Sector and Subsector-wide Merchant Lines

[MasterGwydion]

Hey all! Has anyone ever published any info on the general stats or general requirements for what it takes to be classified as a Subsector-wide or Sector-wide Merchant Line? I know that High Guard has the minimum requirements for the different Starport Classes.

Is it just one little 200-ton ship on a year-long route around the sector or subsector? Is it one ship per system? Is it one ship per Trade Route? Do the ships have a minimum size? Does the Merchant Line have a minimum required income? A required number of ships? A required tonnage of ships? Do they need to handle a minimum percentage of the subsector or sector-wide trade?

Has this been discussed anywhere? I am back doing some worldbuilding again. In Zeng Subsector this time.

 

[Sigtrygg]

CT LBB:7 merchant prince and The Traveller Adventure are the two sources that spring immediately to mind, then GT Far Trader.

 

[ottarrus]

Well, a 'merchant line' presumes more than one ship and a network of brokers and shipping agents. One 200-ton A2 is only a tramp freighter incorporated under Imperial business law. One guy driving his car isn't a 'taxi company' and/or one person renting their pick up truck on weekends isn't a 'mover's service'.
I would suggest that a 'line' would require at least 3 ships and a staffed headquarters office at the line hub starport.
At least, that's how I would rule it at my table. YMMV and all that.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I have them all, but I have not been able to find any references as to how to actually define when a business is a Tramp Trader who owns a second ship on a regular route versus when it is considered a Shipping Line, a Merchant Line, a Passenger Line, a Subsector Line, a Sector Line, etc.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Well, a 'merchant line' presumes more than one ship and a network of brokers and shipping agents. One 200 A2 is only a tramp freighter incorporated under Imperial business law. One guy driving his car isn't a 'taxi company' and/or one person renting their pick up truck on weekends isn't a 'mover's service'.
I would suggest that a 'line' would require at least 3 ships and a staffed headquarters office at the line hub starport.
At least, that's how I would rule it at my table. YMMV and all that.

On this topic, opinions are welcome, as there doesn't seem to be a massive amount of Canon data available.

 

[Condottiere]

A tramp steamer doing a circuit around a subsector, is more like a travelling salesman in a caravan.

You have to build up a fleet, and I sort of vaguely recall the Onedin Line.


The Onedin Line is a BBC television drama series that ran from 1971 to 1980. The series was created by Cyril Abraham.

The series is set in Liverpool from 1860 to 1886[1] and covers the rise of a fictional shipping company, the Onedin Line, named after its owner captain James Onedin. Around this, it depicts the lives of his family, most notably his brother and partner Robert, a ship chandler, and his sister Elizabeth, giving insight into the lifestyle and customs at the time, not only at sea, but also ashore (mostly lower- and upper-middle-class). The series also illustrates some of the changes in business and shipping, such as from wooden to steel ships and from sailing ships to steamships. It shows the role that ships played in such matters as international politics, uprisings and the slave trade.

 

[NOLATrav]

Yeah so CT LBB:7 Merchant Prince is the first time I saw the distinctions. But clearly they were mostly for char-gen backstory. No support was ever given for defining or delineating the differences.

Just riffing here but a Subsector Line should be able to service say, 30-80% of major trading worlds in the subsector on a regular basis; say, bi-monthly? Likewise, a Sector Line should be able to do the same with regards to its subsectors.

How that is accomplished is probably best left to the individual operators. Some may have a fleet or caravan, others a network of Free Traders, still others might take advantage of subsidized routes.

Could lead to some fun adventure hooks. Piss off Nishka and you have to do the Craptastic Loop for three months to get back in his good graces. Likewise, please a local Noble and he puts you on the Milk Run for a couple months. Either way the regular ships on those routes will be none too happy with your presence lol.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I am wondering if the Subsector Lines would have all of the BTN 8s and perhaps some of the 9s across their subsector and the Sector Lines would have some of the BTN 9s and some of the BTN 10s across the whole sector. If I continue this line of thinking, perhaps the Megacorp Lines have some of the BTN 10s and everything BTN 11+.

Tramps and subsidized would see some BTN-8 traffic, but they would mostly be found on BTN 7 or less.

Just some thoughts off of the top of My head.

 

[GypsyComet]

The CT Book "Spinward Marches Campaign" includes an example "sector-wide" line, though it is really a half-sector line since it stays in Imperial territory.

A "Line" suggests multiple ships on fixed routes, but no two subsectors are going to have the same requirements or be able to support the same number of ships or competing lines. Contracts, predictability, and name/livery recognition are strong elements, in my opinion.

Building an example of roughly subsector size: Trin-Dodds-Pallique Partners (TDPP), operating along a regular loop that connects Trin, Dodds, Edenelt, and Pallique. At J2 that can be done with a total of 17 stops, give or take. If you want a ship of the line present all the time at every stop, you'll need 34 ships. Half the time will need 17 ships, and one week per month about 8 or 9 ships. Going with the latter, and adding coverage for annual maintenance, the line will have between 10 and 12 ships with full crews, a permanent brokerage office on each of the 17 worlds so cargos are waiting for ships and not the other way around, and a larger office on at least one of the principal four worlds.
This assumes the Line is going only one direction around the loop. As long as that is a known characteristic of the Line, that isn't a huge deal. Freight going the other direction either goes to a different Line, or is warehoused by TDPP and handed off to a Free or Far Trader going the right direction.
Or we double their fleet and assume they have ships going both directions. That means their presence goes up to two weeks per month, but the schedules in each direction remains, so those two ships per month are going in opposite directions.
TDPP's actual ships may be Far Traders or one of the two Subbies (R or M), though the R would need to be up-engined to J2. Why so small? Only their four anchor worlds are high pops; the other thirteen are small towns or truck stops.

 

[MasterGwydion]

The CT Book "Spinward Marches Campaign" includes an example "sector-wide" line, though it is really a half-sector line since it stays in Imperial territory.

A "Line" suggests multiple ships on fixed routes, but no two subsectors are going to have the same requirements or be able to support the same number of ships or competing lines. Contracts, predictability, and name/livery recognition are strong elements, in my opinion.

Building an example of roughly subsector size: Trin-Dodds-Pallique Partners (TDPP), operating along a regular loop that connects Trin, Dodds, Edenelt, and Pallique. At J2 that can be done with a total of 17 stops, give or take. If you want a ship of the line present all the time at every stop, you'll need 34 ships. Half the time will need 17 ships, and one week per month about 8 or 9 ships. Going with the latter, and adding coverage for annual maintenance, the line will have between 10 and 12 ships with full crews, a permanent brokerage office on each of the 17 worlds so cargos are waiting for ships and not the other way around, and a larger office on at least one of the principal four worlds.
This assumes the Line is going only one direction around the loop. As long as that is a known characteristic of the Line, that isn't a huge deal. Freight going the other direction either goes to a different Line, or is warehoused by TDPP and handed off to a Free or Far Trader going the right direction.
Or we double their fleet and assume they have ships going both directions. That means their presence goes up to two weeks per month, but the schedules in each direction remains, so those two ships per month are going in opposite directions.
TDPP's actual ships may be Far Traders or one of the two Subbies (R or M), though the R would need to be up-engined to J2. Why so small? Only their four anchor worlds are high pops; the other thirteen are small towns or truck stops.

I wonder how that would look if someone plugged that route into GURPS Far Trader for the WTNs, BTNs, weekly tonnage, and weekly passengers. I am guessing that the Line above may move less than 1% of the totals. The wiki has an example of a Merchant Line

Al Morai - Traveller

wiki.travellerrpg.com

I doubt that it is Canon, but it is a place to start a discussion.

 

[rinku]

Any business can claim to be a subsector wide service.

It's down to that business to put up or shut up about being able to manage it.

Really, it's going to vary a LOT. Two free traders that service one cluster might count, especially if there's not much custom outside of that cluster. But also a shipping line with dozens of ships that works every world in the subsector.

Some companies will cover two subsectors, or a group of worlds that happen to be in three or four subsectors.

Sector wise concerns are probably all pretty much the same - to even count they have to be seriously large companies, and are going into direct competiton with the MegaCorps. They'll either need to be niche service providers or locally as powerful as, say Tukera Lines.

But the subsector wide category could be almost anything. Hang up a shingle and just hang around the same worlds.

 

[rinku]

I wonder how that would look if someone plugged that route into GURPS Far Trader for the WTNs, BTNs, weekly tonnage, and weekly passengers. I am guessing that the Line above may move less than 1% of the totals. The wiki has an example of a Merchant Line

Al Morai - Traveller

wiki.travellerrpg.com

I doubt that it is Canon, but it is a place to start a discussion.

Since that was described in CT Book 8: Merchant Prince, I'd say it's pretty canon. At least as far as the text description goes. The suggested ship manifest is likely drawn from T5.

 

[Condottiere]

If you really want to go into the economics of the stuff.

If you figure storing stuff in the local warehouse is relatively cheap, you can order a large amount of goods for a sizable discount, and sit on the stock.

One assumes that micro increases in technological level would be recognized and mostly ignored by Chartered Space inhabitants.

 

[GypsyComet]

Since that was described in CT Book 8: Merchant Prince, I'd say it's pretty canon. At least as far as the text description goes. The suggested ship manifest is likely drawn from T5.

Al Morai is also the aforementioned line from Spinward Marches Campaign.

 

[phavoc]

Any business can claim to be a subsector wide service.

It's down to that business to put up or shut up about being able to manage it.

Really, it's going to vary a LOT. Two free traders that service one cluster might count, especially if there's not much custom outside of that cluster. But also a shipping line with dozens of ships that works every world in the subsector.

Some companies will cover two subsectors, or a group of worlds that happen to be in three or four subsectors.

Sector wise concerns are probably all pretty much the same - to even count they have to be seriously large companies, and are going into direct competiton with the MegaCorps. They'll either need to be niche service providers or locally as powerful as, say Tukera Lines.

But the subsector wide category could be almost anything. Hang up a shingle and just hang around the same worlds.

Agreed. I think it really comes down more to marketing than any actual definition that you could do something useful with.

I think you'd need to go back to the early 1900s to really come up with realistic comparisons to Traveller. You had enough oceanic traffic split between the really fast liners, the merchies who plodded along, and a good high/low mix of bigger companies and much smaller independents and niche market players.

If you are looking for a rule of thumb, I think you'd have to have a gradient really to be fair. High pop/Ind worlds would have the bigger markets and thus you'd have to service them on a more frequent basis (say every 2-3 weeks), or else you'd possibly lose too much business between rival lines offering better frequency (passenger traffic would be more time-sensitive than cargo, since most cargo's would be routed for saving money as their priority). So a "line" would need a ship calling the planet every X number of weeks on its route. A company could profitably serve just a handful of worlds and not be subsector wide if they had enough business.

To service an entire subsector would require some deeper pockets - unless you could/would ignore potential swaths of lower volume trade worlds. In theory those planets that were along a major route that couldn't be bypassed economically would gain extra traffic as ships transited through their area and their ports would pick up some extra traffic as an interchange. And obviously stellar cartography would dictate what type of trade routes would exist to even ask that question.

Lots of imponderables to come up with a good rule because there'd just be too many exceptions to it. Is it fair to compare a core-sector to a frontier sector? I don't think so. Best to just wing it and as long as it sounds reasonable then it's as good as anything else anyone can come up with.

 

[Condottiere]

There are lots of reasons to establish regional shipping companies.

One would be, you directly control the flow of traffic around you, ensuring that it can be directed towards your system(s), avoiding getting bypassed.

Another one would be, you would have existing infrastructure and rolling stock, that could be requisitioned during an emergency, like war.

 

[rinku]

Actually, on rereading Book 8, I may have overstated the low end of a Subsector line. Two or three ships is really more what you'd call a Fledgling Line.

But you could have a proper Subsector Line with a half dozen ships.

 

[ColinD]

I like what some of the previous posters put up there. To quote phavoc, "it really comes down more to marketing than any actual definition".

There is no Imperial Mandate regulating what a Sector Wide Merchant Line can be, or even exist. If some scrappy Travellers get a hold of a 500 ton Maru Class Merchant from Adventure Class Ships or even a 400 ton Tramp Merchant Traders and Gunboats they can link up with other such crews, make themselves a company, and start their own line!

I think that could be an adventure or side-hustle for Travellers. "If you deliver this cargo and these passengers to Banasdan, our company will kick in some extra money. You'll be part of the Solomani Rim Merchant Line. It gets you some extra credits and connections. Now don't worry, it almost always works out for the best!"

 

[boggo2300]

I like what some of the previous posters put up there. To quote phavoc, "it really comes down more to marketing than any actual definition".

There is no Imperial Mandate regulating what a Sector Wide Merchant Line can be, or even exist. If some scrappy Travellers get a hold of a 500 ton Maru Class Merchant from Adventure Class Ships or even a 400 ton Tramp Merchant Traders and Gunboats they can link up with other such crews, make themselves a company, and start their own line!

I think that could be an adventure or side-hustle for Travellers. "If you deliver this cargo and these passengers to Banasdan, our company will kick in some extra money. You'll be part of the Solomani Rim Merchant Line. It gets you some extra credits and connections. Now don't worry, it almost always works out for the best!"

I agree, on all but one point, it's never going to be a side hustle, it's going to take way too much time and effort, the shipping bisiness is going to take up most of their time, anything ELSE they do is going to be a side hustle (if they get lucky)

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on margins.

Smuggling, presumably, has a large one.