I would take that to mean things can play out in your universe any darn way you like, just work out the background to a consistent level whether you do SFlow’s full business case driven ship designs or some lesser involved but unlikely to be punctured by player disbelief.
In my case, the reason why I "go so far" as to examine the "full business case driven ship designs" can be summed up in a single word.
But jokes aside
...the other reason is to delve into the "end user experience" of what it means to LIVE WITH the design choices of the Naval Architect's Office Work for years/decades of operations, so as to learn what impacts different choices make on The Bottom Line™ for bean counters who care about profit margins (because their lives and livelihoods depend on them, so ... go figure, eh?
).
It's something of a "traveling salesman problem" to figure out what kind of starship class design you "need" in order to be able to operate
as a tramp merchant along the frontier
with enough self(ish) sufficiency AND security to be able to keep operating for years/decades and have a decent expectation that you'll "come out ahead" after all that work (with hopefully enough profit to re-invest and start the cycle all over again).
And yes, in order to investigate that question and the impacts of design decisions made before construction, you kind of HAVE TO do the sort of deep dive into The Simulation™ that I've been exploring over the long haul of this thread, with the occasional foray into making deck plans once I've got the Naval Architect Office Spreadsheet of features and functionality nailed down.
At some point here, I'm going to switch over to the (newer) 300 pixels per deck square resolution size Geomorphs set and start making new sets of deck plans for a 100 ton Scout/Courier (Type-S2), a 280 ton Rule of Man Long Trader and a 410 ton Rule of Man Clipper ... because it's FUN to think about these things and see where they go.
The bonus experience then becomes realizing that just because a class design was built by a specific polity (Second Imperium/Rule of Man, pre-Long Night) doesn't mean that the engineering, design and business operation principles are necessarily "confined" to that polity (or era) only.
Convergent Evolution IS A THING, even in the realm of interstellar transport and merchant operations, so the insights that I manage to tease out of the CT ruleset can be broadly applicable to more than just a single point in time or specific region of space.
For example ...
The Vilani designed J1/1G
Free Trader is something that "makes sense" if your homeworld is part of a
J1 Main.
The
Vilani Main includes 985 star systems.
It therefore makes perfect sense for the Vilani to have
somewhat subtantially stagnated on J1 as being "adequate" to most interstellar transport "needs" when building out an empire from their home star system.
Likewise, Zdant is a part of the
Zdant Main and thus J1 would be "adequate" for most interstellar transport "needs" in the Zhodani polity when building out the Consulate for an extended period of time.
By contrast, the Solomani homeworld is NOT on a Main ...
... and thus J1=1 parsec range interstellar transport options would be ... sub-optimal ... to the needs of any Rule of Man Empire that needed to interface with the homeworld of the Solomani. That kind of "environmental pressure" resulting from the jump map arrangement of nearby stars would therefore logically produce a "need" for J2=2 parsec range interstellar transport options that would become an enduring "feature" of the cultural attitudes of businesses within the polity of the Second Imperium/Rule of Man/Ramshackle Empire. I can also likely surmise that such "demands for mercantile range options" are what (eventually) prompted the development of the Vilani J2
Far Trader class design after the Interstellar Wars era.
But that still begs the question ... what kind of (early expansion) starship classes would the Solomani have been building as their "tramp merchant" starship classes in time to meet the needs of the Second Imperium? Because no matter what anyone says, your basic J1/1G
Free Trader is simply NOT GOING TO CUT IT as an all around solution for "small time, breakbulk" merchant transport to all locations.
Furthermore, there are going to be places on the map where you need 2+ parsecs of range in order to "marry up" differing interstellar markets.
Caravanserie can help bridge between J1 Mains, but their services can potentially be "expensive" (in a variety of ways and meanings), so ... Use At Own Risk. Sometimes you're going to want to have an unrefueled range of 3-4 or even 5-6(!) parsecs, in order to bypass/jump over potential trouble spots/profit loss sinks on the way to your ultimate destination. Being able to multi-jump through empty hexes on the interstellar map can be a highly advantageous shortcut
*IF* your starship is capable of performing such maneuvers (reliably).
All of these considerations would have far more "merit" to them in the context of a Solomani cultural background than would be the case with a Vilani (or Zhodani) cultural background ... because Main: YES vs Main: NO.
And then you get to places like the
Great Rift,
Lesser Rift,
Delphi Rift and
Windhorn Rift where the demand for jump
RANGE becomes an overriding priority (of the "you must be this high to ride this ride" variety). Any kind of extended range (via multi-jump) starship design can (start to) solve the "problem" of being able to transit across the Rifts while still carrying a "useful load" of revenue tonnage capacity for doing merchant transport work with. What does it take in order to
jump so far into the void and make it back out again? Is it even (theoretically) possible to do so ... and still turn a profit, so the business enterprise can survive long enough to keep making the journey(s)?
Vilani attitude: That's
Somebody Else's Problem.
Solomani attitude:
HOLD MY BEER.
Those kinds of differences in cultural background then become the springboard for fun little ideas of how to tackle these kinds of challenges ... and what might result from success in those efforts ... to Boldly Go Where No One COULD Go Before ...
