Payment and Ship Share substitution

[Smax]

This seems reasonably clear but I just want to be sure: The sidebar on payment says that the usual payment for a mission should be more than the PCs would make trading, i.e. 1000-2000 creds per ton of cargo space. Is this in addition to the listed rewards for missions? (That is, if the players have an 88-ton Free Trader and take a two-week 10K reward mission, the total payment should be in the 98-186KCr range.) It seems a bit odd that the actual nature of the mission has far, far less to do with the price than the cargo space of the ship. But it beats my previous reading (when I glossed over the sidebar and thought that they were just getting the 10K, which makes those monthly payments pretty dire indeed).

All that's in the future right now anyway, as I'm thinking I'll start the players off without a ship at all, so they have to hitch across a sector or three to get the ship Rich Uncle Bloodmoney left them in his will (that'll really make them appreciate the freedom of ownership. Plus it'll give me a couple sessions of railroa- guided gaming before they start BAMFing all over the Spinward Marches like Nightcrawler on a coke jag).

Only trouble is, of course, those damn ship shares, which aren't going to be worth a plugged nickel if they just get the ship lock stock and so on. I suppose I could just declare that the ship's not entirely paid off (R.U.B. being that kind of a guy) and let them ship-share down the outstanding debt, but that involves the assumption that they'll ever get the chance to put their shares to use. I'd like to replace them with something that'll be dramatically useful right out of the gate. Question being, what? There's allies, contacts (the characters I've rolled up seem to have a dearth of contacts), fancy equipment, cash, a lot of options. ATM I'm thinking I'll just make a quick 2d6 table they can roll on for each ship share they're meant to have (doesn't quite take into account specialized ship shares*, etc, but as mentioned, this is pretty quick & dirty). Something like:

2 +1 to stat of choice
3 Specialized equipment (High-tech, augment, etc)
4 Gain a skill of choice at 0
5 Equipment or Weapon
6 Ally
7 Contact
8 1d3 Contacts
9 Equipment or Armour
10 Gain skill of choice at 0
11 +1 to a skill of choice, cannot increase above 3
12 (1-3: +1 to two different skills of choice, cannot increase above 3
4-6: Weird equipment (artifact, psionic, etc))

Any suggestions/advice?

* To say nothing of entire loaner scout ships. Oy.

 

[rust]

I would not use stat increases and skills to replace ship shares, there is
a risk to unbalance the game - better stay with material benefits, for ex-
ample a "voucher" to buy equipment up to a certain value.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Significantly drop the value of the ship so that the players then have "buy" it back to full spec. Remove any and all weapons and turrets, if possible drop any drive rating above one down to one requiring mutimegacredit repair bills. Strip out some of the staterooms again needed a lot of cash to fix.

If you intend to give them the ship outright make it a wreck and the yard where rich uncle bloodmoneys wreck is parked can do some repairs and get it moving but it will cost, well you could sign those ship shares over to me and I'll get the drives running. Beyond that we are talking hard cash :twisted:

The cost of hiring a ship is based on its potential income for the period of its hire. If you have 6 passenger staterooms and 50 tons of cargo you would be looking at 50k and 18k for a two week hire. Plus paying for the crew if they are doing anything other than crewing the ship like groundside stuff. This value gets negociated up or down and forms the hire price for the ship. Outright hire of a ship is expensive but if you want to hire a Free trader to take you and some cargo somewhere you need to compensate for the loss of income the ship would make trading.

You can do it just on cargo or count the total trade income of the ship with passengers as well. To put it another way if your merchantman makes 150k hauling bodies and cargo every two weeks and someone turns up wanting to hire your ship for a month and paying 10,000 per person you laugh at them and go back to your beer.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Many players love specializing their ship to their taste. Adding to what was previously mentioned; lower end computer and minimal software so that they can customize these to their taste.

Another option is how did dear old uncle pass? Maybe he died when the ship was attacked. The ship got away but took heavy damage. Your left with a ship but also a repair bill.

Another option is that dear old Uncle did not own the ship outright. Everything from if the uncles heir gets a few friends together, maybe they can just about pay off the mortgage with those ship shares, to the uncle leaving them with a huge mortgage that a few ship shares will only slightly reduce so that the GM can still keep the players "in line".

Also, maybe the ship shares are used to buy out other family that have an interest in the ship.

 

[rinku]

It's mainly going to be a matter for negotiation with your player group. They have a say in what sort of campaigns they want and don't want; if they're gung-ho for combat and plug for a merc cruiser, it's no good trying to force them into a trading game, just as it's no good trying to force a group that wants to explore and trade into a military one.

One option you can take is to allow the players to choose their ship normally with ship shares, but then act as owner/shareholders instead of crew. Crew the ship with NPCs and have it operate commercially during times that you have adventures which require the players to head off somewhere (this works particularly well if they've ended up with a scout as well as a regular ship).

Another one is to have the remaining shares held by a patron (a branch of the government or a megacorporation are good ones); in effect the ship has been purchased and mortgage pressure has been replaced by a provider of missions. This works particularly well for ships not as well suited for general commercial use (lab ship, yacht etc). The players can still have some way of buying out the patron, if you wish.

 

[zero]

^

Yeah, you can either do the trading route or if the players want a more combat-orientated campaign, you could have a patron give them the ship but they'll have to work for them doing missions to pay off the expense, which'll lead to all kinds of adventures

I just do the generic trading until a patron offers to pay off a month's mortgage payment in exchange for a mission done by them.