Advanced Low Berth?

[swordtart]

As well, even without luxury robot assisted low berths, an Expert (Medic/1) program (TL11, Cr1000 plus the cost of the computer) gives anyone with Medic skill a +1 for tasks. It would pretty much be malpractice not to use one!

Under the CSC rules the Medic-1 expert package now only costs Cr200. If it is only granting +1 to a person who has Medic-0 or better, this can be run on a specialised computer running the Intelligent Interface. You only need a TL8 computer for this and you can buy a TL12 retro-tech version that is a microchip for Cr78. IMTU Cr300 gets you a wrist-watch with built-in 5km transceiver, geostationary satellite uplink, torch, basic camera and the computer and Medic-1 expert software. This is a popular med-school graduation gift and is a no-brainer for a ship's doctor.

 

[swordtart]

Also it has to be said that building your medical droid into the low berth means you are paying for it whether you need it or not. You could have a conventional low berth and build the same medic functionality into a conventional crew droid instead. It does not specify that the medic check requires any particular STR or DEX and it is an INT check so there is no mandated size for the robot, so you could have dozens of dirt cheap "medic scutters" that perform the function instead of meat crew. These will cost less than upgrading a low berth, they do not have an ongoing maintenance or operating cost and could reasonably take up effectively no space on the ship (you could pack hundreds into a DTon. As each one can service many low berths the cost is amortized over all those berths rather than being per berth. In addition they can offer conventional medical help and are therefore useful for the entire voyage not just on the day of disembarkation.

Canny captains might also have ranked "Medical Scutters" with most at low skill levels to deal with mundane matters and the low passengers in good health and a few more advanced ones to cover the more challenging ones. Especially difficult ones can be dealt with by spending more time.

For even the modest numbers of berths on a small trader this would save MCr's. When you are only making Cr690 per low berth any saving is significant.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Also it has to be said that building your medical droid into the low berth means you are paying for it whether you need it or not. You could have a conventional low berth and build the same medic functionality into a conventional crew droid instead. It does not specify that the medic check requires any particular STR or DEX and it is an INT check so there is no mandated size for the robot, so you could have dozens of dirt cheap "medic scutters" that perform the function instead of meat crew. These will cost less than upgrading a low berth, they do not have an ongoing maintenance or operating cost and could reasonably take up effectively no space on the ship (you could pack hundreds into a DTon. As each one can service many low berths the cost is amortized over all those berths rather than being per berth. In addition they can offer conventional medical help and are therefore useful for the entire voyage not just on the day of disembarkation.

Canny captains might also have ranked "Medical Scutters" with most at low skill levels to deal with mundane matters and the low passengers in good health and a few more advanced ones to cover the more challenging ones. Especially difficult ones can be dealt with by spending more time.

For even the modest numbers of berths on a small trader this would save MCr's. When you are only making Cr690 per low berth any saving is significant.

Valid, but this was a thread on advanced low berths, so that was what I was addressing.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

The Captain will set the lottery to have people bet any number but 0 deaths if the tech is advanced enough that 0 deaths is the norm and pocket a bonus every trip.

 

[Condottiere]

The way to win is not to play.

Which reminds me.

Does time on ice still count towards seniority?

Do you get paid overtime?

 

[AndrewW]

The way to win is not to play.

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

 

[rinku]

That would be the point.

What is their primary usage?

If it's for emergencies, whether medical or catastrophic hull damage, the low berths would be viewed differently, as compared to minimizing life support costs, for cattle class.

CSC has the Cryoberth that is specifically for rapid (but riskier) freezing of critically injured. That tends to support that the usual starship version is mainly not for that. Either cattle class or less hasty hibernation.

Further thought that just occurred to me... because of how Mongoose does injury, most critically injured characters will be 0 or 1 END. It really is a last resort procedure, and you do want a skilled medic WITH technological aid who takes their time to carefully put the patient under.

Also... if nothing else, having a low berth on a ship gives you somewhere sanitary to put a corpse. Up to seven days in jump with a decomposing body could be pretty unpleasant.

 

[Condottiere]

Cargo net.

Shouldn't really destabilize the jump bubble.

Or, brandy barrel.

 

[swordtart]

CSC has the Cryoberth that is specifically for rapid (but riskier) freezing of critically injured. That tends to support that the usual starship version is mainly not for that. Either cattle class or less hasty hibernation.

Further thought that just occurred to me... because of how Mongoose does injury, most critically injured characters will be 0 or 1 END. It really is a last resort procedure, and you do want a skilled medic WITH technological aid who takes their time to carefully put the patient under.

Also... if nothing else, having a low berth on a ship gives you somewhere sanitary to put a corpse. Up to seven days in jump with a decomposing body could be pretty unpleasant.

You only need the skilled medic on revival, so anyone can throw their mangled buddy into the cryobeth. You can then take your time getting them to somewhere you can hire a skilled medic with all the toys to revive them. A grav cryobeth will allow you to take them to a facility for the revival instead.

Grav low berths allow there to be a low terminal where passengers can be boxed up by skilled teams independent of ships to carry them and then simply moved onto the ships. That means the boxing up can take place weeks before a ship arrives allowing rapid embarkation/disembarkation of low berths when the ship is in dock and medical teams to spend hours reviving each passenger, lowering the required level of medical skill (possibly down to Medic-0 technicians with cheap expert systems to supplement).

A lot of the low passage IMTU is prisoner transport. Many systems that have eliminated the death penalty opt for exile/transportation as an alternative. Exiles are simply shipped out of system on the next ship to wherever. They are simply released on arrival and the system that deported them takes no further interest in them as long as they never return. This is cheaper than holding prisoners and allows someone a fresh start with no criminal record. This might be an appropriate penalty for a high tariff crime where the prisoner has shown remorse or is otherwise unlikely to reoffend (crimes of passion etc.) though some systems have no compunction in exporting their scum and villainy. Transportation is where they are dropped off on some habitable planet but are not permitted to leave until they have served their sentence. This will often be a prison colony and the intent is to generate economic benefit from the prisoners. Enlightened systems may provide training and rehabilitation and provide benefits after the sentence is served (in which case this is more like a term in the citizen career rather than prisoner).

 

[MasterGwydion]

You only need the skilled medic on revival, so anyone can throw their mangled buddy into the cryobeth. You can then take your time getting them to somewhere you can hire a skilled medic with all the toys to revive them. A grav cryobeth will allow you to take them to a facility for the revival instead.

Grav low berths allow there to be a low terminal where passengers can be boxed up by skilled teams independent of ships to carry them and then simply moved onto the ships. That means the boxing up can take place weeks before a ship arrives allowing rapid embarkation/disembarkation of low berths when the ship is in dock and medical teams to spend hours reviving each passenger, lowering the required level of medical skill (possibly down to Medic-0 technicians with cheap expert systems to supplement).

A lot of the low passage IMTU is prisoner transport. Many systems that have eliminated the death penalty opt for exile/transportation as an alternative. Exiles are simply shipped out of system on the next ship to wherever. They are simply released on arrival and the system that deported them takes no further interest in them as long as they never return. This is cheaper than holding prisoners and allows someone a fresh start with no criminal record. This might be an appropriate penalty for a high tariff crime where the prisoner has shown remorse or is otherwise unlikely to reoffend (crimes of passion etc.) though some systems have no compunction in exporting their scum and villainy. Transportation is where they are dropped off on some habitable planet but are not permitted to leave until they have served their sentence. This will often be a prison colony and the intent is to generate economic benefit from the prisoners. Enlightened systems may provide training and rehabilitation and provide benefits after the sentence is served (in which case this is more like a term in the citizen career rather than prisoner).

I usually run it that mostly SOC 1-3 uses Low Berths. SOC 4-7 uses Standard staterooms. SOC 8-9 uses the High Staterooms. SOC 10+ uses Luxury staterooms.

SOC 0 goes wherever they are put. SOC 0 are pretty much criminals, slaves, etc.

 

[swordtart]

Half that. KCr460.

Every 1KCr extra you spend on low berth costs you Cr1/12 in maintenance and Cr4.2 in mortgage per month (Cr4.25 total). Assuming you make 2 trips per month at jump 1 you are making Cr1400 in fees and spending Cr100 in supplies.

To compare profit margins I am ignoring the discounts as these are setting specific (and even the default low berths can benefit from common ship design discounts).

Type	Cost	Maint (Mth)	Mort (Mth)	Support (Mth)	Fees (Mth)	Income (Mth)
Std	50,000	4	208	100	1400	1088
Basic	57,250	5	239	100	1400	1057
Advanced	126,250	11	526	100	1400	763
Advanced Plus	143,650	12	599	100	1400	689
Superior	158,900	13	662	100	1400	625
Delux	377,500	21	1573	100	1400	-304
Iridium	589,000	49	2454	100	1400	-1203

Delux and Iridium make a net loss and unless you can justify charging more they are not economically viable.

The same volume of cargo generates Cr1000 per month with no overheads so only the Basic and Standard berths compete economically.

In the spirit of making lemonade, where we might shift the balance is by ganging together low berth modules in a larger chassis all monitored by the same robot brain. The Advanced Plus would seem to offer the best compromise of guaranteed survival and cost. All you need to do is increase the Chassis size and add extra medical chambers. The limitation of 256 slots for robots is an issue, but we could extend the table by a row and have a 256 slot chassis which would allow 5 medical chambers within the same chassis and leave space for all the other components in the Advanced Plus. I'd be interested in seeing that price point as it might allow 100% survivability at close to the cost of the standard low berth.

EDIT
My original numbers were based on very faulty maths. I forgot the 0.1% maintenance was per year (rather than per month) and I had the mortgage as 1/480th rather than 1/240th. Also I was only basing the cargo rate on a single jump per month.

Apologies for the confusion.

 

[MonsterX]

Does time on ice still count towards seniority?

Do you get paid overtime?

These are questions to take up with your union representative

A lot of the low passage IMTU is prisoner transport. Many systems that have eliminated the death penalty opt for exile/transportation as an alternative. Exiles are simply shipped out of system on the next ship to wherever. They are simply released on arrival and the system that deported them takes no further interest in them as long as they never return. This is cheaper than holding prisoners and allows someone a fresh start with no criminal record. This might be an appropriate penalty for a high tariff crime where the prisoner has shown remorse or is otherwise unlikely to reoffend (crimes of passion etc.) though some systems have no compunction in exporting their scum and villainy.

Prisoner transport seems like one of those places where safety standards might be skipped in many cases and survival roles might suddenly become very relevant again. Corrupt and dystopian systems might send criminals - or even just accused criminals - away and not much care if they live or die in the process. No one can be blamed for a unforeseeable fault in the low berth, but it does save the private prison contractractor room and board expenses. It's not like the prisoners can just demand to travel with a more reputable carrier instead. Of course, you can't have them all die in transit, as that sort of undermines the reason for running prison in the first place, but if a couple don't make it, it just a slight bump in profit margins. And distributing well maintained low berths might be a good way for the guards to earn a little extra on the side from the prisoners, or the prisoners' relatives.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Every 1KCr extra you spend on low berth costs you Cr1 in maintenance and Cr2 in mortgage per month. Assuming you make 2 trips per month at jump 1 you are making Cr1400 in fees and spending Cr100 in supplies.

To compare profit margins I am ignoring the discounts as these are setting specific (and even the default low berths can benefit from common ship design discounts).

The baseline KCr50 berth makes you Cr1150 per month
For your designs:
The Basic berth makes Cr1129 so on par.
Advanced makes Cr922
Advanced Plus makes Cr871
Delux makes Cr169 per month
Irridium actually costs you Cr467 per month and is therefore going to have to cost more than the basic Cr700 for passage to make it economically viable.

You can carry 2 low berths per DTon and cargo is Cr1000 per DTon. Even compared with this low bar Delux is not economic. Superior starts to look like a lot of extra hassle for only Cr652 per month.

In the spirit of making lemonade, where we might shift the balance is by ganging together low berth modules in a larger chassis all monitored by the same robot brain. The Advanced Plus would seem to offer the best compromise of guaranteed survival and cost. All you need to do is increase the Chassis size and add extra medical chambers. The limitation of 256 slots for robots is an issue, but we could extend the table by a row and have a 256 slot chassis which would allow 5 medical chambers within the same chassis and leave space for all the other components in the Advanced Plus. I'd be interested in seeing that price point as it might allow 100% survivability at close to the cost of the standard low berth,.

I think your math is off. 0.1% per year. So, it may be more accurate to say that for every 13KCr of cost you pay 1Cr in maintenance and 54Cr/(50Cr) in mortgage (by RAW using 240, but I usually use 260, since it makes more sense that the 3rd Imperium uses 13 months instead of 12.)

 

[Terry Mixon]

Every 1KCr extra you spend on low berth costs you Cr1 in maintenance and Cr2.1 in mortgage per month. Assuming you make 2 trips per month at jump 1 you are making Cr1400 in fees and spending Cr100 in supplies.

To compare profit margins I am ignoring the discounts as these are setting specific (and even the default low berths can benefit from common ship design discounts).

The baseline KCr50 berth makes you Cr1145 per month
For your designs:
The Basic berth makes Cr1124 so on par.
Advanced makes Cr911
Advanced Plus makes Cr847
Superior makes Cr810
Delux makes Cr136 per month
Irridium actually costs you Cr516 per month and is therefore going to have to cost more than the basic Cr700 for passage to make it economically viable.

You can carry 2 low berths per DTon and cargo is Cr1000 per DTon. Even compared with this low bar Delux is not economic. Superior starts to look like a lot of extra hassle for only Cr620 per month.

In the spirit of making lemonade, where we might shift the balance is by ganging together low berth modules in a larger chassis all monitored by the same robot brain. The Advanced Plus would seem to offer the best compromise of guaranteed survival and cost. All you need to do is increase the Chassis size and add extra medical chambers. The limitation of 256 slots for robots is an issue, but we could extend the table by a row and have a 256 slot chassis which would allow 5 medical chambers within the same chassis and leave space for all the other components in the Advanced Plus. I'd be interested in seeing that price point as it might allow 100% survivability at close to the cost of the standard low berth,.

I like that idea a lot. Thanks for breaking it down. What timeframe did you use in your calculations?

 

[swordtart]

I like that idea a lot. Thanks for breaking it down. What timeframe did you use in your calculations?

The numbers have been corrected (and make the lack of cost effectiveness even more apparent). You might be able to make them work better on liners with longer jumps or making more than 2 jumps per month as the income increases but the overheads stay the same.

The expenses are a constant every maintenance period so other than being outside the 40-year mortgage window the timeframe is irrelevant.

 

[MasterGwydion]

The numbers have been corrected (and make the lack of cost effectiveness even more apparent). You might be able to make them work better on liners with longer jumps or making more than 2 jumps per month as the income increases but the overheads stay the same.

The expenses are a constant every maintenance period so other than being outside the 40-year mortgage window the timeframe is irrelevant.

This is a nice bit of work! Nice job! You too @Terry Mixon

 

[Terry Mixon]

I looked at what was included in the low berths and see some places were features could be cut for an economy model without loss of capability. I present to you:

Advanced Low Berth (economy):

One of the differences between the basic and advanced low berths in the Robot Handbook were the addition of a cryobvath and vacuum protection. Removing those cuts KCr58.4 off the price and makes it only slightly more expensive than the basic model (+KCr2) and has no loss of revival capability from the Advanced Low Berth as presented. A literal no brainer to make the jump from the Basic model to the Advanced (economy).



Advanced Low Berth Plus (economy):

Same removal of cryobath and vacuum protection removes the same KCr58.4, dropping the price to KCr68. Not much of a price hike over the Basic model (KCr17) and just a bit less over the Advanced (economy) (KCr15).



Superior Low Berth (economy):

For this one, I removed the cryobath, vacuum protection, and the Vargr specific add-on. Savings: KCr68.4. At KCr72, it is only KCr21 more than a Basic unit. Less than a 50% price bump.



The Deluxe Low Berth (economy):

Here is where there is still a big price jump. Likely not something many folks will go for without a desire to provide premium service. They only save KCr50 and the cost is still high.



The Iridium Low Berth (economy):

Like the deluxe unit, it only saves KCr50 off a steep price. Very much for those who demand the best at any cost.



Let's steal borrow @swordtart's table and add the new entries.

The chart presented has standard and then basic without a discount. This is in error. The basic IS the standard. The two are one and the same. That means the discount is valid and the so it should be valid for the other models. The Advanced, for example, is presented in the book at the discounted price and so the build has to have that discount to match the published materials. So, the follow-on discounts (same rate as the advanced) are equally valid.

Now, to make this a comparison of apples to apples, I made the chart for both the undiscounted price (including the basic) and then again for the discounted price.

Opps. I have too many attachments. Look for the follow up post that details what I found and my take on it.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Here are my charts. They assume a 13-month calendar as is standard in the Imperium. They are arranged in order of unit cost.



The difference between the basic model and the superior (economy) is minimal (either Cr89.1 or Cr141.1). That's money, but not a lot of money. At a minimum, going up to the advanced (economy) will cost little and save you from dealing with a pile of bodies every year.

There will still be a few bodies with the Advanced (economy) so the truly concerned could go up to either the Advanced Plue (economy) or Superior (economy) and have no bodies and get more people thawed in minutes rather than hours. That convenience has to be worth something to my way of thinking.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Here are my charts. They assume a 13-month calendar as is standard in the Imperium.

View attachment 4290

As I said earlier, I could not replicate the profit/loss from earlier, so if I'm missing something, let me know.

Income (Cr1,400 per month) - Maintenance per month - Mortgage per month = Profit/Loss.

They all seem profitable to me. The difference in profit from least expensive to most is either Cr162.5 or Cr211.3. Neither is a loss. What did I missunderstand?

I hate when this happens to Me. All of My math seems to work, but it still feels like I screwed up somewhere. lol

 

[Terry Mixon]

I hate when this happens to Me. All of My math seems to work, but it still feels like I screwed up somewhere. lol

I was screwing up and just corrected it.