Cheap ships, expensive to run.

[tolcreator]

Ships in Traveller are expensive to buy, but cheap to run.

While yes the average Traveller crew is struggling to meet payments every month...
It seems very, very hard for me to square this with a firefly-esque "keep her flying" type theme, when the ship is worth tens of millions.

In the "real world", ships are "cheap" (especially old ones) but are expensive to run. Now mostly this is because fuel in the real world is expensive. Also to my mind an expensive ship makes it harder to justify getting it shot up. A decent space fight will *ruin* the PCs, bringing on debt only an order of magnitude smaller than that huge 40 year mortgage to begin with.

My "solution": Make ships cheap to buy, but expensive to run.

1) Divide the cost of all ships and ship equipment by 10
2) Mortgages are for 10 years, and require 1/60th the price of the ship per month
(the bank will still make twice its money, but this way in 10 years instead of 40 years. This amounts to an APR of 7.2%. This may be the "adventurer" rate)
3) Increase the effectiveness of ship shares by 2.5 (so it works out the same)
4) Increase maintenance costs to 10% of the ship per annum, or 1/120 of the ship per month.
5) Change the "old ship" table so that "double maintenance" results read "+10%" instead.
6) Increase price of fuel to 1k/ton refined, 0.5k/ton unrefined
7) Increase berthing costs to several KCr/week

This still comes in slightly cheaper per month, for a free trader, than the traditional model. I might up the mortgage a bit to even it out, maybe the adventurer rate is too lenient.

Scouts with their formerly free scout ship are screwed over by this model. As a way of compensation, maybe they get free berthing/fuel/maintenance at scout bases.

This... *feels* more like a firefly type setup to me. Of course for scoundrels like that, it's not a "mortgage" but whatever is owed to whoever is owed, a source of missions etc. Dividing all prices by 10 means the ship is easier to upgrade, and finding salvage isn't winning the lottery (especially when you still only sell it for a fraction of original price).

What do people think? Am I being too worried about this? If I were to run a game, I'm pretty sure my players wouldn't really care all that much!

 

[Kirin]

In the default model, you have to have the same buy in from the players as you did back in D&D - there's no reason a sane person wouldn't take that +2 sword of dragon slaying, sell it for a small fortune, and retire to a town or farm somewhere and raise a family in a life of leisure. The same could be said for ships and ship shares. I own x/100th of a multi-million credit ship. Why not sell my stake and really retire on my Navy pension?

I suspect you're right about your players, though. They're unlikely to care one way or another. They'll buy into the fiction before they start doing the math on the economics. Just figure out ways to keep them running lean and they'll keep taking adventures.

 

[Reynard]

How many of those 'inexpensive' puddle jumper cargo ships today are actually running to faraway ports with speculative cargos and pallets of goods auctioned right on the dock hoping for big scores? How many of those crews, with their cheap ship, take chances finding work at foreign locations to pay the bills and seek adventure? Yeah, if Traveller ran like the real world, your players would be bored and depressed.

I always figured the ship share was a plot device during character generation to tie players and their ship to their history. During their prior years, they acquire initial access to a vessel. type of ship and number of each players' shares aide in describing the acquisition. You're not just meeting and suddenly deciding to go down to the yards and purchasing a ship, at least one person was on that ship for some years. This also explains why the characters are willing to use the ship rather than sell it off.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

One way to make ships cheap and expensive to run is to divide the costs of it by ten and nake it run on antimatter, make 90% of the starship's cost its fuel, and since antimatter is dangerous stuff to handle, when the ship runs out of fuel, you just buy a new starship with its full load of antimatter, and have the antimatter last 4 years of operating time. Antimatter ships always need to consume some power, it only to run the antimatter containment device. Also with ships of this nature, you never want to land them in or around populated areas, so starports are always in high orbit, where an antimatter/matter explosion won't threaten populated areas on the planet. The result is Star Trek style starships that aren't designed to land, and fusion powered shuttles which bring cargo and passengers and crew to the planets surface from the ship in orbit. Can you think of any other implications with this type of starship?

 

[Condottiere]

Need more second hand dealerships.

And junkyards.

And junkyard dogs.

 

[simonh]

What do people think? Am I being too worried about this? If I were to run a game, I'm pretty sure my players wouldn't really care all that much!

Looks really good. It certainly fixes that scene from Star Wars, you know, the one where Han decides not to help Luke and Ben because he doesn't have money problems after all, so they get caught by the storm troopers and thrown up against a wall and shot.

Luke: "What a piece of junk!"
Han: "She may not have the looks kid, but she's still worth at least Cr10 Million and... er.. hang on a minute. Chewie, set up a meeting with a broker and then call Jabba and tell him that Cr10,000 I owe him isn't going to be a problem. After that, we're headed to Fhloston Paradise baby!"

Simon Hibbs

 

[tolcreator]

Not to mention that scene where luke was incredulous about the money they were paying for passage and said "We could buy our own ship for that", and was immediately shot down by Han with "Oh yeah? The cheapest ship out there is worth... well... more money than YOU could imagine!"

 

[phavoc]

Ships in Traveller are expensive to buy, but cheap to run.

While yes the average Traveller crew is struggling to meet payments every month...
It seems very, very hard for me to square this with a firefly-esque "keep her flying" type theme, when the ship is worth tens of millions.

In the "real world", ships are "cheap" (especially old ones) but are expensive to run. Now mostly this is because fuel in the real world is expensive. Also to my mind an expensive ship makes it harder to justify getting it shot up. A decent space fight will *ruin* the PCs, bringing on debt only an order of magnitude smaller than that huge 40 year mortgage to begin with.

My "solution": Make ships cheap to buy, but expensive to run.

1) Divide the cost of all ships and ship equipment by 10
2) Mortgages are for 10 years, and require 1/60th the price of the ship per month
(the bank will still make twice its money, but this way in 10 years instead of 40 years. This amounts to an APR of 7.2%. This may be the "adventurer" rate)
3) Increase the effectiveness of ship shares by 2.5 (so it works out the same)
4) Increase maintenance costs to 10% of the ship per annum, or 1/120 of the ship per month.
5) Change the "old ship" table so that "double maintenance" results read "+10%" instead.
6) Increase price of fuel to 1k/ton refined, 0.5k/ton unrefined
7) Increase berthing costs to several KCr/week

This still comes in slightly cheaper per month, for a free trader, than the traditional model. I might up the mortgage a bit to even it out, maybe the adventurer rate is too lenient.

Scouts with their formerly free scout ship are screwed over by this model. As a way of compensation, maybe they get free berthing/fuel/maintenance at scout bases.

This... *feels* more like a firefly type setup to me. Of course for scoundrels like that, it's not a "mortgage" but whatever is owed to whoever is owed, a source of missions etc. Dividing all prices by 10 means the ship is easier to upgrade, and finding salvage isn't winning the lottery (especially when you still only sell it for a fraction of original price).

What do people think? Am I being too worried about this? If I were to run a game, I'm pretty sure my players wouldn't really care all that much!

The rules have a number of mechanisms already in place to make it so the players aren't crushed with ship debt. For scouts there is no payment because you don't own it. If you want weapons you have to pay for them, but you can get free fuel and some maintenance from scout bases. That also allows you a plot hook (the local base commander says' they are too "busy", or short on spares to service their scout ship, but magically things will change if the PC's could do a particular mission for the base...).

Free traders (and science vessels) are a bit different. Remember that ship shares and such are applied to the price of a new ship. Maybe during their journey the players were able to find a far cheaper, far older ship that had more, ah, "personality" to it than a bright and shiny new one. But it's cheap. In that case Traveller would mimic more of the premise for Firefly.

There are many ways to get around this issue without having to make wholesale modifications to the system. A patron makes an offer for free servicing or spares if they'll do him an in-kind deal though a mission. During mustering out give the merchant character additional ship shares to ease the payoff. Etc, etc.

Being a tramp merchant is already conceptually living on the edge. Teeny free traders simply can't move enough bulk cargo to affect any planet's economy. So it's going to be about speculation, making a score, however you wanna spin that plot point that's key.

 

[tolcreator]

Ok I think I've got it finalised:

1) All ship and ship components costs divided by 10.
2) 10 year mortgages = 1/60th ship cost per month
3) Ship shares = 2.5% of a ship
4) Maintenance = 1/120th ship cost per month
5) On old ship table, "50% maintenance increase" should read "5% maintenance increase".
6) Fuel costs 1k/ton refined, 0.5k/ton unrefined.
7) Introduce cargo handling fees of 50 Cr/ton of cargo, both offload and onload
8 ) Berthing costs: (stupid glasses smiley)
A: 4D6 x 10 Cr/ton of ship
B: 3D6 x 10 Cr/ton
C: 2D6 x 10 Cr/ton
D: 1D6 x 10 Cr/ton
E: 10 Cr/ton

Comparing old and new, for common PC ships, assuming berthing at an "Average" Class C port, and buying enough unrefined fuel for max jump and 2 weeks, and onloading/offloading full cargo bay.

Free Trader: was 182,511 now 181,018
Far Trader: was 248,480 now 233,865
Scout (1): was 130,606 now 115,452
Seeker: was 105,854 now 91,515
Fat Trader (2): was 365,656 now 364,380
Corsair (3): was 643,975 now 524,988

Poor scouts get completely screwed, their once free ship now suddenly costs almost as much as one you'd have to buy. My solution: Scout bases give free everything, free fuel, maintenance, life support, cargo handling, berthing. So comparing the old "free scout ship" to the new "free and free stuff at scout bases" assuming every 2nd stop is at a scout base:

Retired scout: Was 15,854 now 34,774

1) I note in the rulebook that scouts have 10 tons more fuel than needed for the indicated endurance, so my scout ships have 30 tons fuel, 13 tons cargo.
2) I note in the rulebook that fat traders have C class engines and power plant when they only need B. My fat traders have B class components, 48 tons fuel, 219 tons cargo, and are cheaper.
3) I note in the rulebook that corsairs have 104 tons fuel but need only 96 to give indicated endurance, and they have 2 tons free space when they have no extra hardpoints to fill it. Therefore my corsairs have 170 tons cargo.

 

[tolcreator]

The rules have a number of mechanisms already in place to make it so the players aren't crushed with ship debt.

As you can see above... I don't want the monthly costs of running a ship to be different. This is... an OCD thing on my part. I just can't square the han solo/firefly/scruffy nerf herder theme... with a ship that costs 10s of millions of credits. In my scheme they still costs millions of credits, and the bulk of monthly costs is maintenance/fuel/etc instead of mortgage. Because "Keep her flying" is different from "pay down the debt". The outcome is (more or less) identical, but somehow the former seems... cooler than the latter.

This is (almost) purely a colour thing for me. I say almost because it does have 2 implications:
1) even if you pay down the debt and get your ship scot free... or run out on your debt
you still have substantial costs to keep the ship running.
2) If you get bored of that pulse laser and want to upgrade to a beam laser, it doesn't cost a lottery win to do so.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Not to mention that scene where luke was incredulous about the money they were paying for passage and said "We could buy our own ship for that", and was immediately shot down by Han with "Oh yeah? The cheapest ship out there is worth... well... more money than YOU could imagine!"

Yep, just sell his landspeeder and with the proceeds, buy a starship!

 

[Condottiere]

You may want to take a step back, and talk to the players beforehand as to how exactly they envision travelling about.

Then, one of the characters wins the Millenium Falcon in the Cloud City Sabacc Tournament.

 

[tolcreator]

You may want to take a step back, and talk to the players beforehand as to how exactly they envision travelling about.

Then, one of the characters wins the Millenium Falcon in the Cloud City Sabacc Tournament.

Players are... entirely hypothetical at the moment. My current D&D game may be coming to and end around sept/oct, in which case I'll see about starting Traveller.
To be honest, the best thing that would work for my current players would be something like the abstract KEF (Keep Em Flying) from Serenity. While one or two of them would probably love the trading mini-game, the rest would be bored to tears. I'll have to see who's playing and what they think. I'll present the "use actual credits" plan as a first option, in which case I'll sell the above house rules. If not... something abstract.

 

[tolcreator]

Another 2 reasons for this house rule:

1) It punishes reckless behaviour less. Getting your ship shot up now costs only 1/10th of what it did.

2) It always struck me as odd that ships were worth FAR more than the cargo they carried. Unless you had 88 tons of radioactives in your free trader. With this, even 88 tons of Basic Electronics is a healthy fraction (1/4) of the cost of a free trader, and once you're into goods of 100KCr/ton, your cargo is worth far more than your ship.

... which makes Piracy more plausible.

 

[dragoner]

The players in the campaign I'm ref of have a ship on loan, which is a good thing, because if you want expensive upkeep, put a stealth jump drive on that puppy. Credits to me are just another way of working for stuff, same as if they can find stuff in abandoned places, if they are creative or persistent enough; mostly what we are talking real life is time, as in how much time does anyone want to spend on something? I spend plenty of time in real life doing the bills, enough so that I'll shine it in game.

 

[Imeanunoharm]

Think of it like this:

The big freighters are like our ships at sea.

The little guys are like our semi-trailers (I don't know what you call them in your country, lorries in britain, or big rigs in US?)

Some are new and special and being bought by mid sized companies and leased, or flown by employees, and some are then sold on at cheaper prices to independents etc ect...

Disperse your economy accordingly.

 

[dragoner]

How ever you do it, maximize the fun parts, that makes it cooler.

 

[Imeanunoharm]

And/Or put your semi-trailers on the Fury Road equivalent of deep space. :twisted:

 

[dragoner]

If that is what the players are into, I just find that for players from other games systems, like the campaign I'm ref of, two are from pathfinder, so they like flying the ship, but for economics, they aren't interested. The real commodity IMTU is people, not enough people to do everything, with a lot of wilderness between the more densely populated systems, they could use robots, and do, but there is also the memory of that pesky virus.

 

[Condottiere]

The problem with an interstellar campaign, or even an interplanetary one, is that players have to get from point A to point B, you can't walk there, and transportation costs and/or access are held hostage to modes that is inherently more expensive than a car or a horse, but can't be so cheap that everyone has one in their garage.