type 23 Corvette
- Thread starter Xerxeskingofking
- Start date
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I agree completely 
If your business is providing spares to a hungry shipping maintenance industry, having drives available is your mechanism for providing revenue.
Depending on the time of day, it seems that the Traveller Universe is either teeming with starships flying hither and yon, or the ships are as rare as hens teeth with folks stuck in backwater systems, out of contact for ages.
On earth, as ships get larger and larger, their requirements get more and more specialized. But part of the is simply because large ships are rare and each one is pretty much a one off (barring perhaps 1 or 2 sister ships). And, I'm not speaking to the military, just the civilian market.
But as the volume of sale increases, then everything else scales up. If Z drives are super duper extra rare, then parts and spares and expertise for those drives will be super duper extra rare, even to the point that someone may well choose to not use those drives BECAUSE they are so rare.
If not, if Z drives are simply "uncommon", there will be a market to support those ships and those drives. Nobody likes downtime, downtime is expensive, and it's worth paying money to avoid it. Which means it's worth someones time to assemble a Z drive and stuff it in a warehouse somewhere knowing that soon enough someone will come wanting that drive and is willing to pay for the parts it's made of, the labor to assemble it, the warehousing fees where it's been stored all this time, and a little on top for the proprietors trouble.
Will every system have Z drives just sitting idle? Not necessarily. But, as the famous quote says: "Geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!" In most sectors, that's pretty true. At worst you're likely 4 weeks from most anything you want.
Because when it gets to be more than 4 weeks, folks start tooling up to make it locally so that it doesn't take more than 4 weeks to get the item. Locality has value.
If a Z drive can be built is less than 4 weeks, well, there's no real reason to call out to have it delivered, is there?
Each locale will be a little different. Z drives may well be quite rare on the frontier. Rare in use, rare in support. Kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. Nobody uses Z drives because nobody uses Z drives. No one is using them, so no need for a support network. Since there's no support network, no one is using them.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Why would it be insurmountable to train a few hundred thousand pilots, but not astrogators or engineers?
For a pop A world with a few tens of billions of population, that is one in every 100 000 population, less than the ratio of combat pilots in the US (or Sweden).
Both the US and Sweden, and at a guess, most other industrialised nations manage that without problem.
Or are you saying that F-22s and F-35s are flown by raw recruits, because it is so difficult to train pilots, and when the aircraft were ordered no-one foresaw the need for pilots?
The point being made is that it wouldn't be.
TCS only restricts pilots as a game mechanic to restrict ship numbers in a fleet in order to generate different tournment scenarios, not for any other reason. The same logic as used to restrict jump range in tournaments.
[FONT=arial,helvetica]Arguably with automation, TL10+ ships are not a comparison with earlier tech when it comes to crewing and required skills. I no longer need highly trained skills to drive and maintain a car, soon I won't be driving or maintaining it at all.
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Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Depends on how much it costs to train, maintain, and retain, such talent.
Trillion Credit tended to place limitations on their availability.
Trillion Credit tended to place limitations on their availability.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
I agree, and I'm trying to make that point, but flykiller used lack of pilots as an argument against many small ships, if I understand him correctly.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Trillion credit squadron is a wargame designed to produce 'balanced' scenarios not a universe simulator.
Even the sample campaign. while supposedly in the OTU setting, is contrived to produce balance between the adversaries.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Before the start of the Human Malware, there was a crunch on military and commercial pilots, to the point that some enthusiasts thought it worthwhile enough to pay out of pocket for their own training, and contract themselves out to some godforsaken airlines in order to accumulate flying hours and experience.
Agree with this; an extension net can only be used whilst stationery, so not ideal for a convoy escort, but mandatory for my small escorts used for patrol work.
The more sensor operators the more missile salvo's you can target, so again essential to have at least one extra.
Kind Regards
David
