2300AD Gearheading

[ottarrus]

So, for the 2300 wonks out there, I want to ask a question or three about ships and their design.
1. Okay I realize someone has likely asked and answered this one. Do ships with habitats keep them extended in stutterwarp or only in normal space?
2. Has anyone figured out the economics of space travel in 2300? It just seems impossible to me for a commercial ship with a crew of 20, each of whom makes a salary of Lv3000 a month on average, plus fueling, stevadoring [getting cargoes from orbit to ground], and operating costs [incl. L/S] of Lv 10 thousand a month can make anything like a living.
3. There's a large discrepancy over several books on the required crews vs. the number of staterooms. The Merkur, for example, lists a crew of 10 at a Comfort Level of -2. This implies that the crew is undermanned, overworked, and stacked on top of each other. But the deck plan has 12 staterooms. Now, I can see one extra for VIP transport, but that 'extra' 4 dtons could be used as a common room if nothing else.

 

[Lurking Grue]

1. Do ships with habitats keep them extended in stutterwarp or only in normal space?

I would think they keep them extended and rotating in stutterwarp. As the flight between star systems is the longest part of the journey and the primary reason for having rotating habitats is to keep the crew and passengers both comfortable (simpler living for non-spacers, no zero-G sickness etc.) and healthier (no deterioration of bone density, muscle mass etc.), it would be quite strange to limit their use to just when the ship is not in warp, e.g. when in orbit of a planet and/or discharging the drive. AFAIK, stutterwarp imparts no stress of acceleration to the habitats, so there's no reason not to keep them extended - unless you're trying to keep your radar profile smaller. IMHO, at least. I have no rule book reference to give unfortunately. (P.S. By normal space I take it you mean when not travelling at warp.)

 

[Bryn the 2300AD guy]

Okay, let me just state up front that the AEH is horribly, horribly broken. Efficiencies in the hundreds, perhaps thousands of percents, OMS drives that would instantly melt if ignited etc.

One problem is that the livre's value was changed by Colin, but prices generally weren't. In fact, starship crewman are paid a lot less under Mongoose than the original, because the value of the Livre is 1/5th of what it originally was. However, crew size requirements have skyrocketed. In GDW the minimum crew of a typical starship was 16 - 10 for 2 bridge watches of 5, and 6 for 2 engineering watches of 3. This was basically the constant required crew for a merchant, regardless of cargo capacity.

One of the few things that was corrected for inflation was cargo costs. In the core game, cargo costs work out as ca. Lv150/dTon/ly, whereas in Mongoose it is corrected for the new value of the livre to Lv750/dTon/ly.

Only having the 2012 version of Mongoose 2k3, I can only assume that the charge of Lv750/dTon/ly still applies. This means a busy Anjou has a gross income of 200-300 million livre per year. All the overheads are only a few percent of this.

It may be that Colin decreased this, because the relationship of starship construction cost to annual potential income proves that starship production is tantalum limited, and he wanted to get rid of that. Is it still Lv750/dTon/ly?