Express Boat

• For the Fanzine periodical of the same name, please see: X-Boat: A Traveller5 Zine.

Line Combatants (Primary - Capital)				Escort Combatants (Secondary - Subcapital)				Military Auxiliary (Tertiary)
B- Battleship	C- Cruiser	O- Ortillery	V- Carrier	D- Destroyer	E- Escort	F- Fighter	H- Defense/Security	I- Combat Transport	Q- Combat Support	S- Scout	U- Utility	X- Commo	Z- Special

Mercantile Commercial Ships (Trade & Profit)				Non-Mercantile Commercial Ships (Industry & Profit)					Non-Commercial Ships (Nonprofit)			System Craft (Intrastellar)
A- Tramp	M- Freighter	R- Liner	T- Transport	G- Industrial	J- Prospector	K- Expedition	P- Corsair	U- Utility	L- Science	N- Medical	Y- Private	WB- Barge	WA- Satellite	WO- Space Station

Express Boat (a.k.a. X-boat) are rapid communication ships which are designed to make optimum use of jump technology in communicating information within the Imperium. Because the Imperium is so large, ordinary communication must depend on ships traveling along established Trade Routes, making Regina (Spinward Marches 1710) nearly four years out from the Imperial Core.

• X-boats transport X-mail. Many ships are equipped with a Mail Vault for this purpose.
• Other kinds of Communication Vessels and can be found at the article of the same name.
• The main difference between an Express Boat and a Courier Vessel is that express boats either can not, or are not usually intended to, approach a planet or highport but instead waits at the 100 diameter line for a tender to deliver fuel and transfer physical cargo, while couriers either dock at highports or land on planets like most ships.
• The Supraclass designation is also known as Ship Mission, Ship Mission Code, Mission, or Ship Hull Designation.
• It is a starship supraclass.

Description (Specifications)

Logo of the IISS X-Boat Service.

As an X-boat arrives in a system, it beams its recorded data to the express station, which then retransmits it to an X-boat standing by for a jump outsystem.

• Time between jumps is almost always less than four hours and has been recorded at under seven minutes, making the speed of communication nearly the speed of jump (...since X-boats carry Jump-4 drives, speeds near four parsecs per week).
• In practice, this speed is somewhat reduced by the fact that trade routes do not follow straight lines and that not all jumps are made at Jump-4. Nonetheless, the system achieves approximately Jump-2.6 per week.

Image Repository

1. A typical Type XT class Express Boat Tender as represented through a crew sketch.
   
2. An image of a Xavier class Express Boat.
   

Strategy & Tactics (Doctrine)

Xboats are Jump-4 ships with no maneuver drive, crewed by single pilots. As an xboat arrives in a new system, it beams its recorded data to the express boat station, which then re-transmits it to an xboat standing by to jump outsystem. The first ship is then refuelled, possibly the pilot is replaced, and it awaits the arrival of the next incoming boat.

Time between jumps is almost always under 4 hours, and the record is under 7 minutes, making the speed of the communication nearly the speed of jump; 4 parsecs per week. In practice, this speed is somewhat reduced because xboat routes do not follow straight lines, and that not all jumps are made at Jump-4. Nonetheless, the system achieves approximately Jump-2.6 per week.

Supraclass Roles

Express Boats typically serve the following roles:

1. Communication Vessel
2. Courier
3. Express Boat
4. Express Solar Sailor
5. Interplanetary Express Boat
6. VIP Transport

Supraclass Archtypes

X-class Supraclass Archtypes
Archtype	Type Code	TL Range	Remarks
Express Boat	XB	TL:10-15	None
Express Boat Tender	XT	TL:10-15	None

History & Background (Dossier)

The sheer size of the Imperium means that ordinary communications must depend on ships travelling along the main trade routes, making Regina (Regina / Spinward Marches 1910) nearly four years out from the Imperial Core Sector.

The Express Boat (abbreviated X-boat) System, established originally in 624 and expanded to cover the entire Imperium by 718, cuts this communication time by nearly 75 percent. Selected locations along major trade routes are established as sites for express stations, which are orbital facilities which service and refuel the X-boats on their communications runs. Often an express boat tender serves as the station.

The express boats themselves were given the highest jump range commonly available when they were designed - Jump 4 - but as technology has progressed, even with Jump 6 becoming commonly available in approximately 1000, the express boat has remained at Jump 4. There are three primary reasons for this:

1. Tonnage limitations. With the extreme storage and bandwidth requirements to carry an entire system's worth of mail, there is little room for additional drives and fuel storage: while not impossible, it is largely impractical to extend this range further.
2. Cost. The express boat is one of - if not the - most prevalent starships in Imperial space, and due to the pony express nature of the network, an upgraded variant cannot be assigned to where it is most useful: they all must be upgraded. Even a minor increase in cost for one boat would represent a dramatic expense for the whole network, and no Emperor (as of 1105) has decided to make the investment.
3. Limited returns. The comparison to a pony express leads many to believe that the purpose of the network is to take a message from one end of the Imperium to another as fast as physically possible. While it is the most commonly available way to accomplish just that, the primary purpose of the network is to disseminate information - and to do so, it must make as many stops as practical. Looking at a map of the network, one can see that (relatively) few of the links make full use of the express boat's range. This is exactly why. Increasing jump range further would only increase speed if some of these stops were taken away, which would be akin to taking a public transport route and removing all stops but the terminals: moving between the start and end would be faster, but only by defeating the point of public transport. As such, the network would only be faster in sparsely-populated regions where express stations are maintained only to pass along the express boat, not to pass mail locally, and only if these regions were within Jump 5 or 6 range. That is to say, the network would almost never be faster.

Selected Variant Types & Classes

Paramilitary Vessel - Express Boats:

• Type X class Express Boat
  • Type XM class Interplanetary Express Boat
  • Type XSS class Express Solar Sailor
  • Xavier class Express Boat

Paramilitary Vessel - Express Boat Tenders:

• Type XT class Express Boat Tender
  • Lirshala class Express Boat Tender
  • Purcell class Express Boat Tender

Ship Summary List

Some of the most commonly used vessels in this role or these roles include:

2 Representative Communications Vessel (X) Classes
Class Mission Code TL Tons Jump G Origin Canon Quick ship profile Class Mission Code TL Tons Jump G Origin Canon Quick ship profile Type XUA class Armed Packet Ship XUA 12 300 3 3 Third Imperium Yes. Published, canon starship design. XU-CS33 Yetsabl class Courier XC 15 200 3 6 Zhodani Consulate Yes

0 Representative X-boat (XB) Classes
No results

0 Representative X-boat Tender (XT) Classes
No results

1 Representative Packet Boat (XU) Classes
Class Mission Code TL Tons Jump G Origin Canon Quick ship profile Class Mission Code TL Tons Jump G Origin Canon Quick ship profile Type XUA class Armed Packet Ship XUA 12 300 3 3 Third Imperium Yes. Published, canon starship design. XU-CS33

Library Data Referral Tree

Please refer to the following AAB Library Data for more information: (Click "Expand" to reveal)

Starship:

• Starship User Types
  • Civilian Ship
  • Military Ship
  • Non-Commercial Vessel
  • Paramilitary Ship

• Advanced Ship Classifications
  • Ship Mission Code / Supraclass
  • Ship Type Code / Superclass
  • Ship Class Code / Class
  • Model (TL)
  • Bloc (Lot)

• Basic Ship Classifications
  • Adventure Class Ship (Auxiliary Class Ship)
  • Battle Class Ship (Bulk / Subcapital Class Ship)
  • Capital Ship (Capital Class Ship)
  • Fleet Class Ship (Capital Class Ship)
  • Size-Role Classification
  • Subcapital Ship (Small & Large Battle Class Ships)
  • QSP
  • USP
  • World Class Ship

• Ships by Function
  • Bigcraft
  • Boat
  • Capital Ship
  • Largecraft
  • Non-starship
  • Smallcraft
  • Spaceplane
  • Spaceship
  • Starship
  • Subcapital Ship
  • Subcraft
  • System Craft
  • Warship

Speed of Travel

• NAFAL (STL) - (Not As Fast As Light) / (Slower Than Light)
• Light Speed (c)
• FTL - (Faster Than Light) - "Superluminal"

• Astronomical Unit (AU)

» Imperial Standard Astronomical Unit

• Light-second (ls)
• Light-minute (lm)
• Light-hour (lh)
• Light-day (ld)
• Light-week (lw)
• Light-year (ly)
• Parsec (pc)

» Solomani Parsec

» Vilani Parsec ("Deshi")

» Imperial Standard Parsec

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References

This article has a secret.

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Marc Miller. The Kinunir (Game Designers Workshop, 1979), 39.
• John Harshman, Marc Miller, Loren Wiseman. Library Data (A-M) (Game Designers Workshop, 1981), 26-27.
• Marc Miller. The Spinward Marches (Game Designers Workshop, 1979), 3.
• Marc Miller. Twilight's Peak (Game Designers Workshop, 1980), TBD.
• Marc Miller. Imperial Encyclopedia (Game Designers Workshop, 1987), TBD.
• Marc Miller. The Traveller Book (Game Designers Workshop, 1982), TBD.
• Gregory P. Lee. Lee's Guide to Interstellar Adventure (Gamelords, 1982), TBD.
• Martin Dougherty. Scout Ships (Avenger Enterprises, 2007), TBD.
• Marc Miller. T5 Core Rules (Far Future Enterprises, 2013), TBD.
• XBITS: Xboats in Tender System by Admiral Savage