What needs to be in it: answers to all of the questions people ask here!

Then we tell them to read GPD4 page whatever (insert very evil grin) and if they don't have GPD4, oh well ...

By David Lang (Dlang) on Tuesday, October 26, 2004 - 07:17 pm: Edit

Gary,
off the top of my head

1. why we don't use warp^3
2. timeline of warp drives
3. what the #$%@ is dash warp
4. freighter/aux warp (may be part of the timeline fo warp drives)
5. sublight ships have warp capability ?!?!?!??
6. the new 'slow' warp (F&E speed 5) that some ships will soon have (national guard, possibly a few others)

what else do we need to answer?

also are we still stuck with the 'warp 10 is infinante' nonsense from TNG?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, October 26, 2004 - 09:39 pm: Edit

I don't think so since the rules mention the Andros traveling at warp 15 between bases.

I'd point out that at the highest warp speed galactics can travel they are traveling nearly blind. I reason that subspace scanners scan ahead at warp equivelant of 9.99 and if you are traveling at warp 9 you just aren't seeing ahead far enough to be safe. Hence the need to make these speeds either for a short time or on preset routes.

Speeds beyond that would require both better engines AND a technology similar to the Andros.

Star Trek TOS clearly had the ship moving beyond warp 9 and 10 several times so the infinante thing should not apply to the SFU which is based on that...IMO.

Let it be other limitation that keep ships below warp 10 in 99% of cases.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Tuesday, October 26, 2004 - 09:51 pm: Edit

one reason I asked about the 'warp 10' limit is that dash speed is up around warp 20 , not the warp 9+ listed in GPD and I do hate to have the warp numbers in the chart fudged for the sake of not offending the TNG crowd

I'll add the andros RTN speed to the chart, it's significantly faster then normal galactic movement, but also significantly slower then dash speed, but without most of the dash speed limits

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Wednesday, October 27, 2004 - 12:17 am: Edit

No -- we do not think that Warp 10 is as fast as we can go. Lots of instances of the Enterprise going faster.

The heck with TNG on this one! ;)

By David Lang (Dlang) on Wednesday, December 01, 2004 - 08:45 pm: Edit

reopening this topic (and I hope to have some time to work on this this weekend)

to figure out the economics of transport we need to balance out the following items

1. the cost of the ships (paying off the ship over time, including maintinance)

2. the cost of the crew to man the ships

3. the max amount of profit that can be earned for any item (this is capped by the fact that at some point it's cheaper to replicate an item then have it shipped)

4. how long it takes to get to it's destination with each type of drive (including dash speed)

in GPDv3 we had the following rules defined

A. replication costs twice as mcuh as producing the item

This means that shipping can never be higher then the cost of producing the item

B. Dash speed (which increases the speed of the ship by 6x-17x depending on the drive) costs 10% of the cost of the ship per 6 months

This means that the cost of operating the ship for 17x as long needs to be less then 10% of the cost of the ship

it would be EXTREMELY useful to get some sort of idea what the value of a 50 point cargo box worth of cargo is (idealy a few different values, low value bulk cargo, medium value cargo, high value cargo, etc)

I did some research many moons ago and looking at the salary paied to merchane marine crew it looks like a cheap cost per crewmember would be ~$50k/year. This includes their salary, room and board, etc along with some room for the officers to be paied more then the base crew.

I think that for GPDv4 we will need to make replicated goods more expensive to allow a higher shipping cost, and may need to increase the cost of dash speed.

if anyone has a good idea of what the normal repayment schedule is for Big-rig trucks or cargo ships it would be great to get this info.

By David Kass (Dkass) on Wednesday, December 01, 2004 - 09:52 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

replication costs twice as mcuh as producing the item

---

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, December 01, 2004 - 10:45 pm: Edit

Unfortunatley MPB isn't getting published. The Replicators vs. Shipping this was all worked out in my article of the same title (and a bunch of other replicator facts).

The article explains much but it basically come down to two major factors.
1) Replication takes a lot of energy.
2) Hand Made is better.
2a) Replicated material weaken and breaks down over long periods (not an issue with food).
2b) Replicated items aren't as durable.
2c) You cannot replicate complex devices with out a high degree of errors. The more basic the material the easier. Food doesn't require materials to not have any blending as mechanical devices and electronics do.

Shipping is always important.

Also, replications in hundreds of time more expensive than mining when the product is simple raw material.

Some materials are vurtually non-replicatable (usable dilithium for instance).

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 01:07 am: Edit

Loren, I don't recall seeing an article by you titled Replicators vs Shipping or anything similar.

MPB has nothing to do with this -- because David Lang had been working on this material, I asked him to spiff it up so that SVC and I can consider putting in into GPD4.

If you've written such an article, please send it to me ASAP!

By David Lang (Dlang) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 01:34 am: Edit

Loren,
Given that SVC has said that replicators are extensivly used in starship construction I'm not sure how well 2a and 2b apply

basicly to figure out how expensive shipping actually is I need to get a handlw on how much profit can be made in a single run (especially since a run could be several months for a bulk freighter so you don't get many in per year)

in other words ....... HElp!!!

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 10:57 am: Edit

David: This is a different type of Replicator called a Matter Reformer used in casting raw material into a finished product. It's covered in the article.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 11:01 am: Edit

"Given that SVC has said that replicators are extensivly used in starship construction"

I did?

By David Lang (Dlang) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 11:57 am: Edit

SVC, it was a while ago and would take a long time to dig up, but at one time when we were talking about details of shipyards you indicated that replicators were heavily used which drasticly simplified the shipyards compared to what we were talking about at the time.

you of course do have the right to redefine things, and/or I may be misremembering something so if you have approved Loren's article we'll just go by it.

Loren, Gary,
since I have not seen this article could you give me an idea of how much shipping could be charged per cargo box for a few different classes of products?

I'm assuming that there are cargos that a bulk freighter can run a profit on that a APT could not (not to mention a FedEx) so I need to get some idea of the profit potential for several catagories (and by looking at the tramp steamer which can't make a profit with just cargo or just passangers I can get an idea of the cost of passanger tickets)

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 12:33 pm: Edit

Starships with limited storage certainly make good use fo the replicator since it takes less space and the energy required is available.

Expiditions and new colonies should have them so that it is not nessasary to bring every concevable supply along. Still, considerable supplies are needed. Basic raw materials are needed everywhere and you cannot feed a planets population on replicated food (and they'd probably revolt if you tried). Replicators excell at supplying things for imediate use. For every day long term items (about 90% of our stuff) we need manufactured goods.

In some cases Factorys use processes of replication to streamline some manufacturing processes.

Indeed, Replicators have theri greatest effect on shipping by decreasing the expense of the ships crews. It has little effect on the goods themselves. The cost of shipping is less because the cost of crew supplies is less (so this should go to the Masters profit) but you can look a shipping, for the most part, as if replicators didn't exsist.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 12:42 pm: Edit

Ok, this still leaves me with the question of how much shipping can be on items of various catagories (I honestly don't know what reasonble values for this are, I'm not trying to harass you, just needing help)

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 12:55 pm: Edit

I don't know either. I suppose that you might start with what the wholesale cost would be then add shipping so that after a profit you get to the retail prices listed for stuff.

Here is another idea. You might compare so real world costs. First check UPS shipping cost per weight. Then see if you cannot find out what it cost to ship containers overseas. The time and effort are similar I would guess.

The real world situation is that shipping happens because:
1) The base cost of goods plus shipping are cheeper abroad than here.
1a) Some goods aren't available here. Their value (as opposed to cost) is greater than the cost and shipping charges.
2) Shipping is profitable.


(Note: In a recent story (so recent you haven't seen it yet) an ingot of Dilithium is said to be worth more than a month salery for a crew member.)

Shipping probably has some to do with value in the SFU. A shipment of dilithium would pose more risk to a crew due to piracy and handling and insurance. Many Companies probably mix their cargo, making less profit on some goods than others but understand that there is no profit in empty holds.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 01:02 pm: Edit

and the Dilithium is far more likly to be shipped in an APT then in a bulk freighter becouse of it's value (actually this may even be valuble enough to ship by FedEx)

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 01:02 pm: Edit

I'm not sure that shipping prices would be the same (or even similar) everywhere.

I'm also not sure it needs to be defined exactly. It's a tough call. I have trouble imagining a group of players willing to keep the books on their Free Trader. I would think that general business would be assumed to work out and special circumstances would be specified. Other than that the player needs only say he is going to this planet to make a shipping deal. He contacts the right people and strikes a bargain. They load up and go. The exact accounting specifics need not be ironed out. The GM can say if the offer is great, good, moderate, poor or just plain so lousy you are insulted. No numbers needed there.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 01:14 pm: Edit

some players will want to keep the books on their Free Trader. others will need ship ship equipment between systems, others will want to buy tickets themselves to travel between systems.

we could pull numbers out of thin air for the latter two, but it will come back and bite us later when we have someone trying the first.

however the answers to these things do end up having a significant effect on things

for example, (from my 'how to get there' article) if it's cheap enough you could live on vulcan and commute to earth for your daily job and earth and alpha centori would be closer than LA and San Diego

if it's more expensive the effects will be different

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 01:41 pm: Edit

I don't remember the shipyard thing and cannot say that I have ever read Loren's article.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 02:02 pm: Edit

SVC: When you do (I hope you do, I'm pretty proud of it) please read the E-mail header with my comments as to why I did some things there.

My original goal was to preserve the need for shipping and the result was a logic that I feel was always the case. I works for the SFU and blends with what is expected from Trek (it opposes neither).

By Ian Whitchurch (Ian_Whitchurch) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 12:02 am: Edit

You might want to have a look at Gurps Traveller: Far Trader for this ...

Althought the technologies are different (and FTL radio makes spec cargos far more difficult), it's the best product out there for a merchant campaign.

Ian Whitchurch

By David Lang (Dlang) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 02:37 am: Edit

Ian, the other problem is that distances and travel times in the SFU are significantly longer then in Traveller

for example it will take a freigher ~42 months to cross the federation

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 04:43 am: Edit

David: Travel times in Traveller are quite long. It takes about a year for the XBoats to cross the Imperium or about 4 times that for a Far Trader with its shorter jumps and delays between jumps.

It would take some adjustments to modify GT:FT's tables that use parsecs into similar tables that build all the modifiers based solely on time and drop all the Traveller concepts that force trade through certain systems. I expect that most trade in the SFU would be major trade routes directly connecting the primary worlds together and the secondary worlds would conduct most trade with the nearest major world. The primary method for a PC merchant succeeding would be the same; cut between trade routes and generate higher margins.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 12:34 pm: Edit

does anyone who has travaler have to time to generate a set of tables based on time? (that's one GURPS book I don't have)