Okay, say your group wants to sell their starship...

[rinku]

The original rules are focussed on buying a ship new, with finance. It assumes a secured loan, or mortgage, but conceivably you could look at other arrangements - the Subsidised Merchant route is a variation of it. You potentially could secure the loan on another asset, or have such means as to be able to negotiate an unsecured loan at a higher interest rate. But in most cases it's cheaper and more sensible to use the ship itself as the asset.

 

[swordtart]

Not sell buy. Most sales are through a dealer and have a warranty that you as a private seller can't offer. You will sell for less than that (and so on with all the other buying prices over time) while buying for that price (depending on negotiations). Even private sales would usually involve a "Starship Broker" who makes sure all the i's are dotted and t's crossed and they will take a percentage of the price.

fi you wish it to be that way it is an entirely reasonable approach but it is not set out in the rules. If you can buy a second-hand ship for a certain price then the person selling it is getting that price. That might normally be broker for convenience and they might take a cut (in house sales the estate agent gets 1-2%), but you are not obliged to use a broker.

If you are part exchanging your ship there may not be any fees.

I see no warranty rules either. You are as likely to be buying a ship from "Honest John's" used shipyard as a "regulated" broker and your protections might wary greatly. It will very much be "buyer beware".

You may wish to use Broker Skill checks but it will not be the same as speculative trade for such a large one-off purchase. You are also not obliged to accept any deal you negotiate if it is below market rate or the buyer accept one that is above market rates (and the price of ships is well established).

 

[swordtart]

One assumes, surplus to requirements.

Normally, probably headed to contracted wholesalers, but the institution has a perquisite that allows retired employees to purchase it, at cost minus depreciation.

I work for a large organisation. When it decides to update IT it sells the old ones off by the ton rather than by machine. After 5 years they are deemed obsolete with no residual value. It is even required to pay on occasion to have the stuff disposed of to ensure it fulfils environmental requirements. The buyer then generally "refurbishes" them, which may simply be wiping them down or salvaging parts from one to fix another and sells them on at a profit. As an alternative some organisations allow their employees to buy perfectly functional machines to reduce the amount that needs to go through the formal process and thus avoid the paperwork and potentially cost.

The Ship's Boat is exclusively a Navy career benefit. The number of naval personnel of all ranks that are eligible to receive them means the Navy must be getting rid of a number equal to the personnel establishment of the Navy every quarter century (i.e. on average a 6 term veteran will get one, more so officers). Since they appear to be buying the exact same ship's boat design as they did 25 years previously it doesn't appear to be an upgrade path.

There are several options. Perhaps the boats are obsolete in some way as previously stated but we might expect it to have quirks or damage. in the same way that some of the other ships as benefits do. Alternatively maybe this is deliberate policy for the navy to ensure that there is a pool of competent pilots and decent small craft able to service (or police) the minor trade routes within a system and thus facilitate trade (in a similar way to the way surplus scout ships are released to former scouts). They might also be personal gifts from grateful sector dukes for discrete services rendered. The source of the boats might be seized vessels (prizes) or mothballed war reserves that simply become too expensive to maintain at readiness. Given very few published Naval designs use the Ship's Boat (the Pinnace is far more common) if these are surplus then they have likely been naval base assets or ex-customs vessels.

I am not sure in which edition the Navy got so generous, perhaps it is an artifact of that setting.

 

[rinku]

Modern IT assets may not be a good example here. Those have shelf lives of years, a decade at most. They're both cheap and disposable.

By comparison, a starship is a complex and expensive major asset, much more akin to a passenger ship, with a working life of many decades to a century. A small craft is still a quality spacecraft, and you'd expect a similar service life, I'd think.

I'd not assume the benefit table Ship's Boat has to be a Navy one. As with other ships except the Scout, it might have come into the character's possession for any number of reasons. It's not subject to the mortgage rule, so may well be something the character purchased new themselves with a windfall. Or got cheap due to Navy contacts. Or found themselves in possession of due to the playing out of their last few Events. It could be a vessel they took as a prize, or that they inherited. Or stole.

 

[Vormaerin]

I believe the Ship's Boat is specifically a Mongoose thing. I don't recall that specific an award anywhere else.

In Classic, Naval Characters had no access to any kind of ship from their career.

T:NE had a totally different ship acquisition system, but both enlisted and officers in the Navy got pretty good modifiers to contribute to the group's starting ship.

T5 also gives Ship shares as a mustering out benefit as a possibility for all Naval personnel.

But I also fully second Rinku's post. There's nothing in the rules that suggest that the Ship's Boat is Navy surplus vessel, especially because the actual definition is any TL 12 small craft up to MCr10 in value. Or 2 ship shares.

That's basically any of the small craft in the basic rules except the Modular Cutter (MCr0.11 too much!) or the Shuttle. And quite a few of the small craft in other books, especially the Small Craft Catalogue, unsurprisingly.

 

[rinku]

"We came across Rogan on some backwater dump where he was operating his ageing pinnace on local cargo and passenger runs between the planet and its moon. Said he'd won it in a card game, but I think we always had our doubts about that. I once hacked his Navy record and there was a lot of sketchy stuff in there, but who knows?"

Yeah, I think you're right about it being a Mongoose innovation.

 

[Condottiere]

Currently, I think the commercial cargo carriers tend to sour off after fifteen years, the discussion was why the Chinese will be dominating ship construction in the very near future, due to the need to replace existing fleets.

More to do with operating costs.

And in Traveller, tend to be extraordinarily cheap.

Base starship technological level tends to depend on the jump drive range.

For smallcraft, I think choice is limited to five megastarbux, and could have to do with age, orbital reentry stress, or damage, combat or otherwise.