Poseidon class water tanker (primitive early dropshuttle)

[kato]

This is spun off from LiamGhost's Pathfinder/Ark thread, in some places below referring to that too.

Poseidon class Water Tanker

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Civilian Spheroid Dropshuttle / 3000 tons / 2124

1170.0 tons - Maneuver Engine (3/5)
  60.0 tons - Structural Integrity (10 SI)
  45.0 tons - Control Systems
  20.0 tons - Quarters (4 Steerage)
   2.0 tons - Armor (primitive - 21 points: 5n/5l/5r/6a)
   0.0 tons - Heatsinks (39 free)
 260.0 tons - Fuel Tank (3900 fuel points, 5.64 tons/burn-day)
   5.5 tons - Fuel Pumps
   7.5 tons - 1.2 tons Consumables and 6.0 tons Spare Parts (for 2 months ea) + 0.3 tons bulk cargo (1 bay door - a)
   1.0 tons - Fluid Suction System (second system for second water tank bay door; first system free with water tank)
1429.0 tons - Water Tank (for 1300 tons of water) (2 bay doors - l/r)
That's the hard cargo limit pre-2130. It can still provide 13.3 burn-days to a jumpship in one go even without converting water - enough for a single jump and a month of stationkeeping, which would fit the lore.

The Poseidon after leaving the planet it operates from would arrive at the jump point with a full fuel tank and about 1043 tons of water left over; in an optimized production cycle the jumpship would already charge its KF drive while both jumpship and dropshuttle convert more water, producing a further 146 tons over a space of 7.3 maintenance cycles to top up the jumpship to a full 391.74-ton supplied fuel capacity and 14.26 tons used for the stationkeeping in this time. Quite commonly, Poseidons would trundle through space at less than 1g thrust in order to give them some fuel remaining for on-station time to wait for a jumpship to arrive.

The 391.74 tons of fuel transferred to a jump ship enable it to perform 2 jumps with a 0.4-day / 940-kg reserve of stationkeeping time. Further reserves for deeper-reaching missions - and for station-keeping in other systems - would be carried along by the jumpship itself, but would not be replenishable unless the jumpship would stay in a system with Poseidon supply for several more weeks.

Poseidons meanwhile excel at requiring minimal land-side facilities restricted to a single specialized support vehicle and a handful men stationed at a seaside outpost which would use the minimum 26-day time that the Poseidon spends on its refueling mission to produce the required 260t fuel for its operations. Their little cargo capacity is insufficient to provide more than a small parcel service to colonies though; in extreme cases they can see up to two people e.g. in medical emergencies taken along to a jumpship, although this requires rather optimal planning time-wise.

They would ultimately be supplanted in the 2130s by refueling space stations at jump points as jumpship operations pick up and newer, even larger dropshuttles become available; these space stations could still be resupplied with water and fuel monthly from Poseidons, keeping available up to 4,800 tons of fuel for jumpships directly at the jump point at any time that way - but even in these operations the Poseidons would soon be replaced by newer dropshuttles that could simply take along higher quantities of fuel which would be produced by expanded capacity on colonies.

Some Poseidons - badly aged with corrosion affecting their inner workings - would later be bought up by budding colonies on arid planets for use in asteroid ice-mining operations, while others would have their water tanks removed and replaced by a generic cargo bay.

The business case for a single Poseidon - 86.34 million C-Bills invested for the dropshuttle, under 125k C-Bills monthly recurring operating cost - is that based upon charging the standard fee per ton hydrogen, it pays off within only 15 fuel deliveries. Operating one for ten years at six deliveries per year will generate about 264 million, or three times the initial investment. Provided credit is available for under 12% annual interest to the amounts required we basically only need to sell the dropshuttle off for around 10 million to turn a profit on the operation.

[kato]

Pontos class Transport

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Civilian Spheroid Dropshuttle / 3000 tons / 2145

1170.0 tons - Maneuver Engine (3/5)
  60.0 tons - Structural Integrity (10 SI)
  45.0 tons - Control Systems
  20.0 tons - Quarters (4 Steerage - Crew)
  75.0 tons - Quarters (15 Steerage - Passengers)
   2.0 tons - Armor (primitive - 21 points: 5n/5l/5r/6a)
   0.0 tons - Heatsinks (39 free)
  87.0 tons - Fuel Tank (1305 fuel points, 5.64 tons/burn-day)
   2.0 tons - Fuel Pumps
  19.0 tons - 5.7 tons Consumables and 6.0 tons Spare Parts (for 2 months ea) + 7.3 tons bulk cargo (1 bay door - a)
1520.0 tons - Container Storage (2 bay doors - l/r)

The Pontos was a simple redesign from the Poseidon class water tankers to serve as a cargo transport, often for the same colonies that also operated Poseidons for their rather common maintenance requirements and crew handling. Removing the water tank and the bottom two of three fuel tanks made room for transporting containers in a large cargo hold as well as the necessary space for a single deck transporting passengers.

Often used to transport the at the time still in use 40-foot containers ubiquitous in the 20th and 21st century, the Pontos was also classed as a "100 TEU hauler".

[marauder648]

Lovely stuff :D

[kato]

Still pondering the minimal ground force to support the Poseidon.

Current idea is - bear with me - a ca 760-ton cargo train (2 locomotives, 18 cars carrying fuel, 6 crew) that only shunts on a short track between a standby position and a landing field, basically only moving itself back out of the blast zone for landing and liftoff. The requisite discrete construction materials for the track and the landing field would fit alongside the train in a single Pontos without any problems. The train, aside from the fuel, would also carry spare parts and consumables for both itself and the dropship for some 30 months, as well as some exoskeletons to assist loading. Still working on the cost, but it'll probably come cheaper than any permanent base.

[Daryk]

It strikes me installing tracks is tantamount to a permanent base.  Will the locomotives power the necessary electrolysis to make fuel?  Perhaps their "stand by" position should be where they draw the water from...

[kato]

It strikes me installing tracks is tantamount to a permanent base.

For a spaceport it's also one of the easiest ways of moving cargo on dropship scales between the landing site, any storage hangars and other spaceport buildings and perhaps a colony town farther away.

At least if you want to go a simple route, without mobile structure dropship movers and such which sound a bit too advanced and unneccessary complicated for a mid-22nd century colony that sees dropship landings likely only every couple weeks.

Will the locomotives power the necessary electrolysis to make fuel?  Perhaps their "stand by" position should be where they draw the water from...

I was actually thinking reusing the crater created by the initial landing (of the Pontos carrying the train) as a ready water depot. That crater holds up to 30,000 tons of water, both for fuel conversion and for loading on the Poseidon. The landing field should be installed adjacent to this artificial lake; the tracks move away from both landing field and lake, ideally arranged as a siding branching off from preexisting rail line where available. Using the crater keeps construction time for the entire installation to less than a week for installing the tracks and landing field.

The train basically only has to shunt away from the landing field while the Poseidon is lifting off or landing on its dedicated spot - that's perhaps one day in a month. Otherwise it could remain parked next to landing field and lake and fill up its fuel tanks through converting that water.
The two locomotives would be more "powered work cars" - each with a fission reactor (for flavour) powering a 6/9 engine, some quarters for its crew and a relatively large storage/bay section. If Poseidon operations cease they'll still be very usable for other purposes by that colony or just on the spaceport itself.

[Daryk]

Makes sense, thanks! O0

[kato]

Here's some stuff - technically not quite right here, but it's aerospace infrastructure after all...

The initial setup would look like this:



Basically, just branching off that existing rail line running vertical with a siding and a track branching off to our landing field with its water depot next door. Our train would sit next to it, and for the Poseidon to lift off or land would move over to the siding temporarily. And yeah, that blue there is our water depot crater.

Our train would initially only consist of two powered railcars and 18 fuel cars.

Class 275 Power Railcar

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Tech Level C box rail car, powered, 190 tons

53.0 tons - chassis, tractor
27.0 tons - fission engine (6/9)
  0.5 tons - armour (20 points BAR2 - 5f/5l/5r/5a)
  1.0 tons - communications
21.0 tons - quarters, second class, crew (3)
  8.0 tons - exoskeleton bay (4 exoskeletons nominal)
79.5 tons - bulk storage:
- 11.5t spare parts train (15 months)
- 45.0t spare parts dropshuttle (15 months)
- 23.0t consumables (15 months)

Cost: 1,265,661 C-Bills each

Type-14 Fuel Tank rail car

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Tech Level C box rail car, unpowered, 21 tons

5 tons - chassis, tractor, trailer
16 tons - fuel tank

The two locomotives would run us 1,265,661 C-Bills each, while the eighteen fuel cars are a steal at only 14,648 C-Bills each. With 18 fuel cars we can 250t of fuel to a dropshuttle.

Our first flight - using a Pontos - would bring in this full train plus construction materials. As a little bribe to the host colony - for using their rail line - we can even bring in a pair of standardized powered passenger rail cars for them, typically bought used (price, new: 485,595 C-Bills) and simply transported there for free:

Pollux 200 Commuter Train

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Tech Level C, box rail car, powered, 47 tons

9.5 tons - chassis
12.0 tons - fuel cell engine (9/14)
5.0 tons - fuel (2777 km range)
0.5 tons - armour (20 points BAR2 - 5f/5l/5r/5a)
20.0 tons - foot infantry bay (112 people)

These railcars later come in handy as well - because, after all, we're trying to make a business here, and with that we have to expand. So, with only a second Pontos flight, we bring in everything we need to install a small spaceport.



So, basically just a second landing field, extending the tracks there, and a couple buildings. Let's look into those:



The setup of that is actually pretty simple. We've got a control tower, a power generator, a small terminal and a pair of hangars that we can use for both storage and to shift loads over to trucks for those customers who disdain proper transport.

Infrastructure is relatively simple. That control tower - CF16 light building, 1-hex/4-level - basically just hosts 6 tons of communications gear, while the terminal - CF40 medium building, 4-hex/2-level - only hosts a duty-free shop and a small hotel for 20 guests. In addition, between these two buildings, there's accomodation for 29 employees now working on site - 6 for the comms, 21 for the now actually manned landing field and 2 for the shop. We even have sufficient supplies for these guys and the hotel guests for two months on-site. The power generator of course runs fission, and at 90 tons even has sufficient spare capacity to further expand the spaceport later on without needing a new power supply.

The two transshipment hangars - CF45 heavy hangars, 5-hex/2-level - are somewhat special. Effectively, each of them consists of a drive-through pair of (light vehicle) bays for rail cars up to 50t weight, as well as - towards that road - a single (medium vehicle) bay where a truck can be loaded. Each hangar can store some 375 tons on top of that - not quite half the load of a Pontos between the two of them, but sufficient for most dropships of the time.
And when the spaceport's not busy, those hangars make a good site for the local farmers to load their goods for transport to the larger towns at the ends of that rail line.

We'll need something to move some freight around of course. You guess it, we're bringing in a few flatcars on the same flight. Six of them nicely fit our weight budget. Don't need a locomotive, we can just use one of the two already there since it's only standing around.

Container Car

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Tech Level C, flat car, unpowered, 40 tons (9t empty)

9.0 tons - chassis, tractor, trailer
31.0 tons - bulk cargo storage, external
As they're a bit bigger than the fuel cars these run for 21,533 C-Bills each.

From here on? A few hundred tons, and we can extend both of those rail branches outwards for a pair of extra landing fields. Then we're really in business.

[Daryk]

Nice!  A couple of comments:

1) I've been looking at the rules for damaging barriers, and if you want something to be mostly small arms proof, you really need BAR 5 at a minimum.

2) 6 tons of communications gear?  If you're going above 3, you might as well go for the full 7, I think...


Otherwise, excellent idea!  I really like this...

[kato]

BAR2 works fine against... well, really ugly weather, and not much more. It should work against a saboteur with a hammer in his hands ;)

As for the six tons comms, there's still benefits to not keeping it to three. Mostly that we need 4 tons to use satellite imagers - and 5 tons to really "use" them. There's also the remote sensor benefit, say we're monitoring the rail line with a couple well-placed sensors...
Could still drop one ton and go down to five, adding say a pair of mounted searchlights to the tower. Should fit the theme.

[Daryk]

I was just thinking "building: what tonnage limits?"... :)

[kato]

I was just thinking "building: what tonnage limits?"... :)

I like to keep the building's CF "simple" - while i really dislike "undisclosed equipment". I.e. i either stay at CF16 for that control tower or go straight to CF40 and i would then have to wonder what i pack in there otherwise ;)

7 tons comms is perfectly possible on the frame of that building even with a quarter for the extra crewman. Just lower the bulk storage. That drops our stored supplies down to only 4 weeks though, and i'd like to keep them at a level that's somewhat reasonable between two flights going out from there (and hence some traffic coming in) even for a smaller colony.

P.S. I also use a house rule to find construction materials for logistics purposes for buildings, which is mostly CF-squared dependent. Gotta ship it all in somehow in the early game.

[Daryk]

Put the comms dish in another CF 16 "building" next to the tower? :)

[kato]

See those pale yellow hexes? Those denote where buildings or units would take damage during liftoff :P

[Daryk]

Ahhh, that's what that is... Hmmm... how about running some cable under the rail line (to the green hex on the other side)?

[kato]

Sure, but do we really need that second CF16 building and those 7t comms? Not like we'll need the +2 initiative or the ECCM here, at least for a couple decades. ;)

I'm kinda earmarking those two hexes for a stage 3 expansion to the spaceport, along with the area that road continues for.

[Daryk]

That makes sense... O0

[kato]

Next expansion, a few years in, based on demand, with one more Pontos flight moving things in:

• extending the two rail lines to the landing fields further out and then looping them together with a vertical stretch
• along that vertical stretch installing a full 15x3-hex landing strip for aerodyne dropshuttles, which of course can also be used to land two spheroids in parallel instead

The spaceport itself would now stretch over two mapsheets and is sufficiently sized to support even a mid-sized colony.

A later installation would likely include a small rail shed for the locomotives for maintenance - in one of those green hexes north of the terminal. A single-hex, single-level CF75 hangar with a superheavy vehicle bay suffices.

Beyond that, we can allow some local companies to install a small industry park to the south of our spaceport, though that'll have to be constructed on local means and local money. Existing power supply is good for another 30 hex-heights in buildings, or well beyond 5000 tons of hangar tonnage. For easy commutes we'll want the whole thing to be within 90 km of the next town, which our Pollux railcars can do in under one hour.

[kato]

Just to show something on construction times and costs...

For the initial stage we have just the landing field and railroad. Add an extra team - or a construction vehicle - and you can keep the time at under 5 days. Cost for construction is 185,500 C-Bills. The train as designed adds 2,794,986 C-Bills to that, so we're still staying at under 3 million.

For the second stage those buildings will cost us quite a bit more. All five together come in at around 545.65 days base construction time; the largest component of that is our power generator building at 279 days. Say we're also extending that road further to the next farm some 2 km away just because we're nice. We need some serious support thus to keep this at a reasonable level: Say nine hired construction teams (which turns out twice the personnel strength as will later work on the spaceport) and two construction vehicles; that puts us down to 103 days. Or 3.5 months. Given our rail infrastructure on-site we have enough capacity on-site to house the construction workers too, though for feeding them we'll have to make the occasional supply run into town about every three weeks.
The cost for the spaceport buildings is also quite a bit higher than our initial investment. 5,432,000 for the terminal, 933,800 for the control tower, 4,275,000 for the power generator and 5,110,000 for each of the two hangars Add some 618,000 for the extra tracks, the second landing field and that 2 km road to the farm. Overall we're at 21,478,800 C-Bills for that stage. Add the flatcars and even if we get the commuter passenger railcars used for half their new price we still run an easy 22 million C-Bills here.

[kato]

Sample timetable for tagteaming a monthly jumpship route with an above Stage 2 spaceport, a single Poseidon and a single Pontos:



Our locomotives are used both to convert water into fuel and to deliver the goods from the Pontos to up to five different nearby settlements; nearby being relative since we are talking about 160 miles / 8600-hex distances. The train is not quite big enough to offload all of our inbound goods over those distances; 10% would be delivered locally by truck, in the above table represented by a single TEU delivered from our transshipping hangars every three days.

For scale of what the above supplies to the larger settlements, 40% of this could equal e.g. grain and luxury food imports for typical consumption by 52,483 people. At 3 jumps out from Terra the add-on cost per person for this import (compared to Terran prices) would be about 9 C-Bills per month (!), which makes such imports rather viable.

The spaceport itself could in theory handle twice the above in turnover, provided a second cargo train, a second monthly jumpship route through the system and an additional Poseidon/Pontos pair is available.

The main source of revenue of the space operations - 93% - would always be from the fuel deliveries of the Poseidon, not from the cargo handling of the Pontos. After initial debt servicing the profit margin of the spaceport is large enough to nominally sustain operations even if jumpship routes drop to only one passing by every four years (say after 2236).

[marauder648]

Oh wow! This is a brilliant expansion of this, the starport, the money etc, superb!

[kato]

The funny thing is that the more you play with the numbers the better it fits into the universe. With a total investment of just under 200 million C-Bills the operation even fits the budget constraints of a Campaign-Operations-designed force without problems.

[kato]

Here's a full stage 3 spaceport:

(map clickable for humongous size, this is four mapsheets)


It basically adds:

• an aerodyne landing stretch that can also be used for two spheroids
• a second terminal building to handle larger passenger numbers
• a fuel depot to handle the increased demand, with buried fuel lines to the three spheroid landing zones
• a set of four additional hangars supplied by the spaceport's reactor (in orange), with rail access
• an industrial area to the south externally supplied by other power generators (in blue)
• some additional transport infrastructure (rail and road), in particular expanding our siding into a small marshalling yard
• a bridge across the railway line, possibly to a nearby new settlement

[Daryk]

Awesome!  Are you going to center a game around this idea?

[kato]

It's a bit hard to find the right angle of attack for a game based on this.

It should work well as a backdrop in an ATOW game, perhaps around the Outer Reaches Rebellion on a smaller, less important planet. Economics and negotiations in the starter points, visit the towns and the farms, and for the main campaign: Smuggle some weapons, hack satellites for information warfare, get the opportunity to capture some Alliance heavy gear with a deft risk of exposure, have rebels harass troops using long-ranging weapons in a hit-and-run from the forests in the north, park some fuel train cars next to an Alliance dropship and blow them up...

[Daryk]

That sounds very workable... I'd be interested if you ever decide to do it play by post! O0

[truetanker]

Your Pontos could also drop a single Nolan and LevCar Cargo trailer to do the exact thing! Just 15 tons heavier and easier to produce an use all you'll need is some engineering / work mechs.

TT

[kato]

Maglev would need more infrastructure on-site - not just the rails, but also a discrete power plant somewhere. A Nolan equivalent itself wouldn't be buildable at Tech Level C btw (which i'm restricting myself to as we're in the 22nd century). The chassis and engine alone would already exceed the 475-ton frame of a Nolan - and cost well over 10 million C-Bills.

[kato]

And since the forum's back up here's some fluff for the kind of environment i see this in:


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While Epsilon Indi became one of the largest Poseidon sites during the 2160s, operating no less
than 28 dropshuttles of various kinds in the system by that point and maintaining a constant
presence at both zenith and nadir jump points as well as running two of its own spaceports on the
planet, it also became the first such site to be fully replaced by jump point refueling stations
being supplied by newer, larger in-system shuttles that'd tug in blocks of ice cut from asteroids
in the outer system only two decades later in the 2190s. Even earlier than that jumppoint stations
had already been established in the system to facilitate the transfer of cargo and personnel.

Being located at the convergence point of jumpship routes towards both agricultural breadbaskets
such as Ingress and Sheratan and mining worlds such as Kawich, the Epsilon Indi operations became
a corner stone to the colonization of worlds spinwards of Terra, guaranteeing it constant business
and, while not making it a major actor like those capitalizing off the mining business, would
still result in net profits exceeding 10 million C-Bills per week.

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Redeploying most its older dropshuttle Fleet after the construction of the jump point stations,
the local operations company of Epsilon Indi managed to expand, supplying the routes towards the
then evolving Tikonov Union and Chesterton Trade League as well as smaller independent planets
such as Poznan or Cynthiania with new ports being built on both established colonies such as on
Woodstock and alongside new colonization endeavours such as on Ruchbah; the number of Poseidons
available also allowed establishing operations even further out on Yangtze and even Demeter - some
115 light years out from Terra.

While "arrangements" with volatile elements in its space sector - in particular the soon expanding
Tikonov Union - kept the Epsilon Indi operations company largely out of the limelight, after a few
incidents around the turn of the century it soon sought to outfit its own small private security
force with some heavier modern weaponry, its ample financial resources and contacts among the
interstellar trade community allowing it to acquire these without much problem.

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By the time of the Demarcation Declaration - marking 90 years since local operations began for the
Epsilon Indi Poseidon Corporation - the company would come to still operate some seven original
Poseidons itself, having replaced the majority of its fleet with newer more capable dropshuttles
and having sold off several dozen dropshuttles - mostly of the Pontos and Poseidon classes - to the
colonies that sprung up in the wider sector in the meantime, and, from decades of dominating the
fuel supply market in the sector now even operating four jumpships of its own.

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[idea weenie]

If you get a chance, check out Traveller Spaceports books for ideas of other stuff a spaceport might need.  Overall, very nice setup.