Sharks, Spiders and Pod Layyers

kzt wrote:

SWM wrote:I don't think you read my statement correctly. In my scenario you cam move 30% faster, but it costs 50% more to do so. So in this scenario, if you can't get people to pay you more, you can get 30% more money, but it is costing you 50% more money. You are losing money if you do this.

Yes, I'm arguing that this assumption is absurd. There is no V^2 friction from water in space, and your fuel is the most common element in the universe. Military grade hyper generator designs have been stable (prior to the MA) for literally centuries, so it's not like you have any problem buying them or they are leading edge technology.

Do you suppose resistance to using the fastest hypergenerators may be less a matter of the expenses you can count on (the system itself to start, ancillary bits, upkeep, crew count, crew skill, etc.) and more a matter of risk?

At least historically in the Honorverse - going further back - higher hyperbands have been risky, and the military ships at least do not normally risk using the highest ones they can use. Military ships need to be available at particular places at particular times far, far more than most cargoes do, so building the ships so they can go that fast if they need to (and incidentally go faster safely than merchies can at all) makes some sense - and much more sense than doing so for bulk carriers. Courier ships and deep space surveys let it rip just because they put so few people and such little stuff at risk when they do, and coming in second with the "goods" in their case means you've completely wasted your effort (along with all the risk you did run).

It's also possible that, over time, use of the higher bands has become much less risky than it once was and that merchant shipping (and/or the insurance companies) hasn't yet caught up with that in practice.

JeffEngel wrote:Do you suppose resistance to using the fastest hypergenerators may be less a matter of the expenses you can count on (the system itself to start, ancillary bits, upkeep, crew count, crew skill, etc.) and more a matter of risk?

At least historically in the Honorverse - going further back - higher hyperbands have been risky, and the military ships at least do not normally risk using the highest ones they can use. Military ships need to be available at particular places at particular times far, far more than most cargoes do, so building the ships so they can go that fast if they need to (and incidentally go faster safely than merchies can at all) makes some sense - and much more sense than doing so for bulk carriers. Courier ships and deep space surveys let it rip just because they put so few people and such little stuff at risk when they do, and coming in second with the "goods" in their case means you've completely wasted your effort (along with all the risk you did run).

It's also possible that, over time, use of the higher bands has become much less risky than it once was and that merchant shipping (and/or the insurance companies) hasn't yet caught up with that in practice.

One of the infodumps on hyper travel also had the tidbit that courier ships, in order to routinely use the highest bands, take extra precautions compared to even many military ships -- despite using the same military grade hyper generators.

runsforcelery wrote:Courier boat crews do receive additional training before they're assigned to the duty. Their equipment is essentially the same as any hyper-capable ship's, except that it is maintained within much closer tolerances. There is a certain amount of "play" in hyper generators and [inertial] compensators; that's why a ship with a particularly good engineer can afford to push its compensator harder and cut its safety margin thinner than a ship with a less skilled engineer. Courier boat engineers are highly trained, and their generators, compensators, and nodes are overhauled at least twice as frequently as those of ships which will not normally be operating as high in the hyper bands as they will.

Jonathan_S wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Do you suppose resistance to using the fastest hypergenerators may be less a matter of the expenses you can count on (the system itself to start, ancillary bits, upkeep, crew count, crew skill, etc.) and more a matter of risk?

At least historically in the Honorverse - going further back - higher hyperbands have been risky, and the military ships at least do not normally risk using the highest ones they can use. Military ships need to be available at particular places at particular times far, far more than most cargoes do, so building the ships so they can go that fast if they need to (and incidentally go faster safely than merchies can at all) makes some sense - and much more sense than doing so for bulk carriers. Courier ships and deep space surveys let it rip just because they put so few people and such little stuff at risk when they do, and coming in second with the "goods" in their case means you've completely wasted your effort (along with all the risk you did run).

It's also possible that, over time, use of the higher bands has become much less risky than it once was and that merchant shipping (and/or the insurance companies) hasn't yet caught up with that in practice.

One of the infodumps on hyper travel also had the tidbit that courier ships, in order to routinely use the highest bands, take extra precautions compared to even many military ships -- despite using the same military grade hyper generators.

runsforcelery wrote:Courier boat crews do receive additional training before they're assigned to the duty. Their equipment is essentially the same as any hyper-capable ship's, except that it is maintained within much closer tolerances. There is a certain amount of "play" in hyper generators and [inertial] compensators; that's why a ship with a particularly good engineer can afford to push its compensator harder and cut its safety margin thinner than a ship with a less skilled engineer. Courier boat engineers are highly trained, and their generators, compensators, and nodes are overhauled at least twice as frequently as those of ships which will not normally be operating as high in the hyper bands as they will.

Thanks.

You know, it is curious that militaries wouldn't go for that additional training and maintenance for the sake of the greater speed that the higher hyperbands permit. (Or being safer while using higher bands than they do in fact use, if not the very highest ones they could use.) I suppose that the fact that navies - at least the walls of battle and their screening units - do spend most of their time in a single star system means that even if they do splurge that way, the training may get rusty from disuse.

JeffEngel wrote:Thanks.

You know, it is curious that militaries wouldn't go for that additional training and maintenance for the sake of the greater speed that the higher hyperbands permit. (Or being safer while using higher bands than they do in fact use, if not the very highest ones they could use.) I suppose that the fact that navies - at least the walls of battle and their screening units - do spend most of their time in a single star system means that even if they do splurge that way, the training may get rusty from disuse.

Cost and benefit.

More or less Manticore has a ship in the yards 15% percent of the time. Not only are you spending twice as much now you need another 1 ship for each 6 ships to cover the time that they are in the yards. You also need twice the refit capacity.

The training part means that instead of training a 30 person crew on a dispatch boat (do we even know how many are engineers) A PRN BC has ~300, IIRC.

Not to mention the fact that all those civilian courier guys are getting paid a lot more money. The military can segregate some to get the same for less on its couriers.

A little subject drift.

Whereas on the Hali Sowle their idea on engineering staff shows what is required on a typical merchant. How cow batman!!!

Even without a trained idiot a merchant grade component engineering department operates between refits(many years) with no problems. If a problem happens, suck it up you are dead, unless another ship is there to bail your butt out. That part that failed should have been replaced at least 100,000 hours ago, according to Andrew. Think about that divide by 24 that is 4,167 days past due. Divide by 365 that is ~11.4 years. How long is its designed use(boggles me) Compared to military stuff that last ~35% as long.

If you are on a military ship that is in use you are lucky to get 3 or 4 years. On average that military ship will spend at least 4 times as much time hanging out somewhere than a merchant ship which is getting paid to get stuff from here to there.

Been there done that watching ships go cruising by at 15+ knots while I hung out at 3 knots to nowhere. But hey if we needed to we were rated for 30 knots according to Jane's.

Have fun,
T2M

wastedfly wrote:

WLBjork wrote:2. Radio and telephone communication on Earth are effectively instantaneous. As such, it is quick and easy to check up on pretty much every shipping company and find the most competitive to transport your cargo.
In the Honorverse, you can instantaneously check up on any shipping company with a planetary presence, but other communication with off-planet companies requires the use of a courier boat, and days or weeks of waiting.
Not only that, but a company with planetary presence most likely has ships calling on a regular basis, so your cargo can probably be squeezed in somewhere. Go off-planet and not only do you have to send the courier again with the signed contract, but you now need to wait for a ship to be diverted to your local orbital facility.

1) A nodal shipping system will be present.
EDIT: Obviously take the major nodes(WHJ) out and you now have a major problem. Of course Manticore also took the ships out as well...

2) Honorverse does not have manufacturing companies as shippers. Historically on earth this has not been true either except in the case of very close distance shipping of say, iron ore.

3) Your captain is in charge of the contract negotiations. Same goes for payment. Couriers are not going anywhere. Done via credit vouchers. This is how it worked before the age of phone communication. Look in the pearls. RFC has several posts concerning how monetary and contractual obligations are dealt with concerning interstellar trade.

Enjoy the search. http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/series/Harrington/

EDIT: Grrr: Can't find shipping Pearl on how paid. Just read it a month ago too...

Where I was trying to go with the "no instantaneous communication" thing was that a cargo is waiting until a ship enters the system before there is a chance if it going anywhere.

Depending on where the cargo I going, there's rarely going to be a point to offering a bonus.

At one extreme, Manticore is so busy, it will be unusual that *someone* isn't going at least in your direction, and probably to the general region of space - so bonuses are unnecessary.

A backwater on the other hand may have to wait a half year or more for the local tramp to come around, and the cargo has to go with that ship, there's no real choice.

What the backwater cannot do is send a message to say "we have a cargo that needs picking up", because no one is going to hear it out of system - well, not until it propagates to the next nearest system anyway. And that is where the bonus would work.

The other problem is, long distance transport can travel in multiple hulls - so you'd have to offer bonuses per stage. I can see that becoming problematic.

I found the textev for the difference between military and civilian equipment. This is about impellers, but I expect it would work for hyper generators as well.

Lt Hearns attack on the Dromedary class merchant ship that the Peep StateSec pirates had captured.

Shadow of Saganami wrote:But merchant designers had other priorities, and civilian-grade impellers were fifty to sixty percent less massive, on a node-for-node basis, than military-grade installations. The military-grade systems were commensurately more expensive, and their design lifetimes were substantially shorter, all of which was highly undesirable from the viewpoint of designing a durable, low-maintenance, low-cost freight-hauling vessel.

The size won't make much of a difference in a multi-million ton freighter, but the cost and designed lifetimes will factor in significantly.