Gents,
Abomination already made this point, but I think it is important enough to be made again.
There will be very few "cruise" liners in the Pacific Princess/Captain Stubing/Isaac Your Bartender sense we all too quickly presume.
Liners in Traveller are the primary means of interstellar travel and not a three day vacation during which time you can gamble and meet Charo.
The pre-air travel paradigm is the one to follow here. Liners are transport ships which will move people between star systems, just as they used to be transport ships that moved people between continents. Yes, there were glamorous staterooms aboard equally glamorous ships that boasted of hot and cold running gin, gold plated bum wipers, and 24/7 foot massages. Those staterooms and the fares they commanded were loss leaders however. The monies that kept the Queens and their competitors in bunker crude were earned by hauling steerage/emigrant passengers, providing a fast freight service, and fulfilling government mail contracts.
Government subsidies in the form of construction loans and mail contracts were already vitally important to the liners' bottom line by the first decade of the 1900s and shipping emigrants was so lucrative that Ballin, the genius pre-WW1 HAPAG chief, found it economically sound to build an entire village in the Hamburg docklands to handle, sort, and medically clear emigrants before cramming them aboard his vessels.
Will there be amazingly luxurious "superliners" resembling cities in space in which nobles, playboys, captains of industry, scions, and all the other kinds of powerful and/or idle rich drink, gamble, squabble, and otherwise make nuisances of themselves as they jump between the stars? Sure thing, Gopher.
Will your players ever step foot aboard one as something other than a crewman, body guard, investigator, or other working stiff? Most likely not.
Forget about Norwegian Cruise Lines and the Sovereign of the Seas. The vast majority of liners working in the 57th Century will be passenger liners, not cruise liners, and will most resemble the old mixed passenger/freight vessels of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Regards,
Bill
Abomination already made this point, but I think it is important enough to be made again.
There will be very few "cruise" liners in the Pacific Princess/Captain Stubing/Isaac Your Bartender sense we all too quickly presume.
Liners in Traveller are the primary means of interstellar travel and not a three day vacation during which time you can gamble and meet Charo.
The pre-air travel paradigm is the one to follow here. Liners are transport ships which will move people between star systems, just as they used to be transport ships that moved people between continents. Yes, there were glamorous staterooms aboard equally glamorous ships that boasted of hot and cold running gin, gold plated bum wipers, and 24/7 foot massages. Those staterooms and the fares they commanded were loss leaders however. The monies that kept the Queens and their competitors in bunker crude were earned by hauling steerage/emigrant passengers, providing a fast freight service, and fulfilling government mail contracts.
Government subsidies in the form of construction loans and mail contracts were already vitally important to the liners' bottom line by the first decade of the 1900s and shipping emigrants was so lucrative that Ballin, the genius pre-WW1 HAPAG chief, found it economically sound to build an entire village in the Hamburg docklands to handle, sort, and medically clear emigrants before cramming them aboard his vessels.
Will there be amazingly luxurious "superliners" resembling cities in space in which nobles, playboys, captains of industry, scions, and all the other kinds of powerful and/or idle rich drink, gamble, squabble, and otherwise make nuisances of themselves as they jump between the stars? Sure thing, Gopher.
Will your players ever step foot aboard one as something other than a crewman, body guard, investigator, or other working stiff? Most likely not.
Forget about Norwegian Cruise Lines and the Sovereign of the Seas. The vast majority of liners working in the 57th Century will be passenger liners, not cruise liners, and will most resemble the old mixed passenger/freight vessels of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Regards,
Bill
