Hopeless wrote:
Sorry if I'm being a little slow on the uptake but could you expand on that?
Ship's maintenance cost: multiplied by how many months it takes to get to your destination and back if there's no cargo or passengers to pick up
Not a factor since costs to carry are per light year. So a run from Nyotekundu at the start of the French arm all the way to say Hochbaden via a scenic run of Neubayern, Augereau, Queen Alices Star, DM 34 14332 and Beta Comae. A total of severn stutterwarp runs with say 10 days each if you include flight times in system and discharge times. A shade over two months. Now maintenance. Life support the mortgae etc for that entire two month run for the Anjou is Mlv1.4, under half a million for the tiny Thorez. Cargo picked up from the start for delivery at the final world before the return trip would pay for the entire distance in LYs, passengers or cargo going from say Nyotekundu to Neubayern would just pay for that part of the trip and be replaced with cargo and passengers for the next worlds on the run. Lv10,000 a month is LV40,000 for the entire run out and back. You could pay for the entire round trips maintenance just by ten tons of cargo on your first run
Hopeless wrote:
Crew Salaries: Direct debit I assume but given you're heading outsystem and communication doesn't cope for this I assume its paid into a suitable account for them perhaps a smaller amount so the majority if direct debited at their preferred bank.
Well the entire run is two months up so that is Lv12,000 for your pilot. But is like anything else, you get paid at the end of the month. If the ships fund doesn’t have the cash for some reason wait a while or change ships. I see the rougher frontier worlds being very cash sort of places and the more core like worlds being all charge cards/RFID and E-Cash
Hopeless wrote:
Rental Charges: Cost for employing labourers to unload and load cargo if you don't want to cope with the bill of crewmembers fulfilling these roles.
The Anjou includes 4 crew as cargo handlers, no mention of specialist cargo moving kit on the ship but cargo is going to be moved in zero G on and off ships so small thrusters packs or waldos. On the frontiers you could hire them for a price but its not going to be too high or you bring your own. The Anjou has 4 cargo handlers so probably has 4 cargo moving units as well.
Hopeless wrote:
Landing/Refuelling Costs: Whereever you dock you will be charged, refuelling is something you can't avoid and then there's the auxiliary costs after all in 2300ad you need somewhere to shunt your stutter drives and I can see that being preyed upon by an avaricious local authority.
Docking Lv300 a day, a day or three to unload and reload cargo. There is no cost for discharging since it happens as soon as you enter the shelf. The only time you would pay would be docking at some weird deep space station that used exotic tech to bleed off the charge without having a 0.1G gravity well handy. Fuel costs. I have factored in the Thorez costs. The Anjou uses 140Dtons a month or Lv130,000 buying the fuel at frontier costs. As for being preyed upon by greedy local administrators. See my post on Bribes. If the bulk of shipping in the frontiers is independent and you annoy them they will stop visiting you. If you charge them more to visit they will charge more to bring cargo to you or collect it from you. You business and trade suffers and you lose money rather than make it. National colonies have cargo ships from the home nation to call on but they few of the nations have a large enough fleet to meet the needs of all their colonies.
Hopeless wrote:
Mortgage Cost: Direct debited from the owner's account so any cargo or passenger payments would have to go through their account so they don't default on this during their trip to and from their destination.
Pay when you get back to your home port. There are 30 worlds in known space. Skipping on a mortgage isn’t possible, its far easier to wreck the ship as an insurance scam. Steal the ship, refuse to pay the bank. Then what? There is no where to run to. This isn’t the 30,000 worlds of the 3rdI and its neighbours. Banks will simply charge you for being late on the monthly payment unless they know you are doing a 5 month long circuit up most of the arm and will expect payments every 6 month for half a years money
Hopeless wrote:
Have I missed anything?
Sorry but your post got me thinking (never a good sign in my case!) and this is my way of trying to understand (and clearly I don't) in the Traveller game I ran last year I decided that the lab ship one of the player character's owned was modified so it could refine fuel to help with the repayments which would cover alot of the costs as I could discern.
With Traveller 2300 I doubt this will be anything as easy (and that wasn't) and figure this was something I really need to understand.
The passenger costs will put ships such as liners right on the edge which is supported by the background with nations subsidising runs to their colonies. But for cargo haulers, if you can get a ship and crew you are away very quickly.
The prices are too high, they reflect lots of cargo and too few ships hence the charges being far higher than the costs. More ships begin to bargain with each other by lowering the costs. If one charges Lv750 a Ly per Dton and makes a huge profit another can charge Lv720, get the run and still make a big profit. The price would swing down to the point where the national lines, the big independent groups and so on decide that is the point and no lower. If it is profitable to add more ships to the fleets then more ships will be build increasing the number of ships in known space till they reached the point where the cost to carry cargo has reached the level the big haulers were happy with.
If 2300 has ships like the Anjou in such numbers 78+ official ones, not counting the knockoffs and unlicensed copies. There must be enough cargo to support ships able to haul 1,712Dtons each. And that is just one class of ship. The Ships of the French arm lists a number of ships hauling 200-300Dtons each or more.
The Anjou’s alone can carry 133,536Dtons if they only carry their entire load in a month and make two half empty runs.
No if the price is too high and there is nothing to reflect why it is so high it would drop in a free market.
If a ship can expect to make 10 Light years a month then a price fluctuating between Lv100 and Lv150 per Dton per Ly is far more reasonable and where I would expect the markets to reach.
The Anjou making two runs full would be looking at 1712Dtons times ten light years times Lv150 at the top end or Lv100 at the bottom end. Which is between MLv2.56 and Mlv1.7. This is enough to be viable without a huge profit that goes nowhere but into the ships vault. If the Anjou costs about Lv850,000 a month including fuel and all the little costs then it needs to be half full each trip to make a break even at the lower hauling fee and can make a decent profit if it carries full loads or can earn the higher fee. Seems reasonable to me.
The Thorez is much tighter if it just does deep space stuff but when you add on the “to and from orbit” stuff it is perfectly viable.
Perhaps set the base price at Lv120 Per Dton and Broker + SOC 8+ with each effect adding or subtracting Lv10 to a max of Lv150 and a minimum of Lv90
