Sector and Subsector-wide Merchant Lines

[Condottiere]

Good example.

That makes me wonder though...

Has there ever been much discussion about long range Low Passage travel?

You'd think that many people looking at a year long journey might prefer to just go cryo and wake up tomorrow where they are going to. If the Low Berth apparatus is designed to be modular and portable, which seems doable, the passenger just stays frozen and is unloaded and loaded between ships as required. Maybe require a Medic roll to oversee a transfer, but it wouldn't be as hard as reviving.

Yes.

Pragmatically, you'd want that done by a large organized institution, like the Navy, or a megacorporation spaceline that doesn't squeeze their profit margins to the point of safety shortcuts.

 

[boggo2300]

Making the ship significantly more expensive. Doesn't change the time but the price/dTon should rise significantly.

makes sense thats how it works IRL, you pay more for express shipping, that's probably something to be added to the shipping tables in the rulebooks, should be price per ton/jump/week rather than just ton/jump

 

[Condottiere]

I suppose you could low berth the black forest ice cream cake.

 

[boggo2300]

I suppose you could low berth the black forest ice cream cake.

seems like a more expensive option than a refrigerated cake box to me, plus it doesn't seem likely to me that a low berth would actually work by freezing, considering the tissue damage that causes

 

[Condottiere]

But, it shouldn't age, and therefore be fresh on delivery.

 

[boggo2300]

But, it shouldn't age, and therefore be fresh on delivery.

call me squeamish, but I prefer my cakes to not be alive

 

[Condottiere]

There's always steak.

Schrodinger's cow - dead and alive.

 

[rinku]

Huh.

Because the required power points for a J-Drive are 10% hull times Jn, they're the same as the one jump feul tankage. So divide the fuel requirement by the PP per ton of plant to get the tonnage of power plant required. Simpler than I thought.

 

[rinku]

Aright. Roughed out comparisons for a 2000 ton hull are:

J-2 requires 531 tons of drives, fuel and engineer accommodation (73% available for other things)
J-3 requires 795 tons of drives, fuel and engineer accommodation (60% available for other things)
J-4 requires 1059 tons of drives, fuel and engineer accommodation (47% available for other things)
J-6 requires 1585 tons of drives, fuel and engineer accommodation (20% available for other things)

It's clear even from this rough comparison that payload delivery generally becomes less efficient with Jump number. Assuming a six hex main, a J-6 ship making two jumps there and back, a J-3 ship that makes four jumps in the same time will have processed more payload than the J-6 one. Higher passenger and freight charges defray this a little, but it's fairly clear you will need those premium charges to compete.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Aright. Roughed out comparisons for a 2000 ton hull are:

J-2 requires 531 tons of drives, fuel and engineer accommodation (73% available for other things)
J-3 requires 795 tons of drives, fuel and engineer accommodation (60% available for other things)
J-4 requires 1059 tons of drives, fuel and engineer accommodation (47% available for other things)
J-6 requires 1585 tons of drives, fuel and engineer accommodation (20% available for other things)

It's clear even from this rough comparison that payload delivery generally becomes less efficient with Jump number. Assuming a six hex main, a J-6 ship making two jumps there and back, a J-3 ship that makes four jumps in the same time will have processed more payload than the J-6 one. Higher passenger and freight charges defray this a little, but it's fairly clear you will need those premium charges to compete.

I may be too tired, but check your math. The J-6s are 1-month round-trip. The J-3s are a 2-month round-trip. So, you have to double the cargo being carried by the J-6s to account for two trips versus one trip for the J-3s. So, the J-6s are also getting paid twice versus the J-3s only getting paid once in the same 2-month timeframe.

5,200Cr/ton for 6 parsecs at J-3
32,000Cr/ton for 6 parsecs at J-6.

So, J-3 makes 10,400Cr/ton every 2 months. J-3 carries 3 times the cargo, so call it 31,200Cr every 2 months.

The J-6 makes 128,000Cr/ton every 2 months.

Somebody will have to check My math. I am pretty tired.

 

[rinku]

Those are very rough figures; you do need to knock off the other common tonnage usages like bridge, M-drives, fuel for the power plant (which I forgot about) and other crew accommodations. Those should come out to under 100 tons on a 2000 ton ship, though.

I was only working out the payload figures. The extreme markup for J-6 carriage does make up for the reduced percentage payload, indeed.

Assuming you can find customers willing to pay for it.

It works both ways - if I have 100 tons of widgets I need shipped 6 parsecs and have a choice of 7 day delivery for MCr3.2, or 2-3 week delivery at a cost of MCr0.52... yeah, the J-3 option makes a lot more sense. And is probably worth paying more than the J-2 cost of MCr0.48

 

[rinku]

A few things occurred to me last night about J-6. It seemed odd that the freight and passage prices suddenly leap up like that at J-6.

But then I realised that ONLY J-6 ships can make those jumps, and any ship jumping less than its full rating is competing against ships with lower rated drives, that have more payload and lower running costs. In a commercial setting, you would generally only operate a J-6 ship where you have to - if a J-4 or J-5 would do, that's what you set up. There are other contexts where that does not matter and you just want the fastest transit possible (fast couriers across several subsectors, communications, military scouts etc), but for a jump there and jump back commercial setup, it's only going to be used where it has to be.

It's also TL-15 only tech. Depending on how you run things in YTU that might mean having to get to a TL15 Type A for annual maintenance and J-Drive repairs. But standard rules just require TL for construction and total drive replacement. You can get drive repairs done at any A port.

There's also the consideration that in MGT2e the distance is a modifier to the Astrogation roll. Some Astrogation-1, EDU 8 schmuck isn't likely to be up to the job - you'd need to hire the best and pay for the best equipment and take extra time on the plot, every time.

 

[Condottiere]

Concorde being an apt comparison.

Passengers get cabin space accommodation, but pay luxury prices.

Cargo is going to be caviar and champagne.

You're using cutting edge technological level fifteen, versus technological level twelve, to cut transition times in half.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

The ticket price for J6 lines justify the cost of the ship and then some.

I would say the reverse. The cost of the ship and its low percentage of cargo/passenger space justifies the ticket price. Low ticket prices and the ships go bankrupt. High ticket price and relatively few customers so few ships doing the run and those ships likely LARGE.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I would say the reverse. The cost of the ship and its low percentage of cargo/passenger space justifies the ticket price. Low ticket prices and the ships go bankrupt. High ticket price and relatively few customers so few ships doing the run and those ships likely LARGE.

As @MongooseMatt is fond of saying, the big boys play by different rules than the rest. I'd imagine they can make it work when an Indie couldn't. Luxury cruises are for the wealthy to be seen with the others of wealth and power. There might not be a ton of them, but they exist, and they do very well for themselves, I'd imagine. Maybe when Merchant Prince comes out it will tell us how to work the big boys.

 

[rinku]

In this case the J-6 ship is expensive and all that, but it's not THAT much more expenseive than a J-5 one.

If it makes a J-5 jump, in theory it has competition for passengers from J-5 ships, so can't overcharge (in practice... who knows?), but I'd see that as a bit more niche. J-3 or J-4 are more likely competition, and on the one hand neither can do what the J-6 ship can do, but on the other hand, the J-6 ship is at a total disadvantage if it's in direct competition against them for the shorter links.

It's not like a fast steamer, which retains a commercial advantage regardless of route distance.

It's only a little bit like Concorde over transatlantic distances, inasumch as payload is sacrificed for performance. A regular airliner can still make the trip. But it is also like Concorde in that a London to Paris leg makes little sense and saves no practical time.

 

[phavoc]

Didn't Core 2.0 change the revenue for J-6 tickets to like 80k CR? Don't have my books handy to reference that. It's still more expensive than doing it with lower jump#'s, but it gets you there in a single week. You'd be hard-pressed to justify cargo carrying J-6 freighters, but passenger liners on the right circuit could make the credits. There will always be people willing to trade credits for time.

 

[phavoc]

It would be interesting to run the numbers and see if the lost space is worth it, though I agree that a dedicated line will have their own refueling center.

I think the sweet spot is going to be having enough refinery equipment onboard to refuel and begin refining as soon as you land so that you take advantage of all your downtime plus the amount of time you expect it to take you to travel from downport/highport to your 100D limit.

If you look at it that way, 3 dtons of refining gear nets you 60dtons/day. That's like 4,200 Cr/day in savings between 100Cr unrefined and 500Cr refined. That more than pays for the lost revenue for basic cargo.

The whole fuel equation has really skewered parts of the game. In CT it was the lowly scout built with special drives to use unrefined fuel. That's changed to any ship can skim (as long as it's the right configuration) and refine its own fuel. I think it would be better to just revise the whole fuel question and make it so that ships COULD carry more fuel if they wanted, but overall the Dtons dedicated to fuel would be reduced. Couple that with making fuel refineries something that only tankers carry (or some vessel willing to carry industrial-size gear), you'd see more ships having to utilize starports and purchasing refined fuel. It would definitely change the flavor the game - not necessarily a bad thing I think.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Didn't Core 2.0 change the revenue for J-6 tickets to like 80k CR? Don't have my books handy to reference that. It's still more expensive than doing it with lower jump#'s, but it gets you there in a single week. You'd be hard-pressed to justify cargo carrying J-6 freighters, but passenger liners on the right circuit could make the credits. There will always be people willing to trade credits for time.

The Singularity campaign is updating the rates for High and Luxury passengers.

 

[Condottiere]

Total operating costs should be baked into the ticket price, even if you have to buy premium hydrogen.

And, I suspect, time's too valuable to go skinny dipping, as well as the Concorde, itself.