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

Which is exactly why the 3I has all those J6 Fleet Couriers racing around!

I can easily imagine that the MegaCorps have the same capability or something similar.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Wed, 6/14/17, C. Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] Dumb Q about Passages
 To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
 Date: Wednesday, June 14, 2017, 12:57 PM

 One can
 imagine a market for this developing on routes between major
 worlds. Picture a pool of loitering ships, each kept ready
 to jump on a moment's notice. Businesses wanting to get
 data to another world *right now* can bid for exclusive
 message transport. Ships that accept a bid then get the data
 beamed aboard (encrypted, naturally) with instructions where
 to send it in the target system. If a lot of traffic like
 this is happening, the market would probably be automated to
 connect businesses and ships quickly. And of course the
 really big players would have their own private messenger
 fleets, turning to the market only when they run out of
 their own ships, and perhaps putting excess ships
 temporarily on the market as well.
 Again, this would only happen
 between pairs of high-traffic, big-business worlds. In the
 backwaters, you'd still get the PC-friendly scenario of
 the frantic businessbeing running into the starport bar
 waving a wad of credits and asking who can jump a message to
 Hellengonne XIV *right now*. :)
 On Wed, Jun 14, 2017 at
 12:43 PM, Jeffrey Schwartz <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
 wrote:
 On Wed, Jun 14, 2017 at 3:29 PM,
 Christopher Sean Hilton

 <xxxxxx@vindaloo.com>
 wrote:

 > On Wed, Jun 14, 2017 at 10:43:16AM -0700, Kelly St.
 Clair wrote:

 > Also, I would expect
 some companies would gain a business advantage by

 > building small J-3 or J-4 transport ships to move staff
 from home base

 > to hot spot and back as today's companies use
 private jets and

 > helicopters. I'm reminded of an episode of Chasing
 Classic Cars where

 > a business man took the host to Colorado for a day trip
 to inspect a

 > Ferrari Daytona. Via private aviation, that trip
 probably cost in the

 > $10k ~ 50k range but the car in question was worth
 several hundred

 > thousand dollars if not millions and it had special
 meaning to the

 > person paying for the trip.

 >

 I would suspect that J3 or J4 would likely be quick
 enough to beat the

 X-boats in some routes... which would mean that a business
 could be

 making decisions about an event before the competition even
 knew the

 event occurred.

 Sort of like the current High Frequency Trading push on the
 stock

 market to shave microseconds off the communications lag in
 order to

 make a better stock deal, but on a longer time frame.

 Knowing the price of ____ is going to skyrocket a day before
 everyone

 else knows could potentially pay for the ship in one use.

 Of course, that hinges on the ship being available to carry
 the

 message from the site of "unexpected events" to
 the center of commerce

 in a reasonable time... which could, potentially, make for a
 PC

 Adventure thread. "W-Boats" ("We're there
 one before X") hires the

 players to operate a fast courier that is dispatched to
 potential

 "places of interest" and told to keep watch for
 "an event", then rush

 home to report.

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