How common is space travel in Traveller
- Thread starter LeperColony
- Start date
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
I don't see how that informs one way or another
It is still limited to the very wealthy, a very small percentage of the total population. That the numbers are staggering is no issue. High Pop worlds may well have many many interstellar travellers but it will still be the very wealthy and powerful and those engaged in business or military. It won't be Enerii the Baker and family. Or students taking a year off to travel the stars backpacking through the subsector... unless they do it as working passage Stewards on Free-Traders
So I still say, for high tech (TL9+)
Interstellar travel, very uncommon to rare. Only the powerful, rich, or employed in it.
Interplanetary travel uncommon. The locally powerful, rich, employed in it, and the rare trip of a lifetime for Enerii the Baker and family.
Intercontinental travel common. Very much like modern western society today. Everyone has personal tranport capable of long distance travel and some have private air/grav vehilces for longer and faster trips but mass transit carries the bulk cheaply for long distances.
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far-trader
SOC-14 10K
How so? We have no hard data (in the OTU CT at least*) on actual passenger numbers (do we?) to arrive at what percentage of the population can afford interstellar tourism. The best we have that I can think of are the cost of living rates (noted above) to estimate general incomes on and from that most people can't afford passage at 8 or 10KCr, 1 way.
Taking that baseline we might figure out the total affluent population by extrapolation, and from that figure out how many ships are needed and how many trips are made.
* YTU, MTU, and other rules may have added data or changed baselines
Real World, tourism is often cheaper through group rates, discounts, etc. . The ticket rules as written could be considered on the spot buying of a ticket, which is the most expensive way.
Peter Schutze
SOC-12
>Interplanetary travel uncommon. The locally powerful, rich, employed in it, and the rare trip of a lifetime for Enerii the Baker and family.
with the cheapness of interface transport I would expect this to be less true on any tech 8+ world
if there are destinations worth going to within the system, I see the average low-middle income person taking several trips in a lifetime - major events holidays like honeymoon, kids are finally out of the house, final fling before a frugal retirement
with the cheapness of interface transport I would expect this to be less true on any tech 8+ world
if there are destinations worth going to within the system, I see the average low-middle income person taking several trips in a lifetime - major events holidays like honeymoon, kids are finally out of the house, final fling before a frugal retirement
No, not really. if 1 in 10M people can afford an annual KCr100 vacation, a tourist world within J3, taking 7 weeks off to do so, 1J1 and 1J2 for him each way...
In a Bk2 universe, J3 can make a profit (just barely) at book flat price... so he's got KCr80 to spend. They'll probably spend less than half that to provide him with a better standard than he's used to, counting local salaries, especially if they're TL7 or lower. His 3-4 weeks there are part of an arranged KCr70 package, but he'll likely also spend the other KCr10 on other stuff.
Now, if J3 from a world of 10B, that's 1000 people who can afford it, and if properly cultivated, maybe half will come... let's assume 25% of those go for the social life and to hobnob with the local nobles ... 250 people... x70k... MCr17. If the local world has a population in the low millions, that's a significant source of income... plus the trickle down... and when we add the currency value, it's MCrL40-50 initial input, probably generating MCrL200-500 in economic activities.
Keeping in mind I have exactly two books and from the online surfing I've done, here and the wiki, I believe that most of the info we have on tourism is from adventures. Again this is from hazy memory of something that was online. The mere fact that there are star liners and companies that have more than one ship suggests that interstellar travel is common. Regardless of what other points of data show. At best it's is contradictory information and has to be left up to IMTU.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Someone here (I think) was recently musing that if we use the published adventures to paint the picture of the Imperium then it's one (along the lines of) that is lawless and all the people are criminals "Let's do crime." should be Traveller's adventuring motto.
No, not really. The (high) cost is what's needed to determine how common it is. There could well be thousands of tourist ship's plying profitable routes. The expense is too high to support average people taking regular interstellar trips. Some might take one in a lifetime, a special trip saved for over the years or on a sell everything to stake a new life on a new world gamble.
All a liner shows is that there are enough people moving for various reasons to justify dedicated passenger vessels.
Keep in mind... a single J2 liner needs only 25 jumps a year, at about 15 passengers apiece, plus filling its cargo hold, in order to make money. That's a mere 375 passenger-jumps per liner
Using the same rough approximation of 10^(Pop/3) as before, I came up with 150K people who are "spacers" in the marches... well more than enough to support several liners and a thriving but localized tourist industry. Most of whom will stick close to home, a single jump. But if several large worlds are within a single jump, tourism for that subset can and will flourish, and liners can and will operate to support business traffic.
LeperColony
Traveller Card Game Dev Team
Is it possible that travel is subsidized somehow? I could see destination worlds being willing to pick up some of the tab for travel under the assumption that the tourists would end up spending more once they arrived. After all, the destination world doesn't profit at all from the ticket prices, that all goes to the carrier.
Note that in Supplement 3, the "pop multiple" was already implicitly present in the rules. To quote:
"The code digit for population is the exponents of the actual population level for a world, and indicates the order of magnitude of the actual figure."
This is supported by the table which speaks of "tens", "hundreds", "thousands" and so on.
CosmicGamer
SOC-14 1K
Nice
If anything, the text of Sup3 implies that the multiples are higher than the canonical ones.
LeperColony
Traveller Card Game Dev Team
It's my understanding that passage tickets come with a considerable amount of cargo space for a single person. According to TNE, HP allows 1k kilos in baggage. Maybe a passenger might be able to sell the cargo space back to the ship for a reduced ticket price?
What, are you kidding? This is Traveller! Hire the space out to some smugglers!
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Just curious, which historic figures?
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
What, are you kidding? This is Traveller! Hire the space out to some smugglers!
At a thousand credits a head use it to smuggle illegal aliens.... That gives a whole new meaning to that term too!
18th & 19th century census immigration/emmigration between north america and europe.
Concorde vs 747 traffic along common routes (cost is no limit travel).
