On 17Jun2020 1334, Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml
list) wrote:
> It really comes down to the question of, just what do you want?
>
> After all "the real world" doesn't allow anything like the TU unless
> one handwaves with both hands & feet and also his head!
>
> I prefer 'small ships' for commerce & big ones for the military.
>
> My 'handwave' is that the big ones are needed for military activities
> while the smaller ones are all that's needed for commerce as almost
> any system will have virtually infinite resources & once trade reaches
> a certain level enterprising locals &/or even the shipping outfits
> themselves will realize that it would be more efficient to produce
> things insystem.
For trade I assume that there are large ships around (and LASH setups
and so on), but they trade along set routes between major worlds.
Smaller ships provide trade elsewhere, and tramps like the PCs tend to
run fill the gaps and try to make a profit off speculative trade.

One thing to consider though - the Liberty ships of WWII carried 10,000
tons (officially - they often actually carried quite a bit more), which
means their holds were about 2,000 DTons in volume, and thus in CT even
with only J1 or J2 they'd be 3,000 DTon ships, large for Book 2 ships.
They weren't exceptionally large ships in WWII, and after WWII they were
rapidly out-grown.

To me that sets 2-3,000 DTons as a baseline for a reasonable sized
freighter for trade to and from a pop 7+ world with a decent port and TL.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>