Well indeed, I'm quite happy to modify and elaborate on stuff as a GM. Career and Life Events are a good example. I'd already had something similar as a CT house rule, but now the concept is part of canon. That's cool, and rounds off the chargen process. But you can run chargen as is out of the box. Customisation is up to the ref.
With the quirks table isn't possible to run 'out of the box'. The ref has to add stuff before that mechanic can be used. I'm happy to pencil in my own options, but less experienced or sci-fi savvy refs could do with a few more pointers.
My bigger beef is that the 'shares rebate' for buying an older ship is capped at 10. Since the rebate is 1d6 shares per 10 years, then on average you get no extra benefit, cost wise, for a 30 year old ship than for a 40, 50, 60 etc year old vessel. In fact a cap is unnecessary. Even if you only roll 6's, the vessel would need to be 170 years old to be 'free'. With 17 quirks it would probably be a wreck anyway. On average a vessel would need to be 300 years old to come gratis, with 30 quirks. Vessels that flaky deserve to be cheap, given the fact that they'd probably fail all and any safety inspections.
I'm sure a 40 year old Jumbo jet is more that 10% less to lease than a brand new one...
Given the certain road to bankruptcy that previous versions of the Traveller trade rules have presented this is something that can be made right by using the older ship rules.
My rationale would be that a Type A should be able to garner a little profit after costs as long as it's holds are full of standard cargo, and so any passengers become pure profit, and that a Type A2 should break even with full holds and passengers, requiring some speculative trade to truly make money.
If it's harder than this then it's inconceivable it would be possible to get a mortgage for a tramp freighter in the OTU. No bank would invest in a business certain to make a loss and foreclose. Only the big boys would be able to trade. Only PC crews have the time and inclination to carry out extra jobs to pay the rent and any toys. And these 'none-standard jobs' need to pay exceptionally well to keep even the smallest of vessels in operation. In the 10's and 100's of thousands per week kind of range. That's big money for your average patron encounter.
Even being able to make a small profit with full holds does not discourage Traveller style semi-legal adventuring, as it's pretty damn hard to get full holds, and a ref can easily alter the economic climate to get those pc's out there causing trouble. It would be nice if the trading 'mini-game' finally had another possible outcome than going out of business.
