Standardised shipping container?

S

Sageryne

Mongoose
Hello,

I was wondering if Mongoose has published any official details of the ubiquitous shipping container?

The Core Rulebook talks about 5 ton mail containers.

The Robot Handbook talks about a 'five-ton starship shipping container' in the forklift section.

Most previous editions had the dimensions as 3m x 3m x some length. I had used 6m (4 ton) and 12m (8 ton) in my own games and ship designs.

If you assume 3m x 3m, then a 5-ton container would be 7.5m (approximately 25ft) long, which is fine. But one double that size (like the 20ft compared to the 40ft shipping containers used today) would be 15m long (roughly 50ft), which seems long to me. Today, you can get 45ft, 48ft and even 53ft shipping containers, but they are not typical sizes.

I would like to know things like the price of different types (dry storage, refrigerated, tank (for liquids or gases), bulk storage, etc).

Are Traveller shipping containers vacuum tight by default, or is that a special type?

Any Traveller sources you can point me to would be appreciated.

Also, if this has been discussed before, I link to the post would be great.

Thank you,

- Kerry
 
Good to know. I can certainly wait until next week. I was already planning on buying the Starship Operator's Manual. Now, I have one more reason to do so.

Thank you
 
This has been discussed a bit in a recent thread Efficient space only freighter design. IIRC all were agreed on the ends being 3mx3m but then people preferred different lengths.
7.5m (5dT) and 15m (10dT) make sense from a game perspective as that matches the trade tables.
Personally I prefer 6m (4dT) and 12m (8dT) because they're doublings of length that just feel aesthetically right :)
Real world dimensions are all over the place. IIRC the 53' container matches certain railway carriages?
 
Thirty tonnes - optimum minimum shipping volume from Vehicles.

Sixty tonnes - double that, and a tad off maximum weight capacity of the cargo crane.
 
Condottiere said:
Thirty tonnes - optimum minimum shipping volume from Vehicles.

Sixty tonnes - double that, and a tad off maximum weight capacity of the cargo crane.
Click to expand...
While I understand your logic, it in no way corresponds to the Trade system or in practicalities based on the actual volume of containers - and of small starship holds.

Me, I still like the rounded down numbers of 3X3X6m or X12 for 5 and 10 dtons, but I understand and could accept 3X3X7.5 and X15.
 
Sageryne said:
Any Traveller sources you can point me to would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Not Mongoose, but the first mention of containers I can find is in The Traveller Adventure from 1983. The deckplans of the March Harrier shows a -Standard Cargo Shipping Module- which is 3x3x6m, or 8 deckplan squares, which is 4dT. It even talks about reversing grav plates in the hold to allow the containers to be pushed into place. Inertia was obviously not a big deal back then :)
 
Sageryne said:
Hello,

I was wondering if Mongoose has published any official details of the ubiquitous shipping container?

The Core Rulebook talks about 5 ton mail containers.

The Robot Handbook talks about a 'five-ton starship shipping container' in the forklift section.

Most previous editions had the dimensions as 3m x 3m x some length. I had used 6m (4 ton) and 12m (8 ton) in my own games and ship designs.

If you assume 3m x 3m, then a 5-ton container would be 7.5m (approximately 25ft) long, which is fine. But one double that size (like the 20ft compared to the 40ft shipping containers used today) would be 15m long (roughly 50ft), which seems long to me. Today, you can get 45ft, 48ft and even 53ft shipping containers, but they are not typical sizes.

I would like to know things like the price of different types (dry storage, refrigerated, tank (for liquids or gases), bulk storage, etc).

Are Traveller shipping containers vacuum tight by default, or is that a special type?

Any Traveller sources you can point me to would be appreciated.

Also, if this has been discussed before, I link to the post would be great.

Thank you,

- Kerry
Click to expand...
No; I do not believe that Mongoose has yet defined a 'canonical' shipping container (Edit: I do not have, and have not read, the Starship Operators Manual). It seems like the consensus is forming up around containers which are 3m x 3m at the end, and of varying lengths. The way the trade tables were designed around 5 dTon and 10 dTon lots creates a group a folks who claim these are the obvious sizes for containers.

For myself, I like containers which are multiples of 3m in length; mostly 4 dTon (6m) and 8 dTon (12m) as the standards, with a few odd-duck containers at 6 dTonS (9m). I tend to handle the 'lots' that players have access to as break-bulk (at best crated or palletized) cargo, which need to be 'tetrised' into the hold to make most efficient use of volume -- and I add a random factor so that the 'lots' are all sorts of ragged numbers instead of just smoothe multiples of five. The preference for 4 & 8 dTon conatiners also ties to my envisaging a universe where standard containers are re-purposed into a wide variety of other roles; or other items are re-dimensioned to the standard container sizes to make them more efficeint to move around. Being able to stack layers at 90 degree angle across each other to form cubes (or other shapes) is easier if length is a multiple of width.

I build standard containers as unpowered boats in the vehicle guide; and vacuum sealing is an option, but it adds quite a bit (even if done without life support) of cost.

Some of this is covered in the 'efficient space only freighter design' thread.
 
Last edited:
J. L. Brown said:
No; I do not believe that Mongoose has yet defined a 'canonical' shipping container (Edit: I do not have, and have not read, the Starship Operators Manual). It seems like the consensus is forming up around containers which are 3m x 3m at the end, and of varying lengths. The way the trade tables were designed around 5 dTon and 10 dTon lots creates a group a folks who claim these are the obvious sizes for containers.

For myself, I like containers which are multiples of 3m in length; mostly 4 dTon (6m) and 8 dTon (12m) as the standards, with a few odd-duck containers at 6 dTonS (9m).
Click to expand...
SOM agrees with your preference. Of course, this is also some of the canonical shipping containers in previous editions of Traveller.
 
Takei said:
Inertia was obviously not a big deal back then :)
Click to expand...
Go really slow, and when you get it where you want it or where you need to adjust the angle, turn the plates grav plates back on. Let friction worry about inertia. Rinse and repeat until the thing is in place.

IMTU, I generally include battery powered grav hand trucks for pallets incorporated into the walls next to the cargo hatch. At and beyond TL 12, I let them be integrated into the grave plate grid so that the area around the container interacts with the hand truck for ease of use.
 
Sigtrygg said:
There are canonical shipping containers in the new SoM.
Click to expand...

after the Computer section which I had printed out last night and read while at work today and which left my monitor speckled in cranial matter after having not seen Boolean logic in since .. what was it... in Com Sci 101 as a Freshman many decades ago.. and thanks to sudden loss of grey matter I was reduced to grabbing a pre-lunch working from home beer..

I am looking forward to printing out and reading the Cargo and Docking Systems chapter here momentarily and thus enjoy with a bottle of wine and was looking to see if they had gone into exactly these kinds of things.
 
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