[Spolier] impact of new compensator and Hyper on Merchies

IT is well know that even before manticore started improving its compensators that merchies were slow, both in normal space and hyper.

I'm, wondering if now that the wars are over some merchies might start considering speed upgrades. now obviously they aren't going to mount top of the line Mil spec compensators but average speed i've seen listed for a normal merchie is about 200g. though i think the passenger liners Hauptman used, particularly for silesa were more like 400 but they were an abnormality.

Time is money and while a rise of 200 to 300g might only shave a day of the trip to hyper, surely that along with sightly improved hypertech, the non classified parts of the streak drive research maybe, though just stronger rad shielding would probably do. might take a week or 2 off journeys.

over a year/2 that has to improve profits. especially if they start serving the newly free verge worlds.

i undrestand it all comes down to money but especially the compensators should be cheap enough now after 20 years of research.

The economics of the honorverse are strange. And we are missing a lot of critical info. So who knows. The hyperdrive upgrades are what provide massive boosts to the bottom line, acceleration is nearly worthless for a hyper merchant. Whether either is economically viable we can’t determine. David has word of god stated that they are not.

Let's put some numbers on this.

Currently, merchants seem to prefer the Delta band. To put a concrete proposal on the table, let's assume that the researchers at Bolthole apply what they've discovered about the Streak Drive to a "standard" merchant-class hyperdrive and come up with something that can get to the Epsilon band (the next band up) with the same TCO (total cost of ownership). The shift from Delta to Epsilon gives a 32% speed improvement (as observed from base) in the limit, meaning we still need to account for the time getting there and getting up to speed.

For relatively short haul work, this means relatively little. For long haul work, this means that either the ship can cut the time in transit significantly, meaning that it can haul more loads, or it can extend its range significantly, meaning that more of the Verge becomes profitable to do business with. It also means that some routes can bypass wormholes with their attendant fees.

Their may be some improvement in speed but not much IMHO. My guess is in moving from the low and middle Delta bands to the upper and lower Gamma bands. For a RW example look at merchants just prior to during and after WWII. Merchant ship owners want three things in regards to their ship speed. They want reliability, economical speed and ease of maintenance.

saber964 wrote:Their may be some improvement in speed but not much IMHO. My guess is in moving from the low and middle Delta bands to the upper and lower Gamma bands. For a RW example look at merchants just prior to during and after WWII. Merchant ship owners want three things in regards to their ship speed. They want reliability, economical speed and ease of maintenance.

The bands go Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon. Going from Delta to Gamma does not gain you a speed increase. Please see the chart at the snippets site.

I don't think anybody is going to see much on the Streak Drive for a while. When Bolthole figures anything out that that they can implement you can bet it is going to be 1st applied to GA military ships and will be a long time before anybody in the civilian markets sees (or even hears) anything.

In general the Reliability/economy of operation and ease of maintenance is the sets of balance points. It is only when you get to high value/low weight and/or critical need that speed starts to displace the other three.

I agree we would need a lot more information on the actual economics of merchant shipping operations. Just think, probably 30 or more classes of hyper-capable merchant shipping built over 200yrs (and some still in service) plus the unknown number of upgrad/design changes to more modern variations of the classes.
That would, however, take up an massive amount of RFC's time and imagination which we would MUCH perfer he spend writing books....big smile.

Brigade XO wrote:I don't think anybody is going to see much on the Streak Drive for a while. When Bolthole figures anything out that that they can implement you can bet it is going to be 1st applied to GA military ships and will be a long time before anybody in the civilian markets sees (or even hears) anything.

In general the Reliability/economy of operation and ease of maintenance is the sets of balance points. It is only when you get to high value/low weight and/or critical need that speed starts to displace the other three.

I agree we would need a lot more information on the actual economics of merchant shipping operations. Just think, probably 30 or more classes of hyper-capable merchant shipping built over 200yrs (and some still in service) plus the unknown number of upgrad/design changes to more modern variations of the classes.
That would, however, take up an massive amount of RFC's time and imagination which we would MUCH perfer he spend writing books....big smile.

Shannon & Simoes will end up getting married and make little baby streak/spider drives at bolthole

Nimitz

Tech is not static. Eventually the streak will no longer be cutting edge for military purposes. As that happens the tech becomes more broadly known, more economical, and more broadly applied. While streaks for freighters might not be an immediate priority, I doubt that faster freighters would be objectionable either. So it's an idea whose time will eventually come, later if not sooner.

As for the spider, I really don't see a commercial application here. It's slow and cumbersome, its only advantage being its stealth... not something that is a priority for a merchie.

Don

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n7axw wrote:Tech is not static. Eventually the streak will no longer be cutting edge for military purposes. As that happens the tech becomes more broadly known, more economical, and more broadly applied. While streaks for freighters might not be an immediate priority, I doubt that faster freighters would be objectionable either. So it's an idea whose time will eventually come, later if not sooner.

Military hyperdrives are OLD technology. Like 400 years old. They are still not used by merchants.

JohnRoth wrote:Let's put some numbers on this.

Currently, merchants seem to prefer the Delta band. To put a concrete proposal on the table, let's assume that the researchers at Bolthole apply what they've discovered about the Streak Drive to a "standard" merchant-class hyperdrive and come up with something that can get to the Epsilon band (the next band up) with the same TCO (total cost of ownership). The shift from Delta to Epsilon gives a 32% speed improvement (as observed from base) in the limit, meaning we still need to account for the time getting there and getting up to speed.

For relatively short haul work, this means relatively little. For long haul work, this means that either the ship can cut the time in transit significantly, meaning that it can haul more loads, or it can extend its range significantly, meaning that more of the Verge becomes profitable to do business with. It also means that some routes can bypass wormholes with their attendant fees.

Do pardon my bold to call attention.

Relatively.

Even these routes could drastically impact the bottom line. These shorter routes could be serviced by less ships since round trips would be much faster on non-perishable goods.

Also, I'm foreseeing that new, though insanely more expensive, FedEx delivery service seeing the light of day...

When it absolutely positively has to be there overnite, or over the next fortnite.