Re: Whatever (was a lot of things)

-----Original Message-----
From: Mikko Kurki-Suonio <maxxon@swob.dna.fi>

>> Why use interceptable freighters? Because 12 thrust-15
freighters carry
>> as much cargo as 1 thrust-4 freighter, and cost almost 20
times more.
>
>This is getting a bit extreme... but okay. (Why not just one
bigger
>transport?)
>
>> Can you afford to maintain the 12 thrust-15 freighters during
times of
>> peace better than you can afford to lose the occasional
thrust-4
>> freighter to enemy raiders during a war?
>
>Skip peacetime. Economics is not (at least yet) part of the
game.

   If you're paying points for the ships, economics is indeed
part of the problem.  That is, if you're going to buy (or be
given) freighters in the first place, you have a
scenario-related reason for them to be there.	If the scenario
has much in the way of logical thought behind it, you'll have a
victory criteria based, at least in part, on quantity of cargo
delivered.
   If you're using a continuous-thrust model--ie start at A,
thrust to midpoint, reverse heading and decelerate to B--then a
thrust 15 ship isn't going to get from A to B all that much
faster than a thrust 2 ship--the thrust 2 ship will take
something under 3 times as long as the thrust 15 ship, if I
worked it out correctly (but caveat emptor).  If the T15 costs
20 and delivers 3, and three T2's cost a total 3 and deliver 3,
then the T2's can afford 85% casualties before they're as
inefficient as the T15.  This ignores cargo costs (including
them would help the T15, possibly quite a lot) and maintenance
costs.	It also ignores the opportunity costs the T15 would
incur from being able to deliver to only one place at a
time--that is, if you need to deliver 100 tons of supplies to
each of 4 different places this week, the T15 is physically
incapable of being in 4 places at once.
  All in all, it's reasonable to expect that cargo ships will be
low thrust.

>But this
>does present an interesting problem:
>
>What is the most efficient way of delivering a standard unit of
cargo?
>Exactly how many slower transports you are going to lose?
Escorts?