Merchantmen, speed, and trade cartels

Somtaaw wrote:...snip...

As long as they don't let their hyper generator fall into such disreputable state like the Hali Sowle, which had a military grade hyper drive, and it had that pole that needed to be replaced ~1,000 hours prior to them even going near Mesa, and the Green Pines incident.

If a tramp freighter, that passed through multiple hands and was used as a smuggler... then larger corporations should also be able to operate military-grade, or near-military hyper generators.

Cut into their margins slightly? Sure, most definitely.
Cut into their margins enough to make it inefficient? Almost certainly not.

Do you have textev for Hali Sowle having a military style Hyper generator? I can't find it. It would also be an unnecessary bell on a tramp freighter that was making routine trips to Mesa. Making round trips faster than was normal makes security types nervous.

An additional nit. It wasn't a thousand hours it was one hundred thousand hours.

Have fun,
T2M

Somtaaw wrote:I think a merchant ship could get away with less maintenance than military ships do, because they spend considerably more time at ports. And that little niggling detail, they don't need to maintain a 90%+ readiness state should the need to do battle ever come into play.

...snip...

Just snipped because what I am addressing.

The books tend to give a disproportionate idea of what the military ships do. Because nobody wants to read about someone going up to stand a sensor watch while traveling from point a to point b. Which is the reason that merchants don't have a good sensor watch. Nothing happening is a good thing!

But lets look at OBS for example. A RMN spends a year in orbit of Medusa. Nobody comments on it. For that matter a RMN CL spends 3 months hanging out with its people trying to be helpful. Nodes get powered up a couple of times other than maintenenace.

A merchant with a node problem hangs out for 3 months and all the Navy folk start to wig out. They are just pouring money out the airlock. That makes no sense to the Navy.

Or take a look at how long ships spend time in Mesa 16 days is considered a long time for a tramp freighter and needs to be justified.

ToF Chapter 38 wrote:Blomqvist pulled up yet another screen. “Anywhere up to sixteen T-days, it looks like.”

Trimm frowned. That was a little unusual. Not unheard of, by any means, but still out of the ordinary. Most gypsies wanted to be in and out of Mesan orbit as fast as possible. Not because the Mesan trade gave them any moral qualms, but simply because they weren’t making money unless they were hauling freight somewhere.

“What reason do they give?” she asked.

“They say they’re waiting for a shipment of jewelry coming from Ghatotkacha. That’s a planet . . .” He squinted at the screen, trying to find the data.

There is an incredible amount of examples for the fact that the merchants are underweigh on average than navy ships.

Have fun,
T2M

Somtaaw wrote:We've also seen it, that Naval officers have low opinions of merchants.

That probably depends upon the sort of merchants you're dealing with. If you spend your time in the scummy parts of Silesia trying to find pirates, slavers and their associates you're probably not got to find the creme-de-la-creme of the galaxy's merchants! I suspect the likes of those Atlas class passenger liners have a much better image.

Edited to add : Way back in OBS Hauptmann was told the reason his freighters where getting "special attention" was because they'd shown themselves deserving of it. I suspect freighters from lines with a good reputation get random checks a whole lot less, thus meaning RMN officers will see the dodgy ones more which will tend to reinforce their negative opinion of merchants.

Somtaaw wrote:Merchants would "let slide" a maintenance cycle if a minor problem pops up until they can get to a better (or cheaper?) yard. We've seen it repeatedly in Silesian space.

Will vary a lot. I've worked for an organisation where if you reported a vehicle fault, it was off the road until it was fixed and I've also worked for another location in the same organisation where if you reported a fault you got the same vehicle the next day with the form you'd reported the fault on elastic banded to the front of the vehicle's log book!

Some merchants will try and drag things out to the last possible moment to avoid spending the money. Others will stay on top of everything, others will stay on top of the important things but may let less important things slide from time to time.

thinkstoomuch wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:...snip...

As long as they don't let their hyper generator fall into such disreputable state like the Hali Sowle, which had a military grade hyper drive, and it had that pole that needed to be replaced ~1,000 hours prior to them even going near Mesa, and the Green Pines incident.

If a tramp freighter, that passed through multiple hands and was used as a smuggler... then larger corporations should also be able to operate military-grade, or near-military hyper generators.

Cut into their margins slightly? Sure, most definitely.
Cut into their margins enough to make it inefficient? Almost certainly not.

Do you have textev for Hali Sowle having a military style Hyper generator? I can't find it. It would also be an unnecessary bell on a tramp freighter that was making routine trips to Mesa. Making round trips faster than was normal makes security types nervous.

An additional nit. It wasn't a thousand hours it was one hundred thousand hours.

Have fun,
T2M

The reason the Hali Sowle had a military grade hyper generator is that the ship was originally a smuggler:

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 6 wrote:Over the course of their lengthy mission on Mesa, Yana had gotten past most of her own uneasiness with the Havenite. And the four-month voyage from Mesa back to the Hainuwele System had finished it off. Of course, the trip shouldn’t have taken anywhere near that long. The old, battered, and dilapidated freighter Hali Sowle their Erewhonese contacts had provided had been a smuggler in her time, and she’d been equipped with a military grade hyper generator. It wasn’t obvious, because her original owners had gone to considerable lengths to disguise it, and they hadn’t tinkered with her commercial grade impeller nodes and particle screening, but that had allowed her to climb as high as the Theta Bands, which made her far faster than the vast majority of merchant vessels. Unfortunately, the hyper generator in question had been less than perfectly maintained by the various owners through whose hands the ship had passed since it was first installed, and it had promptly failed after they managed to escape Mesa into hyper. They’d survived the experience, but it had taken Andrew Artlet what had seemed like an eternity to jury-rig the replacement component they’d required.

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

Vince wrote:...snip...
The reason the Hali Sowle had a military grade hyper generator is that the ship was originally a smuggler:

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 6 wrote:...snip...

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

Thank you for that quote. I was looking in the wrong place. ToF.

Dang I am going to have to revisit a bunch of stuff.

Thought all that stuff was just cut and pasted between books.

Thanks again,
T2M

thinkstoomuch quote="Vince wrote:...snip...
The reason the Hali Sowle had a military grade hyper generator is that the ship was originally a smuggler:

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 6 wrote:...snip...

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

Thank you for that quote. I was looking in the wrong place. ToF.

Dang I am going to have to revisit a bunch of stuff.

Thought all that stuff was just cut and pasted between books.

Thanks again,
T2M[/quote]



IIRC the slaver Marianne aka Golden Butterfly had the same type of set-up.

Mondern Real Universe merchant ships spend as little time as possible in port. They go from point to point on their route(s) mostly at the most economical (fuel) speed, get in, unload/load and get moving on to the next point. What they can't fix while "steaming" where they are going, they either arrange to get the replacement parts delivered to the next (or as soon as practical) port of call and then do the fix. If they HAVE to take the ship out-of-service for a major replacement it causes all manner of havoc with schedules, meeting contracts and expences.

Yes, they do tend to have regular maintence schedules and they do build in some heavy refit times but if they (and the company that ownes them) want to keep running they have to monitor anything that can be watched and do preventitive maintence when possible under way.

We have often been shown smugglers and slavers and some really sloppy examples of merchant ships in the Honorerse. BUT, we have also been shown bits and pieces of the Haupman Lines and any number of merchants who were either RMN (Rt) or Reserve and run their ships in a very tight operations. That would include being physicaly clean inside and keeping an active track on the equipment and anything else. The larger shipping lines would be very concerned about the state of their ships. Sure, all of them are going to keep an eye tight on the bottom line and look to cut costs, but unless they are already in serious trouble financial, they are going to do AT LEAST minimum ongoing maintenance and try to fix or replace anything that is showing signes of problems before the problem either kills the ship (and crew) outright or leaves them stuck in real-space years from any possible place they can get to -if the have any motive power at all- and have the ship be a total loss and/or never shows up again. Insurance companies take a really dim view of endlessly defered maintenance if they are asked to pay a loss claim because a ship vanishes. There WILL be records and they will be dug out. Even if the insurance carrier has to send people to multiple ports of call over the last months or years of the ships runs, they will check with the suppliers to see if what is on the company records match what what the service providers did.