In some cases production and destination sites might be at the star port
or otherwise it might be practical to land the freighter in their parking
lot. But i would assume that this is the exception rather then the rule.
Traveller has plenty of worlds with one town. If that is
a company town, would the starport be located for the
convenience of the employees or for the ease of freight
handling?
You need a large enough parking lot that is empty at the right times, for
the ship to land. Given the SOP for free trader freight (which is
generated by the tables in question) is that the ship first lands and then
looks for cargo, not even putting your factory* next to or into the star
port will guarantee this, since the wrong ship(s) might be sitting next to
your factory.
Moving the ship to the factory for loading operation would be an operation
that in most cases involves star port flight control. Which means the star
port authorities will propably not like the practice overly much and try
to discurage it.
If you have a standard setup with an upport and a downport and
unstreamlined ships go to the upport, and the factory is on the planet,
you limit yourself to streamlined ships.
In some cases there will be legal reasons for ships not to leave the
extrality zone.
If either the source or the destination prohibits direct access by the
ship, you are better off with shipping a container.
There are some cases where i can easily see such a setup. For instance
with space stations and astereoid bases it works quite well, also with low
tech worlds, with little trade and thus also little traffic control. But
guessing without actually running any numbers i think getting such
conditions on both sides is not the norm.
And for many table results there is an other problem with using that
approach. There also is the type of contract (i forgot how they call it in
FT and i don't have the book with me now, DFD, CIF ect) that determinates
what the freighter crew is responsible for. Most types specify delivery to
and from the star port. IIRC none really fits a case, where both source
and destination are outside the star port.
In case of a space station you could have the factory meet the ship docked
on an upport, but that sounds like an exceptional rather then a usual
setup.
*or whatever it is instead of a factory
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