On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 12:33 PM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Another thing to consider is if the truck should be gravitic > > > or a ground vehicle. Part of the reason why the harvester or > > > plow are gravitic is to protect the soil, but if there are > > > roads in the area anyway, the harvester could simply fly > > > there and meet the truck. > > > > The reason that this is done in modern farms is that the combine costs a > > whole hell of a lot more than the grain carts do. It's stupid and > > expensive > > to stop harvesting to transfer the grain to transport. You've got a big > > honking expensive piece of equipment standing idle, when you could have a > > cheaper piece of equipment shuttling the grain around. > > But a ground truck next to the field might be more cost-efficient > than a grav truck on the field, as long as there are decent roads > to the field. > Unlikely. The advantage of the grav truck (and the tractor pulled grain wagons, used today), is that the combine can unload from its internal storage to the truck without stopping the harvest. If you have to drive to the edge of the field, it will spend a lot more time unloading, traveling to unload, and traveling back than it will harvesting. Most places, harvest time is done in hurry up mode, to get things in before the weather changes, so keeping the expensive machine working full time is a high priority. (At modern crop yields, the harvester has only about 15 minutes worth of harvesting before it's full.) If there are good roads, you might have just one grav truck per combine, and a larger number of road vehicles. (I agree that a grain wagon is a pretty boring vehicle for adventuring purposes.) -- David Scheidt [email protected] _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
