Lacöon I

Zakharra wrote: Something like that might be worth the cost of a starship and a viable use between the major systems and node systems in the outer rings of the Verge and beyond.

Are you suggesting that the top 20 firms on Beowulf each have a fleet of couriers that each run to earth every day, along with a separate fleet of couriers on earth that the top 25 firms on earth run to Beowulf every day?

kzt wrote:

Zakharra wrote: Something like that might be worth the cost of a starship and a viable use between the major systems and node systems in the outer rings of the Verge and beyond.

Are you suggesting that the top 20 firms on Beowulf each have a fleet of couriers that each run to earth every day, along with a separate fleet of couriers on earth that the top 25 firms on earth run to Beowulf every day?

I'm sure they have regular couriers/dispatch boats making regular runs (one to several times a week), but for very important deals involving hundreds of millions/billions of whatever currency,I'm sure it's common to have special couriers/dispatch boats make a run just for that, as well as hauling all of the assembled transactions that have accumulated at that time. Time is money in finances and the faster data gets to the main offices, the better said institution can react and plan. When a dispatch boat is just a hull, a dozen crew or so and massive amounts of high density of computer data storage banks, I doubt they cost that much to keep running compared to say.. an average commercial freighter. Or even if they do cost more, the companies have them because it's a lot more convenient for the company to have transportation they need when they need it.

kzt wrote:Are you suggesting that the top 20 firms on Beowulf each have a fleet of couriers that each run to earth every day, along with a separate fleet of couriers on earth that the top 25 firms on earth run to Beowulf every day?

That would be kind of crazy. Even if for some crazy reason it started that way you'd expect significant market consolidation around message delivery .

Corp A and Corp B decided to share their ships. Even if each cut back their contributions 25% they'd still have 50% more ships carry messages than before, which reduced lag for both of them.
Corp C wants in on the action and throws their ships in and now the 3 get much faster message service than their competitors, and for less individually than they or their competitors were spending; which presumable gives them a business advantage.


But more likely for routine runs that like there is a company the focuses just on providing timely courier service and all the companies pay to send their traffic. After all once you're sending a ship the marginal cost to carry a few more terrabytes of data is darn near zero. Might as well carry all the data anyone is interested in sending to that destination.


I see news organizations as a bit different. I assume they'd use commercial dispatch ships for normal distribution - what they'd reserve their dispatch boats for is to ensure they can get major stories from wherever they occur. (Not entirely dissimilar to why some news stations have helicopters now -- it's not to get video tape to the broadcast studio in a hurry, it's to get eyes and/or reports to where the news is happening)

Zakharra wrote:

I'm sure they have regular couriers/dispatch boats making regular runs (one to several times a week), but for very important deals involving hundreds of millions/billions of whatever currency,I'm sure it's common to have special couriers/dispatch boats make a run just for that, as well as hauling all of the assembled transactions that have accumulated at that time. Time is money in finances and the faster data gets to the main offices, the better said institution can react and plan. When a dispatch boat is just a hull, a dozen crew or so and massive amounts of high density of computer data storage banks, I doubt they cost that much to keep running compared to say.. an average commercial freighter. Or even if they do cost more, the companies have them because it's a lot more convenient for the company to have transportation they need when they need it.

Actually, a freighter doesn't need many more people than a dispatch boat (cargo loading/unloading would be done primarily by station/starport workers; not freighter crew), and the impellers and hyper generators are freighters are less powerful (but therefore cheaper and lower maintenance) - so the dispatch boat needs a lot more maintenance on its propulsion.
Most of a freighter is unpressurized area (the holds), so the life support systems are probably about the same - a bit more because of the longer habitable corridors to get to the impeller rooms - but probably no more that 4x the volume to cover with life support, and for a similar number of crew.

So I'd expect a dispatch boat to be more expensive to buy than the freighter (the military grade wedge, sails, hyper generator, and particle shielding would all be more expensive than their freighter counterparts; probably more than offsetting the huge amount of extra hull material needed to build the freighter). I'd also expect it to have higher operating costs - both more maintenance and also if it's focused on minimum transit times it'll spend more time cutting "cross country" in hyper so it won't be able to power itself off grav waves for nearly as much of it's transits as the freighter would)

Jonathan_S wrote:

kzt wrote:Are you suggesting that the top 20 firms on Beowulf each have a fleet of couriers that each run to earth every day, along with a separate fleet of couriers on earth that the top 25 firms on earth run to Beowulf every day?

That would be kind of crazy. Even if for some crazy reason it started that way you'd expect significant market consolidation around message delivery .

Corp A and Corp B decided to share their ships. Even if each cut back their contributions 25% they'd still have 50% more ships carry messages than before, which reduced lag for both of them.
Corp C wants in on the action and throws their ships in and now the 3 get much faster message service than their competitors, and for less individually than they or their competitors were spending; which presumable gives them a business advantage.


But more likely for routine runs that like there is a company the focuses just on providing timely courier service and all the companies pay to send their traffic. After all once you're sending a ship the marginal cost to carry a few more terrabytes of data is darn near zero. Might as well carry all the data anyone is interested in sending to that destination.


I see news organizations as a bit different. I assume they'd use commercial dispatch ships for normal distribution - what they'd reserve their dispatch boats for is to ensure they can get major stories from wherever they occur. (Not entirely dissimilar to why some news stations have helicopters now -- it's not to get video tape to the broadcast studio in a hurry, it's to get eyes and/or reports to where the news is happening)

I'm not so sure about that. Several of them might use the dispatch boats of a specialized corporation that's not owned by any of them, but them sharing the same boat if one of them owns it? No. Too much risk of espionage. Better to use your own vessels or ones used by corporations that specialize in data delivery, but much better to use your own ships for additional safety.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Zakharra wrote: I'm sure they have regular couriers/dispatch boats making regular runs (one to several times a week), but for very important deals involving hundreds of millions/billions of whatever currency,I'm sure it's common to have special couriers/dispatch boats make a run just for that, as well as hauling all of the assembled transactions that have accumulated at that time. Time is money in finances and the faster data gets to the main offices, the better said institution can react and plan. When a dispatch boat is just a hull, a dozen crew or so and massive amounts of high density of computer data storage banks, I doubt they cost that much to keep running compared to say.. an average commercial freighter. Or even if they do cost more, the companies have them because it's a lot more convenient for the company to have transportation they need when they need it.

Actually, a freighter doesn't need many more people than a dispatch boat (cargo loading/unloading would be done primarily by station/starport workers; not freighter crew), and the impellers and hyper generators are freighters are less powerful (but therefore cheaper and lower maintenance) - so the dispatch boat needs a lot more maintenance on its propulsion.
Most of a freighter is unpressurized area (the holds), so the life support systems are probably about the same - a bit more because of the longer habitable corridors to get to the impeller rooms - but probably no more that 4x the volume to cover with life support, and for a similar number of crew.

So I'd expect a dispatch boat to be more expensive to buy than the freighter (the military grade wedge, sails, hyper generator, and particle shielding would all be more expensive than their freighter counterparts; probably more than offsetting the huge amount of extra hull material needed to build the freighter). I'd also expect it to have higher operating costs - both more maintenance and also if it's focused on minimum transit times it'll spend more time cutting "cross country" in hyper so it won't be able to power itself off grav waves for nearly as much of it's transits as the freighter would)

Very likely. I realized that after I had posted, but it still stands, even adding in the cost, the convenience of having your own ships would be a huge incentive for the corporation to have them. That's why many large corps now have corporate jets. It's very convenient for them to have private transportation rather than having to depend upon slower more public (and less secure) transportation. Corporate jets have the added feature of being a lot more secure and able to go right to the nearest airport of the destination. Less chances of something intercepting any valuable data.

That being said, do I think they'd have many hundreds of such ships? No. About a hundred or so? Possibly. When you're dealing in data that has the transfer of hundreds of billions/trillions of currency, the cost of a dispatch boat pales in comparison and being able to act days or even just hours earlier than your rivals? Priceless.

Zakharra wrote: I'm not so sure about that. Several of them might use the dispatch boats of a specialized corporation that's not owned by any of them, but them sharing the same boat if one of them owns it? No. Too much risk of espionage. Better to use your own vessels or ones used by corporations that specialize in data delivery, but much better to use your own ships for additional safety.

Cryptography works in the Honorverse. It works really, really well.

Oh, and the statue of Lacöon in the Vatican is damn impressive.

kzt wrote:

Zakharra wrote: I'm not so sure about that. Several of them might use the dispatch boats of a specialized corporation that's not owned by any of them, but them sharing the same boat if one of them owns it? No. Too much risk of espionage. Better to use your own vessels or ones used by corporations that specialize in data delivery, but much better to use your own ships for additional safety.

Cryptography works in the Honorverse. It works really, really well.

You still don't give them the opportunity to get access to your data. It could be as easy as losing it or just delaying releasing it. Any ways you look at it though, letting a competitor be one of the only ways your data gets to other centers is asinine. Good cryptography or not that's not a good business plan. Better to have your own reliable vessels than that.

Zakharra wrote:You still don't give them the opportunity to get access to your data. It could be as easy as losing it or just delaying releasing it.

A peek at the security measures of a Dispatch Boat. Havenite, true, but Solarian Financial groups can afford even better data security than Navies normally use.

Echoes of Honor
Chapter Forty-five wrote:"My God," Justin Bouret said fervently from where he'd lurked outside the pickup's range. "I thought for a while they were going to come up here and demand to take the message banks apart!"

"Wouldn't have done them any good, and Citizen General Chernock knew it," Heathrow said in an oddly detached tone. He felt the tremors of relief tingling in his fingertips and toes and raised one hand to mop sweat from his forehead without even trying to conceal it from his subordinates. "Even if they did take the banks apart, they couldn't make any sense of them," the citizen lieutenant commander went on. "Unless they have either Shilo's authentication codes or a copy of StateSec GHQ's override software, that is."

Zakharra wrote:Any ways you look at it though, letting a competitor be one of the only ways your data gets to other centers is asinine. Good cryptography or not that's not a good business plan. Better to have your own reliable vessels than that.

You're still thinking in terms of modern communications and travel capabilities and cost. Financial data traveling between centers would travel on any available carrier in secure message databanks like those described above (and in the surrounding scene) and important information would likely be duplicated and sent via different carriers over different routes.

The East India Companies are actually a pretty good example; It wouldn't be uncommon for a year or two to elapse between exchanges of correspondence because it took that long for ships to travel to India and Back.

Hi Jonathan_S,

Since a dispatch boat is somewhere around 40,000 tons and modern freighters are up around 8.5 M tons, I suspect the sheer scale of the different sizes [200+ times etc] to come into play regarding cost.

In the past we've often used M$5K/ton to estimate the cost of warships, so using that rate a db might cost M$200M, versus a 7 M ton freighter costing roughly only a billion Manticore dollars, so the db costs 35 times as much per ton, but not more than one.

Regarding Beowulf-Terra db's, since contact between Manticore is so regular [every 5.5 hours if not more often] I suspect db's leave Beowulf for Sol at least twice a day, for ten each way with overhauls etc refitting a couple more in each system for at least two dozen, which some might consider a pretty penny, yet given the billions if not tens, hundreds and even thousands of billions of M$ or solarian credits etc, such a fleet easily pays for itself.

How many such routes there are or their frequency we can't say, but the fact the Lacoon operations guarantee their safe passage indicates the SEM and RMN at least recognise their importance, even if the mandarins still haven't, since we have no textev they've done anything to stop such db's at their ends, however logical such might be according to some posters here.

L

PS: Sorry, I though I'd posted this hours ago.


[quote="Jonathan_S"][quote="kzt"]
Are you suggesting that the top 20 firms on Beowulf each have a fleet of couriers that each run to earth every day, along with a separate fleet of couriers on earth that the top 25 firms on earth run to Beowulf every day?[/quote]That would be kind of crazy. Even if for some crazy reason it started that way you'd expect significant market consolidation around message delivery .

Corp A and Corp B decided to share their ships. Even if each cut back their contributions 25% they'd still have 50% more ships carry messages than before, which reduced lag for both of them.
Corp C wants in on the action and throws their ships in and now the 3 get much faster message service than their competitors, and for less individually than they or their competitors were spending; which presumable gives them a business advantage.


But more likely for routine runs that like there is a company the focuses just on providing timely courier service and all the companies pay to send their traffic. After all once you're sending a ship the marginal cost to carry a few more terrabytes of data is darn near zero. Might as well carry [i]all[/i] the data anyone is interested in sending to that destination.


I see news organizations as a bit different. I [i]assume[/i] they'd use commercial dispatch ships for normal distribution - what they'd reserve their dispatch boats for is to ensure they can get major stories from wherever they occur. (Not entirely dissimilar to why some news stations have helicopters now -- it's not to get video tape to the broadcast studio in a hurry, it's to get eyes and/or reports to where the news is happening)[quote="Zakharra"]


I'm sure they have regular couriers/dispatch boats making regular runs (one to several times a week), but for very important deals involving hundreds of millions/billions of whatever currency,I'm sure it's common to have special couriers/dispatch boats make a run just for that, as well as hauling all of the assembled transactions that have accumulated at that time. Time is money in finances and the faster data gets to the main offices, the better said institution can react and plan. When a dispatch boat is just a hull, a dozen crew or so and massive amounts of high density of computer data storage banks, I doubt they cost that much to keep running compared to say.. an average commercial freighter. Or even if they do cost more, the companies have them because it's a lot more convenient for the company to have transportation they need when they need it.[/quote]Actually, a freighter doesn't need many more people than a dispatch boat (cargo loading/unloading would be done primarily by station/starport workers; not freighter crew), and the impellers and hyper generators are freighters are less powerful (but therefore cheaper and lower maintenance) - so the dispatch boat needs a lot more maintenance on its propulsion.
Most of a freighter is unpressurized area (the holds), so the life support systems are probably about the same - a bit more because of the longer habitable corridors to get to the impeller rooms - but probably no more that 4x the volume to cover with life support, and for a similar number of crew.

So I'd expect a dispatch boat to be more expensive to buy than the freighter (the military grade wedge, sails, hyper generator, and particle shielding would all be more expensive than their freighter counterparts; probably more than offsetting the huge amount of extra hull material needed to build the freighter). I'd also expect it to have higher operating costs - both more maintenance and also if it's focused on minimum transit times it'll spend more time cutting "cross country" in hyper so it won't be able to power itself off grav waves for nearly as much of it's transits as the freighter would)[/quote]

lyonheart wrote:In the past we've often used M$5K/ton to estimate the cost of warships, so using that rate a db might cost M$200M, versus a 7 M ton freighter costing roughly only a billion Manticore dollars, so the db costs 35 times as much per ton, but not more than one.

Dispatch Boats carrying financial information or priority mail will be more expensive due to the secure message banks required for such service. Dispatch Boats routinely carrying diplomatic, financial, or high-priority mail would need the best security for messages, pouches and parcels that Honorverse Tech can provide.

lyonheart wrote:...I suspect db's leave Beowulf for Sol at least twice a day,

I suspect the schedule is more like the advertisement above promises -- daily for the main route and longer intervals for subsidiary routes.

Click on the picture for a history of Wells Fargo, and compare to the needs of Interstellar communications and Finance.

I think Lloyds Of London's banking division has similar roots but with sailing ships instead of stagecoaches.