Ship Rentals

Arkathan said:
Medium Passage is equivalent to a taxi. A high end on at that.
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Charter is equivalent to a taxi as with a charter you don't drive the ship, the "taxi driver" does. What level of comfort you have is whether your taxi is a minicab, a bomber or a chauffer driven limo. It only becomes equivalent to a rental if you get to fly the ship (and I think we all agree that is a bad idea for a starship).
 
Arkathan said:
When you are scrounging for passengers and freight, you HOPE to cover your expenses.
When some Schmuck is scrounging for ships, because just being a passenger won't do, that comes at a premium.
They need a ship and are willing to pay for one.
The example of the guy smoking crack two bays down, is because that is the guy who would be desperate enough to take on such a low-balled contract.
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If you cannot make a profit from a charter at the rates I am quoting (which are the traditional rates since lord knows when) then you won't have a hope of covering your expenses with regular passengers and freight as the charter pays 90% of the absolute maximum you could get from freight and passengers.

If you get a desperate schmuck then it is a sellers market and of course you can name your price, but in a credibly structured marketplace (most of chartered space) a sensible business man would not charter above the usual market price to subsidise some other shmucks inefficient hobby ship.
 
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Traditional rates, where? Source?

IYTU?

Because any captain who agrees to your terms is smoking crack.
 
Unless, you concede that a 100 ton Cargo bay can make 200K per ton on advanced vehicles, and take 90% of that.
At which point covering ALL of the expenses, passengers and freight tonnage becomes a bargain.
 
Arkathan said:
Unless, you concede that a 100 ton Cargo bay can make 200K per ton on advanced vehicles, and take 90% of that.
At which point covering ALL of the expenses, passengers and freight tonnage becomes a bargain.
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No just a bog standard type A.
I make the 2 week charter fee Cr141300 based on the CT 90% rule (but using MGT2 rates).
Assuming 5 crew paid at the normal rates, all the life support (with 4 crew sharing 2 staterooms with captain getting their own), 2 jumps fuel and a few hundred for berthing fees it costs around KCr50 per month to run. Maintenance brings it to around KCr54.
Two lots of charter fee take you up to KCr282 leaving you over KCr230 to pay off your KCr195 mortgage.
That gives you KCr35* every month clear profit not including the wage you earned as Pilot or whatever job you took.
For many captains just making a living, that is plenty.
After 40 years you retire and get half the value of all those mortgage payments back when you sell the ship for KCr46**.

If you were creative you could probably make a bit more on the side taking low volume special cargos in your glove compartment, or allowing another passenger to double bunk with the captain. If your crew work their passage you could save their wages as well, or they could all be on shares instead. You might also run a bit leaner if you had got the ship with a discount through ship shares or buying second-hand. You might reduce the fee by a couple of KCr to allow you a few tons of speculative cargo.

*That is KCr420 per year which is almost 10 times the return you would get on 46 ship shares.
** That is of course MCr46 - Durn it.
 
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swordtart said:
No just a bog standard type A.
I make the 2 week charter fee Cr141300 based on the CT 90% rule (but using MGT2 rates).
Assuming 5 crew paid at the normal rates, all the life support (with 4 crew sharing 2 staterooms with captain getting their own), 2 jumps fuel and a few hundred for berthing fees it costs around KCr50 per month to run. Maintenance brings it to around KCr54.
Two lots of charter fee take you up to KCr282 leaving you over KCr230 to pay off your KCr195 mortgage.
That gives you KCr35 every month clear profit not including the wage you earned as Pilot or whatever job you took.
For many captains just making a living, that is plenty.
After 40 years you retire and get half the value of all those mortgage payments back when you sell the ship for KCr46.
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Thank you for providing a source of sorts.
 
Terry Mixon said:
Rental or charter, you’ll be paying out the nose. Just saying.
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Chartering is not a bad way for a starting space trader to operate. As we have shown the ship owner can make a decent profit and can service his payments, but the charterer also gets a slight break on the breakbulk rate. This makes it attractive to both parties.

If you have a nice safe run (Between Collace and Tarsus for example) you can charter for months at a time and run cargos back and forth without needing any ship-based skills. Buying and running the ship yourself is risky if you have no applicable skills.

If you just want a steady income you can act as a travel agent and freight company. Selling to third parties at basic passage and freight rates means you can make 10% as long as you fill the ship (KCr14 per jump for the Type A).

If you have a partner (or broker bot) on the other end of your run, you needn't even leave your system, just ping-pong the charter between the two of you, each filling it at your end. You can improve on the 10% with the occasional speculative cargo and as you are not relying on it, you can afford to wait for the right price before you buy or sell and improve your chances of getting a decent profit.

I have been running a game in the Collace arm for a while now and the wealth of the two doing the Collace-Tarsus run has significantly increased in only a few months in game to the point that having started with less than KCr20 between them they are in a position for each of them to buy their own Type A outright. These were not super skilled traders either. The concept of the campaign is they were wash-outs from the merchant service with only basic training before they were ejected (with at least one of them getting Mishap 6 and getting to keep their mustering out benefit).
 
I've been struggling to make the 100 ton Hull cost effective. The solution appears to take a Seeker, replace the mining drones with an additional stateroom and 5 Type I docking clamps. Buy 5 Launches and install 28 Low Berths in each. You need 6 crew with 5 of them with pilot small craft in addition to their usual ship skill (astrogator, engineer etc.) and one crewman with Pilot Spacecraft. You degrade to Jump 1 but have 140 low berths in addition to the 27 tons cargo in the main ship. When you reach the destination system the launches can detach and deliver their cargo directly to the starport (only 1 needs any medic skill to defrost the passengers for each).

This should clear over KCr35 per month.

As it is hard for an independent to fill 140 low berths per jump, this would be an ideal set-up for a long term contract (charter) for convict transport or hospice runs. You might have to add extra standard berths for prisoner escort, or you might be able to use the small amount of free space in each launch for a security bot since that just needs a power supply.

You could also get a variant of the Steward Droid for each launch allowing it to be self sufficient (buy 1 per month from your profits), reducing your payroll and freeing up 2 of the staterooms in the main ship for passengers significantly increasing your margin month on month. You can tune the skills as you see fit perhaps favouring Medic if you care about your passengers or pilot if you prefer to reduce the risk of damage to the boat. The level 2 skill could be swapped for 2 level 1 skills.

I have been toying with these "launch carriers" for a bit as I think the launch with a stateroom or two could make an ideal campervan in spaaaaace. The ability to take it to another system would increase the appeal as you could jump to a new system and go exploring on your own. You can either agree to link back up with your carrier for the return leg or if this was a common thing you might be able to book a clamp on a scheduled run of such carriers.

Small business could run out of launches (with with maybe studio modules) servicing mining colonies or travelling round the sector to increase their market share. They could practice their profession making goods to sell during the jump and spend the week in system actually trading. I envisage it like the small boat based merchants in the far east and Venice.
 
I've had several goes at designing the cheapest possible starship.

You do have several options, that aren't covered in character generation.

You can minimize most of the costs, but engineering tends to be the big ticket items, which I would suppose the cheapest way would be to buy them as scrap, and have your talented engineer colleague refurbish them.

The plot contrived way would be inheritance or discovering a derelict.
 
Condottiere said:
I've had several goes at designing the cheapest possible starship.

You do have several options, that aren't covered in character generation.

You can minimize most of the costs, but engineering tends to be the big ticket items, which I would suppose the cheapest way would be to buy them as scrap, and have your talented engineer colleague refurbish them.

The plot contrived way would be inheritance or discovering a derelict.
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It is the jump drive generally that makes a cheap ship unaffordable. The fact there is was no 100-ton equivalent to jump 1 forced you into either a 200 ton ship where everything based on ship tons is twice the cost of a 100 ton ship, or forces you to have a 100 ton ship with Jump 2. The returns on Jump 2 are not twice those for Jump 1 so you end up doubling cost for less than double the revenue.

At east now you can have a 100-ton Jump-1 ship. It is all but impossible to make it economically viable however and to justify why anyone would buy one. That extra 5 tons on every Jump Drive doesn't help.

Once docking clamps came in at least you could add capacity without having to proportionally increase every other cost. Jump nets are supposed to add cheap capacity, but it is more expensive than taking a larger hull.
 
All you need is a ten tonne jump drive with degraded performance, either from a scoutship or a free trader, get the depreciated value, and a loan to buy and install it.

If you have two characters who get hold of two cutters, you can weld them together.

Or a ninety five tonne shuttle, where you add five tonnes external cargo.
 
Condottiere said:
Starships: Cheapest Possible

1. Within reason, I suppose.

2. Hull is a hundred tonne planetoid, at two fifths megastarbux, natural armour class two, gravitated, and unstreamlined, built at a technological level nine space yard.

3. Six tonne small bridge at a quarter megastarbux, with basic sensors (lidar and radar).

4. Thirty kilostarbux for a computer/five seems expensive, comparatively to our sensibilities with manoeuvre, jump control/one (one tenth of a megastarbux), library.

5. Ten tonne Venture model jump drive, at nine megastarbux.

6. One tonne energy inefficient manoeuvre drive at one and a half megastarbux.

7. Four tonne increased size early fusion reactor at one and a half megastarbux, fuel consumption hundred kilogrammes per week.

8. Half tonne point defence turret with point defence laser, at half a megastarbux.

9. 13.28 megastarbux and fifty eight and a half tonnes of cargo.
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