Renting out your ship's boat

[77thPatron]

If a player wanted to rent out a ship's boat benefit, so it would bring him a bit of extra montyl income, what would be a fair way to evaluate the revenue that he/she would receive?

This would assume that they had a company/rental manager who took a management fee, handled maintenance, etc. I know this is common in real life with sail and motorboats, where the owner will allow their vessel to be charted out through a third party.

I'm wondering if there is a quick, off the cuff percentage that I can use to find a reasonable monthly income for the PC.

 

[locarno24]

Well, if you were prepared to buy a ship's boat, you'd be paying (one assumes) starship mortgage fees - 1/240th of the cash price per month.

Rental fees are generally more than loan repayments (because the latter has a garuanteed continuity and the former needs to make a profit if it's still paying loans) but are of the same order of magnitude.

On top of that, depends on the rental terms? Is maintenance included? Fuel? Crew?
Standard costs are known, then figure out what sort of a percentage mark-up you'd put on it.

Say cost plus 20%?

What proportion of that makes it back to the boat owner, I've not a clue. Probably not as much as you'd hope!

 

[Captain Jonah]

Ships boat benefit is one of those odd ones.

Hey I got a ships boat, ok Ref these go for Mcr15+, how much can I sell it for :roll:

I look at ships boats and other small craft benefits much like the scout service scout ships. Someone else owns them, you are allowed to use the. As in YOU are allowed to use them.

You can pilot the boat yourself and make money doing cargo or passenger runs in system but renting the boat wholesale to a 3rd party involves changing the contract by which you have use of it. And since it belongs to someone else and you are in effect, giving it to a third party to use, why would you get any money out of it.

If you were say, ex navy, and had worked at a naval port where they had 50 ships boats a lot of these boats could have been allocated for the personal use of senior personnel or people who needed them. The enlisted guy with Engineer jump 3, Power 3, Electronics 2 would be busy all over the system and would be a clear case for allocating a personal ships boat with the cargo bay full of spares and tools. Or maybe he is good friends with the woman that allocates the boats for personal use.

Even mid ranking officers would be hard pressed to make a case to claim that ships boat from the bloke whose skills are needed on 6 bases, two planets, three moons and numerous ships in space.

So he resigns from the navy but somehow, clerical error, faulty computer data, an old friend turning a blind eye etc that ships boat is still allocated to him. However if the navy finds out someone is using a Naval ships boat to run slightly dodgy cargo, or it's involved in an accident or incident then they are going to investigate, find out the boat is still allocated to someone who is no longer in the navy and take it back.

Its one thing to have Warrant Bob Smith Rtd, (naval reserve list) to list his ships boat for an incident of repairs since the data supports the boat is allocated to him. Its entirely another to find the Warrant Smiths boat (which he was privately renting to some joy riders for cash :roll: ) just hit a liner in dock, 200 passengers are suing for damages and emotional stress and the listed owner of the Boat (the Navy) is being held accountable. :shock:

 

[locarno24]

Yeah. Sorry - didn't register that the ship's boat we were looking at was one someone had received as a benefit roll rather than a 'spare' on a ship.

Benefits are things that you'll have trouble making money off - loans, gifts, "lost" equipment and other things that you really aren't in a position to just sell.

 

[GypsyComet]

The Firefly arrangement could be charged as an existing ship's service, either very expensively as a very large stateroom or merely expensive as "Freight", but if the ship owner owns the Boat and is renting its space and use, even the Freight rate is going to be quite a bit at three times a High Passage. Great way to make the boat's dedicated tonnage pay for itself if you can find the right renter.

Simple economics set the Chartering rate: Fuel and upkeep, piloting wage for the period involved, and the normal mortgage slice per month add up to nearly 70kCr for a month's charter.

 

[jwpacker]

I suspect we'd be better off reading the "Ship's Boat" benefit as being more like ship shares - each time you hit it, you get 5 shares towards the boat. Keeps you from running into that crazy business of players coming into megacredits from the get-go.

That said, I've also thought that there's a great opportunity for a party whose only ship is someone's ship's boat, running an all in-system game, in a suitably fleshed-out system.

If the boat is wholly owned by the character, he's looking at trying to find a rate to charge. If it were a purchase, it would cost about KCr.67 per month. Double that for a rental to KCr.133. Then apply charges for the management company - advertising, sales, monthly maintenance, insurance - and assume that it won't be rented every single day, and offer the character 1/20th of that, call it Cr.6,500 per month.

 

[77thPatron]

It's a stolen ship's boat, not a muster out benefit.

 

[rust]

It's a stolen ship's boat, not a muster out benefit.

Then it would be extremely unwise to rent out the boat, because
there would always be the risk that there will be a need for repairs
wherever the people who rented the boat may take it, and that the
technician who does the repair takes a closer look at one of the se-
rial numbers of one of the boat's important parts ... :shock:

 

[77thPatron]

They moved it to a new subsector, outside the Imperium.

Anyway, I ended up using 25% of the 1/240th mortgage price. It's a bit of income for them without being excessive.

 

[jwpacker]

I'd be curious to hear how they wind up spending the money. That's quite a little bit, by the "cost of living" tables from the Core rules, but in most games, more money is never enough!

And do you have plans to have, say, someone else steal the boat, leading to a merry chase through the system or perhaps the stars?

 

[77thPatron]

Yeah, they made about 200K off the loot they stole. One guy spend the money on one augment and a grav belt and was broke again. That's the great thing about players - the money burns a hole in their pocket and one EMP grenade later, they are dirt poor again. Beside, as the Ref, you can always send in a 600 dton Corsair to pound on them until they hit make a run for the escape pods. Then it's "you are on an alien world with only the following survival gear"... Players have whatever they can carry.. you have an entire universe. It's not a fair fight, even if they are making 35K every month.

 

[captainquirk]

"There's no such thing as a free launch...." :lol: