On 4/28/20, Bruce  Johnson <xxxxxx@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On Apr 28, 2020, at 1:05 AM, Rupert Boleyn
> <xxxxxx@gmail.com<mailto: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.
> (snip)

Somewhere, I once expanded on your phrase with a modern analogy -
modeling corporate shipping from the basic trade rules is equivalent
to trying to understand Amazon using a model based on two flea market
speculators with an RV and a 20' UHaul...