ottarrus
Cosmic Mongoose
For those of you who are fiddling with 2300AD, has it seemed to you that it's impossible for a ship crew to make money in the game?
Given the high numbers of crewmen needed, just salaries completely prevent the stereotypical Traveller Free Trader campaign. Consider: even the Merchant career muster-out ship, the Thorez, requires a crew of almost 20. And each one of those personnel make about Lv. 2000/mo. So that's 40k in salaries alone at base pay... meaning that your crew all have skill levels of 1 or 2 in their primary job skills. Even Player Characters like to get paid at end of the month, even if they take part of their pay in shares purchases.
Now, the Thorez is a great 'adventurer' ship. It can get on and off most worlds without undue hassle. I has a decent turn of speed in stutterwarp, so she can get where she's going pretty quickly, and she's ubiquitous in two Arms of space. Maintenance and repairs are not too very burdensome.
But she just can't make a living, much less a ship payment, with the cargo space she has available plus the passengers she can carry.
Given the high numbers of crewmen needed, just salaries completely prevent the stereotypical Traveller Free Trader campaign. Consider: even the Merchant career muster-out ship, the Thorez, requires a crew of almost 20. And each one of those personnel make about Lv. 2000/mo. So that's 40k in salaries alone at base pay... meaning that your crew all have skill levels of 1 or 2 in their primary job skills. Even Player Characters like to get paid at end of the month, even if they take part of their pay in shares purchases.
Now, the Thorez is a great 'adventurer' ship. It can get on and off most worlds without undue hassle. I has a decent turn of speed in stutterwarp, so she can get where she's going pretty quickly, and she's ubiquitous in two Arms of space. Maintenance and repairs are not too very burdensome.
But she just can't make a living, much less a ship payment, with the cargo space she has available plus the passengers she can carry.