Archive through January 10, 2004
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Archive through January 10, 2004
David L., cool. I've never read that but makes sense. Like I said, might have to be a life boat. Thanks.
I'm not sure if any inter-stallar flight would be safe, unescorted. Making the Earth/Alpha-Centari flight in a lone Star Liner would be pretty scarry. Perhaps pirates don't operate at all in the core hex's of Empires? (or at least not in a raiding capacity)
Looking at the costs table (Sept 05 archive), the question becomes "How reliable are the purchase prices"
Remembering that using GURPS means using GURPS basic financial considerations (IE, normal incomes are about $1000 per month), if thoe operations costs are in fact in millios, and purchase prices in thousands, then those mortgage costs should run about 1-2% of purchase price per month... and since the annual op costs suggested are apparently higher than outright purchase costs, it looks pretty good.
Assuming 1 Econ BPV = $1M, assume a subsidized low interest loan, that's $120K-$240K per year additional op cost per BPV. 26*0.12=3.12 so cost to AC goes up by factor 7 if the formula for op costs isn't including the payments already.
Which puts costs to AC still below $1 per kl, with a healthy profit.
Passage goes from once a year to once a couple of years kind of thing. Similar to trips to Europe or Australia from the US.
Now, if only I had GS3...
the operating costs listed definantly do not include the payments on the ship itself.
note that that chart in the 12-5 archive was based on payments over 20 years, and the column that is listed as purchase price includes the interest on the purchase (i.e. it's the total outlay for the ship)
Pirates need a few hours to unlock the ship controls and head for the base. if help can get into sensor range faster then that pirates will be VERY rare. given the distances in the SFB universe this will only happen in the most densly populated areas. remember that at dash speed a warship is covering a F&E hex in about 2 hours. so if you are within a hex of a fleet base where ships are stationed you are likly to be safe.
looking at the base placements within the empires this actually means that pirates are less likly along the borders, unless the warships have been pulled elsewhere.
Inside the borders, you mean. If you are in a neutral zone, you need to be lucky.
David:
So that is the final total of all payments? Then the numbers are not so high.
I'm used to thinking in traveller terms... 20 year mortgage, at 1% of final price for 240 payments (13 month Traveller-Imperial year with one month waived per year for maintenance time), plus 20% down... ( yes, that is less than 3% interest...) for 260% paid on "List Value"; I thought that was list value shown.
If that's the final amortized cost, and subsidized mortages ala Trveller are the rule, list is about $10M..., and we're only jumping the costs by $0.1M/month. (roughly trebles cost.)
if it's the "List Price" aka "Write a check for This much" price, we add 0.26M per month, making the run costs about $10.1K, or $405 per cargo space, or still less than handling should be. Higher interest rates could push costs up to about $1000/space, still under $5 per kl...
AC is just to close to earth...
As for the SL pods... IF they can be carried OPERATIVELY on a freighter, then no civilian tugs need exist. Nor, for that matter, true liners. If Not, Civilian tugs probably will exist. And remember, just because it's NTW doesn't mean its sensors aren't working. (The old SFB mini shows the sensor/deflector dish...), in fact, I'd hazard a guess the deflector would be absolutely essential.
There are a couple different ways to think of SL pods:
One is the lash mode: The Pod is on the tug only to/from the system, and the tug grabs another waiting pod. the pod proceeds in-system on its own.
Another is the Freight model: it needs a dedicated tug to be in operation. (At least one scenario contradicts, as do the pod rules, last I checked.)
A third is the Freighters carry standard pods model... the freighter should have its move cost doubled since the SL is a double weight pod, right? so the freighter normally carries the SL pod as a dedicated "Liner", until BuCol or the marines (whomever subsidized the purchase) needs it, and they then borrow a tug from Star Fleet to tow it.
BTW, fed cargo pods are 32 cargo, while small freighters carry a 25 cargo block... so they are NOT the same.
So, say a small freighter loading one should go up to 1+1/6 move... and probably also drop max warp to shuttle speeds....
I realize it's not entirely germain this forum, but DO tugs have reduced high and dash speeds? (I suspect not, but it's not answered in GPD that I noticed.)
unless tugs are overloaded they have the same high and dash speeds as any warship. I would have to go lookup the F&E overloaded tug rules to see what they end up slowing down to when overloaded.
something isn't matching between my numbers and your numbers on the cargo costs.
I think that my numbers in the 12-5 archive are the cargo per year. the lowest per space cost that I had was something like $25K, you are producing numbers that are WAY under that.
Overloaded tugs in F&E can move three hexes during the Op move phase, and 12 hexes during the Strategic phase.
Ok, so the dash speed of an overloaded tug would match the aux-dash speed
high warp speed I will need to lookup. I think there is an existing speed that is 3 hexes/turn, but I'm not remembering it right now. a quick calculation shows that this should be about warp 5.5
Also, they can drop off the extra pod at any time and immediately go back to full warship speed.
I'm figuring costs per kiloliter per trip. Using the rough guess of 10x10x5m per box cargo (someone else's gues, not mine). 1 kiloliter is 1x1x1m, 1 cargo box is (roughly ?) 500 kl.
Looking at per kl costs gives a "How much will X cost to ship?" rate.
Here's the math for a FL on the 4.26 LY EACC run...
Trip time: 2+2+ ((4.26/5832)*365*24) in hours. =~ 10.4
Down time: = trip time 10.4
leg time: trip time + down time =20.8. rounding up 24, since most crews would...
legs per year: (365*24)/leg time = 365
cost per trip: cost per year/ trips per year
Cost per year from the 12/5 table
Ops cost: $1.0M
Min P: $5.3M
2% monthly payment: $106K per month
12 months payment: 1.272M/year
Total COST per year, per ship: 2.272M
cost per EACC trip: 6.225K
leg cost per cargo box (Cost per trip per box): $124
Rough charge: Cost per leg x2 = 250 (rounded up to round number, since most skippers would.)
Shipping "Cost" per KL to customers: = 250/500 = $0.5 per KL for trip on EACC...
Mind you, this is a VERY short run. my figures are PER RUN, and look at per KL, not per box. (I run a lot of Traveller... and think in KL for cargos.)
Lets look at the costs for the same freighter to go to a starbase near the core of the fed (1 hex out), and weel assume a 500 pc run.
Trip time = (500*3.26)/5832 )*365 (oly going to days, then adding .15 to cover the 4 hours system maneuver, 2 at each end) = 102.26 d
down time: = 102.26 d
time is 204.5 days, roughly.
Legs per year = 1.78
we'll use that...
Annual cost 2.272M
Cost/leg = 2.272E6/1.78 = 1,273,189
Cost per box per leg: ~25.5K/leg
Charged rate: ~51K/Leg
Per KL per Leg = 51K/500 = $102 per KL.,
asuming 3L per 2L soda, 333 sodas per KL, $0.31 shipping cost, and a small handling cost. Still less than replication, probably still not going to need local manufacture. So soda still may get shipped, until there is enough demand for a local bottling facility.
(I don't think you guys were looking at the end impact in so fine a detail... I was curious to see how it would affect a character's bottle of SFUCola.... This is, of course, ignoring the effects of limited shippable supply, warehousing costs at both ends, and insurance premiums.)
As for piracy, if the shipping costs are so low, pirates will focus more on smuggling than on piracy. Pirates will primarily focus araments on preventing loss to "Official enforcement" rather than capturing targets. Also, on each other. Objects d'Art, also would be prime targets.
Perhaps the KL/Cargo SSD Box ratio is too high? (500KL puts 1 CSP at 10KL... 2x2x2.5m..., assuming I recqall correctly 50 CSP per box).
why do you have trip time = down time?
on the Earth AC run this may make sense, but on the 500 parsec run it doesn't so you should get ~2 runs/year out of things
remember that if you are shipping soda you don't ship 2L bottles, you ship raw tankers so you would get much closer to 1L of cargo per 1L of soda 
however realize that space is HUGE in the SFB universe. you seldom have major destinations 1 hex apart, you are frequently needing to go 2-3 hexes to get from your major manufacturing wordls (i.e. anything large enough to show up as a minor planet in F&E) to you little colony
In that case, the average trip would be roughly 1000-1500 parsecs, taking an average freighter 200-300 days to make it one way, meaning that you're probably only going to get multiple runs per year if yoou work within 1 hex.
With that being the case is probable that each hex will have it's own trade network to run routine supplies here and there. In turn each network will trade with neighboring networks at points that they touch. In this model, if you were going to transport something across the galaxy, it would probably change hands several times, with a lot of time wasted in several loading/unloading operations.
why would you change ships many times rather then just putting it on a long-haul freighter?
remember there isn't that much in any hex to trade with, there is some, but not that much
each hex produces ~.8 EP per year in military budget at the highest crisis levels (.4 EP/hex in pre-war peacetime)
assume that the military is 5% of the GDP in peacetime and your economy per hex is ~8 EP/year
that doesn't support THAT many freighters per hex
I picked down time as equal as a simple flat rate for the runs. Really, it should cap at about a week.
On short runs, down time is probably either
A: condensed at home port (EG, make two legs on day 1, and take day 2 off at home port)
B: a consolidated block of time after 3-4 runs.
for long runs, it's likely to be shore leave and annual leave...
And assuming massive down time makes the much shorter down time (as yet unspecified) reduce costs to the carrier, but probably not to the consummer, and allows for fallow time (time you can't find cargo...) Call it a fudge factor on the conservative side.
and a remnant of Traveler... (week in jump, week in system, repeat 24 times, then take the thirteenth month as annual leave while the ship gets annual maintenance).
I agree, for long runs, 1:1 down to up is excessive, but it still doesn't put the costs terribly bad to the consumer for 1-3 hexes. (hell on crews, earning that downtime!)
And as for shipping 2L bottles, well, shipping many sodas to anchorage is done by break-bulk boxed bottles in cargo containers, and those bottles were packed elsewhere... but some sodas are shipped as breakbulk bagged concentrates and carbonated at a local bottling plant (of which there is one locally) or sold in syrup to POS recarbonation. Looking at the can of coca-cola I just pulled from the box, it was bottled in Atlanta, and probably driven 3000 miles, then shipped 1500 miles by container ship, then driven another 20.... (10 port to warehouse, 10 more warehouse to store... as the store I purcased it at is by the prt, and the CocaCola distributor's warehouse is 10 miles away from the port).
For many "specialist" consumer goods, they are NEVER shipped liquid-bulk. Wines, most carbonated beverages, Tabasco. Some, like draft beers, are shipped break-bulk for POS "repackaging for individual sale"; others are prepackaged from the factory and shipped a individual sale portions boxed together. (Like JD's Old #7, CocaCola, Falcon Crest Wine, Tabasco McIlhenny Pepper sauce). Things where carbonation and/or proof of quality are part of the packaging.
Milk usually IS shipped liquid-bulk... often in tanks which had recently been carrying petrochem, or other things.
Heck, the milk I buy is shipped break bulk from the factory in 1L boxes... non refridgerated... packaged in Pensylvania... shipping times probably on the same order as Earth-Vulcan. (well over a week. 3-5 days drive, depending upon drivers per rig, and then a half a week from seattle to anchorage... )
FYI, I effectively live in a modern American colony... local food production is potatoes, milk, carrots, lettuce, berries and cabbage. almost all other food is shipped in, usually prepackaged for sale; most meat does arrive as carcassaes. I've gotten to work with (admittedly 1942-1947) old pricing data, specifically maximum price regulations, and the supporting documents for changes being sought, while I worked at the local branch of the National Archives. I've freinds who've worked in the beverage wholesale industry; we collected some preliminary modern info for a (well researched) Car Wars campaign. Relative costs of shipping to anchorage have dropped over time (as a portion of good sale price or wholesale price....) Almost all alaskan consumer goods are imports. Most by sea, some by air (time-limited, like washington state eggs, Oregon cheeses). Some arrive by truk, mostly meats and milk, for local repackaging. 7-Up closed their bottling plant up here at one point, as shipping became cheaper (more full runs, due to larger populations) as shipping packaged for individual sale from washington state was less expensive than shipping either syrup or raw components to the local plant, plus paying the salaries of the plant workers. Ancorage's main industry is government and military bases; tourism is next. Fairbanks is a mining town. Valdez is an oil port. Seward and Homer are commercial fishing. Juneau is fishing, government, mining and tourism (They use jade rubble from the jade mines for paving gravel, as "less valuable" rock rubble is actually more expensive than the low quality waste jade....).
Bulk shipping depends upon just how important the resource is, and how rare it is, and if repackaging at delivery would cost the PROVIDER more than the shipping losses to packaging.
And please pardon the inconsistant capitalizations... 8 years of college, 4 years teaching elementary school, and I still can't consistantly type with proper capitalization...
Just crossing one hex (500 parsecs) takes a freighter (Warp 4.5) 3.35 months (assuming a 30 day month). The sample trip in the GPD rulebook (Federation capitol hex to Orion; a distance of 5 hexes/2500 parsecs) would take 16.76 months at freighter speeds. So not only will the purchasers of the cargo have to pay for the cargo, they'll have to offset the costs of a 17 month trip. For something to have a 4-6 week delivery time (as seen on TV!), it would have to be within 200 parsecs (less than half of a hex).
Exactly, these sorts of distances are why I have been so worried about the effects of dash speed, with any reasonable operating cost and long trips like this the savings from getting the trip over so much faster can easily counter the 10% per month surcharge.
for the earth->orion trip
a freighter will take ~15 months
a normal ship ~5 months
a normal ship at dash speeds ~1 week
2500 pc at freighter speeds
cost per leg (using 1.5 years, counting shore leaave and maintenance down time) on the E-O run on
F-S" $1.686M/trip 67440K/box $135/KL, charges will be twice that, at $270/KL, or some 27 cents per liter. affordable, but slow.
F-AS: Armed Frieghter, uses aux engines correct? calling it 1 year, (.76 year in flight) similar reasons. 6.736M/leg 269440/box 539/KL, $0.53/L
APT: (Std Warp, yes?) .37 year 136 days. + 1.5 month down time = 182 days. 0.5 year. 6 cargo. $5.8M per leg. 966,666 per box. $1934/KL, or about $1.94/L, so $4/L to the customer.
fdx: .34 year, 121 days. adding a month down, that's 5 months... $26.5M/leg 8.833M/box, 17667/kL, 18/L, charge $36/L
fdx dash, at 0.1x cost per month for dash:
6 days. Assume down time for rest of month. $28.925M/leg 9.642M/box, 19284/KL, $19/L, or about $38 to the customer... if we cut the down time to a little over a week, we can cut the costs by half on high-activity links... simply because it will be twice the load income in the same time.
F-AS dash: 2500 Pc, at 1004/month, 5 months. 1 month down. 8.735M/leg 349387/box 698.77/kL $6.99/L, or $13/L to the customer.
So, a shipment of Ph-II, at about 2L each (counting the box), WILL be shipped slowest viable speed for the need, almost anywhere in the federation... it's cheaper than replication, if replication are 2x cost. many things will be cheaper to manufacture closer to home... in fact, sending 5 marinnes along will be affordable when the shipment is a kL in size.... (500 phas 2's, that's 1.5million in phasers... outfitting the local NG Regiment, say?)
FedX can't compete on the short runs, tho... and non-time critical stuff can afford to go by tramp.
All the above assumes freight, not purchased loads, and typical shipment being 60-80% full, so profit is made by filling past 50%...
F-AS dash should be able to do 12 hexes/6 months so it should be ~2.2 months for the trip (call it 2.5-3 months including downtime)
the FDX dash should not need more then ~3 days of downtime per 6 days in transit (it needs that much for maintinance and that sort of workload is very reasonable)
when you talk about being able to send 5 marines along with the shipment don't forget to count their salary, 1.5 years of their salary compared to a week (F-S vs FDX dash) will make up for a lot of shipping costs.
Something I've been thinking about regarding ship speeds .... I think that within the broad categories of max-speeds (freighters VS aux-ships VS warships), there should be a break down by ship size-class and/or number of Warp boxes. Perhaps, however, instead of printing a hard-wired chart, present the GM with some general guidelines and let them "adjust" to fit their needs of the day.
Ships should be rated by three values: Top speed, Acceleration and Endurance. Larger ships should have better top speed and endurance, but smaller ships should have better endurance.
For example, all war ships using “standard dash warp” max out at Warp 9.25, per GPD page 128. But let’s say that a FF can hit 9.250, but a CA can make 9.255 -- this idea fits with a published scenario in which the B-10, running at Warp 9.26 or so, outran it’s supporting fleet and went into battle alone.
Likewise, a larger ship carries more fuel (albeit burning it up at a faster rate to feed the bigger engines) and is more solidly built to withstand the pounding at max speed. How many times did Scotty tell Kirk “She just can’t take any more of this!” when the E. was as very high warp??? He wouldn't have had the change in a frigate ... they'd already be just pieces flying in formation.
On the flip side, I feel that smaller ships should be able to go from Warp 3.0 to cruising speed of Warp 7.0, and again up to near-max of Warp 9.0 in noticeably less time that larger ships. While I don’t have a good SFB or ST:TOS example to prove that, take my two cars … off the line, my Nissan goes from 0 to 30-45 much faster than the 4300 pound Jaguar does, but the Jag tops out well above the Nissan. And even though the Nissan gets 25-30 MPG, it has a smaller fuel tank than either of the Jag's two tanks. The Jag actually has a slightly better range between fill-ups.
From a player’s point of view, this concept will tell them whether a Fed CA can catch an Orion CR before it gets out of sensor range. Probably not, but it does give the CR a chance to find a hiding place before the CA gets to stomp them.
Comments???
Garth L. Getgen
Sounds like an article for MPB, Garth!
SVC, please look at Garth's post two up and let us know if you bless the concept
in a local game anything can be done, but for something like this to get published rill require SVC agreeing to the basic concept (so let's get that before we spend any significant time on it)
Too complicated to think about now; I'm shuffling F&E countersheets and have a headache. Seems unnecessary to me, but what do I know?
The concept sound good to me. I rather though of things that way already.
Some acceptions might be Technology classes and a serious reason Orions built X-ships. Some time ago there was a big arguement that Orions should never have built X-Ships. What if the only way to out accelerate an X-Ship is with another X-Ship. If a Fed-CCX can now get the jump on an Orion BR then the Orion is in serious trouble having always relied on being able to out accelerate bigger ships. The Orion has little choice than to convert to X-Tech (beside which there is lot of other perks like better eapons etc.)
Acceleration, Top speed and Endurance could be based on Size Class. Then present basic formulas for Technology classes.
SC=Size Class
| Tech Class | Top Speed | TS Endurance | Acceleration to TS |
| -------- | -------- | in hours | Factor x 60 seconds |
| -------- | -------- | -------- | -------- |
| Military | Warp 9.25-SC | 100/SC | SCxMC |
| Military Auxillary | 8.25-(2xSC) | 100/SC | SC-1 |
| Civilian | 8.25-(2xSC) | 80/SC | SCx(2MC) |
| Freighter | 7.5-(2xSC) | 200/SC | SC |
| X1-Tech | 9.5-SC | 150/SC | Class Formula -1 |
This is unreaserched data off the top of my head presented only to show the concept. Whith a table like this any ship could be quickly calculated using existing standard data.
note that as-is an X-ship is faster then a non-X ship (X and fast ships are the same speed) so even without dealing with the acceleration your argument still holds
hoever, given the vunerability of ships running at these speeds I really do wonder if it's worth a page or so of rules/explination for dealing with acceleration differences that are over with in seconds
I think time would be better spent trying to deal with rules that will let a good engineer shave time off a trip. that is needed anyway and could explain all the examples that have been used to justify varied acceleration/top speed.
also if you start trying to tweak the top speed how are you going to know how fast you are actually going? SVC has not wanted to publish the warp->speed formula for high warp, and for dash warp the warp numbers were made up anyway (the warp numbers that produced the speeds were > 10 and thanks to those @#$!@ at Paramount who declared warp 10 == infinate speed the numbers were dummied up instead)
SVC said "Seems unnecessary to me, but what do I know?"
For most situations, I agree it's a level of detail that just bogs the game down. However, in those pursuit scenarios, it gives the GM (and players) some guidance of how the play it out.
"Sir, the Orion ship just jumped to high warp. He'll make Blackfoot Pass befor we can match his speed." ~~~ "Alright, now that we stole this D7, how do we get away? Those F5's will run us down before they run out of fuel." Stuff like that.
Note: I am NOT saying that we need to add stats to every ship published. A short, one-page article expanding on my post with a couple examples is all that's needed, in my opinion. Just state that bigger ships can make slight higher top speed for loner periods than smaller ships WITHIN THE SAME CATEGORY.
David: You know, I really don't know why SVC kept all Warp numbers < 10. In ST:TOS, they went above Warp 10 on at least two occasions. What Paramount did only applies to ST:TNG+ .... and besides, they got it wrong: Warp 10 is not infinate speed, rather it requirtes (near-) infinate power to get there. You just shouldn't get me started on that subject.
Garth L. Getgen