Merchantmen, speed, and trade cartels

Based on a mix of some pearls, is why I originally posed this question.

Impeller Nodes pearl 1
The impeller rings of any military starship mount a total of 24 nodes: 8 alpha nodes and 16 beta nodes. The alpha nodes are mounted at 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270, and 315 degrees. The beta nodes are mounted every 15 degrees between the alpha nodes. In terms of size, an alpha node is about three times as large and massive as a beta node; in terms of the generator support required, the difference is more like six times as great, but a beta node provides about half as much power to a standard impeller wedge as an alpha node does. Thus each alpha node provides about 6.25% of a wedge's full power and each beta node provides about 3.13%, so that the alphas and betas as groups each provide 50% of the whole. (Actually, those values are halved for the full power of the wedge, since both impeller rings combine in a full-strength wedge.) The 8 alpha nodes, however, suck up as much mass as 48 beta nodes would, which is the reason beta nodes are used. It is the alpha nodes which contain the Warshawski sail components, though, and a ship cannot generate a Warshawski sail without at least 8 of them. It is possible to run a node at greater than 100% of rated capacity under emergency conditions in order to get back some of the power lost when other nodes are knocked out by combat damage, but this is a risky procedure and not one to be undertaken lightly. Freighters may sometimes carry fewer beta nodes, or even none at all. It is extremely uncommon for a ship to mount no beta nodes, but it is not unheard of, either, since cargo carriers seldom carry the inertial compensators to permit them to make full use of a "full powered" wedge, anyway.

And

Beta nodes pearl 2
Impeller rooms are cylindrical volumes located within the hull and centered fore-and-aft on the impeller ring they serve. The diameters of civilian impeller rooms are approximately 60% of the diameter of the impeller ring and approximately 1.2 times as long as they are across. They normally consist of a single, very large compartment crammed with the required generators and node support hardware. Military impeller rooms are approximately 85% as wide as the diameter of the impeller ring and approximately 1.6 times as long as they are broad.

So most of the reason a military impeller room is big, is actually due to the armoring, and all the beta nodes. Freighters on the other hand, primarily have just 8 Alpha's, and maybe a couple beta nodes to boost their in-space speed slightly.

There's no real need for maintenance on just that, and as far as I understand it, the real cause of merchies being "slow" is their compensators and hyper generators themselves. There's not much (if any) size differential in the hyper generators of military and merchies. Which places most of the speed, or lack thereof, in the compensator.


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On the economic side, trade in the honorverse really doesn't seem to matter who does the freighting it seems. Flip a coin, whatever you get is the shipper you use, seems to be the general concept. Hauptman Cartels, Dempsey Cartel, or any of the other known Manticoran "Trade Lords", all appear to be the same.

The reason someone like Hauptman Cartel (or Grayson Skydomes) are more successful, is the spotting of opportunities, and seizing them with both hands. Honor saw the potential in the dome-tech, and found a way to change the rules to allow her to invest into it, when she couldn't do it as just a steadholder. And as I pointed out in OP, Hauptman has been known to... creatively upgrade ships (the Atlas liners), or building the Nat Turners which had a high level of tech, compared to any other navy in existance.


The only place I can possible see an economic reason to pick certain shippers, is prior to Laocoon, shipping duties on using the Manticoran Junction may have inspired Solarian shippers to use Manticoran hulls for lower Junction fees. As duties went up and up, leading upto the Havenite Wars, it would have become more cost efficient to use Manty freighters to get around Junction fees, and then possibly switch back to Solarian hulls after.

That opinion is based on the Mandarin's description of exactly how much freight in the Solarian League moved in Manty hulls, for X% of the trip. Off-hand I think it was something around 50% of total trade moves at least 75% of their travel distance in a Manticoran hull.

Excluding that thought, one shipper appears to be the same as any other shipper. So after the MAlign is taken care of, and other sectors copy the Maya Sepoy Option, a shrewd merchant (like Klaus Hauptman) would be looking for new opportunities to exploit and increase their bottom line profits. Wouldn't that fall under sometimes requiring short-term expense hikes, for long-term profit margins to increase?

Somtaaw:

To answer your questions there is no better explanation that in the appendix in More than Honor, Universe of Honor Harrington. It explains why in exacting detail. Read it thoroughly.

wastedfly wrote:Somtaaw:

To answer your questions there is no better explanation that in the appendix in More than Honor, Universe of Honor Harrington. It explains why in exacting detail. Read it thoroughly.

So lazy you can only bother to post a two liner, that doesn't even pull out the information in question? That's ok, I read through the thing and there's at best ONE point which only slightly touches upon the point of this thread.

In the Warshawki Sail Logistics section, it addresses how:
-bulk freighter have the lowest speed and lowest powered sails usually travelling at 1000-1500 c
-passenger liners and higher-speed crticial cargos (such as Montanan Beef haulers) accept slightly higher overhead and run at 1500-2000 c
-warships have incredible costs and run at upto 3000c.

It then goes point out that bulk carriers might get 50 years out of their tuners, passenger liners perhaps 20, and warships are lucky to get 10. While also pointing out that usage varies wildly, warships could spend months or even years "laid up" at single planets and thus not putting tuner wear at all, while bulk carriers might see tons of usage and replace earlier.


The point of this thread, isn't addressing the economics, but "seizing opportunities", and who is likely to try some off-the-wall ideas (such as boosting their ships speed) to lock up new contracts.

If I'm on a planet, and I have three empty freighters come to my planet. This isn't typical, but we've read it does happen at least in Silesia, empty freighters will stop in random systems to check in and see if anything might be worth making regular stops for.

Of those three freighters, currently I can assign 1/3 to the Hauptman freighter, 2/4 to say the Dempsey Cartel, and 3/6 to the Solarian flagged, and roll a d6 to determine who I hire to ship my wares, whatever they may be to wherever I might need them shipped.

Or... it could just be, the Hauptman freighter's been slightly souped up, because it's got a trade factor on board looking to sign long-term trade agreements. And in the negotiations, they offer higher speed freighters for the first 20 T-years, and average speed for the remaining 30 T-years, in a 50 T-year exclusive contract. The other two Cartels simply arrived, to try and negotiate standard shipping arrangements, the same as they've done for the past 100 T-years.

Who would you sign with?

Unless you're simply shipping the most basic of non-perishables, like ore or unrefined metals, you'd probably leap at the chance to try and one-up your own competitors by getting faster delivery for a time.

Somtaaw wrote:The point of this thread, isn't addressing the economics, but "seizing opportunities", and who is likely to try some off-the-wall ideas (such as boosting their ships speed) to lock up new contracts.

If I'm on a planet, and I have three empty freighters come to my planet. This isn't typical, but we've read it does happen at least in Silesia, empty freighters will stop in random systems to check in and see if anything might be worth making regular stops for.

Of those three freighters, currently I can assign 1/3 to the Hauptman freighter, 2/4 to say the Dempsey Cartel, and 3/6 to the Solarian flagged, and roll a d6 to determine who I hire to ship my wares, whatever they may be to wherever I might need them shipped.

Or... it could just be, the Hauptman freighter's been slightly souped up, because it's got a trade factor on board looking to sign long-term trade agreements. And in the negotiations, they offer higher speed freighters for the first 20 T-years, and average speed for the remaining 30 T-years, in a 50 T-year exclusive contract. The other two Cartels simply arrived, to try and negotiate standard shipping arrangements, the same as they've done for the past 100 T-years.

Who would you sign with?

Unless you're simply shipping the most basic of non-perishables, like ore or unrefined metals, you'd probably leap at the chance to try and one-up your own competitors by getting faster delivery for a time.

But the economics play back into this. Hauptman (in your example) isn't going to offer the faster service for free. They probably want to make just as much profit margin as the other lines - so unless the faster speed comes without additional costs per run they're going to have to charge more for it.

Now some commodities would also see their profits rise on a quicker time-to-market. And there might be some benefits from getting even bulk inventory sold faster so I have to carry less inventory, and get money back sooner. But unless something balances out the higher cost for faster delivery then I've no compelling reason to cut into my profit margins, or raise my prices, just to get material to market faster.


(Of course if it was the same cost people would almost always opt for the speedier service. But the whole economics argument is that it's extremely unlikely to be the same cost for faster service; so now the question is how much extra does that service cost and is my profit higher or lower for using that service)

Just because...

OK, here is a Merchant ship routing in the Honorverse:

Manticore-Beowulf (Wormhole)
Beowulf-Atchison (78 LY in Hyper)
Atchinson-McGyver (44 LY in Hyper)
McGyver-Stearns Wormhole (one of those the MWW hasn't gotten around to identifying yet...<grin>
Stearns-Topeka (57 LY in Hyper)
Topeka-Santa Fe (36 LY in Hyper)
Santa Fe-Baslisk (60 LY in Hyper)
Baslisk-Manticore (Wormhole)

Doing some dirty calculations, old frieghter doing about 912c will take 110 days hyper transist, more modern freights at 1200c will spend 83 days in hyper, and milspec freighters (I'm saying 2000c, since 2500c+ would require more military-grade stuff than is cost-effective (be my guest to disagree) will take only 50 days in-between ports.

So you can save time. But as mentioned above, is it worth it to the customer. I mean, if four reguarly scheduled deliveries per year meet a planet's requirements for something (molydium, beef, unleaded gasoline...) and no new requirements are triggered by larger of more frequent shipments, the need for faster delivery is moot.

Like kzt said, we really don't know the economics of trade in the Honorverse or the costs of building/maintaining a high-speed transport fleet. After all, the MWW is writing a war story, not a commerce one.

Still, it leaves us plenty of room for speculation...so please continue to speculate away.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Hutch wrote:Like kzt said, we really don't know the economics of trade in the Honorverse or the costs of building/maintaining a high-speed transport fleet. After all, the MWW is writing a war story, not a commerce one.

Still, it leaves us plenty of room for speculation...so please continue to speculate away.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Plus this means you are getting two runs for the ship to one run for the other. So you are making 100% more gross. Since we know ships cost a huge amount we also the average profit per run is enormous, as it has to pay the note on the ship plus the operating costs. So extra salaries are easily handled by that additional income, as would be any reasonable incremental cost to build the ship and reasonable maintenance costs.

So what is really going on that makes faster ships not economical? Don't really know. I suspect it's mostly because 'it is so written', and the economics is all handwaved.

kzt wrote:

Hutch wrote:Like kzt said, we really don't know the economics of trade in the Honorverse or the costs of building/maintaining a high-speed transport fleet. After all, the MWW is writing a war story, not a commerce one.

Still, it leaves us plenty of room for speculation...so please continue to speculate away.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Plus this means you are getting two runs for the ship to one run for the other. So you are making 100% more gross. Since we know ships cost a huge amount we also the average profit per run is enormous, as it has to pay the note on the ship plus the operating costs. So extra salaries are easily handled by that additional income, as would be any reasonable incremental cost to build the ship and reasonable maintenance costs.

So what is really going on that makes faster ships not economical? Don't really know. I suspect it's mostly because 'it is so written', and the economics is all handwaved.

Lets assume a normal freighter spends 90% of it's time in hyperspace at maximum speed. Building a freighter with a milspec hyperdrive, that is twice as fast, and the same cargo capacity, would increase the effective freight capacity by about 82 percent. Now at the time of the novel faster milspec drives have been available for a long time (IIRC even centuries). It is not the case that freighters are slower, because they use legacy technologies. If it were economical these technologies be used by bulk freight carriers a long time ago. Civilian couriers have drives as fast as the military. Therefore the capital and operating cost of a milspec hyper drive is at least 82% higher, compared to a normal bulk freighter drive. Since there is such a thing as normal freighter speed. I would assume, that that speed is at the economic sweet spot.

Torlek wrote:

kzt wrote:Plus this means you are getting two runs for the ship to one run for the other. So you are making 100% more gross. Since we know ships cost a huge amount we also the average profit per run is enormous, as it has to pay the note on the ship plus the operating costs. So extra salaries are easily handled by that additional income, as would be any reasonable incremental cost to build the ship and reasonable maintenance costs.

So what is really going on that makes faster ships not economical? Don't really know. I suspect it's mostly because 'it is so written', and the economics is all handwaved.

Lets assume a normal freighter spends 90% of it's time in hyperspace at maximum speed. Building a freighter with a milspec hyperdrive, that is twice as fast, and the same cargo capacity, would increase the effective freight capacity by about 82 percent. Now at the time of the novel faster milspec drives have been available for a long time (IIRC even centuries). It is not the case that freighters are slower, because they use legacy technologies. If it were economical these technologies be used by bulk freight carriers a long time ago. Civilian couriers have drives as fast as the military. Therefore the capital and operating cost of a milspec hyper drive is at least 82% higher, compared to a normal bulk freighter drive. Since there is such a thing as normal freighter speed. I would assume, that that speed is at the economic sweet spot.

Nitpick, the milspec hyperdrive is more like 2.3x as fast (Theta bands vs Delta bands) than just twice as fast.

Plus you can combine that with milspec partical shielding for an additional 1.2x in any given band over a standard freighter -- for a combined total of up to 2.75x as fast.


(Not that that does more than further emphasize your point)

Jonathan_S wrote:

Torlek wrote:Lets assume a normal freighter spends 90% of it's time in hyperspace at maximum speed. Building a freighter with a milspec hyperdrive, that is twice as fast, and the same cargo capacity, would increase the effective freight capacity by about 82 percent. Now at the time of the novel faster milspec drives have been available for a long time (IIRC even centuries). It is not the case that freighters are slower, because they use legacy technologies. If it were economical these technologies be used by bulk freight carriers a long time ago. Civilian couriers have drives as fast as the military. Therefore the capital and operating cost of a milspec hyper drive is at least 82% higher, compared to a normal bulk freighter drive. Since there is such a thing as normal freighter speed. I would assume, that that speed is at the economic sweet spot.

Nitpick, the milspec hyperdrive is more like 2.3x as fast (Theta bands vs Delta bands) than just twice as fast.

Plus you can combine that with milspec partical shielding for an additional 1.2x in any given band over a standard freighter -- for a combined total of up to 2.75x as fast.


(Not that that does more than further emphasize your point)

Numbers were selected solely based on ease of calculation.

Here is an example of how faster freighters might be uneconomical. It is just a rough outline--I'm no expert in trade or economy. I'm pulling numbers out of my...hat.

Suppose you have an ordinary freighter with the following expenses:

annual crew-related expenses (salary, food, air, etc.): 10,000
maintenance expenses for hyper-drive, power generator, nodes: 5,000
all other maintenance expenses: 5,000
total: 20,000

If you install military-grade equipment, you can go 2.5 times faster. If you carry the same type of cargo, that means you can make 2.5 times as much income. But what if the maintenance costs of the military-grade equipment is ten times higher than the current costs? Your total annual expenses would then be 65,000. Your expenses have gone up by a factor of 3.25, but your income is up by only 2.5.

My numbers are total garbage, but it seems to me that it is entirely plausible that military grade equipment may cost more than you can make in faster trips, unless you only carry cargo which require the higher speed or give bonuses for faster delivery.