Pixie reference

[Carlobrand]

Pixie, Pixie, where do I recall that one?

Little vacuum world a bit over half the size of Earth's moon, in a binary system consisting of a little red type-M star and a small white dwarf. Given that the only thing of apparent value in this system other than this otherwise undistinguished rock is a single gas giant, then unless this rock has some significantly valuable ore deposit that distinguishes it from any other rock in the system, there's a good chance the rock is orbiting the gas giant - it's the best source of fuel, and the hydrogen can be combined with oxygen liberated from ores during processing to produce water needed by the settlement.

Population 90-some, mostly Vargr, relatively high tech at TL D - but it also has an Imperial naval base, a class-A starport, a General Shipyards ship-construction facility rated for ships up to 600 dTons (possibly the reason for this backwater's class-A designation) and a small prison hulk (former Kinunir-class escort Gaesh) floating in orbit, holding either political prisoners or Ine Givar agents, depending on where you stand in that particular dispute. Thus a possibly sizeable population of "transients" who are not under the jurisdiction of the planetary government (or rather, the planetary lack-of-government) and who most likely live in space. It's likely these installations are also near the system's gas giant, as that would be a strategic point and the most likely place for the system's naval base.

Busy little backwater. Given the clientele, I would have a couple of 1000dT Oberlindes cargo carriers running a scheduled route, collecting ore from an automated mining facility run by a little Vargr clan and running Naval personnel and General Shipyards employees to Kinorb and back for their annual leaves, there being basically nothing in the system to serve the recreational needs of these groups. Navy might even pay a subsidy to keep that route running.

 

[rancke]

Here's something I came up with just a couple of days ago on another thread:

General Shipyards: The largest starship manufacturer in the Regina Subsector, with yards at Regina, Efate, and Pixie. Originally a military contractor. General no longer produces ships for military use, instead concentrating on the more lucrative commercial market. The yard at Regina has a capacity of around 1,000,000T and has produced ships ranging in size from 1,250T to 180,000T, while the subsidiary yards at Pixie and Efate both have a capacity of around 120,000T, and devote most of their attention to annual maintenances.

Stock ownership: Imperial Family -- 2%, General Products -- 98%.​

Note 1: The yard at Pixie is subsidized by the Imperial Navy for the purpose of maintaining emergency repair facilites in case of war. This enables General Shipyards to give a discount on annual maintenance that compensates its customers for the loss of income the jumps to and from Pixie involves. This in turn allows the customers to offer passenger service at much reduced rates, which in turn makes some people take the detour through Pixie, paying less for two jumps than they would for a direct jump.


(This, in case some of Marc Miller's minions are reading it, may be considered a proposal for a retcon justified by the reference to General Shipyards being the largest starship manufacturer in the subsector -- something that would make it patently ridiculous to leave it with a shipyard capacity of 6200T.)


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

Here's something I came up with just a couple of days ago on another thread:

General Shipyards: The largest starship manufacturer in the Regina Subsector, with yards at Regina, Efate, and Pixie. Originally a military contractor. General no longer produces ships for military use, instead concentrating on the more lucrative commercial market. The yard at Regina has a capacity of around 1,000,000T and has produced ships ranging in size from 1,250T to 180,000T, while the subsidiary yards at Pixie and Efate both have a capacity of around 120,000T, and devote most of their attention to annual maintenances.

Stock ownership: Imperial Family -- 2%, General Products -- 98%.​

Note 1: The yard at Pixie is subsidized by the Imperial Navy for the purpose of maintaining emergency repair facilites in case of war. This enables General Shipyards to give a discount on annual maintenance that compensates its customers for the loss of income the jumps to and from Pixie involves. This in turn allows the customers to offer passenger service at much reduced rates, which in turn makes some people take the detour through Pixie, paying less for two jumps than they would for a direct jump.


(This, in case some of Marc Miller's minions are reading it, may be considered a proposal for a retcon justified by the reference to General Shipyards being the largest starship manufacturer in the subsector -- something that would make it patently ridiculous to leave it with a shipyard capacity of 6200T.)


Hans

Might be easier just to add zeroes, declare that the Regina yards can handle ships up to 500,000 dT while the Pixie and Efate yards are limited to 60,000. Puts Regina up in the range of dreadnoughts, while the other two can handle most Imperial cruisers. Nothing was actually said about total capacity, just maximum ship size, so it might be best to leave the capacity issue ambiguous.

At any event, it's pretty clear that Pixie has a lot more going on than is apparent in that UPP. Probably works out pretty well for the Navy: they can conduct full-scale naval exercises without having to worry too much about disrupting civilian shipping or dealing with unwanted observers. They could grab up a couple of the uninhabited planets or moons of the systems and establish them as live-fire ranges for practicing bombardment and planetary assault, automate some of the obsolescent ships as target ships, set up a full scale training site without having to worry as much about accidents or ordnance that got away from them.

 

[McPerth]

Might be easier just to add zeroes, declare that the Regina yards can handle ships up to 500,000 dT while the Pixie and Efate yards are limited to 60,000. Puts Regina up in the range of dreadnoughts, while the other two can handle most Imperial cruisers. Nothing was actually said about total capacity, just maximum ship size, so it might be best to leave the capacity issue ambiguous.

I know this only marginally affects your numbers, only for Regina, in fact, but, as I posted on the other thread Hans talks about above:

If you play with Regina being TL 10, its maximum ship size building capacity would be K (so, up to 19999 dton). If you play with Regina being TL 12, maximum ship size built there would be R (199999 dton). In both cases this is due to computing limits (maximum computers being 4 and 6 respectivelly).

See that if you assume Regina being TL10, as initially published, he cannot build ships of 20000 dtons or more, and as being described as the largest GS shipyards, Pixie's capacity should be even lower (unless another company has larger shipyards there).

At any event, it's pretty clear that Pixie has a lot more going on than is apparent in that UPP. Probably works out pretty well for the Navy: they can conduct full-scale naval exercises without having to worry too much about disrupting civilian shipping or dealing with unwanted observers. They could grab up a couple of the uninhabited planets or moons of the systems and establish them as live-fire ranges for practicing bombardment and planetary assault, automate some of the obsolescent ships as target ships, set up a full scale training site without having to worry as much about accidents or ordnance that got away from them.

Fully agreed here.

 

[rancke]

See that if you assume Regina being TL10, as initially published, he cannot build ships of 20000 dtons or more, and as being described as the largest GS shipyards, Pixie's capacity should be even lower (unless another company has larger shipyards there).

As I replied, I assume Regina has a TL of 12 (space TL 13) and has had that at least as far back as when the Kinunir was built. (Actually, I assume it has had TL12 for most of its history, but the Kinunir is evidence for a space TL of 13; there is no canonical evidence about earlier times).

But TL10 or 12 doesn't matter. If you have enough trade with a neighboring system to employ X 200,000T freighters but can only build 20,000T freighters, you'll simply have to build 10X of those. The total tonnage remains the same.


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

...See that if you assume Regina being TL10, as initially published, he cannot build ships of 20000 dtons or more, and as being described as the largest GS shipyards, Pixie's capacity should be even lower (unless another company has larger shipyards there). ...

Oops, you're right. Good point.

 

[McPerth]

As I replied, I assume Regina has a TL of 12 (space TL 13) and has had that at least as far back as when the Kinunir was built. (Actually, I assume it has had TL12 for most of its history, but the Kinunir is evidence for a space TL of 13; there is no canonical evidence about earlier times).

I know, but the controversy remains. And the Kinunir must be TL 15 to have its Black Globe, so the controversy is still larger.

I guess we all know that Regina's TL and the fact of Kinunirs were built in places unable to do that according to rules are some of the ethernal unsolved questions of Traveller OTU and canon.

But TL10 or 12 doesn't matter. If you have enough trade with a neighboring system to employ X 200,000T freighters but can only build 20,000T freighters, you'll simply have to build 10X of those. The total tonnage remains the same.

When Carlobrand said ships up to 500000 tons I understood up to 500000 dtons in size, not as total. Now you point it I see it can be read both ways.

 

[rancke]

I know, but the controversy remains.

Not in my mind and, which is more to the point, not in the mind of Traveller editors in the last quater century. Regina's tech level has been 12 since The Spinward Marches Campaign came out.

And the Kinunir must be TL 15 to have its Black Globe, so the controversy is still larger.

Black Globes appear to be unusually self-contained equipment and there seems no good reason why a TL15 Black Globe couldn't be installed in a TL7 spacecraft. Note that a ship design rule requiring all components of a vessel to be of the same tech level is not, IMO, a good reason, since I know for a fact that it is possible to install equipment of different tech level in the same vessel in the Real World.

In any case, if you want to use the Black Globe as evidence that Regina's space TL is actually 15, I guess I could live with that. But I don't think it's plausible that a world's space TL can be three levels in advance of its general TL, so that would, IMO, require retconning Regina's general TL to 14, or at the very least 13. Or why not make it 15 while we're at it?[*]

[*] Setting aside for the moment the fact that neither you nor I have anything to say in the matther. ​

The one thing that's clear to me is that while a TL of 12 may not be all that plausible, a TL of 10 is even less plausible, by a large margin.


Hans

 

[rancke]

I'm about to write a two-paragraph library data entry about Pixie and would like to ask for opinions on how many transients you think would be on Pixie on a regular basis (i.e. personnel on the Navy base, workers on the shipyard, and starport employees)? I've settled on a shipyard capacity of 60,000T total for the Pixie Yard. I don't any notion of how big Navy bases are (I vaguely recall seeing some figures about five different sizes of navy bases, but I can't recall where; perhaps it was the Imperial Navy playtest). I think the starport will be running with fairly minimum personnel, whatever that would mean.


Hans