Hello everybody, one measure for the efficiency of a space transport would be tons of load (excluding fuel and people) times parsec per day divided by the ship cost in $M. It is slightly unfair because mixes paid crew and paying passengers, and it lumps real cargo, food, and subcraft together. Maybe I should have rounded the efficiency to one significant figure, not two :-)
It is no surprise that the Scouts are less efficient than the real transports -- the TL14 Megafreighter is 3,000 times more efficient than the TL10 Scout. More interesting is that the TL11 container transport ranks right with the TL14 ships. And the TL10 container transport is eight times more efficient than the small TL10 transport. Of course at TL10 landing capability comes at a very high price. The table is ASCII art, use a non-proportional font. TL Type LWt Cargo Occ Cost Speed Notes Efficiency 14 Megafreighter 2,000,000 1,249,900 1,000 $56B 4 89 14 Bulk Transport 30,000 15,590 100 $1.3B 5 60 11 Bulk Transport 30,000 20,470 100 $788M 2 [3] 53 15 Light Transport 100 61.9 6 $2M 1 31 13 Light Transport 100 62.1 4 $4.3M 2 29 14 Light Transport 100 51.6 4 $6M 2.4 [6] 21 11 Light Transport 100 51.6 4 $4.4M 1 12 12 Bulk Transport 30,000 12,050 4,000 $500M 0.4 [4,5] 9.6 11 Freighter 3,000 1,756 40 $86M 0.4 8.2 16 Light Transport 100 51.2 8 $30M 3 [1] 5.1 11 Blockade Runner 30 4.5 5 $2.4 2 [5] 3.8 10 Bulk Transport 30,000 20,399 10 $1.2B 0.2 [3] 3.4 14 Scout 20 3.9 1 $3.2M 2 2.4 15 Scout 10 2.4 1 $3.5M 3 2.1 13 Scout 15 2.9 1 $1.9M 1 1.5 16 Scout 15 2.9 1 $10M 4 [1] 1.2 12 Scout 12 1.9 1 $1.5M 0.5 0.64 12 Light Transport 100 24.6 4 $64M 1.2 [2] 0.46 10 Light Transport 100 19.4 6 $11M 0.24 0.42 11 Scout 10 0.9 1 $1.5M 0.4 0.24 10 Scout 10 0.3 1 $2M 0.2 0.03 [1] Expensive because of a teleport projector. [2] Expensive because of a cloaking device. [3] Externally carried container(s). [4] Ark ship, considerably more crew than necessary. [5] Cheaply made, which "doubles" efficiency. [6] Efficiency 30 with maximum tractor load. I think I can get over 100 for a TL15 bulk transport, even with surface landing capability. GURPS Traveller has rules how you translate ship costs into operation costs, but those come with some very Travellerish assumptions re long-term mortgages, annual maintenance, and so on. For now, I'll assume that the true operating cost is proportional to the sticker price of the ships. I wonder if there is a "fair" way to get passengers into the efficiency figure. For the TL14 Megafreighter it won't really matter, but the TL10 light transport and the scouts would get a little boost. Any thoughts? Better ship designs? Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
