If you want a systematic approach, it is easy to calculate your costs for each type of passenger/trip and from that you can identify the baseline price for each passenger berth and cargo DTonnage. I tend to assume that over time costs will be driven down to the point that prices will have become standard regardless of which ship is offering it.
The variables will be:
The space allocated to each passenger in DTons (which will reduce for multiple occupancy).
The Fuel expended per DTon for the type of jump you are doing (plus power to run ships systems) you then add that to the costs for each DTon of payload pro-rata.
The life support costs (and there will be a minimum per person required that will not vary regardless of class of passenger).
The wages of any crew specifically required to support the passengers i.e. Stewards (divided pro-rata to each passenger class).
The wages of Pilot and Engineer and other essential crew (divided by Dton across all the payload)
The extra cost of any luxuries (including more luxurious life support) that will be consumed (which you should probably base on the living costs table rather than just make stuff up)
These will give you the baseline costs that will set the floor of the competitive process, under normal circumstances prices would not be expected to go below this as to do so would mean running at a loss. Clearly there are sometimes reasons you might do this, but they are outliers and shouldn't form the basis of a system to calculate passenger costs.
You then add whatever profit margin you think you can get, but I would suggest that the chance of obtaining passengers should be influenced by that margin and the class of the star port. The larger the star port, the higher the competition and the lower your margin will need to be. In small ports you might be able to command extortionate fees, but the client base is liable to be lower also.
Non-recurring costs do not contribute to the baseline cost (e.g. entertainment suites). These usually add a DM to the chance to get passengers and their benefit is they allow you offset the negative DM from upping the profit margin.
The overall cost to run or mortgage your ship should not influence the base price (customers will not be drawn to a ship that charges significantly more that another ship because the owner has been inefficient in design) This is where liners make their money, they do not waste effort installing expensive do-dads that "might come in handy" or carry surplus crew like tramps ships (particularly player designed ones) do. For example for a high passage you require 1 level of steward skill per 10 passengers. So the pro-rata rate for that is Cr100 per high passenger per trip (assuming standard 2 week trip). How much it costs to provide that level of stewardship is your problem. The cost to the passenger is Cr100 built into their ticket price. If you only have a single stateroom and you add Cr900 extra to cover your costs in having a steward underemployed for 90% of the time, that is extra margin that someone who has put in 10 staterooms will not have to charge for. Equally if you have crewman who does secondary duty as steward in jump space then you may not incur any cost to provide the stewardship and you can undercut the competition by Cr100 per ticket without impacting your service.
The prices per passenger quoted in the books was traditionally the price per passage regardless of whether you flew tramp or scheduled liner. There was no inherent discount or premium for the class of vessel. A boutique free trader might have luxurious staterooms and offer personal services far superior to the stack-em high impersonal scheduled liners which in turn might be superior to the spare cabin in a Type-J taking opportunity passengers.
The variables will be:
The space allocated to each passenger in DTons (which will reduce for multiple occupancy).
The Fuel expended per DTon for the type of jump you are doing (plus power to run ships systems) you then add that to the costs for each DTon of payload pro-rata.
The life support costs (and there will be a minimum per person required that will not vary regardless of class of passenger).
The wages of any crew specifically required to support the passengers i.e. Stewards (divided pro-rata to each passenger class).
The wages of Pilot and Engineer and other essential crew (divided by Dton across all the payload)
The extra cost of any luxuries (including more luxurious life support) that will be consumed (which you should probably base on the living costs table rather than just make stuff up)
These will give you the baseline costs that will set the floor of the competitive process, under normal circumstances prices would not be expected to go below this as to do so would mean running at a loss. Clearly there are sometimes reasons you might do this, but they are outliers and shouldn't form the basis of a system to calculate passenger costs.
You then add whatever profit margin you think you can get, but I would suggest that the chance of obtaining passengers should be influenced by that margin and the class of the star port. The larger the star port, the higher the competition and the lower your margin will need to be. In small ports you might be able to command extortionate fees, but the client base is liable to be lower also.
Non-recurring costs do not contribute to the baseline cost (e.g. entertainment suites). These usually add a DM to the chance to get passengers and their benefit is they allow you offset the negative DM from upping the profit margin.
The overall cost to run or mortgage your ship should not influence the base price (customers will not be drawn to a ship that charges significantly more that another ship because the owner has been inefficient in design) This is where liners make their money, they do not waste effort installing expensive do-dads that "might come in handy" or carry surplus crew like tramps ships (particularly player designed ones) do. For example for a high passage you require 1 level of steward skill per 10 passengers. So the pro-rata rate for that is Cr100 per high passenger per trip (assuming standard 2 week trip). How much it costs to provide that level of stewardship is your problem. The cost to the passenger is Cr100 built into their ticket price. If you only have a single stateroom and you add Cr900 extra to cover your costs in having a steward underemployed for 90% of the time, that is extra margin that someone who has put in 10 staterooms will not have to charge for. Equally if you have crewman who does secondary duty as steward in jump space then you may not incur any cost to provide the stewardship and you can undercut the competition by Cr100 per ticket without impacting your service.
The prices per passenger quoted in the books was traditionally the price per passage regardless of whether you flew tramp or scheduled liner. There was no inherent discount or premium for the class of vessel. A boutique free trader might have luxurious staterooms and offer personal services far superior to the stack-em high impersonal scheduled liners which in turn might be superior to the spare cabin in a Type-J taking opportunity passengers.
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