What is the Business Model for the X-Boat Routes?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by J Crocker

In-game, the xboat network was introduced as a communication system in response to the Civil Wars period - yes, it costs a lot to run, but it's still cheaper than having yet another frontier admiral march on Capital and take the throne, or try to splinter off part of the Imperium. As a way to defray operating costs, it accepts messages from citizens and corporations. How much the xboats rely on that income or the amount of the subsidy in your Traveller universe is left to the reader as an exercise.

One of the 'secrets of the Imperium' is a spoiler if you haven't read it - there is really a secret network of jump-6 couriers using downscale merchant companies as a front, and it's used by the nobility to keep the Imperium running as smoothly as possible. So the xboats aren't about to get jump-6 ships any time soon, that would cut into the advantage of the secret courier network.

Not to metagame it, but it sounds a lot like the old US Pony Express system. That was never a money-maker, but it was deemed a link necessary enough that it was worth the cost. Plus I think the 'rule of cool' was exercised when they wrote this - it sounds like it would work, looked useful as an adventure hook, and it added a little depth to the Imperium.

Any routes that actually turned a profit, I would expect the scouts to jump for joy over. A lot of the routes, I wouldn't think the scouts would ever hope for such a thing. But those are the routes where the communication aspect would be even more important.

To me it sounds less like the Pony Express and more like the communication networks of empires in the pass. It is designed to bring intelligence from borders to central command and civilian uses are secondary, probably rented like the USPS.

[J Crocker]

Originally Posted by hal

None the less - Jump-6 ships aren't all that secretive in the original Traveller Universe - as a Jump-6 model ship was disguised to look like an ordinary ship as early as the Classic Traveller game universe.

Right, the jump-6 drive was common knowledge. It was the knowledge that specific ships working for specific lines were actually clandestine jump-6 couriers that was the secret part of it.

Please don't let me discourage you - if you want to complete the design, please go ahead, I'd be interested in the result - the onboard computers would have changed a lot from the first version, I'm sure.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by J Crocker

Right, the jump-6 drive was common knowledge. It was the knowledge that specific ships working for specific lines were actually clandestine jump-6 couriers that was the secret part of it.

The real problem is that setting up a competing J6 network really isn't very expensive, and setting up rational X-boat routes are essentially free, just carrying mail on J3 freighters can beat the X-boat routes.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The real problem is that setting up a competing J6 network really isn't very expensive, and setting up rational X-boat routes are essentially free, just carrying mail on J3 freighters can beat the X-boat routes.

Although the Scout Service explicitly sends unscheduled couriers off the X-boat routes as needed. It's quite possible there are worlds where there is an "unscheduled" courier to an important neighbor system several times a day, and the scheduled X-boat to nowhere once a week.

I'd assume the X-boat net represents the guaranteed schedule, and is probably cheap and meets minimum legal requirements for stuff you are required to send or publish, but anything anyone considers time critical enough to pay more than the price of a stamp to send, let alone important enough to justify a boat all by itself, gets routed differently.

[hal]

For what it is worth, this is a description of a TL 12 Xboat Courier which says:

"The ship’s primary function is to carry extensive data storage banks and communications gear. The standard Xboat design can carry 150 terabytes of data, transmitting or receiving the entire load in just over an hour."

In GURPS TRAVELLER STARSHIPS, we see this on page 44

"This system consists of a single massive laser communicator, three hardened computers, hardened mass-data storage capacity with double backups (5 TB at TL7, 50 TB at TL8-10, and then x 10 per TL after that), and an independent energy bank (5-hour supply)."

Thus, at TL 11, it would be 500 TB per Module, and 5,000 TB at TL 12. With three communications modules, this would end up being 3 x 5,000 TB or 15 Petabytes (someone correct me if I'm wrong please!).

What follows in my next post, is a modified TL 12 Xboat courier class named Minerva. It gives the cost, and specs...

[hal]

This is a modified version of the one given on page 36 of GURPS TRAVELLER FIRST IN. The original XBoat courier violated the rules as given in the original GDW ship building rules almost from the start. This one is based on the premise that I am better served with mobile XBoat couriers than I am with dead in the water (so to speak) XBoat courier.



Crew: 1 Pilot, 1 Engineer and 2 maintenance

Hull: 100-ton USL, Medium Frame, Standard Materials, Bonded Superdense (Expensive) Armored Hull (DR 100), Standard Compartmentalization.

Control Areas: Basic Bridge/12 (Complexity 9), Compact Bridge option (Used on Basic or command bridges only), 2 XBoat Comms/12 (Complexity 9).


Communicator Range (mi)

Radio: 50,000,000

Maser

Laser : 100,000,000

Meson: 20,000




Sensors Range/Rating (mi)

Passive: 30,000/38

Active: 150,000/42

Radscanner: 10,000/35



Engineering: Engineering/12, 5 Jump Drive/12, 8 Maneuver Drive/12 (1.85 / 1.85 Gs, 800 stons thrust), Maneuver Drive/12 Half Unit (0.12 / 0.12 Gs, 50 stons thrust), 40 Jump Fuel Tank/7, Small Utility/12.

Accommodations: 4 Stateroom/11.

Stores: 3 Hold (0 dtons free for cargo).

Statistics: DMass 391.81 stons, EMass 431.81 stons, LMass 431.81 stons, Base Cost MCr39.11, Load Cost MCr0.01, Total Cost MCr39.12, HP 15,000, Damage Threshold 1,500, Size Mod +8, HT 12, 30 Man-Hours/day Maintenance.

Space Performance: Jump-4, sAcc 1.97/1.97/1.97/2.17 Gs.

Air Performance: aSpeed 600 mph, Skimming aSpeed 5,010 mph, aLift 850 stons.

Sample Times : Orbit 0.23 Hrs, Escape Velocity 0.33 Hrs, 100D 4.55 Hrs, Earth-Mars 78.14 Hrs.

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

[hal]

My next step it would seem, is to create a data-base on Excel, containing all of the worlds in the current X-Boat courier system for Spinward Marches, and their distances between neighbors. I will be using as a standard, the downloaded information on Travellermap.com from the Second Survey.

If people have thoughts or ideas they want to share, or even a "hey Hal, can you include X, Y, and Z please" - I will try to accommodate such requests.

Once I get the database set up, I'll then start trying to look at using all of the GURPS TRAVELLER rules as written (even the Jump Point Masking rules) and see where it takes me. :)

OK - I've now got a database of sorts for the number of star systems that have an X-Boat terminus at their location. Excluding those worlds whose "xboat" linkage goes outside of the Spinward Marches outright...

40 start/end destinations were Jump-1
34 start/end destinations were jump-2
30 start/end destinations were jump-3
17 start/end destinations were jump-4
6 jump pairings not included above were crossing Sector boundaries and I will check the distance manually by hand later on.

If anyone wants my distance checking Excel spreadsheet, let me know. What it does is accepts the start hex ID number and the End Hex ID number, and calculates their distance by a deceptively simple mathematical formula.

The formula when written out, would look like this:

=IF(DeltaX>(2*AbsoluteDeltaY),DeltaX, DeltaX/2+AbsoluteDeltaY)

In other words, it checks to see if Delta X is greater than 2 x the Absolute Value of Delta Y. If this is true, then the distance is simply Delta X. Otherwise, it is 1/2 Delta X plus the absolute value of Delta Y.

What is Delta X and Delta Y? All hexes are four digits. The first two are the X and the latter 2 are the Y. A hex with 0101 would be treated as having an X value of 1, while a hex with the value of 2810 would have an X value of 28.

In any event, anyone who wants to play with the spreadsheet, can email me for it. Now that I know what the Jump Distances are, I can set things up to optimize the Xboat routes as to what kinds of ships are needed, and in theory, how many.

[cptbutton]

From GURPS Traveller First In:


page 12:

The Imperial Courier Service takes up where the Express Boat Service leaves off. The Courier Service carries small cargoes and important personnel which cannot travel by express boat.


Xmail sidebar, page 132:

The standard rate for Xmail traffic is Cr10 per gigabyte of data per parsec. Assume a minimum of Cr1 for any given message, no matter how short – every message has a minimum “handling fee.” Messages generally travel at about 2-3 parsecs per week along the Xboat network lines.

[...]

In practice, the vast majority of the traffic on the Xboat network is between high-technology, high-population worlds. Worlds with medium or low technology levels get a nearly free ride, generating and receiving so little data that the cost to the system is essentially nil. The flat fee has the effect of causing high-traffic segments of the network to subsidize low-traffic segments (where the express boats don’t travel with a full load of data).

Note that the Xmail cost given here is hundreds of thousands of times lower than that published in early versions of Traveller.

[hal]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

From GURPS Traveller First In:




Xmail sidebar, page 132:

Note that the Xmail cost given here is hundreds of thousands of times lower than that published in early versions of Traveller.

Hi cptbutton,
Thank you for the cite, I appreciated that. Now it is going to bug me that I will have to try and hunt down the original traveller published versions of costs. That means rereading the JTAS articles as well as anything else that i might have. Fortunately, FFE published a lot of the material on Disks and made them all available for $35 per disk (a bargain to be sure!).

Part of the problem from my perspective is that the various versions of Traveller don't seem to have gone the route of detailing the Xboat commo links. By seem, read that as "I don't recall them doing so".

TNE (Traveller the New Era) may have done so as part of its Fire, Fusion, and Steel rules - but it would be nice to find specifics where possible.

:)

Thanks again.

[Z09SS]

Going meta and historical here.

The Third Imperium is a Roman Empire allegory.

The Spinward Marches are the British Isles.

The Solomani Rim is the eastern Med and North Africa.

The X-Boat, and its pace is to simulate the travel time from the edges of the empire to Rome herself by a mounted courier using a relay of fresh horses and riders.

Somewhat later, the game became more detailed and some of the assumptions needed no-prized to keep making sense.

If you stop looking at the X-Boat as a UPS truck and start seeing it as a van with NSA painted on the side, the routing and pacing make a bit more sense.

As was mentioned up thread, it's the eyes of Core/Capital.

Also, J6 ships used to move intel goes back to LBB Supplement 9 and the Fleet Courier.