The Starliner Pod that I was talking about is from the Basic Set. It has 4 impulse and 2 APR on it and 12 pt Shields. This means that while it is slow it still is viable to run around a system. This is very simular to what modern cruise ships do. You fly on a plane to get to get to the embarcation port. You then spend 3-14 days going slowly in a circle. Every so often, it comes into a port so that you can buy souveniers and take a 1-2 hour sightseeing tour. There are faster ways to get around, but that is not the point of a "cruise".

By David Lang (Dlang) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 04:36 pm: Edit

Gary, I looked at the SSD of TSS and it shows 30 crew units of passangers. this is what I was looking at to come up with the 300 passangers

Ship speeds
tactical warp speeds are to slow to be useful outside of a star system

within a star system tactical warp makes everything really close, to go from one edge of pluto's orbit to the opposite edge is ~640 light min
at tactical speeds
\table(,warp,SFB speed,min to cross system
shuttle,1.8,6,107
MRS,2,8,80
shuttle w/WBP,2.3,12,54
F-S,2.4,13,49
MRS w/WBP,2.5,16,40
F-OL,2.6,17,38
F-L,2.6,17,38
armed freighter,2.9,25,26
ship,3.14,31,21
NTW,5.5H,10648,3.6 sec}
as you see from the NTW entry high warp speeds are just to fast to use inside a system.

once you get outside a single system though the tactical warp speeds are just to slow. at SFB speed 31 it would take 47 days to get to Alpha Centari, with NTW it only takes 3 hours 20 min

the relavent speeds here are (from GPD p 128)

	warp	parsecs per day
shuttle	2.5	0.86
freighter	4.5	4.97
NTW	5.5	9.07
armed freighters	5.5	9.07
early warp	6	11.77
std warp	7	18.70
fast warp	7.25	20.77

as you see armed freighters go about 50% faster then normal freighters, but are still about half the speed of APT or FT with fast warships and FDX being about 16% faster then them

I just realized that muy formulas above have amajor mistake in them. I had been remembering that dash speed was 10% of the cost of the ship for 6 months of use when it's really 10% per month of use. so the break-even point for normal vs dash speed it a lot different then I had been calculating. I have to run into the office but I'll re-calculate things and update them later

By David Lang (Dlang) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 04:41 pm: Edit

here's a question on the starliner pod, does it have non-tactical warp engines in it? they can be powered by impulse engines, ane while this would not be relavent to SFB tactical warp combat it would allow a starliner pod to hop from system to system and then cruise around inside that system (if the impulse engines let it go lightspeed it could make the pluto-pluto trip in about 11 hours so if you slow it down to a more reasonable 40% of lightspeed you are still talking a reasonable 27 hours to cross a system)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 04:52 pm: Edit

Yes, Starliner has NTW.

Somebody asked about cubic feet in a cargo box. No idea. We never needed to know.

Get the deck plans from PA1 for a small freighter. Use geometry to calculate volume of the pod, then deduct for the driveways, top and bottom decks, elevator shafts, docking areas, etc. Divide the rest by 25. let me know how it turns out.

If David Lang doesn't have a set of these deck plans, Email me an address and I'll mail you a set.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 05:03 pm: Edit

I do have a set of those (I think I even know where they are )

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 06:06 pm: Edit

David: I would assume that civilian ships never use Dash Warp simply because it costs so much. The only exception would be when someone needs something moved fast and is willing to pay for the use of Dash Warp up front -- that would be so rare an event that I would not take Dash Warp into account at any time.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 06:08 pm: Edit

Based on the size of a shuttle craft, a standard cargo box has to be at least 8x8 meters, but 10x10 meters works better. The deck plans that Nick Blank drew up for the Free Trader has 5 meter high cargo bays. Call it 10x10x5 meters = 500 cubic meters per standard SSD cargo box.


Garth L. Getgen

By David Kass (Dkass) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 09:42 pm: Edit

Gary, the trick is making sure your statement is actually true (ie dash warp is not used regularly due to the cost). I could see the FDX using dash warp regularly (ie parts of its runs are high speed dashes while others aren't).

David, I just realized I made a mistake in the Q-ship data (crew sizes). I accidentally took the #BP column instead of the crew, oopse. There are only two sizes:

10 crew (5 for the small) for the Klingon, Rom, Tholian, Hydran, Lyran and LDR.

12 crew (6 for the small) for the Fed, Kzinti, Gorn, and ISC.

The EPV are over a range:

	large-Q	small-Q	notes
Fed	81	40
Klingon	83	41
Rom	80	40	+ NSM (and other mines)
Kzinti	62	30	+ fighters
Gorn	80	35
Thol	83	41
Hydran	55	25	+ stingers
Lyran	83	41
ISC	82	39
LDR	83	41

My impression was that the relative inefficiency of a Q-ship is paid for by reduced insurance rates. Or more directly a freight tax (and they're run by the "police").

I suspect the basic cost calculations should be done on the small freighter since they're the most common freighter in service (the large might be slightly better since it represents what is used on "good" trade routes).

---

Quote:

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.

---

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, November 30, 2003 - 10:35 am: Edit

A thought I had was to whip up something on the GPC concept and put it on the web site, then expand it into a feature for MPB or GF.

By F. Douglas Wall (Knarf) on Sunday, November 30, 2003 - 06:39 pm: Edit

Yeah. Perhaps an organization that sponsors adventurers of some sort, like mercenaries or freelance troubleshooters.

Better idea: Federation Marshals. They're not Star Fleet, but they have lots of adventuring potential and the template is listed in GPD.

Also, you might want to touch on economics. GURPS Space has prices listed for a lot of space-oriented things, and a sample job table. Even starships have a price.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Sunday, November 30, 2003 - 10:07 pm: Edit

Gary, I agree that dash warp should not be used much, but I want to make sure the numbers reflect this.

with my initial calculations based on 10% per 6 months this meant that a ship running at dash speed could cover 85 times as much distance as a ship running at normal speed before it spent enough on the dash speed surcharge to equal the purchase cost of the ship.

put another way, on a fixed budget which would be better

A. 1 ship operating at normal speed for 83.3 years
B. 1 ship operating at dash speed for 5 years

in both cases the ship travels the same distance (500 F&E hexes)

in B you would pay the purchase cost twice while in A you would have an extra 78.3 years of maintinance/crew salary, etc.

now the numbers above are not accurate becouse I was mistaken on the dash surcharge (it's 10% per mont, not 10% per 6 months) and I haven't gone back and done all the calculations again with the correct numbers, but this can give you an idea of what I am trying to explain.

Douglas, Gurps Space has prices that are appropriate for it's universe (transportation capability, etc) the SFB universe has some wrinkles (replicators and warp drive) that may make those numbers not work. In addition we want to come up with a way to translate from the EPV values in SFB to $ for GPD that makes some sort of sense

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 01:57 am: Edit

David: quite frankly, it depends entirely on the cargo.

Bulk cargo (grain, coal, iron ore, etc) is a commodity item, is readily available, and you can schedule its delivery way out in advance. Because it is a commodity item, price is VERY sensitive, so you have to ship it as inexpensively as possible. That would mean never using Dash in normal circumstances; you could ship it using Dash, but then your bulk cargo that is normally $5/ton (to purchase at the source) plus $1/ton to ship becomes $10/ton to ship, and no one will buy it at $15 when they can wait for the next freighter to pull in and pay $6. (These $ amounts pulled out of thin air, but you get my point?)

Smaller items that are unique, OR items that are so valuable you don't want to leave them exposed to pirates, OR are perishable in some way, have to get to their destination faster -- ASAP. That means you use Dash frequently (if not all the time). It costs more to ship it that way, but the items are not price-sensitive because (by definition) they cost so much in the first place, that a few more $ for shipping makes no difference.

So this means that for the bulk cargo, you ship it in Freighters, and the small stuff goes via FedX. (Isn't it nice when it all comes together?)

The remaining stuff that is neither bulk commodity or valuable uniques falls into the realm of "Harry Mudd"-type transports, Free Traders, APTs, and whatnot. THIS type of shipment is going to be the kind that our players (and their campaigns) are going to be involved in most often. And certainly the most interesting!

IMHO, of course. But I think everyone will agree?

By David Lang (Dlang) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 02:00 am: Edit

Ok, trying the formulas again (sorry for the headachs ;))

P = Purchase price
O = Operating cost
V = value of 1 space of cargo
Y = years to repay ships purchase price
C = # of cargo boxes on a ship

1. Dash speed limits

in 5 years a normal ship will travel 1000 hexes at dash speed (100 hexes per 6 months) and will spend 600% it's base cost for this privilage

for a ship to travel 1000 hexes at normal speed (5 F&E hexes per 6 months) would take 83.3 years

so 6 * P > 78.3 * O or P > 13 * O

for fast ships the ratio is about the same, the normal speed is higher, but so is the dash speed.

for a freighter the numbers are different due to the limited distance it can travel useing dash speed per month.

in 5 years the freighter at dash speed will travel 120 hexes which would take 30 years to travel at normal speeds

so 6 * P > 25 * O or P > 4.17 * O

for aux engines (armed freighters) it would take 20 years to travel the 120 hexes

so 6 * P > 15 * O or P > 2.5 * O

2. Replication limits

According to GPD page 114 getting an item replicated costs about twice what it would normally cost to make it by conventional means (note I thought this was 10x, this is a LOT cheaper then I had been thinking)

this means that the shipping cost cannot be higher then the value of the material being shipped or it's cheaper to replicate it (there are some items that cannot be replicated and are always worth shipping)

so V * C > O

3. Payback Limits

to have a ship pay itself off requires that the income - Operating overhead * Years to pay off must be more then the purchase price

P < Y * C * V - Y * O

4. now things start getting ugly

Take formula #1

ship	P > 13 * O
freighter	P > 4.17 * O
aux	P > 2.5 * O

another way of stating this is that the formula is

P > X * O where

ship	X > 13
freighter	X > 4.17
aux	X > 2.5

substatuting this into formula #3 produces

XO < YCV -YO
XO + YO < YCV
(X+Y)O < YCV
(X+Y)O/YC < V

now if we make some assumptions about the value of O and Y we can actually come up with values of V and P for various ships.

Assumption #1 Purchace Loan Terms

looking at google for the loan options avilable for people purchasing Big Rig Trucks today it looks like the max loan duration os 39 months (3 1/4 years) so let's say that the payback time is 5 years (it takes longer to get from point A to point B)

for purposes of this discussion P is the total outlay for purchasing the ship, including interest paid on the loan.

Assumption #2 Crew Salaries

looking at google for the salary of freighter crewmembers today I am seeing engineers at ~$2K/month. assuming that this is the average (most will be paid less, Officers will be paid more) lets call the cost per person $4k/month or $48K/year. lets round this to $50K/year/crewmember to keep the math simple

Assumption #3 Maintinance

as the ships typically have lots of power available while space is scarse I am going to assume that they replicate most replacement parts and the crew installs them so minor repairs that are done by the crew in flight are essentially free.

taking formula #4 (X+Y)*O/YC < V and plugging in these numbers for the various ships we have

ship	18*O/5C < V
freighter	9.17*O/5C < V
aux	7.5*O/5c < V

so looking at the various ships

ship	crew	annual cost	cargo	min V	min P	EPV
F-S	10	$0.5M	25	$37K	$2M	26
F-AS	80	$4.0M	25	$240K	$10M	36
F-S skid	20	$1.0M	25	$74K	4.2M
F-AS skid	90	$4.5M	25	$270K	$11.3M
F-QS	50	$2.5M	10	$459K	$10.4M	40
F-QS	60	$3.0M	10	$550K	$27.5M	40
TSS	30	$1.5M	20	$138	$13.8M	28	note: carries 300 passangers to defray costs
F-L	20	$1.0M	50	$37K	$9.2M	61
F-AL	120	$6.0M	50	$180K	$15M	75
F-L 2skids	40	$2.0M	50	$74K	$18.34M
F-AL 2skids	140	$7.0M	50	$210K	$17.5M
F=OL	20	$1.0M	100	$18K	$9.2M	100
F-QL	100	$5.0M	20	$459K	$45.6M	82
F-QL	120	$6.0M	20	$550K	$55.0M	82
APT	40	$2.0M	6	$1200K	$26M	75
APT civilian	20	$1.0M	6	$600K	13M
FT	30	$1.5M	12	$450K	$19.5M	70
FDX	30	$1.5M	3	$900K	$19.5M	70
SLV	120	$6.0M	11	$1964K	$78M	83

Note that this chart lists the Minimum V and Minimum P for each ship from a shipping point of view. it assums that armament doesn't cost anything, there is no fuel cost, and there is not maintinance cost other then the crew.

in reality the numbers are going to have to be higher then this to take those things into account.

of special note is the fact that the slaver only is worthwhile if it can constantly get cargo worth ~2M per cargo box. For the Orions to survive on Piracy the average cargo is probably worth quite a bit more then this. I'd have to look at other Orions, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that the average cargo would need to be worth ~$10M/box for piracy to be profitable (the combination of the small amount of cargo the pirates can capture and carry along with the fact that they can't keep their ships constantly filled)

$10M for a 10x10x5m volume is pretty high (this ia ~$700K per cubic foot)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 02:08 am: Edit

My head hurts.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 02:58 am: Edit

Gary, you are purely looking at it from the point of view of the customer, and you are right, except for one point.

part of what determins the cost of the shipping is the time in transit. during this time the crew must be fed and paid. there is a point, even for bulk cargo where the slow delivery ends up being more expensive then the fast delivery.

consider shipping a truckload of supplies from California to Virginia. I have two options

1. buy a pickup truck and pay two people to drive it cross country at an average of 170MPH. you will have to do extra maintinance equal to 6 times the cost of the truck over 5 years
delivery time ~17 hours each trip
cost over 5 years
$30K for the truck
$600K for the drivers (equivalent to a salary of $50K/yr)
$180K maintinance.
total $860K cargos delivered ~2576 cost per load ~$334 each

2. now send the same cargo in a truck that needs no maintinance but only travels an average of 10mph (say a farm tractor pulling a trailer)
delivery time ~12 days
cost over 5 years
$30K for the tractor/trailer
$600K for the drivers
$0 maintinance
total $630K cargos delivered ~150 cost per load ~$3500 each

this is about the difference we are talking about between normal and dash speed for the APT, FT, and FDX

the freighers aren't as bad, for them it's the difference between 60MPH and 10MPH useing the numbers above the fast trip would be ~2 day/trip 900 trips $1000/trip

in both cases the fast delivery is worth it becouse it cuts down on the time-based overhead.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 03:07 am: Edit

someone please check my math and reasoning in that last post. If I am doing the math correctly with a speed difference of 17x there is no value of P such that 7P+600K/2576 > P+600K/150 (i.e. no cost of the truck such that it's cheaper to be slow)

the math I did for the ship calculations above was based on the same number of deliveries, but different times to deliver them. that I can get to make sense.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 09:13 am: Edit

David Lang:

Unless I missed something in your discussion, you're leaving out a couple of important factors. One is loading/unloading time. This will likely vary depending on both the cargo and the port facility. But consider as a hypothetical case that it takes 36 hours to load a cargo of ore at primitive mining planet Revort (freighter must land, loading done by mechanical means) but only 12 hours to unload it at well-equipped port Nala (port has heavy cargo transporters that can unload the freighter while in orbit). Total loading+unloading time is two days regardless of transit time. If Revort and Nala are close together (say 24 hours travel time standard but only a couple of hours at dash speed) the total shipment time is 3 days standard versus 2 days dash. Dash will not be economical for this because you won't get enough extra trips to pay for the high cost. But if the planets are 3 weeks apart (standard speed) then making the trip at dash speed may make more sense.

The second issue is that the freighter may not be able to start a new run as soon as the old one is finished. Suppose you are delivering a cargo to planet Gnal and have a contract to pick up a new cargo and carry it from Gnal to Divad. The new cargo will not be ready for pick up until October 27 (Old Earth calender). At dash speed you will reach Gnal with your current cargo on Oct 17. At standard speed you would reach Gnal on Oct 20. Unloading time would be 18 hours in each case. All using dash warp does in this case is give you more downtime on Gnal, which your crew might appreciate. But it won't allow you to start your Gnal to Divad run any earlier.

Trying to work out the economics of using dash speed for routine cargo operations is impossible unless you have some notion of the average time spent at each planet between runs, and also an idea of how long the average trip is.

By Ken Humpherys (Pmthecat) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 11:45 am: Edit

David Lang,
I appreciate the work you are doing. You do have a point that for long trips, Dash speed is more ecconomical. But, as Alan Trevor pointed out, most freight runs will be short hops from System A to System B.

One factor metioned in GPD but not elaborated on was how Dash speed affects ship longevity. To put it in terms of your truck analogy, the fast truck not only has to pay $180K in extra maintence costs, but you would need to replace the truck every year as critical (read nonrepairable) parts wear out. Meanwhile the slow truck still has another 10-15 years of usable life.

Also, consider the fact that the drivers of the Fast truck will have a VERY high turnover, as burnout will happen after 1 or 2 trips(with no sleep-breaks or lay-over time). While the slow truck might have the same drivers for the entire 5 years.

Accidents also go up geometrically as speed goes up. Accidents mean either major repairs, or replacement of vehicle.

Meanwhile your Fast truck is out of service while it waits for new drivers or new parts.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 12:00 pm: Edit

One reason freighters might not use dash speed is it might put out a higher energy signature that could attract pirates.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 12:24 pm: Edit

Re loading and unloading Freighters:

Freighters use pods; small freighters have one, large freighters two, and the rare F-OL has four. All freighters also have a Command section which attaches to the front of the pod(s) and a Drive section which attaches to the rear.

The Command and Drive sections are only attached temporarily and can be detached at will; in SFB terms, this would be "between scenarios". Freighters on a regular run will get to their destination, detach the command and drive sections, and reattach them to the pod they are taking to their next destination (which has already been loaded) and depart. As a result there is no real time spent loading and unloading; that can be done without the expensive part of the freighter hanging around. An exact comparison would be the 18-wheeler semi's you see on the road all the time. (FYI this was established pretty clearly in the old PD1 material.)

(As an aside, I've always felt that there would be some kind of orbital base that several cargo pods would dock to while loading and unloading. It would also have a large transporter array and a large shuttle bay; the transporters would move the product down to the surface, while the double-sized shuttles in the bay would move stuff that couldn't be transported, plus acting as "yard engines" to move the pods around while they were detached from a freighter. I wrote this up a long time ago, I think I'll dust it off for MPB.)

Of course, there are going to be a number of freighters that don't bother swapping pods out, but keep them attached for years; the Wandering Child and Tramp Steamers in the old PD1 book PRIME ADVENTURES #1 both fall into that category.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 01:41 pm: Edit

Gary Plana:

Thanks. I don't have the old PD1 material. But I'm also not sure this procedure would work in the case of picking up a cargo at a small remote mining colony, for example. The colony might not have the facilities to swap out pods on a freighter. Even if it did, the procedure would probably take longer than at a well equipped spaceport.

This brings up a question - You say that "in SFB terms, this would be between scenarios". Was it established how long the procedure to swap out pods takes? If it's only a few minutes that's one thing. But if it's a matter of hours I believe my original point about dash warp not saving much time on short trips would still be valid.

By George M. Ebersole (George) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 01:45 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

Somebody asked about cubic feet in a cargo box. No idea. We never needed to know.

---

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 01:52 pm: Edit

That would be one factor among many in that calculation I suggested. But also note that your quote is incomplete and out of context.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 01:52 pm: Edit

Alan: you don't need facilities to swap out a pod, it just makes it easier. How long? Don't know, probably not more than an hour.

Everyone should keep in mind that Freighters (F-S, F-L, and F-OL) cannot land on the surface of a planet.

George: the deckplans for a cargo pod were published in PA#1 and are almost certainly different than those in the Franz Joseph tech manual. Probably not much different, but the plans in PA#1 are the ones we must use.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 02:17 pm: Edit

Gary: I had thought a freighter could land. Evidently I misremembered. But unless every single backwater colony has some kind of orbital base, even if only a SAMS, this makes the problem of picking up cargo there even worse. At some colonies the cargo will have to be transferred from the planet's surface to the freighter (or vice versa for delivering cargos) via shuttle craft, which could take significant time.