Last call for feedback: Passengers and profits

[BP]

Um, but that's just it it's not extra, it costs you 4t for the stateroom which could be freight at 1kCr/ton, not even counting the life support, required medic and steward (8t, plus *more* life support, plus salary) and already we're up to 1.5MCr for the staterooms themselves (6250Cr/mo payment) (or 5770Cr/mo using the 1/260 <s>) Oh and life support there 3k. and salaries what? 3kCr/2 week jump) Again weekly monthly gah. ok 2 jumps a month:
6250 for the stats, 6k LS, 6k salary, it's costing us 18,250 for the staterooms, life support and salaries for those staterooms and passengers, plus we're out 12t of freight (which would be 24kCr for a month!) and we get, for a mid passenger J1, twice, 6k. And yeah, it *is* like a business. No passenger, +24kCr/mo, passenger, -11750Cr/mo...

It is an extra when there is no cargo... (i.e. - less of a loss)

Your example assumes worst case with maximum personnel expenditure - 1 stateroom and a steward (with a full stateroom?) and a medic (with a full stateroom)... Perfect example of many small business startups actually* (yeah - the ones that invariably fail...)!

The 3 pilot average is not a requirement! As stated on Core pg 113 - '...if disaster strikes, ... has a much slower response time...'

Also, Core pg 110 allows Luxuries at 1 ton = 1 steward level. So no steward is required. (Yes you lost 1 ton cargo space and 100,000 cr per)

For the Medic - if you ain't carrying a lot of passengers use an Autodoc and a crew member who is also a medic.

And small, low budget outfits are gonna skimp and take the DMs when the risk is worth the profit (avoid bankruptcy) - heck one crew member could be steward, medic, navigator and gunner - giving +skill DMs for some things and negative for others...

For larger passenger liners (why would players want this? - to each his own) the extra staff would be distributed across a lot more rooms (ie. overhead substantially less %).

 

[Maccat]

CT had 10kCr for a high, 8kCr for a mid, assuming no stewards (say luxuries (though that 1MCr is 4166Cr a month...) that comes out 2500Cr/t High, 2kCr/t Mid by tonnage of the staterooms, freight carriage the same at 1kCr/t

MgT (at J1) 6kCr High, 3kCr Mid, for 1500Cr/t High, 750Cr/t Mid. Again, not counting LS, which makes it worse. w/LS 625Cr/t for a mid!!!

Ships costs are lower in MgT but still pretty-darn-close to CT costs. These revenues are +/- *half* what they used to be. it used to be the passenger trade because of the higher (barely!) net than freight rates allowed greater ship performance or more extras (say the ability to pay for a turret and arming, or an actual paid gunner)

There is no "no cargo" because you have an infinite supply of speculative cargo as stands. Carrying passengers nets less (even assuming no stewards, and *not* counting life support costs) than straight freight.
*Carrying passengers grosses less than straight freight*
It *costs* to carry passengers compared to carrying the same tonnage of freight as stands. To me, that is broken.

Some have suggested that for a mortgaged ship it would need average manning, it specifically somewhere in there mentions corporate ships. Or do the banks just sign off and let undermanned ships sail away with their hard-earned MCr?

So attempting to keep the 'new' passenger rates (though why?), one could

A. do the 1/260 total ship price, because a week *is* 52 weeks. 12*4week months (2 jumps a month) *is* 48 week year. This lowers overall ship monthly costs, makes running a profitable or payment-making ship easier, doesn't give an extra months payment away (to who?)

B. Lower life support costs, increases revenue by reducing expenses, apllies to crew life support as well (although it'a already half what it used to be in CT)
say 500Cr/p/J

C. Make staterooms smaller, this makes them more profitable because it's "taking" less freight tonnage to carry a passenger
say 3t

D. Make staterooms cheaper, this reduces ship costs hence payments.
say 250kCr, or 100kCr!

E. Raise prices charged to passengers to be at least even to the freight so you could carry freight *or* passengers, or raise freight prices to match the passenger costs. ala
CT freight rates 1kCr/t, H 10kCr M8kCr L1kCr LS2kCr/jump
MgT freight rates 1kCr/t H 6kCr M3kCr L1kCr LS1k/J
Ships costs similar (lower in MgT actually!). Why keep freight and low passage the same, while like halving passenger carry?! How about we halve freight returns and low carriage as well?!

So what was your take on any/all of those?

 

[captainjack23]

The profit(less) passenger business is similar to what is currently faced by Amtrak in the US. Amtrak is a money looser, has been for a long time. Only government subsidies keep it operational. Cargo hauling by train is profitable.

BALANCE is needed here and lots of number crunching before something is published.

wellllll.....the publishing -whatever got used, happened a while ago. This thread is from the playtest for the core book.

 

[BP]

...
So what was your take on any/all of those?

For High Passage -
* Fee is by Jump (just as with CT) but based on parsecs per jump and past J-1 it is higher (signicantly for J-3 and beyond)...
* Steward skill is required - the body is optional! (this is why luxuries can be used - CT required Steward 1 per 8 passengers, though did allow multi-position crewmembers at skill-1)

Ex: Mortgaged Type A Free Trader crewed by Pilot, Engineer and Medic (with Steward-2 skill)
6 staterooms can be used (Steward-2 allows for this); 6 tons cargo space must be allocated (when in use)

Assume on average only one J-1 per month... (As won't fill every stateroom per jump - though Middle passage will help)

Monthly Costs (fixed from starship design)
12,750 Cr for 6 Staterooms' Mortgage +Maint (3 MCr /240 +3000/12)
12,000 Cr for 6 Staterooms' Life Support
1,650 Cr fuel percentage (4+1 tons per *6 / 200 tons *22 tons *500 Cr)
Total Monthly Costs = 26,400 Cr

Monthly J-1 travel revenue = 36,000 Cr from 6 High Passage Fares
Gross Monthly Revenue = 9,600 Cr for 30 tons (320 Cr per Ton)
^If you choose to include the Medic salary as part of the expenses this drops to 5,600 Cr excluding the Medic's Life Support (you already have to pay that = as with the rest of the crew quarters and the unused one!)
[If you used the 6 tons of cargo space for freight instead, you would lose 20,400 Cr instead (6,000 Cr with the same fixed 26,400 Cr expenses)]

So you can make money for the passengers - but won't subsidize the full cost of the ship - for that there is 82 tons of cargo space left and 20 low berths (these actually are more profitable than freight by about 50% if fully sold)! And there is an extra stateroom (if the Steward skill is higher or another member of the crew has steward skills)

Now if those staterooms weren't in the plan - sure the freight space would have been more profitable (assuming you could fill it). Having passenger space allows one to take on passengers (splitting the risks of unavailability at the cost of lower profit). Speculative trade could, of course, be even more profitable...

Now consider that J-1 passenger travel is intentionally penalized. J-3+ works out better than freight. Why the J-1 penalty - perhaps the J-1 lines are likely to be hard on independents as they are in densely clustered sub-sectors...

If you are designing a ship you can make more for hauling passengers than freight by aiming for high Jump numbers (3+). But your J-1 Tramp Traders can only pay their bills with a lot of effort and creativity. They can make a profit with passengers, but its pretty meager (and less than freight). But even if they don't fill them all every month they can break even allowing for revenue from speculative cargo and available freight to sustain the balance of their monthly bills...

This doesn't seem broken to me - perhaps it seems illogical from the Cr/ton standpoint - but I find it to fit what often happens in RW situations (small businesses make much less margin for many things they have to do because the big boys do them...)

As for the 260 payments - I'm not following that unless you are saying pay by 4 weeks instead of monthly...
* you are still paying the same amount per year - since the mortgage is simple 120% interest

P.S. - Luxuries are .1 MCr not 1 MCr (~417 Cr/month) [Core pg 110]

 

[cbrunish]

As for the 260 payments - I'm not following that unless you are saying pay by 4 weeks instead of monthly...
* you are still paying the same amount per year - since the mortgage is simple 120% interest

P.S. - Luxuries are .1 MCr not 1 MCr (~417 Cr/month) [Core pg 110]

Yes the end price is the same but the payments are lower. You are dividing the price by 260 instead of 240. With 20 extra payments this lowers the price. Reason is that the Imperial calender does not have months. Only days and weeks. So there will be 52 weeks a year. This would give you 13 pay periods a year.

 

[BP]

Yes the end price is the same but the payments are lower. You are dividing the price by 260 instead of 240. With 20 extra payments this lowers the price. Reason is that the Imperial calender does not have months. Only days and weeks. So there will be 52 weeks a year. This would give you 13 pay periods a year.

Understood = though MGT Core hasn't actually defined this as far as I know.

The old CT Forms Supplement defined the calendar - and it does mention months of about 28 days, i.e 4 weeks. While this would yield 13 months/year - we typically define a month as about 4 weeks - so this really doesn't hold much water since all other equations involving months use a factor of 12.

Of course, CT also states months rarely have established dates. So months broken down into weeks for ship payments can be:

1st Quarter = 4 weeks + 4 weeks + 5 weeks
2nd Quarter = 4 weeks + 4 weeks + 5 weeks
3rd Quarter = 4 weeks + 4 weeks + 5 weeks
4th Quarter = 4 weeks + 4 weeks + 5 weeks

So 12 months with every 3rd month having 5 weeks (Holiday - day 001 being a free day).

Now if one uses the 13 month per year every 4 weeks payment cycle (i.e. 260 payments over 40 years) you:
* reduce payment amounts by about 320.5 Cr per MCr per payment
* lose the extra week to pay every 3 payments
* get to make up the difference at the end of the year (13th 'month')

So not only do I think it doesn't amount to much - and can actually make things harder as often as it helps (since you get 5 weeks to raise the cashy monies every quarter).

 

[BP]

To the point of passenger hauling being less profitable per investment and tonnage than freight - I wonder that this condition does not exist in the RW.

Consider oceanic passengers liners versus oceanic freight - there are a great many more freighters than such and given the extra space, crew, life support (food, cleaning supplies, etc), services (laundry, cooking, cleaning), etc. it doesn't seem it could be as profitable. Then add the legal risks (liability for lives vs. goods) and the regulatory requirements (lifeboats/vests/medical treatment/staffing/food handling).

Of course, there is modern trans-atlantic airlines to compete so its not a 100% fair analogy - but ,even historically freight was hauled more so than passengers if one counts slaves as freight and doesn't count military as passengers.

MGT even accounts for the higher costs of longer range jumps = which is not just extra fuel costs, but more importantly from a cost standpoint typically involves either much larger ships or takes the more space away from cargo for larger drive and fuel tonnage.

I don't really see how, in this aspect, MGT is broken compared to CT. Different - yes. Indeed - perhaps fixed...

 

[atpollard]

IMHO the definition of 'broken' rests on whether or not the group (players and Ref) WANT 'Adventure Class Ships' capable of J2 or J3, and whether or not such ships are affordable (able to make the bank payments).

I would agree that passengers generating less profit per ton than filling the staterooms with cargo is a bad thing. The ship should have an incentive to include passengers or many adventure opportunities and hooks get flushed out of the airlock (benefitting no one).

The problem with setting cargo rates too low, is that it tends to quelch the 'Firefly' scenario with a group just trying to get by. If the ONLY way to afford the ship is speculation and speculation generates large profits, then the Merchant Prince/Accountants in Space campaign becomes 'the only game in town'.

In my own Classic Traveller game, I found that converting the cargo rates from 'per jump' to 'per parsec' allowed J2 and J3 free traders to pay the mortgage (and therefore exist) which made for a richer My Traveller Universe.

Make whatever changes are necessary to put YOUR stamp on YOUR game.

 

[Maccat]

I actually like the quarter thing, tossing the extra weeks in throughout the year. *would* throw of payment due at end of month thing (perhaps?) If per the calender a month is 4 weeks then there are 13 a year. we can call it 12 but yes I'd want those extra 4 weeks. otherwise I would be making an extra payment a year, which is pure profit to the mortgaging institution.
Interspersing them gives one 4 "free" trips (profit!) where the mortgage is already paid. Problem is 2 of those need to be down time for annual maintenance (and together at that) so maybe thirds not quarters?:

T1 4wk+4wk+4wk+4wk+1wk
T2 4wk+4wk+4wk+4wk+1wk
T3 4wk+4wk+4wk+4wk+2wk

320Cr difference per MCr adds up quite a bit! using free trader Type A 36.567MCr, is 11,701Cr less monthly payment.
/240 payment 152,363Cr/mo
/260 payment 140,643Cr/mo
As long as there are no extra payments made (I do not make 13 mortgage payments a year, and if I did would sure want credit for the extra money out!) I'm ok with any interpretation. Reconciling a calender would allow (much!) simplified comparing of ship costs/revenues and accounting thereof.

... and with mids:
Monthly Costs (fixed from starship design)
12,750 Cr for 6 Staterooms' Mortgage +Maint (3 MCr /240 +3000/12)
(11,798 Cr (11,539+250)/260 version)
12,000 Cr for 6 Staterooms' Life Support
1,353 Cr fuel percentage (4+.1 tons per *6 / 200 tons *22 tons *500 Cr)
Total Monthly Costs = 26,103 Cr

Monthly J-1 travel revenue = 18,000 Cr from 6 Mid Passage Fares
Gross Monthly Revenue = -8,103 Cr for 24.6 tons (-329 Cr per Ton)
[If you used the .6 tons of cargo space for freight instead, you would lose 25,503 Cr instead (600 Cr with the same fixed 26,103 Cr expenses)]

if you instead had no staterooms you'd be ahead a lot nearer 24,600 no?

Granted mids, and you say J1 is penalized (that's clear!) but does the loss need to be as much as the gain like that?! With 3t stats, 18t stats 6t/.6t cgo, then freight would be 24k/18.6k

An aspect of all this, of course, is any ship is just a vehicle for the party to travel on. The economics of it can, and probably is at times, disregarded. As to passengers costing more to carry than freight, per above most assuredly!

So what about .25MCr/stateroom, or 100kCr? 3t staterooms?

 

[BP]

The incentive to haul passengers instead of cargo, in some cases, will be simply because the ship came with the staterooms.

The other idea is that the mundane hauling of cargo and passengers to pay the bills isn't really the average attraction of Traveller (barring the Accountants in Space lovers) - its the 'other' income streams that motivate...

This actually fits nicely with the 'Firefly' scenario - as Mal says in the Pilot - "We don't get paid for this, we won't have enough money to fuel the ship, let alone keep her in repair." In another episode I believe he says something along the lines of taking on passengers not being near enough to keep them flying. And he doesn't seem to have a mortgage...

P.S. Keep in mind that player's ships are more often than not purchased with shares or second hand - so the mortgage payments are much lower or non-existent. And MGT adds rules for the 'Skipping Out' option!

 

[BP]

...If per the calender a month is 4 weeks then there are 13 a year. we can call it 12 but yes I'd want those extra 4 weeks. otherwise I would be making an extra payment a year, which is pure profit to the mortgaging institution.

A Traveller month is 'implicitly defined' as 1/12 of a year - the 4 weeks thing 'of about 28 days' doesn't in any way override this fact and neither does any other text that I am aware of. Specifically, in MGT [Core pg 137] - "... 1/240th of the cash price each month for 480 months (40 years). Meaning (480/40) 12 months per year. Same page states maintenance at 1/12 of 0.1% per month.
Regardless, even if you define a month as 28 days and 13 months per year = you still don't pay extra to the bank (you are giving one 'free' month per year to the players as it takes 480 payments over 40 years)!

Interspersing them gives one 4 "free" trips (profit!) where the mortgage is already paid. Problem is 2 of those need to be down time for annual maintenance (and together at that) so maybe thirds not quarters?:

T1 4wk+4wk+4wk+4wk+1wk
T2 4wk+4wk+4wk+4wk+1wk
T3 4wk+4wk+4wk+4wk+2wk

Note that MGT did away with the annual maintenance though [Core pg 138] - so there is no real reason to go this route... and the 4 'free weeks' are actually only enough for 2 normal trips of 1 wk in Jump 1 wk in system.
You could certainly do it this way... its not as clean as breaking into Financial Quarters (the reason I choose the 4+4+5 originally). Or go with the existing (Gregorian?) monthly system or use 30 days per month with an extra day each quarter (neither of which breaks down nicely on week boundaries).

320Cr difference per MCr adds up quite a bit!

It's still only 7.7% irregardless - nothing to laugh at - but not gonna break anything! And keep in mind - this does add an extra payment at the end of the year which puts that 7.7% right back on ya (if you are playing the 13th month rule you also added 40 payments onto the note - unless you are reducing the interest).

Other points:
* I did my numbers based on 1 passenger trip per month - which is quite conservative (normal 2 weeks per one-way trip)
* The mortgage rules are 'broken' in the sense that MGT either left out the 20% down payment or meant simple 100% interest instead of 120% (to compound the problem - pun not intended - the text goes on to state 100% financed). And this ignores the Architect's fee (which is mentioned on Core pg 105!
* Nothing (except the GM) prevents the players from attempting to gain higher fees by offering other services (flying under the radar; harboring known fugitives; the 'No Questions Asked' special rates; 'Secure Transport' on combat ready ships; Vault available transport, etc.)
* And keep in mind low berths are pretty cost competitive...

 

[BP]

Oh yeah -
In my CT days I created the quarterly thing because the mortgage monthly payments didn't make any real sense - instead players made payments Quarterly or Annually (with small fees for annual payments). And were late if past 1 year and a Quarter (if paid at main bank) - so time to call out for the skip tracers...

This meant players had up to 1 year to get back to a system their bank dealt with. These branch locations had to be within 1 Quarter (3 months) of the main bank on the X-Boat money route...