Freighters of the Third Imperium

A Type MK freighter.

So I graduated from LSP Commercial in ‘92 with an Engineering-3 rating, which got me on the Alderamin Bulker, a big thirty-grand superfreighter out of Shululsish. I thought I had it made: the pay was sweet, even though it was LingScrip. But nobody tells you how they cram the crew into those big ships. Or how damned boring eight years on the same route gets. We averaged twenty-two jumps a year, over and over and over again. If I never set foot on another freighter it’ll be too soon.

Shortly after I published my last post on “Semi-Essential Ships of the Third Imperium,” I realized that I had missed a few more canonical examples of large freighters. The CT supplement Alien Realms (1986) had deckplans for the 3,000-ton Tukera Type AT freighter. Power Projection: Fleet (2007) had brief details on the 50,000-ton Kobe-class bulk carrier. And Mongoose Traveller had a 30,000-ton Galoof-class megafreighter in Pirates of Drinax (2017). (I continue to be amazed by just how much goodness is packed into that campaign setting.)

After looking at the Galoof I wanted to revisit my freighter descriptions, in particular the ones derived from GURPS Traveller. I haven’t done much ship design for any edition, but CT, MT, MgT, and Traveller⁵ ship designs all seem relatively compatible. Some differences in game mechanics between these editions might result in subtle differences to layouts or configurations, but in general a ship designed in one of these editions can be readily dropped into another one.

But I really wasn’t sure about how similar GURPS Traveller ships would be to ones created in other editions. At a glance, the Galoof specifications seemed more-or-less in line with the 20,000-ton Bulk Freighter from Far Trader in terms of size, cargo capacity, and jump capability. 

Curious, I decided to break out my copy of Mongoose Traveller High Guard and build a series of freighters at different tonnages. My goal wasn’t to recreate a specific design but rather to develop representative freighters that would be broadly compatible with four canonical sources: The Traveller Adventure, The Spinward Marches Campaign, Far Trader, and Pirates of Drinax.

So what minimum specifications should apply to large commercial ships? The few canonical examples vary quite a bit in terms of tech level (ranging from TL10 to TL15) as well as jump capability (ranging from J-1 to J-4).

The good old Traveller Wiki has trade route maps for most if not all of the official sectors in Charted Space. Thomas Jones-Low created these using the formulas from Far Trader, which estimates trade volume between worlds using a model that draws from real-world economics:

The gravity model is so named because it is based on a decreasing function of the distance between two “masses,” just like gravity. In this case, “mass” indicates the size of an economy. The variables used in real-world gravity models are economic size, average wealth, distance and measures of the economies’ comparative advantage (20).

A review of the Jones-Low maps for the rimward sectors of the Imperium demonstrates that the highest traffic routes—the ones most likely to be plied by large freighters—are generally jump-3 in distance. I found only one jump-4 link in the entire Solomani Rim. This suggests that the biggest freighters working major trade routes would only need to be built to a jump-3 specification, though small freighters working less-trafficked or frontier routes might need jump-4.

I was initially surprised by this finding: I had expected that the biggest ships, funded by the megacorporations, would be built to the highest tech level and would have higher jump capacity, maybe jump-4 or even jump-5. However, this makes perfect sense when we consider the nature of the gravity model: as you increase the distance between two worlds you decrease the strength of trade connections. Jump-3 seems to be in the sweet spot where worlds have plenty of choices of trading partners that are close enough to form main trade routes. Going with a lower jump number reduces costs but more importantly frees up a great deal of cargo space by reducing the needs for fuel storage.

Using MgT High Guard, I designed nine different freighters. Borrowing from terminology used in GURPS Traveller, I assigned these designs to one of three different classifications: Freighters (1,000+ tons), Superfreighters (10,000+ tons), and Megafreighters (100,0000+ tons).

Creating a single spreadsheet for all nine designs certainly sped things along and helped me spot errors. Although my 30,000-ton superfreighter departs from the Galoof in several ways, it was extremely helpful to have an example to calibrate against as I worked through the designs.

I spotted a few notable things in the Galoof that I adopted for my own designs: for example, the ship’s power plant is just large enough to simultaneously power both the basic ship systems and the jump drive.

The Galoof contains a full complement of crew, and does not utilize the “reduce by two thirds” rule for Large Ships (High Guard 20). I’ve followed this practice, though reducing crew size would significantly reduce operating expenses while freeing up stateroom space for additional cargo.

Along similar lines, the Galoof design assumes that the captain, flight crew, and officers all have their own staterooms and everyone else bunks in a double occupancy cabin (High Guard 21). I was a little surprised that the Galoof had no low berths for replacement crew, but this would be an easy modification.

The CT rules (and I think just about every other edition) require one medic per 120 passengers, or on any starship 200 tons or more. The Mongoose Traveller rules, however, only require one medic per 120 crew and passengers. I just flat-out think this is a mistake: having an able spacer develop acute appendicitis two days into a jump would make for an incredibly bad time. And looking at the designs in High Guard, all ships 200 tons or larger seem to have a medic. So, in lieu of errata I’ll follow the CT rule in my own designs.

The Galoof has common space equal to about 90% of the stateroom space. This is considerably higher than the suggested 25% (High Guard 21). For my own freighters I used the 25% guideline instead.

Most freighters passing through sketchy systems are likely accompanied by patrol corvettes or destroyer escorts either owned or hired by the parent corporation. While the Galoof sports neither armor nor armament, here I followed the examples from Far Trader and CT in assuming that most freighters utilize at least a small number of their hardpoints. The most common armament appears to be a triple turret with beam laser, missile racks, and sandcaster. This is almost certainly for show: the sheer size of the larger freighters, and their enormous number of hull points, is probably deterrent enough. In any case, adding armaments creates the need for gunners, who I assumed would double as shipboard security.

In general, I found the High Guard design sequence fun to work with and probably a bit easier than the MgT 1e sequence. I noticed that in general, there’s not a lot of advantage within the MgT rules to build freighters at TL15 instead of TL12 or 13, even though that higher tech level should be easily within the reach of a megacorporation. TL15 reduces your power plant by about 25% and gives you a better computer, but I’m not sure the extra cost is justified. 

Nevertheless, most of the CT and GT examples of freighters appear to be built at TL15, so I designed a few of my examples to that standard along with TL12 and TL13.

Finally, a couple of notes on secondary craft. Although many Mongoose Traveller designs explicitly do not include the cost of secondary craft in their ship prices, I have done so for the examples below. I have also not included the cargo space available on secondary craft in the ship cargo totals, even though The Traveller Adventure takes pains to point out that secondary craft can be carried with their own cargo bays filled, and that extra space really adds up on a giant starship. For a 100,000 ton megafreighter with ten 95-ton shuttles, this could add another 722 tons of cargo: more than carried by a 1,000 ton freighter!

And with that, here are some representative freighter designs. Based on The Traveller Adventure, different commercial lines appear to utilize their own, proprietary ship classes. So while smaller ships often have standardized designs that are used across Charted Space, freighters probably exhibit significant variation in specifications depending on region and carrier.

Freighters

Freighters are commercial vessel of 1,000 to 9,999 tons used by interface, subsector- and sector-wide transport lines to provide scheduled freight service. Freighters are uncommon on Feeder Routes but are reasonably common on the Main Trade Routes that support tens of thousands to millions of tons of cargo per week.

Merchant lines able to afford such large ships often employ robotic cargo handlers such as the JP-3, Stevedore III, or Longshoreman models—all manufactured and sold by Naasirka.

1,000-ton Freighter. 1,000 tons (standard hull), Thrust-1, Jump-3, TL-12, Computer-20/bis. 14 crew. 304 tons fuel. 10 hardpoints. One 30-ton slow boat. 471 tons cargo. MCr264.83.

2,000-ton Freighter. 2,000 tons (standard hull), Thrust-2, Jump-3, TL-12, Computer-20/bis. 19 crew. 607 tons fuel. 20 hardpoints. One 40-ton slow pinnace. 983 tons cargo. MCr532.59.

3,000-ton Freighter. 3,000 tons (standard hull), Thrust-1, Jump-4, TL-13, Computer-25/bis. 30 crew. 1,212 tons fuel. 30 hardpoints. Two 40-ton slow pinnaces. 1,090 tons cargo. MCr875.26.

5,000-ton Freighter. 5,000 tons (standard hull), Thrust-2, Jump-4, TL-15, Computer-25/bis. 48 crew. 2,015 tons fuel. 50 hardpoints. Three 40-ton slow pinnaces. 1,888 tons cargo. MCr1,637.90.

Superfreighters

Superfreighters generally include commercial vessels in the 10,000 to 99,999 ton range. Superfreighters are too large to profit from incidental trade; their routes are carefully planned, sometimes years in advance. These large starships are rare on Main Trade Routes and uncommon on Major Routes, which support anywhere from up to a million tons of cargo and tens of thousands of passengers per week. Superfreighters are relatively common along the even larger Mega-Routes.

In addition to the Imperial megacorporations, several large mercantile lines operate superfreighters in Magyar. These include the Solomani-controlled Transstar, Solomani Shipping, and Solar Shipping. Most of the principal corporations of the Wuan Technology Association utilize superfreighters, as well as several Aslan companies engaged in trading in the sector: Faiekhas, Oakhowus, Reastirlao, and Tlasayerlahel.

10,000-ton Superfreighter. 10,000 tons (standard hull), Thrust-1, Jump-4, TL-13, Computer-25/bis. 70 crew. 4,040 tons fuel. 100 hardpoints. One 95-ton shuttle. 3,970 tons cargo. MCr2,794.10.

20,000-ton Superfreighter. 20,000 tons (standard hull), Thrust-2, Jump-3, TL-12, Computer-20/bis. 121 crew. 6,067 tons fuel. 200 hardpoints. Two 95-ton shuttles. 10,437 tons cargo. MCr5,138.06.

30,000-ton Superfreighter. 30,000 tons (standard hull), Thrust-1, Jump-3, TL-12, Computer-20/bis. 173 crew. 9,100 tons fuel. 300 hardpoints. Three 95-ton shuttles. 15,901 tons cargo. MCr7,200.40.

50,000-ton Superfreighter. 50,000 tons (standard hull), Thrust-2, Jump-3, TL-15, Computer-20/bis. 296 crew. 15,125 tons fuel. 500 hardpoints. Five 95-ton shuttles. 26,240 tons cargo. MCr14,075.20.

Megafreighter

Megafreighters, the largest commercial ships at 100,000 tons or more, are rare even on the Major Trade Routes. A few dozen magafreighters may ply the high-traffic Mega-Routes, which support several million tons of cargo and hundreds of thousands of passengers per week. Only one such route exists in Magyar sector, connecting Daibei and the Solomani Rim, running through Stansifer (3109), Nosret (2807), Guenivier (2505), Nahn (2403), and Seloo (2102).

In Magyar, megafreighters are generally operated only by a handful of the great Imperial megacorporations: Kreuta (the sector subsidiary of Tukera), Ling-Standard Products, Makhidkarun, and Naasirka.

Megafreighter. 100,000 tons (standard hull), Thrust-1, Jump-3, TL-15, Computer-20/bis. 606 crew. 30,250 tons fuel. 1,000 hardpoints. Ten 95-ton shuttles. 51,981 tons cargo. MCr27,673.87.

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