Well, we can all do as many 'paper studies' as we want to but in the end the result is the same; We know how we want the TU to work so we accept the data which reinforces our desires & reject that which doesn't. Which is pretty much 'par for the course' as far as human behavior goes. In fact that very well may just be the main reason for the various official Trav rules 'morphs' that have occurred over the years; A different guy/s (company, in the case of DGP) are put in charge of of the product line & they throw out stuff they don't like & put in stuff that they do. As we all do. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Tue, 10/28/14, Ian Whitchurch <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: Subject: Re: [TML] Original CT LBB's scoutship vs CT HG scoutship? To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2014, 10:01 PM Alternatively we could, I dunno, copy FFS2 and get rid of the stupid 20 dton Bridge requirement, because it makes no sense that a 200 dton ship needs the same size bridge as a 20 000 dton ship ? If you do that, then the 200 dton Far Trader starts to become viable against the 20kdton Far Trader - "but it's a niche" doesnt work in a low-trade universe, because for anything other than small urgent packages, you're generally better off waiting the 10 weeks for the scheduled big freighter to come through, and for small urgent packages you have the Type S. The quantity of trade in the Traveller universe was never quantified until Gurps Traveller:Far Trader ... but the fact some worlds are specifically listed as 'Non-Agricultural' should be a hint that at least some worlds move kilos of interstellar trade per person per week. That this level of trade is possible is easily seen from the GWP numbers in Trillion Credit Squadron or Striker, both of which are CT products - lets assume a person consumes a dton of food a decade (10 tons, one ton per year, 3 kilos a day). Assume food costs Cr 5000 a dton at an Ag world, or at least an a non- NA one. One Far Trader doing three jump 2s with a week turnaround each end (ie load+fuel, jump fuel jump fuel jump unload ... no stuffing around for a week in each transit port) - thats call it KCr 5 for the freight, so KCr10 total. As thats 10 years worth of food, thats a Cr1000 per year, and easily viable at any sort of TL. That Far Trader with call it 100 dtons of cargo capacity takes 5 weeks there and 5 back per run, 5 runs a year, therefore supports roughly 5000 people. Is it going to be cheaper to buy and maintain algae vats and so on for those 5k people, or obtain one Far Trader to go three jump-2s to a world with a decent biosphere,to which we can also export whatever the heck our planet makes as a backload while moving the food in ? This is the logic that makes the Third Imperium a high-trade place - it's got a lot of crappy biospheres, a lot of different tech worlds, and a central government that has the preservation of trade and the suppression of piracy as a founding principle. And with a lot of trade, then you get your little niches. On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 2:53 PM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote: This email was sent from yahoo.com which does not allow forwarding of emails via email lists. Therefore the sender's email address (xxxxxx@yahoo.com) has been replaced with a dummy one. The original message follows: On Tue, 10/28/14, Ian Whitchurch <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: [SNIP] A 200 dton merchant ship is 10% bridge. A 2000 dton merchant ship is 1% bridge. Therefore, ten 200 dton merchant ships cannot carry as much cargo as one 2000 dton merchant ship, because they are collectively lugging around ten times as much Bridge. The 200 dton Far Trader isnt going to happen, in short. Trade will be done by bigger ships. [SNIP] ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I prefer to work backwards wrt this; ie: we know that Far Traders did & do actually happen, so, how come? Now, of course there's always the 'Rule of Cool'; 'Traders are 'cool', hence FarTraders are 'cool', hence, FarTraders happen. For myself, I see them as filling a niche, 'tramp-steamer' style, where they service worlds where the volume of trade (remember, the way I see it, the TU has the lower volumes associated w/ CT rather than the much higher ones from MT) just doesn't work for a larger ship. Yeah, I know, you could have a larger ship visit less often but that's not desired for various & insundry reasons. (You'll have to ask 'them' about that!) Now, of course, if the volume increases enough then the 'Traders (all types) eventually get squeezed out but that's part & parcel of the background of the TU. 'Traders operate on the fringes. Scrounging whatever they can get. It's more fun that way! ============================================================================================== ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://archives.simplelists.com ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=EwREIRgLK8vaUEhNlnoNdSGKwnjoID8a
