Aslan Corporations

[kpenguin]

How is the "corporation" mustering out benefit for Aslan supposed to work? One of my players wants to trade in a clan share for that benefit, but it seems... wonky.

With gross profits equal to 1D-5% of assets per year, it seems the corporation would lose money every five out of six years and even then on that six years it wouldn't make nearly enough money to make back its losses.

In addition, ownership of a corporation worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions depending on clan share investment, MCr seems like an wildly overwhelming starting benefit compared to trading the clan share in for CR 10,000 or a ship share or use of a scout ship. At the very least, it'd be nice to have a guideline for how much of those thousands of MCr worth of gross profit that the corporation would receive every six years or so should float back to the owner.

 

[DickTurpin]

There are two things (maybe three) wrong with the benefit as written:

1) I think the assets amount is off by a factor of 1 million. As written the company would be worth 500 billion credits per clan share. 500 thousand sounds Much more reasonable.

2) Making gross profits equal 1d6-5% of assets, the company would lose an average of 45 billion credits every six years, or an average loss of 7.5 billion per year. In that regard, it would be a foolish waste of clan shares to invest in such an enterprise.

The third possible error is that the amount is given in gross profit (loss) rather than net, with no adjustment given for how much should be deducted for taxes and expenses. There is no way to determine how much cash the benefit generates for the Traveller.

I propose that the following changes be adopted: The assets per clan share be changes to MCr. 0.5. The profit/loss formula be changed to 1D-3%, and the profit/loss be stated as Net profit. This profit/loss can either be paid (all or in part) to/by the Traveller, or allowed to accumulate to alter the company's asset base.

The results of these changes would be a profit amount between a loss of Cr.10,000 and a profit of Cr. 15,000 per year, with an annual average of Cr. 2,500 profit. That amount seems much more in line with the other possible uses of clan shares.

 

[tytalan]

I think this was already brought up In the error thread for the pirates of Drinax and they either have a fix or are working on one.

 

[paltrysum]

I pointed this one out to them in the errata topic. I think it was intended to be either 1D+5 or 1Dx5, probably the former to avoid making your female Aslans billionaires too quickly.