Merchantmen, speed, and trade cartels

For the foreseeable future, I suspect that the streak drive, even after the GA has figured it out, will remain exclusively in military/government ships, not being released for any sort of civilian, much less commercial, useage. Even after the capability it grants becomes known, which will likely initially be held secret, for however long that lasts.


The Streak drive may lead to more reliable, more efficient lesser hyperdrives, and thus potentially merchies will gradually start to use drives going a band or two higher.
But it might not, too, in which case there will be little or no impact.

Kytheros wrote:For the foreseeable future, I suspect that the streak drive, even after the GA has figured it out, will remain exclusively in military/government ships, not being released for any sort of civilian, much less commercial, useage. Even after the capability it grants becomes known, which will likely initially be held secret, for however long that lasts.


The Streak drive may lead to more reliable, more efficient lesser hyperdrives, and thus potentially merchies will gradually start to use drives going a band or two higher.
But it might not, too, in which case there will be little or no impact.

I tend to agree, both that the details will be held secret as long as practical and that most merchant ships will only eventually benefit if the breakthroughs improve the civilian grade hyper generators.

After all if it doesn't make economic sense to spring for current 'off the shelf' mil grade generators it's unlikely the higher speed (and presumably higher costs/higher maintenance) of the streak drive would be enough to tip the economics.

Weird Harold wrote:Streak Drives will probably filter down into new build merchanters once the cost comes down through supplying the classes listed above. Eventually Streak Drives will become the "standard" but it will take a century or two for older, slower ships to wear out and be replaced.

Military hyper generators have never become standard in merchant shipping vessels despite being a well-known and well-tested tech for centuries.

drothgery wrote:Military hyper generators have never become standard in merchant shipping vessels despite being a well-known and well-tested tech for centuries.

True, but merchant ships don't waddle along in the Alpha Band either. At one time, access to beta, gamma, and delta bands were undoubtedly "military grade" but now those are considered "civilian" bands where merchant ships travel.

All the "analysis" being done here is without any of the pertinent data. So you can't come up with any idea what makes economic sense without a good idea what a 8mt ship costs, what is the incremental cost of going to a better drive, what the average monthly operating costs is, what the incremental average monthly operating costs of a better hyperdrive is, what the interest rate on the note for the ship is, what the load fraction is and the average charge for hauling cargo is, etc.

Essentially we know nothing about how the economics of a freighter work and how it would be changed by using a better hyperdrive.

Grashtel wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Streak Drive ships- after the tech becomes available to anyone other than the Alignment- will probably be limited to 1st military ships and then to highly specialized transports for high value premium products.

I suspect that it will be showing up in couriers before warships due to couriers being cheaper and faster to build and Streak Drive couriers being even more useful than Streak Drive warships

Personally, I suspect they will be outfitted on SD(P)s first. In order to fit a hyper generator twice the standard size on a courier boat, you would need to design and build brand new hull around the new generator. And before you could do that, you would need to know at least approximately the detentions that the streak generator will be.

On an SD(P), on the other hand, you can wall off a small section at the front of the pod bay, and stash the streak drive there. You can convert all of your SD(p)s as fast as you can make streak drives, easy peasy.

Brigade XO wrote:Streak Drive ships- after the tech becomes available to anyone other than the Alignment- will probably be limited to 1st military ships and then to highly specialized transports for high value premium products.

Grashtel wrote:I suspect that it will be showing up in couriers before warships due to couriers being cheaper and faster to build and Streak Drive couriers being even more useful than Streak Drive warships

crewdude48 wrote:Personally, I suspect they will be outfitted on SD(P)s first. In order to fit a hyper generator twice the standard size on a courier boat, you would need to design and build brand new hull around the new generator. And before you could do that, you would need to know at least approximately the detentions that the streak generator will be.

On an SD(P), on the other hand, you can wall off a small section at the front of the pod bay, and stash the streak drive there. You can convert all of your SD(p)s as fast as you can make streak drives, easy peasy.

Or any pod-laying warship. New use for BC(P).

crewdude48 wrote:Personally, I suspect they will be outfitted on SD(P)s first.

Streak Drives might be easier to fit to podnaughts, but you'd never be able to take advantage of the additional capability because SDs don't travel alone; outrunning your scouts and screens could have very unfortunate consequences.

Weird Harold wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:Personally, I suspect they will be outfitted on SD(P)s first.

Streak Drives might be easier to fit to podnaughts, but you'd never be able to take advantage of the additional capability because SDs don't travel alone; outrunning your scouts and screens could have very unfortunate consequences.

In fact it'd be more useful for your scouts to be able to outrun the rest of your fleet than the other way round.
At least that way they could sometimes run ahead and scout while your fleet was in route.

(Though normally prepping for a mission takes long enough there's plenty of time for non-streak scouts to get the job done before the rest of the fleet is ready to roll out)

kzt wrote:Essentially we know nothing about how the economics of a freighter work and how it would be changed by using a better hyperdrive.

But we do know that a better hyperdrive has been available and safe for a long, long time but is rarely used for civilian purposes.