Core rule book : Ship Shares p36

[IanBruntlett]

Hi,

According to the rules a ship share is 1% of the ship's total cost.

There is a table on p36 for this and it lists: Ship Type, Value(Cr), Ship Share.

Here's an example:
Scout ship, total cost 27,040,500, ship share 2,704,050 <- I make that out to be 10%

I'm quite happy to rule that the ship shares will be worth 10% of the ship's total cost because I don't think mortgages are exciting.

Ideas?

TIA


Ian

 

[Jame Rowe]

I think it points out an ... oversight ... in editing or mathematics. I may go with 10% like you.

 

[katadder]

be too easy to get a ship with 4 people i think if its 10%.
also if you see about used ships it says for every 10 years old you get 1d6 ship shares, another reason i think its 1%.
much as I would like 10% i think this may be a bit much.

 

[TrippyHippy]

That's a first printing typo - the latest printing has adjusted (and correct!) values.

But there is no point making a ship share worth 10% - it's well within the realms of possibility that an experienced character alone can get more than 10 ship shares from benefits (don't forget when a ship type is specified it's worth 5 ship shares - and there can be several rolls of this).

If you don't like players having a mortgage, however, - then just give them a ship! Your the ref - you can do what you want!

 

[IanBruntlett]

TrippyHippy wrote

That's a first printing typo - the latest printing has adjusted (and correct!) values.

OK. Where can I get the errata from?

TIA


Ian

 

[TrippyHippy]

Here:

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/pdf/travpg.pdf

 

[hdrider67]

I'm still using the original idea of ship sahres being worth 1MCr each. As with a coupon, these shares have little value (compared to the share). If a party manages to amass 30 shares, they can get a scout outright.

 

[cbrunish]

I'm still using the original idea of ship sahres being worth 1MCr each. As with a coupon, these shares have little value (compared to the share). If a party manages to amass 30 shares, they can get a scout outright.

I personally like that idea better. It is similar to the old system with 5 rolls the character gets the ship for free (at least a free trader). Plus why would anybody give credit to purchase a corsair? And I would think that a Yacht would be payed off, being a family vessel of a noble.

 

[Stormraven]

I have to say, I've created something like 6 or 8 characters personally, and seen characters created for three games, and I have yet to see any group get enough ship's shares that they could buy a new ship outright, even with shares at 10% of the ship's value. And even a used ship would have to be seriously old.

 

[Ishmael]

.... Plus why would anybody give credit to purchase a corsair? ....

Because the group giving the loan is illegal?
if you fail to pay or skip out, that illegal group doesn't repo your ship...they repo your life.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I have to say, I've created something like 6 or 8 characters personally, and seen characters created for three games, and I have yet to see any group get enough ship's shares that they could buy a new ship outright, even with shares at 10% of the ship's value. And even a used ship would have to be seriously old.

I have created hundreds of characters, personally, and have run the game with four different groups, one with an extended campaign.

It can happen where individual characters end up with more than 10 Ship shares by themselves, and likewise a group of six characters, say, with plenty of terms and ranks between them, can also earn a lot of collective ship shares between them. With ship shares at a 1% value this is fine, but with 10% increments, this can be a problem.

 

[Stormraven]

Sorry, I still can't see it - unless your characters average 7 terms (which, in itself, I've seen to be nearly impossible to get in one career) - or you're just having a lot more luck in your die rolls than I've seen.

I don't doubt you - but my own experience has been quite different, and based on that experience, I can't say that I would have any difficulty with 10% shares - because it still wouldn't have been sufficient to allow our party to have a ship that was newer than 20 years old (at best) free and clear.

 

[captainjack23]

.... Plus why would anybody give credit to purchase a corsair? ....

Because the group giving the loan is illegal?
if you fail to pay or skip out, that illegal group doesn't repo your ship...they repo your life.

A government encouraging ....privateering..... would be one reason - how much of Drakes funding was essentially a loan to equip a corsair ? Answer, at least half was from the government -in the form of aloan from Her Majesty's purse. -in his case, it funded several nimble, heavy armed ships with long distance capacity, warship level crews, and decent cargo holds.......

Also, there are situations like Captain kidd's -a "private" pirate hunting ship is pretty easy to turn into a pirate ship, if you end up with the wrong crew.....

 

[mhensley]

a better question may be "who is building corsairs?"

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

PSSTT, cummeer...

See there's this little shipyard just outsides the Imperium that will build whatever you want, no questions asked.

You have to pay a bit more, but they is real friendly like.

Oh, it helps if you can speak one of the Vargr languages, but not necessary.

Also, there's this group that sells em as "escorts"... You have to buy the weapons somewhere else acourse, but they'll sell you the ship.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Sorry, I still can't see it - unless your characters average 7 terms (which, in itself, I've seen to be nearly impossible to get in one career) - or you're just having a lot more luck in your die rolls than I've seen.

I don't doubt you - but my own experience has been quite different, and based on that experience, I can't say that I would have any difficulty with 10% shares - because it still wouldn't have been sufficient to allow our party to have a ship that was newer than 20 years old (at best) free and clear.

Say you are a Merchant, and you roll the 'Free Trader' benefit twice. That's 10 shares in a Free Trader vessel, right there, from one character. At 10% increments that would be a brand new Free Trader vessel, for one character, based upon two rolls of a dice (from however many are rolled).

And it's not impossible to get 7 terms of a career either, incidently, unless you put term limits on. Moreover, you can get additional benefits from terms in different careers anyway.

 

[Stormraven]

I didn't say impossible - I said 'nearly impossible'. I know I've never been able to manage it. I haven't been able to manage four terms in a single career, due to the luck of the dice.

As for rolling ship shares twice - again, I'm not doubting that it's possible, I've just never seen it - ever.

My whole point is, whatever the theoretical possibilities are of getting a brand new ship at character creation, if a person's experiences with MGT parallels mine, they'll look at the 1% values askance, too.

One group I play with, I think we managed to get a grand total of 5 ship shares between five people. Look at that, and the fact that that's no more than 5% of a ship's cost, and there's no wondering why people want to increase the values.

 

[MrUkpyr]

For my game, each ship share is worth 2.5% of the ship's cost.

This means you need 40 ship shares to pay for your ship outright.

They rolled a total of 8 shares between the 3 players, but then they also threw in a twist.

Somehow each person rolled Traveller's Aid Society membership. Thus they will be getting a High Passage every 8 weeks, and so have no actual need for a ship of their own.

It should be interesting to see if they attempt to get a ship or not.

-MrUkpyr
(playing since the boxed little black books)

 

[TrippyHippy]

I didn't say impossible - I said 'nearly impossible'. I know I've never been able to manage it. I haven't been able to manage four terms in a single career, due to the luck of the dice.

As for rolling ship shares twice - again, I'm not doubting that it's possible, I've just never seen it - ever.

My whole point is, whatever the theoretical possibilities are of getting a brand new ship at character creation, if a person's experiences with MGT parallels mine, they'll look at the 1% values askance, too.

One group I play with, I think we managed to get a grand total of 5 ship shares between five people. Look at that, and the fact that that's no more than 5% of a ship's cost, and there's no wondering why people want to increase the values.

I think your experience is very limited. To be saying that it's 'nearly impossible' for any of these things, which are pretty normal (rather than theoretical). Getting more than 4 terms in a career doesn't happen every time, but it's hardly unusual at all. And it doesn't actually apply to this issue at all - as you can get benefits from differing careers.

You might find the notion of a group getting 5% ship shares as low - I would say that it's just a bonus anyway, and space ships are supposed to be expensive. The notion of having a mortgage is part of the gameplay, insofar that it gives motivation to get into missions and earn some cash. And I have seen plenty of groups get way higher than this as percentages. I'd actually say that for a group of 5, with careers of 6 terms or so, it would be pretty normal to get at least 10 shares between them.

 

[Stormraven]

I think your experience is very limited. To be saying that it's 'nearly impossible' for any of these things, which are pretty normal (rather than theoretical). Getting more than 4 terms in a career doesn't happen every time, but it's hardly unusual at all. And it doesn't actually apply to this issue at all - as you can get benefits from differing careers.

You might find the notion of a group getting 5% ship shares as low - I would say that it's just a bonus anyway, and space ships are supposed to be expensive. The notion of having a mortgage is part of the gameplay, insofar that it gives motivation to get into missions and earn some cash. And I have seen plenty of groups get way higher than this as percentages. I'd actually say that for a group of 5, with careers of 6 terms or so, it would be pretty normal to get at least 10 shares between them.

Three or four games, five to six players each, plus approximately eight to ten attempts on my own. 30-odd characters. Not a large sample, but statistically acceptable.

As I recall, in all of those, I saw one character survive more than four terms, either due to failed survival rolls or advancement rolls that dropped them out (more the former, than the latter, of course). One. 3%. Close enough to 'nearly impossible' for my books, thanks.

And I would like to point out, I'm not advocating giving players a ship. Given my experiences, a 10% share still would have resulted in a mortgage in every situation. Smaller than the RAW, but a mortgage nonetheless.

The difference is between a 5% share and a 50% share. A mortgage of (for a scout seeker, fe) 107,000 Credits monthly or 56,000 Credits monthly - not counting maintenance costs.

Again, I understand where you're coming from. You've seen more people get more shares than I have, so a 10% share percentage is clearly too high. Had I seen even one instance in those examples where we would have exceeded 50% of the mortgage without ship aging, I would agree.

And while I agree that having a mortgage on a ship is part of the basic concept of play (for OTU, anyway), I wouldn't subject my players to a monthly payment of over 150,000 Credits, especially as I haven't seen anything in the RAW that would allow them to actually make that kind of money on a consistent monthly basis. I do not want to play Traveller: The Accounting, and I'm not going to run that for my players, nor do I want to play or run 'Hide from the creditors again'.

I think a good compromise is 2.5% to 5% per share. The odds of getting 20 shares are not all that good, and in most cases, if the players want a newer ship, they'll still have some debts to goad adventuring.