Postage rates

skyth · #1 May 17th, 2009, 07:15 PM

Out of curiosity, is there any set rate to mail something to another system?

**aramis** · #2 May 17th, 2009, 07:17 PM

Yes. TTA and Supp 12 both have rates. I don't have them handy.

skyth · #3 May 17th, 2009, 07:46 PM

Sup 12 has a form, but no rates.

far-trader · #4 May 17th, 2009, 07:47 PM

There has of course always been (since LBB2) the expedient personal touch, contact a starship Captain and for Cr20-120 they will (the presumption being they are trusty) deliver your personal mail to the next stop. Or you might approach a crew member of a starship for a more secret (and possibly less trusty) delivery.

For extra interest, imagine sending your mail with a lowberth passenger bound for where you want. They'll be happy for a little extra coin. Or you might try another (high or mid) passenger.

Anyway, the X-Boat service rates aren't in Supp 12 (that I can see, I thought they were right on the form, but it's not in that version and I don't see it in the text either, maybe a later one?).

Found it in The Traveller Adventure.

"Xmail: Messages sent by xboat. Xmail carries information
only; material objects may not be sent. The message
is digitally coded; xmail costs Cr1O per 20 kilobits per
parsec. The message may be sent using a standard Anglic
character set (about Cr1O for a 500 word message) or a
picture may be reproduced in facsimile (Cr20 for a
200 x 200 bit matrix). The message is printed out at its
destination and delivered by a world's local mail system."

So, about Cr20 per page per parsec.

skyth · #5 May 17th, 2009, 08:17 PM

Thanks. I did find the info in TTA once I went looking for it.

**« Spinward Scout »** · #6 May 18th, 2009, 12:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by far-trader

Found it in The Traveller Adventure.

"Xmail: Messages sent by xboat. Xmail carries information
only; material objects may not be sent. The message
is digitally coded; xmail costs Cr1O per 20 kilobits per
parsec. The message may be sent using a standard Anglic
character set (about Cr1O for a 500 word message) or a
picture may be reproduced in facsimile (Cr20 for a
200 x 200 bit matrix). The message is printed out at its
destination and delivered by a world's local mail system."

So, about Cr20 per page per parsec.

I think we had this discussion before (but I can't seem to find it). Those X-Message rates would make the X-Boat service richer than any MegaCorp. Those rates were made back in the 70's when computers still filled a room (or several) and RAM or hard memory was expensive.

far-trader · #7 May 18th, 2009, 12:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spinward Scout

I think we had this discussion before (but I can't seem to find it). Those X-Message rates would make the X-Boat service richer than any MegaCorp. Those rates were made back in the 70's when computers still filled a room (or several) and RAM or hard memory was expensive.

Maybe on the TML?

Anyway, it doesn't matter how big or small the computer is, nor how cheap or expensive it is to build, the message price may be (is imo) still valid. We are talking about interstellar communication

(and it's totally made up like every other economic price). Though hunting it up I did go "hunh? per parsec rate?! fancy that!"

As far as the IISS being the POWER in the Imperium, well yeah, of course it is

**« Spinward Scout »** · #8 May 18th, 2009, 02:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by far-trader

Maybe on the TML?

Anyway, it doesn't matter how big or small the computer is, nor how cheap or expensive it is to build, the message price may be (is imo) still valid. We are talking about interstellar communication (and it's totally made up like every other economic price). Though hunting it up I did go "hunh? per parsec rate?! fancy that!"

As far as the IISS being the POWER in the Imperium, well yeah, of course it is

I've never been on the TML.

But,

Do you really think they'd be charging Cr10 per KILOBIT?!?

Computers are now rated in GigaBytes and I haven't heard the word KiloBit since the 80's. I just went looking for a kilobit to kilobyte converter - 1 gigabyte is 8,388,608 kilobits (divided by 20 kilobits per message/page = 419430.4 multiplied by Cr10 = 4,194,304 Credits per GigaByte). My home computer has an 80 GigaByte harddrive. By The Traveller Book standards, my home computer harddrive can make up to Cr335,544,320 (335 Million Credits) in a one-parsec trip. That's just one trip by one ship if it was using my home computer as a storage medium for X-Messages. Granted, the drive might not always be full (could hold 33,554,432 messages), but with High-Population worlds, it's possible it could be.

How many X-Boats are out there in the Imperium?

I don't think The Third Imperium would ever have a money/economic problem, tho. There wouldn't be a need for interstellar taxes.

At those rates, would any corporation bother with the X-Boat service? They'd make a killing bypassing the X-Boat system and starting their own message service at cut rates. Even cutting the price 90% (only charging 10% of the Imperial price) would be 33.5 Million Credits per parsec (still theoretically using my home computer harddrive). Why would anyone ever get into the interstellar cargo shipping business if they could just courier messages from one system to the next? They could pay off the ship in one run.

far-trader · #9 May 18th, 2009, 02:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spinward Scout

Computers are now rated in GigaBytes and I haven't heard the word KiloBit since the 80's.

Sure, but computer storage is funny that way. It doesn't matter how much they increase it they keep finding ways to fill it up. Does you GigaByte computer really do that much more than than the Kilobyte computers of years past?

It's just done flashier is all. Same for messages in the far future imo. So instead of some archaic telegram. Stop. With just words. Stop. You get a fully interactive hologram, or whatever. I never used the Kilobit rating, I just did it by pages. Text or graphic, or whatever, and it was all deeply encrypted and backed up in triplicate and stored holographically. The data capacity was never the issue. As today compared to then, the same info just fills the greater storage capacity

Compare it instead to secure shipping of sensitive documents. There's no way citizen Jayne Doe is routinely sending love notes to his sweetheart 5 sectors away via X-Boat like we exchange e-mails or snail mail here on Earth. It's more like Corp-X is sending contracts and such to it's branches a world or two distant. The only entities sending anything further are MegaCorps (and they typically have their own couriers) or silly PCs who left something important behind and only now realize they need it sent to them, after they misjumped a dozen parsecs

(sucks to be them

).

**aramis** · #10 May 18th, 2009, 04:36 AM

I simply left the costs per page at 500 words (presuming a major issue is entry fees, not memory), and the facsimile page at 75pixels per mm in 32bit color. (about 300dpi), and left the fees. The pix are far easier to handle, but the text input is typed in by hand, often while talkign to the customer. A ready data packet I cut to Cr2/parsec per 500 words.