More affordable starships

[sideranautae]

I honestly wouldn't try to work out the economy of the universe and then set starship prices, I would decide how common starships are supposed to be and then work backwards to set other prices.

This.

I am currently working this out. I know "roughly" what wealth people have & how common I want small ships to be in frontier areas. So, working from those 2 simple assumptions should be easy enough.

 

[Reynard]

Warn me when everyone finish remaking Mongoose Traveller with nano-detailed rules on EVERYTHING. I'll need a copy to block gamma radiation leakage while I continue playing the fun, simple Traveller.

Seriously, T5 will be a pamphlet.

 

[Jame Rowe]

@Tom - Whoops, yeah, you are right. I was thinking of household income (which includes working spouses and legally working children).

@James - I went back and checked my notes, an you are right. I had reversed them.

No problem. What did you think of my other thought - starship prices being 10% of standard?

Batting 0-2... I either need to drink more or less...

Try both! Either together at separately. Let us know how it works, from the guinea pig viewpoint.

 

[IanBruntlett]

Warn me when everyone finish remaking Mongoose Traveller with nano-detailed rules on EVERYTHING. I'll need a copy to block gamma radiation leakage while I continue playing the fun, simple Traveller.

Seriously, T5 will be a pamphlet.

Shocking confession... I ad lib like crazy

 

[Ishmael]

Warn me when everyone finish remaking Mongoose Traveller with nano-detailed rules on EVERYTHING. I'll need a copy to block gamma radiation leakage while I continue playing the fun, simple Traveller.

Seriously, T5 will be a pamphlet.

So who is remaking Mongoose Traveller?
Only Mongoose can do that. ( and I hope they don't )

I can only speak for myself, but I am doing things that are for my own meta-gaming curiousity that are not necessarily for the public and definately not for the game table except for the effects if I choose.

I just happen to enjoy world/universe-building exercises.

 

[Reynard]

I guess I failed to express my observational opinion by a touch of exaggeration how there's a common trend on the forums to minutia the rules stating far too subtly that the rules need to change. It's just so funny how in depth people go to explain why the rules are wrong.

Just my own observation. Continue with the games.

 

[phavoc]

No problem. What did you think of my other thought - starship prices being 10% of standard?

That would be TOO cheap, I think.

I guess I failed to express my observational opinion by a touch of exaggeration how there's a common trend on the forums to minutia the rules stating far too subtly that the rules need to change. It's just so funny how in depth people go to explain why the rules are wrong.

Just my own observation. Continue with the games.

Trying to figure out the background for WHY something is the way it is doesn't have to be a bad thing. A number of discussions are about trying to break down why a particular issue is the way it is, and then move forward with it. There are many gaps in the Traveller model that have been there since day one. I don't mind if it's stated "we pulled this out of our ass" - but since not everything is pulled out of a designers ass, the pieces that were built from some sort of model (logical or not) compared to the pieces that came out of thin air, well, for some it just drives us nuts. It doesn't mean I'm trying to calculate the cost of 1lbs of space beans on a TL3 world. But to know the underlying model I can then design the mechanics of an adventure whereby I can either deplete the party's funds through regular every-day expenses (maybe they got marooned and the current adventure is trying to build up enough money/gear to get off this rock), or maybe if I knew that it took 18hrs to melt ice down to fill the tanks on a scout courier, I could plan for something else. Some people like the details, others could give a rat's ass.

@OP - I don't know where the original pricing structure came from. It's rather odd to me. I did some digging and found a 230' freighter, 1,600 DWT, built in 1988, for sale for a little over $900,000USD. I guess you could call it a modern-day tramp freighter, maybe a sea-going equivalent of a free trader.

There are a shit-ton of freighters plying the worlds oceans and waterways. Somebody has to pay for them all. Most players would be struggling to pay for a single star ship, which is as it should be. The larger freighters or military ships have large corporations or governments behind them, so they would normally be out of the reach of the "average" player.

So, in theory at least, we don't need more "affordable" starships, as it would upset the overall game balance. Players, for the most part, should never have the biggest, baddest, shiniest toy on the block. If they did, where's the challenge in trying to kill, err, create an adventure for them?

 

[sideranautae]

I modified my JDrive prices DOWN by ~80%. I dropped the hull cost for <2,000 ton ships to Cr.10,000/ton. This lowered the cost of this ship by almost half.

 

[Infojunky]

Ok, the real question here is what model of shipping do want to use, Aircraft or Maritime?

As it stands Traveller has used a Aircraft pricing model for it ships. Which in a lot of ways makes sense for smaller ships and smallcraft. But not so much as you move into the larger ships. But the question occurs where doe one start making the switch from one model to the other? Or should the discount for being none streamlined be bigger?

Some food for thought a Wide Body cargo jet and a Panamax Container ship both cost the same approx.

 

[sideranautae]

Ok, the real question here is what model of shipping do want to use, Aircraft or Maritime?

Nuke Submarine model. It is closer structurally, life support and other wise. In reality it is only superficially like water or aircraft. You cannot model like either without running into logic problems that are glaring.

 

[Infojunky]

Ok, the real question here is what model of shipping do want to use, Aircraft or Maritime?

Nuke Submarine model. It is closer structurally, life support and other wise. In reality it is only superficially like water or aircraft. You cannot model like either without running into logic problems that are glaring.

So you are going with the aircraft model then....

As cost-wise a sub has more in common with an airliner than a ship.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

No problem. What did you think of my other thought - starship prices being 10% of standard?

That would be TOO cheap, I think.

I guess I failed to express my observational opinion by a touch of exaggeration how there's a common trend on the forums to minutia the rules stating far too subtly that the rules need to change. It's just so funny how in depth people go to explain why the rules are wrong.

Just my own observation. Continue with the games.

Trying to figure out the background for WHY something is the way it is doesn't have to be a bad thing. A number of discussions are about trying to break down why a particular issue is the way it is, and then move forward with it. There are many gaps in the Traveller model that have been there since day one. I don't mind if it's stated "we pulled this out of our ass" - but since not everything is pulled out of a designers ass, the pieces that were built from some sort of model (logical or not) compared to the pieces that came out of thin air, well, for some it just drives us nuts. It doesn't mean I'm trying to calculate the cost of 1lbs of space beans on a TL3 world. But to know the underlying model I can then design the mechanics of an adventure whereby I can either deplete the party's funds through regular every-day expenses (maybe they got marooned and the current adventure is trying to build up enough money/gear to get off this rock), or maybe if I knew that it took 18hrs to melt ice down to fill the tanks on a scout courier, I could plan for something else. Some people like the details, others could give a rat's ass.

@OP - I don't know where the original pricing structure came from. It's rather odd to me. I did some digging and found a 230' freighter, 1,600 DWT, built in 1988, for sale for a little over $900,000USD. I guess you could call it a modern-day tramp freighter, maybe a sea-going equivalent of a free trader.

There are a shit-ton of freighters plying the worlds oceans and waterways. Somebody has to pay for them all. Most players would be struggling to pay for a single star ship, which is as it should be. The larger freighters or military ships have large corporations or governments behind them, so they would normally be out of the reach of the "average" player.

So, in theory at least, we don't need more "affordable" starships, as it would upset the overall game balance. Players, for the most part, should never have the biggest, baddest, shiniest toy on the block. If they did, where's the challenge in trying to kill, err, create an adventure for them?

I noticed the prices for starships in the old Star Wars Role Playing Game were a lot cheaper, for example the Millenium Falcon was about tens of thousands of credits if I'm not mistaken. Remember what Luke Skywalker said when asked to sell his landspeeder. Luke: "We can almost buy our own ship for that amount of money!" Solo: "But who's going to fly it kid?"

Star Wars starships are cheap, that is why there are so many huge ones, such as Star Destroyers, super star Destroyers and the Death Star. The Largest Starships don't even come close to that in Traveller, the tables top out at 1,000,000 dtons or thereabouts. What is 1,000,000 dtons anyway? it is about 10,000 scout/couriers. Place 10 scout/couriers end to end, line them up in rows 10 across side by side and then stack them on top in a layer 10 deep and the dimensions of that is about the size of a 1,000,000 dton starship. This is considerably smaller than a Star Destroyer , much less a Super star Destroyer. One of the reasons Star Wars ships can be so huge is because the average size ones are so cheap!

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I modified my JDrive prices DOWN by ~80%. I dropped the hull cost for <2,000 ton ships to Cr.10,000/ton. This lowered the cost of this ship by almost half.

I like this idea. Reducing the basic hull size is a great way to reduce the overall ship costs.

I would suggest leaving the Jump Drive cost alone and reducing the M-Drive and Power Plant costs. Those things are TL8-9 and should be old, reliable, cheap technology. The Jump Drive should be more expensive.

I also like the idea of making unstreamlined ships MUCH less expensive. Even with Contra-Grav, there will be a lot of hull used to smooth out the ship lines that would not be needed if the ship never entered atmo.

For a long time I used the 10% cost structure that was suggested upstream, but as I got more and more into it, I thought it was a bit too low. Reducing prices to 25% - 50% of current costs seems reasonable.

BUT, be aware that this will make ships more profitable (quite a bit actually) and that will destroy the "struggling to make money" paradigm. However, if you have interstellar trade then people have to be able to make money doing it and the RAW don't really allow that very well. Why buy a multi-million credit ship and then not be able to make the monthly payments without cheating - no bank would ever finance that kind of venture.

Keep going!

 

[sideranautae]

I would suggest leaving the Jump Drive cost alone and reducing the M-Drive and Power Plant costs.

The M drive & PP are not costly enough (as a total %) to make much difference by reduction. Only the Hull & JD, on small merchants, will make a real difference if greatly reduced. Look at how much each component contributes to the overall cost to correctly assign items that need reduction.