Hello everybody, the last two 30,000-ton freighters are under construction. It seems that there is a significant mass penalty for externally carried containers.
GURPS Traveller has rules for loading and unloading, p. FT58: * Breakbulk is 30 dtons/hour. (100 hours for 15,000 stons) * Containers are 180 dtons/hour. (17 hours for 15,000 stons) * Liquid bulk is 540 dtons/hour. (3 hours for 15,000 stons) * LASH is a flat one hour. My external containers are in the thousand-ton range, so they are probably closer to LASH times than to smaller containers, but that doesn't really matter -- 16 hours more in port are nothing against the increase in FTL speed. Of course 30,000 tons is not much if you look at real-world ships. If the star freighter was 300,000 tons, the saving would be a week. But for gaming opportunities, I'd rather go back to smaller ships. One interesting option would be fast couriers, where the goal is to carry a few people and a few tons of cargo as fast as possible, not as cost-effective as possible. Another option could be a "traditional" tramp freighter in the thousand-ton range. That would be large enough to carry a party of PCs and perhaps some interesting passengers, but it probably isn't economical. This is no problem for a game, the Traveller tramp freighters are usually up to adventures instead of honest trading, too. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
