Champa Interstellar Starport

[Timerover51]

I have been going through my hard copies of the JTAS, along with the online JTAS bundle from DriveThru. I re-read the article on Champa Starport, and then did some thinking. The planet of Champa has a UPP of A-6629B9-8, so population in the Billions, non-Charismatic Dictatorship, and a very high Law Level to go with that Dictatorship. The description in the article covers the surface port, not the presumed High Port. The same JTAS has an article on R and R which discusses startowns, which is referenced in the Champa article to see for more information. Edit Note: The JTAS magazine that contains the two articles is Number 7.

Its construction is fairly typical of starports throughout the empire, and a specific examination of it will serve to illustrate starports in general.

The area immediately outside the Imperial extrality fence is called startown on most planets because it is devoted almost entirely to satisfying the baser urges of starship crewmembers. Like the waterfronts of seaport towns in earlier years, startown is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, considered to be the worst area of the starport district. Startown is dealt with in more detail elsewhere in this issue {see R&R by T. R. Mcinnes, page 34). Casual visitors and the faint of heart are urged to stay out of startown.

The starport shows 11 landing pads for ships, 3 landing pads for Scouts (there is a Scout Base present), and 2 building pads for Ling-Standard Products for small craft. Ling has an orbital construction facility at the High Port, and the article states that ships larger than 400 tons, i.e. Subsidized Merchants, rarely land on the surface.

As the R&R article is referenced, the following is stated with respect to Startown.

Startown is sleazy and rundown; it's considered to be the worst district of the spaceport city. Cheap taverns, brothels, hotels and gambling halls abound, wedged in among warehouses, the local ship's crew hiring hall, cargo brokers' offices, ship suppliers, passenger agents' offices, and the central cargo exchange. The city police usually maintain a large station in startown.

What struck me in re-reading that description and the shorter one in the article on the Champa Starport, was the disparity between those descriptions and the likely number of ships crew that would be on the ground at any time.

If you assume that all of the surface berths are occupied by "Fat Trader" ships, your maximum number of crew on the surface, allowing for 2 gunners per ship in addition to standard crew of 5, is 77. Three Scouts on the ground would add between 3 and 12, if they are retired Scouts carrying additional persons. Ling Standard has it own facility, and the workers would be planet, or at least Starport, residents. That would make about 89 or so crew member for debauch. Or would it? The trader captain is going to be spending time selling or arranging delivery of existing cargo and locating passengers and more cargo. The engineer is going to be doing routine maintenance on his drives and power plant for part of the time. The steward is going to be working on replacing consumed supplies, monitoring life support refreshment (possibly along with the engineer), while the medic might be sort of available, but he/she does not seem like a person apt to go wild on a planet. Even if he/she does, that leaves about 40 to 50 people (ship navigator, medic, two gunners, and maybe a couple more), to support that den of iniquity called Startown. Even if the whole crew goes wild, 90 people can only support so much business. Plus, they have been at another port a week earlier, which means that money to spend might be limited, especially if they are on shares. Ah, but there are the shuttle crews, you say. Problem with that is that they are SHUTTLE crews, which means that they live on the planet, maybe even have families. Why should they pay much attention to Startown?

When crews of sailing ships hit port, they might have been out for several months, or in the case of whaling ships, a year or more. Plus, a couple of whaling ships or large sailing ships might have the same number of crew as the crews of all of the star ships. A large naval sailing ship would have crew numbering in the hundreds, or in the case of a ship-of-the-line, nearly a thousand. There, you would have the numbers to make for a "Barbary Coast" environment. If you have a major naval base or military base, then you might also get the needed numbers and payroll.

Without something like that, the Startown as described just does not add up for the average starport, which Champa Interstellar Starport is described as being.

 

[rancke]

The problem is the underlying assumption that a world with 8 billion inhabitants has so few interstellar visitors that it can make do with 11 landing pads in the downport. Though I suppose 11 pads just might be enough for the shuttles bringing down crew and passengers from the hundreds of big ships berthing in the upport. No setting down on the surface¹ for free traders and no staying in one of those 11 pads for six days for any fee, by gum!

¹ Not in Champa Interstellar Downport, that is. I would assume the existence of auxiliary downports for commercial ships.​

Hans

 

[Rabbit 3]

In this case perhaps the real revenue generator is workers from the LSP orbital facility on some `downtime` (think modern oilrig crews) plus crew or passengers from bigger ships docked to the orbital facility.
Free trader and scout crews are just `small change` by comparison.

 

[Hyphen]

The problem is the underlying assumption that a world with 8 billion inhabitants has so few interstellar visitors that it can make do with 11 landing pads in the downport.

Exactly! Even using Leroy's number-crunching*, the world should have two starports, one A and one B. The A-class has from 18 to 63 ships at any one time, with the B having 16 to 48 at any one time.

And this article was for a small ship universe.**

If you change your assumptions and allow 20kT-plus cargo vessels (in orbit, with crews shuttling down on furlough), the crew numbers will become a lot larger too.

As for bays, the article suggests that Terra's class-A 'port at Phoenix has 70 bays, so I suggest that Champa should have anywhere from 20 to 60 bays, depending on how busy you think it is (with more at the class-B).

So the canonical map is perhaps a little small. Maybe you could tell your players it shows one of the six "nodes" of the overall 'port...?

EDIT: OK, so I had another look at the text. The landing pads are 250 metres across, surrounded by hangers. This means they are more than large enough to land multiple small ships per pad. (Going purely from memory of my own Tavonni Down, ISTR that I designated this size as a 3000-ton pad. Or thereabouts.) So quadrupling the "pads" you can see straight away that the place can probably land at least 40 sub-1000t ships. That, at least, is a better fit with the "Port" article.

Does that help?


(*)"From Port to Jump-point", JTAS#22, pp 24-30.
(**) I know he mentions High Guard and Fighting Ships, but read through his description of the encounter tables he made up. The majority were small ships - adventurer-scale, in other words.

P.S. "Champa Interstellar Starport" and"R & R" are in JTAS 7, not 16.

 

[Timerover51]

Exactly! Even using Leroy's number-crunching*, the world should have two starports, one A and one B. The A-class has from 18 to 63 ships at any one time, with the B having 16 to 48 at any one time.

And this article was for a small ship universe.**

I analyzed it based on a small ship universe. Boosting the numbers by 5 really does not add that much more money to support the classic Startown. Think in terms of numbers of men times credits spent per man.

If you change your assumptions and allow 20kT-plus cargo vessels (in orbit, with crews shuttling down on furlough), the crew numbers will become a lot larger too.

As for bays, the article suggests that Terra's class-A 'port at Phoenix has 70 bays, so I suggest that Champa should have anywhere from 20 to 60 bays, depending on how busy you think it is (with more at the class-B).

1. Where in the Champa article does in mention Terra or Phoenix?
2. Why are crews going to land on furlough? They have less than one week, and limited cash for shuttle service. And they may be a bit busy with their own ship.

So the canonical map is perhaps a little small. Maybe you could tell your players it shows one of the six "nodes" of the overall 'port...?

EDIT: OK, so I had another look at the text. The landing pads are 250 metres across, surrounded by hangers. This means they are more than large enough to land multiple small ships per pad. (Going purely from memory of my own Tavonni Down, ISTR that I designated this size as a 3000-ton pad. Or thereabouts.) So quadrupling the "pads" you can see straight away that the place can probably land at least 40 sub-1000t ships. That, at least, is a better fit with the "Port" article.

Does that help?

(*)"From Port to Jump-point", JTAS#22, pp 24-30.
(**) I know he mentions High Guard and Fighting Ships, but read through his description of the encounter tables he made up. The majority were small ships - adventurer-scale, in other words.

Again, going from 11 ships to 40+ ships does not help that much. How many

Cheap taverns, brothels, hotels and gambling halls

are 200 crewpersons a week going to support?

P.S. "Champa Interstellar Starport" and"R & R" are in JTAS 7, not 16.

Thanks for the correction, I was looking at JTAS 16 for something else, and listed the wrong one. I made the correction in the original post.

 

[Reban]

Landing Pads

Understanding the function and use of landing pads is important.

First of all a landing pad is a point to aim for when coming in to land. That may sound obvious but its worth stating to understand that an area designated as a landing pad will be capable of taking the weight of a ship (the article notes they are constructed of reinforced concrete with equivalent materials used on other worlds). A landing pad will also be a clear area, free of obstructions both on, over and around the pad. Ground traffic crossing the pad will be controlled. Likewise a landing pad will be placed in an area, or engineered in such a way that landing and lifting ships do not endanger the bulk of the starport (for example a pad should be at a distance where an exploding starship will do the least harm to building or other ships. If propulsion methods create "wash" or noise pads may have abatement measures).

While a pad may be used for parking, its not the primary purpose. In the article each pad is surrounded by dispersal bays for ships up to 400dtons.

It may be useful to think about the way a modern airport is divided into runway and apron. Runways, and helipads, are the areas designated for touchdown and take-off, and are specially reinforced to take repeated and high tempo touch downs. The apron is the paved space available for parking, operations such as loading, maintenance, and movement. Its worth nothing you can park on an inactive runway and land or take-off from the apron and taxiways.

Even if a helicopter takes-off on the apron of an airport it will usually hover taxi to the active runway and climb away along the axis of the runway so that it is safely in the traffic pattern.

The short version of what I'm saying is, the landpad may be the designated area that a ship lands and lifts from but it doesn't have to stay there for the duration of its stay.

 

[rancke]

I analyzed it based on a small ship universe. Boosting the numbers by 5 really does not add that much more money to support the classic Startown. Think in terms of numbers of men times credits spent per man.

Traveller writers were not always burdened with a sense of proportion. Or possibly a belief that anyone would care. They obviously wanted big bustling starports and opportunities for PC-run ships to make a difference and they didn't see the built-in contradiction in that.


Hans

 

[Reban]

Startown

Again, going from 11 ships to 40+ ships does not help that much. How many

Cheap taverns, brothels, hotels and gambling halls

are 200 crewpersons a week going to support?

Why assume Startown exists solely for the benefit of ships crews and passengers?

There are also the Starport employees. Startown will also attract members of the planetary population. Startown is where the wider universe seeps into the planetary society.

Those taverns will have exotic foreign liquors and entertainments, the brothels will unfortunately always have "new girls" (or possibly new sophonts and new bots). Gambling Halls will have the latest games or passing whales to attract local gamblers.

What if every 1 Traveller in Startown drew 10 Locals?

Also IMTU a world's higher tech industries locate around Startown because they import and export via the Starport. The workforce there frequent Startown as well.

 

[aramis]

200 crew a week? Hmmm let's think Seward, Dutch, or Talkeetna levels.

Hotels... could be as few as 8 rooms each, or upwards of 100. Many will have 3-5 x the capacity as what they routinely have occupied.
Unlike current naval & merchant crews, shore leaves are likely to not sleep aboard ship.

if we break that 200/week down to 28/day arriving, and typically on a 3 day pass, we need at least 84 beds. So I'd expect 250 to 400 hotel beds.

I know a particular lodge of 8 rooms that runs with 5 staff, including the restaurant: 1 owner/gift shop attendant/front desk, 1 cook, 1 waitress, 1 housekeeper, one grounds/physical plant. It is a great place to retreat to... but ain't cheap. (Mountain Mary's Denali View Lodge.) I know a 16 bed motel in Bird Creek that, as a motel, has two staff. And the owner could support more rooms if he had demand (know him from church), but he simply doesn't have the demand; he wished he did so he could have run it with 4 staff, and have time off.

Dutch Harbour has at least two hotels... The Grand Aleutian (100 room, passable but very expensive beds), Harbor iew Inn (Unisea Inn is the same place - 42 crappy but expensive beds), and a 23 room B&B (Royal Dutch Inn). Just before crabbing season, most of those rooms will be rented out , but there are usually a couple rooms left at the Unisea. Crewmen often get doules, and hopefuls often stupidly get singles... so local pop absorbs typically 300 people for a week. Then they make do between runs with the occasional tourist, the crewmen too lazy to go home, and the occasional local tossed out by the SO or parents.

Seward has a whopping 124 hotels... most of which are under 20 beds, let alone 20 rooms. Lots of quaint Mom & Pop motels, 8-10 rooms, 1-2 part time employees. But it also has a major hotel - which closes outside tourist season - in downtown. (The local SCA group got them to open up for Winter Coronet once... literally had the whole place to themselves, and the owner took a HUGE writeoff).

So, depending upon the nature of the hotels... 200 people a week could be as few as 90 beds in a single hotel, or 300 beds in a bunch of quaint 8-25 bed, 5-15 room, mom & pop minihotels. Or it could even be a collection of barracks style hostels, or even coffin-lodgings.

Locally, most hotels run 25% of capacity half the year, 50% for a quarter, and 90% for about a quarter. This implies that they can readily survive an average occupancy rate of 45%-50%.

Also, much of the occupancy will be singles in double rooms... so let's tack on a few percent (20%) as a conservative guess... so our 200 a week shuld be able t support rooms for about 440 people. If we use the average stay being "half a week", we get about 220 beds; if we presume 5 days, much closer to 400 beds.

As for brothels - don't as questions you don't want answers to.
But, since you asked -

Spoiler:

depending upon the local legality, local moral system, and client base typical morality, local value of the mode of pay, plus whether shipboard liaisons are permitted, could be anywhere from a couple individuals to easily 20+ (If a single client can feed the family for a month, you're likely to see lot of part timers; if it puts food on the table for the day, a few desperate souls; filling the belly for the next meal, not likely unless they can run in volume, at which point, it's likely one or two pros in the employ of a hotel, possibly under the table). Lots of variables, but I could easily see between 0 and 2 brothels, and a handful of independents. Given a high law level, it's likely that prostitution is either state run (possibly criminal indentures), or outlawed. In a low law level, it's likely to be casual independant gals, some of whom have deals with hosteliers.

At TL12+, robotic is possible; and even if prostitution is itself unlawful, robotic "simulation" is less likely to be so. Or, at least, that's a recurrent trope of sci-fi. And if it is legal, expect many hotels to have one or two, just in case.

 

[Hyphen]

1. Where in the Champa article does in mention Terra or Phoenix?

Sorry, when I said "the article" I meant the "Port" article, not the Champa one.

BTW, I've now gone back and looked at my Tavonni Down map, and realised I designated the 150m landing pads as 3000-ton. The 250m diameter pads are large enough to land a 6000-ton ship.

This came from having a stab at figuring the dimensions of a large ship. After all, my underground fuel tanks are only 86m across but hold 25,000 displacement tons of LHyd. (Each. You need 20 of these to hold 500,000 tons of fuel, to match the Fifth Frontier War refuelling rules.)

Even a Tigress is only 300m across...

(My extrapolation has always been that anything much larger than about 6000 tons will require a special cradle, or else land in water so it is supported evenly. Sometimes craft don't even need to be that big to need cradles, like the Tukera long-liner. My rule-of thumb has been that the largest craft that will land in general practice is 20ktons. Larger craft can enter atmosphere and approach the planet (hey, they skim gas giants, so why not) but would not - emergencies aside - attempt a landing. I can't remember what conclusion CotI finally reached on this point - Hans?)

 

[rancke]

Exactly! Even using Leroy's number-crunching*, the world should have two starports, one A and one B. The A-class has from 18 to 63 ships at any one time, with the B having 16 to 48 at any one time.

Leroy's number-crunching struck me as grossly inadequate back than and I haven't felt any reason to revise that opinion since.

And this article was for a small ship universe.**

That affects the size of the ships carrying goods and passengers between worlds, but it does not affect the amount of goods and passengers being carried. No mega-freighters and mega-liners just means more freighters and liners of lesser size.

If you change your assumptions and allow 20kT-plus cargo vessels (in orbit, with crews shuttling down on furlough), the crew numbers will become a lot larger too.

Yes, I think that's the way to go.

EDIT: OK, so I had another look at the text. The landing pads are 250 metres across, surrounded by hangers. This means they are more than large enough to land multiple small ships per pad. (Going purely from memory of my own Tavonni Down, ISTR that I designated this size as a 3000-ton pad. Or thereabouts.) So quadrupling the "pads" you can see straight away that the place can probably land at least 40 sub-1000t ships. That, at least, is a better fit with the "Port" article.

The article mentions 400T ships as the usual maximum size. How many of that size could safely use a 250 meter pad?

Also, how long would a shuttle occupy a landing spot? If, say, it takes four hours from approach to safely gone and ready for the next one, each landing spot could service six shuttleloads of passengers per day.


Hans

 

[aramis]

Actually, Hans, many Small Ship universe advocates do not buy the massive flows of GTFT calculations, especially for high tech high pop near garden worlds.

The SSU must ship less, because the cost of shipping is higher per unit, and thwt higher. ost makes shipping inexpensive items even less profitable.

 

[rancke]

Actually, Hans, many Small Ship universe advocates do not buy the massive flows of GTFT calculations, especially for high tech high pop near garden worlds.

I'm quite aware of that, but I don't buy the paucity of interstellar traffic that many Small Universe advocates advocate.

The SSU must ship less, because the cost of shipping is higher per unit, and that higher cost makes shipping inexpensive items even less profitable.

Less perhaps, but not enough less to make the volumes implied by some of CT canon plausible. (Other parts of CT canon, even SSU canon, like the descriptions of bustling starports, implies quite different and much higher volumes).

This really is a dichotomy. You can have bustling starports or you can have low interstellar traffic volumes; you cannot have both.


Hans

 

[Neroon]

The article mentions 400T ships as the usual maximum size. How many of that size could safely use a 250 meter pad?

Hans

If you base the dimensions on the recommendations for helicopters the Final Approach and Take Off (FATO) area needs to be 1.5 times the length of the longest dimension of the largest ship it will be used for. Assuming that is 400T Subsidized Merchant the FATO would need to be 46.5*1.5= 69.75 m (lets call it 70 m).

The FATO needs to be surrounded by a safety area. For day time, good visibility operations that is 0.25 times the FATO with a minimum of 3 m (17.5 m for a Subsidized Merchant). For all weather and night time landings it needs to be a minimum of 60 m longitudinally and 45 m laterally. Since Champa is Class A it's probably going to be the latter so ships are going to need an area 130 m long and 115 m wide to land in. By my calculations that means two ships at a time.

(I think that if you made the landing pads square instead of round you could squeeze in an extra ship).

Of course this all assumes that there is no run off area for aborted take offs and bad landings attached to the FATO. If there is (and a commercial port probably does have them) then it will extend even further along the length and a circular pad may only be able to handle one ship at a time. A square pad could do two.

Edit: Actually, on reflection, Far Traders are actually longer than Subsidized Merchants (49.3 m) so I would guess that the FATO would be set up with 50 m ships in mind. That means it's a 75 m FATO rather than 70 m so with safety area it's going to be a 135 m x 120 m operational area for each ship. That would also allow it to service 400T SDBs and 300T Close Escorts if required.

 

[Hyphen]

Leroy's number-crunching struck me as grossly inadequate back than and I haven't felt any reason to revise that opinion since.

Heh. Agreed. I've always thought of it as the minimum.

Certainly it is the minimum in a near-canonical source. Loren always said JTAS articles were variants, unless marked otherwise (OTOH, it was never contradicted or over-written in CT canon).

But we had very few other touchstones.

Fifty Starbases had a few references to starport working craft; nothing really about the total size of starship facilities.

GT: Far Trader and GT: Starports certainly didn't exist.

So you end up piecing together some scraps, and guessing the rest. ;-)

 

[Rabbit 3]

My extrapolation has always been that anything much larger than about 6000 tons will require a special cradle, or else land in water so it is supported evenly. Sometimes craft don't even need to be that big to need cradles, like the Tukera long-liner.

From what I recall most write ups of the bigger ships assume that the Tukera ship is more or less typical of a ship of that tonnage.
So by that thinking pretty much anything over 1000 Dt`s requires a special cradle or more likely docks at the orbital station if present, lands in the sea or uses smaller subcraft to reach the surface.

This dosn`t seem to me to be much of a problem at the higher TL`s where contra-grav vehicles are common and orbital space is easily accessable, about as simple as jumping in a taxi in fact.
And with bigger ships, landing in the sea might actually make a good deal of sense on lower tech worlds as if they land at a seaport they can use the same facilities as ocean going vessels.
Of course to do that you need a planet with an ocean!


In any case I`ve always felt that with type A starports the main facilities are located in the orbital station.
Whats on the ground is more support facilities for the main work going on in orbit and not really the primary port.

 

[Timerover51]

From what I recall most write ups of the bigger ships assume that the Tukera ship is more or less typical of a ship of that tonnage.

So by that thinking pretty much anything over 1000 Dt`s requires a special cradle or more likely docks at the orbital station if present, lands in the sea or uses smaller subcraft to reach the surface.

This dosn`t seem to me to be much of a problem at the higher TL`s where contra-grav vehicles are common and orbital space is easily accessable, about as simple as jumping in a taxi in fact.
And with bigger ships, landing in the sea might actually make a good deal of sense on lower tech worlds as if they land at a seaport they can use the same facilities as ocean going vessels.
Of course to do that you need a planet with an ocean!

Based on the analogy with wet ocean shipping, anything much over 1000 dTons is going to need a special cradle customized for the specific ship in the same way that a ship in dry dock needs a special cradle. Which is one reason why dry docking is expensive, and why I have higher landing fees than given in the books in MTU.

In any case I`ve always felt that with type A starports the main facilities are located in the orbital station.
Whats on the ground is more support facilities for the main work going on in orbit and not really the primary port.

That would make the Champa Starport a much more understandable set up than assuming it is the primary port. Or, as it is on an island, having the larger ships, that are streamlined, land in the ocean.