Independent and Tramp Traders

saber964 wrote:The rescued freighter in SoS was a Dromedary class named IIRC Emerald Dawn and had a crew of at least 30. Now as to crew on a merchant freighter DW is probably under stating the number by 20-30%. Now at a minimum you will have on a ship.
CO
XO/1st Officer
Nav/2nd Officer
Asst.Nav/3rd Officer (optional)
Comm/4th Officer
Purser ships supply officer and accountant
Cargo Master
6-10 able spacemen to handle helm on watch and do ships non-engineering general maintenance and assist in galley.
Chief Engineer
Assistant Engineer x 2
6-10 engineering ratings

Don't forget that these crews are living on the ship for multiple weeks or months at a time. While you mentioned the galley, a Crew this size probably has at least 1 dedicated cook and a hydroponics specialist (probably doubling as a life support specialist). If your ship is armed, then you have to crew and maintain that hardware as well.

I would put the minimum as follows:
6 officers, 3 bridge officers and 3 engineering qualified officers:
On the bridge, Captain, XO, Navigator. Communications could be handled by the XO or by a crememeber or NCO.
Enginerring officer.
Purser, cargo master and accountant would be two people who would double as engineering watches.

Bridge, fusion, impeller 1, impeller 2, hyper would all need to be manned at all times, so that is a minimum of 9 ratings.

Minimum 15 crew for watch-standing, the other 15-35 would be crew/NCO's for maintenance, loading, and other functions.

saber964 wrote:The rescued freighter in SoS was a Dromedary class named IIRC Emerald Dawn and had a crew of at least 30. Now as to crew on a merchant freighter DW is probably under stating the number by 20-30%. Now at a minimum you will have on a ship.
CO
XO/1st Officer
Nav/2nd Officer
Asst.Nav/3rd Officer (optional)
Comm/4th Officer
Purser ships supply officer and accountant
Cargo Master
6-10 able spacemen to handle helm on watch and do ships non-engineering general maintenance and assist in galley.
Chief Engineer
Assistant Engineer x 2
6-10 engineering ratings

darrell wrote:I would put the minimum as follows:
6 officers, 3 bridge officers and 3 engineering qualified officers:
On the bridge, Captain, XO, Navigator. Communications could be handled by the XO or by a crememeber or NCO.
Enginerring officer.
Purser, cargo master and accountant would be two people who would double as engineering watches.

Bridge, fusion, impeller 1, impeller 2, hyper would all need to be manned at all times, so that is a minimum of 9 ratings.

Minimum 15 crew for watch-standing, the other 15-35 would be crew/NCO's for maintenance, loading, and other functions.

saber964 wrote:The rescued freighter in SoS was a Dromedary class named IIRC Emerald Dawn and had a crew of at least 30. Now as to crew on a merchant freighter DW is probably under stating the number by 20-30%. Now at a minimum you will have on a ship.
CO
XO/1st Officer
Nav/2nd Officer
Asst.Nav/3rd Officer (optional)
Comm/4th Officer
Purser ships supply officer and accountant
Cargo Master
6-10 able spacemen to handle helm on watch and do ships non-engineering general maintenance and assist in galley.
Chief Engineer
Assistant Engineer x 2
6-10 engineering ratings

If you were to go any smaller than that, you build a bridge with a bunch of repeater consoles, a nice comfy chair in the center for the watch stander, and a button to sound an alarm which will wake the dead in case something goes wrong. - chances are this is what a tramp usually has.

darrell wrote:I would put the minimum as follows:
6 officers, 3 bridge officers and 3 engineering qualified officers:
...

Very logical, but IIRC, we know the names and qualifications of all 12 people on the Howle Sowle and half of them were passengers. How many crew are required is going to be pretty much determined by how much automation there is. Theoretically, a tramp freighter could require no more crew than the Millenium Falcon (Han Solo and Chewbaca, for those who aren't Star Wars geeks.)

First off I'd like to thank all of you for your feedback. It was the section in Torch of Freedom that several of you referenced that had me pondering this. I'm sorry I used a less-than-reliable source, I figured it was a starting point at least.

Thank you for the crew breakdown, this makes way more sense to me than the initial numbers in the hundreds. Obviously if one is transporting thousands of people that makes sense.

A couple of you have made reference to the cost of even a small tramp-style ship, could you provide a rough estimate of the cost?

SJLee wrote:A couple of you have made reference to the cost of even a small tramp-style ship, could you provide a rough estimate of the cost?

ten dollars-per-pound?

IIRC, there are some mentions that pirates could fence even a small freighter for a billion dollars (manticoran.) But dollar amounts are really meaningless without knowing the cost of gold or the price of a loaf of bread; the length of a mortgage is a better guide -- there are a couple of mentions of mortgages in textev, IIRC.

Theemile wrote:
snip

If you were to go any smaller than that, you build a bridge with a bunch of repeater consoles, a nice comfy chair in the center for the watch stander, and a button to sound an alarm which will wake the dead in case something goes wrong. - chances are this is what a tramp usually has.

IIRC, when they were snooping the star nation planning to attack Talbot, the com officer was warned against being too on the ball in replying to a hail because most freighters wouldn't do so.

This sounds about right.

Weird Harold wrote:IIRC, there are some mentions that pirates could fence even a small freighter for a billion dollars (manticoran.) But dollar amounts are really meaningless without knowing the cost of gold or the price of a loaf of bread; the length of a mortgage is a better guide -- there are a couple of mentions of mortgages in textev, IIRC.

If you look at prices mentioned by David in various places it's pretty clear that he's running a model where a $M is roughly a $US circa early 90s.

tSotS
"Ringstorff hadn't liked it, but he'd passed on their complaints to the home office, at which point some REMF genius had come up with the notion of placating the pirates by allowing them to dispose of the transport itself through their own contacts in Silesia. At a little over two million tons it hadn't been all that large, but it was still worth the odd billion Solarian credit or two, and the pirates' credit accounts had done well out of it."

HAE
"You know what I wish?" Truman asked. Honor looked at her, and the other captain shrugged. "I wish we knew who was funding and supporting the bastards. You know as well as I do that the average piracy ring can afford to lose and replace vessels—and crews—all year long if as much as a third of them manage to take a decent prize on each cruise. Think about it. These eleven ships"—she tapped her screen, where the names of the most recently missing vessels were displayed—"represent an aggregate value of almost twelve billion just for the hulls. You can buy a lot of ships heavy enough to kill merchies for that kind of money."

kzt wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:IIRC, there are some mentions that pirates could fence even a small freighter for a billion dollars (manticoran.) But dollar amounts are really meaningless without knowing the cost of gold or the price of a loaf of bread; the length of a mortgage is a better guide -- there are a couple of mentions of mortgages in textev, IIRC.

If you look at prices mentioned by David in various places it's pretty clear that he's running a model where a $M is roughly a $US circa early 90s.

tSotS
"Ringstorff hadn't liked it, but he'd passed on their complaints to the home office, at which point some REMF genius had come up with the notion of placating the pirates by allowing them to dispose of the transport itself through their own contacts in Silesia. At a little over two million tons it hadn't been all that large, but it was still worth the odd billion Solarian credit or two, and the pirates' credit accounts had done well out of it."

HAE
"You know what I wish?" Truman asked. Honor looked at her, and the other captain shrugged. "I wish we knew who was funding and supporting the bastards. You know as well as I do that the average piracy ring can afford to lose and replace vessels—and crews—all year long if as much as a third of them manage to take a decent prize on each cruise. Think about it. These eleven ships"—she tapped her screen, where the names of the most recently missing vessels were displayed—"represent an aggregate value of almost twelve billion just for the hulls. You can buy a lot of ships heavy enough to kill merchies for that kind of money."

A captured pre-war Peep DN was valued at around M$32 billion. The aggregated value of the lighter vessels surrendered at Hancock, in at least repairable condition, was M$6.4 billion(based on six million being 25% of 12% of 3%). For maybe two BCs and a handful of cruisers and destroyers.

kzt wrote:HAE
<snip>" These eleven ships"—she tapped her screen, where the names of the most recently missing vessels were displayed—"represent an aggregate value of almost twelve billion just for the hulls. You can buy a lot of ships heavy enough to kill merchies for that kind of money."

Don't forget, those ships in HAE were big 4-8 Mton freighters, not tramps.

In my mind, (and there's really no text-ev to back this up) A tramp is usually an old obsolete design, which is completely outdated but can still survive on margins in the speciality or small freight trade. I'm not saying they are cheap, but you may be able to pick up a rust bucket for a few million or 10s of millions - you'd probably need to drop a few million into it before you'd trust it to reliably do anything. You will probably pay more to keep up a tramp than a new cargo ship.