Interest Rates

[Jak Nazryth]

I know the ship design uses simple interest to calculate the price of ships.
You actually pay 220% base price per the book.
What about "real" interest if I want to have "good" credit?
What would the interest rate be it you treated it like a modern home?
My interest rate was around 4.9% with 10% down a few years ago.
Are the any economists on the boards?
How would you calculate variable interest rates in stead of the simple rates per the core rules? Would that make ships cheaper depending on the credit rating of the player (maybe based on social?)

 

[far-trader]

Use an online free mortgage calculator. Google one up. Most major banks have one somewhere on their websites.

...iirc the simple rate of 220% works out to a pretty low rate compared to compounded interest mortgages. So you could presume (I would and do) that the players already have the best rate possible. And that it is predicated on a sound business plan for the ship (a requirement for the loan).

If your players have no business running a business ship (a bunch of ex-Marines operating a Free-Trader for pax and freight for example) and their idea of a sound financial plan is "jump around to random worlds, shoot things... oh and look for speculative cargo, freight, and passengers on the side." Well, they may be paying a lot more on that loan, with all kinds of safeguards put in place on the ship. If they even get the loan in the first place. Of course the bank will happily take their down payment then seize and foreclose on the first missed payment. Leaving the players out all that equity and abandoned on some random planet. Possible one they were just shooting up and folks there are looking for some payback :twisted:

Of course they'll probably just skip with the ship at that point. Or try to. Those lockouts are not easy to bypass and can lead to all kinds of fun.

 

[BP]

Yeah - at compound rates starship loans are very low...

If you go the Accountants in Space route, the players should also be able to pay on principle to reduce loan term and interest amount paid - simply doubling up first years payments would make a huge difference on the time to repay... of course, I find the 40 year loan thing rather silly - most PCs would be 70~80 years old before their loan was paid in full...

 

[Treebore]

We had a thread on this not to long ago, a month ago? Maybe two? In there I used a loan calculator showing how a loan done like a house would never be possible to pay off in 40 years. Monthly payments would be in the millions.

 

[CosmicGamer]

What about "real" interest if I want to have "good" credit?

I thought good credit was one of the things listed as a reason ship shares reduce the overall price/payments for a ship.

How would you calculate variable interest rates in stead of the simple rates per the core rules? Would that make ships cheaper depending on the credit rating of the player (maybe based on social?)

How are you going to determine the amount variable rates change during game play? Interest rates could also differ from one system to the next and one lender to the next. Can you really create a simulation for the economy of the entire universe? I can't even figure out what a single stock is going to do from one minute to the next.

 

[DFW]

Example:

MCr40 ship loan

480 payments at Cr166,666.67 (1/240th of loan)

Compound annual interest rate = 3.98%

http://www.calculatorweb.com/calculators/loancalc.shtml

Someone mentioned that a ship loan couldn't be paid like a house loan? The example I gave is exactly that.