Recreation in the Lanth system

[Badenov]

Except ... you have entirely missed the point of what LBB2.81, p9 actually says.
I'll copy/paste quote it here for you and bold text what you are missing so you can see what you have overlooked.

LBB2.81, p9:


Ergo ... tickets are priced PER JUMP ... NOT per parsec.
If a starship needs to make more than one jump to reach the (ultimate) destination ... then you have to buy multiple tickets to reach that destination aboard THIS starship.

This is a 'yes, but ...' situation. You haven't carefully read the quote, either, it seems.

Passage is always sold on the basis of transport to the announced destination, rather than on the basis of jump distance.

Number of jumps to get to the destination is never mentioned. The 'announced destination' is certainly not some intermediate piont where the ship's not even stopping. (Now the RAW do mention that if a ship stops at an intermediate destination, follow-on transit requires a sepatate ticket. This is a separate case, though, and not what I was referring to).

If a non-stop trip to the Bahamas cost $300 or $600 with a stopover in Atlanta, who would pay twice as much for a trip that takes longer?

Wrong.
Cargoes pay for tickets the same way that passengers do ... on a PER JUMP basis, regardless of the number of parsecs traveled per jump.

I can't find cargoes paying per jump anywhere. What I do find is:

All cargos are carried at Cr1,000 per ton. Starship owners may purchase goods locally and ship them at their own expense, speculating that they can later sell them at a profit. (LBB2 p8-9).

Not 'per ton per jump', but 'per ton'. MgT1 does a bit better, by making the shipping distance part of the per ton rate. But as Commander Truestar says, you can do as you like IYTU. But it doesn't make sense to me, and won't ever be the case IMTU.

If cargo did NOT pay per jump, you could ship 1 ton of cargo across an entire SECTOR of space for Cr1000 for that 1 ton of cargo to transit (multiple) dozens of parsecs.

This would seem to be the actual case.

Such an interpretation does not even pass the laugh test (let alone the steward accounting test).

It seems to pass the RAW test, though. If it doesn't pass the accounting test, that means it's a bad plan, not that the rule is otherwise.

Notice what is underpinning your assumption ... that a "faster competitor" will AUTOMATICALLY (and Always?) be available with tickets for sale in direct competition to your own "slower" option ... leaving you with No Customers Willing To Buy At Your Price. That MIGHT be the case, some of the time ... but it won't necessarily be the case ALL of the time.

So, I'm not assuming anything other than a person without an emergency will not pay twice as much to go someplace more slowly than a faster ship will get them there. A 1-Jump competitor can arrive a week after you and still arrive at the same time at the final destination. Are there places in the Imperium so desolate that only 1 ship a week goes there? Maybe. But 4 weeks in a hotel is cheaper than a second ticket. For the cost of a ticket, you can lease a very nice house or condo and live comfortably for months while you wait.

Besides, the LBB2 ticket rules aren't exactly modeling "there's another starship leaving to the same place that YOU are, and your competitor has better service and amenities than YOU do, so a -DM penalty is going to be assessed on the number of tickets that YOU can sell to the same destination" ... because RAW isn't trying to model "the entire pie" of interstellar transport competition, just merely the "slice of the pie" that is relevant to your starship operation.

I'm not sure what LBB2 ticket prices are modeling, but double jumps aren't explicitly mentioned anywhere I can find. Since the RAW aren't modeling double jumps at all, you're already working a corner case.

Which is another way of saying that anyone buying J1+1 tickets from YOU when there's a J2 competitor at the starport going to the same place you're bound for ... well ... your competitor "sold out" their ticket capacity, but the demand for transport to that destination is greater than they can accommodate (alone) ... so YOU get the "overflow demand" that your competitor cannot satisfy RIGHT NOW. Therefore, even if your competition is offering a "better/cheaper service" than what you can, there is still demand for what YOU have to offer once "beggars can't be choosers" in terms of getting stuff (passengers and/or cargoes) to move.

And just like when demand outstrips supply, if the demand for transport to 2 parsecs away EXCEEDS the capacity of the J2 starship(s) going there ... then the Laws of Supply & Demand "dictate" that the price for the service to that destination 2 parsecs away will necessarily have to INCREASE in order to balance the Supply with that Demand ... at which point, paying 2 tickets for a J1+1 starship to the same destination 2 parsecs away is both "reasonable" and "makes sense" in macroeconomic terms.

Sure, the J2 starship will "sell out" first on ticket sales ... but then your J1+1 starship is ALSO there to scoop up the remaining pent up demand at a higher price (because, 2x tickets) than what the J2 starship was selling (fewer) 1x tickets to the exact same destination for.

We're talking WORLD EXPORT economy volumes of trade here ... compared to the "soda straw" transport capacity of ACS Free Trader competitors. There will tend to be an overall level of demand which individual starships cannot always suppy capacity for ... and so the ticket buyers get "bumped" down the list of options until they can buy what they need to get to where they want to go (even if it means needing to take more than 1 jump to get there).

So, the ticketing and travel sections don't go nearly into this much detail. Technically, if you roll 10 1C passengers and only have 9 cabins, you could start a bidding war for tickets. None of this is RAW, and as mentioned above, tickets aren't per jump, they're per destination. If you can sell tickets to 'floating in space halfway to <place>', be my guest.

As for waiting for a different competitor J2 starship to arrive next week going to the same place that your J1+1 starship is going to THIS week ... see again, bird in the hand versus two in the bush. If you couldn't buy a J2 ticket to where you want to go TODAY ... what guarantees do you have that you'll be able to buy a J2 ticket to that same location a week from now? If there are no guarantees that you'll get what you want if you wait a week, do you take the "sure thing" (at 2x price) now ... or do you keep waiting for a "cheaper" deal later ... while continuing to rack up living expenses while you wait?

Living expenses are so much less than an interstellar ticket, waiting is far more economical. You'd have to wait years to add up to the cost of a 2-jump ticket. And I don't think any place in the empire that only sees one ship a week.

The point I'm making is that the comparison isn't quite so simple as you've made it out to be.

Well, yes, and I explained that I was confused. Some of your answers make good sense, others confuse me. But I think I've run enough of the RAW to ground that I understand the situation well enough and can plan how to play in my games, so that has been accomplished. And I will be working that 500T J-6 drop tank cargoliner. It should make good money.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Number of jumps to get to the destination is never mentioned.

I can't find cargoes paying per jump anywhere.

Beam me up, Scotty.
There's no intelligent life down here ...

 

[mike wightman]

Costs in LBB:2 for shipping freight and/or passengers are per jump, not distance.

If you are on a jump 1 trader and want passage to a world three parsecs away you pay per jump, three tickets. if you take a trip on a jump 3 liner you pay for one jump.

This has been discussed ad nauseam, the rules are clear, you pay per jump. In CT that is.

"The referee should determine all worlds accessible to the starship (depending on jump number)*, and roll for each such world on the cargo table."

*jump number, not jump range. A ship with a jump 1 drive but enough onboard for three jump 1s still only checks for cargo (and therefore passengers) to worlds within its jump 1 range.

"Passengers: After a starship has accepted cargo for a specific destination,** passengers will present themselves for transport to that destination"

** a destination determined by jump number nor jump range

This is where the confusion now come:

" Passage is always sold on the basis of transport to the announced destination,*** - rather than on the basis of jump distance."

*** the announced destination has to be within the jump number of the ship because it was previously determined by cargo

And now the end of the argument:

"Differences in starship jump drive capacity have no specific effect on passage prices. A jump-3 starship charges the same passage price as a jump-1 starship. The difference is that a jump-3 ship can reach a destination in one jump, while the jump-1 ship would take three separate jumps (through two intermediate destinations, and requiring three separate tickets) to reach it."

Costs are per jump number, not per parsec.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Just to be clear, though -- until TL-15, there is no regular supply of Cr1000 per ton per jump cargo space for any Jn higher than 1. What's available at that price is either subsidized, or infill around spec cargo that covers that ship's cost already, or dead space on a corporate freighter that's earning more than Cr1000 per ton per jump on what it's carrying (in effect, they're paying themselves above Cr1000).

From my thread a few years ago:
The only ship that has costs of less than Cr1000/ton/jump at Jump-2 is the J-2, 5000Td TL-15 ship (3439 tons payload, cost per payload ton per jump-2: Cr826), because of its Z drives.

The next smaller most-efficient ship (J-2, 1000Td, TL-11, 635 tons payload) costs Cr1185 per payload ton at Jump-2. If unarmed, it's still Cr1165 per payload ton at Jump-2.

And, obviously, they're big enough to have trouble keeping their cargo holds full on every leg of a route using the rules as written.

Nothing at Jump-3 or above has costs below Cr1000/ton payload/Jump at max jump number.

Therefore, without having subidies or a corporate route declared by referee-fiat, or an ongoing arbitrage situation (say, a high TL Ind world near a low TL non-ind world), you can't get there from here at J2+ at Cr1000/Td/Jump.

The rules don't say this. But they do end up with ships that can't haul cargo profitably at Cr1000/Td for more than a single parsec.

Which means almost everything moves in J1 increments, each costing Cr1000/Td. Which is to say, per-parsec pricing....

J2 ships can undercut the Cr1000/Td/Parsec rate and still make money. J3 is... close. Beyond that -- nope, they'll need to charge still more.

 

[Spinward Flow]

What needs to be understood is that when LBB2 (77 and 81) was being written, there was no such thing as microjumps ... because every star system had only ONE planet (the mainworld) and nothing else was documented (or documentable until LBB6 came long with extended system generation). So a LOT of the assumptions underpinning FTL transport (and the ticket system for it) was both highly simplified ... and poorly worded (in hindsight) ... because the RAW wound up being a bit "word salad" for getting the point across.

Also, what's the point of limiting the rules to "jump number" if Hop/Skip/Leap Drives become available?
My point being, that the LBB2 ticket RAW is (with the benefit of hindsight) something of a premature optimization ... which in retrospect could have been written better/more clearly than it was.



If I had to rewrite the LBB2 ticket RAW "today" using terms that would be clearer to understand (and reduce confusion/errors in interpretation), I would basically hit these points:

• FTL tickets for transport services (freight and passenger) are sold on a per FTL transit basis, regardless of the distance the FTL transit covers. A single FTL transit costs 1 ticket, whether it is a microjump of less than 1 parsec or a multi-parsec distance traveled.
• Destinations that require multiple FTL transits to reach will require the purchase of multiple FTL tickets (2 jumps = 2 tickets, 3 jumps = 3 tickets, etc.), accounting for each intermediate destination as requiring its own ticket along the navigation plot to the final destination. Starships capable of multiple FTL transits before needing to refuel can use empty hexes/deep space as intermediate destinations in order to reach their final destinations.
• Starship operators can choose to declare multiple destinations at the port of origin to determine the demand for tickets to each of the destinations being declared. These multiple destinations can extend beyond the starship's unrefueled range, but accepting ticket sales to those destinations "binds" the starship operator to meeting the terms of those ticket sales. An "abort" from the plot to declared destinations (for whatever reason, including misjumps/etc.) will oblige the starship operator to reimburse the ticket buyer(s) at 3x the value of the ticket(s) sale price(s) that the starship operator can/will no longer fulfill, in breach of service contract with the ticket buyer(s).

Everything else concerning the pricing of interstellar tickets would remain the same as we know (and love) in CT.



The above rewrite of the LBB2 ticket RAW "broadens the scope" of FTL transit ranges from microjump to hop drive (and beyond), explicitly covers the multi-jump circumstance, and sets up how to handle pre-planned routes that schedule a starship operator's movements beyond the immediate next destination.

I'd like to think that such a rewrite HONORS both the letter and the spirit of the ticket RAW in LBB2 while being "clearer" in its phrasing and terminology as to how it's "supposed to work" in actual practice. The only addition that I would make would be to add a penalty clause in circumstances in which a starship operator cannot deliver the contracted service that tickets entitle buyer(s) to expect to receive. So if an operator "renegs" on the terms of the tickets that they've sold (for whatever reason), expect to pay compensation to the buyer(s) of those tickets.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I still think that freight costs need to reflect the actual cost to provide the service, with a reasonable profit. That's actually a pretty heavy lift to calculate though, and would have been a lot more difficult before mass market spreadsheet programs.

I concur that the trade rules (and whatever tweaks were done to the build rules -- notably, standard hull discounts) were a premature optimization for J1 and up to about 200Td cargo capacity. Good enough for a game and a short campaign; it'd take a while using reasonable rates of wealth accumulation before you really went off the map and met the fiscal dragons that lurk beyond its edges.

 

[mike wightman]

The purpose of the freight and passenger costs was not to allow for a PC crewed free trader to make a comfortable living. It was to make it so that speculative trade and the odd adventure would be needed to make ends meet, and if you do well, get lucky, score big you may find yourself in the lucrative position of being able to afford large speculative trade lots.

Once you start making money hand over fist with high tonnage high value speculative trade you can begin to think about buying a bigger ship with a longer range jump drive.

To have more fabulous adventures? No. You need a cargo hold that can take the largest speculative trade shipments you can get on the tables, max out passengers, and the advantage of a jump 3 drive is that you are able to get to a suitable trade code for your speculative goods.

A jump 5 speculative trader will be mostly engines and fuel, but a 60t cargo hold for speculative trade is likely the most you will ever need. The profit on 60t of ATVs is not to be sniffed at.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The purpose of the freight and passenger costs was not to allow for a PC crewed free trader to make a comfortable living.

Right -- it's a game. On the other hand, the idea that you'd put up many megacredits for an opportunity to provide cheap cargo haulage as a charitable gesture seems silly.

A jump 5 speculative trader will be mostly engines and fuel, but a 60t cargo hold for speculative trade is likely the most you will ever need. The profit on 60t of ATVs is not to be sniffed at.

As if anyone would imagine such a thing!

(Basically, they'll want half a megacredit up front to light off the Jump Drive for you. But they'll take 41Td of whatever you have, out to 16.3 light years away in a week, and not ask too many questions.)