That's... totally accurate to our world. And that also likely means that if interstellar traffic is running to decent pop/tech worlds, even the smaller ports will have public health and customs regimes.

I think there's some good stuff to put on paper here, much like the UPP discussion.

Perhaps an updated UPP/USP format and a more rounded out model of actual populations, ports, public health, and trade.

Tom B

On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 6:04 PM Bruce Johnson <xxxxxx@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:


On Apr 28, 2020, at 1:05 AM, Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

Which illustrates another feature of the UWP people sometimes forget - it tells us stuff that is useful to your average scout, free trader, or other TAS member. Thus the starport rating talks about repairs, (small) ship building, fuel supplies, and the presence or absence of orbital facilities. It does not discuss containerised loading/unloading, specialised LASH support facilities or anything like that.

Leading to my Rule of Traveller Cargo: Extrapolating Imperial Commerce Levels from the rules for a Free Trader is akin to modeling world container ship traffic by analyzing cross-Indian ocean dhow traffic.

A particularly fiendish GM could have the players aim for the clearly marked big starport, only to get promptly yelled at by Starport Control along with a hasty visit by Starport security boats (or even local Naval forces) when they try to get into the queue for the *real* starships…they’re directed off to the little class D field on the other side of the big one. “This is where you LITTLE guys go!"

-- 
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs


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