There's a huge amount of large-container-ship traffic now, in real
life, with voyages measured in weeks to months -- and with all trading
partners living in the same ecosphere, with access to resources much
more similar than what one would find between planets.

As for comm lag, that really only matters for non-commodity cargo. You
know months in advance when you're going to start shipping the new
model of grav bike, and how long it will take shipments to reach
dealers, so you build that into your plans (for shipping and for
marketing) well in advance. Again, this is routinely done in the real
world.

And yes, this does tend to lead to near-monopolies; look at e.g.
Maersk. They started out by ruthlessly dominating shipping in the
Baltic a few centuries ago, and haven't lost that drive since. And, of
course, in Traveller this shipping dominance by e.g. Tukera is a
matter of canon.

For more urgent non-bulk-commodity shipments, you turn to the
equivalent of UPS or FedEx, which charge a huge premium over bulk
shippers in exchange for getting things there much more quickly. In
Traveller, this can be accomplished through some combination of using
higher-jump ships, using more direct routing, and departing on demand
rather than on a schedule.

Finally, for illegal or otherwise clandestine cargoes, you turn to
smugglers, who charge an enormous premium for the risk they incur, and
also have a distressing tendency to decide it's more lucrative to take
the goods themselves.

On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 12:19 PM, 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:
>
> Actually, there's another issue.
>
> I just don't believe that there would be *that* much trade volume on even the *heaviest* routes.
>
> I mean anyone can produce a table that will indicate that there will a gazillion dTons 'tween here & there but anyone else can also produce one that will show almost nothing in the same situation. From what I've read it appears that T5 leans heavily towards the latter rather than the former but haven't there been differences amongst each morph of Trav in this regard?
>
> I can remember reading about that on this very list, back in first 1/2 of the '90's.
> Someone, in response to a question, posted about how MT changed the 3I (or TU, can't remember exactly) from a setting of smaller merchantmen to one of massively gigantic ones.
>
> Still, that's where the 17th century maritime analogy, that has always been the template for the TU from the beginning, comes in.
> Esp by the late 18th century you had the monster warships w/ smaller merchantmen.
>
> Then there's also the comm lag.
>
> Obviously that's not present these days so how would that affect things?
> I think it would argue for smaller ship & more frequent visits.
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Mon, 8/25/14, Craig Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Re: [TML] expected ship traffic
>  To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
>  Date: Monday, August 25, 2014, 9:42 AM
>
>  That's
>  the basic issue at the core of this discussion. Economies of
>  scale will always win (in the absence of market-distorting
>  regulations).
>  Personally,
>  I think the CT "feel" works just fine in a TU with
>  100 kdt+ container ships. Just as in the real world you
>  couldn't run a successful cargo business with an 80'
>  tramp between Long Beach and Tolyo, you're not going to
>  last long running a Far Trader between Mora and Vincennes.
>  But conversely, just as in the real world you can run a
>  successful tramp freighter business between backwater ports
>  in the South Pacific, you can do so in Traveller between the
>  backwater worlds of the Marches.
>
>
>
>  On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at
>  9:14 AM, Bruce Johnson <xxxxxx@pharmacy.arizona.edu>
>  wrote:
>
>
>
>
>  On Aug 25, 2014, at 7:54 AM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list)
>  <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
>  wrote:
>
>
>
>  >
>
>  > It's not a question of of monster ships vs 200dT
>  ships.
>
>  >
>
>  > It's a question of mostly ships up to 1000dT's
>  w/ a few going higher, may be even as high as
>  20KdT's.
>
>  >
>
>  > And it's every 10 weeks in *some* systems, but more
>  (even *much* more) in some systems & even less in
>  others.
>
>  > And that applies to not only the 3I but the TU in
>  general.
>
>
>
>  If you are doing "much more" trade along a
>  route with multiple 20KDton ships, one 200KDton Dt ship will
>  handle the trade and be more profitable.
>
>
>
>  --
>
>  Bruce Johnson
>
>
>
>  "Wherever you go, there you are." B. Banzai,
>  PhD
>
>
>
>  -----
>
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>
>
>
>  --
>  Craig Berry (http://google.com/+CraigBerry)
>  "Eternity is in love with the productions
>  of time." - William Blake
>
>
>
>
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--
Craig Berry (http://google.com/+CraigBerry)
"Eternity is in love with the productions of time." - William Blake