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On Mon, 8/25/14, Bruce Johnson <johnson@Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] expected ship traffic
 To: "tml@simplelists.com" <tml@simplelists.com>
 Date: Monday, August 25, 2014, 7:28 AM

 On Aug
 24, 2014, at 10:47 PM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <nobody@simplelists.com>
 wrote:

 > I don't
 think a 10kTon ship w/ 6kTon cargo is really in the same
 class as the immense bulk carriers I recall from MT.
 > I certainly would NOT call it that.
 > But, I think that it could qualify as a
 'massive' commercial vessel.
 > I
 also would have reservations about whether or not a
 commercial vessel this large would really be required.
 > But, if it was, I don't think
 there'd be much need for an armed version as I would
 doubt that it would be needed to service anything other than
 established hi-pop worlds. I'd also dispense w/ the fuel
 scoops & purification plant.
 > IMO,
 though, there would be more demand for passenger space &
 so I'd swap reduce cargo space accordingly & also
 have J2 & J3 versions.

 Here's the basic conundrum:

 An imperium based on
 'tramp steamer'-scale trade does not need and cannot
 afford the massive navy and starport infrastructure it has.
 (See: Trillion Credit Squadron, which has been hailed as
 canon many times) .

 If you
 have such a volume of trade that you need dozens of 10KT
 ships regularly plying a route, far fewer 100Kton ships will
 be more economical. And if you need a dozen of those, well,
 a 1MDt container ship will make you more money, once costs
 are amortized (and remember, ships last hundreds of years)
 because the costs of operation do not scale linearly with
 ship size.

 This is WHY we
 have huge containerized bulk transports today.

 and if you have trade routes
 that have 1MDt ships traveling them regularly, well lo and
 behold: you have the tax revenue, and infrastructure needs
 to build the canon Imperial Navy and starport system.

 If the Imperium really is
 serviced by 200Dt ships once per 10 weeks, the economic
 value of interstellar trade is simply too low to generate
 the taxes needed for the IN and the rest of the Imperial
 bureaucracy.

 The only way
 to accommodate both things as true is to assert that the
 game rules are for modeling PC-level 'interstellar
 scraps' trade, not a comprehensive model of the
 Imperium-wide economy.

 I've analogized it in the past as
 "Trying to model modern global trade economics, based
 on cross-Indian Ocean dhow cargo trade data."

 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's not a question of of monster ships vs 200dT ships.

It's a question of mostly ships up to 1000dT's w/ a few going higher, may be even as high as  20KdT's.

And it's every 10 weeks in *some* systems, but more (even *much* more) in some systems & even less in others.
And that applies to not only the 3I but the TU in general.
(Note that I think that T5 has swung way too far toward the low-end in this respect. But that's the way it always seems to be w/ each morph of Trav. There's always instances were someone seems to have gotten carried away w/ the remake.)

As far as revenue is concerned, someone else (Jeff?) posted, a while back (early last year?), a detailed explanation of how the 3I
could realize adequate revenue w/o MegaTrav's MegaVolume of trade.

With that revenue, the 3I must have created the infrastructure & force levels necessary to defend itself or else it wouldn't be around by 1100.