Old Stuff

Here are a bunch of things I was going to post to TML during the period
that it was down; I saved them up so here they come all at once!

I may have mentioned some of these things on TML-Not!, but as far as I
remember I did not post the following messages generally.


Bertil Jonell [email removed] writes:
>   Assuming a static total tonnage in the Imperium, the shipyards must divide
> their space into doing the yearly overhaul and building ships to replace those
> who go away (through age or destruction).

Right.  Class A or B ports can do yearly maintainance and all types of
repairs.  In Classic Traveller and MegaTraveller, no mention is made of any
TL requirements for these overhauls; they can be done at *ANY* class A or B
port.  According to Trillion Credit Squadron, repairs can be performed at a
Class A or B port (although Jump-Drive repairs take twice as long and cost
twice as much at Class B facilities).  TCS also imposes the limitation that
the facility doing the repair must be at the same (or higher) tech level as
the listed TL (in the High Guard construction tables) for the system.  Only
Class A ports can construct new ships.

One problem I see with the TCS rules is that there are 29 Class A starports
listed at tech levels below 9.  By definition, these ports are able to
construct jump-capable starships; however, TCS rules makes them unable to
repair the jump-drives of any ships that they construct.

Furthermore, the definition of Class C ports indicates that they are capable
of some types of repairs, but not annual maintainance overhauls.  A complete
model should assign some type of capacity to these ports for repairing
damaged starships.

> [comments on the economics of overhauls, maintainance, and repairs]

Huh?  Where did your numbers come from?

From the designs I have available, military starships can cost over 1 MCr per
ton, while commercial ships cost between 0.3 and 0.1 MCr per ton.
Construction time depends on the size of the vessel, with larger ships taking
longer to construct.

Repair is more difficult to estimate.  According to TCS, "normal" battle
damage takes 1 to 4 weeks to fix, and costs 1/4 of the cost of the damaged
system.  In the case of partially damaged systems (for example, factor 3
system damaged by 1 factor), the fraction is also applied to the repair cost
(in this example, the repair cost would be 1/4 of 1/3 of the cost of the
system).  Critical hits require the complete replacement of the system, at
full purchase price; this takes 4 to 8 weeks.  In the examples below, I have
assumed damage that involves the power plant (damaged to inoperability
through normal weapons fire) and the jump drive (destroyed by a critical
hit); and minimum time to replace the systems.

A bulk freighter of 100,000 tons, built at TL-15 with Jump-1 performance
costs 0.1179 MCr per ton, and will take 208 weeks to construct.  The income
from this works out to 566.59 credits per ton-week.  The same ship pays
11.785 MCr for its annual maintainance, which occupies 100,000 tons of
shipyard capacity for two weeks, or 58.92 credits per ton-week.  Repair of
normal damage costs 628.75 MCr, or 1,571,88 credits per ton-week.  Critical
repairs cost 6,000 MCr, or 7,500.00 credits per ton-week.

A 400 ton subsidized merchant (built using my own design, rather than the one
in the Imperial Encyclopedia) built at TL-15 with Jump-1 performance costs
0.2125 MCr per ton, and will take 64 weeks to construct.  This works out to
be 3,320.31 credits per ton-week.  For annual maintainance, this ship will
pay 85,000 Cr for two weeks work, or 106.25 credits per ton-week.  Repairs
cost 2.675 MCr and 24 MCr; or 1,671.88 and 7,500.00 credits per ton-week.

A 400 ton Q-ship (pirate catcher disguised as a subsidized merchant) built at
TL-15 with maneuver-4, jump-4 performance costs 1.1075 MCr per ton, and will
take 64 weeks to complete, for 17,304.69 credits per ton-week.  Its annual
maintainance will cost 443,000 Cr for two weeks work, or 553.75 credits per
ton-week.  Repairs cost 23.9 MCr and 60.0 MCr; or 14,937.50 and 18,750
credits per ton-week.

The following ships are purely Naval vessels (although I assume that it is
possible that the destroyer or escorts could turn up in the Rebellion or Hard
Times as vikings or starmercs.

A 9,500 ton escort costs 9,499 MCr, while a destroyer based on the same hull
costs 14,178 MCr; both would take 160 weeks to construct, for 6,249.34 and
9,327.63 credits per ton-week, respectively.  The maintainance figures are
499.95 and 746.21 credits per ton-week.

A 95,000 ton frigate costs 117,668 MCr, and takes 208 weeks to complete.
This makes its figures 5,954.86 and 619.31 credits per ton-week for
construction and maintainance.

I think that it is reasonable to conclude that merchant ships will cost
between 1,000 and 5,000 credits per ton-week to construct (with smaller ships
costing more, and therefore being more profitable).  Annual maintainance
overhauls are much less profitable, at 50 to 200 credits per ton-week.
Military and starmerc ships of any size are much more profitable than
merchant craft; again smaller ships are more profitable.

Repairs are more profitable than annual maintainance; these profits are of
the same order of magnitude as new construction (repair of critical hits can
be more lucrative than new construction).  This business is much less secure
(depending as it does on essentially random events) than construction or
annual overhauls.

All of these numbers suggest some assumptions about the way shipyards work,
and about the way they make a profit.  I'm assuming that the cost per
ton-week of capacity is a measure of the shipyards resources, both in terms
of capacity and in terms of the labor, parts, and materials required.  Since
the shipyard is in business to earn a profit, this figure also includes the
yard's profit margin.

Small ships (certainly under 5,000 tons, with most of them being under 1,000
tons) is quite profitable.  Enough so that they may be produced on
speculation when the shipyard is otherwise idle.  If the market for such
vessels is strong, this type of speculation can even be more profitable than
performing annual maintainance.

Annual maintainance is the least profitable of all shipyard activities.
However, it is the only one which can be performed by Class B starports, and
presumably almost all of this work is done there.  Annual maintainance at a
Class A port would be unusual, and an indication of unusually high demand for
this service.  At this point, prices would start to go up, as demand
outstripped supply.  These price increases are almost all profit for the
shipyard; as the price goes up, overhauls start to become as profitable as
new construction.

Larger ships are more efficient for the operator.  The 100,000 ton bulk
freighter's cargo bay is slightly over 77% of the ship's entire volume, while
a comparable 400 ton subsidized merchant can devote slightly over 62% of its
volume to cargo and passengers.  However, these larger ships are less
profitable for the shipyards.

The construction and maintainance of large ships is probably done under long
term or large order contract.  During the Imperium, transport companies with
long term freight contracts or secure routes could easily borrow money to
build such ships.  Outside of the Safes in the post-Rebellion era, the
companies which used to let these kinds of contracts no longer exist, and the
lack of stability prevents their re-creation; very large transports are
therefore unknown.  This, and not the large amounts of repairs, is what
breaks the interstellar economy (in my not-so-humble opinion).


Steve Higginbotham writes:
> This is not really relevant to my point, which was
> that J-1 is too low to use as a favourable mod, since heavy traffic
> systems will trade with anyone within J-4 probably.  J-1 is too
> restrictive an assumption for defining areas of heavy traffic.

Heavy traffic systems will still be heavy traffic systems even if they are
isolated; there is a certain amount of traffic which travels farther than
most.  The difference works out to about 4 "points" of traffic density.  How
this translates into numbers and tons of ships depends on your interpretation
of the traffic density chart, and how you divide up the traffic.

A workable interpretation would be to take the total "trade partners" DM
(which can range from -2 to +12, and is typically +4) and compare it to the
traffic level.  If the DM is negative, almost all (at least 95%) of the
traffic is "long-distance".  If the DM is larger than the trade level, almost
all (at least 95%) of the trade is "local".  If the DM is positive and less
than the trade leve), the ratio of the "trade partners" DM to the traffic
level shows the ratio between short and long distance trade.  If the DM is
zero, the amount of local trade is small (less than 1 / traffic level), but
greater than if the DM were negative.

For example, Regina has a trade level of 14 (E), and its partners DM is +3.
About 3/14ths, or about 21% of its trade is with local partners, and the
balance of 79% goes farther than the next parsec or two.  Rebellion-Era
Promise with a trade level of 14, and a partners DM of +4 is about the same:
29% of the traffic is local, and 71% is long-distance.  During the Hard
Times, this shifts dramatically, to a new trade level of 7, and a partners DM
of 0.  Nearly all of it's trade is "long distance": presumably to that
relatively undamaged agricultural world at the other end of the League of
Promise.  The local trade (probably to the nearby agricultural world) is less
than 1/7th of Promise's trade (over 5% but under 14%, pick any reasonable
number).

[email removed]
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                 Science-Fiction Adventure
                                                         in the Far Future