Ship quality and quirks

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

I began writing an aging table for ships of different quality levels. Excellent ships last far longer then poor ships, they may be cheap but they age fast, pay them off and flip them to some other loser before they fall apart. I didn't like having the aging just being a numbered column so I decided to name the age classes like a used starship salesman might.

So here is the list in order from 1 to 10 : “Like New”, “Broken In”, “Mature Design”, “Proven Model”, “A Classic”, “A Real Classic”, “Well Preserved”, “Vintage”, “Antique”, “They don’t make them like this anymore”

10 for an average quality ship is anywhere past 150 years. For a ship built prototype technologies anything over 34. By the time they get to 10 people will be saying "I didn't think any of these were still flying" and "I am NOT travelling on that death trap".

 

[Condottiere]

Lemons are usually manufactured in batches.

We tolerate quirks, which increase operating expenses, in whatever form, because it's balanced off by the cost of acquiring the object.

 

[swordtart]

I'd like to see the Quirks table revised. Whilst I don't object to ships becoming better than the default over time, I don't like that an older ship might not only be cheaper but might also have positive quirks.

Quality could be entirely component based (and we have that already in the customising ships section). I feel that any knowledgeable vendor will know the value of those deltas (either positive and negative) if the buyer also knows then the price differentials apply. The price will then be a matter of negotiation in game rather than just an automatic result on a table. If the buyer or seller is unaware however someone might get a bargain.

All you need then is to add some quirk traits to those modification tables. You can still roll for quirks on a ship (and some might be positive) but the price will go up or down depending on the value of those traits rather than it being an entirely independent mechanism.

Price breaks should be proportional to ongoing costs. If you double the maintenance costs you have added 4% onto the through life cost of a ship over the normal 40 year life. The discount should reflect that. It should also reflect the 4% interest rate on ship mortgages (a bird in the hand...)

If maintenance is likely to take longer then the duty cycle should be considered. A -1 on a repair check taking a few hours is unlikely to affect the revenue generation capability of a ship significantly. If the maintenance takes a few days extra each month however that will soon add up and it would prevent about 3-4 weeks commerce each year. That is 1-2 jump cycles where the ship makes no money but still needs to make all it's payments. That might be worth a few percent off the cost of the ship. It is also something that the buyer might well not know until after he is saddled with that hangar queen.

If these thing just break even then they are not attractive to buyers. You might double or quadruple the price differential as captains might be looking to offset those extra costs over the course of a decade rather than the full 40-year life (and remembering that the ship's value will drop after 5 years as well.

If quirks can be repaired, it will need to cost more than the savings made on the original purchase (or the vendor would do it before sale). It should be inconvenient as well. The point of quirks is to make things interesting, if you can just buy them off once you start making money then it is too easy and just an exploit.

I look forward to seeing how this turns out.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

I'd like to see the Quirks table revised. Whilst I don't object to ships becoming better than the default over time, I don't like that an older ship might not only be cheaper but might also have positive quirks.

Most of the existing "good" quirks are upgrades made by prior owners and should increase the base value before calculating the current values. Others might not be an "upgrade" such as the J-Drive was replaced 4 years ago and is therefore much newer than the rest of the ship even though it's the same model of drive, it also would change the selling price upwards.

Now some ships might have "positive" quirks unknown to the seller such as hidden compartments and others might be unrecognized because they never flew the ship (such as a J-Drive that uses less fuel) in a ship that was built customized. The same of course applies to hidden negative quirks such as the storage area with the hatch on backwards so it locks from the inside not the outside so you should never lock it.

Now your "Honest Horace" the used spaceship dealer will emphasize known good quirks while ignoring/downplaying the negative ones. So prices should often tend to be higher than otherwise.

 

[rinku]

One "quirk" I have used in the past that seems reasonable to me is hidden programming that the bank has installed to ensure their investment is protected. Nothing really draconian (there are probably 3I laws preventing the ship's computer being able to take over, for example) but in the event of skipping or hijack it is smart enough to start recording stuff and if it can manage to, to alert the authorities.

I didn't tell the players.

 

[swordtart]

One "quirk" I have used in the past that seems reasonable to me is hidden programming that the bank has installed to ensure their investment is protected. Nothing really draconian (there are probably 3I laws preventing the ship's computer being able to take over, for example) but in the event of skipping or hijack it is smart enough to start recording stuff and if it can manage to, to alert the authorities.

I didn't tell the players.

That sounds eminently sensible. You could put in a mortgage clause to "astro-fence" the ship by preventing the navigation computer from allowing jumps out of the sector. That would at least narrow down the search (or provide a clue if a shipyard that "fixes" that issue is encouraged to report it). Even if the players do circumvent it, doing so shows intent to break the terms of their mortgage.

 

[rinku]

It's almost required to pair this idea with a cheerful, annoying REQUIRED BY THE BANK AI interface.

"Good Morning Captain! What exciting and hopefully more profitable ventures are we going to start today? A friendly reminder that Cr1456 is required in the account balance by 155-1107. Your current balance is... ... minus Cr54,674. Gosh! Better get cracking! "

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

One thing that just occurred to me. When the PCs acquire a ship there is a good chance that they will immediately do work on it, upgrading (or even downgrading) components. These may either remove a quirk or ADD a quirk that should count against the total. Upgraded computers and sensors for example are on the quirk table. Also ship reputation which may be built up (or down) by the Players actions.

This could be a way to insulate the ship against negative quirks developing down the line. Also a way to get the characters to spend money to "protect" against GM adding quirks due to the ship aging or taking damage.

 

[swordtart]

I am not sure how many campaigns run long enough for quirks to develop. I haven't had a campaign last 5 months in game time let along 5 years which seems to be the lowest interval for quirk development. I am assuming the quirks in an older ship may have had more quirks than shown develop, those are just the ones that haven't been corrected yet (or are not correctable).

The easiest way of handling second hand ship price reductions would be to use the existing critical and poor maintenance tables. It has clearly defined effects and costs to repair (we can assume that the repair is priced as if the maximum spares are required). If players want a cheap ship they go to a breakers yard and generate one or more entries on the tables and take the repair cost off the purchase price.

The problem with the current quirks table is that many of the quirk effects are really low down the critical table and therefore would only use KCr100 in parts. You will need dozens of such faults to get the price down to the level of that shown on the Quirks table and of course most of the quirks don't have an equivalence.

Easy ones are.
6 - Damaged sensors should not result in a cost saving greater than the cost to repair or replace the sensors. This is harder to evaluate but a DM-1 sensor is less severe than even the level 1 critical which gives DM-2. This will cost at most KCr100 to repair. A ship needs to cost less than 2MCr for this not to be a good deal. You say you could replace the sensors entirely. How much does it cost to replace Basic Sensors as they are built into the hull cost. The other sensors are a fixed cost but their price break from the quirk is a function of total ship price so the deal gets better the more expensive the ship.

9 - Each hull point repair will cost KCr100. This is the easiest to evaluate and seems to always be a benefit. For a Modular Cutter this quirk represents KCr500 in savings. Repair is only KCr200. On a serpent class scout it saves MCr2 but costs only KCr400 to repair. On an Azhanti Frontier Cruiser it would save MCr1370 and cost MCr330 to repair.

I am inclined therefore to say that quirks are non-recoverable and are results in extraordinary events or errors at design time rather than simple damage. If you replace the sensors then the new sensor package will still suffer DM-1 as it is the entire integration of sensors into the ship that causes the issue. If the ship has low Hull points it is because it was designed that way, or it has structurally deteriorated in a non-repairable way (and obviously cannot be replaced).

I think that fixes the disadvantageous Quirks and I see no reason to introduce them as the game progresses as not all second hand ships need have quirks but those that don't won't be any cheaper than a new one (we'll assume they were refurbished).

Advantageous Quirks at a cost saving are simply a bad idea as you are not obligated to buy a ship that is a bad deal and you could just shop around until you find a 6 year old ship with a single beneficial quirk. I will keep them but I'll use the price reduction as price increase instead. Ships with multiple quirks might then have the odd beneficial one but could still overall offer a cost saving as you take the good with the bad.

 

[CordwainerFish]

Also ship reputation which may be built up (or down) by the Players actions.

In my experience it's usually down.

 

[Condottiere]

Try a fresh paint job.