Starport drawings wanted!!!!!

[trader jim]

Does any one have any starports drawings or "plans" or "layouts" ect,ect,, they can post ??? Ayear ago, or more one of the guys posted several starport drawing to the Boards, Now I cant find it!!!...I need as much info as i can get....point me in the right direction please...thanx

 

[Burocrate]

TJ, Are you thinking of this site:


web page


Really good site, starport maps incorporated into the author's original adventures. Also try looking through all the goodies in the COTI "STARPORT" section at the top of the page.

 

[savage]

Trader Jim,

I've started adding a few things to my site. Not nearly as fancy as Matt Finch's site but your welcome to use it. I only have 1 starport there so far.

Cheers.
Savage

 

[savage]

http://www.angelfire.com/empire2/savage/1WorldOrder/Commonwealth/Maps_Commonwealth_Campaign.html

Here's the direct link.
Savage

 

[shield]

There are some very nice overall starport layouts from Class A to Class E in White Dwarf 42 ish (from memory) if you can get hold of it.

Cheers
Richard

 

[Andrew Boulton]

http://eaglestone.pocketempires.com/StarportModuleCatalog.html

I've not looked at the WD article for years, but the pictures here look awfully similar.

 

[trader jim]

Thanx Andrew... I found it earlier, and ran a copy of the whole thing , all 38 pages!!!..looks good and is VERY usefull, raelly like those illistrations of a downport!!!...went on line and found several goodies and ran them also!!!!, I gotta get a copy of #22 and #43 of white dwarf, I will be using Gurps starports, white dwarf starports, startown liberty, and the Keiths starports, (carrugut press), and of course any thing else i can get a hold of.
Then Good "ol" TRADER JIM is going to build his very own Super Starport Headquarders on a Cross Roads type planet....and i mean BIG!!!

 

[jappel]

Does anyone remember which issue of Dragon Magazine had "Exonidas Spaceport" from the Swycaffer books in it? I remember that being a pretty decent write-up, with a lot of excellent drawings.

I distinctly remember the huge hexagonal gravitic landing grid - incoming ships didn't come in under their own power, but rather were "flown" to the ground by controllers manipulating this grid.

John

 

[kafka47]

That would be Dragon#59. For Exonidas Spaceport

Also a good source for Starports was the GURPS product.

Also there was the JTAS, for an older rendition...

"]http://www.travellerbibliography.org/jtas/jtas7.html[/IMG][/url]

And the Keiths did something for Classic Traveller

And updated the same article for MegaTraveller in Far & Away...sorry no picture...

 

[Straybow]

When I read things like that Eaglestone Starports page I can't help but feel that the scale is screwed up. This model might work for minor worlds on the fringes, but not sector economic seats or core worlds.

Picture the US, or Britain, or any other first world nation having no road, rail, or air connections outside its territories and only one seaport, and it capable of handling a few hundred small ships on a weekly basis. That is like a pop 8 rich world with a single Type A starport. Interstellar trade would be limited to a few hundredths of a percent of GDP. In other words, insignificant.

Downports would be located and sized to serve its commerce needs. For an average number on a planet figure one per 50 million population. A highly organized planet with extensive infrastructure might have fewer downports designed to handle tremendous shipping volume for large regions, up to entire mid-sized continents.

A balkanized world like Earth would certainly have a downport for each principle polity, and some such as the US would have several. Political relationships would dictate the number of highports, as minor polities align with majors or form their own trade blocs.

Even with a model like that, such worlds would derive as little as 1% of GDP from interstellar trade. Any world that wished to expand interstellar trade to 5% of GDP would probably need double the number of downports and a minimum of three synchronous highports plus low-orbit transfer stations for various specialized trade, safety, and security needs.

This is ignoring the idea that advanced worlds will tend to have a significant portion of mineral extraction and manufacturing in various extraplanetary locations: in orbit, on a moon if they've got one, on asteroids (there would be tens of thousands even if not concentrated in a belt). Intrasystem traffic could be orders of magnitude higher than interstellar traffic, swelling downport numbers and sizes proportionally.

Even a minor world of moderate intrinsic tech level will have significant spaceport infrastructure because the existing functional tech of the greater starfaring civilization and economic advantages of systemwide resources make them a given.

When we get to technologically and economically mature worlds with pop figures 9 and above, both supply and demand for goods become staggering at a mere 0.1% of GDP. Consider that N Amer, Europe, Japan, and Aus/NZ constitute no more than 12% of the population but represent 75+% of Earth GDP (90+% if including OPEC), making for a relatively low overall GDP/capita. An advanced world would have GDP/capita dozens of times higher, and may likely have population several times greater.

A genuine high-tech industrial trade center (remember that Traveller assumes an industrial world is so heavily exploited that it must have a tainted atmosphere, no matter how advanced the tech) makes busy city and port scenes of popular movies look deserted by comparison.

 

[ozbonius_2000]

You can find my attempt at creating a Starport here: Loren Down

I borrowed (with permission!) some graphics on Mythmere's site. There are links to the Planet and System information as well. Keep in mind that this is a work in progress.

 

[jasper]

while we talking about ports. What is the runway length for the avg 400dTon trader?

 

[robject]

Hey 'Bow -- yeah, no news there: I have just about no conceptual image of the scales involved in the Imperium.

Yes, I run a sparse Imperium.

My assumptions were:

(1) Since most people never leave their homeworld, space traffic is nothing like air traffic today. Inter- and in-system traffic is mainly corporate, industrial, military, or oddballs.

(2) Your point about inner-system traffic is well taken. A high tech system will have a large industrial presence. But then, there will also be corporate starports, which I do not know much about. Colonies will promote some casual travel; how much is up to the referee. I assume it will be a percentage of the colony's population per year, not the mainworld's (see point 1).

(3) In order to have brisk interstellar trade you need a strong trading neighbor a jump away, or a pipeline to your doorstep with goods at the ready (i.e. XBoat route). At least in the Marches, this isn't very frequent -- that's why my trade model and catalog lean toward small installations. Also I assumed player-characters are more likely to comprehend (or even own) a smaller starport than a larger (because that's true in my case).


Example
Taking those three assumptions, I can see Rhylanor and Porozlo... two very important worlds in the Marches. Large populations, high tech, and close together. A recipe for success.

In fact, it looks like my numbers could be off by a couple orders of magnitude -- at least for freight. I've calculated passenger traffic through Rhylanor orbital at 50,000 per week, and freight is handwaved to be 200,000 tons per week.

50,000 people per week is 3 hundredths of a percent of Rhylanor's population per year. Over 20 years, then, that could mean that a bit over half of one percent of the population may have travelled to Porozlo once in their lives... which is perhaps a tad harsh, but it is possible. That's still 50 million people over 20 years -- most of which are probably repeats. And the freight numbers look even leaner.

But that can be boosted without any violence to the system. A point can be added for worlds that are within a jump of each other, and the freight numbers can be x10 instead of x4 (I think x10 is more reasonable).

At any rate, there's still only 500,000 people arriving per week at Rhylanor, and 5 million tons of freight, which is very easy to manage.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

25 passengers? Pah. That's not a liner. THIS is a liner:

http://www.cunard.com/QM2/home.asp

 

[DaveChase]

Wonder how long that system would take before it depleted the water, gas giants and such for fuel.

Maybe that is why there are so many dead planets every where we go.

Dave

 

[robject]

I assume that ships 1000 tons or under need at most a 5km landing strip.

It would take forever to deplete a system of h2 sources. Some wild guesstimation... if the amount of ice insystem could form a sphere 1 000 000 m in radius, then there's 4 000 000 000 000 000 000 cubic meters of ice, or around 250 000 000 000 000 000 tons of fuel. Using 700 billion tons per year would deplete the iceballs alone in 35 thousand years. We're okay there.

Assume a world of size 5 with 50% water. Guesstimate average water depth of 2000m (help! is this absurd?) Guesstimate water volume then as a big pan 1000m deep, 15 000 000 m on a side. Total volume appx 200 000 000 000 000 000 cubic meters -- again, another 35 thousand years or so.

Don't even start with the gas giant.

 

[savage]

robject,
Even the subliners in T4 had 41 people. Your suggesting that traffic between J1-2 worlds is
completed equally by craft "less than" 600dt. I'd kick but in that world. Start building 1kdt middle passenger/low passenger ships...make a fortune.
My Savior 1000dt liner transports 10high, 120 middle and 500 low. That's closer to a standard.
Lets not even thing about the the coreship liners, and King Richard liners.
I probably could offer cost fares... Savage-Mart StarLines.

This ice asteroid idea...not too hot. So you loose a 100million ton of it and it lands on your big city. Ouch. The Sky Raiders asteroid world could take a large asteroid and bring it inside. That's probably a better plan for the highport.

Savage

 

[Burocrate]

"insert of awe-struck wonder"

I thought I have a decent set of archived data till the answers on this thread started to pour in.

 

[robject]

Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
25 passengers? Pah. That's not a liner. THIS is a liner:

http://www.cunard.com/QM2/home.asp

Yeah, I struggled with the concept of Liner a little bit, finally ending with the Classic Traveller 600t liner (30 passengers, right?).

A liner is sort-of exclusive, since even white collar workers on a TLF world almost never leave their homeworld. A liner has more in common with a Yacht than the Pacific Princess.

Of course it's because the CT view is smaller than the MT view is smaller than the T4 view etc etc. But I think it's still defensible, for referees who want to play that TU.

Suppose you've got a 1000-passenger liner. Where ya gonna go to? And how often? Those are the questions the referee has decided upon, and it helps to have a first-approximation idea of how much travel is going on out there.

But on the other hand, that would be pretty cool. How about a cruise from Rhylanor to Belizo? It's sort of a tropical paradise, and Rhylanor is industrial and polluted, so there might be a draw there. How much of a draw? I don't know. If most people don't leave their homeworld, then it would have to be wealthy people, corporate sponsorships, lottery winners, and the like. And it would be simply amazing.

Lessee, Belizo's at trade code 2... three parsecs from Rhylanor, penalty 1, so trade codes 5 x 1 = 5, sqrt is a bit more than 2, so between 100 and 1000 people per week... not bad at all. Yes, I'd say that's a prime candidate for weekly cruises departing from Rhylanor to Belizo. And there will also be similar weekly cruises from Porozlo and Jae Tellona to Belizo, too.

Belizo's a planet, of course, so those 9 million people might not all be part of an industry that pulls in 150,000 tourists per year, but it can't hurt. And if the tourists are spending Cr20,000 apiece on travel alone, I imagine they'll spend that much on Belizo too. A 3 billion credit industry for 9 million people sounds significant.

 

[robject]

Savage,

Yep, you can plainly see that I dwell on the fringes of known space. And you're very, very right: established routes (especially in the core) are dominated by large, dedicated passenger ships and freighters. Free traders and small liners fight for the scraps.

Rob

P.S. Again, however, you have to define those routes reasonably well. A single world with a gargantuan population has to want to go somewhere in order to send ships there. So it helps to lay down some ground rules, and then do a lot of sanity checking. I've purposefully stayed far away from trying to figure out core sectors.