Average profit per ton of cargo space?

[dayriff]

I'm looking for answers from people who have played with the MT cargo & speculative trade system a lot. About how much money per jump can a ship be expected to make per ton of cargo space? Or per 5 tons of cargo space, or however you want to break it down? Obviously the answer is going to vary a lot based on what speculative cargoes are rolled, if they can get a mail drum, the highest Broker skill in the group, how many parsecs they jump, etc, etc. I'm only looking for a rough estimate guided by actual play experience. (Probably assume Jump 2.)

The question is brought on by me playing around with the ship design system and asking myself, "If I offer this ship up as an option and the players take out a mortgage, will they be making enough profit to pay it off every month?" (Pay it off, plus maintenance costs, plus life support, plus everything else.)

My preliminary look at the system suggests that it's tough to even break even. Certainly I don't think any of the sample ships could make it on pure freight and passenger runs. But perhaps I'm dropping numbers somewhere. If it's very tough to make a profit, I may play with the system and cut costs in half or somesuch. I figure if they're doing well it'll be easy for me to add costs and expenses, but if they can't cut it then it becomes awkward to have a patron offering a 50K credit job every two weeks.

 

[AndrewW]

The question is brought on by me playing around with the ship design system and asking myself, "If I offer this ship up as an option and the players take out a mortgage, will they be making enough profit to pay it off every month?" (Pay it off, plus maintenance costs, plus life support, plus everything else.)

The morgage amount can vary a lot depending on ship shares that can be put towards the ship.

Where's Merchant Prince when you need it...

 

[dayriff]

The question is brought on by me playing around with the ship design system and asking myself, "If I offer this ship up as an option and the players take out a mortgage, will they be making enough profit to pay it off every month?" (Pay it off, plus maintenance costs, plus life support, plus everything else.)

The morgage amount can vary a lot depending on ship shares that can be put towards the ship.

Where's Merchant Prince when you need it...

It can vary a lot depending on how many bells and whistles get tossed on the ship as well. That's why I asked in the terms how much money they can expect to make per amount of cargo space. I can compare that to the total ship cost myself.

(Incidentally, we have 3 ship shares and one "Lab Ship" share among the four players.)

 

[rust]

The average profit per ton of cargo space depends very much on the
setting and the worlds and trade routes available there.

In another forum someone complained that the trade system makes
it much too easy to get rich quick, while in my frontier region setting
it is quite difficult to make any profit at all.

 

[dayriff]

The average profit per ton of cargo space depends very much on the
setting and the worlds and trade routes available there.

In another forum someone complained that the trade system makes
it much too easy to get rich quick, while in my frontier region setting
it is quite difficult to make any profit at all.

So it's just a blind guess? You throw the ship out there and start the game with no clue if the PCs will quickly go broke or not? I mean, I understand what you're saying, but at the same time what you're saying isn't helpful.

To illustrate, I came up with a 45MC ship (100t hull) last night with about 22 tons of cargo space. Would the PCs go broke on that? I don't know.

 

[GypsyComet]

Generally what you do is figure out if the ship can pay its mortgage and costs on Freight alone (ie. Cr1000 per cargo ton, and about half of the available passenger staterooms occupied by Middle Passages). A ship that can do that is easy money.

Typically, however, a ship can't meet expenses on Cr1000/ton. How viable a ship is will depend on how high that Cr/ton figure needs to be. Cr2000/ton is generally easy to meet with light speculative trading (ie. "Cargo"). Cr3000/ton means you need a decent Broker handy, and much above Cr4000/ton means the side jobs that define Traveller are pretty much mandatory, and had better be high-paying.

Do the calculation (adding mortgage/month to fuel, annual maintenance, life support, and salaries) and compare that to revenue tonnage. The credits required per ton will tell you where to go from there.

 

[dayriff]

Thanks GypsyComet, that answer makes a lot of sense!

 

[hhawk]

I ran some monty carlo simulations of a million trades on the trade tables. If your net DM is +0 your average return per trade is about 5%. An interesting side effect is that you could buy cargo on a planet and resell it on the same planet for an average 5% profit. I need to make a better simulation to model so that I can figure out if the bank will loan the players the money based on whether or not they are likely to be able to pay the debt.

 

[GypsyComet]

An interesting side effect is that you could buy cargo on a planet and resell it on the same planet for an average 5% profit.

As those tables are intended for interstellar trade, I'm not sure they should be taken as useful for on-planet transactions except on worlds large enough to have significant internal shipping needs.

On a related note, I suspect a starship would have trouble making money on such same-planet or same-system milkruns with Freight, either. The Cr1000/ton figure is for "take this to a different star" haulage. The on-planet price and in-system price are probably considerably lower.

 

[kristof65]

The on-planet price and in-system price are probably considerably lower.

But the profit margin is probably about the same once the lower prices of maintaining the equipment used for on-planet and in-system transport are considered.

Using a starship to transport cargo from one point to another on a planet or in a system probably isn't cost effective for either the shipper nor the star-ship operater unless the ship just happens to have to go to another port in the same system to pick up something else.

 

[rust]

So it's just a blind guess?

No, because you can easily get the data you need to estimate the trade
opportunities in a certain region from the UWPs / trade codes of the re-
gion.

For example, if a trade route exists over a long distance between a low
population water world and a low population desert world, a ship with a lot
of cargo space will not survive for long on this trade route, while a short
distance trade route between an industrial world and a rich world can sup-
port a quite big ship easily.

 

[hhawk]

An interesting side effect is that you could buy cargo on a planet and resell it on the same planet for an average 5% profit.

As those tables are intended for interstellar trade, I'm not sure they should be taken as useful for on-planet transactions except on worlds large enough to have significant internal shipping needs.

I know, it is just an amusing thing that happens when you misapply the table. I figured that if you can spend an extra week on a different planet to find a different buy why can't you wait a week on the same planet ;-p

I guess that players if they found a nice stable trade route they could set up a broker on the sales planet and pay the standard shipping fee to ship the goods to the broker. The broker could deposit the money and the bank wires the funds back to the players. It could be some plot hooks to preserve the trade route and maintain a good relationship with their broker.

On a related note, I suspect a starship would have trouble making money on such same-planet or same-system milkruns with Freight, either. The Cr1000/ton figure is for "take this to a different star" haulage. The on-planet price and in-system price are probably considerably lower.

I wanted a better picture of how profitable speculative trading is in general so I refined my simulation.

This seems to indicate that Purchase DM is slightly better than Sales DM. This also helps to show that purchasing low value trade goods is risky unless you have a very good broker skill. Standard fright is pretty close to trading 10,000 per ton at 11% profit.

Profit   -5     -4     -3     -2     -1     0      1      2      3      4      5     PDM  
  -5    -62%   -57%   -52%   -46%   -41%   -35%   -29%   -21%   -11%     1%    17%  
  -4    -49%   -44%   -39%   -33%   -29%   -23%   -16%    -9%     1%    12%    30%  
  -3    -41%   -35%   -30%   -24%   -19%   -13%    -7%     0%     9%    22%    39%  
  -2    -34%   -28%   -22%   -17%   -12%    -6%     0%     7%    17%    30%    46%  
  -1    -28%   -22%   -17%   -11%    -6%     0%     6%    13%    23%    36%    53%  
  0     -22%   -16%   -11%    -6%     0%     5%    11%    18%    27%    40%    57%  
  1     -17%   -11%    -6%     0%     5%    11%    16%    24%    33%    45%    63%  
  2     -12%    -6%    -1%     5%    10%    15%    22%    29%    38%    52%    68%  
  3      -6%    -1%     5%    10%    15%    21%    27%    34%    44%    57%    72%  
  4      -1%     5%    10%    16%    21%    27%    33%    40%    49%    62%    78%  
  5       5%    10%    16%    22%    27%    32%    38%    45%    55%    69%    85%  
 SDM

 

[Zowy]

I would make things interesting and give them a 40 to 50 year old Ex-Subsidized Lab Ship. They are buying a full title, but with steep discounts for age, damage and the fact that it remains subject to mobilization by whatever government subsidized it when built. :twisted:

Make some "interesting" changes to the ship and let the players know some of them when they buy it. But have them find out the others the hard way. :lol:

 

[hhawk]

I would make things interesting and give them a 40 to 50 year old Ex-Subsidized Lab Ship. They are buying a full title, but with steep discounts for age, damage and the fact that it remains subject to mobilization by whatever government subsidized it when built. :twisted:

Make some "interesting" changes to the ship and let the players know some of them when they buy it. But have them find out the others the hard way. :lol:

That or two players could roll a ship's boat and sell them for most of a free trader ;-p

 

[Elysianknight]

We have a Far Trader (jump 2), 62 tons cargo available, bought with 40% ship shares (30 % through chargen, 10% for a 30 yr old ship). We easily clear the mortgage, and are building a healthy working balance.

edit: i will say, it has proved far easier to turn a good profit than i thought it would be. Our broker skill is 2, and we probably clear 150k-500k per jump. Of course we have had a few freight runs, which don't clear the monthly mortgage, but we have had a couple of blinders, the best being a jump profit of about 11MCr

 

[MrUkpyr]

Generally what you do is figure out if the ship can pay its mortgage and costs on Freight alone (ie. Cr1000 per cargo ton, and about half of the available passenger staterooms occupied by Middle Passages). A ship that can do that is easy money.

Typically, however, a ship can't meet expenses on Cr1000/ton. ...

Do the calculation (adding mortgage/month to fuel, annual maintenance, life support, and salaries) and compare that to revenue tonnage. The credits required per ton will tell you where to go from there.

GypsyComet brings up a very important point. More often than not, freight by itself won't do it.

Now for a short word of advice - and a most important point.

Make sure you have at least 1 player that *enjoys* the whole buy low/sell high game of merchanting. Or be ready to create an NPC to handle that for the players.

Ran a game where no one wanted to be a merchant. The idea of dealing with cargo and speculative trade made them yawn. They started with a far trader and quickly were screaming cuz they didn't want to think about money, they wanted to explore strange planets and aliens and adventures.

The ship quickly changed (grin).