Archive through December 05, 2003
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Prime Directive RPG: NEW KINDS OF RPG PRODUCTS:
GURPS Prime Civilians:
Archive through December 05, 2003
My fear with the GCA is that players would buy them for their tactical advantages. Put a GCA in a power grid with 3 GPS and you have a 41 point anchor.
I'd prefer to see a large (3-4 space) shuttle that had a tractor beam instead of cargo space (i.e. small harbor tug) whose sole purpose was to land cargo pods (and, in a pinch, tow shuttles and freighter parts around).
The Recovery shuttle in J2 already has a tractor beam. It's a 1x size shuttle so a larger version is feasible.
One very important thing to keep in mind is Year Of Availability: 2x shuttles (HTS) are available in Y90, 3x shuttles are Y140, 4x are Y180. For that reason alone, any kind of shuttle like we've been discussing for the last week is initially likely to be a double-size shuttle based on the HTS.
There is also the possibility of civilian tractor system that we never see in SFB, as they are not robust, quick enough, or long-ranged enough to be useful in a combat situation.
Ken, that 10% per month charge is what I have been taking into account.
all my posts to date have been assuming that freighter variants (including armed freighters, Q-ships, etc) can do aux dash, FT, APT, SLV can do standard dash and FDX can do fast dash.
Navagation limits do limit you to the major waypoints as destinations, but if you are covering a significant distance you will be able to use dash at lest some of the way (and if dash is to much better you can go out of your way to use dash and still come out ahead, but it will make the numbers closer depending on how far our of your way you go)
so the options are
1. normal speed for 5 years, 70 hexes.
2. dash speed for 5 years, 1200 hexes, 6 times the ships cost in maintinance.
or put another way.
1. purchase 7 ships, operate them for 5 years, travel 490 hexes and pay for 7 crews
2. purchase 1 ship operate it at dash speed for 5 years, pay for 1 crew and cover almost three times as much distance.
let's look at the longer timeframe, possibly I've been missing something by only looking 5 years down the road
lets look at 10 years of federation express operation (same amount spent on the ship purchase + dash maintinance)
1. 13 ships at normal speed, 1820 hexes, 13 crews to pay
2. 1 ship at dash speed, 2400 hexes 1 crew to pay
closer, but still not worth it.
ok 20 years
1.25 ships at normal speed 7000 hexes, 25 crews to pay
2. 1 ship at dash speed 4800 hexes, 1 crew to pay
Ok, finally, assuming that normal maintinance and crew salaries aren't to much somewhere between 10 and 20 years of ships operation it becomes worth it to buy 25 ships instead of 1 ship, although over 20 years it costs a LOT to pay for 24 extra crews.
there's also the difference that buying 25 ships requires a HUGE amount of cash (or borrowing) up front, while buying one ship and paying for the maintinance spreads the costs over time
so the formula per cargo is
normal speed costs
(P + Y * O)
dash speed costs
(P + Y (O + 1.2 * P)) / X
where X is the speed improvement you get from dash speed
| normal movement | dash movement | multiplier |
| ship | 6 | 100 | 17 |
| fast | 7 | 120 | 17 |
| freighter | 2 | 12 | 6 |
| aux | 3 | 12 | 4 |
so we are looking for the conditions that make
dash speed costs > normal speed costs
(going into deep detail so that if I make a mistake in my 2am math someone else can catch it)
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
(P + Y (O + 1.2P))/X > P + YO
P + YO + 1.2YP > XP + XYO
P + 1.2YP > XP + (X-1)YO
P + 1.2YP -XP > (X-1)YO
(1.2Y - X + 1)P > (X-1)YO
P > (X-1)YO / (1.2Y-X+1)
now my head is starting to hurt 
Ok, lets complete the formulas
from my post of 12/1 2:00am (why am I trying to do this sort of thing at this hour???)
#2 replication limit
cost of shipping < cost of purchase
#3 Payback limit
P < Y * C * V - Y * O
#4 time to get messy
from #1 we have
(X-1)YO / (1.2Y-X+1) < P
and from #3 we have
P < Y * C * V - Y * O
putting them togeather we have
(X-1)YO / (1.2Y-X+1) < P < Y * C * V - Y * O
or
(X-1)YO / (1.2Y-X+1) < YCV - YO
(X-1)YO / (1.2Y-X+1) + YO < YCV
(X-1)YO / (1.2Y-X+1) + (1.2Y-X+1)YO / (1.2Y+x+1) < YCV
(X-1+1.2Y-X+1)YO / (1.2Y-X+1) < YCV
(1.2Y)YO / (1.2Y-X+1) < YCV
1.2YYO / ((1.2Y-X+1)YC < V
1.2YO / C(1.2Y-X+1) < V
or | ship | 1.2YO / C(1.2Y-16) |
| freighter | 1.2YO / C(1.2Y-5) | <V |
| aux | 1.2YO / C(1.2Y-3) |
noteing that this only makes sense for number >0 so 1.2Y+1 must be > X
I'm not going to recalculate the entire table now, it's just to late
Gary, while that may be true about GSA having a strong anchor a simple Base Station on theground would have the same abilities whith Ph-4's behind it.
If the GSA were to pull off such an anchor the GSA would soon be dead as it doesn't nearly have the wear with all to hold up long (like a Ground Base Station could). The one tractor would be easy to take out.
I don't think it would (could) be abused.
No shuttle (tractor or otherwise) is going to lower a whole cargo pod to the surface.
David Lang:
I may well be misremembering again (don't have my books handy) but I believe that armed freighters (with their more powerful "military grade" engines) are capable of aux dash speed but standard freighters can not dash at all. Can someone cite a reference to confirm whether standard freighters have a dash speed?
In Comment to Alex's remark about a 'civilian' tractor system, on e option to consider, if nothing else is the use of the previous generations tractor technology. In TL12, that would be a tractor system technology that is (without going for the books) quite old and anyone could pick up for 1/4 the price of the current TL's tech.
These need not be left overs, they could just be the items needed for a broad based, low requirement market, but still current manufacture.
RH
David L.,
Yes, Freighters are designed to have a operational life of 15-30 years. Even current Container Ships and Oil Tankers have operational lives of ~20 years, with some still in service after 30+ years.
As to how pirate ships make a profit, check out how current pirates work. Yes, there is quite an active pirate trade today. They mostly work off the coasts of Indonesia and SE Asia. This is one of the major reasons we have a fleet in Asian waters most of the time.
Alan T.,
The referance that standard Freighters cannot use Dash speeds is on GPD pg. 128. There is a Freighters speed line but no Freighter Dash speed.
Also, both Small and Large Freighters cannot disengage by Acceleration (see SSD's and rule descriptions).
RH,
Early Tractors are a great Idea. Equip a ground Base with a Tractor-W (TL10) (call it a cargo tractor) and it can handle slow, friendly objects (<speed 1) in a 60º arc out to 10,000 KM. (1 hex)
Andy, maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't see the problem. The planet is stationary, so the anchor isn't going anywhere. At range 5, the raider (assume we're talking about a pirate raid, but it doesn't really matter) identifies the ground bases and the fact the four are connected to a power grid. The tractor is absolutely useless at this point, the raider can sit out here and blast until it destroys all the bases and can then move in. Even at range 3, the potential anchor is more annoying than dangerous (its a 13 point anchor, and anything larger than a FF can defeat it, if desired). At range 2 it starts to be significant (20 points is more than most size class 4 ships can handle). Its only at range 1 in the 180 degree FOV of the GCA that something is going to get caught. Have you ever considered the type of anchor a standard orbital base can potentially do (think PAM and docked ships)?
For the same BPV, I can probably get 4 GBDP and in my experience, 4 phaser-IV are much more dangerous than an immobile 41 point anchor.
About the only thing I can see this stopping is a ground raid by a commando PF...
suicide freighters have the ability to use strategic movement (dash speed) in F&E, there are severe limits, but I don't think that they have aux engines, I think they use standard freighter engines.
in F&E most of the other aux units are the uprated engines and convoys can be moved at no cost (redirectign the surplus so that you don't have to worry about getting a particular ship there)
I know normal freighters cannot disengage by acceleration, can the military freighters do this? if so then this could be a difference between them.
Ken, freighters last 20-30 years, but how long does it take to pay them off? I have a hard time believing that companies expect to take 20 years to break even. (it may be possible, I work in computers where it's hard to get companies to look 2 years ahead so 20 seems like forever )
can you point me at a link to the pirate data you are refering to.
Of course, the big thing missing in all these formulas is: How much does a ship cost? Someone with a copy of GURPS Space and a bit of free time could probably make a rather educated guess.
Yes, I know the prices there may not hold true in the SFU. But now I would like to raise 2 points:
1: Many items from GURPS Space and GURPS UltraTech have been included in GPD and MPA with prices listed. So at least for those items, the prices are set. However, everything else from GURPS uses roughly the same standard, so remaining items can probably be "grandfathered in" rather easily, with changes as needed to fit the SFU.
2: You gotta start somewhere. Even if no number in any GURPS book is sufficiently accurate for our needs, they at least serve as starting points that we can branch out from. And the wonderful thing about having so much information in so many GURPS books is so that we don't have to waste our time doing everything because a lot has been done for us.
well useing Gurps Space 3, some quick mental calculations and the listing for the large freighter in GPD it looks like it would run somewhere around $1B, with ~85% or more being the cost of the shields (even giving it credit for 'cheap' shields)
unfortunantly we don't have a cost for much of the equipment on board, but with the hull going for ~$10M and the shields for ~$950M we are already to the point where my earlier estimation of $10M/space is probably low
this is why I have been generating these formulas so that we can make some reasonable guesses of some of the figures to then generate the others
Just as some items are at different TLs in GPD than they are in standard GURPS, I suspect the same holds true for pricing -- $950M for five-point shields is bleeping ridiculous!
What those prices should be is open to discussion, of course. 
Gary, can you reach whoever did the freighter and free trader designs for GPD gurps space and see if they have any notes on costs?
David: I think the Suicide Frieghter strategic movement ability in F&E is from the 'invisible' tugs that are operating all over the place 'off board.' If I remember right, a tug can attach a freighter in a fashion like a pod, though I'm sure it's shut down during trasport and they have to 'prep' it in the staging zone.
David Lang:
Armed freighters CAN disengage by acceleration in SFB so, as you say, this is a difference between them and standard freighters.
Also, regarding strategic movement at dash speed, even if Donovan Willett's supposition about "invisible tugs" is wrong (I'm not saying that it is) that still wouldn't prove that standard freighters can dash. The whole point of suicide freighters is that they are intended to make a one-way trip and therefor you might stress them in ways you would never consider for a ship that had to be around for decades.
During the late 1930s the Luftwaffe wanted to set the absolute world speed record with the Me-109 as a propoganda coup. They set the record with something called the Me-109R (IIRC) that used a special engine with methyl alcohol injection. They wanted to world to believe the Me-109 utterly outclassed anything else in the world. In fact this special engine was designed to survive one flight at what was (at the time) an absurdly high speed. It was a propoganda/deception stunt that bore no relation to actual Me-109 performance. (Actual Me-109 performance at that time was very comparable to the Spitfire, each being better in some respects.) The analogy is faulty in several ways, of course, but does illustrate how a special mission craft intended for only one flight can be souped up to levels unreachable by standard versions of that craft.
David: Aaron Hendricks did those specs. I haven't heard from him in a while, so I don't know if he's active any longer.
I'm sure there are no notes on costs, he would have included them in the original writeup.
My impression from reading the section on suicide freighters is that they're actually assembled in place from whatever is available (basically a freighter from the local supply chain is requisitioned and stuffed with explosives). Thus I'm not sure their movement in F&E is relevant--that's just the explosives and troop transports.
Your impression is correct, but it can be extremely relevant:
I once ran a game where the PCs were hired to crew a freighter from point A to point B, after the original crew got sick from an environmental system failure. They concentrated on investigating Life Support, and didn't notice what was in the cargo holds until about an hour before the magnetic containment vessels were scheduled to fail ...
(very evil grin)
Also note that GPD starship shields are ablative, reducing in effectiveness as they take damage. This would probably explain why the cDRs are so high and will help us figure out a reasonable price for them. Shields should probably not be your biggest expenditure in a starship, so let's look for a number that would be much more reasonable. Perhaps ablative shields are only 10% of list cost for normal non-ablative shielding. Or maybe that's too low. But now we have a starting point for a practical discussion on the topic.
Ok, now the big chart again.
I'm going to continue to do the normal freighters with the same formulas (based on the dash speed limits) as they already end up with numbers so much lower then the other ships.
from my post 12-3 5:56am
| |
| ship | | | 1.2YO / C(1.2Y-16) | | | 16YO/(1.2Y-16) |
| freighter | | V > | 1.2YO / C(1.2Y-5) | | P > | 5YO/(1.2Y-5) |
| aux | | | 1.2YO / C(1.2Y-3) | | | 3YO/(1.2Y-3) |
assuming that each crewmember has a cost of $50K/year
there is no other maintinance or fuel cost
let's call the purchase load a 20 year payback schedule
so the formulas are
| |
| ship | | 3 * O / C | | | 40 * O |
| freighter | V > | 24 * O / 19C | | P > | 100 * O/19 |
| aux | | 8 * O / 7C | | | 20 * O/7 |
| ship | crew | annual cost | cargo | min V | min P | EPV |
| F-S | 10 | $0.5M | 25 | $25K | $2.6M | 26 |
| F-AS | 80 | $4.0M | 25 | $182K | $11.4M | 36 |
| F-S skid | 20 | $1.0M | 25 | $50K | $5.2M |
| F-AS skid | 90 | $4.5M | 25 | $206K | $12.9M |
| F-QS | 50 | $2.5M | 10 | $316K | $13.2M | 40 |
| F-QS | 60 | $3.0M | 10 | $379K | $15.8M | 40 |
| TSS | 30 | $1.5M | 20 | $94K | $7.9M | 28 | note: carries 300 passangers to defray costs |
| F-L | 20 | $1.0M | 50 | $25K | $5.3M | 61 |
| F-AL | 120 | $6.0M | 50 | $137K | $17.1M | 75 |
| F-L 2skids | 40 | $2.0M | 50 | $51K | $5.7M |
| F-AL 2skids | 140 | $7.0M | 50 | $160K | $20.0M |
| F=OL | 20 | $1.0M | 100 | $13K | $5.3M | 100 |
| F-QL | 100 | $5.0M | 20 | $316K | $26.4M | 82 |
| F-QL | 120 | $6.0M | 20 | $379K | $31.6M | 82 |
| APT | 40 | $2.0M | 6 | $1000K | $80.0M | 75 |
| APT civilian | 20 | $1.0M | 6 | $500K | $40.0M |
| FT | 30 | $1.5M | 12 | $375K | $60.0M | 70 |
| FDX | 30 | $1.5M | 3 | $1500K | $60.0M | 70 |
| SLV | 120 | $6.0M | 11 | $1636K | $240M | 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.
let's look at the tramp steamer for a little bit, this ship carries some cargo and some passangers, but I seem to remember that it can't quite turn a profit if it carries either exclusivly
\table,TSS,30,$1.5M,20,$94K,$7.9M,28,note: carries 300 passangers to defray costs}
so to allow for a little extra maintinance costs lets say that routine cargo is worth $100K/space ($5/cubic ft) and a full passanger berth for a year is worth $8K (passangers aren't as paitent as cargo so it's more likly that there are some empty berths) let's go ahead and say that valuble cargo is worth $400K/space (worth an armed freighter, $22/cubic ft) and priority cargo is worth $1.6M/space (worth a APT/FDX $91/cubic ft)
let's look at the ships value while loaded and see how that compares to the EPV.
| ship | loaded | min P | EPV |
| F-S | $5.1M | 26 |
| F-AS | $21.4M | 36 |
| F-S skid | $7.7M |
| F-AS skid | $22.9M |
| F-QS | $14.2M | 40 | running at a net loss of $5.4M/year |
| F-QS | $16.8M | 40 | running at a net loss of $7.0M/year |
| TSS | $9.9M | 28 | not counting the 300 passangers |
| F-L | $10.3M | 61 |
| F-AL | $37.1M | 75 |
| F-L 2skids | $10.7M |
| F-AL 2skids | $40M |
| F=OL | $15.3M | 100 |
| F-QL | $28.4M | 82 | running at a net loss of $10.8M/year |
| F-QL | $33.6M | 82 | running at a net loss of $10.8M/year |
| APT | $89.6M | 75 |
| APT civilian | $49.6M |
| FT | $64.8M | 70 |
| FDX | $64.8M | 70 |
| SLV | $257.6 | 83 | if used for cargo only ;-) runs at a loss of $400K/year |
this is starting to look almost reasonable. if we were to say that 1EP is roughly $1M and look at the loaded value of the freighters then I think we are in the ballpark (and it would be SUCH a nice conversion factor if it can work ) however this will mean that we don't have any significant maintinance costs beyond the $50K/crewmember/year, specificly no fuel costs.
if we add to the overhead with something like fuel then the $ <-> EP conversion factor will have to be higher. After I get some sleep I'll approach it from the other direction (EP * X = $ value loaded for a couple different values of X) and see what sort of cargo values I get for the different ships
the origional source did show that the ships did have bussard ramjet type fields to gather fuel, we could get away with saying that ships operating at normal speed gather their fuel as they go and so really never need to refuel, but ships that operate at dash speed must refuel, therefor all the senerios and fiction that show warships trying to get to a fuel source have drained their tanks with a burst of dash speed (i.e. we ignore the problem and explain away the conflicting evidence )
These numbers are starting to look reasonable, David. It certainly explains why skids are not as common as you'd think.
The F-L (2 skids) cost seems to be way too low, though -- only 400K over the no-skids cost? And the numbers for the Free Trader and APT are out of line. They need to be addressed somehow -- although I think the APT will require a wholesale overhaul at the SFB level.
As for refueling, I think I can agree if we also state that major refueling is done as a part of getting a major overhaul every 10-20 years, and that the refueling cost is included.
You are heading in the direction of writing this up as an article for MPB, correct? If so, you should add the U-1 (converted Klingon PF) from GK and the Prime Trader variants -- players will especially want to see those. Remember that the U-1 is TL13, so that will lower the costs.
David Lang:
I don't think I buy your assumption that (unless I've misunderstood something you've said)all crew units cost the same. The master of a tramp freighter is not going to be paid the same as the cook. And even within the same general class there will be differences. A senior engineer with 30 years experience and hundreds of voyages is not going to be paid the same as a very junior apprentice engineer on his first ever voyage.
Now this might not affect your analysis if the ratio of "high skill level-high pay" positions to "low skill-low pay" positions was constant for all ship types. But I think it more likely that, for example, an APT may have very different skill mix requirements than an old, slow, non-dash-capable tramp freighter. I'm certainly not trying to create more work for you but it does seem to me that you are currently ignoring something that in reality might be a significant cost driver.
I just did some geometrical growth calculations. If one assumes at least 50 years pass between now and Y1, making Y168 around 200 years in the future (trying to set a lower limit), you get your net worth to increase:
7 fold at 1% growth for 200 years
140 fold at 2.5% growth for 200 years
17000 fold at 5% growth for 200 years
For comparison, the world had a 4.8% growth during the good year of 2000 and a 2.7% increase during 2002. You can assume wars and such will temporarily impact the average growth, but even assuming an average of growth as bad as 2001's (2.2%) you still have the Earth's purchasing power parity at $3.8Q in Y168. The US government (using it as a model) has a budget of about 20% of its PPP. If we assume that during wartime, just 25% of the Major world's government budget is turned over to military production (total: 5 EP), that gives a ratio of around $40T/EP. This gets bigger at better economic growth and smaller at poorer economic growth.
The net result: I would say that trying to convert EPs to $ and back is highly uncertain. That, and military hardware is real expensive in the SFB universe. Which is certainly reasonable.
Note, for this I used data from the CIA World Factbook. GDP and budgets are given in purchasing power parity.