Star Princess-class

H

Hakkonen

Banded Mongoose
Star Princess class
Hull: 1000 tons, sphere
Armor: Crystaliron, 5
M-drive: Thrust 1
J-drive: Jump 3
Fuel: 4 weeks operation, J-3
Bridge w/ holographic controls, 20 tons
Computer/20
Sensors: Improved
Weapons: Triple beam laser turret x2
Systems: Fuel scoops, fuel processor (60 tons/day), 66 tons docking space, ship's boat x2, gaming space (20 people), library, medical bay (8 tons), cargo crane
Acommodations: Staterooms (high) x5, staterooms (standard) x40, common areas (47.5 tons)
Cargo: 131 tons

I was going for a "bigger and better free trader;" I definitely want to keep the tramp steamer feeling. Would it make sense to downgrade the J-drive to jump 2, or even jump 1?
 
If it's going to be a 'tramp' freighter, you won't have any high passengers, or at least not enough to justify the cost of high cabins and service. Armor should be the minimum. The jump rating is high, but much would depend on the area of service it handles. A freighter that mostly serves secondary ports would be lower in most ratings across the board. Think of the Liberty ships that were used for decades after WW2 - slow, plodding, but cheap.
 
As a tramp freighter you will traffic fly-over country, that basically has no other service. If there are any high passengers they will have to book with you. You do not compete with luxury liners on the major trade routes.

I would use a M-2 drive to make sure the ship can land anywhere. It's fairly cheap and you have the power plant for it already.

The needed jump range depends on the terrain, where will the ship operate? J-3 is efficient to carry cargo long distances, but on the Spinward Main J-1 is might be more economical.

I believe you have too many staterooms. If you use the standard freight tables you will rarely fill them on lesser worlds, but you could probably use more cargo space. I believe the Subbie has a reasonable amount of cargo and passenger staterooms.

High staterooms are not necessary (but gives slightly more) to carry high passengers and actually makes high passengers unprofitable. High passengers are marginally profitable at 4 Dt, definitely not profitable at 6 Dt. You carry high passengers to get some more traffic and fill the ship.

The armour and boat bay are vary large and cuts into the paying payload and destroys the profit margin. I assume the point is to make money?
 
I might suggest something like this:

700 Dt, J-3, M-2, 15 passenger staterooms, 200 Dt cargo.

140 Dt fuel in cargo/fuel containers so you can ship more cargo for shorter jumps.
Collapsible tanks for another J-3.
External cargo mounts for 350 Dt (max J-2).
Budget drives and hull. Half the cost of your design. Healthy profit margin!
Slightly robustified with Repair Drones and Emergency Power.
No weapons by default, but can be added later...

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Reducing the armor from 5 to 3, swapping the drives from M1 and J3 to M2 and J2, and scrapping the high staterooms brings my cargo capacity up to 197.8 tons from 131.

Side note: the cargo crane calculations are needlessly awkward. 2.5 tons plus 0.5 tons per 150 tons of cargo space? Really?
 
Every room on a present day cruise ship is luxury travel. But there's a huge variation in cabin size. For example, the smallest staterooms on the Oosterdam are 151 square feet (14 square meters, or about 2.5 dtons, assuming decks are spaced as tight as 2.5 meters, or 3 dtons assuming the 3 meter Traveller spacing). The largest suites are 1290 square feet (120 square meters, almost 26 dtons assuming 3 meter deck spacing on premium decks). Disney Magic staterooms range from 184 square feet (17 square meters, 3 to 3.6 dtons, a bit larger since Disney assumes their passengers bring kids) to 1029 square feet (95.6 square meters, 20.5 dtons). Cruise ships have a lot of staterooms and suites between those extremes.

The fanciest suites grant access to premium areas of the ships: the Neptune Lounge on the Oosterdam, which looked (peeking in from the corridor) like a cross between a luxury pub and a private library, and the Concierge Lounge on the Disney Magic, which was like a luxurious office break room with an open bar, open only to passengers in the 32 most expensive suites.

So why have suites that are almost nine times larger than the smallest staterooms? Because passengers in those suites pay far more than the base staterooms. Newer cruise ships have more of the largest suites, and the largest on newer ships are larger than the largest on older ships, because the top suite are so profitable.

So a Traveller starship that does significant passenger business should have a wide range of stateroom and suite sizes, from four dtons that includes the stateroom's share of common areas, four dtons of actual stateroom, up to huge suites bigger than a small starship.

Of course, the biggest suites will not be profitable except on routes where there are lots of rich people in space, and there aren't going to be a lot of player characters who could afford a ship with room for a 26 dton suite (let alone a 200 dton duke's suite). And ships with suites that large have to travel very scheduled routes, which is detrimental to gaming anyway. Additionally, having a large variety of stateroom sizes can make deck plans more difficult, not just a copy and paste of the same design in alternating mirror image versions.

But if a small ship offers staterooms that are four dtons minus their contribution to common areas and a few that are four dtons dedicated to the stateroom, the latter should command a higher fare, as long as the owners of the ship are good at finding passengers.
 
I agree that liners on the major trade routes play in a different league from tramp freighters.

There should be different sized rooms and suites, at different prices.

But then we have left the Mid and High Passage system far behind.
 
Player character ships are always going to be scrambling for the crumbs that fall off the plates of the titans of transportation. GURPS Traveller Far Trader models that in its traffic tables. Some really heavily trafficked routes may have many thousands of dtons of freight and hundreds or thousands of passengers per day, and tables note that, but they also indicate that the total available to independent operators tops out low enough that captains have to scramble for the best cargoes and settle for the worst passengers.

Captain: "But that cargo rate doesn't even cover our crew salaries, let alone jump fuel, mortgage, and annual maintenance reserve."

Broker: "That's probably why the Glisten Kronos 8 didn't take it. Maybe they'll take it next time. OK, how about this? Six habitat containers of live 'cyanide crocodiles', whatever they are. Oh, and ten habitat containers of 'cyanide crocodile' food. Looks like --"

"Hold on! What in space is a 'cyanide crocodile'?"

"I don't know. It says here that they're they're highly aggressive pouncers that vent release various cyanides from their reproductive glands to mark territory. Deadly to humans, Vargr, and various other sophonts. But hazard suits are included."

"I see why the Kronos didn't take them."

"Also they need to be fed at nine hour intervals. The feeder animals don't sound very nice either. The mainfest calls them 'teetherines'. Aggressively territorial carrion eaters. Supposedly smell worse than the 'Esalin skunkamander'. You might not want any other cargo in your hold with them."

"But the freight rate is . . ." Looks. "Whoa! I could fly empty almost to maintenance on that."

"Sounds like you're in. If you're up for that, I have some fun passengers: a hockey team banned from most of the major lines. Real party animals between matches."

"I read about them in the Shipping News. And J-TAS, I think. No, crocodiles and teetherines are probably all the dangerous livestock I need on one jump. I'll settle for boring passengers."
 
I think the term "Star Princess" by its very name does not imply a "Tramp Freighter". From the description, it looks like a kind of yacht, and then thing about yachts is that not all of them are playthings of rich nobles, some of them are for hire, you can charter one.
 
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