On Thu, 25 Jun 2015, Onno Meyer wrote:
Johannes replied to me:
One assumption i always take in Traveller that helps suspending disbelieve
regarding TL differences:
As rule of thumb, you don't happen to find people with the skills to
maintain or repair high TL equipment on low TL worlds.
Hello Johannes,
I would think that spare parts and techs for typical civilian TL10 equipment
like an air/raft or a dishwasher can be found at any class II or better
starport. Salaries and prices will be increased for this "hardship posting"
and the mechanics will complain and demand even more money if they are to
leave the comfort and security of the starport, but they are available on the
world.
Class II was D in the old nomenclature, right?
Sure if you can do the repairs on starships, that are neccessary for the
port classification, you implicitly also can repair some other high tech
equuipment.
But mechanics will be hired and repair equipment will be owned by and
large by companies thats businessmodel is to to do star port services.
They might not be all that willing to branch out for some reason such as:
If their mechanics fail at defaulting from their star ship mechanics
skill, it can lead to bad PR.
Star ship repairs will have to be a priority, propably due to a contract
with the star port, and rescheduling planet business for any star ship
that comes is too much of a hassle.
If they use all their capacity, that might attract competion, or put the
neccessity of any subventions they might recieve (that the star port might
give out, to keeps it's classification).
So in short they likely act like an archetypical company with a goverment
backed monopoly, whitch might even be exactly their position, just with
the star port as their goverment.
Spare parts will generally be imported, and thoose that are not
interchangeable from star ships to air/rafts will likely only be in stock
in star ship size.
It might also be that spare part and repair costs for star ships are
subventioned, to close gaps in trade routes, so you can't apply the same
prices, and propably using subventioned infrastructure for uses other then
originally intended might mean you loose subventions.
For occasional minor jobs you might also find some mechanics, who do some
extra job in their spare time but i don't think it is advisable to make
that a business model.
I also would consider it plausible, that some star ships have lower tech
dishwashers installed, because their original broke down when they had
been in a low TL world and they had to replace it there. Some tramp
frighter style ships might intentionally keep some equipment low TL to
make sure they can use low TL spareparts.
From my current numbers, a TL6 $400,000 / CrImp20,000 blimp can carry 10
people and 16 stons of cargo some 700 miles in a day. A CrImp20,000 / TL8
$160,000 G-Carrier would carry less cargo much faster, so the trade-off
depends on assumptions about unloading times and the reading of a pesky
little rule about the cost of hydrogen. VE makes it quite expensive.
If there is a conceivable way, how hydrogen is produced locally with
mostly local equipment, close to the star port you likely have already a
facility with regular customers and you can take advantage of ecconomy of
scale.
If you are flexible about when you buy it you might be able to buy surplus
hydrogen.
Johannes
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