Archive through December 06, 2004
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Archive through December 06, 2004
Here's a formula:
Q 5.1) Given a distance in miles and an acceleration in G's, what's our travel time in minutes?
A 5.1) Time in minutes = (0.4230 divided by the square root of acceleration in gees) times square root of distance in miles:
Tm=(0.4230/sqr Ag)*sqr Dm --where Tm is time in minutes, 0.4230 is the time in minutes that it takes to acc./deacc. one mile at one gee, Ag is acceleration in gee, and Dm is distance in miles.
(This is assuming you are accelerating constantly to the half way point and then decelerating the rest of the way.)
Here's a table in comma seperated format. (I'll compare it to the one in GT when I get home just to double check my math....)
AU,Miles,1,2,3,4,5,6
0.1,9300000,1290,645,430,322,258,215
0.2,18600000,1824,912,608,456,365,304
0.3,27900000,2234,1117,745,559,447,372
0.4,37200000,2580,1290,860,645,516,430
0.5,46500000,2884,1442,961,721,577,481
0.6,55800000,3160,1580,1053,790,632,527
0.7,65100000,3413,1706,1138,853,683,569
0.8,74400000,3649,1824,1216,912,730,608
0.9,83700000,3870,1935,1290,967,774,645
1,93000000,4079,2040,1360,1020,816,680
2,186000000,5769,2884,1923,1442,1154,961
3,279000000,7065,3533,2355,1766,1413,1178
4,372000000,8159,4079,2720,2040,1632,1360
5,465000000,9122,4561,3041,2280,1824,1520
6,558000000,9992,4996,3331,2498,1998,1665
7,651000000,10793,5396,3598,2698,2159,1799
8,744000000,11538,5769,3846,2884,2308,1923
9,837000000,12238,6119,4079,3059,2448,2040
10,930000000,12900,6450,4300,3225,2580,2150
20,1860000000,18243,9122,6081,4561,3649,3041
50,4650000000,28845,14422,9615,7211,5769,4807
100,9300000000,40793,20396,13598,10198,8159,6799
| AU | Miles | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| 0.1 | 9300000 | 1290 | 645 | 430 | 322 | 258 | 215 |
| 0.2 | 18600000 | 1824 | 912 | 608 | 456 | 365 | 304 |
| 0.3 | 27900000 | 2234 | 1117 | 745 | 559 | 447 | 372 |
| 0.4 | 37200000 | 2580 | 1290 | 860 | 645 | 516 | 430 |
| 0.5 | 46500000 | 2884 | 1442 | 961 | 721 | 577 | 481 |
| 0.6 | 55800000 | 3160 | 1580 | 1053 | 790 | 632 | 527 |
| 0.7 | 65100000 | 3413 | 1706 | 1138 | 853 | 683 | 569 |
| 0.8 | 74400000 | 3649 | 1824 | 1216 | 912 | 730 | 608 |
| 0.9 | 83700000 | 3870 | 1935 | 1290 | 967 | 774 | 645 |
| 1 | 93000000 | 4079 | 2040 | 1360 | 1020 | 816 | 680 |
| 2 | 186000000 | 5769 | 2884 | 1923 | 1442 | 1154 | 961 |
| 3 | 279000000 | 7065 | 3533 | 2355 | 1766 | 1413 | 1178 |
| 4 | 372000000 | 8159 | 4079 | 2720 | 2040 | 1632 | 1360 |
| 5 | 465000000 | 9122 | 4561 | 3041 | 2280 | 1824 | 1520 |
| 6 | 558000000 | 9992 | 4996 | 3331 | 2498 | 1998 | 1665 |
| 7 | 651000000 | 10793 | 5396 | 3598 | 2698 | 2159 | 1799 |
| 8 | 744000000 | 11538 | 5769 | 3846 | 2884 | 2308 | 1923 |
| 9 | 837000000 | 12238 | 6119 | 4079 | 3059 | 2448 | 2040 |
| 10 | 930000000 | 12900 | 6450 | 4300 | 3225 | 2580 | 2150 |
| 20 | 1860000000 | 18243 | 9122 | 6081 | 4561 | 3649 | 3041 |
| 50 | 4650000000 | 28845 | 14422 | 9615 | 7211 | 5769 | 4807 |
| 100 | 9300000000 | 40793 | 20396 | 13598 | 10198 | 8159 | 6799 |
since SFU has gravity compensators the acceleration available is huge, and over any sort of significant difference you will be useing warp drive which if FTL anyway the table you produces isn't what I'm looking for.
what I need is the shipping costs in terms of time ($/ton-month)
travaler will have a chart that covers costs based on $/ton-parsec or similar, those charts need to be taken and the travaler speeds applied to them to convert them to be time based
I don't think there is such a chart.
The laws of supply and demand force freight shipping rates to a fairly consistent average throughout the Imperium. Shipping rates will go up slightly if you're in an out of the way place, but that's it. The chart you're asking for simply says $x per dton per parsec. There might also be a slightly different rate depending on the Jump rating of the ship, though, but that's it. (Speculative Trading is a whole different ballgame in Traveller and there is no chart for that.)
I can check Far Trader when I get home, though... (this is just from memory.)
There is page 15 of Far Trader which lists trade routes of considerable length. (I think they swapped the two column headers.) For time conversion, figure that it takes a week for each parsec in Traveller figuring most traders have jump-2 and spend a week on refueling and maintainence. Plug in the travel time in weeks to generate the distance trade number modifier. Adjust as seems reasonable to get the level of trade you prefer.
Edit: A quick calculation indicates that cross border trade between racial homeworlds in peacetime would be at the levels of thousands of tons per year.
There is a chart on page 22 of Far Trader that gives the average freight price based on how much advance notice the shipper is given.
There is a chart on page 23 that gives average shipping costs per Jump and per Parsec depending on the Jump capability of the ship.
The heart of the FT trade system is the calculation of "World Trade Number" depending on the population/TL of the world. Given any two worlds, you can then calculate the "Bilateral Trade Number" and use that to determine the volume of trade between them. With that you can determine what kind of traffic there is on routes between the worlds.
Travel times in Traveller are complicated by the jump rating of the ships, the intersteller "terrain", the +/-10% variability of jump times, and also by the jump masking phenomenon. Being able to jump twice as far as another ship will not necessarily get you there twice as fast: all jumps take the same amount of time and you can't always "get there from here." Every trip requires some slower than light travel (hence the chart above) and this can be substantially greater than the usual 100 Diameters away from the planet if the system's star precipitates you out of jump earlier and farther away.
Travel times can be calculated much more precisely in SFU-- warp 4 is warp 4 no matter where you are or where you're going.
(BTW, my travel time chart above matches the one in GT in some places but not in others. I'm not sure if I made a mistake or if they rounded differently or something....)
Anyways... looks like I misumderstood you when you aksed about tavel times and "Trade Routes." Trade routes are really unusual in Traveller and drawing them is a bit of an art. The WTN and BTN concepts are much more generic and applicable to SFU.
ANother thing to consider is that in the SFU ships travel at a Cruise Speed typically. This is not their top speed so travel time calculated in Cruise Speed can be very accurate. Ship encountering some terrain can simply speed up for a bit and make up for lost time with little trouble.
Traveling at top speed for extended periods IS a problem and it would be very difficult to make an accurate calculation of travel times based on that.
So, when calculating Freighter times use the Cruise speed instead of the top speed.
For the economics of freight, start with the costs of a basic SFU freighter (I'm guessing a F-L), figure a 6% rate of return on that, and then add annual maintainence, consumables and crew costs.
Divide by the cargo capacity (figuring 80% full on each run), then figure the per-parsec cost on that.
One of the things about Trav is that ships are very expensive, as compared to the costs of crew and consumables, and interest rates are low (3%).
Ian Whitchurch
PS Email me at ian_whitchurch@postmaster.co.uk if you want to figure this off-list.
Ian, the problem is that we don't have the cost of the ship itself, I'm trying to basicly reverse your calculation to figure out the cost of the ship.
we can make a guess at the cost of the crew and consumables (I'm useing ~$50k/person/year)
hopefully we can figure out reasonable figures for shipping costs based on the cost of items and the max that can be charged before replication replaces shipping
we know the cargo capacity of various ships
so if we figure these out and plug them into the formula you list we then have one unknown value (the cost of the ship) and can solve for it.
I'll follow up in e-mail as well, but if we can cover it here other people can watch and point out our mistakes (BEFORE they make it into print 
)
There is one more constraint, the EPV value of each ship (defined in SFB). This will eventually define the value of one EPV.
We should probably think a bit about piracy to make sure it works economically (it would be embarrassing if the real value is in the captured ships, not their cargo).
Except that a clunky freighter would be difficult to handle. It highly visable, slow and you can't just sell them where ever. The ship is probably too much of a liability (even though it might be worth more than the cargo it's hauling). Also, there isn't all that much to scrap from them.
Lastly, to pirates, freighters are a little like chickens. Dead chickens don't lay eggs!
David K, correct, although the EPV of cargo ships may include the cost of the cargo.
"... the EPV of cargo ships may include the cost of the cargo."
No, it does not.
Gary, the numbers for the ship costs works out much better if the SFB EPV does assume some average cargo cost
I posted on this some months ago when we were hammering out the details on the numbers, I'll have to dig it up and update that stuff when I can get some sort of cargo/shipping costs (I went down to a convention in anehim yesterday hopeing to pick up Grups travaler/far trader, but not a single vendor carried gurps stuff 
)
Loren and David,
Actually, the 'capture the ship, not the freight' argument is one that comes up on the Trav mailing list, when the piracy debate reignites, as it does every couple of years.
You can always sell the freighter into another state, and they arent that far from each other in the SFU. Orions also use freighters for mining colonies etc, so a captured freighter has some profit potential, even if you can't sell it directly.
Generating false paperwork for a captured ship is a third option.
Finally, have you tried building a SFU F-L under Gurps rules, and seeing what crunches out as to sticker cost ?
Ian Whitchurch
Loren,
I'm a bit concerned about "temporary" replication for food. Every way of making it temporary seems to make it a health hazard (and there are a number of both SFB and Trek references to extensive use of replicated food). And if even simple food can be permanently replicated, most other things would be permanent.
If it breaks down chemically (molecularly), it'll become poisonous, explosive and/or toxic.
If it breaks down atomically or sub-atomically, it is effectively highly radioactive.
If it contains black holes or antimatter, I don't see it as being safe to eat.
If it just "disappears" then there is a risk of all kinds of degenerative/malnutritional diseases.
What if the factor of two replication cost was a best case scenario (for replication)? And if this applied to the local "retail" costs? Thus in some situations the ratio would be much worse and transportation more workable. For example gold, top of the line, Rolex might only cost twice as much to replicate as to manufacture and market. On the other hand it would cost about the same to replicate a cheap $4.99 digital watch. Thus, for them, the ratio might be closer to 200:1.
Food is mostly a mix of simple compounds and Replicators excel at making molicules. The breakdown that occures is just not an issue with food. Food is consumed and broaken down anyway within hours at most and the Replication breakdown effect wouldn't occure for a day or days (when most food would go bad).
I believe the article will be going in GPD4e (I'll know for sure when it in print). It's all explained there is pretty good detail. At this point I don't think I can go into detail about it.
Ian, the problem with trying to build a SFU ship under GURPS rules is that too much of the equipment isn't available (warp drives and weaponse) and these items are a significant enough chunk of the cost that I haven't been able to get any useful info from this.
Couldn't you use Jump Drive and Laser costs? Since the Universes are separate the costs would be about the same.
Loren: Fat and carbohydrates are simple, sure, but proteins and a lot of the B-vitamins are definitely not simple; they make most pharmaceuticals look trivial.
Overall, how fast something replicated "breaks down" or becomes unusable as intended rests on three factors:
The first factor is the TL of the replicator and the replicator template which the item is being amde from. The higher the better.
The second is how complex the item is, or more accurately what the item is made from. A steel bar is basicly good forever, while a complex organic such as medicine would have a very short "shelf life".
The third is how many components an item is made from. Take a hand phaser as an example; it has maybe 100 parts. If you were to replicate the parts individually and then assemble the phaser from these parts, no problem. But if you tried to replicate a complete assembled hand phaser, it would look pretty but probably be nonfunctional; minor parts might be welded together, etc.
Higher TL can offset some of the problems in #3 but not all of them. Like a computer, replicators have only so much processing power and memory.
A comparison to a graphic file is a good one here: a small file with only one color will take up a few bytes, while a larger, more complex hi-res graphic in true color will take up many megs. You can squeeze the graphic down to a smaller size, but then the compression induces "JPG errors" and the like.
Loren: as far as I'm concerned, your article is going into GPD4 unless SVC vetos it.
Cool, I just was concerned that discussing it too much might give away too much.
I'm not suggesting you did. You put it very well I think.
The specifics should put most people minds at ease.
Food is not simple.
Gary, you don't describe "how it breaks down." You only seem to be describing success versus failure at creation. Breaking down is the where the issue is. Every method I can think of is dangerous, even hours (days) after eaten--especially if it does molecules well.
Food is not simple. If replication has problems with something as (relatively) simple as a hand phaser, how is it going to get a piece of lettuce correct (safe, neutritional and tasting right).
David,
OK, then it's time for plug numbers, which we then reverse engineer into the generation system.
By fiat, One EBPV point = $1m
Puts the cost of an FL at $61m ... @ 7% = $4m
25 crew @ $50k pa = $1.1m
Thus, with 50 cargo boxes and gross costs of $5.1m, each cargo box has to return $2k a week.
Add in a margin, and we get $2.5k a week to rent a standard size cargo box.
Now, depending if we follow the Bigger Engines = Faster Cruise Speed, we can explain why the smaller 25-box, 26 EBPV F-S doesnt dominate the space lanes. The 100-box, 100 EBPV Large Ore Carrier can be handwaved by saying it doesnt have life support in the cargo bays (it's an ore carrier, dammit).
Note that the relatively less efficient armed freighters are going to need government subsidies to survive (which is the way it should be).
Finally, do what you need to do to eliminate the replicator as a threat to trade and commerce. I like the 'complex molecules evaporate' handwave.
Ian
PS You want me to build a couple of SFB ships under GT with handwaves as appropriate ? I'm thinking warp box = jump drive, 1 meson screen = 12 shield boxes and the rest is pretty obvious.