2nd Ed High Guard Strange Things

A

allanimal

Mongoose
Thanks to an international move, I didn't get much time to really look at High Guard during the playtest phase, but now that things have settled down a bit, I'm looking at the preview PDF provided to the playtesters, and there are a couple things I think are weird.
Maybe these were brought up in the playtest forums, but they're not around anymore, so I can't search them.

First off: Life support costs. I like how some things break this down (Barracks, brigs, cabin space, luxury staterooms - maybe others), but some don't (normal, double, high passage staterooms - maybe others). I think every passenger space type should include the cost. If there's a general rule here, it should be mentioned in the high guard text under "install staterooms".

Then there's my gripe: Luxury staterooms are 10 tons per. OK, cool. Someone who pays to travel in that, deserves the space and opulence.
However life support cost for it is 5k per ton, or 50k per luxury stateroom.
This is in comparison to a barracks (Cr 500 per trooper) or Brig (Cr 333 per prisoner) or cabin space (Cr 1500 per moderately comfortable passenger).
So, I can see the prisoner gets enough oxygen and water/facilities to survive, as well as the most basic nutrition.
The starship trooper gets the same amount of oxygen & water/facilities, and a bit better food. Maybe spam and beans instead of the protein paste that the prisoners get.
The people in the cabin get the same amount of oxygen, water & facilities, and maybe a decent meal or two. is it really 3x what the trooper gets? Maybe - instead of tripe and beans, they get a reasonable facsimile of chicken vindaloo or beef stroganoff. (I'm thinking airline food for international flights here).
So, the rich 1%er in the luxury stateroom maybe brings their personal assistant, a butler, a spouse and/or mistress (what's the gender neutral word here?), a bodyguard or two.... But the tonnage is less than 50% more than a high stateroom, so that really only covers person or maybe the couple that's in it. So why the heck is the life support 100x that of a trooper or 33.33x the cost of the moderately comfortable customer in cabin space?
The luxury passenger is breathing the same amount & quality of air (right? or does that level get you special air too?), averaging the same amount of bodily eliminations, maybe getting laundry service and definitely getting better food as well as better non-essential drinks (the luxury passenger gets fine alcohol, the marine if they want more than H2O pays for their own beer/jägerbombs/etc..)

I just can't imagine that the luxury food and booze is that much more expensive. If it was Cr5000 per luxury stateroom, cool. But 5k per ton. Woah.

Anyone else see anything weird in the High Guard Preview??

Allan
 
I think it's safe to say that the life support cost model remains fundamentally broken.

Why you can build a starship to last 150 years but you can't make life support systems that are based upon as robust technology is, well, silly.

The mechanical costs associated to life support should be bundled into the annual/monthly maintenance fee's. Trying to justify the usage of systems when no one is using them (i.e. charging per compartment even when it's not in use) is again silly. If we, today, can shut off machinery for days/months/years without incurring any costs, why can't they do so in the future? Don't believe me? Try turning off your fridge for a month and then turn it back on. I bet it you will incur no costs while doing so. And yes, it can break while off, just like it can break while in operation.

The biggest costs associated with life support should be the food costs. Air/water is recycled, and while you might need to get a re-up from a station when you dock due to inevitable minor losses, air/water is or would be quite cheap. Food though, is a variable. And for passengers paying mid/high passage fee's it's got to be NICE food (with some booze thrown in for most sophonts). And that would vary depending on just how nice you want to make their food/drink. Though it could be easily quantified with a chart and you are done. There's actually a chart already in the book the defines average costs per month based upon your SOC level. So it's not like there isn't existing precedent.
 
Oops ... frankly, if there are any more problems like these in the new High Guard I will certainly not pay ca. 30 USD for a PDF of it. :shock:
 
Air is the most difficult thing to clean on an starship; odors persist. A luxury passenger could well be paying to have premium filtration of the air, or, in more poorly run ships, the right of “first breath” of the freshly filtered air, that then gets flushed to the other passengers with no filter in-between. A biohazard waiting to happen, to be sure...
 
rust2 said:
Oops ... frankly, if there are any more problems like these in the new High Guard I will certainly not pay ca. 30 USD for a PDF of it. :shock:
Click to expand...

the one advantage of a PDF is that they can update and correct mistakes as they are discovered, and release a corrected version....instead of semi-regular seperate Errata dumps
 
phavoc said:
The mechanical costs associated to life support should be bundled into the annual/monthly maintenance fee's. Trying to justify the usage of systems when no one is using them (i.e. charging per compartment even when it's not in use) is again silly. If we, today, can shut off machinery for days/months/years without incurring any costs, why can't they do so in the future?
Click to expand...

There is an argument to roll life support into maintenance, but you are always going to get a situation where players try to ram a hundred refugees into the cargo hold. From the other side, we do not break down every cost of running a ship, so things get rolled into either life support and maintenance. Life support is not just food and air, but will govern all components associated with crew and passengers (subscriptions for the latest pay to view vid shows, for example, the cleaning of staterooms and common areas, or laundry).

So, costs for a ship are basically sunk into two areas (life support and maintenance) because one is a variable and the other is a fixed cost. That is the only reason - simplicity. But they both cover a great deal of ground.

As for luxury staterooms... yeah, the food is going to be nicer - and the water a bit hotter, the air recycled more often, the laundry specially freshened. This is how the other side live. It costs, but they think they are worth it.
 
msprange said:
As for luxury staterooms... yeah, the food is going to be nicer - and the water a bit hotter, the air recycled more often, the laundry specially freshened. This is how the other side live. It costs, but they think they are worth it.
Click to expand...

Best answer.
 
This actually seems very much, NOT, a strange thing.

Luxury costs being too high? Luxury costs have always exploded exponentially . Also - Life-support costs to me, is not keeping the lights on, it is literally that opulence of services (food, decoration, entertainment, drinks, etc...)

Yes I can live on $20 a day by shopping at walmart.
But in my stupider years, I have spent $200 a day (yes a DAY, weekly) simply on food and drink - and this wasn't even luxurious by ANY standard.

If I'm going to have Kaiseki cuisine, 2000 thread-count sheets, 30+ year old bottles, bathe in milk and so on.. I'm going to be paying a TON more. Especially if this on a travelling ship not in some building somewhere.
 
Another problem in the High Guard preview document.
The "High Technology" chapter, the table for Large Bay Weapons has Plasma-pulse Cannon Bay twice.
That's not all: while the cost and power of the Plasma-pulse Cannon Bay increases over the Medium Bay version, the Damage and Auto rating does not, unlike the steps from turret to barbette to small bay to medium bay.

There's got to be a reason to get the large bay version over medium bay, but I'm not seeing it.
 
Read the text about bays.

Large bays have +4 to hit vs large ships.
They also have some damage boost = 1 per dmg dice.
They also can land a critical hit on any spaceship, regardless of size (larger ships become immune to critical hits of smaller weapons).
 
arcador said:
Read the text about bays.
Click to expand...

Good point - I hadn't done that yet, as I don't normally play with ships large enough to mount bays.

My point about the double entry still stands though. :)
 
For those of us unlucky enough to not have a preview copy, isn't 2nd Edition High Guard supposed to be released sometime this July? I'm slowly going insane waiting for it.
 
arcador said:
They also can land a critical hit on any spaceship, regardless of size (larger ships become immune to critical hits of smaller weapons).
Click to expand...
Unfortunately big ships are basically immune to crits in the last ß.
HG said:
The Severity of a critical hit is based on full 5% increments of the ship’s hull value. For example,
a ship with 10,000 Hull points that receives a critical hit that causes 1,200 points of damage, will sustain a Severity 2 critical hit.
Click to expand...
 
allanimal said:
The "High Technology" chapter, the table for Large Bay Weapons has Plasma-pulse Cannon Bay twice.
Click to expand...

I've got a newer version then the last preview one and it only shows up once so has already been corrected.
 
msprange said:
phavoc said:
The mechanical costs associated to life support should be bundled into the annual/monthly maintenance fee's. Trying to justify the usage of systems when no one is using them (i.e. charging per compartment even when it's not in use) is again silly. If we, today, can shut off machinery for days/months/years without incurring any costs, why can't they do so in the future?
Click to expand...

There is an argument to roll life support into maintenance, but you are always going to get a situation where players try to ram a hundred refugees into the cargo hold. From the other side, we do not break down every cost of running a ship, so things get rolled into either life support and maintenance. Life support is not just food and air, but will govern all components associated with crew and passengers (subscriptions for the latest pay to view vid shows, for example, the cleaning of staterooms and common areas, or laundry).

So, costs for a ship are basically sunk into two areas (life support and maintenance) because one is a variable and the other is a fixed cost. That is the only reason - simplicity. But they both cover a great deal of ground.

As for luxury staterooms... yeah, the food is going to be nicer - and the water a bit hotter, the air recycled more often, the laundry specially freshened. This is how the other side live. It costs, but they think they are worth it.
Click to expand...

There definitely a sliding g scene in that sense. It this is where the life support charges, per stateroom regardless of occupancy and type of occupant show the cost model to be broken. Someone payin 8k credits for passage should be getting better food and drink than someone purchasing basic passage. But the occupancy costs remain the same.

This is where the table that provides costs by social level comes in handy. It would be easy enough to adapt to passage and reflect the different costs for an occupied stateroom. Plus if someone decides to combine rooms to make a larger compartment your costs don't get skewed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

J
High and Luxury Staterooms Life Support
2
Replies
33
Views
2K
Condottiere
C
Terry Mixon
Passenger Staterooms: Single Travellers vs Couples
11 12 13
Replies
245
Views
6K
Condottiere
C
M
Feeding a High Population, Non-Agricultural world
5 6 7
Replies
121
Views
3K
boggo2300
boggo2300
ottarrus
High Guard Stateroom Proposal
Replies
10
Views
2K
fvcoulter
F
S
Heath Robinson "Lifeboat"
Replies
0
Views
377
swordtart
S
Back
Top