Shuttles and transporters and smaller landable ships.

Hmmm... sounds like we need a "ground to orbit ferry" with impulse engines (no warp), minimal habitability, and lots of cargo spaces, with docking ports to match standard small freighter.

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

There is a base that docks several cargo pods for loading/unloading, it's called a commercial platform.

loading and unloading time does need to be taken into account, but for freighters this is much less of a factor then you would think. freighter engines cannot run at dash speed continuously, they can travel 3 years worth of distance in a couple weeks and then have to sit for a couple weeks to flush their engines. this means that for them the loading/unloading time is essentially free (unless it's _really_ short trips, and even at warp speed the distances of the SFB universe are larger then this)

Ken, the 120% of the purchase cost per year of dash speed is the price you would pay a outside shipowner if you want him to run his ship at that speed. this includes the wear and tear that will cause teh ship to need to be replaced sooner.

Alan, the schedule issue is valid, but it cuts both ways. I am assuming best case where the ships are kept busy all the time, if the ships are not busy all the time then the cargo they carry needs to be even more valuble to be able to pay for the ship.

Now the one thing that was left out of the calculations were fuel costs (and other per-mile costs) including them in the calculation would change the per trip cost formula to
(7*P+(5*O))/2575 + M < (P + (5 * O))/150 + M
unfortunantly the milage cost is a constant so it doesn't help this problem.

the fundamenta problem is that the cost of dash speed just doesn't offset the increased performance. for 7x the cost you get 17x the performance (for a normal ship). for a freighter the numbers can actually work out as you are paying 7x the cost for 6x the performance (for aux you are paying 7x the cost for 4x the performance)

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 04:02 pm: Edit

David: I know what a ComPlat is -- I've even got the deckplans for it! The problem is that it cannot dock freighter-type cargo pods, it can only dock two base augmentation modules plus two ships, and it does not have enough cargo space, transporter, or shuttles to do the job.

SVC: for the ground-to-orbit ferry, I see two ways to do it. #1 is an Orbital Loading Dock like I discussed about six messages up. As I see it, it would be able to dock up to six freighter cargo pods. It would have a total of ten transporters in two groups of four (2x cargo transporters) and one group of two (personnel transporter). It would also have two shuttle bays, each holding four HTS shuttles; these would move the non-transportable cargo, act as switch engines, etc.

Option #2 would be the VFS shuttle from Module J2 which holds 100 points of cargo -- two standard Cargo boxes worth. These would operate from an R1.46 -type ground base which hasn't been printed yet. Something that could operate 4 VFS would be about right.

Worlds that could justify them would use the Orbital Loading Dock, those that wouldn't would use the VFS/small ground cargo base.

I have draft SSDs for both the OLD and the ground base, if you're interested -- I've been holding off until after you get back from Florida.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 04:27 pm: Edit

Gary. The CPL should be able to dock a Cargo Pod in one of the "ship" slots (using its tractor) allowing for transfer of cargo. Admitedly, the largest shuttle that can land in a CPL is an HTS but that's only 25 trips for one to empty out a Cargo Pod.

I just see your orbital "ferry point" as being far too large for the need (considering it would be doing nothin most of the time). Even a standard colony, with say 2 GSA and a GMS has 3 HTS to shuttle cargo from the CPL to the planet. It may take a few hours, but would only occur perhaps twice a month.

By David Kass (Dkass) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 04:27 pm: Edit

I'd always assumed the pods were lowered to the ground by tractor (after the freighter detached them) and filled up on the ground. Then when it is time for the freighter to pick it up, its moved back into space via tractor. (P2.44) implies that all pods can land on a planet safely.

I can't recall if any of the ground bases have a tractor (if not maybe a "colony center" one is needed).

<edit>
Note that the free trader can land directly on planets.

By David Kass (Dkass) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 04:33 pm: Edit

David L, the cargo in an Orion ship may have to be worth ~$10M per (50 point) box. But it can cherry pick the top 10% of what's in the freighter (my impression is that few freighters carry uniform cargo--think of it more as "modern" container ship with containers from dozens of sources).

P.S. I haven't had a chance to check your numbers, but I'll try to find some time to do so. Is the value for goods you're calculating the source value or the arrival (or retail?) value?

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 04:40 pm: Edit

David Kass:

Not only could the Orion cherry pick what's in the freighter, presuming the Orions have good intelligence about what's being shipped and when, they would concentrate their attentions on freighters carrying unusually valuable cargos and would ignore freighters carrying bulk shipments of wheat.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 05:41 pm: Edit

David Kass. Very, very few ground bases have tractors.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 06:13 pm: Edit

The ComPlat can dock either a module OR a civilian cargo pod at its two docking points.

It has to be able to dock the cargo pods, as this is its stated reason for even existing!

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 06:15 pm: Edit

Tractors is one established way that pods are landed and debarked but there is very often no tractors available. A landing ferry would also be safer than a tractor, I would imagin. It would do good to rely compleatly on tractors NEVER malfuctioning while lowering a pod full of who knows what. Ferry's sound cool to me.

SVC: Not going to highjack this topic but just a short mention that this thread contains, what seems to me, good arguements for the HLT.

OK, 'nuff said.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 06:17 pm: Edit

Also, if you can find a copy, you might want to take a look at GURPS Traveller: Far Trader. It has a rather exhaustive method for determining interstellar trade that should be workable in any system.

BTW, it pretty much agrees with Gary's assessment of what type of cargos a typical non-military PC's ship will work with.

I imagine most non-military PC ships, assuming you want interstellar capabilities, will be either the F-S or (most likely) the ubiquitous Free Trader.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 08:03 pm: Edit

David K, the value figures are for the origional cost of the cargo, it will get a 100% markup and sell for double that on arrival

the problem with cherry picking the cargo is that the math doesn't work. if you have 1 space of cargo at $10M and 9 spaces of empty bays you are still talking about an average value of $1M/space

By David Kass (Dkass) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 08:41 pm: Edit

But a small freigher carrying the 2.5 spaces of $10M cargo and 22.5 empty spaces still fills up the entire cargo hold of the CR that looted it (I think the CR has 5 Orion cargo boxes--my SSDs aren't here). So the value for the CR is $10M/box.

Note that the Orions can probably also make money selling the ship itself...

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 09:22 pm: Edit

Andy: my assumption for the OLD was that it would only be built over worlds that had enough traffic to justify the cost -- major and minor worlds like in GK -- not over every single world or colony. After all, it is a commercial facility, so it has to keep busy enough to make a profit. They'd only build one if they needed it.

Andy & David: I had forgotten that the ComPlat could dock freighter cargo pods. In that case, it would make an excellent choice for worlds that needed something orbital, but smaller than the OLD.

With that, we've got three levels of covering the "last mile" of the supply chain: the OLD for the major trade centers, ComPlats for most of the medium-to-small worlds, and ground-based heavy shuttles for the smallest ones. Anything smaller wouldn't have freighters calling on them.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 09:29 pm: Edit

SVC and/or SPP: David brought up the point that it may be possible for freighter cargo pods (the 25-box variety carried by F-S) to be lowered to the surface of a planet (and then raised back into orbit) using tractors per SFB rule P2.44.

Questions: how possible is this, especially as a cargo pod is different than a ship (no structural integrity, etc)? What do you need in terms of tractor beams (and power to run them) to do this? Keep in mind that a cargo pod will usually be full of kilotons of cargo, plus the pod's own mass.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 09:38 pm: Edit

Gary. Also check out the BSC (Civilan Base Station) as an "in-the-box" solution.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 09:40 pm: Edit

Gary: Might work. Ask Petrick.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 09:51 pm: Edit

Not to stop the discussion, but to raise a history/background point...

in the TOS episode where the Enterprise was equipped with a "super computer" (M5?!?)

The computer, after taking control of the ship attacked and destroyed an "unmanned ship"...don't remember if it was an ore carrier or what it was, but if you are going to define the mechanisms by which trade and bulk freight are handled in the SFU, this might be the correct place to define just what these 'automated' ships are.

just as a suggestion, I would posit that they carry unrefined ore that would have little value to pirates, virtually no passenger or crew provision and rely on Non Tactical Warp (NTW) for movement so there would be no value for taking control of the ship since it has a limited speed ability (and virtually no value as a source of spare parts).

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 10:17 pm: Edit

It should be possible to lower a pod via tractor. Two things to note.

In the Obibital Defense Platform thread we are conducting a bit of half role playing scenario. Though it's been on hold for the time being (and it has to remain that way since I've got a Dec. 16 story deadline). Anyway, SPP had our PDU lowered by tractor. I assume that would be pods lowered by tractor.

It shouldn't take any extra power even though there is a lot of weight in the pod. One point of power into tractor is enough to tow a Dreadnaught at high tactical warp speeds even when both ships are pulling opposite directions. That's a lot of stress so lowering a pods slowly to the ground sounds well within the limits to simple tractor beam usage (providing that over the thousands of time tractors are used for such a job one doesn't fail.)

Perhaps on realatively unpopulated planets tractor lowing would be more common than on populated or highly populated planets with Ferry Transports being use on those.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Monday, December 01, 2003 - 10:46 pm: Edit

also when considering lowering the pod to the ground via tractors remember that a small freighter gets most of it's strength from the pod sitting between the engines and the bridge.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Tuesday, December 02, 2003 - 07:05 am: Edit

Loren. The PDU consists of Ground Bases, which are designed to be lowered to the ground by tractor (and most importantly, are designed to sit on the ground and not break).

By Ken Humpherys (Pmthecat) on Tuesday, December 02, 2003 - 03:48 pm: Edit

David Lang,
I was reading GPD today after reading your posts. While it does mention the extra 5% cost for using dash speeds, this is for emergency usage. If you want to use Dash speed for long periods of time, this falls under Strategic Movement (p 129) and the assesed maintenence cost goes up to 10% per month. Also, on page 128 it mentions the 5% cost is to cover extra spare parts and fuel.
Another nail in the coffin for using constant Dash speed is Navigation. Only Major Bases and Major Planets have the nessasary navigational beacons needed to guide ships at dash speeds. This means frieghters visiting minor colonies could only dash to the nearest Beacon and then use the slower speeds to reach the smaller colonies.
Also, most Small/Large/Ore frieghters do not have "Military" engines and so cannot even use Dash speeds. The only cargo ship that can even use "Fast Dash" speed is the Fed Ex. All others would use "Aux Dash" speed. A Prime Trader would probably be able to use "Standard Dash" because it has better engines.

By David Kass (Dkass) on Tuesday, December 02, 2003 - 04:59 pm: Edit

andy, that was what I was afraid of (no tractors on small ground bases).

I'd suggest adding a new small ground base: the Colony Administration Center (GCA). It contains all the basic essentials for a colony and would often be the first ground base. I'm thinking a bit along the lines of the police flagship, but for a colony.

As a first cut, give it the following:
bridge
flag bridge (to represent the colony administration and/or C&C). (?)
tractor
transporter
Ph-3
shuttle (? 0 or perhaps 2)
2 barracks (for national guard or seasonal quarters or perhaps even the basic starting quarters).
2 cargo
2 lab
4 hull
4 APR

Obviously, for this discussion, the key is the tractor, but the rest might be useful for very small colonies (say if this were the only base in the colony). It also might not be the first element, but instead when the colony becomes large enough to require a dedicated administrative complex.

Also, note that according to SPP's colony description, very small colonies are usually served by free traders which can land (and according to the deck plans have significant builtin cargo handling capabilities).

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Tuesday, December 02, 2003 - 06:21 pm: Edit

Remember that it is also possible to have a base or major colony "direct" a ship to a destination at dash speed. This is how warships moving at dash speed intercept the enemy fleet which is moving at regular high warp.

I don't know if this is routinely done,i.e. a starbase or bats or large colony acting as a sort of space traffic control center for civilian ships moving at dash speeds to less developed target systems, but it could work.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, December 02, 2003 - 09:30 pm: Edit

D Kass: I like it. Seem it should have always been.