Actually, there's another issue.

I just don't believe that there would be *that* much trade volume on even the *heaviest* routes.

I mean anyone can produce a table that will indicate that there will a gazillion dTons 'tween here & there but anyone else can also produce one that will show almost nothing in the same situation. From what I've read it appears that T5 leans heavily towards the latter rather than the former but haven't there been differences amongst each morph of Trav in this regard?

I can remember reading about that on this very list, back in first 1/2 of the '90's.
Someone, in response to a question, posted about how MT changed the 3I (or TU, can't remember exactly) from a setting of smaller merchantmen to one of massively gigantic ones.

Still, that's where the 17th century maritime analogy, that has always been the template for the TU from the beginning, comes in.
Esp by the late 18th century you had the monster warships w/ smaller merchantmen.

Then there's also the comm lag.

Obviously that's not present these days so how would that affect things?
I think it would argue for smaller ship & more frequent visits.

--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 8/25/14, Craig Berry <cdberry@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] expected ship traffic
 To: tml@simplelists.com
 Date: Monday, August 25, 2014, 9:42 AM

 That's
 the basic issue at the core of this discussion. Economies of
 scale will always win (in the absence of market-distorting
 regulations). 
 Personally,
 I think the CT "feel" works just fine in a TU with
 100 kdt+ container ships. Just as in the real world you
 couldn't run a successful cargo business with an 80'
 tramp between Long Beach and Tolyo, you're not going to
 last long running a Far Trader between Mora and Vincennes.
 But conversely, just as in the real world you can run a
 successful tramp freighter business between backwater ports
 in the South Pacific, you can do so in Traveller between the
 backwater worlds of the Marches.

 On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at
 9:14 AM, Bruce Johnson <johnson@pharmacy.arizona.edu>
 wrote:

 On Aug 25, 2014, at 7:54 AM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list)
 <nobody@simplelists.com>
 wrote:

 >

 > 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.

 If you are doing "much more" trade along a
 route with multiple 20KDton ships, one 200KDton Dt ship will
 handle the trade and be more profitable.

 --

 Bruce Johnson

 "Wherever you go, there you are." B. Banzai,
 PhD

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