Archive through November 29, 2003
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Prime Directive RPG: NEW KINDS OF RPG PRODUCTS:
GURPS Prime Civilians:
Archive through November 29, 2003
the thing I am hearing the most from the outside gamers is that they want more information about running non-military people. there are to many cases where GPD assumes that you are part of a huge orginization that pays the bills and so you really don't need to know the cost, you just need to find out if you can get it or not (simple things like how much does it cost for transportation, MPA covered some of the approaches, but no costs)
fleshing out the civilian side of things is harder to do, but I think it would have the most interst for the non-SFB players
This would be a good topic to discuss such things.
I should note that....
1. We'd probably put this info into other products rather than in a product of its own, but we still need the info.
2. I'm not qualified to write any of this but I'll try to answer questions if you put "SVC-Question" at the first of your message so I know it contains a question I need to answer.
3. There is data in some other topics that people should copy and repost here.
I think David has a point, but somebody other than me is going to have to write that stuff.
hmm....sounds like something interesting to work on.
one huge question when determining the civilian side of things is how cheap is transportation.
in MPA I wrote an article that describes what methods are available, but the question then becomes how expensive is it.
are we talking about something similar to today where buisnesspeople fly all the time and think nothing much of it, a trip from Los Angeles to London is done by reasonably normal folks every year or so to visit relatives and the Thanksgiving holiday rush strains transportation to it's limits?
or are we talking about something like the late 1800's, early 1900's where the trip to another continent is a once-in-a-lifetime migration to a new life, only the really rich do the trip routinly
and then for shorter travel, are shuttles like the family car (every family has at least one, new they are about 6 months pay, used cheaper)
like an RV (lots of folks have them say 1 in 20 families, frequently not used but available, but not common and pretty expensive new about 18-24 months pay)
like a private plane (30-48 months pay, extensive training to operate, rare say 1 in 1000 families)
SVC, if you can give us a little bit of guidence on this I think we can crunch the numbers and work through the implications to find what the effects will be.
what is the typical salary in GURPS? is it the same in GPD?
there are going to be a number of things that we need to work through, for example with dash speed costing 10% of the cost of a ships cost 5 years at dash speed doubles the cost of the ship, but it multiplies the distance traveled by ~6 for freighters, ~17 for normal ships. we have to make sure that the costs work out so that it's not worth it to just run at dash speed all the time (and when you start including the pay/food/etc for a crew over multiple years this gets interesting) after this is worked out the next question is what sort of cargo is valuble enough to send over interstellar distances
we know that replicators are available and can produce just about anything, but at a pretty high cost (IIRC SVC said it was ~10 times the normal cost, someone please correct me if I'm wrong) this is going to put a limit on how much of a markup you can put on an object becouse of it being rare (except for one-of-a-kind things like art) becouse if the markup is to high it becomes cheaper to use a replicator
or it may be that there are some things that the replicator won't work on for some reason and those things must be shipped
Similar to businessmen today, where a trip to New York (Mars) is a once-a-month event and a trip to Warsaw (Vulcan) is once-a-year.
Tourist travelers, buying tickets 3 months ahead, could afford to visit a planet halfway across the galaxy once a lifetime; closer planets every fourth or fifth year.
Say, trip to Rigel is like a trip to Paradise Island.
Trip to Archaelogical planet in Klingon space is say $4,500 per person for a three-week excursion including travel, accomodations on Motel 6 standards.
One thing I think could be added, Starliner Pods = Cruise ships. Take a week to tour a system with stop overs at key resorts. Take a Freighter/Shuttle to and from the Main port.
An Admin shuttles' life support can handle 20 people for 20 turns, but 10 people for hundreds of turns. see (G9.14) I think that they are close to a full sized Van or SUV in role. As SVC has placed travel costs at simular costs to now, I think that the Admin shuttles should fall into the same price range as SUV's do now (about 12-24 months pay). HTS are then equivalent to RV's or Cargo trucks (about 1/2 of a Semi.)
This also opens up possiblities for "sports car" type shuttles say speed 8, 4 hits, no phaser. Or Extra Heavy Cargo Shuttles (3 or 4 space shuttles) that are planet based only (like Bombers.) Frex: EHS (Extra Heavy Shuttle)3 spaces, Speed 6, 18 hits, no phaser, carries up to 100 cargo points or 6 BP. SHS (Super Heavy Shuttle) 4 spaces, Speed 4, 24 hits, carries up to 150 cargo points or 8 BP. These shuttles are used to carry the insystem traffic only.
Frieghters are then like modern cargo ships, APT's/FT's like Cargo Planes and Federation Express like a private Jet.
Ken, 'sportscar' shuttles are possible (there is a fed 'fighter' based on this concept)
Heavy transport shuttles and Yachts were introduced along with bombers, IIRC they have numbers similar to what you are saying (the stuff is at home)
Ship costs:
as I see it we have the following constraints on ship costs.
1 operating costs need to be cheap enough so that interstellar shipping is worthwhile (in trouble with tribbles they were shipping wheat for example).
this means that the cost of goods with shipping must be enough less then the cost of replication that shipping is prefered (as replication is definantly far more convienient)
2. operating costs need to be cheap enough that it's substantially cheaper to pay for 'slow' travel then to pay for dash speed (10% surcharge per 6 months)
for freighters the break-even point is operating costs for 30 years = purchase cost
for APT's/FT's (F&E speed 6) the break-even point is operating costs for 85 years = purchase cost
for EY (F&E speed 4) ships the break-even point is operating costs for 125 years = purchase cost
3. ships purchase costs need to be cheap enough for the ships to pay for themselves in a reasonable time period (5 years, 10 years, 30 years ?? what's a reasonable time)
4. operating costs need to include paying the crew (this is potentially the most expensive portion of the operating costs)
so we have the following formulas to satisfy
P = purchase cost
O = operating cost (per year)
C = number of cargo boxes
V = value of cargo in one box (APT's and FT's may focus on higher value cargo which would allow this to be higher for them)
Y = years to pay for ship
for bulk freighters
P > 30 * O
for APT/FT
P > 85 * O
for all ships
O < 9 * (V*C)
O = fixed cost + crew salary + crew benifits
P < Y * ((9*(V*C)-O)
if we say a ship takes 20 years to pay off a freighter would be
30 * O < P < 108 * C * V (a small freighter would be P < 2600V)
O < 3.6 * C * V (a small freighter would be O < 180 V)
a APT/FT would be
85 * O < P < 145 * C * V (a 20 space ship would be P < 2900V)
O < 1.7 * C * V (a 20 space ship would be O < 34 V)
can someone who has their books handy look up the crew size and cargo capacity of several of these ships? knowing the crew size we should be able to guestamate the crew salary + crew benifits part of the operating costs
I was thinking that for a ship in transit the fixed maintinance costs may be very low, since the advent of tac warp engines they have substantially more power available then they need for normal conditions so it may be substantially cheaper for ships to use replicators routinly to create parts/food/etc rather then trying to store the parts (stored parts/food = mass to move, volume to hole, waste to store, etc all very expensive on a ship) especially if the primary cost of replication is energy costs
Freighters:
Small freighter 1 crew unit and 25 boxes of cargo.
Large freighter 2 crew units and 50 boxes of cargo.
Large Ore Carrier 2 crew units and 100 boxes of cargo.
Others:
APT: 4 crew units and 6 boxes of cargo.
FT: 3 crew units and 12 boxes of cargo.
FDX (Fed Express): 3 crewunits and 3 boxes of cargo.
The Free Trader has 2 BP in its 3 crew units (so one crew unit is the marines).
The Fed Express has 1 BP in its 3 crew units (half a crew unit).
The story "Return of the Hood" only shows 5 individuals on a small freighter (and given the multiple roles they take, I'd guess there weren't any others). I don't know if the number was "standard" or not...
The large ore carrier should expect to have V even lower than the other two freighters (from the ship description, its hold is sufficiently large that it either takes low value bulk stuff--or it runs empty).
I'm going to guess that the FDX is in the zone where V is high enough that it always runs at dash speeds. I wouldn't be surprised if the APT is close to the same. The APT (based on its name) might also be primarily running military cargoes where its cost is "absorbed" in a logistics tail. On the other hand, there is probably an "unarmed" version (my guess would be half the crew in that case, and at least no marines).
Quote:this means that the cost of goods with shipping must be enough less then the cost of replication that shipping is prefered (as replication is definantly far more convienient).
I agree that the cost has to be less, but I'm not sure it has to be that much less (a few percent might be enough for "bulk" items). Basically it becomes a competitive environment, the replicating company can sell at any time at a fixed price, but when the ship arrives even the cheaper transported supplies will sell (I'm thinking food here where the margins are notoriously thin). The replicating company might even be the ones to buy and resell (gives their equipment down time for maitenance).
I didn't have the time to check the math, but the approach seems reasonable...
The crew of a small freighter is 10 people. See the data in Prime Adventures #1. There is a captain (sometimes with a wife or girlfriend), six crewmen in the front module, and two or three crewmen in the back module. I would consider trying to extract the number of crewmen for a ship from names mentioned in a fiction story to be a really bad way of doing things.
one aspect of the shipping vs replicate debate is that the stuff being shipped then needs to be stored, guarded, etc. if it sits for to long this could be a significant amount
with a crew unit being ~10 people 5 on a small freighter is reasonable
a quick google search shows freighter crewmen having an salary of $2k/month, not counting room and board on the ship (this is high for crewmembers but low for officers, let's use it for the moment)
let's say another $2K/month per crewmember for overhead (food, taxes, insurance, etc)
so the ships listed above end up with the following costs
| ship | crew | annual cost | cargo | min V | min P |
| FS | 10 | $480K | 25 | $6K | $14.4M |
| FL | 20 | $960K | 50 | $6K | $28.8M |
| OC | 20 | $960K | 100 | $3K | $28.8M |
| APT | 40 | $1920K | 6 | $189K | $163.2M |
| FT | 30 | $1440K | 12 | $71K | $122.4M |
| FDX | 30 | $1440K | 3 | $283K | $122.4M |
note that these values are the bare minimum, this is the point where the ship pays for itself at the 20 year mark if nothing goes wrong (pirates, etc) and allowing for no overhead other then crew costs
Edited to correct chart
the numbers in the chart above are assuming that you are paying for a crew. a family owned tramp freighter would have much lower overhead as everyone is working to keep the family alive on the ship, not for wages to send home to a family so while they could never compete with the bulk freighters they can end up a lot cheaper then the listing above.
also I will point out that the V listed above is the value of the cargo itself, for the minimums listed the transportaion fee would be 9 times this value (or another way of putting it is that the total cost at the destination would be 10x this value, 1x for the cargo itself + 9x for transportation)
the APT is really a surprisingly bad deal for most uses.
what about armed freighters and the addition of akids or ducktails to freighters? how much does the crew/cargo capacity change for these?
also the figure of 30 for bulk freighters as the minimum to keep dash from being worthwhile is definantly a little low. useing dash speed a freighter can cover 3 years distance in two weeks, but then needs to sit for two weeks to clear the engines before leaving again. this two week enforced layover can be used for loading/unloading that would eat up transit time normally
Armed freighters:
Small: 8 crew units and 25 boxes of cargo (all variants)
Large: 12 crew units and 50 boxes of cargo (all variants)
Q-ships (number of crew units depends on the race, but the large ship always had twice as many as the small ship. The Feds are tied for smallest crews.)
Small: 4 to 6 crew units and 10 boxes of cargo.
Large: 8, 10 or 12 crew units and 20 boxes of cargo.
Skids & Ducktails:
The published skids and ducktails don't add any cargo space (although not all skids have been published). It looks like each skid adds one crew unit.
Orion Slaver: 12 crew units and 22 cargo boxes (remember that Orion boxes are half sized). It could put two more boxes in the option mounts (for a total of 24 Orion cargo boxes).
A "civilian" APT with half the crew would come in at V = $95K and P = $81.6M. Expensive but no longer out of line for priority cargoes.
The actual ship purchase costs should probably reflect the economic point value of the various ships from SFB (presumably some constant ratio). This would reflect issues like the "extras" built into some ships (eg the significantly better F-L phaser array).
| EPV |
| F-S | 26 |
| F-L | 61 |
| F-OL | 100 |
| APT | 75 |
| FT | 70 |
| FDX | 70 |
| SLV | 83 |
Starliner pods require a tug to move them around, and there are never ever enough tugs to meet demand. I suppose there could be some kind of civilian LTT ship, but this would be a SFB item -- and considering the effect it would have on F&E, good luck getting it approved!
On the other hand, standard freighter pods are HUGE. The deckplans for a Small Tramp Steamer in R6 (TSS, R1.44) are in PA#1, and a tiny slice of the pod (which is mostly cargo) carries 150 people (30 SFB crew units). A pod fully converted to passenger service could hold 800-900 people -- double that for a large freighter, 4x for a F-OL. Starliner pods really aren't needed for civilian use.
Grab one of the existing GURPS deckplan sets for a passenger ship and use it, after all it is fully compatible with GPD! 
David: at low TLs, it is more difficult/expensive (or just plain impossible) to replicate certain items. These items would make up a lot of what gets shipped by a low TL society. At higher TLs, more stuff can be replicated, but that gets offset by the reduced transportation costs a high TL allows.
A good example would be to compare food on the original Enterprise versus the Enterprise-E; food slots that have trouble making chicken-and-tribble sandwiches versus Riker cooking eggs just for the novelty of it.
updated chart
| ship | crew | annual cost | cargo | min V | min P | EPV |
| F-S | 10 | $480K | 25 | $6K | $14.4M | 26 |
| F-AS | 80 | $3840K | 25 | $35K | $76.8M | 36 |
| F-S skid | 20 | $960K | 25 | $K | $14.4M |
| F-AS skid | 90 | $4320K | 25 | $39K | $86.4M |
| F-QS | 40 | $1920K | 10 | $53K | $57.6M |
| F-QS | 50 | $2400K | 10 | $67K | $72.0M | 41 | Lyran Tholian |
| F-QS | 60 | $2880K | 10 | $80K | $86.4M | 39 | ISC |
| TSS | 30 | $1440 | 20 | $20K | $43.2M | 28 | note: carries 300 passangers to defray costs |
| F-L | 20 | $960K | 50 | $6K | $28.8M | 61 |
| F-AL | 120 | $5760K | 50 | $26K | $115.2M | 75 |
| F-L 2skids | 40 | $1920K | 50 | $11K | $57.6M |
| F-AL 2skids | 140 | $6720K | 50 | $30K | $134.4M |
| F=OL | 20 | $960K | 100 | $3K | $28.8M | 100 |
| F-QL | 80 | $3840K | 20 | $53K | $115.2M |
| F-QL | 100 | $4800K | 20 | $67K | $144.0M | 83 | Lyran Tholian |
| F-QL | 120 | $5760K | 20 | $80K | $172.8M | 82 | ISC |
| APT | 40 | $1920K | 6 | $189K | $163.2M | 75 |
| APT civilian | 20 | $960K | 6 | $95K | $81.6M |
| FT | 30 | $1440K | 12 | $71K | $122.4M | 70 |
| FDX | 30 | $1440K | 3 | $283K | $122.4M | 70 |
| SLV | 120 | $5760K | 11 | $309K | $4890.0M | 83 |
the fact that the FT and FDX are showing the same cost and EPV is encouraging
the above calculations have been assuming that 1 crew unit=10 people (based on SVC's comment of a small freighter having a 10 man, 1 crew unit crew), Gary, you commented about the TSS carrying 150 people (30 passanger crew units), that's not adding up. is this a case of passangers get more room or is there a mistake here?
note that adding a skid doubles the operating cost of a standard freighter (and therefor it's minimum purchase cost), but has much less of an effect on an armed freighter. This shows that they will be pretty rare.
armed freighters are 50% faster then the normal ones, but with the same dash speed limits, this means that their minimum multiplier is ~ P > 20 * O making them quite a bit better in normal operations then they would be otherwise (but still much more expensive then normal freighters)
the Orions bring up yet another point, the cargo shipped around is valuble enough that the Orions can steal enough of it to keep them in buisness (can someone lookup the convoy raid senerio and see how many cargo boxes the Orions need to capture to have the battle considered a victory)
another item that will need to be considered in the purchase costs is the liklyhood of the ship being lost to pirates/monsters/etc, here a F-L is considerably better then 2xF-S. I'm not sure how to account for this however.
possibly the right answer to figuring out cargo costs is to take the numbers above and look at what a 'standard' convoy carries (as the Q-ship overhead will in large part be paid by the other ships in the convoy)
I agree that the final purchase costs need to be tied to the EPV, but we need to get some idea of the minimum $ costs so that we can figure out a rough 'currancy conversion' of EPV to $
Gary, your point on the TL feasability of replication is well put, but all the numbers above are for the GW time period, more or less origional enterprise replication capability. this does point out that there are much more valuble cargos around then bulk food, even raw ore could be more valuble if it contains elements that can't be replicated (dilithium obviously can't be or half the plots of the shows would be meaningless )
My head hurts. Now you guys see why I *like* being part of a large organization that pays the bills.
Quote:Starliner pods require a tug to move them around, and there are never ever enough tugs to meet demand. I suppose there could be some kind of civilian LTT ship, but this would be a SFB item -- and considering the effect it would have on F&E, good luck getting it approved!
Wouldn't the Civilian LTT actually be a freighter control/drive system. Why could you put a Starliner pod in a freighter config.?
Isn't that what the AUX Troop Transport is? (there is one right?)
Loren: a Starliner pod is not the same thing as a freighter pod. Starliner pods can only be used by a tug -- they could be moved by a freighter but it would have to be *inactive* and thus could not carry any passengers at all.
(As an aside, the Starliner pod is a leftover from the original Franz Joseph tech manual. It was a valid idea 20 years ago, but IMHO really has no place in SFB any longer -- newer stuff has superceeded it.)
David: a standard small freighter carries no passengers and has 25 SFB cargo boxes. The TSS that I mentioned is a F-S with a modified pod; it carries 150 passengers but retains 20 cargo boxes. The TSS and its specs are in print, although it has not been updated since PD1 days. The passenger version (all passenger, no cargo boxes) is hypothetical at this point.
I suspect that a starliner pod could be made to work on a freighter, but you'd need military-grade freighter engines (naval auxiliary type) and you'd need a couple of APR-skids to run the systems. Even then, you'd have a very expensive, very rare, pod going VERY slowly compared to putting it on a tug.
Regarding the APT:
Yes, it is a bad deal. But the concept behind the ship is that it is used in areas where pirates operate, etc, so that the high operating cost is offset by an increased probability that your cargo will get to it's destination un-hijacked. On those routes, you'd be able to charge more than "standard shipping rates" making it more viable.
Someone is certain to point out that the APT is badly underdefended for its intended mission; one phaser-3 and 5-point shields is NOT going to worry a pirate. The problem is that the APT is one of the earliest civilian ships added to SFB. I would argue that the APT should be redesigned in terms of its SFB SSD -- it needs a lot more defensive firepower, and some armor would be nice, too. But if I do that, SVC will throw rocks at me.
So I would say this: accept the fact that the APT makes no sense to use, it is an obsolete design and should be ignored by GPD.
Thinking about it further, the SFB Monitor design (with a cargo pod) would make a better APT than the APT itself. Too bad monitors are dead slow.
Steve, how receptive would you be to a redesign of some of the old SFB civilian ships for use within GPD?
About all the APT has going for it is speed 31. The FT can just go 25. Even the F-AS is stuck at 25 (though a F-AL can go 31). Overall, assuming the acceleration limits on Freighter hulls has some strategic implications, it means that the APT is the fastest Freighter outside the FedEx. I could therefore see its uses being time sensitive materials (medical supplies, etc.) as well as luxury items. Heck, turn 3 cargo into Hull and it becomes a very fast passenger transport.
We can look into the APT. Talk to Petrick about it and see if he's going to do it.