Traveller Release Schedule 2023

Example: A world with 5 billion non-agricultural people. A person (for simplicity) eats 1 kg of food per day and uses 2 kg of water. This amounts to 30 kg of food per month and 60 kg of water (liters, but a liter of water weighs a kg). Let's assume that 90% of the food is produced within the system (hydroponic farms, etc.) and 95% of the water is reclaimed. Let's even assume that there are no losses in transportation and food storage (although these can be up to 80%). This results in 1.5 million tons of food and 1.5 tons of water that need to be brought in every month from other systems. And, as I pointed out, this is in an ideal situation where there are no losses.

This amounts to 100,000 tons of food and water unloaded at the port daily. Without transport ships with capacities of 100,200,500 thousand tons, this world would not function.

Why do we need plans? Because many scenarios might involve situations where such a ship needs to be robbed.

Regarding the crew - since the Robot Handbook came out, having a large crew is economically unjustified. A pilot, captain, astronavigator, perhaps a chief engineer, and the rest, for example, SED.

As for mining ships - there are some described, but only a few. In the new JTAS, there is also one or two. In space, there will mainly be mining installations. Apart from Belter ships, there is no economic sense to fly anywhere other than the main planet. So there should be many Belter ships.
 
Non agricultural does not mean that they don't produce food. It means that they don't produce enough food for export and additional food imports (either in quantity or quality or both) are welcomed. Even super death toxic worlds will produce some food via hydroponics and other solutions. Personally, I don't believe that a world that has no intrinsic food production would ever get that large, but the point of science fiction is exploring the weird and unusual, so maybe it would in someone's Traveller universe.

That said, big cargo ships for ore and other bulk goods doubtless exist. Though the economics of really, really big ships gets problematic. But the reality is that I don't think Mongoose would make any money trying to sell a "Element Class Cruiser" book for a grain ship. There's almost 50 years of Traveller and Traveller spinoff deckplans out there and they don't explore those kinds of ships because there isn't much demand for it. And its a metric fton of work to make deckplans for something that big. Even if you can put 60 to 70% of the volume down as fuel and cargo.

Almost all the deckplans are for small ships because 1) that's what players are likely to interact with/operate and 2) that's what can reasonably be published. :(
 
Non agricultural does not mean that they don't produce food. It means that they don't produce enough food for export and additional food imports (either in quantity or quality or both) are welcomed. Even super death toxic worlds will produce some food via hydroponics and other solutions. Personally, I don't believe that a world that has no intrinsic food production would ever get that large, but the point of science fiction is exploring the weird and unusual, so maybe it would in someone's Traveller universe.

That said, big cargo ships for ore and other bulk goods doubtless exist. Though the economics of really, really big ships gets problematic. But the reality is that I don't think Mongoose would make any money trying to sell a "Element Class Cruiser" book for a grain ship. There's almost 50 years of Traveller and Traveller spinoff deckplans out there and they don't explore those kinds of ships because there isn't much demand for it. And its a metric fton of work to make deckplans for something that big. Even if you can put 60 to 70% of the volume down as fuel and cargo.

Almost all the deckplans are for small ships because 1) that's what players are likely to interact with/operate and 2) that's what can reasonably be published. :(
I'm not an expert on Traveller, as I mentioned, I've only been running it for 3 years, while Mongoose is capable of producing and releasing dozens of cruisers, battleships, etc., weighing up to 500,000 tons. And they can create plans for them. And I dare say that players are more likely to try to break into a large merchant ship than a battleship.

As for non-agricultural worlds, English is not my first language, but I think the code is precisely described in Traveller5 and is unambiguous:
non-Agricultural
The world is unable to produce enough food agriculturally to feed its population; synthetic food production generally meets basic food needs - Traveller 5 p. 495
 
Right. The basics of the code is that it doesn't produce a sufficiency of good food to satisfy the wants of the population. Which is not the same thing as it has to import food to survive. Just that there is no outgoing foodstuffs and high quality food or non synthetics foods are in demand. Remember, these are *trade codes* for discussion of imports and exports.

There aren't plans for most of the big ships, just stats. The Element Class Cruiser was basically a boxed set to do the plans and ship's data and its only 60,000 tons. Otherwise, the large ship "deckplans" are just outlines with large areas labeled "staterooms" or whatever but no actual usable floorplan like you get on the smaller ships.

Btw, the reason there are a lot of military ships is because Traveller has a long history of also being used to play Honor Harrington or With the Lightnings style campaigns. The same reason there's tons of tanks and howitzers and such, because running mercenary campaigns like Hammer's Slammers or whatever is also a long time alternate Traveller playstyle.

Anyway, this is actually a request thread. I'd initially been trying to suggest resources that already existed that might be close to what you wanted, not argue about what you might want. I was just saying I'd be shocked to ever see a ship like you described getting actual floor plans, not that you shouldn't ask for what you want.
 
Depends on how you define agriculture.

You could have manufacturing facilities that can create processed foods, like Soylent Green.
 
Right. The basics of the code is that it doesn't produce a sufficiency of good food to satisfy the wants of the population. Which is not the same thing as it has to import food to survive. Just that there is no outgoing foodstuffs and high quality food or non synthetics foods are in demand. Remember, these are *trade codes* for discussion of imports and exports.

There aren't plans for most of the big ships, just stats. The Element Class Cruiser was basically a boxed set to do the plans and ship's data and its only 60,000 tons. Otherwise, the large ship "deckplans" are just outlines with large areas labeled "staterooms" or whatever but no actual usable floorplan like you get on the smaller ships.

Btw, the reason there are a lot of military ships is because Traveller has a long history of also being used to play Honor Harrington or With the Lightnings style campaigns. The same reason there's tons of tanks and howitzers and such, because running mercenary campaigns like Hammer's Slammers or whatever is also a long time alternate Traveller playstyle.

Anyway, this is actually a request thread. I'd initially been trying to suggest resources that already existed that might be close to what you wanted, not argue about what you might want. I was just saying I'd be shocked to ever see a ship like you described getting actual floor plans, not that you shouldn't ask for what you want.
As for the codes - I don't know what the discussion looked like over the last thirty years on this subject, unfortunately, I've only known the system for three. I interpret this as a failure or overproduction of the star system rather than the main planet. By the way, this would cause the expansion of the entire cluster (e.g., food has to come from somewhere), and I have the impression that this is overlooked in the Mongoose supplements.
As for the deck plans - in HighGuard2022 there are several ships over 100,000 tons, even one commercial. Ok, the deck plans are very basic, but they exist. When I need detailed plans, I use an add-on I found once - modular deck plans. Maybe it would be worth releasing something like that? Or create an application - a deck plan generator, similar to Inkarnate (https://inkarnate.com/).
 
Depends on how you define agriculture.

You could have manufacturing facilities that can create processed foods, like Soylent Green.
As I mentioned before, I don't consider myself an expert on Traveller, but the codes are quite accurately described in Traveller5.
 
Everything in Traveller: UWP, Trade Codes, etc are "fuzzy". They are technically "in character" designations by the Imperial Grand Survey or some other oversimplifying narrator. In practice, of course, they are mechanics. It is the referee's role to look at the numbers and decide how that translates into a society that actually works. If you believe its possible to import enough food for 5 billion people, you can certainly make a memorable system around the effects that has on society.

But "Na" just means that the food on that world does not generally come from planting seeds and watching them grow. It comes from cloning vats or fabricators or some other industrial process. It means that "real" food that isn't a protein shake or whatever is a profitable thing for traders to bring here.

Every version of Traveller has focused on the mainworld. And, in fact, just the part of the mainworld that is around the starport. It provides material to help the referee develop the entire star system, but the number of published worlds that get that level of system work up is tiny, as is the number of mainworlds that get significant detail. There is generally several hundred worlds in a sector, which is usually the smallest region of space to get its own sourcebook (Mongoose does 2 per book). You have T5, so you know that the Traveller method is MOAN (map only as needed). Its up to the referee to design the rest of the system IF its needed for the story they are telling.

Just because there is no suggestion that huge bulk carriers of the sort you are talking about exist in anything published doesn't mean they can't exist in your Traveller game. They are highly unprofitable if they can't go directly from a massive trade world to another massive trade world. So they are probably only run by governments or on government subsidies. Even the 10k tradeships that are mentioned in some materials have very limited destinations that wouldn't cause them to lose money regularly. But I can see really cool stories coming out of that.

I'm just saying that if you think the numbers and codes in Traveller are "hard", then you might want to reconsider that. They exist so that its easy to adjudicate a flyby visit and to serve as prompts for your own creativity when you want to do something on that world beyond refuel, trade, and move on to where the actual adventure is.
 
Funny this conversation went to systems without enough food to feed the population. I have been mulling over a mission where the Travellers have to go to an amber zone low water (2) high population (10) world ( call it Utopia) that can not support the population. Nearby agricultural and industrial worlds have Imperial contracts to ship food to this world in mass quantities.

The government and industry on Utopia have collapsed as the population exploded to 50 or so billion. Everyone is dependent on the free food and supplies provided to them. Million ton ships deliver 100,000 ton modules stuffed with 5 ton containers. The ships dump them at the jump limit, eject the empty fuel modules as well, get full fuel modules for the jump back and are in and out of the system in less then a day. The large modules are towed to orbit and the 5 ton containers are ejected. Small robotic entry tugs grab each 5 ton container and slowly float down to the surface to dump the container and fly off.

On the surface, there is no order, but not so much violence. Everyone has the same food, water, clothing and possessions and there are more of all delivered all the time. Everyone lives in old shipping containers improved with makeshift tools. The only weapons delivered to this world would be the little plastic knives in the meal packs...

The mission is to rescue the adult child of a local noble that went on a fact finding expedition but was wearing different clothing, had different equipment and had armed security with them. This was a prize to be fought for and over by the residents of Utopia.

Think mid stage mouse utopia and a needle in a haystack search for the child.
 
Funny this conversation went to systems without enough food to feed the population. I have been mulling over a mission where the Travellers have to go to an amber zone low water (2) high population (10) world ( call it Utopia) that can not support the population. Nearby agricultural and industrial worlds have Imperial contracts to ship food to this world in mass quantities.

The government and industry on Utopia have collapsed as the population exploded to 50 or so billion. Everyone is dependent on the free food and supplies provided to them. Million ton ships deliver 100,000 ton modules stuffed with 5 ton containers. The ships dump them at the jump limit, eject the empty fuel modules as well, get full fuel modules for the jump back and are in and out of the system in less then a day. The large modules are towed to orbit and the 5 ton containers are ejected. Small robotic entry tugs grab each 5 ton container and slowly float down to the surface to dump the container and fly off.

On the surface, there is no order, but not so much violence. Everyone has the same food, water, clothing and possessions and there are more of all delivered all the time. Everyone lives in old shipping containers improved with makeshift tools. The only weapons delivered to this world would be the little plastic knives in the meal packs...

The mission is to rescue the adult child of a local noble that went on a fact finding expedition but was wearing different clothing, had different equipment and had armed security with them. This was a prize to be fought for and over by the residents of Utopia.

Think mid stage mouse utopia and a needle in a haystack search for the child.
First association - Africa. A world where a low level of technology is artificially maintained, neighboring countries flood the market with free goods (such as clothes), which prevents the local industry from developing, and Africa falls into even greater economic dependence on Europe.

The second association is "one's own backyard." My hometown until '89 was under communist rule, and the economy was... specific. There were constant shortages of everything (such as food) in an agricultural country.

As for ships - to put it bluntly, it seems that the creators don't understand the volume of international trade. We're talking about millions or billions of tons of goods, not hundreds :) And I'm not talking about countries like the UK, USA, or China, but Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, or the Czech Republic. One of my clients (a shoe manufacturer in Poland) processes 5 tons of leather per day...
 
Keep in mind that Latvia is a Pop 6 planet all by itself. Also that what's cost effective to send by ship on Earth is not the same as what's cost effective to put into orbit and then send light years away.

But, mostly, you are just making bad assumptions about the design intent. Accusing the designers of being ignorant when they just have different goals than you think they should is kind of lame. They spend their resources on player facing content, because they are trying to make a game people play, not an interstellar trade simulator. There's references to big ships and large trade volumes, but there's no details because tramp traders aren't going to be touching any of that. Players aren't going to be operating the megafreighters that do nothing but run between high pop worlds with pre-arranged freight.

I'm sure there's big freighters in Star Wars and in Star Trek. In Firefly and Dark Matter. In the Polysotechnic League and at the Dowbelow Station. How often do they show up in an episode or even get mentioned? The rules are flexible enough that the referee can use them to simulate whatever is interesting for them, but the details provided are for replicating sci fi books and shows, where the PCs generally are tramp traders on the frontiers or military officers or explorers. All that other stuff exists off screen. The ship building rules let you bring it on screen if you want. But even GURPS Far Trader, which does explicitly talk about this stuff and has rules most folks probably find unnecessarily complex, doesn't spend time providing floor plans for big cargo ships or doing much more than saying 'they exist, they do stuff, and if your PCs find an amazing repeatable trade route, they'll show up and eat it so your PCs have to move on to something else'.
 
Background. I mean the background of the game. If there are large container ships, the characters see them. If there are large container ships, there must be infrastructure for their unloading, warehousing, refuelling, etc.

As for the size of trade - when the supply of electricity to Ukraine was disrupted, Poland was supplying 500 tons daily (!) of crude oil to the reactors just for Lviv, and only for critical infrastructure. An average-sized tissue producer in Poland produces three truckloads a day. I'm talking about scale - for any world to have noticeable trade, a 400-ton ship is a joke.
I get the feeling that the game creators simply didn't pay attention to the volumes of trade exchange.
And pay attention to the TL. The level of production (or harvests when it comes to food production) at a higher TL grows exponentially. In 1900, from one hectare of orchards, 0.8-1 ton of apples was obtained. Now it's 3-5 tons.
 
That increase in food production is the direct result of industrialisation - farm machinery rather then muscle power, pesticides and fertilsers from the chemical industry.
 
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