Why is refined fuel so expensive?

[far-trader]

Basically, I think that if 100Cr/ton is the standard price for unrefined, 150cr/ton is appropriate for refined, the producers make a profit, the starports get their cut, and trade contiues to flow swifly and cheaply, keeping the 3rd Imperium in business...

...except for the people making and selling fuel purifiers. You've just killed the market

That's one of the issues you're overlooking.

And you won't be able to sell unrefined for Cr100/ton. Or anything for that matter. You'll have to give it away. Heck I'm not even sure you could sell refined for anything in a setting where purifiers are so cheap, small, and eliminate all the problems of running unrefined fuel.

In my opinion, the introduction of fuel purifiers requires changing the definition of the fuel grades as I outlined to preserve the rest of the setting:

Unrefined becomes raw fuel components, unusable and worthless. Basically water or any other first source. Free for the taking but needing an investment to be used as fuel.

Purified is the first step in that investment. You can buy it for Cr100/ton at any starport but it may cause breakdowns and misjumps. Even the smallest, poorest, backwater starports (Class C and D) can afford and install the small purifier units to provide it. Many ships even include purifiers aboard to do it themselves though this requires an investment in time to source the raw components.

Refined fuel is the ultimate step in the process and will insure worry free operation of your ship. You can buy it for Cr500/ton at the bigger, better, primary starports (Class A and B). Very few ships can afford it due to the size and expense.

...it really is that simple

 

[BFalcon]

Basically, I think that if 100Cr/ton is the standard price for unrefined, 150cr/ton is appropriate for refined, the producers make a profit, the starports get their cut, and trade contiues to flow swifly and cheaply, keeping the 3rd Imperium in business...

...except for the people making and selling fuel purifiers. You've just killed the market

Agreed... you need to make it worthwhile to keep those purifiers running in the starports, or they'll just not bother.

That's one of the issues you're overlooking.

And you won't be able to sell unrefined for Cr100/ton. Or anything for that matter. You'll have to give it away. Heck I'm not even sure you could sell refined for anything in a setting where purifiers are so cheap, small, and eliminate all the problems of running unrefined fuel.

In my opinion, the introduction of fuel purifiers requires changing the definition of the fuel grades as I outlined to preserve the rest of the setting:

Unrefined becomes raw fuel components, unusable and worthless. Basically water or any other first source. Free for the taking but needing an investment to be used as fuel.

Purified is the first step in that investment. You can buy it for Cr100/ton at any starport but it may cause breakdowns and misjumps. Even the smallest, poorest, backwater starports (Class C and D) can afford and install the small purifier units to provide it. Many ships even include purifiers aboard to do it themselves though this requires an investment in time to source the raw components.

Refined fuel is the ultimate step in the process and will insure worry free operation of your ship. You can buy it for Cr500/ton at the bigger, better, primary starports (Class A and B). Very few ships can afford it due to the size and expense.

...it really is that simple

I don't agree with your definitions, but mainly because I plan to make misjumps a bit more severe (potentially) so don't want to discourage players from using self-purified fuel. I think I'd sooner have all planet-side water sources need filtration rather than just submerge the ship, open the tanks and away you go, so you'd need to rough-field land (illegal on many planets, for various reasons) and set up pipes and a filtration unit.

In the rulebook, it does state that you do need to down the power plant to maintain it. This would preclude running the purifiers for a while (I'm thinking possibly days).

One comprimise might be for the SPA to ban unsupervised running of the power plant - ie no turning it on and then leaving the ship to go find a buyer - that would force the players to decide whether to leave the ships Cargo Master / Purser to find a buyer/seller and everyone else waits in the ship or to draw straws as to who gets to stay behind, or all spread out and just pay for the damned fuel...

I think you're right though - as long as you're paying the 500Cr per day, I don't think they'd be too worried about you refining the fuel there (unless the local SPA is getting a kickback from fuel sales - in which case you buy and leave - no refining inside or in the surrounding area...)

Where the loitering in system thing comes in, I'd say that the InSys (ie the System Navy) would probably ban all loitering inside 100d of any planet in the system without a good reason (their definition, not yours as a crewman) - outside that limit, you're the Imperial Navy's problem, so do as you want. Inside that limit, you pose a navigational risk (and you're looking at 2G ships that are in the capital ship range trying to change course at what is going to be a pretty short range at the speeds they're doing, don't forget).

As I said earlier, the gas giant purification is fine - either you pay for the fuel or you waste a week going to get your own. The way I'd stop planetary landings is simple - planetary government has banned all non-licensed extraction of water (if the system has a class A, B or C starport, then it's probably big enough to need all the water it can get for its population, for its industries or for the ecosystem on which their whole economy depends (depending on whether it's a Hi, Ind or Ag/Ga world). People tend to be a little picky about freeloaders and even more when it's their own livelyhood on the line. Those licenses would probably last a month and, depending on the class, would cost oh... I dunno... 1k per ton of fuel capacity and last a month?

Failure to pay the license means that if you get caught (pretty likely given the size of most starships) you'll be running from the governmental authorities and the System Navy...

In systems with Class D or E ports, they'd either be too poor to enforce such a system or so sparcely populated that they wouldn't care. Class C is a weird point - it could be that they have such a system, but not the means to enforce it (but might be monitoring fuel content on their customs checks, in which case, SPA-bought impure fuel might have an intentional harmless additive to identify it as such which is completely removed when purifying).

I still find it hard that planets would be perfectly happy with ships (potentially larger than some modern cities - even the smallest would be the size of a house) coming down and scooping up full fuel tanks of water and then removing both the hydrogen and the oxygen is consists of, completely from that planet... forever. Not without some kind of financial compensation, anyhow.

 

[rust]

I still have problems with the ecology argument, except where truly
arid planets are concerned. For a water world the loss of a few milli-
meters of ocean level in a thousand years is irrelevant, and agricul-
tural planets would be short term operations only - the organics they
export (grain, fruit, vegetables, meat, etc.) consist to 50 % to 80 %
of water, so each free trader cargo of 88 dtons of agricultural pro-
duce would remove between 44 dtons and 70 dtons of water from
the planet forever, at least twice the volume of the fuel tank. If 22
dtons of water per ship were a problem, double that volume per
cargo should at least lead to much higher prices for agricultural
goods.

 

[far-trader]

I agree, the ecology wouldn't be impacted in most settings. Ages ago I too was concerned for the loss of water from the oceans of a world by all the ships taking it away. Then I ran the numbers and figured the world would be long dead from other cataclysms before they'd even make a dent. I had wanted to stop the players from simply dipping and jumping for the adventure, but wanted a reason I could argue from the planet's perspective. Destroying the ecosystem sounded good, until I proved it wasn't possible.

If I recall correctly only the smallest worlds with the driest hydro numbers MIGHT have an issue IF they had a LOT of traffic. I may rerun the figures again for my curiosity but I think I didn't bother keeping them or making a rule because it was so rare an occurrence.

 

[Ishmael]

I don't think the global depletion of water is an issue, but locally there could be, especially if the water is pumped from an aquifer causing the water table to drop drastically. However, there are other related issues to refining fuel in this manner.

"Costs and Environmental Impact of Desalination
According to the non-profit Food & Water Watch, desalinated ocean water is the most expensive form of fresh water out there, given the infrastructure costs of collecting, distilling and distributing it. The group reports that, in the U.S., desalinated water costs at least five times as much to harvest as other sources of fresh water*. Similar high costs are a big hurdle to desalination efforts in poor countries as well, where limited funds are already stretched too thin.

On the environmental front, widespread desalination could take a heavy toll on ocean biodiversity. "Ocean water is filled with living creatures, and most of them are lost in the process of desalination," says Sylvia Earle, one of the world's foremost marine biologists and a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. “Most are microbial, but intake pipes to desalination plants also take up the larvae of a cross section of life in the sea, as well as some fairly large organisms…part of the hidden cost of doing business,” she says.

Earle also points out that the very salty residue left over from desalination must be disposed of properly, not just dumped back into the sea. Food & Water Watch concurs, warning that coastal areas already battered by urban and agricultural run-off can ill afford to absorb tons of concentrated saltwater sludge."

http://environment.about.com/od/biodiversityconservation/a/desalination.htm

naturally, I'm assuming that at least one step of making seawater into refined fuel is desalinization.

Here's another paper covering this, except the listed environmental benefits may not exist as the pure water output is used to make starship fuel and not for irrigation, etc.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CEUQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fciwr.ucsc.edu%2Fdesalplanning%2FFirstWorkshopSummary_web.pdf&ei=3wRXTp-nFYXl0QHbm4m2DA&usg=AFQjCNEe_zZapM7HmxxgTHiKUn-JaDQ8_g&sig2=76YktC4lwzma66hc46i2UA

Now consider worlds with low populations or corporate owned where industrial slash'n'burn tactics might be used to cut costs. On worlds where environmental impacts are regulated, costs go up.
Although the effects described above would be localized as opposed to being global, consider that such operations may have continued for decades or, in the OTU, even centuries, one might get areas damaged worse than the Werra and Weser rivers.

As far as adventure fodder goes, think "Chinatown" or every old western movie made where ranchers fight over water rights. How about industrial espionage? or exposing a cover-up concerning illegal dumping with politicians paid under-the-table to look the other way. The more money that is involved, the more dangerous it is for pc's who might disrupt the money's flow..


* here's an example of the 100cr going to 500cr, perhaps?

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

I think you mentioned something about not wanting to change things on your players in mid game. Quite understandable but I don't believe my suggested fuel grade definitions do that. Your sudden huge price change does, to my way of thinking at least. Won't the players suddenly wonder, "If refined fuel is so cheap why were we wasting all that time and space messing about with skimming and purifying? We could have been making more trips and trades with more room for cargo."

Unless your players have always had a ship with a purifier and never paid for refined fuel. Even then it could just be they've been lucky in avoiding breakdowns or misjumps but that could change anytime.

Thanks for the detailed answers, I like the idea of grades for fuel, and starting from scratch would have used that, my players have never had to buy purified fuel, have always used the processor on a free trader or a fat trader, typically land at starport and buy unrefined fuel, process it during the stop over (while carrying out other activities, trade etc), so the 500Cr for refined fuel has never been a problem, so it wouldn't make any difference if I declared that refined fuel was, e.g., 125Cr/ton. Frankly, being permanently strapped for cash :twisted: they would probably still buy unrefined!

Egil

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Basically, I think that if 100Cr/ton is the standard price for unrefined, 150cr/ton is appropriate for refined, the producers make a profit, the starports get their cut, and trade contiues to flow swifly and cheaply, keeping the 3rd Imperium in business...

...except for the people making and selling fuel purifiers. You've just killed the market

That's one of the issues you're overlooking.

And you won't be able to sell unrefined for Cr100/ton. Or anything for that matter. You'll have to give it away. Heck I'm not even sure you could sell refined for anything in a setting where purifiers are so cheap, small, and eliminate all the problems of running unrefined fuel.

In my opinion, the introduction of fuel purifiers requires changing the definition of the fuel grades as I outlined to preserve the rest of the setting:

No, the market for fuel processors is still there, the profits are considerably less, but are still worth having, even a 10% profit would still be 10Cr/ton, when you are selling millions of tons the money will still roll in. Unrefined might become unsalable (but, according to the rules power plants can use it without any penalty, so they might still be able to sell it in considerable amounts to insystem craft, again, small savings would be worth collecting, so cargo tugs etc would still create a market for unrefined).

Yes, I like your fuel grade ideas ,it is a shame they are not in the RAW!

Egil

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

One comprimise might be for the SPA to ban unsupervised running of the power plant - ie no turning it on and then leaving the ship to go find a buyer - that would force the players to decide whether to leave the ships Cargo Master / Purser to find a buyer/seller and everyone else waits in the ship or to draw straws as to who gets to stay behind, or all spread out and just pay for the damned fuel...

This is really not such a problem, it takes just over 26 hours to process the full tank of a free trader (saving 8800Cr each time you do it), while the engineer keeps an eye on this (and other tasks), everybody else is getting on with the ships admin etc, by lunchtime of the second day in port the crew set off to sample the local, patron stuffed, bars .....

(A fat trader takes over 2 days, we got round that by fitting two fuel processors (but, as we had got rid of the superflous displacement and cost of the launch, not a great inroad into cargo space or costs)

Egil

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

In systems with Class D or E ports, they'd either be too poor to enforce such a system or so sparcely populated that they wouldn't care. Class C is a weird point - it could be that they have such a system, but not the means to enforce it (but might be monitoring fuel content on their customs checks, in which case, SPA-bought impure fuel might have an intentional harmless additive to identify it as such which is completely removed when purifying).

I still find it hard that planets would be perfectly happy with ships (potentially larger than some modern cities - even the smallest would be the size of a house) coming down and scooping up full fuel tanks of water and then removing both the hydrogen and the oxygen is consists of, completely from that planet... forever. Not without some kind of financial compensation, anyhow.

I think we can rule out any planet with a working space force allowing anybody to dip in and pinch water, without paying for it, some planets pose real problems, e.g. Heroni in Rhylanor sector, no gas giant, a desert world with no (or next to no) water and a class E starport (no fuel). Hard to image the population selling dtons of water to passing space ships. All you can really do is hunt around for an ice ball to crack, and hope you find one before your fuel gives out!

Egil

 

[far-trader]

Thanks for the detailed answers...

You're welcome, thanks for the appreciation, I enjoy sharing and easily get carried away.

...I like the idea of grades for fuel, and starting from scratch would have used that...

I understand the difficulties in switching details mid-game. No worries, just throwing it out there, not trying to hard-sell you on it

Yeah, I've known players like that (heck I've been a player like that ). It can be fun for the ref tripping them up on their own frugality. I think it's part of why they do it :lol:

 

[GypsyComet]

I still have problems with the ecology argument, except where truly
arid planets are concerned.

The "ecology argument" has two components: real damage, and legislative "reality". In the face of a high law level world's desires to control traffic and extract money from passing ships, real ecological damage is unimportant. Its a charge you really don't want following you around, trumped up or not.

 

[DFW]

Crude oil per gallon is ~USD 2.00 Gasoline per gallon (sans tax) is ~USD 3.00

Oil takes MUCH more processing to obtain gasoline than does H2O to get H2...

 

[atpollard]

Oil takes MUCH more processing to obtain gasoline than does H2O to get H2...

Are you sure?
I know that it takes a lot of energy to crack water.
That's why it is currently cheaper to extract H2 from oil than water (making Hydrogen powered cars not yet truely 'Green' - one of those paradoxes that amuses me.)

[or did you just mean that refining oil was a more complex chemical process than cracking water?]

 

[GypsyComet]

You also get more than 55 gallons of final product out of a 55 gallon drum of crude oil. Hydrocarbon fractions are funny that way.

 

[far-trader]

Crude oil per gallon is ~USD 2.00 Gasoline per gallon (sans tax) is ~USD 3.00

In the US Just saying, higher and lower by degrees elsewhere, for both crude and gas, as well as gas varying by octane and etc.

Oil takes MUCH more processing to obtain gasoline than does H2O to get H2...

H2O to H2 should be practically free (processing side), energy being so cheap once you get Traveller's fusion going, but there are other factors that are not so easy to nail down.

The difficulty is Traveller's same price across charted space. It is another example of oversimplification for playability. No one should be making too many assumptions setting wise based on that Sure we can (and do) go on at length trying to make it make sense, we just have to not forget that it wasn't meant to

 

[DFW]

Are you sure?

Yep. What I mean is that it takes MANY more steps. It takes about 1/3 the energy to refine oil but, much more equipment, time & processes. Also, extracting oil is MUCH more expensive than extracting water (in most cases).

So, at most, under average conditions, the multiplyer should only be slightly higher than for oil/gasoline.

 

[DFW]

In the US Just saying, higher and lower by degrees elsewhere, for both crude and gas, as well as gas varying by octane and etc.

In the 1st world, any major difference is taxes. (My brother-in-law is in charge of all oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico and knows this area inside and out.)

 

[DFW]

You also get more than 55 gallons of final product out of a 55 gallon drum of crude oil. Hydrocarbon fractions are funny that way.

And, you get 1.6 times as much (volume) LHyd as the volume of H2O you start with.

 

[hdan]

Since berthing costs vary from port to port, I suppose it's not unreasonable to think that fuel costs would as well.

I suspect that "unrefined" fuel will always cost 100Cr per ton, just to pay for the storage and delivery. And of course a few extra Cr for the base administrator.

It might be fun to make refined fuel cost 1d6 * 100Cr per ton, possibly rolled every time you land (to simulate supply/demand - if you wait a few days, you can get another roll, this time modified by Admin or Bribery...) and with a -DM for every TL above 9 (so at TL-15, you never pay extra for refined fuel, and at TL-12 you top out at 300Cr) to simulate better access to cheap energy and refining equipment. (Of course you can't get lower than '1'...)

IMTU, if there is a C or better starport (or a D on high LL worlds), you *have* to get fuel from the port. Low tech or low population worlds can't effectively enforce the ban, but if you land at the port without empty tanks (and a good excuse, or at least a good bribe), you will be fined, and you won't be cleared for departure without enough fuel to at least make a J-1.

Some worlds make skimming explicitly legal, especially systems that either can't or don't want to be bothered to enforce their "mineral rights" or which want to encourage traders.

 

[DFW]

Some worlds make skimming explicitly legal, especially systems that either can't or don't want to be bothered to enforce their "mineral rights" or which want to encourage traders.

Sure but, I think we're trying to explain it within the 3I. The worlds can't really restrict in the 3I. That (GG's) is Imperial area. If I remember correctly.