Starport Economics

[Bob Weaver]

(Cross-posting with CT-Starships Yahoo group)

Hey all,

IMTU there is a small cluster of independent planets, locked in an
endless series of small-scale wars (largely to give me an environment
for testing HG designs) and a question came to me lately. Has anyone
ever made up guidelines or rules for how much it costs to build a
starport of a given class? Some of these little planets might want to upgrade their shipbuilding capability, or just rebuild after their neighbor slags the existing site.
I would guess a Class-E 'port', defined in Bk 3 as "Frontier
Installation. Essentially a bare spot of bedrock with no fuel,
facilities, or bases present." wouldn't set the government back more
than a few MCr for clearing the bedrock and constructing a homing
beacon. But how much would a fully loaded Class A port cost?
Millions? Billions? A trillion? Any thoughts?

Best Regards,
Bob

 

[Gnusam Netor]

Originally posted by Bob Weaver:
(Cross-posting with CT-Starships Yahoo group)
snip...

But how much would a fully loaded Class A port cost?
Millions? Billions? A trillion? Any thoughts?

Best Regards,
Bob

IIRC, I think Pocket Empires have (good) rules for building starports and other doodads any good system ruler could want.

And yes, A-class cost something like 100 times a B-class starport...

 

[aramis]

TNE's World Tamer's Handbook provides the rules for building heavy industrial capacity (Needed for B&A yards), and Hydrogen could be classed as Light Industry. It lacks volumes, tho, so it's only truly relevant for dirtside.

 

[Piper]

There is also a very fine set of guidelines at this link

Courtesy of robject, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[robject]

Thanks Piper! Few here are those who want a gamist solution rather than a gearhead solution, and mine is clearly gamist.

So if you want fiddly, then don't bother looking at my stuff. But I'm reasonably happy with the result.

It's all guesstimation from basic assumptions pulled from Classic Traveller. Here's the bottom line:

A Class E is probably MCr1 -- and that's mostly for the telemeter; a marked patch of bedrock or a small landing pad is trivial cost in comparison.

I figured a Class D starport would probably run MCr250.

There's a fuzzy area starting at around MCr500 (and up) where the D's add on ship maintenance, at which point the port is a Class C.

Class B starports could conceivably be built for as little as BCr1, but it's more likely they'll range from BCr2 to BCr16... though they can get very expensive very fast, especially if you add a base.

Finally the Class A starts at BCr10, and can easily reach into the 00's, mainly due to the shipyard and accompanying infrastructure.

 

[robject]

Thanks, but it borrows from a lot of work done by members of the TML back in the late 90s (see credits) -- many of whom were hardcore gearheads. My contribution is mostly compilation and interpolation.

 

[Chuck Anumia]

Good, straight up, usable information...Thanks Robject

 

[RainOfSteel]

There is also some considerable information about starports right here on CotI.

See: Starport Design 101.

 

[robject]

Before they closed the forum down, they had a lot of neat ideas -- a lot -- itemized down. It was astonishing and awesome.

 

[mike wightman]

Isn't it about time it was reopened?

A two year hiatus...

failing that, someone could start a series of linked threads on another forum

 

[Bob Weaver]

Hey fellows, thanks for the input! Sadly, I do not have access to the GURPS or TNE stuff, but I'm checking out Robject's link right now. I am not sure whether I fall in the gamist or gearhead camp. So I hope they reopen the 'Starport design 101' thread again.

Best regards,

Bob

 

[robject]

Well Bob, if you find it to your liking, feel free to make suggestions. The page is due for a reformat, but I'd really like to hear about content revision.

 

[Jeffr0]

Wow...

That is a much needed supplement.

Good work as usual, robject.

 

[aramis]

Gearhead is the overlap of Gamist & Simulationist!

Interesting stuff, Rob.

 

[robject]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Gearhead is the overlap of Gamist & Simulationist!

I'd draw a Venn diagram, but I don't want to.

 

[robject]

If you're into Painful Gamism (PG), you can check out some really old JavaScript I wrote back in 1998.

http://eaglestone.pocketempires.com/starports/

Starport capacity estimator
Calculates between passenger/freight traffic and ship types, and the starport resources needed to service them.

Starport cost estimator
Based on passenger & freight traffic, figure out ship traffic, starport components needed, and costs. More detailed [on the starport end] than the above script, but otherwise similar.

Starport trade estimator
This was a fun script. Given a world and its neighbors, estimate passenger and freight traffic through its starport in an average week, and estimate shuttles & landing facilities required.