Economics of shipyard

[akalrs]

I'm interested in opinions and ideas for the economics of running a shipyard. Just as an example I have tried to make a minimum viable small craft shipyard using the HG 2e rules. I'm going to assumed that it is places in an astroid belt with access to raw materials.

Mini shipyard station
* 40 MCr
* 200 D-Ton Dispersed structure
* 5 Mining drones
* 3 D-Ton Workshop
* 1 D-Ton Fuel refinery
* 10 D-Ton Basic Manufacturing Plant
* 25 D-Ton Advanced Manufacturing Plant
* 8 D-Ton Mineral refinery
* 2 D-Ton Mineral Smelter
* 60 D-Ton Residential Zone
* 20 D-Ton Shipyard

Should be able to produce the following i each day
- 5 D-Ton astroid
- 1 D-Ton of Basic Goods
- 1 D-Ton of advanced Goods

The monthly running cost for such a station would be
Salary 45 500
Life support Crew 10 000
Maintenance 3 304
Mortgage 165 206
TOTAL 224 010

Using the 20 D-Tons of Ship the station should be able to produce a 10 D-Ton light fighter, with list price of MCr 7.8.

1. Have I overlooked any expenses?
2. How much common and advanced good goes into making a Light Fighter? In other words does the mining and manufacturing operation have to be scaled up to support the shipyard?
3. How long should it take to produce a Light Fighter?

 

[JMISBEST]

Sounds like a very good idea and as a little bit of advice, if you aren't sure of something do what I do and either ask on this website or ask a more experienced GM or do both
#

 

[EldritchFire]

2) HG page 61 lists advanced vehicles as Advanced Tech, and I'd hazard to say that spaceships would be advanced vehicles. With that in mind, my opinion is you'd need 10dT of advanced goods per ship.

3) HG page 8:

"On average, assume that it takes one day per million credits to build a spacecraft at an average commercial shipyard."

The light fighter, then would take just over a week to construct. Of course, if you're only making 1dT of advanced materials per day, it'll take 10 days to make enough for the fighter.

 

[akalrs]

2) HG page 61 lists advanced vehicles as Advanced Tech, and I'd hazard to say that spaceships would be advanced vehicles. With that in mind, my opinion is you'd need 10dT of advanced goods per ship.

Should probably include some amount of basic, some amount of advanced and some amount spesialist?

"On average, assume that it takes one day per million credits to build a spacecraft at an average commercial shipyard."

The light fighter, then would take just over a week to construct. Of course, if you're only making 1dT of advanced materials per day, it'll take 10 days to make enough for the fighter.

I was thinking that this figure was aimed at the much much larger shipyards. But looking at the speed cars are produced today maybe MCr 1 is not such a bad figure. However it has some issues with scaling. 20 people working on a large ship can only make MCr 1 progress in a day when 2 people working on a light fighter can also make MCr 1 progress each day.

On the other hand making progress of MCr1 for a 2 man team would also allow a station like this to turn out too much profit, like 5-7 MCr a week after expenses.

 

[DivineWrath]

Supplement 14 Space Stations has many rules for making money using space stations. It however was written for 1st edition Mongoose Traveller rules, so some of the rules might be out of date. I think it is only a concern for building and selling ships though. Smaller ships used to be much cheaper relative to bigger ships.

The kind of rules available includes:
-Selling ship fuel
-Renting out dock space
-Renting out residential and commercial spaces
-Selling produced goods
-Contracts to build ships
-Speculative ship building

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The sale price of the craft will have to pay for all the costs of the company.

A sales department,
a marketing department,
a shipping department,
a R&D department,
licensing costs,
a department for regulatory compliance and reporting,
an accounting department,
a HR department,
office space,
an janitorial department,
management,
the CEOs mistress,
the special department for bribing bureaucratic buyers,
etc...


If you need 10 workers to operate the shipyard, you might need 12 - 15 employees to cover vacations, sick days, training, etc... Even then a simple flu can reduce your output.

When it comes to the manufacturing plant you probably need several assembly lines for components, you don't manufacture computer chips and missile launchers on the same assembly lines.

If manufacturing works even remotely like today you will use hundreds of components from other factories or companies when you make finished complicated machinery.

You will need warehouse space to store a buffer between each step of manufacturing, as well as the finished product. You also have to be able to provide spare parts for decades to come, either by maintaining old assembly lines or storing massive amounts of parts.

You will need to maintain sales offices, maintenance facilities, and spares stores on many different planets.

You probably want a larger manufacturing capacity than your normal sales, to be able to handle sales tops. So a factory needs to be profitable even at reduced output.

In the end the manufacturing plant might be a minor cost in the entire operation.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

This thread might give you some ideas:
http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=118812&hilit=shipyard

 

[EldritchFire]

2) HG page 61 lists advanced vehicles as Advanced Tech, and I'd hazard to say that spaceships would be advanced vehicles. With that in mind, my opinion is you'd need 10dT of advanced goods per ship.

Should probably include some amount of basic, some amount of advanced and some amount spesialist?

Not really, no. The hull, superstructure, and any armour needs to be able to handle several abs of acceleration. The computer is not one central machine but a distributed network. Nothing about at seems basic to me.

As for specialist, that includes cybernetics, medical supplies/drugs, and robots. Not much of that sounds like what would be used for a spaceship.

"On average, assume that it takes one day per million credits to build a spacecraft at an average commercial shipyard."

The light fighter, then would take just over a week to construct. Of course, if you're only making 1dT of advanced materials per day, it'll take 10 days to make enough for the fighter.

I was thinking that this figure was aimed at the much much larger shipyards. But looking at the speed cars are produced today maybe MCr 1 is not such a bad figure. However it has some issues with scaling. 20 people working on a large ship can only make MCr 1 progress in a day when 2 people working on a light fighter can also make MCr 1 progress each day.

Actually, for an advanced manufacturing plant that produces 1dT, the crew required is 13 (1 per 2 tons, per the table), not 20, not 2. A plant that could produce 2dT of advanced equipment would require 50dT of space and a crew of 25.

On the other hand making progress of MCr1 for a 2 man team would also allow a station like this to turn out too much profit, like 5-7 MCr a week after expenses.

A two-man team isn't enough to produce the required components, let alone actually make the craft. Also, per the crew requirements table, the cost for the crew of the advanced manufacturing plant would be Cr13,000 a month (Cr1,000 per crew, x 13 crew for a 25dT plant). Divide that by 3 (30 days a month, 10 days to make one fighter) you get Cr4,334 in salary per fighter.

I'm sure we could get into more detail about different costs for the production, but I'm at work now so cannot delve that deep. Hopefully later today I'll be able to come up with a bit more for you.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

As for specialist, that includes cybernetics, medical supplies/drugs, and robots. Not much of hat sounds like what would be used for a spaceship.

I disagree.

Cybernetics would be command&control systems and regulation system. That would be built into more or less all hi-tech systems.

Robots would be e.g. an autoloader for a missile launcher.

 

[EldritchFire]

As for specialist, that includes cybernetics, medical supplies/drugs, and robots. Not much of hat sounds like what would be used for a spaceship.

I disagree.

Cybernetics would be command&control systems and regulation system. That would be built into more or less all hi-tech systems.

Robots would be e.g. an autoloader for a missile launcher.

I see cybernetics as more of a wetware/hardware interface, I.E. connecting the cybernetic to your body so it functions properly. I don't see that being of much use for spaceships (unless you have neural links, but this isn't BattleTech ).

Robotics could be used for autoloaders, sure. But to me, I picture that as being a robot arm picking up a warhead and moving it to the launch tube. Wouldn't it be easier to just have a magazine that autoloads into the launcher, instead of having a point-of-failure in the robo arm?

Also, for simplicity, I would just lump them all into 'advanced manufacturing plant'. That being said, it wouldn't be too hard to say you need 1dT of cybernetics per 2dT of bridge/cockpit (as the CC system) and 1dT of robotics for each 2dT of missile/torpedo system for the feeding mechanism you easily could.

 

[EldritchFire]

Just found on page 212 of the Core Rulebook that spacecraft are classified as 'advanced vehicles'. Also, page 213 lists titanium as an example of an uncommon raw material, and titanium steel is the 'weakest' armour you can have, so I would assume that all armour types are going to be uncommon materials.

It would be interesting to go through each component and figure out if it would be classified as common or uncommon materials.

 

[AndrewW]

I see cybernetics as more of a wetware/hardware interface, I.E. connecting the cybernetic to your body so it functions properly. I don't see that being of much use for spaceships (unless you have neural links, but this isn't BattleTech ).

Nope, it isn't though the Psionic Capacitor might come under this.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I see cybernetics as more of a wetware/hardware interface, I.E. connecting the cybernetic to your body so it functions properly. I don't see that being of much use for spaceships (unless you have neural links, but this isn't BattleTech ).

You are right. I see that Traveller uses a different definition of "cybernetics" than English.

 

[DivineWrath]

To OP:

Are you asking about how the rules work, or are you asking how much raw materials and what goods you require to build more advanced stuff? For instance, raw materials -> basic electronics -> advanced electronics. Or something similar to produce all the goods needed to make a spaceship, and then build the spaceship? MgT seems to had wave away a lot of in between stuff.

 

[akalrs]

To OP:

Are you asking about how the rules work, or are you asking how much raw materials and what goods you require to build more advanced stuff? For instance, raw materials -> basic electronics -> advanced electronics. Or something similar to produce all the goods needed to make a spaceship, and then build the spaceship? MgT seems to had wave away a lot of in between stuff.

My issue is that my player might end up controlling/owning a small space station, and I started out looking into how I could make that into a interesting challenge. Then I noticed that if I let them have a shipyard, and with my current understanding of the rules, I would basically give them a huge money machine. So I wanted to know if there was something I had missed.

Licensing cost or R&D seems like the best way to reduce the profit. Many of the other ideas including sales, marketing, shipping, HR, janior and so forth that could easily be circumvented by the players just dealing with them in game, and at any rate these cost should not be that high for a 10-20 person opperation. However the licensing of designs or the development of new designs seems logical and are harder to circumvent.

Idealy I would have a good system for running a space station with many possible income and cost sources.

 

[EldritchFire]

I think the biggest hurdle is going to be raw materials.

Mining drones produce 5D (average 17) tons of common ore each day. The mineral refinery is what brings in the uncommon ore, crystals/gems, and precious metals. Even if we assume all you need is uncommon ore (and I think that some components would require crystals/gems for focusing lasers or precious metals for computer parts), your 8dT refinery would only output 2.4dT of uncommon ore each day.

Then the smelter would take that 2.4dT of ore and make 1.2dT of uncommon raw materials. And, per page 213 of the CRB, uncommon raw materials cost, on average, Cr20,000 per dT. If we extrapolate the cost of the light fighter's hull (MCr0.6) it's going to take 30dT of uncommon raw materials just for the hull of the fighter! That's 200dT of asteroid just for the uncommon ore!

Doing the maths, your shipyard can process 8dT of asteroid each day into 2.4dT of uncommon ore, which becomes 1.2dT of uncommon raw materials. That would take 25 days to make enough uncommon raw materials just for the hull. Weapons, computer system, power plant, sensors, etc would be extra.

Wile you could make a light fighter in just over a week, it's going to take a lot longer to get the materials to actually assemble the fighter.

 

[steve98052]

While you could make a light fighter in just over a week, it's going to take a lot longer to get the materials to actually assemble the fighter.

Or more capital investment for enough mining drones to keep up a reliable supply of raw materials.

Also, are there minimum sizes on things like smelters? It's reasonable to say that they cost so much per dton, and produce so much per dton, but production drops precipitously if the size is below a minimum economy of scale size -- to the point that you could get a desktop smelter, but it wouldn't produce enough for any purpose other than assaying the quality of a mineral deposit.

Example (with a guess on some numbers, because I don't have the book handy):

A refinery and smelter operation costs MCr 200k per dton, and refines its own volume of ore into 10% of its volume of materials per day, at the economy of scale size of 64 dtons. Below that size, production drops by half for each halving of the operation's volume. So, this table would apply (facility size - input volume per dton - total input volume):
64 - 64 - 4096
32 - 32 - 1024
16 -16 - 256
8 - 8 - 64
4 - 4 - 16
2 - 2 - 4
1 - 1 - 1
0.5 - 0.5 - 0.25
0.25 - 0.25 - 0.0625 (0.875 cubic meter)
0.125 - 0.125 - 0.156 (0.22 cubic meter)
0.0625 - 0.0625 - 0.0039 (0.054 cubic meter =54 liters) -- refrigerator sized (7/8 cubic meter) unit
0.03125 - 0.03125 - 0.00097 (0.013 cubic meter = 13 liters)
0.0156 - 0.0156 - 0.00024 (0.0034 cubic meter = 3.4 liters)
0.0078 - 0.0078 - 0.000 061 (854 ml) -- 109 liter unit volume
0.0039 - 0.0039 - 0.000 015 (213 ml)
0.0019 - 0.0019 - 0.000 0038 (53 ml)
0.00097 - 0.00097 - 0.000 00095 (13 ml)
0.00048 - 0.00048 - 0.000 00023 (3.3 ml)
0.00024 - 0.00024 - 0.000 000 059 (0.83 ml)
0.00012 - 0.00012 - 0.000 000 014 (0.2 ml) -- 1.7 liter unit volume

 

[akalrs]

I think the biggest hurdle is going to be raw materials.
Then the smelter would take that 2.4dT of ore and make 1.2dT of uncommon raw materials. And, per page 213 of the CRB, uncommon raw materials cost, on average, Cr20,000 per dT. If we extrapolate the cost of the light fighter's hull (MCr0.6) it's going to take 30dT of uncommon raw materials just for the hull of the fighter! That's 200dT of asteroid just for the uncommon ore!

I'm not buying this logic. First it assume that the price of a processed item, in this case a hull, is made up only of raw material. No production cost, no marketing cost, no profit and so on. Also I struggle with the part where making a metal "wraping" that will cover 10dT space should require 30 solid 1dT blocks of metal.

Though it is a fair point to make that there is probably some waste in production. This is to some extent covered in transisoon from ore to metal, but after that the system does not includ any waste. I assumed that 1dT of metal made 1dT of parts, which results in no waste. But on the other hand since dT is (as far as I understand) a measurement of volume and not weight, 1dT of metal means a solid block of metal, but 1dT of parts contains a significant amount of empty space. In that sense there is a lot of waste already calculated into 1dT of metal = 1dT of parts. A ship would probably contain even higher percentage of empty space than parts.

I might be wrong about how to interprete dT, but if it means 14 cubic meter as I have assumed then:
My car is 5m x 1,96m x 1,43m = 14 cubic meter = 1dT. It weights "only" 2.000 KG. Steel weight 8.050 KG per cubic meter. 112.700kg for a dT. Which means that if we said 1dT of metal made 1dT of parts that makes 1dT of vehicle, we have assumed alot of wasted metal. So much infact that I'm wondering if I have a flaw in my logic If my logic is sound it probably should go the other way, and 1dT should result in many dT of parts.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

If my logic is sound it probably should go the other way, and 1dT should result in many dT of parts.

I think you are correct, but there will also be waste material.

A car consists of compact machinery wrapped around a lot of empty space (the passenger compartment). A fighter will be mostly machinery, hence use more material per unit of volume.

 

[DivineWrath]

In an effort to try to figure out this stuff better, I ended up translating the Manufactory Station in supplement 14 to HG2e.

I tried to keep everything the way it was. However, some changes had to be made. I had to dip into the cargo hold get enough room to fit all the stuff.

Manufactury Station
TL 10
Tonnage 2000
Hull Points 720
Dispersed Structure
Cost 50.000 MCr 400.000 Power

M-Drive 0
5 Tons 5.000 MCr 200.000 Power

Fusion TL 8, 2100 power
210 tons 105.000 MCr

Fuel 84 (16 weeks)

Computer/5 0.030 MCr

Sensor Basic

Craft
Docking Space 210 tons 52.500 MCr
2 Shuttle 30.294

Systems
Manufacturing, Basic 50 Tons of goods 500 tons 100.000 MCr 500.000 Power
Manufacturing, Advanced 20 Tons of goods 500 tons 200.000 MCr 1000.000 Power

Accommodations
Stateroom, Standard 20 80 Tons 10.000 MCr
Common Areas 20 20 tons 2.000 MCr

Cargo 371

Cost 556.530 MCr (500.877 with 10% discount)

As for getting raw materials, I can't find the rules that I want. I can find rules for making profit off of manufacturing, but it factors in the expenses of raw materials as negative DM to your profit check. I can't find anything that says I can take 2 tons of common ore and turn it into 2 tons of common electronics. If anyone knows of the rules I'm looking for, please let me know.

By the way, how would you go about determining how many workers you need? It says stuff like "1 per 5 tons". 1 per 5 tons of factory, or 1 per 5 tons of produced good? The books are not very clear on this. Taking the manufactory as an example, it doesn't have that many staterooms, so is it safe to say 1 worker per x tons of produced goods?