I wholeheartedly agree about the 'rule of cool'.

In fact I imagine that's why CT 'High Guard' introduced SW's  'StarDestroyer' analogs.
And why DGP introduced their bulk carrier behemoths.

However, such a rule is inherently subjective in nature & thus subject to individual whims & fancies.
Still, many folks, incl those who created the various Trav products, have almost always tended to try to present 'hard' facts & figures to support their positions.
While this does help with 'suspension of disbelief' (after it's not supposed to be a (D&D in outer space, where 'Magicks' can explain anything & everything, is it?), it will also, inevitably lead to prolonged debates.

--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 8/22/14, Craig Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] expected ship traffic
 To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
 Date: Friday, August 22, 2014, 3:21 PM

 Yes; by
 the 57th Century (heck, by the 22nd Century) we should be
 able to create anything we want "magically" (3d
 printing, nanites, or whatever). Trade in anything other
 than information makes no sense in such a world. It would
 also lack free traders (and indeed, capitalism as we know
 it), rendering Traveller (and likely, humanity itself)
 unrecognizable. Traveller has always been about the
 "rule of cool" -- something that doesn't make
 sense but makes the setting more interesting is allowed to
 be handwaved into the game. Traveller is hard SF at the
 micro scale, exceedingly silly at all other scales.

 So if you handwave in the idea
 that a society with millennia of scientific progress beyond
 ours and the resources of ten thousand worlds still has a
 scarcity-based economy, all the usual rules of economics
 follow. One of these is the principle of comparative
 advantage, which explains why specialization occurs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
 . Anyone trying to design realistic Traveller economics
 needs to be familiar with that principle.

 It should be noted that
 polities will often use regulatory methods to push back
 against this principle. Even if world A makes really cheap
 farm machinery and nearby world B grows really cheap food, A
 will probably want to have significant farmland, and B some
 local industrial capacity. This is insurance against the
 unexpected -- e.g. A and B end up on different sides in a
 civil war, or pirates start intercepting a lot of the local
 merchant traffic, or whatever. See e.g. Japan's
 rice-growing subsidies for a real-world example.

 On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at
 2:34 PM, Ian Whitchurch <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
 wrote:

 Edit on the grav tank. Should be 30 parsecs, not
 300. Typos :)

 On Sat,
 Aug 23, 2014 at 7:32 AM, Ian Whitchurch <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
 wrote:

 "DGP apparently never understood
 that the TU had always used the 17th century as a template
 instead of the, at that time current, 1980's.

 Hence there was a
 dichotomy.
 If Tim's calculations are
 correct (I don't have T5) then it appears that DGP's
 template has been abandoned & the original CT has been
 put back in place.

 I, for one, welcome that
 development as I  never could buy into the idea that such a
 large volume of cargo could continue to be shipped
 indefinitely w/o eventually being supplanted by in-system
 (not necessarily on-planet) production."

 You
 are just showing you dont understand either the 17thC or
 economics.

 OK,
 lets deal with the 17thC. Lets see how much glass was made
 in Venice alone, as an example. Or look at the trade in wine
 or brandy, and the fact it was actually
 specialised.

 Now,
 lets deal with economics. Lets take, I dunno, a grav tank.
 Call it 10 dtons and worth MCr3. At Cr750/parsec, for a 10%
 cheaper grav tank from mass producing it in Gravtankograd,
 we can move it ... 300 parsecs ... before cost plus cost of
 shipping is getting close to the cost of the shorter
 production run. At KCr300 per dton, a grav tank is only call
 it KCr 30 per m3 (including packing space at 10 usable m3
 per 14m3 dton).

 KCr30
 per m3 is Cr30 per kilo, at 1000 kilos to a
 m3.

 Lets take some, possibly
 temporarily fashionable, meat - I can see hand-killed poni
 from some worldlet or other being worth Cr30 a kilo to
 sufficiently educated palates, especially if average income
 in a high tech world is KCr15 a year or so.

 Yeah,
 you can be eating something produced by technology and
 industry so much cheaper - but who would go to *that* dinner
 party ?

 Put
 those two things together, and you can easily justify a lot
 of long distance trade in the Imperium.

 Ian
 Whitchurch

 On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 6:41 AM, Phil Pugliese (via tml
 list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
 wrote:

 This email was sent from yahoo.com which
 does not allow forwarding of emails via email lists.
 Therefore the sender's email address (xxxxxx@yahoo.com)
 has been replaced with a dummy one. The original message
 follows:

 The 'large scheduled container ship' theorem
 came in w/ MT & DGP.

 A later development (later MT or early Virus) was the silly
 idea that just about all systems would hyper-specialize
 their production.

 (Bertil Jonell made the observation that it seems that most
 system's production is similar to a system that
 exclusively produces left-footed shoes & imports
 *everything* else!  BTW, anyone have any contact info wrt
 Bertil?)

 DGP apparently never understood that the TU had always used
 the 17th century as a template instead of the, at that time
 current, 1980's.

 Hence there was a dichotomy.

 If Tim's calculations are correct (I don't have T5)
 then it appears that DGP's template has been abandoned
 & the original CT has been put back in place.

 I, for one, welcome that development as I  never could buy
 into the idea that such a large volume of cargo could
 continue to be shipped indefinitely w/o eventually being
 supplanted by in-system (not necessarily on-planet)
 production.

 I believe that someone (Jeff?) posted some text on this
 subject a while back that allowed for such w/o endangering
 the 3I's revenue which was one the major arguments used
 to support MT-DGP's position.

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 On Fri, 8/22/14, Craig Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
 wrote:

  Subject: Re: [TML] expected ship traffic

  To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com

  Date: Friday, August 22, 2014, 12:50 PM

  I've

  always thought that most interstellar shipping, like
 most

  shipping today, would be done by large, scheduled
 container

  ships. Small independents in their free/far/fat traders

  would fill in gaps -- whether that means visiting a
 system

  without regular freight service (for whatever reason),
 or

  getting an urgent cargo delivered ahead of the usual

  schedule, or carrying something the regulars won't
 touch

  for legal or other reasons. A free trader trying to
 compete

  head to head against the big guys is doomed; they
 can't

  beat the economies of scale. Nor will most honest

  business-sophonts do business with a shady tramp

  freighter's crew when the fully bonded, easily sued

  megacorp is an option.

  For shipping volume

  calculations, I recommend Far Trader ( http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/traveller/fartrader/

  ); from what I recall, it produced very reasonable
 figures.

  (The worked example calculating the traffic between the
 two

  main Vegan worlds made my head spin.)

  On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at

  11:59 AM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>

  wrote:

  This

  email was sent from yahoo.com
 which

  does not allow forwarding of emails via email lists.

  Therefore the sender's email address (xxxxxx@yahoo.com)

  has been replaced with a dummy one. The original
 message

  follows:

  --------------------------------------------

  On Fri, 8/22/14, Timothy Collinson <xxxxxx@port.ac.uk>

  wrote:

   Subject: [TML] expected ship traffic

   To: "xxxxxx@simplelists.com"

  <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>

   Date: Friday, August 22, 2014, 9:53 AM

   Hi there,

   Am I reading

   this correctly?  

   page 435 of the T5 core

   rules give a figure for 'expected ship
 traffic'

  -

   the expected interstellar ship traffic for a

   starport.

   S = 10^Ix /

   H

   where:S = total

   ships per week

   Ix = Importance H = Average Cargo Hold Capacity = 100
 for

  most

   worlds

   OK, so I'm looking at

   Neala in Ilelish Sector whose importance = 1

   So I make that a total of 1

   ship every 10 weeks.  And a B class

   starport!

   Is that right or am I

   missing something?

   Nearby Gypsy has an

   Importance of 2 so it manages 1 ship per week.  (And

  again

   a B class starport).

   Is traffic really this

   low?

   cheers

   tc

  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

  If that's NOT a typo then it so long to MT's

  interpretation of what 'maritime'
 (post-container

  cargo 20th century Earth) means.

  However, even under the original CT definition (17th
 century

  Earth), it seems a little 'light'.

  BTW, how much cargo can the CT Free,Far, &

  'Fat'Trader carry?

  p.s. I would argue that whether not not a world is on a
 J1

  'Main' should also factor in as otherwise the

  ubiquitous FreeTrader can't go there.

  ===================================================================================================

  -----

  The Traveller Mailing List

  Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml

  Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com

  To unsubscribe from this list please goto

  http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=PltOdItWBSgOP4y0Q6abkGbDI1eus0lz

  --

  Craig Berry (http://google.com/+CraigBerry)

  "Eternity is in love with the productions

  of time." - William Blake

  -----

  The Traveller Mailing List

  Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml

  Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com

  To unsubscribe from this list please goto

  http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=EwREIRgLK8vaUEhNlnoNdSGKwnjoID8a

 -----

 The Traveller Mailing List

 Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml

 Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com

 To unsubscribe from this list please goto

 http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=Qjs81DnfPhuRQ7Rw3I0XVltos3d36yjy

 -----
 The Traveller Mailing List
 Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml
 Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com
 To unsubscribe from this list please goto
 http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=PltOdItWBSgOP4y0Q6abkGbDI1eus0lz

 --
 Craig Berry (http://google.com/+CraigBerry)
 "Eternity is in love with the productions
 of time." - William Blake

 -----
 The Traveller Mailing List
 Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml
 Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com
 To unsubscribe from this list please goto
 http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=EwREIRgLK8vaUEhNlnoNdSGKwnjoID8a