Their adverts make a point that their operation is largely automatic, and therefore their costs are less. Their fuel is slightly cheaper. Their ships all sport a large smiley gas giant face, with an arm holding a pump nozzle, and another arm waving.
Fuel transports are mostly tank + engines + computers. Spherical design for maximum carrying efficiency? With small dock at bottom, and fuel port dock at front. Low acceleration (1G). The fuel port dock is also non-standard.
ContraGrav station in the GG atmos has crew, they perform monitoring, maintenance on station and transports etc. They have a small insystem craft and an emergency lifeboat docked plus piles of supplies etc. Station has fuel purifiers built in.
Plot Hooks:
Hauler veering off course? Receive warning, or request for visual check i.e. <50km range>. Can see that it is leaving a trail of leaking fuel. Asked to trail it and keep an eye on it until repairs can arrive. Analysis reveals it to be hydrogen boiling off into space. The jet is causing the hauler to (slowly!) veer off course.
External observations determines that there is a lot of vapour coming from a leak in the hull. If PCs have enough people with EVA experience, they may be able to patch it - but it's difficult, because of the pressure.
Repairs are delayed. PC ship has hull patches in hold. Sent blueprints and asked to 1/ fix the leak or 2/ get into the maintenance section and override the control to stop it.
Remote station will send signal to stop accelerating (remember it still has velocity). This will cut the engines, but then the on-board systems will crash (get a message from station some minutes later asking if engines stopped, as they have lost telemetry).
Remember the timelag for messages to the GG station. Could be several minutes each way.
Therefore need to get into the maintenance hatch. Can be sent the hatch 8 digit overrride code, but the guys at the station will initially send the wrong access code. Need to maneuver beneath and dock. Enter number, hatch opens. Lights come on. Inside is small opening. Discover that the terminal is down and needs to be rebooted. This will restore communications to the tanker.
Once the systems have come back up, the mimic system will indicate a pump failure in a baffled tank area. The pump failed, allowing fuel to leak out. This filled a void, and managed to pop a seal, allowing the fuel to spew out of the tank and also to take down the onboard systems for some reason. Need to use terminal display in there to pump fuel out of the leaking tank using other pumps. This takes ~15 minutes. Once the leaking has stopped, can apply the hull patch, and rebalance the fuel from the equivalent (opposite tank) from the terminal. This will take another 15-30 minutes for the pumping to finish, but can tell if starting to be successful after 5 minutes.
Examination of the hull and the terminal etc will reveal that the hauler is quite old. Some skill (Engineering?) vs DC 15 may point out that it could really do with some maintenance and upgrading.
Anyone inside the maintenance hatch may also notice (Computer skill) that there are menu options for pumping out fuel to external lines i.e. you *could* steal refined fuel from this hauler, if you knew the access code for the particular tanker. Given the laxity of the guys on the GG station, the access code may or may not be changed after this episode. You would need some fuel pipes and attachments, but these are standard items.
Guys on the station will be very happy, and offer to the PCs that if they are ever in the area, to drop in, when they will be entertained with some strong rough alcohol, a free refuel (refined!), and other help if the crew can give it (especially if they haven't said anything about the apparent slackness in maintenence). They may also (carefully) offer to sell them fuel for Cr250/dton instead of 500 (this goes to their pockets, of course). In fact, if the PCs turn up at some point in the future, they may even notice another ship around picking up some cheap fuel.
The company operates the station itself, and 3 tankers. The tankers have 1G acceleration, so given the location of the GG, it takes them approximately 6 days to get from the GG to the mainworld and vice versa. The refuelling itself takes 4 days, with the purifiers running constantly. Therefore the turnaround cycle looks something like this:
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
#1 O O O O O O R R R R I I I I I I U U
#2 R R R R I I I I I I U U O O O O O O
#3 I I I I U U O O O O O O R R R R I I
O = Outbound
R = Refill at GG
I = Inbound
U = Unload at mainworld
It is fairly common for the maintenance crew at the homeworld to put stuff in the maintenance section for the guys at the station (in an airtight container of course). This might be alcohol, food, videos etc.
The three tankers are:
1/ Disco Volante (Flying Saucer)
Access Code: 59683480
2/ Hay Quatro Gatos (There are Four Cats)
Access Code: 34791137
3/ Espiritu Carburante (Spirit Fuel)
Access Code: 90846597
Thus the crew at the station have 2 days between tankers, and a tanker of 4700 dt of fuel arrives every 6 days at the mainworld, thus 783 dt of fuel per day is available on average (if an average ship uses 75 dt, that's 10+/day, of course not including the fuel used for everything else.
The company assets are as follows:
Value New (MCr) Value Now (MCr)
GG Station 19.23 12.61
Tanker #1 602.48 395.28
Tanker #2 602.48 395.28
Tanker #3 602.48 395.28
Launch #1 9.84 6.45
Launch #2 9.84 6.45
=============================================
Total 1211.35
Thus the company is valued at something like 1 Billion Credits. However, most of the equipment is quite old, the station and tankers are all about 30 years old. the station recently upgraded to TL 12 purifiers, which has improved the operations no end. With the old TL 10 purifiers it used to take 5 days to refuel a tanker. Unfortunately, there is no slack in the system; if a tanker goes out of operation, there is currently no replacement. The purchase fund (see below) currently has MCr 375 in it, not quite enough to buy a new tanker.
Staff:
3 at station: Capt/Pilot and 2 engineers paid 6000, 4000 and 4000 Cr per month respectively. There are 6 Crew at the base at the homeworld, they rotate on a monthly basis, therefore each group of 3 spends 1 month in 3 on the GG station. A few admin staff also stay permanently at the homeworld base.
The company has held the fuelling franchise for the past 10 years, and intends to hold onto it by generous donations of cash to the people who make those sorts of decisions. The reason for this is simple:
4700 dt of refined fuel/week @ 500 Cr/ton = 2.35 Mcr/week income = 122.2 Mcr/year.
Allowing Cr 50000/month for salaries, and annual maintenance on the tankers and stations: MCr 1.807 and Cr 19232 respectively, leaves about 120 MCr/year. Given that 20% tax is paid that leaves MCr 96. The cost of replacing the tankers is 602 MCr each, and the owners are well aware that they will have to replace at least one in the next 10 years, means that 75 MCr/year goes into a fund for this purpose. This leaves 21 MCr, of which approx 5MCr goes towards "maintaining" the franchise, leaving a final figure of 16 Mcr/year "profit". Which is, of course barely enough to get by on these days. Of course, given that it is only recently that the family got around to actually putting money aside to replace the tankers, they do have somewhat more than you might think stashed away; somewhere on the order of 750 MCr in stocks, shares and cash, and another 750 MCr in goods and property.
cheers
Mark
Just in case it proves useful, here are my notes from a game a few years ago that as a side thread featured a Gas Giant (GG) fuel scooping company. The idea was to introduce the company as possible useful contacts. Sorry if the notes are a bit disjointed, I'm sure that you'll get the idea:
Fuel scooping from gas giant. robot tankers (5000dt+?) haul out to ContraGrav station in GG orbit, fuel up and head back. Continuous cycle of them, 6 days apart. Mostly automated, but specialised small (20dt) modified Launches can dock to take over steering etc if necessary. Nonstandard docking ring to allow remote control from the smallship. Can dock with it, but you won't get control of the tanker without the correct docking ring type. 5000dt = 70000 m^3. => sphere radius 25.5m.
Company is Jolly Gas Giant Fuel Inc. Their adverts make a point that their operation is largely automatic, and therefore their costs are less. Their fuel is slightly cheaper. Their ships all sport a large smiley gas giant face, with an arm holding a pump nozzle, and another arm waving.
Fuel transports are mostly tank + engines + computers. Spherical design for maximum carrying efficiency? With small dock at bottom, and fuel port dock at front. Low acceleration (1G). The fuel port dock is also non-standard.
ContraGrav station in the GG atmos has crew, they perform monitoring, maintenance on station and transports etc. They have a small insystem craft and an emergency lifeboat docked plus piles of supplies etc. Station has fuel purifiers built in.
Plot Hooks:
Hauler veering off course? Receive warning, or request for visual check i.e. <50km range>. Can see that it is leaving a trail of leaking fuel. Asked to trail it and keep an eye on it until repairs can arrive. Analysis reveals it to be hydrogen boiling off into space. The jet is causing the hauler to (slowly!) veer off course.
External observations determines that there is a lot of vapour coming from a leak in the hull. If PCs have enough people with EVA experience, they may be able to patch it - but it's difficult, because of the pressure.
Repairs are delayed. PC ship has hull patches in hold. Sent blueprints and asked to 1/ fix the leak or 2/ get into the maintenance section and override the control to stop it.
Remote station will send signal to stop accelerating (remember it still has velocity). This will cut the engines, but then the on-board systems will crash (get a message from station some minutes later asking if engines stopped, as they have lost telemetry).
Remember the timelag for messages to the GG station. Could be several minutes each way.
Therefore need to get into the maintenance hatch. Can be sent the hatch 8 digit overrride code, but the guys at the station will initially send the wrong access code. Need to maneuver beneath and dock. Enter number, hatch opens. Lights come on. Inside is small opening. Discover that the terminal is down and needs to be rebooted. This will restore communications to the tanker.
Once the systems have come back up, the mimic system will indicate a pump failure in a baffled tank area. The pump failed, allowing fuel to leak out. This filled a void, and managed to pop a seal, allowing the fuel to spew out of the tank and also to take down the onboard systems for some reason. Need to use terminal display in there to pump fuel out of the leaking tank using other pumps. This takes ~15 minutes. Once the leaking has stopped, can apply the hull patch, and rebalance the fuel from the equivalent (opposite tank) from the terminal. This will take another 15-30 minutes for the pumping to finish, but can tell if starting to be successful after 5 minutes.
Examination of the hull and the terminal etc will reveal that the hauler is quite old. Some skill (Engineering?) vs DC 15 may point out that it could really do with some maintenance and upgrading.
Anyone inside the maintenance hatch may also notice (Computer skill) that there are menu options for pumping out fuel to external lines i.e. you *could* steal refined fuel from this hauler, if you knew the access code for the particular tanker. Given the laxity of the guys on the GG station, the access code may or may not be changed after this episode. You would need some fuel pipes and attachments, but these are standard items.
Guys on the station will be very happy, and offer to the PCs that if they are ever in the area, to drop in, when they will be entertained with some strong rough alcohol, a free refuel (refined!), and other help if the crew can give it (especially if they haven't said anything about the apparent slackness in maintenence). They may also (carefully) offer to sell them fuel for Cr250/dton instead of 500 (this goes to their pockets, of course). In fact, if the PCs turn up at some point in the future, they may even notice another ship around picking up some cheap fuel.
The company operates the station itself, and 3 tankers. The tankers have 1G acceleration, so given the location of the GG, it takes them approximately 6 days to get from the GG to the mainworld and vice versa. The refuelling itself takes 4 days, with the purifiers running constantly. Therefore the turnaround cycle looks something like this:
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
#1 O O O O O O R R R R I I I I I I U U
#2 R R R R I I I I I I U U O O O O O O
#3 I I I I U U O O O O O O R R R R I I
O = Outbound
R = Refill at GG
I = Inbound
U = Unload at mainworld
It is fairly common for the maintenance crew at the homeworld to put stuff in the maintenance section for the guys at the station (in an airtight container of course). This might be alcohol, food, videos etc.
The three tankers are:
1/ Disco Volante (Flying Saucer)
Access Code: 59683480
2/ Hay Quatro Gatos (There are Four Cats)
Access Code: 34791137
3/ Espiritu Carburante (Spirit Fuel)
Access Code: 90846597
Thus the crew at the station have 2 days between tankers, and a tanker of 4700 dt of fuel arrives every 6 days at the mainworld, thus 783 dt of fuel per day is available on average (if an average ship uses 75 dt, that's 10+/day, of course not including the fuel used for everything else.
The company assets are as follows:
Value New (MCr) Value Now (MCr)
GG Station 19.23 12.61
Tanker #1 602.48 395.28
Tanker #2 602.48 395.28
Tanker #3 602.48 395.28
Launch #1 9.84 6.45
Launch #2 9.84 6.45
=============================================
Total 1211.35
Thus the company is valued at something like 1 Billion Credits. However, most of the equipment is quite old, the station and tankers are all about 30 years old. the station recently upgraded to TL 12 purifiers, which has improved the operations no end. With the old TL 10 purifiers it used to take 5 days to refuel a tanker. Unfortunately, there is no slack in the system; if a tanker goes out of operation, there is currently no replacement. The purchase fund (see below) currently has MCr 375 in it, not quite enough to buy a new tanker.
Staff:
3 at station: Capt/Pilot and 2 engineers paid 6000, 4000 and 4000 Cr per month respectively. There are 6 Crew at the base at the homeworld, they rotate on a monthly basis, therefore each group of 3 spends 1 month in 3 on the GG station. A few admin staff also stay permanently at the homeworld base.
The company has held the fuelling franchise for the past 10 years, and intends to hold onto it by generous donations of cash to the people who make those sorts of decisions. The reason for this is simple:
4700 dt of refined fuel/week @ 500 Cr/ton = 2.35 Mcr/week income = 122.2 Mcr/year.
Allowing Cr 50000/month for salaries, and annual maintenance on the tankers and stations: MCr 1.807 and Cr 19232 respectively, leaves about 120 MCr/year. Given that 20% tax is paid that leaves MCr 96. The cost of replacing the tankers is 602 MCr each, and the owners are well aware that they will have to replace at least one in the next 10 years, means that 75 MCr/year goes into a fund for this purpose. This leaves 21 MCr, of which approx 5MCr goes towards "maintaining" the franchise, leaving a final figure of 16 Mcr/year "profit". Which is, of course barely enough to get by on these days. Of course, given that it is only recently that the family got around to actually putting money aside to replace the tankers, they do have somewhat more than you might think stashed away; somewhere on the order of 750 MCr in stocks, shares and cash, and another 750 MCr in goods and property.
cheers
Mark