Traveller: The economics of larger ships

Last time I looked at the profitability of a 200-ton Far Trader. 

So this time’ I’m looking a bit bigger and I’m considering the cargo carrier, a 3000 dton ship with 44 staterooms (30 passengers) and a 1,100.5 cargo bay. 

Do the economics stack up? TL;DR: Yes!

Cargo Carrier

Mongoose's High Guard has a 3000-ton Cargo Carrier with 44 staterooms and 1,100.5 tons of cargo space. The full details are in High Guard, but here’s the description:

The Al Morai corporation maintains a fleet of 53 type MK Mora cargo carriers (not enough to receive the discount for standard designs), plying fixed routes of select Class A and B starports throughout the Spinward Marches, armed and accompanied by surplus Gazelle close escorts as deterrents to piracy. Generally named for systems along the route, these freighters maximise cargo space by using a cramped bridge, an undersized power plant that requires dimming ship’s power when initiating a jump-4, turrets controlled via software and fuel/cargo containers to maximise cargo on shorter jumps. Al Morai facilities at each stop supply refined fuel, so no processors are installed. Two pinnaces for ferrying of passengers and cargo, and for emergency use as lifeboats. The ship has 14 rooms for crew (single occupancy for the captain, chief engineer and medic; double occupancy otherwise) and 30 passenger staterooms.

The design is a bit confusing because, at first glance, it doesn't appear to have enough fuel - it has only a 548 dton fuel tank – but a closer inspection reveals 540 tons of combined fuel/cargo containers.

Even then, something’s not right. The cargo carrier needs 540 tons for jump 2 (decreased fuel x 2) and 76 tons for the power plant, so the 548 dton fuel tank should be 68 tons more (to 716 dtons). So for my calculations I’ve shrunk the cargo space by 68 dtons: At jump 2, the cargo carrier can haul 1572.5 dtons of cargo.

(It’s possible I’ve got that wrong – Traveller ship design is incredibly fiddly. So if the original numbers are right, then that means the cargo carrier uses less fuel than I’ve calculated and carries more cargo. But my numbers are probably close enough.)

Let’s trade!

If we fill that 1572.5 cargo bay with freight and fill the 30 staterooms with 15 high and 15 middle passengers, then our income is Cr 5,752,000 per four weeks.

Our four-weekly running costs are Cr 5,009,802, including mortgage. (I've assumed refined fuel because the idiot architects didn't install fuel processors.)

That gives a monthly profit of Cr 742k! (Less any taxes and things that aren’t considered.)

So that does assume that I fill the cargo bay and staterooms. That’s fairly easy between Mora and Fornice – but not elsewhere. (Mind you, I suspect the core book’s freight tables are aimed at smaller ships rather than huge cargo carriers like this.)

The break-even point on the ship is about 88% capacity. For example, with 90% cargo and passengers, then the profit is only Cr 118k. It would be easy to go into the red if you stray away from the profitable routes. (So I would expect remote routes to pay a premium to make them worth servicing.)

And what about Jump 4?

Jump 4 is much more profitable because although the Cargo Carrier sacrifices cargo space for fuel, the shipping and passage rates more than double. 

• Cargo: Cr 4400/dton compared to Cr1600/dton – a 275% increase.
• High passage: Cr34,000 compared to Cr 14,000 – a 242% increase.
• Medium passage: Cr23,000 compared to Cr10,000 – a 230% increase.

Even though fuel costs have increased, a full cargo carrier generates Cr 5.2M profit every month!

That’s if you can find a good route, of course.

Jump 4 is also much more resilient – the cargo/passenger capacity only needs to be a little over half full to pay for the cargo carrier’s operating costs.

But Gazelle Close Escorts?

Mind you, I’m not sure who’s paying for the Gazelle Close Escorts (plural) that, according to the High Guard description, accompany the cargo carrier.

Traveller: Starship operations

I’ve decided to invest in one of Traveller’s Type A 200-ton Far Traders. Can I make money from it?

TL;DR: Goodness, yes!

Far Trader from Traveller's core rulebook

As an investor, I’m not going to run the ship myself. Instead, I will hire a crew and let them do it for me.

I am based in Mora/Mora and my ship will make a regular run between Mora and nearby Fornice/Mora. Back and forth, until the ship is paid off.

So, how does that work out?

Fixed costs

According to the Traveller Core Rulebook Update 2022, costs are calculated per four-week maintenance period and consist of:

• Mortgage: Cr222,169  (assuming I don’t put up any of my own savings, which I haven’t)
• Maintenance: Cr4,443
• Life support (Cr1,000 per stateroom): Cr10,000
• Life support (Cr1,000 per person): Cr10,000 (assuming 10 people aboard, four crew and six passengers)
• Life support (Cr100 per low berth): Cr600
• Salaries: Cr18,000 (crew of four: pilot, astrogator, engineer, medic/steward)
• Berthing fees: Cr8,000 (varies, but both starports are class A, so we’ll assume Cr4,000 per week)
• Power plant fuel: Cr100 (one ton unrefined)

So that’s Cr273,312 every four weeks.

Some of those costs aren’t strictly fixed. Berthing fees may change, and if we don’t carry any passengers, the life support costs will drop. (And life support costs are for the full period – there may be savings when at starports as passengers aren’t living aboard. But I’m ignoring that for the budget.)

And if I combine the pilot and astrogator roles, I only need three crew. But I’ll stick with four for the moment. (From an operational perspective, I’d like one crewmember to be berthed near the passengers. According to the Far Trader deck plans, three staterooms are on deck 1, near the bridge. The other seven are on deck 2.)

Per-jump costs

The main cost that changes per jump is fuel. At Cr100 per ton (unrefined), the cost is Cr4,000.

If we assume a jump every other week, that’s Cr8,000.

Running total: Cr281,312 running costs, assuming a jump every other week.

That’s how much I need to cover before I make a profit on my investment. Nearly 80% of the running costs is the mortgage on the ship. When I pay that off, I’m sitting pretty indeed!

Income

So how about income: freight and passengers. I’ve deliberately chosen my shipping route carefully: two high-populated worlds.

Freight: With a combined +13 DM on the freight table (from population, starport and tech level), there should be no problem filling my Far Trader with 81 tons of freight. (I’m not speculating, just shipping.) So that’s Cr100,800 each jump, or Cr201,600 per four weeks.

Passengers: Similarly, with a combined +9DM on the passenger table (from population and starports) there will be plenty of passengers to fill the staterooms and low berths. While I suspect I can often fill the ship with high passage passengers, I’m assuming for my budget four high and two middle passage passengers. So for two jumps in a four-week period, that brings in:

• High passage: Cr112,000
• Middle passage: Cr40,000
• Low passage: Cr15,600

Overall income then is freight + passengers, or Cr369,200, which works out at a monthly profit of Cr87,888, or an operating margin of an almost obscene 31%. (And which, given I didn’t put up any of my own money, nor am I doing any actual work, sounds like a bargain!)

And after a few months, it’s enough to give me a cushion to cover those occasional lean times (and bad rolls).

An assumption

I am assuming that the passenger numbers do not include everyone planning to travel between Mora and Fornice that week. Instead, they represent the number of people who are prepared to travel on my Far Trader. (The same goes for freight.)

So I could run a second ship, probably without affecting my first.

GURPS Far Trader has more to say on this and is summarised on the Spinward Marches Sector trade map, which shows Mora-Fornice as a blue route. The key explains that blue routes have an average of one million dtons of cargo and 20,000 passengers per week. So I think I’ve chosen well.

(And can I just tip my hat to the creators of tools like the Traveller wiki, the trade map and the Traveller Map. You are wonderful, crazy people.)

An aside: This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. In places with a lot of traffic, I would expect most passengers and freight to be taken by huge, regularly scheduled freighters and liners. As a result, there would be no room for a little guy running a tramp trader – I’d be reduced to picking up scraps and serving less profitable markets.

Squeezing operating margins

I’ve already highlighted where I can save some costs (salaries and life support). Other potential savings might include:

Preferential berthing rates: Given my long-term repeat business, I might be able to negotiate preferential rates on a berth at both starports.

Fuel: Fuel is already pretty cheap – particularly as I’m buying it unrefined and processing it on board. If I was prepared to refuel at the gas giants, I’d save more, but I might prefer to buy the fuel rather than add skimming time to my operations.

Minimising downtime: Do I need to spend a full week between jumps? If I allow a day’s travel time each way (to and from jump points) and two days in the starport (to unload and load freight, clean the staterooms, and refuel [including processing]), the turnaround time becomes 11 days per jump instead of 14. That’s a 20% improvement, which works out at an extra Cr36,000 (20% x Cr184,000 freight and passengers less Cr4,000 fuel) every month.

(My assumption here is that onward freight and passengers can be arranged and booked whilst travelling towards the starport having arrived in system. Both Mora and Fornice are at a high enough tech level for that to be doable – and routine.)

Reconfigure the ship: Swapping out cargo for more staterooms would generate more money but isn’t convenient. If I wanted to concentrate on passengers, I should have bought a different ship.

Risks

As a cautious investor, it would be prudent of me to consider the risks.

Theft: Perhaps my biggest risk is my crew stealing my ship. Obviously, I’ll have hiring procedures and contracts and the like, but ultimately, I will probably have to travel with the ship before letting anyone go it alone. Of course, that means I’ll occupy one of the passenger staterooms (I have no useful ship skills) so that will eat into my profits. I think I can afford it, though. 

Maintenance and misjumps: Assuming a competent crew and regular maintenance, then my ship should be reliable and I shouldn’t have to worry about misjumps.

Competition: Given this is such a lucrative route, I should probably worry about competition (something the Traveller rules don’t really cover). That’s both competition in availability of freight/passengers available, and also prices. Maybe there’s a union fixing prices for freight and passage – that certainly saves me worrying about other ships undercutting me. Instead, if rates are fixed, I will need to compete on things like reliability and customer service.

Lean times: Occasionally, there will be times when I can’t fill the cargo holds and passenger staterooms. As discussed above, I hope that the margin is high enough to cover that risk.

Tax: Happily, Traveller doesn’t worry about tax. If it did, I would expect things like passage, fuel, and shipping to be heavily taxed, say at 25%. We then have the tricky question of who pays the tax. Does the price for a Cr16,000 high passage include tax (in which case I pay the tax and my income is Cr12,800), or does it exclude tax (so passengers actually pay Cr20,000)?

If I apply a 25% tax rate to all my income, that would be about Cr73k tax – leaving me about Cr14k per month in profit. But as I said, Traveller doesn’t care about tax.

Piracy: Piracy is a risk, but it’s an extremely busy trade route, and I would expect there to be plenty of patrol boats.

War: The Fifth Frontier War is brewing, but Mora and Fornice are far enough behind the lines that I should get plenty of warning. If things start looking dicey, I can move elsewhere.

Given the risks, I should probably take out an insurance policy for my Far Trader. This will eat into my profits but will help me sleep at night.

Summary

So it turns out that if you have a good route, then investing in a starship is a good way to earn an income (provided we don’t consider competition or tax and ignore price fluctuations due to demand and supply).

I can’t promise similar riches if you decide to use your investment as a base for adventuring, but if you stick to where the trade is, you shouldn’t go wrong.

(I first tried this with a J-1 Free Trader jumping between similarly populated systems, but it’s not quite as lucrative, with only a Cr35k profit each month.)

Traveller: Biospheres

When I was trying to work out how to feed Rethe, someone pointed me to High Guard’s biospheres, which I had completely overlooked.

Biospheres are amazing. Here’s what Mongoose’s High Guard has to say about them (page 59): This is an area dedicated to flora and fauna, either for the production of food or as a leisure area. Every ton dedicated to a biosphere eliminates life support costs for two passengers. Biospheres consume one Power and cost MCr0.2 per ton.

So 7m3 of biosphere provides 2200 kcals per day (800,000 kcals per year). And all it needs is some electricity (half a power unit per person) and some upfront capital.

Certainly, in terms of feeding a planet, a biosphere is a great idea. They’re small and efficient (if the text is accurate). But are they realistic for Rethe? And at what tech level?

Yield

A "biosphere" ?

Well, this is the greenhouse in our garden. By coincidence, and including the apex, it’s a little under 7m3. While we grow seedlings and some tomatoes, I would guess it probably provides about 2200 kcals per year, rather than every day!

My example hydroponic farms produced an annual yield of 1000 kcals per 0.325m2 per year. Assuming these farms are in racks 20cm deep (one of many big assumptions), that translates into 1000 kcals coming from a volume of 0.065m3. So 7m3 produces an annual yield of just over 100,000 kcals. So biospheres would need to be eight times larger.

What about mushrooms? Well, there are about 20 kcals in 100g of mushrooms, so you’d need 11kg of mushrooms for your daily 2200 kcals. I can’t see our greenhouse producing that. 

Or algae? If 100g of dried algae contains 300 kcals, you’d need about 800g of dried algae every day. Let’s assume algae has a water ratio of 85% (similar to seaweed), which means our biosphere has to produce over 5kg of algae every day. I can’t find any figures on algae production, but I doubt that sort of production rate is possible at TL 8 from a 7m3 volume.

A rich and varied diet

Current nutritional advice is to minimise ultra-processed food and eat a rich and varied diet – aiming for no fewer than 30 different plants a week. (For example, see here.) So a diet of algae is unlikely to be healthy. Now, at higher tech levels (say TL 12+, I can easily handwave all that and assume that science has solved that problem (although I suspect most people will prefer to eat fresh food). But at lower tech levels, we don’t have that luxury.

I have, however, ignored nutrition in my calculations and reduced everything to kcals.

Leisure areas?

I’ve also ignored the bit where High Guard describes biospheres as leisure areas. I’m finding it hard enough to imagine them producing enough food to cover life support, let alone thinking of them as a leisure area. (“I’m bored – let’s visit the algae vats,” said nobody, ever.)

High Guard optimistically describes biospheres as being dedicated to flora and fauna. I’m not sure what fauna anyone is expecting – animals are inefficient producers of kcals. Worms and bugs, maybe, but a petting zoo? Probably not – unless producing food is not your concern.

Other inputs

If you have a greenhouse, you’ll know that it requires many other inputs: compost, soil, seeds, water, sunshine – and time. (And a whole raft of tools and pots and other paraphernalia.)

While there are no running costs involved in a biosphere (other than power), I imagine a biosphere needing regular replenishment of nutrients and flora, especially at lower tech levels.

Tech levels

Speaking of tech levels, High Guard mentions nothing about biosphere tech levels. Given they are self-contained and require no additional nutrients or seeds or attention, I assume they’re pretty miraculous by today’s standards. So TL 10 at least. Maybe more. (So they’re not really suitable for TL 8 Rethe – maintaining them would be expensive.)

Or maybe, as I suggest above, they are simply larger at lower tech levels. Maybe something like this:

• TL8: 4 dtons per person (as a super-efficient hydroponic farm)
• TL10: 2 dtons per person 
• TL12+: 0.5 dtons per person (ie as per High Guard)

I imagine there would be other improvements in terms of other inputs and outputs as well. TL 12 biospheres probably produce synthetic meat and other textured vegetable protein – something the earlier models can only dream of. 

Summary

So, are biospheres any help in feeding Rethe/Regina, a TL8 desert world with barely any atmosphere and a population of 26 billion people? My estimate is no, not at TL8. As I said when I first looked at Rethe, I think it's TL should be much higher than 8.

Edit: Edited to add the summary. 

Traveller: Drop tanks revisited

A while back, I mulled over the curiosity of  Traveller's starship drop tanks and wondered why we don’t see more of them. Some of the feedback I received was that drop tanks “break the game.” 

I wasn’t sure what that meant, so I dug into it.

Some history

My original post looked at the curiosity of drop tanks and wondered why we didn’t see more of them.  As far as I can see, only the Gazelle Close Escort has ever had drop tanks. (It’s the only ship in Mongoose’s Core Rules and High Guard – I’ve not checked every supplement!)

Drop tanks appeared in the Traveller universe in High Guard (1979 and 1980) and with the Gazelle Close Escort in JTAS 4 (1980) and Traders and Gunboats (1980).

The Gazelle has been canon ever since.

But drop tanks have never reappeared – and the latest iterations of Traveller give them a harsh penalty (a high probability of being destroyed when entering jump) which rules them out of use.

Or does it?

Faaaaaar Trader

Let’s build a Free Trader with a jump-6 drive. We’ll replace the J1 drive and its fuel (30 tons total) for a drop tank mount and a J6 drive (40 tons total). So we lose 10 tons of cargo space, reducing us to 71 tons.

For the sake of this argument, I will ignore many of the ship costs – mortgage, maintenance, berthing, salaries and other running costs. I’m looking at the cost of fuel, the drop tanks themselves, and income from freight and passengers.

Costs

Jump costs have a linear relationship. The costs for J6 are six times that for J1.

Jump	Fuel needed	Fuel cost (Cr500 refined)	Drop tank cost	Average drop tank cost per jump	Total costs
1	20	Cr 10k	Cr 500k	Cr 375k	Cr 385k
2	40	Cr 20k	Cr 1,000k	Cr 750k	Cr 770k
3	60	Cr 30k	Cr 1,500k	Cr 1,125k	Cr 1,155k
4	80	Cr 40k	Cr 2,000k	Cr 1,500k	Cr 1,540k
5	100	Cr 50k	Cr 2,500k	Cr 1,875k	Cr 1,925k
6	120	Cr 60k	Cr 3,500k	Cr 2,250k	Cr 2,310k

The cost of the drop tank itself dwarfs the fuel cost.

(Drop tanks are destroyed about 60% of the time they are used, we shouldn’t pay the full rate – let’s say 75% to allow for recovery costs. That’s my “average drop tank cost per jump” column. I’m not sure when this constraint appeared – it’s not in the little black books.)

Income

Income, however, is not linear.

Jump	Freight	Low passage	Medium passage	High passage	Total income
1	Cr 1,000	Cr 700	Cr 6,500	Cr 9,000	Cr 122,500
2	Cr 1,600	Cr 1,300	Cr 10k	Cr 14,000	Cr 197,600
3	Cr 2,600	Cr 2,200	Cr 14k	Cr 21,000	Cr 312,600
4	Cr 4,400	Cr 3,900	Cr 23k	Cr 34,000	Cr 527,400
5	Cr 8,500	Cr 7,200	Cr 40k	Cr 60,000	Cr 987.5k
6	Cr 32k	Cr 27k	Cr 130k	Cr 210k	Cr 3,622k

I’m basing total income on 71 tons of freight, and 20 low, three medium and two high passages.

As you can see, there’s a huge leap in income between jumps 5 and 6.

Profits

So what does all this mean?

Jump	Profit
1	Cr -262,500
2	Cr -572,400
3	Cr -842,400
4	Cr -1,012,600
5	Cr -937,500
6	Cr 1,312,000

So jumps 1-5 lose you money – but if you can find a reliable J6 route, you can make it big and earn Mcr 2.6 every single month! (This is why I didn’t worry about the other costs; they’re peanuts compared to the profit you’ll make running a J6 ship.) 

And that’s why drop tanks “break” Traveller. (Although “break” is a loaded term. All that would really happen is that competition would ensure the J6 prices drop.) 

Are jump drives a mistake?

This makes me think that drop tanks were a mistake.

Maybe they were fine as an idea in 1980 Traveller (but starship economics were different back then).  However, drop tanks do weird things to Mongoose's 2nd Edition Traveller economics. So if they aren’t destroyed during a jump (causing a significant financial loss), then everyone freely zips around the Traveller universe.

And the poor old Gazelle?

On the scale of things, it’s not a big ship – only 300 tons. It’s dwarfed by capital ships, and I find it hard to believe that the costs of fitting drop tanks (at two million credits each) to get an extra two parsecs range would survive first contact with a cost-benefit analysis. (But I’ve not done that analysis, so maybe I’m wrong.)

Maybe drop tanks should have been retconned and the Gazelle redesigned accordingly. That’s what I would have done.

Edit: Updated to correct the first appearance of drop tanks. As far as I can tell, they first appeared in High Guard (1979) with the Gazelle appearing in Traders and Gunboats and JTAS 4 the following year.

Current projects

So we’re about halfway through 2024, and it’s time for a progress update. I last did one of these back in October, and I find it useful to look back and see what I’ve achieved.

What have I done?

Since October I have:

• Published Hazelwood Abbey (a Hillfolk playset inspired by Downton Abbey) on Itch.io. I ran it successfully at AireCon.
• Created an epub version of Writing Freeform Larps and added it to Itch.io and DriveThru
• Published All Flesh is Grass (a freeform larp) on itch.io.
• Written and run The Stars our Destination (a 14-player freeform larp set in the same universe as All Flesh is Grass).
• Published A Purrfect Murder (a cat-themed murder mystery game) at Freeform Games.
• Helped build Freeform Games’ new shop.

Ongoing projects

Right now, this is what I’m working on.

• I’ve formatted and developed (with the author) Backstage Business, a 1980s hair-metal band murder mystery game for Freeform Games. It’s currently being playtested (I'm running it at Continuum) and should be published over the summer.
• I’m building a new website for Freeform Games. We’ve been going since 2001, and our website is a mix of hand-coded pages and two instances of Wordpress. So we’re streamlining everything. It’s a lot of work, but should give us several benefits. With a fair wind it will be live by the end of July.
• I’m taking the feedback from The Stars our Destination and getting the game ready for Consequences in November.
• As I’ve mentioned recently on the blog, I’m running The Dead Undead for Other London: Desk 17. I’ll publish it when we’re done and I’ve incorporated any changes.

The first two of these have demanded a lot of attention and have been particularly draining.

Currently on hold

• I started reformatting Court in the Act for Freeform Games, but put it on hold when Backstage Business landed in my inbox. Court in the Act is an old game and is still in our original game format.
• The Department for Irregular Services for Liminal is on hold. This will expand on this blog post with more detail, three investigations and some pregens. The first two investigations (The Hairy Hands and Hardknott Roman Fort Ghost Realm) are complete, but the third (The Wherwell Cockatrice) is still in pieces. I need to reassemble the pieces and playtest it.
• Inspired partly by Backstage Business, Success2Soon is a band-themed Hillfolk playset that I need to playtest. I may bring it to Furnace.
• Getting Children of the Stars ready for publication and starting to write episode 6 in the series, which follows The Stars our Destination.

Hopefully I’ll get back to these in September.

I think that’s enough to be going on with.