[hal]

Part of what factored into the analysis was the cost of a stateroom itself. If using CT rules, the cost of life support also adds to the overall cost.

By not buying a stateroom, the added cost to the monthly mortgage is discernible. If using CT, the lost revenue for the space taken without passengers becomes noticeable. Each stateroom adds a total of 2,083.33 credits per month to the cost of a starship (excluding cost of life support). It was capable of generating 4,000 credits per jump, or about 8,000 credits per month assuming it was full (not always the case!). Which would you rather do, go without income for volume of hull that essentially adds zero credits to your monthly payment, or pay for the volume, pay for the added life support, and pray you get passengers to make it worth the while to have to pay the added 2,083.33 credits per month for dead space?

In GURPS, the cost of an added stateroom is a mere 50 credits per month in added mortgage costs. This is not really a discernible or felt cost per se. The only time it becomes an issue is lost revenue from a lack of passengers.

In CT - the more efficient manner of building/designing ships is to utilize cargo carrying space in units that are cleanly divisible by 5. In other words, you want to have a volume that is 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, etc as a consequence of the random freight generation rules being in lots of 1d6 x 10 or 1d6 x 5. Any "odd number" of excess cargo capacity works out to an inefficient use of the ship's volume.

Where I to design a purpose built ship for use with GURPS TRAVELLER, I'd make it so that the number of low berths was always lower than the max to offset the times any extra berths would not have carried passengers. The problem is - with a revenue generation of 175 credits per parsec, the income from the space involved for four low berths is 175 x 4 or 700 credits per parsec.

The hard part in all of this where ship designs run, is the fact that the cost of a 100 dton ship is not all too much cheaper than a 200 dTon hull.

For instance, a TL 10 100 dton Hull with Jump 2, Manuever 1.1 with 2 staterooms, 36 dtons of cargo carrying capacity, 2 fuel refinery units (small) for redundancy sake, a compact bridge etc - costs 21.5518 MCr to purchase. Contrast this against an Empress Marava at 36.8 MCr. with 49 dtons of cargo carrying capacity.

Call it .6 MCr per freight carrying capacity for the 100 dton hull vs .75 MCr per carrying dton capacity.

Monthly cost for mortgage is 89,799.17 Cr or 44,899.59 Cr bi-monthly.
Monthly cost for Empress is 153,333.33 Cr or 76,666.67 Cr bi-monthly.

Revenue generation for the extra staterooms on the Empress Marava can be as high as 4 x mid passage (rarely will one generate High Passage for the tramp freighters) - but that is not a sure thing as far as generating the extra passengers. Even if you assume the extra income for three occupied staterooms, you offset this by the wages required for the added crew member "Steward" to handle the workload. It needs 1564.63 Cr per dton. When halved because it too is a jump 2 freighter, we find that it needs a total of 782.32 credits per parsec travelled to make its payments. Cost for the crew's wages, fees etc, are a bit lower per dton than with the 100 dton hull. But it still adds up.

dividing the bi-weekly needs for income by the cargo capacity, we find that...

The 100 dton hull listed above needs to make 1247.22 credits per jump per dton carried. As this is a Jump-2 vessel, that averages to 623.6 credits per jump just to pay the bank. Wages and other fees might add an additional 50 to 100 credits per dton. Consequently, the listed 650 credits per parsec income listed in FAR TRADER page 22 misses the mark for a purpose designed 100 dton freighter, and definitely misses the mark for an Empress Marava class ship



For those who might be interested, Stats for the 100 dton Jump 2 ship is as follows. Note that the stats on the Improved TL 10 Manuever Drive was tweaked to take up MORE of the internal volume to bring it in line with the other drives listed. The original design had way too much waste volume. Stats on the Improved drive are:

TL 10, Volume: 1 dTon, Mass 4.165 tons, Cost .196 MCr, Crew .0167, stons Thrust 49, stons lift: 49, power 4.9 Mw

In most instances, the only reason to use the improved maneuver drive is to regain 1 or 2 dTon's internal capacity when compared against using the inefficient drives that produce only 40 tons thrust. It takes only 8 modules to produce 392 tons of thrust versus needing 10 of the original GURPS TRAVELLER modules to produce 400 tons of thrust. That alone saves 2 dtons internal volume for cargo carrying capacity.

Stats on the ship itself:

Crew:
2 Command and Control, 1 Turret Gunners.

Hull:
100-ton VGSL, Medium Frame, Standard Materials, Crystaliron (Expensive) Armored Hull (DR 100), Standard Compartmentalization.

Control Areas: Basic Bridge/10 (Complexity 7), Compact Bridge option (Used on Basic or command bridges only).


Communicator Range (mi)

Radio: 50,000,000

Maser: 0

Laser: 100,000,000

Meson: 0




Sensors Range/Rating (mi)

TL 10 Basic Bridge
Passive: 20,000/37
Active: 100,000/41
Radscanner: 2,000/31

Engineering:
Sm Engineering/10, 3 Jump Drive/10, 8 Maneuver Drive/10 Improved (1.10 / 2.53 Gs, 392 stons thrust), 20 Jump Fuel Tank/7, 2 Sm Fuel Processor (2.5 hours to refine Jump Fuel Tank/7), Small Utility/10.

Accommodations:
2 Stateroom/10.

Misc:
36 Unspecified Cargo, 20 Hydrogen Fuel (Fire 13).

Armaments:
1 Turret/10 Battery of 1 (Empty; DR 100).

Stores:
36 Hold (0 dtons free for cargo).

Statistics:
DMass 134.88 stons, EMass 154.88 stons, LMass 354.88 stons, Base Cost MCr21.54, Load Cost MCr0.01, Total Cost MCr21.55, HP 15,000, Damage Threshold 1,500, Size Mod +8, HT 12, 22.3 Man-Hours/day Maintenance.

Space Performance:
Jump-2 (2), sAcc 1.10/1.10/2.53/2.91 Gs.

Air Performance:
aSpeed 1,450 mph, Skimming aSpeed 4,850 mph, aLift 392 stons.

Sample Times :
Orbit 0.21 Hrs, Escape Velocity 0.29 Hrs, 100D 6.07 Hrs, Earth-Mars 104.31 Hrs.

Options:
All times are Earth Std, Full Load. 100D and Earth-Mars assume mid-point turnover.

Note: This ship was created using GURPS MODULAR VEHICLES program.