Starliner

[mancerbear]

We've all seen the subsidised liner, which is a nifty little ship, I have no recollection of seeing anything that approaches the size of a cruise liner. The type that can handle 2000 odd passengers and provide a luxurious cruise.

What are people's thoughts on that? I like the idea. I can't see why tourism wouldn't be as big in the Imperium as it is here on Earth.

 

[AndrewW]

We've all seen the subsidised liner, which is a nifty little ship, I have no recollection of seeing anything that approaches the size of a cruise liner. The type that can handle 2000 odd passengers and provide a luxurious cruise.

There's a 20,000 ton liner (Reaches-class) in Freelance Traveller issue #052 April 2014 (Getting There is Half the Fun, page: 20).

 

[PsiTraveller]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour could be a group of worlds that the elite just 'have' to travel to at a certain time in their life.

The length of travel is an issue. A trip to another world means at least 2 weeks in time, plus time spent on planet. So only those that can work in a mobile situation could travel and work.
The rich could afford it of course, but how many from each world would be travelling at a certain moment in time to schedule a stop?

And then there are the TAS membership trips. They could account for some of the trips, but the rich might buy memberships anyway.

There could also be religious trips as well, pilgrimages, holy sites to visit. You will have to figure out the vacation hotspotss in a Sector, and the religious shrines and then decide on travel routes and timetables.

 

[Condottiere]

Who pays for business class? A corporation.

The aristocrats are forced to cultivate first class, to maintain appearances.

So, you need the traffic to justify using a very large luxury liner on any given route.

A lot of the more wealthier travellers would just charter a Learjet. Learjump.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Depends on your Universe.

In the canonical Universe interstellar travel is horrendously expensive. For normal people a single passage costs in the region of a year's salary. There will not be all that many passengers, but there will be some.

Passengers are probably better served by lots of small ships, say on a regular schedule of one ship jumping every day.

 

[phavoc]

For humanity to have spread out through the stars travel between planets has to be at least somewhat common or else star systems would have very little merchant and passenger connections.

 

[Saladman]

It would need a theme song. I'm not making fun either; I think security/troubleshooters on a large passenger liner could make a good campaign frame.

 

[Reynard]

As with an ocean liner, an interstellar liner wouuld need routes justifying the costs. That would more often mean travel between A (and B) class starports with planets having sizable populations and above average wealth. Cruise liners are a specialized vessel that are about pleasure trips rather then people movers. More than lkely they don't have low berth or maybe even standard staterooms. Such vessels would probably be rare.

Cruise ships usually have two interrelated functions, entertainment and sightseeing. Entertainment can be pretty much contained within the confines of the vessel with stages, casinos and recreation. Sightseeing needs to be special to garner the interests of the passengers usually with an itinerary of sights in various stellar systems and ports of call that offer a thrill to be there. That can kill the E, D, and C class ports that couldn't handle either the ships or the passengers. However, this could explain A and B class ports in systems that are far too below the quality for such ports. They exist to serve tourist trade. The systems on the itnerary would often have various objects and phenomena of interest to sell a trip.

Many cruise ships could (and should) be system only ships freeing up a lot of space for more accomidations and focusing on the interplanetary sights within a system. Problem with interstellar tours is that week in jump space. Staring at jump space for seven days can get old fast with another week or so down the gravity well to port while that same time gets the passengers a cruise around worlds and objects chosen to thrill and awe.

Another luxury liner I found is the old FASA King Richard 5000 to luxury liner that serves 300 pasengers and 18 low berths. I definately need to HG2e this including an interplanertary version.

 

[Condottiere]

Casinos or any number of dubiously illegal activities that are technically not taking place in anyone's jurisdiction.

 

[bluekieran]

I'm a bit dubious about the viability of interstellar pleasure cruises, simply due to the week spent in jumpspace - at least 2 weeks of your holiday, assuming a round trip, spent in what amounts to a fancy hotel/shopping mall you can't leave and without even the stars for a view.

 

[Condottiere]

I believe the term is captive customer base.

 

[PsiTraveller]

How much is available to spend on a cruise or vacation to another planet. Suppose you have a month of vacation saved up and want to spend 2 weeks on the watery city on Torpol that is built on a Hedonism model. (What happens on Torpol stays on Torpol!)

Mid Passage is 6200 J1 and 9000 for a Jump 2. Assuming you are a J1 away that will be 12 400 for the trip there and back plus your hotel stay for 2 weeks. SO per person you are in for over 10 k Credits.

A worker mechanic on a ship gets 1000 credits a month, and costs an additional 2000 to 2500 Credits a month in Life support costs, depending on double occupancy or not, so the base cost of the lowest paid worker on a spaceship is 3000 - 3500 a month.

So are spacehands getting 1000 cash a month rich or just scraping by?

 

[Condottiere]

My exchange rate is five greenbacks to one creampie.

 

[phavoc]

The elephant in the room here is that we are discussing economics in a game system that does not have a realistic economic system as it's basis. The costs were created so that players could make money and referees could take it away from them. And it's supposed to be fun, too.

Mix all that up and these discussions quickly go down the rabbit hole of inanity.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Whups, just looked in core book and saw the chart on page 92. SO at 2000 a month room and board covered, a spacehand is living a Soc 8 lifestyle with a high standard of living. the 1000 credits a month extra means a pretty good free cash situation.

But it does show that a J1 return trip is a years salary or more. So definitely in the realm of the very rich.

And it shows getting a TAS membership is a winning lottery ticket that can provide a rich lifestyle selling off a J1 High Passage for 8500 every 2 months. (and the free High passage is a J1 right? or is it J2?)

 

[Reynard]

I had a chance to look over my old King Richard packet and wow. A lot of information both about the ship and about how an interstellar cruise line would work. I'm much more appreciative now.

There is the equivalent of a biosphere on the promenade deck plus shopping stalls, theaters, a casino, and a pool deck next to the gym/salon (Gaming space?). The 90+ staterooms are High at KCr.50 and there are 8 Luxury suites going from KCr.150 to KCr.300. A medical bay contains 18 low berths. Two passenger shuttles in docking bays in the 'wings'. !6 lifeboats carrying 3 crew to fly and 20 passengers in low berth. Need to work out what they look like.

The booklet and deck plans describe what passengers do during those days in jumpspace and it's a lot with entertainment, dining from a high class menu fore to the fast food counter aft, socializing and recreation to keep busy. While seeing marvelous sights in real space, these ships are geared as much to the interstellar experience too.

I'm sure the same information could be multiplied for ships carrying thousands rather than hundreds.

 

[mancerbear]

Who produced the King Richard packet? I would like to see if I could get a copy.

 

[mancerbear]

All good. I found it

 

[steve98052]

As with an ocean liner, an interstellar liner wouuld need routes justifying the costs. That would more often mean travel between A (and B) class starports with planets having sizable populations and above average wealth. Cruise liners are a specialized vessel that are about pleasure trips rather then people movers. More than lkely they don't have low berth or maybe even standard staterooms. Such vessels would probably be rare.
. . .

If we look at modern cruise ships, low berths would exist only to satisfy lifeboat regulations. Maybe they'd be in lifeboat type ship's vehicles (particularly in more dangerous "adventure tourism" parts of the universe where a ship might face dangers beyond mere equipment failure), but maybe they'd just be built into an emergency deck.

However, historical ships included a mix of classes. Consider the Titanic, which had a modest number of luxury passengers and teeming masses of low class passengers (who reportedly had much better accommodations there than on competing ships, aside from the watery grave aspect of the Titanic).

Casinos or any number of dubiously illegal activities that are technically not taking place in anyone's jurisdiction.

Actually, in the customary setting, they'd be under the Imperium's jurisdiction. But the Imperium is pretty flexible about the what activities are illegal.

I'm a bit dubious about the viability of interstellar pleasure cruises, simply due to the week spent in jumpspace - at least 2 weeks of your holiday, assuming a round trip, spent in what amounts to a fancy hotel/shopping mall you can't leave and without even the stars for a view.

At higher tech levels, leisure may be much more available to people who want it. A lot of manufacturing would be automated – something that is already causing a lot of economic tension for those who used to do jobs machines have taken over – so the main economic activities would be intellectual work, services that resist automation, services where customers don't want automation, and maybe minimum basic income.

The relative cost of goods and services would be heavily influenced by Baumol's cost disease.

 

[vargr1]

The elephant in the room here is that we are discussing economics in a game system that does not have a realistic economic system as it's basis. The costs were created so that players could make money and referees could take it away from them. And it's supposed to be fun, too.

Mix all that up and these discussions quickly go down the rabbit hole of inanity.

This. If you want large cruise ships in your TU, then they exist. I've always believed that the published T&C rules only apply to the standard tramp freighter and it's ecosystem. Other ships (especially the large container ships and multi-thousand dton cruise liners) use different rules altogether. I prefer the "cosmopolitan universe" that MM writes about. Star travel is common and a large minority of people have traveled off their home planet for business, pleasure, or military purposes.

But, I'm a heretic.