Pirates of Drinax: Fencing ships

[paltrysum]

For those of you running a Drinax campaign, I assume most of you have run into situations in which the travellers acquire one or more prize ships while pirating the Void. Have your travellers sold any of the ships they steal? How have you handled that? Do you imagine it like the "chop shop" scenario in which stolen ships are best sold by breaking them and selling the parts? Have they sold or donated entire ships to one party or another? What sort of returns have you given your players when they attempt to sell all or part of a ship? Are there consequences to selling stolen ships?

I have ideas about how I will go about this, but I always enjoy hearing what others do to advise my own approach.

 

[MonkeyX]

At the moment the PCs have just captured the Treasure Ship and plan on taking it to Theev to have it disassembled. 25% of its total worth is the figure I’m aiming for.

 

[paltrysum]

That ended up being exactly the amount they got. I had Zhuekvi, one of the pirate lords mentioned in "Pirates of Drinax," run into them on Palindrome and he intervened when he saw that the crew of the Harrier (my players renamed it Ghost of Sindal) had acquired the Janal Torsk, Ferrik Redthane's far trader. Zhuekvi, obviously well connected, offered to "take it off their hands," transport it to a breaker yard, disassemble it, and sell its parts. He offered 20% and the players negotiated for 25.

It would have to be difficult to sell a stolen ship. Presumably the owners of said ship might come after you. On the other hand, it's pretty difficult to trace all the reappointed pieces of a ship that got disassembled at a starship breaker yard.

 

[PsiTraveller]

My playes kept all the ships they captured, but 25-30 is what they figured they would get from a breaker.

The renamed the Harrier "The Aluminun Falcon"

 

[Klooth Quethos]

The renamed the Harrier "The Aluminun Falcon"

:lol:
This! Thanks for the laugh!

 

[Geir]

There's a salvaging section in High Guard (p. 80) that talks about intact ships going to the wreckers for 10% of purchase price and a wreck going for as little as 5%. I imagine for a fence, you could get up to the fence % for that world, but it would make sense to deduct value for the damage to hull and components. You could fix up critical hits and hull damage, if it's worth 100,000 per ton of spares to do that, but destroyed components wouldn't be worth replacing unless you want to keep the ship.
Also, I made a house rule that if the hull points go to -100%, the ship is blown apart. So fighters and other small craft tend to pop when hit by a particle gun or a missile. 0% value.

 

[PsiTraveller]

This raises the possibility ofn players wanting to buy used ships for 20 cents on the dollar and then seeing what they can salvage. Getting a low price when they sell means they offer a low price when buying.

 

[BigDogsRunning]

The players don't have to take the offered price, and the sellers don't either.