https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/26kbbezex2ih4pmq9qyl4/100-Ton-Frontier-Trader.pdf?rlkey=fo4ilqj975qelfwctm8y9lgep&dl=0

Neat!  Thanks for sharing.

Quote from: zircher on August 06, 2023, 03:12:30 PM
Neat!  Thanks for sharing.

your welcome.  More to come

54 tons of cargo is approximately two modern shipping containers.

A modern liner will haul about 2,000 containers.  A feeder will move about 600-800 containers.  A Hong Kong harbor lighter will move 20 at a time.

Otoh, a small island delivery boat servicing isolated communities will do 2-4 containers.  In Hawaii, some of the island delivery vessels will take up to 200.

If you're running the official setting, go with the setting but if you're building your own setting it might be worth looking into how modern cargo liner services work.  A liner goes from one major port to another, A feeder goes from a major port to a smaller one and back. For settled worlds, I could see this being the way it's done in interstellar cultures.  (This is how I do my setting, btw.  Liners and most feeders don't land on planets.)

A lighter is a vessel that takes cargo from a cargo ship at anchor and brings it to a dock to be unloaded or from shore to ship. This is often done in heavy traffic ports or when larger ships are being brought in to a port and the infrastructure isn't established to work with them.  Sometimes, the old cargo cranes don't reach all the way across and a dock ship will unload via shore side crane on the dock side and by lighter on the off shore side.  A lighter is sometimes a small ship and sometimes a barge that will be moved by a tug.

There are certainly cases where small vessels will run a rout for cargo but it's either due to the very low population or it caries a very specif type of cargo.  Today, small cargo that's in a rush goes by airplane.  I could see a Traveller party taking contracts from FedEx or UPS.  The other thing I could see such a small cargo ship being used for is a secured courier service.

Quote from: BadApple on August 06, 2023, 11:43:13 PM

If you're running the official setting, go with the setting but if you're building your own setting it might be worth looking into how modern cargo liner services work.

Thanks, I am very familiar with shipping and the Transportation sector.  I have advised the Fed gov't at the highest levels regarding security of this sector.  The worlds these little ships service are low pop backwaters. A 40' shipping container has a volume of ~68 cubic meters.  54 tons = 756 cubic meters of volume.

Quote from: Scooter on August 07, 2023, 12:13:09 AM
Thanks, I am very familiar with shipping and the Transportation sector.  I have advised the Fed gov't at the highest levels regarding security of this sector. 

Can you tell them to get rid of the TWIC card?  Please?  I have so many different IDs I need just to sign onto a ship already and the electronic tracking that was supposed to be implemented 15 years ago is never going to happen.

IMHO, if you want to really improve security in the ports, mandate drug testing for longshoremen.  That would fold up two different vectors of of security weakness in shipping ports.  I see them high on stimulants all the time and they make really bad decisions that break things and hurt people.  Also, addicts are easier to buy off and to manipulate.

T. - merchant seaman

Quote from: BadApple on August 07, 2023, 12:27:02 AM

Quote from: Scooter on August 07, 2023, 12:13:09 AM
Thanks, I am very familiar with shipping and the Transportation sector.  I have advised the Fed gov't at the highest levels regarding security of this sector. 

Can you tell them to get rid of the TWIC card?  Please?  I have so many different IDs I need just to sign onto a ship already and the electronic tracking that was supposed to be implemented 15 years ago is never going to happen.

IMHO, if you want to really improve security in the ports, mandate drug testing for longshoremen.  That would fold up two different vectors of of security weakness in shipping ports.  I see them high on stimulants all the time and they make really bad decisions that break things and hurt people.  Also, addicts are easier to buy off and to manipulate.

T. - merchant seaman

Those aren't the major security problems.  Hardening computer infrastructure (from crappy OS & pgms + public internet exposure) & anti-terrorism for entire port areas is.

Dude, you're a terrorist and you want to get into a hardened facility.  You think that meth head with a taste for hookers isn't an entry vector?

Quote from: BadApple on August 07, 2023, 09:04:04 AM
Dude, you're a terrorist and you want to get into a hardened facility.  You think that meth head with a taste for hookers isn't an entry vector?

It is the least problem. That can be handled with simple HR policy.  Taking over the entire computer systems is a much larger problem.  You need to be a big picture person

Quote from: Scooter on August 07, 2023, 09:11:31 AM

Quote from: BadApple on August 07, 2023, 09:04:04 AM
Dude, you're a terrorist and you want to get into a hardened facility.  You think that meth head with a taste for hookers isn't an entry vector?

It is the least problem. That can be handled with simple HR policy.  Taking over the entire computer systems is a much larger problem.  You need to be a big picture person

The "big picture people" didn't think hardening commercial aircraft cockpits was much of a priority, either...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on August 07, 2023, 09:38:05 AM

Quote from: Scooter on August 07, 2023, 09:11:31 AM

Quote from: BadApple on August 07, 2023, 09:04:04 AM
Dude, you're a terrorist and you want to get into a hardened facility.  You think that meth head with a taste for hookers isn't an entry vector?

It is the least problem. That can be handled with simple HR policy.  Taking over the entire computer systems is a much larger problem.  You need to be a big picture person

The "big picture people" didn't think hardening commercial aircraft cockpits was much of a priority, either...

Yes, the gov't (NOT the outside security experts who warned them) ignored much expert advice on that and are royally about to really screw the pooch by connecting more of the ATC system onto the public internet and going to known OS's on the back-end systems.  Well, they WERE warned in 2002.  Ignoring that training is what caused the pipeline debacle too. 

No, it's not an issue that can be fixed with HR.  Long shoremen aren't employees of the port, they are contract crews provided by the ILWU.  I'm generally not a government solutions kind of guy but this is one where it should be done.  Mandatory drug testing by DOT standards for all persons working in a port would improve security, close entry vectors for threats, and greatly improve safety and efficiency.  (Side note, the ILWU was an organization expressly created to undermine the security of ports on the west coast.  That's a fun little history deep dive.) 

The problem with the "big picture" argument is that you miss the details that make up the "big picture."  Port security isn't a single monolithic problem, it's a huge swarm of tiny problems.  I have been working in the maritime industry for 20 years and I seen a lot first hand.  "You aren't smart enough/perceptive enough/knowledgeable enough" is an attitude that so many upper level government people have that leads them to make things worse.  I work with very complex systems doing a lot of things all at once.  I know that small things cause the whole system to fail.  I am a big picture guy even if the big picture I'm looking at doesn't look exactly like the one you are.

Computers in ports are really only used to do paperwork.  Since everything is legally required to have hard copies, all you'd do attacking them is slow things down for a few weeks while the admin people figure out how to use a ball point pen again.  Cranes don't work by computer, ships don't run by computer, trucks aren't AI operated, gates aren't controlled by computers.

Even on ships, while we have PLCs operating a lot of systems but they don't have networking capability.  Send a virus to a ship and all you do is make it go back to keeping paper logs.

As for terrorism in a port, it's a lot easier for one or two guys already in the facility to cause havoc than it would be for a small army outside.

I have seen millions of containers going from supplier to final customer without anyone ever taking a look to see if they contain what the paperwork says it does.  AP Moller terminal in the Port of Tacoma has a container x-ray machine that's almost never used except to make sure it still works.  The SSA terminal in Long Beach, the terminal in Anchorage, and the Sand Island terminal in Honolulu don't even have them that I've seen and if they do they aren't routing traffic through them.  I know containers are used for drug trafficking.

Flat out, I don't think the US government is serious at all about security in ports.  If they were, they'd actually start doing the little corrections that would make big sweeping resolutions unnecessary.  There are so many small, no cost solutions that would make the "big picture" management so much easier.

Quote from: BadApple on August 07, 2023, 10:51:32 AM
No, it's not an issue that can be fixed with HR. 

Don't be so literal.  "HR" meaning personnel policies in toto, whether Gov screening regs or non-gov.

Anyway, back to the topic of the thread, 100 ton Starship tramp freighters.

Quote from: Scooter on August 07, 2023, 11:39:18 AM

Quote from: BadApple on August 07, 2023, 10:51:32 AM
No, it's not an issue that can be fixed with HR. 

Don't be so literal.  "HR" meaning personnel policies in toto, whether Gov screening regs or non-gov.

Anyway, back to the topic of the thread, 100 ton Starship tramp freighters.

Where are the Interplanetary Lot Lizards?

Quote from: THE_Leopold on August 08, 2023, 06:53:29 PM

Quote from: Scooter on August 07, 2023, 11:39:18 AM

Quote from: BadApple on August 07, 2023, 10:51:32 AM
No, it's not an issue that can be fixed with HR. 

Don't be so literal.  "HR" meaning personnel policies in toto, whether Gov screening regs or non-gov.

Anyway, back to the topic of the thread, 100 ton Starship tramp freighters.

Where are the Interplanetary Lot Lizards?

At most Class C star ports right outside the customs shack near the unrefined fuel pumps.