HSVU vs LSVU

[atpollard]

Including the use of population level instead of population size, which makes the rule work very badly.


Hans

What about using Population level as a multiplier rather than adding it ...

Starport value
A=50
B=20
C=5
D=3
E=1


POP x SV x (TL- LL) = tonnage moved through starport in a week, in tens of tons.

So an A starport
A pop
15 TL
9 LL planet gets 30,000 tons moving through there,

a C starport
5 pop
11 TL
7 LL planet gets 1000 tons,

and a played out mining hovel
E starport
3 pop
7 TL
3 LL gets 120 tons.

[EDIT: I would worry that using 10^POP rather than just POP in any formula would skew the results so powerfully that you might as well ignore everything else ... potentially accurate but unplayable.]

 

[rancke]

What about using Population level as a multiplier rather than adding it ...

That helps a bit, but not nearly enough. Any calculations that involves 10 billion people producing, consuming, or trading ten times as much as ten people is hopelessly inaccurate. Or 100,000 people only 25% more than 10,000 people. Or most every other example where the difference is in orders of magnitude and the result is linear. (Possible exception for really low populations).

[EDIT: I would worry that using 10^POP rather than just POP in any formula would skew the results so powerfully that you might as well ignore everything else ... potentially accurate but unplayable.]

That's only a problem if you're trying to play a game. If you're setting-building, verisimilitude beats gamability. And even with roleplaying gaming, believability makes a lot of difference to game enjoyment. Unlike with board games and wargames, where good rules is apha and omega and suspension of disbelief is a given, roleplaying games require verisimilitude to aid with the suspension of disbelief.


Hans

 

[kilemall]

The reason I postulated the value as I did is the idea that the populace's interaction with the interstellar economy is measured first and foremost by the starport which indicates how much 'business' activity there is in the first place.

So darn tootin 10 billion can get less tonnage then 100,000 pop. The internal economy itself may be absolutely huge on the 10 billion world and it's system, but we are only concerned with what is getting shipped in and out.

Heck the A starport shipyards generate 1000s of tons on their own I'm sure.

As for pop, this is not a measure of total economic activity, nor in my opinion should it be used for RU for taxation/fleet building purposes (except to the extent your interstellar polity taxes on interstellar activity vs. local GWP). It's just raw tonnage to determine levels of ship activity.

Note that the way I've got it set, increases in pop tend to be counterbalanced by a corresponding per capita drop in interstellar trade. That's because the LL negative in the formula will track upwards with the pop due to the pop-gov-LL connection. Makes sense to me, the bigger the pop the more the local economy can be self-reliant, and the fussier the bureaucracy and rules the less profitable marginal or sketchy products can be sold.

Counterbalancing that, the higher the TL the more the planet can participate with goods and services that are high value portable items, and presumably has more productivity and room for buying luxury items or large scale purchases that the planet can pay for with high value exports of it's own.

Which reminds me, again the ability to more cheaply produce standard goods beyond the typical 30-40% of the tables OR have a high quality product people will pay a premium for 100 parsecs away should be built into any trade system.

What would people pay to have a standard A drive set in their Type S or A perform at B levels reliably by design? Quite a bit, I would think, along with the costs associated with the rare parts stream.

Or K'kree certified 'no meats were consumed or carnivore workers employed in the process of making this product' premium?

Oh, one last thought- you could use this formula and then check against a LL of 3 for the 'real' demand- the difference between the two would be the 'demand pressure' for smuggling.

So in the above examples-

[FONT=arial,helvetica]So an A starport
A pop
15 TL
9 LL planet gets 75,000 tons moving through, but has a demand rate of 110,000 tons yielding a potential 45,000 tons of smuggling

a C starport
5 pop
11 TL
7 LL planet gets 4500 tons, but has a demand rate of 6500 tons yielding 2000 tons potential smuggling

and a played out mining hovel
E starport
3 pop
7 TL
3 LL gets 700 tons and pretty much doesn't have demand to smuggle that anybody will pay a premium for.[/FONT]

 

[rancke]

The reason I postulated the value as I did is the idea that the populace's interaction with the interstellar economy is measured first and foremost by the starport which indicates how much 'business' activity there is in the first place.

So darn tootin 10 billion can get less tonnage then 100,000 pop. The internal economy itself may be absolutely huge on the 10 billion world and it's system, but we are only concerned with what is getting shipped in and out.

Except that I'm talking 'everything else being equal'. You're comparing a small population with a humongous Class E starport with a huge population with a tiny tiny oh so tiny Class E starport. But the rules (and your suggested rules) do not distinguish between starport sizes, only starport class. So everything else being equal, a world with 10 billion people would not have a mere ten times as much trade as a world with 10 people and a starport of the same class.

(Oh, I was talking about the difference between pop level 1 (10 people) and pop level 10 (10 billion people), not about 100,000 people. Darn tooting 10 people are not going to have 10% of the tonnage of 10 billion people.)

As for pop, this is not a measure of total economic activity, nor in my opinion should it be used for RU for taxation/fleet building purposes (except to the extent your interstellar polity taxes on interstellar activity vs. local GWP). It's just raw tonnage to determine levels of ship activity.

Everything else being equal, there's a very strong correlation between population size and total economic activiy. A correleation that is skewed to uselessness by using population level instead of population size.

Note that the way I've got it set, increases in pop tend to be counterbalanced by a corresponding per capita drop in interstellar trade. That's because the LL negative in the formula will track upwards with the pop due to the pop-gov-LL connection. Makes sense to me, the bigger the pop the more the local economy can be self-reliant, and the fussier the bureaucracy and rules the less profitable marginal or sketchy products can be sold.

Doesn't help when you're comparing worlds with the same law level.

Counterbalancing that, the higher the TL the more the planet can participate with goods and services that are high value portable items, and presumably has more productivity and room for buying luxury items or large scale purchases that the planet can pay for with high value exports of it's own.

This would be accounted for in GWP, which is strongly (and proportionately) affected by tech level.


Hans

 

[Selandia]

The reason I postulated the value as I did is the idea that the populace's interaction with the interstellar economy is measured first and foremost by the starport which indicates how much 'business' activity there is in the first place.

So darn tootin 10 billion can get less tonnage then 100,000 pop. The internal economy itself may be absolutely huge on the 10 billion world and it's system, but we are only concerned with what is getting shipped in and out.

Heck the A starport shipyards generate 1000s of tons on their own I'm sure. ]

2 problems for that idea when working with T5 UWP Starport

a) in T5, the mission of the Starport Autorities (p.308), is not equated with its size and is not specified in UWP

Examples given
Max efficiency
Max profit for owner
Maximum insulation possible from external influence while maintaining the minimum required
Minimum required for startrade

even if one can presume that the last two type would yield type E or D, even on large world, the E might however be the practical result from the exact opposite: an excess of trade that saturate high quality installations (Hans explanation of Rethe )

b) T5 allows for large spaceport of good quality. there "is typically one major starport in a system "(T5.09 p.306) but it does not sum up all trade. because spaceport may be involved. My explaination of Rethe: Private concerns involved in startrade (the Cartel) have their private facilities and corrupt the officialdom to keep competition at a disadvantage with an inefficient public starport.

Note

Yes, a class A starport presume large trade since it could exist only if enough trade exist to pay for it and it will generate trade by itself (starship construction and maintenance), however the reverse is not always true, a class E does not always mean low trade volume.

BTW The issue of volume and value are differents.

have fun

Selandia

 

[kilemall]

Except that I'm talking 'everything else being equal'. You're comparing a small population with a humongous Class E starport with a huge population with a tiny tiny oh so tiny Class E starport. But the rules (and your suggested rules) do not distinguish between starport sizes, only starport class. So everything else being equal, a world with 10 billion people would not have a mere ten times as much trade as a world with 10 people and a starport of the same class.

Hmm, perhaps T5 starport definitions are somehow different? How would absolutely huge slab of landing field only generate more shipping from small slab? You don't have facilities, supporting infrastructure, which strongly suggests not enough activity to pay for or justify their expense, ergo less activity.

I suppose you could take the WWII example of a Mulberry Harbor as heavy shipping to a slab, but even then technically it would be a starport D, and very much a wartime expedient until 'real harbors' were put into a productive state.

You just can't move much through an open field airport, a beach the ships on the sand port, or a two track rail siding versus a full sized intermodal facility. That's just math and logistics. Tools Matter.

If some pop A planet has a class E either through the wishes of the populace/govt or manipulations externally, then guess what? They aren't doing much interstellar business, whether preferred or imposed.

(Oh, I was talking about the difference between pop level 1 (10 people) and pop level 10 (10 billion people), not about 100,000 people. Darn tooting 10 people are not going to have 10% of the tonnage of 10 billion people.)

Most 10 billion people worlds are going to have at least class C or B starports, which gets into some serious multiples and leaves the typical D/E pop 1 planets in the dust. Even assuming just a class C LL0 at TL12 for the pop A vs. class D same LL/TL for pop 1, that's 11,000 tons per week for the larger pop planet and 3900 tons for the smaller pop planet.

Which is worse then your 10:1 ratio, but I am good with because again the smaller pop planet is entirely dependent on imports and must have valuable exports or at least critical starport support (everyone would have to be employed by the starport for class D pop 1), and the pop A world is punching under it's proper weight class, normally should be at least a B starport.

So lets run the numbers again, this time pop A B starport, pop 1 E starport, TL12 LL0. Ah, that's 44,000 tons vs. 1300 tons- more like a typical expected result.

Everything else being equal, there's a very strong correlation between population size and total economic activiy. A correleation that is skewed to uselessness by using population level instead of population size.

And again this formula is not about economic activity, it's about imports/exports and measuring tonnage for trade lane activity purposes. I would agree that an E starport A pop planet probably has multiples of production over an outpost, but we aren't playing Planet Developer we're playing Traveller, and what counts is how much breaks atmo and goes somewhere.

Doesn't help when you're comparing worlds with the same law level.

This would be accounted for in GWP, which is strongly (and proportionately) affected by tech level.

Internal activity again is not the same thing as how much import/exporting is occurring, and the starport capacity is the surest measure of how much of that is going on.

 

[kilemall]

2 problems for that idea when working with T5 UWP Starport

a) in T5, the mission of the Starport Autorities (p.308), is not equated with its size and is not specified in UWP

Examples given
Max efficiency
Max profit for owner
Maximum insulation possible from external influence while maintaining the minimum required
Minimum required for startrade

even if one can presume that the last two type would yield type E or D, even on large world, the E might however be the practical result from the exact opposite: an excess of trade that saturate high quality installations (Hans explanation of Rethe )

Well, I am intruding upon a T5 discussion and am not familiar with the ruleset so I cannot effectively comment on the specifics of how various starport governances/resource decisions are defined, other then to say that one has to justify the titanic expense of better and better facilities and to me that would normally be the volume and/or wealth of trade coming through, perhaps a hopeful starport upgrade/investment to stimulate said trade, or larger manipulations of a world/subsector economics or strategic nature.

Rethe, E430AA8-8, correct? Don't have to go much further then poor, cannot pay for imports and does not produce exports worth a darn, being entirely turned inward for hardscrabble survival.

b) T5 allows for large spaceport of good quality. there "is typically one major starport in a system "(T5.09 p.306) but it does not sum up all trade. because spaceport may be involved. My explaination of Rethe: Private concerns involved in startrade (the Cartel) have their private facilities and corrupt the officialdom to keep competition at a disadvantage with an inefficient public starport.

Well that was true in CT and I presume all the intervening editions.

But I am concerned here with interstellar trade, how much jumps in and out. The other spaceports would be about in-system trade, which would go to my point of the internal system economy vs. the external import/export measured by the starport proper.

So if you want to go whole hog, you can define all those spaceports, multiples for main/big worlds and ones for in-system outposts and colonies, and get a picture of internal trade vs. star trade. Worthwhile for giving a picture of how much traffic is coming and going that are not jumping.

Yes, a class A starport presume large trade since it could exist only if enough trade exist to pay for it and it will generate trade by itself (starship construction and maintenance), however the reverse is not always true, a class E does not always mean low trade volume.

Like I said above, a slab is a slab and is not logistically efficient or ultimately economical, you'll have to explain this one to me.

BTW The issue of volume and value are differents.

They ARE different but each should be addressed if you are going to get into major trade play.

I get the impression most interstellar business is a lot more cash and carry at all but the self-financing megacorps, and that deficit trade does not last long or is able to be propped up by governments or businesses.

 

[kilemall]

Why the focus on tonnage? Well that helps visualize how much traffic per week, or even day, is coming in or leaving, and gives an idea of what overhead exists for megacorps superfreighter lines.

Let's use 50 tons as an FTE (Free Trader Equivalent) to get a feel for traffic levels, figuring the normal FT run is not full or has a significant speculative load to make ends meet which may or may not be sold this trip.

At 1400 tons per week, that would be 28 FTEs, divide that by 7 and we have 4 Free Traders coming and going per day, and assuming 20 or so around the main world at any given time.

At 44,000 tons per week that's 880 FTEs at 126 daily, at 75,000 that's 1500 FTEs for 214 coming and going per day.


Busy busy busy.

Then take a look at the worlds that would link to the biggest major trade worlds, and figure how much tonnage is going locally and how much into more distant destinations. The more high value and portable, the further the trade can go.

Alright, now let's apply a big line to the equation, standardized on 1000 tons normally carried/20 FTEs per ship, leaving/arriving from 7 minor systems once per week (so 2000 tons per day), and an additional daily service to/from two major systems.

That's 28,000 tons of major world service and 14,000 to the minor worlds, for a total of 42,000 tons. A significant chunk of our 75,000 ton example and virtually all of the 44,000 ton world.

The big line could squeeze everyone out of this area, then operate a monopoly, at least for awhile. Billions of credits of investment in ships, crews and facilities, but worth it in the long run, especially if it is self-financed and not in ship mortgage debt.

And note that one 1000-ton run each way exceeds the 1400 ton planet. So already the big line is losing potential money every week, but perhaps it's worth it to not allow any of its' competitors a foothold.

So given that outcome, perhaps the subsidized merchant program is less about providing minimal trade and communications services, and more about making sure planetary and subsector governments can discourage destructive merchant line wars and subsequent shipping monopolies.

These numbers don't suit you? Fine, multiply less for smaller trade, by 1000 or 10000 for bigger numbers.

The tool is the same, convert it to FTEs, figure in what size the major freighters run at for major to major worlds, a subsidized network, and finally how much room there is for adventurer merchants, keeping in mind how many ships you want running around out there and the effect and ability to influence when the major lines go after each other- or the small fry like the players.

 

[kilemall]

Alright, how about this adjustment-

[FONT=arial,helvetica]Starport value
A=500
B=200
C=50
D=30
E=10

Rich SV *2=ASV
Poor SV/2=ASV
All others SV=ASV

ASV x [(POP[/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica]2 * TL) - LL[/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][FONT=arial,helvetica]2 ][/FONT] = tonnage moved through starport in a week, in tons.

So an A starport
A pop
15 TL
9 LL planet gets 70,950 tons moving through there,

a C starport
5 pop
11 TL
7 LL planet gets 11,300 tons,

and a played out mining hovel
E starport
3 pop
7 TL
3 LL gets 540 tons.[/FONT]

 

[Selandia]

Rethe, E430AA8-8, correct? Don't have to go much further then poor, cannot pay for imports and does not produce exports worth a darn, being entirely turned inward for hardscrabble survival.

Its the old joke:

When the optimist says: life is a shit sandwich
the pessimist replies: yea, and there is not enough shit for everybody

Look at the poorest countries of the world, ther1%"filthy rich" can afford the luxuries they wish.

1% of 33 billions (the pop of Rethe) = 330,000,000 "filthy rich".

If each of those kinda billionnaires want nothing more than 1Kg a year of "real food" (not hydroponic carny culture) from the pampas of Focaline or Inthe (two Ag world J-2 away) that represent 3,300,000 tons (3.3 millions tons) of reefer cargo, nearly 10,000 a day.

Of course, they can afford that once a week, so 3.3 millions tons time 52.
171 MgT

An additionnal 2% "Rich wana look filthy" would have it as status symbol every month. Add 2 x 12 = 79 MgT

It is the upper middle class, lets say nothing more than 10 % of the pop (3.3 billions )that will indulge in expensive import once a year for great celebrati ons. Add 33 MgT

284 MgT of "walking meat" add some seafood from J-2 Moughas, a waterword (or even J-4 waterworld Roup) and you have a Megaton a day, just for "real food" from reefer liners. Of course if you follow Hans idea that your clouthless free trader will be dumped at a fringe berth with E class service as an explanation for the E rating, Rating might mean at time the contrary of what we may assume. In my explaination, the UWP starport is the base for only a part of the startrade. Both could co-exist on top of that BTW.


The world is poor on a per capita average but there is more disposable income on that world than on the "rich" Feri (Regina 2005, B584879) with hundreds of millions of peoples, that are not all "filthy rich"

As to the peoples been poor, therefore producing nothing worth exporting, they offers a huge mass of low cost labour for labor intensive process. The huge volume of peoples insure a significant internal market for anything that can be produced, therefore the ability to supply even niche products in mass production volume. They can swamp any competitor for manufactured goods on worlds within J-2 and often beyond. Stiff competition exist from Enope for the trade of Moughas and Worchier but Rethe have a +1TL advantage. They could compete on market even further afield in labor intensive process and rake Cr for imports purchase.

Of course all those J-2 small worlds will not add up to a billion; so export trade to them represent a fraction of internal market. Still, you just need enough to purchase some nice food and your manufactured goods could swamp local workshop much farther than J-2.

More interesting markets, like Roup with a 6 Billion pop world are something else. With higher tech competition from Regina and Feri and lower tech from Enope, you need to work the niches where your Hi Pop gives you mass production and economies of scale advantage even in niche. After all, even if you export there 1Kg a year per person , you export 6,000,000 tons a year.

There is no doubt that the hundreds on Heguz are Adventure Class Economic market, but not because the Starport is E. By the same token, you need solid explanation if you want a High Pop world to have low volume startrade. Even the E starport can't justify low volume by itself.

have fun

Selandia

 

[Bloo]

I would recommend just using GT: Far Trader where a real economist knowledgeable about international trade, including the different propensities of differently sized communities to trade, has made the math easy.

 

[kilemall]

Well of course you can play Planetary Builder and go for a greater tonnage that 'makes sense' by whatever criteria you deem accurate.

To me the tonnages you quote just don't work simply because they can't get that many tons off the ships landed and distributed, an E starport is the functional equivalent of beaching container ships, it just isn't going to work especially at the volumes you apparently feel is more logical.

And virtually no traffic control? For 3.3 million tons per week of just one commodity plus multiples of everything else? At an economical rate for large scale shipping? And no rescue or naval facilities?

If you don't see starport facility capability as a huge issue for shipping throughput, well this is firmly 'agree to disagree' territory.

However, independent of this issue, there is another that is a bigger one, namely the crowded skies effect.

If you have say 7 million tons per week, 1 million tons per day, that's 20,000 FTEs.

Even if you were running 10,000 tons of cargo hold per every ship, that's 100 BIG freighters coming and going a day, split up against say 4 heavily travelled vectors, 5-10 ships in a typical 5 hour run to and from jump plus others that would be spotted near planet.

Given that there would be a mix of bigger and smaller ships, that number would go way up.

We can expect higher volumes for richer planets.

That's a way higher amount of traffic then I'm comfortable with, especially for a backwoods economic demographics disaster planet.

This is the sort of traffic I would want to run for Core Worlds and make very much an exception rather then the rule for 95% of the planets to be travelled to.

 

[kilemall]

I would recommend just using GT: Far Trader where a real economist knowledgeable about international trade, including the different propensities of differently sized communities to trade, has made the math easy.

Adverteasing?

 

[aramis]

Adverteasing?

self promotion. .. but there is vast disagreement on if it is easy, and it is based upon 20th C data almost exclusively, so it has some credibility issues as well.

plus, it is out of print, and puts trade flows so high that wypoc /lanth gets multiple ships a day to/from Regina alone... it doesn't replicate the OTU as described.

 

[kilemall]

self promotion. .. but there is vast disagreement on if it is easy, and it is based upon 20th C data almost exclusively, so it has some credibility issues as well.

plus, it is out of print, and puts trade flows so high that wypoc /lanth gets multiple ships a day to/from Regina alone... it doesn't replicate the OTU as described.

I know Bloo from other gaming activities, I'm just teasing him.

On a more serious note, re: previous trading models to emulate, I would tend to treat Traveller as more like the situation that obtained from the 1850s, and can progress to today (if you have TL15 freighters).

Jump-1/2 lower tech small ships being analogous to sailing ships or fishing/coastal vessels, and the higher jump/tech ships being the steamships that are getting larger and larger, culminating in stupendously large carrier warships and supertankers/container ships.

But the small ships are still with us.

Given the distances and relative costs, 19th century patterns are probably more applicable in all but the highest trade routes from the major worlds.

 

[aramis]

Actually, given either model, the J1 ships are the slow superfreighters. The only reason standard Yachts aren't J6 is that under Bk 2 (the default paradigm) and MGT (which is based upon CT 77), you can't build one on a 200 ton hull and have room for a nobleman and guests.
Hell, MGT design inside.

Spoiler:

200 Td
010 bridge, small
019 PP F=6
035 JD F=6
002 MD A=1 (1 under Bk2)
120 JFuel 1j6
024 PP Fuel 4 weeks
020 Crew SR (PNMEE)
----
230...

Note that CT adds a computer requirement (7td) and increases PP Fuel to 60...

The comparison to late 19th C is quite inapt - that is when comm times initially drop (telegraphy), in addition to the change in speed, and that the steamers carried a higher percentage of hull displacement in cargo. (Rigging is a major penalty) Keep in mind: higher speed jump requires more of hull allowance and costs more... which wasn't the case with the steamer transition. New construction of sail merchants drops rapidly as steamers move to mass production boiler systems. And while the small shippers survive, tall ships don't. The few in operation are living history group projects, the occasional eccentric millionaire, and museum ships.

There is no historical parallel to the changes in Jump Drive - they cost more to buy, to operate, and carry less, but go further and faster...

 

[kilemall]

Yes it is true that the jump fuel percentage eats voraciously into 'percentage of ship devoted to paying activity' at max jump 'speed', the nautical equivalent however would be 40+ knot nuclear freighters, which does not have a business need at the moment to build (but could be). We aren't operating J-6/M-6 metaphorical freighters either.

I should also say that prolonged J-5/J-6 routes, making 20-24 parsecs in a month, would be more akin to air freight/mail/parcel shipment, and the multiple of fuel use per ton is far greater and yet it is a paying proposition. The lack of variable rates and/or modeled demand for 'speed' is to blame for not intuitively making fast jump express a desirable freight business to enter.

I am more focused on the J-2/3 ships as metaphor for the steamship revolution, double/triple speeds for less impact then the higher end jump ratings, and that ship hull size increases tremendously in that TL11-15 range such that there can be absolutely huge freighters carrying the sort of cargo loads the OP is on about.

Not sure what your point is with the J6 yacht, generally speaking nautical yachts can have oceanic range or speed but not usually both, and since they are usually pleasure cruising and are focused on amenities they tend to go with Atlantic crossing ranges if anything- J-1 with 2-3 jumps equivalent.

 

[rancke]

How would absolutely huge slab of landing field only generate more shipping from small slab? You don't have facilities, supporting infrastructure, which strongly suggests not enough activity to pay for or justify their expense, ergo less activity.

Not all class E starports conform to the description of a frontier installation. Indeed, no world with a decent population would be a frontier in that sense.

The so-called class E starport on Zila is described in a way that would earn it a C classification from me any time. It has a big staff and multiple buildings, it is visited regularily by 5000T freighters to fetch cargoes and more 5000T freighters passing through on their way back and forth between Aramis and the Vargr frontier.

The description in The Traveller Adventure does not explain just what it is that makes Zila's starport class E. Evidently it does not choose to sell refined fuel and/or provide minor repairs to visiting tramps. It's certainly not because low traffic makes having a fuel purifier plant and a small repair shop economically infeasible. All J1 ships and many J2 and J3 ships going to and from the Towers Cluster and the interior of the Marches will pass through Zila and want to buy refined fuel and effect the occasional minor repair.

Anyway, you can have a world with shipyards, boatyards, repair shops, and all the facilities needed to move millions of tons, but if for some strange reason (religious?) it chooses not to provide repairs to all visiting starships in a timely fashion, it doesn't get any better than an E classification.

You may say that it's very strange that an Imperial starport with a decent amount of trade would choose not to provide refined fuel and repairs, and I couldn't agree with you more. But that's a result of a world generation system that doesn't have any correlation whatsoever between population size (or even population level ) and starport class. Personally I'm sorely puzzled that TPTB have not fixed that glaring problem decades ago, but as they haven't, the obvious solution is to do as GDW did in the case of Zila: Ignore the E classification and assume the starport can handle whatever trade it gets.

Most 10 billion people worlds are going to have at least class C or B starports, which gets into some serious multiples and leaves the typical D/E pop 1 planets in the dust.

But I'm not comparing pop A worlds with class B or C starports with pop 1 worlds with D and E starports. I'm comparing them to pop 1 worlds with B or C starports.

Even assuming just a class C LL0 at TL12 for the pop A vs. class D same LL/TL for pop 1, that's 11,000 tons per week for the larger pop planet and 3900 tons for the smaller pop planet.

10 people producing 11,000 dT of trade goods per week? No. Just no. Not even with automated factories (which is not something the Traveller rules really embrace). Just the security force needed to protect those auto-factories¹ from raiders would run into the hundreds.

¹ Asuming for purposes of argument that such auto-factories were economically feasible in the Third Imperium (Which would open up a huge can of worms and wreck the built-in economics completely).​

Which is worse then your 10:1 ratio, but I am good with because again the smaller pop planet is entirely dependent on imports and must have valuable exports or at least critical starport support (everyone would have to be employed by the starport for class D pop 1), and the pop A world is punching under it's proper weight class, normally should be at least a B starport.

You can certainly have worlds produce trade goods an order of magnitude above or below the average. Which would make your 10 people produce like 100 and your 10 billion produce like 1 billion. And we'd still be talking productions proportionate to the population size rather than the population level.

And again this formula is not about economic activity, it's about imports/exports and measuring tonnage for trade lane activity purposes.

Trade is an economic activity.

I would agree that an E starport A pop planet probably has multiples of production over an outpost, but we aren't playing Planet Developer we're playing Traveller, and what counts is how much breaks atmo and goes somewhere.

I'm not playing Traveller, I'm developing Traveller setting details and rules of thumb for developing setting details. I prefer those details to be at least half-way plausible.


Hans

 

[kilemall]

Not all class E starports conform to the description of a frontier installation. Indeed, no world with a decent population would be a frontier in that sense.

The so-called class E starport on Zila is described in a way that would earn it a C classification from me any time. It has a big staff and multiple buildings, it is visited regularily by 5000T freighters to fetch cargoes and more 5000T freighters passing through on their way back and forth between Aramis and the Vargr frontier.

The description in The Traveller Adventure does not explain just what it is that makes Zila's starport class E. Evidently it does not choose to sell refined fuel and/or provide minor repairs to visiting tramps. It's certainly not because low traffic makes having a fuel purifier plant and a small repair shop economically infeasible. All J1 ships and many J2 and J3 ships going to and from the Towers Cluster and the interior of the Marches will pass through Zila and want to buy refined fuel and effect the occasional minor repair.

Respect the roll is my motto. What should otherwise be a thriving trade center has put out the 'galaxy go away' sign, so why not respect that in the setting?

Nothing more canon then the starport descriptions. Don't understand the 'gotta support this POV through canon' arguments, then ignore the most basic bedrock rules. Let's be honest here, we are ALL IMTU.

Anyway, you can have a world with shipyards, boatyards, repair shops, and all the facilities needed to move millions of tons, but if for some strange reason (religious?) it chooses not to provide repairs to all visiting starships in a timely fashion, it doesn't get any better than an E classification.

Just reread the E classification. It's quite specific. NO facilities whatsoever. So this is your IMTU definition, which is fine, I certainly go off the reservation for things that make sense to me, but I don't think that just because it makes sense to you makes it 'more canon'.

You may say that it's very strange that an Imperial starport with a decent amount of trade would choose not to provide refined fuel and repairs, and I couldn't agree with you more. But that's a result of a world generation system that doesn't have any correlation whatsoever between population size (or even population level ) and starport class. Personally I'm sorely puzzled that TPTB have not fixed that glaring problem decades ago, but as they haven't, the obvious solution is to do as GDW did in the case of Zila: Ignore the E classification and assume the starport can handle whatever trade it gets.

Yes, it's overdue to link the two- if you want a specific range of A starports, then the pop should get a starport mod roll. I'm using RTT Worldgen and couldn't care less about the OTU so I simply don't have these issues, in that system the starport is rolled off of both population and industry levels.

Obvious to you. It's equally obvious to me that the place is the equivalent of an Alaskan bush slab of runway and nothing else, place likely sees nothing bigger then a 400-ton ship on a subsector subsidized mail run every week.

But I'm not comparing pop A worlds with class B or C starports with pop 1 worlds with D and E starports. I'm comparing them to pop 1 worlds with B or C starports.

Hmmm, ok, point taken given that you are dealing with 1000s of OTU weirdness-es and the situation comes up more often than the rare oddball description will cover.

10 people producing 11,000 dT of trade goods per week? No. Just no. Not even with automated factories (which is not something the Traveller rules really embrace). Just the security force needed to protect those auto-factories¹ from raiders would run into the hundreds.

¹ Asuming for purposes of argument that such auto-factories were economically feasible in the Third Imperium (Which would open up a huge can of worms and wreck the built-in economics completely).​

Well again, I am not afraid of discombobulating the Imperium with bots because I'm not there. But I am dealing with the economics and politics that are much closer to our era and sociology which does care very much about employment, and I'm not afraid of the occasional highly automated facility.

Partially because using RTT Worldgen avoids a lot of that, but also the principle of the owner is totally responsible for bot actions makes minimal supervision robots a real liability, as they can work reliably for decades then be presented with a situation that causes them to act badly and tear things up much more quickly without stopping then an equivalent human crew.

There aren't robotic ships that see making populated world space within a light minute IMTU because of interstellar law that prohibits automated things being able to crash into stations or worlds- but they are out there in belts and dwarf mining planets.

But since the Imperium is in most people's interpretation more a loose trade and defense confederation then anything else, it would make sense that there is not a universal 'employment mandate', enough cautionary disasters that few organizations or governments will 'go bot', but some will and it doesn't screw everything up.

Besides, if you cut off most people from employment, who will buy your stuff, and what will you do to avoid making them feckless rebellious trouble?

As for pop to tonnage ratio, who is to say that is all planetary production/consumption? A starship yard alone could consume a lot of that, and you can have transshipment points, where the tonnage is being reshuffled/redirected to break up a larger cargo into smaller lots for local J-1/2 delivery runs.

You can certainly have worlds produce trade goods an order of magnitude above or below the average. Which would make your 10 people produce like 100 and your 10 billion produce like 1 billion. And we'd still be talking productions proportionate to the population size rather than the population level.

I highly disagree, productivity, market desire and usage will be as individual as each planet.

Why not explore each planet's economic weirdness rather then trying to stamp a standard economic model on it? Use the strange as a jumping off point, not something to be stamped out or ignored?

I just don't see the pop ratio thing being some universal rule, even in 20th century times with places like India and China did not getting that much shipping compared to industrial powers or places like Germany or Russia pre-Cold War getting much less shipping per capita due to a continental approach (equivalent to an in-system economy without generating interstellar tonnage).

Postwar Gerrmany is an export machine, far more tonnage going out then before. Same 'UWP', but entirely different economic and business model, which changes the shipping picture dramatically.

I say forego the dead hand of ratio and let each place be it's own thing. More interesting story and different conflicts to arise.

Trade is an economic activity.

Yes, but I am focusing on generating hulls and a traffic pattern picture, not the internal economic mechanisms of each planet/system. If I want to I can drill down to interesting places and probably find years of play activity per system, but that would take a LOT of effort to work out per every system in a subsector. This gives me a quick gen, and I can color inbetween the lines later for content.

I'm not playing Traveller, I'm developing Traveller setting details and rules of thumb for developing setting details. I prefer those details to be at least half-way plausible.

Great. So am I.

But inevitably people will have different results.

Please take a spin through my revised formula, and what is your answer to my crowded skies critique? Are you really ready to have a setting that has that many ships of that big a tonnage to support the OP's conception of planetary tonnage requirements?

Keep in mind he's quoting tonnages for a train wreck of a planetary economy- for a TL15 pop A Starport A, the tonnages would be MUCH higher for his and I am presuming your model, that's a LOT of ships on the lanes to the 100D limit to support all that.

Big part of why I went with the smaller multiples in my formula, I want a specific effect and gameplay which involves 'classic' levels of traffic.

If you go with the OP's tonnage, and the likely multiples for better off planets, are you prepared for that many ships in the lanes as a logical result for your gameplay?

 

[Selandia]

Well of course you can play Planetary Builder and go for a greater tonnage that 'makes sense' by whatever criteria you deem accurate.

To me the tonnages you quote just don't work simply because they can't get that many tons off the ships landed and distributed, an E starport is the functional equivalent of beaching container ships, it just isn't going to work especially at the volumes you apparently feel is more logical..

[

That is why I use the many spaceports to explain traffic.

There is no sense having a freighter from Apha Centaury making Earth's orbit to land at Los Angeles Down to have containers shipped to Yokohama amd roaded to Tokyo when it may as easily go to Tokyo Down.

"Beaching a container ship" was the idea behind the original LASH system, where containers were loaded on barges that would be lowered in the harbor's road to await unloading while the ship would load returns and be on its was fast.

if you prefer Wiki to my word:I]At the time of its invention, the system was considered by experts to be a considerable advancement in shipping technology. LASH carriers were able to transport five times more cargo than a comparable conventional transport ship, the loading and unloading process was much more efficient, and a lack of harbor equipment or quay moorings provided no obstacle, as the lighters could be loaded directly onto the ship. The system also relieved the pressure to unload as quickly as possible, since the lighters already in the water could be moved while others were being unloaded. All told, these ships spent more than 80% of their annual application time at sea, whereas the conventional ships often lay at harbor for as much as half the year.[/I]

Yes it work well with my Jumper system (other thread)

And virtually no traffic control? For 3.3 million tons per week of just one commodity plus multiples of everything else? At an economical rate for large scale shipping? And no rescue or naval facilities?

If you don't see starport facility capability as a huge issue for shipping throughput, well this is firmly 'agree to disagree' territory..

They are crucial, that is why the former lord Rethe hoped to favor the Cartel's private spaceports by making the public starport disfunctionnal.

BTW you do not need an orbital structure called Highport to have High operations. Unloading into shuttles from orbit is akind to E class dirthside berthing for your free trader. You dump your cargo onto local transport without the assistance of port's cargo handling apparatus. It is conform to the traditionnal operations of wet lighters. From high there, the shuttle may land in any dirtside airport like the bumboat of old were landing on the beach.

However, independent of this issue, there is another that is a bigger one, namely the crowded skies effect.

If you have say 7 million tons per week, 1 million tons per day, that's 20,000 FTEs.

Even if you were running 10,000 tons of cargo hold per every ship, that's 100 BIG freighters coming and going a day, split up against say 4 heavily travelled vectors, 5-10 ships in a typical 5 hour run to and from jump plus others that would be spotted near planet.

Given that there would be a mix of bigger and smaller ships, that number would go way up..

Remember, a specific orbit is a mooring buoy in the huge Orbital Roadstead Anchorage of the Highport. The definition of a class of starport involve the MINIMUM capability. So E does not mean nothing more than a beacon, it means at least a beacon. High port are compulsory for higher classification at high Pop level, but nothing prevent a good orbital srafic control station for a port short of berths supplied with sewage treatment, power and fresh water, as well as devoid of accessible workshops, yards or chandlers services and thus rated E.

The safety of the Cartel's ships forced a decent traffic control center, despite the E rating of our public starport and its inadequacies enforced by the corrupt former Lord Rethe.

Have fun

Selandia