Class A and Class B starports

[rancke]

What's the difference between a Class A and a Class B starport?

The throws for presence of Scout and Navy bases differ, but those are game mechanics, not definitions. What the Scouts apparently figure is worth a whole separate class boils down to one single question: Whether the shipyards are capable of building both starships and non-starships or just non-starships.

The jump down to Class C is considerably broader: No yards, no maintenance, no refined fuel available.

Meanwhile, we get starports with boatyards in systems that apparently have few or no customers for their products. Either the local tech level is too low for space travel or the population is so low you wouldn't expect the amount of spaceboats in use to be able to support a boatyard.

As an example, take a look at the Zyra Cluster (Which is what I was doing when these thoughts occurred to me):

Hex	World		UWP		Bases	PBG
0303	Edenelt		A4638BD-B	X	934
0305	Conway          D894586-7	S	311
0402	Leander         E695244-5		801
0403	Pepernium	D567530-3		503
0404	Traltha		B790630-6		410
0503	Raydrad         E99367A-6		303
0504	Zyra		B555448-7		301
0505	Murchison	B544433-6	N	305
0506	Hammermium	A5525AB-B	X	535
0602	Katarulu	B252665-B	X,N,W	201
0605	Prilissa	B985588-6		510

Traltha has a population of 4 million and a tech level of 6. That might be enough to support a bit of space-based exploitation (After all, a world with a diameter of 7,000 miles isn't going to have enough exploitable resources to occupy the energies of that many people, right?), but any outsider who goes to Traltha to buy a ship's boat is going to be mighty dissappointed. Zyra has 30,000 people living on a T-prime world and a TL of 7. How much space traffic is that system going to have? Or Murchison or Prilissa? Besides, I do wonder if the Scouts are really going to award a Class B rating on the strength of a yard that builds TL6 spacecraft.

Katarulu is the only one of the five that might not require some explanation. At least it has an adequate TL and the Navy for a customer. (In a way, a Class A starport on a world with a lowish population is easier to explain (sort of, anyway). at least its products can jump away on their own ).

Be that as it may, I'd like to propose that Class B starports be redefined to mean that refine fuel and maintenance is available, but no shipbuilding. That way you get:

                 Class A    Class B    Class C    Class D    Class E
Shipbuilding        x          -          -          -          -
Maintenance         x          x          -          -          -
Refined fuel        x          x          -          -          -
Repairs             x          x          x          -          -
Unrefined fuel      x          x          x          x          -

Rather neat, eh?

The difference between starship yards and boatyards would become solely a matter of the local TL and the presense of customers. A yard would build boats if there was any local space traffic, otherwise not. A yard in a system with a tech level below stellar would require an explanation why the system was importing starship parts and assembling them, or have its starport downgraded; contrariwise a starport with stellar technology and a high population would require an explanation why it wasn't building at least spaceboats, but that's a little easier to explain.


Hans

 

[Icosahedron]

It's not a canon answer, but IMTU, Class A have highports, Class B have orbiting shipyards and possibly a scheduled shuttle service to a transit station, and Class C have Downports and a chartered shuttle service.

 

[FreeTrav]

Another possible interpretation might be Extending the UWP: Starports at Freelance Traveller.

 

[atpollard]

If one were to tweak the official list, I would suggest the following:

 [FONT="Verdana"]
                             Class A   Class B   Class C   Class D   Class E
Build Starships              x           -           -           -           -
Build Non-Starships        x           x           -           -           -
Build Small Craft            x           x           x           -           -
Refined fuel                  x           x           x           x           -
Unrefined fuel               x           x           x           x           x[/FONT]

With the note that ANY starport of A, B or C can perform annual maintainence on any ship. My local mechanic cannot build either a Honda Civic or a Top Fuel Dragster, but he can order parts and repair either - why should his 23rd century counterpart be so much less capable.

Note that unrefined fuel is water, ice, methane, etc. Venus, Mars, the Moon and most asteroids already have unrefined fuel even without a human settlement. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. People building even just a cleared landing pad without a fuel source nearby is just plain silly. What do the residents do for fuel and water?

 

[aramis]

Arthur:
Using the naval model... a wet ship going in for it's 3yr or 5 year maintenance has to go drydock... in part for the cranes, in part for the chocks that allow checking the hullbottom, in part for the delivery schedule of parts, and in part for the staffing availability of skilled teams.

On to space ships...
Most A ports probably have a 10KTd air-bay for maintenance if they have pop 7+, with tethers, feeds, and tool arms. They literally open all the "No user serviceable parts inside" cabinets, pop the drives out for a check, etc.

For comparison: A fuel station next to a MIdas is an A-port, next to a Quick-lube a B port, and by itself is a C-port. A D-port is a Shed with barrels of unleaded and a hand pump, and an E-port is your driveway. An X is the front lawn.

 

[Gadrin]

Sometimes the logic of the game escapes me when it goes into
so much definition yet yields nothing logical.

A = really big place, lots of stuff
B = big place not as much stuff
C = decent place, less stuff
D = leftovers, hope you brought your own or can rough it
...

and for Law Levels the same thing rather than trying to define
the exact weapons you can use, it's more of a gradual curve

Extreme = No weapons, nada, don't think about it
Middling = weapons are around, but doesn't mean violence is common
None = weapons and combat isn't unusual

I'm still trying to figure out why Traveller gives us outdated or useless
ships:

Azhanti High Lightning -- get the complete deckplans for something that's
largely a do-do !!! Same with the Kinunir.

Or the FASA Zhodani ships that are failed designs. Great. Wow. Now I'm
inspired!

I guess it's so it'll end up in the hands of credit-poor players ? We're the
people that designed this game, but couldn't give you anything worthwhile ???

Toss that logic out the airlock and use them for campaigns.

>

 

[coliver988]

along the lines of expanding the starport stuff out, I tried several things (and as always, version 1 was far too complicated to be, say, useful). Then I found this over at the Freelance Traveller site: http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/rules/expuwp/starports.html which does some nice expansion. If I ever get back to my Traveller software (durn RL) I'll be revamping the starport stuff to match that code: it is succinct and covers game-applicable rules expansion.

 

[Jame]

                 Class A    Class B    Class C    Class D    Class E
Shipbuilding        x          x          -          -          -
Maintenance         x          x          x          x          x
Refined fuel        x          x          x          -          -
Repairs             x          x          x          x          -
Unrefined fuel      x          x          x          x          x

Here's my take on it - extend it a bit the other way, so that all ports that aren't actually X have a bit of port to them, but it goes down by what they do - or actually don't.

I would also include this:
Highport: Class A, Class B, Class C
Orbital Parking Section*: C, D, E; those A and B without highport
Parking Berth: A, B, C, D, E
Passenger Terminal: A, B, C, D
Warehouse: A, B, C, D, E
Startown: A, B, C, D
Port Control: A, B, C, D, E
Duty Small Craft: A, B, C, D
System Defense Boats of 200 tons+: A, B, C; D on a rich world
SD Craft 50 - 100 tons: C, D; low population B-port worlds
SDC 10-50 tons: C, D, E

*Orbital parking section is pretty much a place for ships to park where they aren't in the highport. A class A or B port with a highport will very likely require vessels to park there unless their berths are full.

Utility/duty small craft are shuttles, mod cutters, and so forth that are on duty to go to orbit, dock with starships and perform maintenance/fueling/cargo transfer and etc. System defence craft include revenue cutters.

Yes, this gives more to E ports than Canon! would allow, but I rather like the idea of extending the abilities of ports further for lower-quality ports. Give them at least a bit of traffic, especially for in-system craft.

 

[epicenter00]

Arthur:
Using the naval model... a wet ship going in for it's 3yr or 5 year maintenance has to go drydock... in part for the cranes, in part for the chocks that allow checking the hullbottom, in part for the delivery schedule of parts, and in part for the staffing availability of skilled teams.

That's true - as far as I goes, I think.

I've found that Traveller often flits between going from the Age of Sail model, in which your model is correct, and treating starships more like cars and starports more like gas stations.

When you go to the gas station model (which admittedly can be a little wonky in its own right) you can get some pretty interesting results.

                 Class A    Class B    Class C    Class D    Class E
Shipbuilding        x          ?          -          -          -
Maintenance         x          x          ?          -          -
Repairs             x          x          x          ?          -
Refined fuel        x          x          x          x          x
Unrefined fuel      x          x          x          x          x

Shamelessly stealing rancke's formatting shows what I think.

As these facilities show TAS designations, they probably are rated according to places that meet their qualifications. 'x' means it satisfies the requirements of starship's needs. '?' means that the starport often advertises having such a facilities available but the rating isn't always reliable and the buyer should be aware. '-' means that even if the place advertises having such a service, you shouldn't take it seriously.

Shipbuilding, I've always thought, implies the presence of a native shipyard or the technology to fabricate ships quickly should they wish to (even if they don't make ships regularly).

Maintenance represents the presence of skilled and certified technicians and enough business to justify the presence of an inspector who look over your ship and certify it.

Repairs is just that, the presence of technicians and parts to do anything short of a major rebuild of a ship. In the case of severe battle damage, they may be able to jury-rig your ship well enough so that you can fly it to a "real" starport to get it working again.

Refined Fuel, I pretty much expect that refined fuel is the sign of a starport (the gas station idea). A starport without refined fuel for sale is pointless. Only an X-class starport would have no refined fuel.

Unrefined Fuel, as above, except even more common.

So with that in mind...

A Class "A" starport in my mind has the native industrial tools and ready facilities to manufacture starships on request, even if they don't normally make many ships. For instance, most shipyards are going to have massive slips, armies of skilled shipbuilders, and so on. But a high stellar world might simply have a large number of robots, tanks of nanotech goo, and advanced computer software ("you wish to leave our world? Why? Nono...that was impolite of me. Of course, we can make a 'starship' for you. Jump-6 will be good enough, yes? We have designs you can choose from, here this one that looks like a silvery dragonfl...a 'beowulf'? I...yes, we have the design...it'll be ready in six hours"). This means that they'll either have warehouses of spare parts (or simply plenty of CAD/CAM designs or computers advanced enough to figure out what even broken parts once were using logic) so you can be sure your maintenance will always take the minimum time - you don't have to worry them not having the parts.

A Class "B" starport cannot build starships. That doesn't mean they can't assemble them - perhaps the world has no native industries to churn out ship parts, but if it's brought over to them, they could assemble the "kit." They might be able to build a ship for you in such a case, but it's not reliable at all - they might not have any technicians or space for it either. Buyer beware. Likewise, they can do maintenance, but they might run short of parts or have particularly uncommon gear brought in from somewhere else, causing delays on occasion.

A Class "C" starport simply isn't large enough to warrant the presence of a ship inspector's office. They have enough parts and to do maintenance on common ship models and can do it on rare ships if you bring your own parts. It's not reliable though, and you'll still have to fly to a A or B starport to get it certified. They have enough parts and technical know-how to repair a ship though against most damage, and enough to jury-rig all but the most severely damaged ships so they can fly to an A or B starport for better repairs.

A Class "D" starport is similar to a Class C but the TAS inspector feels that the facility is lacking something - perhaps it lacks spare parts, skilled technicians, or proper working facilities ("oh the grav slip is sort on the blink so we use duct-tape to hold the ship up to help the slip when the power gets fuzzy!"). Perhaps the "garage" just hasn't been used in years after the last tech retired or left.

A Class "E" starport is like a backwater starport. They claim to be a starport by having refined fuel. They might even advertise a garage, but the TAS doesn't buy it - it's not even a "?". They do have fuel to sell at least, but it's best if you inspect the purity of the fuel first, and don't be surprised if they try and gouge you.

 

[Brian Smaller]

Perhaps you could have a look at Gurps:Traveller Starports. It has a lot of really good stuff on Starports and is one of the better books for the GT line, in my opinion.

 

[Easterner9504]

Ports

The base problem is TRAVELLER was designed by army background designers not naval. In reality many shipbuilding facilities are away from Class A seaports.

WW2 era shipbuilding (is much reduced now and greatly outsourced)

Germany: Shipbuilding at Wilhelmshaven, Bremen and Kiel, greatest port in Germany- Hamburg

UK- shipbuilding centered around Tyne River in Scotland. Greatest ports: Liverpool & London

Russ: Baltic- Lenningrad
Black Sea- Nikolayev (Middle of nowhere)
Greatest ports: Lenningrad & Odessa

France: Brest, Lorient, St Nazaire: Greatest ports Marseilles & Bordeaux

East US: NY & Philadelphia, Quincy Ma, Kearney NJ, Newport News & Norfolk Va. Greatest ports: NY, Phily, Boston, Savannah.

West US: Seattle, Vancouver, Tacoma. Greatest ports San Diego, LA, San Fran, Seattle

Other Class A: Pearl Harbor, Truk, Singapore, Malta, Gibraltar all with 0 building facilities but full repair, the effort to build there not worth effort to ship resources. Truk was local TL 0 others barely at 5 except Pearl that maintained 6 with high dollar imports. (Still true today for 8)

 

[abomination]

UK- shipbuilding centered around Tyne River in Scotland. Greatest ports: Liverpool & London

[pedant]
er... the Tyne isn't in Scotland it's in North East England. However, there was ship building on the Clyde near Glasgow. The other great ship building city was Belfast.[/pedant]

 

[Vargr]

I guess it depends which version of Traveller you refer to. In MGT there are notable differences between Starports of classes A, B and C.

C does not provide refined fuel and the shipyard can only service small craft (<100t), B can only service spacecraft (100-2000t) while A can service capital ships.

I extrapolated from this and assume only starports A and B are guaranteed to have an orbital Hightport.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

I extrapolated from this and assume only starports A and B are guaranteed to have an orbital Hightport.

That's how I play it. Otherwise:

The 'A' highport has plush carpetting, large rooms with bay windows, and doors that go 'Whoosh!"

The 'B' highports have painted decks, small rooms with portholes, and doors with big metal wheels in the middle that you have to turn to go through.

'C' ports have orbital beacons with GPS/OPS and some defensive capabilities.

'D' ports have orbital beacons with GPS/OPS.

'E' ports have beacons ... maybe just one in geosynchronous orbit at the same longitude as the downport.

'X' have nothing.

 

[Icosahedron]

That's how I play it. Otherwise:

The 'A' highport has plush carpetting, large rooms with bay windows, and doors that go 'Whoosh!"

The 'B' highports have painted decks, small rooms with portholes, and doors with big metal wheels in the middle that you have to turn to go through.

'C' ports have orbital beacons with GPS/OPS and some defensive capabilities.

'D' ports have orbital beacons with GPS/OPS.

'E' ports have beacons ... maybe just one in geosynchronous orbit at the same longitude as the downport.

'X' have nothing.

That's pretty much my take, too:
'A' have an orbital port
'B' have an orbital station
'C' have a designated 'orbital parking lot' with a dedicated shuttle to a dirtside 'Mos Eisley'
'D' is a few modular buildings dirtside and you make your own way down
'E' and 'X' are adequately described in LBB3.

 

[Jame]

That's pretty much my take, too:
'A' have an orbital port
'B' have an orbital station
'C' have a designated 'orbital parking lot' with a dedicated shuttle to a dirtside 'Mos Eisley'
'D' is a few modular buildings dirtside and you make your own way down
'E' and 'X' are adequately described in LBB3.

I would call most "D" class ports Mos Eisley. Class "C" ports for me would look something more like Cloud City (yes, I realize that this is how most class "B" ports would look too).

 

[Icosahedron]

I would call most "D" class ports Mos Eisley. Class "C" ports for me would look something more like Cloud City (yes, I realize that this is how most class "B" ports would look too).

A six-point scale is necessarily a broad brush. I can't disagree.