INET# Document Id: UX00a.BUX0122649
Item    4517092                 92/12/07        18:07
From:   WILDSTAR@MOENG2.MORGAN.EDU@INET#
Sub: TML Nightly - NOT!

From wildstar@moeng2.morgan.edu Mon Dec  7 18:27:38 1992
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Date: Mon, 7 Dec 92 18:07:21 EST
From: wildstar@moeng2.morgan.edu (Derek Wildstar)
Message-Id: <9212072307.AA08462@moeng2.morgan.edu>
To: wildstar@moeng2.morgan.edu
Subject: TML Nightly - NOT!


Traveller Mailing List --- NOT!

TML-Not! is just me, Wildstar, forwarding mail to the list of TML
subscribers.  If you have something you want to send to all of the TML
participants, just send it to me and let me know you want it forwarded,
and I will put it in the next TML-Not!.  If you want to stop receiving
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change your status on the real TML in any way when it comes back).  To
respond to anything in TML-Not!, simply use your mailer's "reply"
command, and indicate they you want me to forward your reply.  Because I
use "blind" carbon copies, the reply will go to me (only) and I will
include it in the next TML-Not!.

==============================================================================

OK, the mystery Vargr Corsair was:

   Don Karnage

   "Shoot them!  A lot!"

(from The Disney Afternoon's TaleSpin)

==========

Date: Sun, 06 Dec 92 10:18:44 -0600
From: "Steve Higginbotham" <p00206@psilink.com>
Subject: Re: Traffic and Jump Capability

>> Does that mean that a micro-jump should only cost 5% fuel?

>I'd say so: 0 to about 0.49... parsec for 5%, 0.50 to 1.49... for 10%,

You're more generous than I am.  I wanted micro-jumps to be possible,
but wanted to keep the distance short enough that interstellar travel
with a ship so driven was effectively impossible.


>> But the more people there are, the greater chance that there will be enough
>> to make a regular route profitable. But I agree that this bit is wide open
>> to interpretation.

>On the other hand, an independent trade speculator's best purchases are
>going to be on a popoulous world with a great variety of products in
>mass production.  The trader would be looking for overstock, excess
>production runs, and recently-discontinued items to buy cheaply.  And
>haul all of these goodies back to the kind of world described in the
>paragraph above.

This is how Cynthia handles anything that your basic Free Trader-type
wants to do on an Industrial world...Sounds like DAK, doesn't it?


>I think this is going to have to be a referee-generated thing; I can't
>think of a good rule of thumb that covers most (let alone all) of the
>cases (I'm open to suggestions here, folks).  I think that the traffic
>generator is OK, but some thought needs to be put into freight hauling
>and cargo speculation with a tramp freighter.

I'm not sure that this is amenable to random generation.  In general,
this should be done to suit the adventure at hand.  Though you should
also make sure that you keep enough going that your players can make a
living at it, or they'll head back to those civilized areas till the
ship is paid for...


>It seems to me that the most profitable way to operate would be on a
>series of shuttle runs, back and forth, from these large-enough but
>unprofitable for the large scheduled carriers, to the centers of trade,
>industry, and government.

I don't buy this.  If you can shuttle back and forth regularly making a
profit, Tukera can, too.  And they will, and you won't be able to any
more....You really need to make things iffy at the Industrial points:
if there is ANY regularity at all in the operation, then Tukera has all
the advantages in the operation.  We need to fix things so that there is
always SOMETHING, but seldom something that can go to the same world as
last time and be sold profitability....

                                ---Steve

==========

Date:    Mon, 7 Dec 1992 10:44:35 -0500 (EST)
From: BARANSKI@VEAMF1.NUSC.NAVY.MIL
Subject: -TML TBF: micro-jumps & free trader commerce

Thing #1:  Please change my address to baranski@veamf1.nusc.navy.mil on TML,
           TBEM, etc

Thing #2:  Free Trader Left Over Commerce:  I agree that the more populous a
           world, the more shipping traffic, and the more competition in the
           form of corperations.  Therefore I propose that as the population
           increases exponentially(or ^2), the total shipping also increase
           exponentially, but the free trader cargos only increase linearly.
           IE:  POP = 10,000, Total Shipping Tons = 10,000 * <tst/p>,  Free
           Trade Tons = 6 * <ftt/p>

           I also agree with the idea that the best FT buys are on populous
           worlds, but probably not in volume.  And the best destinations are
           those which almost but not quite merit corperation service.

Thing #3:  I don't like the idea of micro-jump governors.  I feel that there
           should be some absolute minimum energy required to initiate a jump.
           Is the current model of how jump works that you burn all your jump
           fuel at the start to give you a 'push off' proportional to the
           distance your jump is to cover?  I can't say I like that.  If that
           were the case, then why bother designing jump fuel into the ship in
           any case?

Jim Baranski

[Jim - I've changed your address in my .mailrc, so it will be correct for
 future TML-Not! mailings.  I don't control the addresses for anything else;
 I hope anyone else who is affected will see the above and make the change.
 To help out, Jim's old address was baranski%vsdec.decnet@nl.nusc.navy.mil.]

==========

From wildstar@moeng2.morgan.edu (Derek Wildstar)
Subject: Free Traders vs MegaCorps

Steve Higginbotham <p00206@psilink.com> writes:
> I don't buy this.  If you can shuttle back and forth regularly making a
> profit, Tukera can, too.  And they will, and you won't be able to any
> more....You really need to make things iffy at the Industrial points:
> if there is ANY regularity at all in the operation, then Tukera has all
> the advantages in the operation.  We need to fix things so that there is
> always SOMETHING, but seldom something that can go to the same world as
> last time and be sold profitability....

Tukera COULD, but it isn't worth it.  The investment required isn't large for
a megacorporation, but the return is pretty tiny.  For the investment of a
200 or 400 ton starship, the return is barely enough to pay off the note on
the ship (over the next 40 years) and pay the salaries of the crew.  Why
bother with these little worlds when the return is so much higher off of a
high traffic route which can employ many 100,000 ton bulk carriers?  From
some preliminary calculations, these large ships cost about a third as much
as a subsidized merchant to buy and operate per ton of cargo hauled.

Add to this the corporate and regulatory environments.  Tukera has brokers,
sales staff (freight and passenger agents), customer service, wharehousing,
and management on most of its ports of call.  This staff, while it adds to
their overhead, more than pays for itself by making efficient use of the
large ships which the MegaCorps operate.  For the smaller worlds most or all
of the efficency of scale is lost; these things become liabilities instead of
assets.

I think we're actually agreeing in an odd sort of way.  I am talking about
having "runs" to several different worlds, but all in the same general area.
Nothing scheduled or anything like that, but one or two industrial worlds are
natural hubs of operation for a free trader to work several nearby ports of
call.  The trader will tend to wander around the same general area, as the
referee, players, and trade and commerce rules interact.

Each of the small worlds doesn't need much; a free trader's hold full of
cargo or freight is a significant on these worlds.  There is some incentive
to become a regular visitor; the more you know about one of these world's
idiosyncracies the better choices you can make about your cargoes.

And for the referee, it's a lot easier to "hook" the players into an
interesting adventure when its the portmaster of a world they frequent, and a
woman the players have (at least in theory) known for years asking them for a
favor, instead of someone they met just a few minutes ago.

In these smaller markets the trader is actually competitive with a larger
outfit, for several reasons.  The free trader operates in a looser regulatory
environment, has less overhead, and is not tied to a fixed schedule.  The
biggest threat to the small tree trader isn't the megacorps, but the
subsector sized or smaller lines.


BARANSKI@VEAMF1.NUSC.NAVY.MIL (Jim Baranski) writes:
> Free Trader Left Over Commerce

This is how the existing Passengers and Cargo/Freight Lots Available tables
work in MegaTraveller.  Increasing the population digit (the exponent of 10
for the population) increases the number of dice rolled; the average number
of Passengers or lots of Cargo and Freight increases linearly.

> I don't like the idea of micro-jump governors.  I feel that there
> should be some absolute minimum energy required to initiate a jump.
> Is the current model of how jump works that you burn all your jump
> fuel at the start to give you a 'push off' proportional to the
> distance your jump is to cover?  I can't say I like that.  If that
> were the case, then why bother designing jump fuel into the ship in
> any case?

In the case of my posting, I required a minimum of 5% of the ship's volume
in fuel to initiate the jump.  Plus 5% more per parsec traveled, up to the
maximum range of the drive.  I set it up as a step function, with the
middle of each step at one-parsec intervals.  So 0 to 0.49.. is 5%, 0.50 to
1.49.. is 10%, 1.50 to 2.49.. is 15%, and so on.  At the even parsecs, this
is exactly the same as standard MegaTraveller.

Jumping slightly shorter or slightly longer would take about the same amount
of fuel, up to the capacity of the drive (in other words, a J-2 drive will
only take you two parsecs, even though a J-3 drive could easily jump 2.4
parsecs on the same amount of fuel).  For normal MegaTraveller starmaps, all
of this is irrellevant: worlds will always be an integer number of parsecs
apart, exactly.  If someone wants to do a 3-d map, things could become much
more interesting, though.

I should also note that any any possible combination of microjumps would take
more fuel, or more time (usually both) than a "normal" jump covering the same
distance.

I've never though of equipping a ship with drives capable of only microjumps.
If someone were to ask, though, I'd make them exactly half of a J-1 drive (to
match the minimum fuel requirement), and capable of a jump from 0 to 0.49..
parsec.  The time of the jump would be 1 week, just like any normal jump.

As I understand the technobabble, the jump drive burns all of the fuel (in a
special high-output, low efficency power plant) to charge up the drive.  The
amount of charge you need depends on the distance you want to travel, and is
measured in fuel: 10% of the ship's volume for 1 parsec, 15% for two parsecs,
20% for three, and so on.  The jump drive then sequences this power to the
hull grid, and the exact sequencing, in combination with the ship's position
and velocity vector at the time of drive activation, determine the ship's
course through jump-space and the exact location of its emergence at the end
of about a week.

As Steve Higginbotham pointed out to me, you don't actually have to design
jump fuel into your starships.  You can use drop tanks (which drop away after
the fuel is used up, and before jump) to provide the jump fuel.  Although
this gives you more cargo volume, there are some reasons why this may not be
a good idea for all starships:

(1) Does anybody besides me remember the Trimhanka Brilliance [sp?] disaster?
    If the drop tanks do not separate properly, this ship will be unable to
    jump (the field will not close over the tanks, which have no jump grid
    installed; this will lead to misjump at best, or the destruction of the
    ship).  But, if the drive is not discharged soon after charging, the
    energy sinks may break down, resulting in catastrophic failure and the
    destruction of the ship.  Fun choice, huh?

(2) You may find yourself stranded in an "uncivilized" system.  While (as
    Steve pointed out) every system with more than a little bit of traffic
    will have drop tanks available, a jump to a system with no source of
    tanks and no ability to construct them will leave the ship stranded.

(3) Drop tanks are a combat liability.  They are unarmored and rather flimsy;
    so that hits are very likely to destroy the tanks (see Trillion Credit
    Squadron).  You cannot scoop for fuel with drop tanks, either.  On the
    other hand, proper use of drop tanks is very important to military
    operations: they will allow you to jump in to a target system with
    enough fuel to conduct extended operations or to escape a trap by
    jumping outsystem.

(4) Drop tanks cost money (as opposed to internal tankage, which is free).
    This may be a consideration for some designs, although the increased
    cargo space should ordinarily make up the difference.

wildstar@moeng2.morgan.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                    Science-Fiction Adventure
                                                            in the Far Future

***************
END of TML-Not!
=END=
