Ship Shares - how do they work in your Traveller Universe?

[OriginalCaruso]

I’m not convinced of the anaogy

A 747 which stays in orbit with a pinnacle able to land the Travellwra with pinpoint accuracy on a planets surface?

I’m not saying a ship is essential. I am saying a ship is a key enabler for many of not most parties and provides an awful lot more freedom than scheduled liners do

 

[OriginalCaruso]

Commercial travel or free traders to minor outposts for example - few and far between

 

[swordtart]

It would depend on how many are in your party and of any had TAS membership. If you have 6 then 6 lots of KCr6.5 is quite a wedge of cash, but we are Travellers. That is what we do. We can scrape by with Basic Passage at only KCr2 (and maybe pay for some freight if the party has a lot of possessions or wants to take a speculative cargo). Even if you jump every fortnight that would still cost only KCr30 for the whole party.

The mortgage alone on the cheapest jump capable ship in the CRB (Seeker) is five times that. Then you add the consumables, fees and maintenance. With 6 accommodation slots filled with the party you are going to struggle not to loose money hand over fist just carrying freight. You save a little in hotel fees at the starport. You are going to need speculative cargo to make ends meet (you cannot expect patrons to subsidise your mortgage).

Chartering is another way to have a ship without owning a ship. Ship shares could be used for collateral otherwise you will be paying the crew to man the ship for you on top of the charter fee.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Those TAS high passages just what are they now? Doesn't seem like they would cover a passage on a high jump ship. If it is sold how much can you get for it?

 

[Vormaerin]

Those TAS high passages just what are they now? Doesn't seem like they would cover a passage on a high jump ship. If it is sold how much can you get for it?

That's because Mongoose changed the rules. Classic Traveller a High Passage Ticket was one jump of whatever distance. They kept TAS the same, but changed ticket prices.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

So now undefined?

 

[Vormaerin]

I’m not convinced of the anaogy

A 747 which stays in orbit with a pinnacle able to land the Travellwra with pinpoint accuracy on a planets surface?

I’m not saying a ship is essential. I am saying a ship is a key enabler for many of not most parties and provides an awful lot more freedom than scheduled liners do

Sure, if you have a pack of NPCs to stay with the ship when you are on your away team. And whatever you are doing with your pinnace actually brings in enough money to pay your mortgage and other expenses.

As I said, it enables certain kinds of adventures and inhibit other kinds of things. Unless, of course, your GM is just gonna handwave away the hassles of running a ship. Which is fine, but if you can leave your ship unattended while you go undercover amongst the Nomads of the World Ocean for weeks. Or trek around the jungles covertly in Sky Raiders. Or be the one wrecked in Marooned or Stranded. Or be sitting at the port costing Cr1000 a week in berthing fees while you do something that actually takes more than a day or two on a planet. Or you are the crew on someone else's ship for their Safari.

There's a reason why sci fi about ship crews is planet of the week or the adventure takes place on the ship. It's because you can't easily tell any other kinds of stories because the ship is there, making demands.

My point is that one is not obviously better than the other. They tell different kinds of stories. And, primarily, I was objecting to the idea that a paying for commercial travel was somehow an insurmountable expense, especially compared to the costs of operating a starship.

 

[swordtart]

Those TAS high passages just what are they now? Doesn't seem like they would cover a passage on a high jump ship. If it is sold how much can you get for it?

Personally I'd peg it at 1 jump 1. The value used to be KCr10 and that is about the cost of Jump-1 in the new edition. It also means it is generating a benefit of 1% it's purchase cost every few months which is credible.

You can sell it for whatever anyone is willing to pay for it. It's value is KCr9, so you should be able to get KCr4-5 easily. Or you could treat it as a trade commodity and use those tables, or whatever other rule you want.

Not so much a grey area as a completely unexplored one

 

[Condottiere]

You can pack them in like sardines, and release them like locusts on unsuspecting worlds.

Having membership in Traveller's Aid Society is a MacGuffin, you get a ticket every two months, and if you have a Party of Five, you can change systems annually, plus living expenses.

 

[MonsterX]

I'm running the DNR campaign, and so ship shares, and all ship benefits were very superfluous. I let PCs use theirs for things that improved the DNR overall but which reflected personal preferences, like adding pimped out shuttle to the ship's small craft complement and secretly hiring a psion.

 

[Gavain]

I have allowed my players use ship shares for any large ticket items (>1MCr). With the proviso that they don't get any change.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

One additional thing I do is since I value the 25% of a ship at 10 MCr and the ship share is 1 MCr I raise the yearly payout from 1,000 Cr to 2,500 Cr to keep it in proportion to the 25% paying out 25,000 Cr.

 

[swordtart]

One additional thing I do is since I value the 25% of a ship at 10 MCr and the ship share is 1 MCr I raise the yearly payout from 1,000 Cr to 2,500 Cr to keep it in proportion to the 25% paying out 25,000 Cr.

My neurodiverse brain struggles with this. The Free Trader is MCr43, the Yacht is MCr67 and the Lab Ship a whopping MCr136. MCr10 per ship benefit is low.

However, not all benefits are created equal. Some careers don't even get ship shares. The Navy offers it in double chunks some times and hands out MCr10 small craft to all and sundry. Rogues get more ship shares than anyone else and the cash pay outs between careers vary dramatically.

It might have been better to ditch the "free ship" and ship shares in their entirety and just allow players to buy a ship with a plausible level of deposit. I'd prefer them to start out needing to use passage (generally paid for by the patron) in order to allow all those scenarios that rely on them being somewhere and the ship has an accident. Once they scrape together enough for a 5% down payment for a beat-up old tub with a 40 year mortgage, they will have achieved something. That beat-up ship will come with quirks and character. Once they have that ship they can start getting some income from trading until finally they are in a position to upgrade. All of those steps are great character development and dishing out a free ships right at the start of the game misses all those opportunities.

Under the current rules, I would encourage players with ship shares to invest it in small craft. Under the rules it is entirely possible to build a low tonnage streamlined small craft with cracking thrust for MCr1 or buy off a large percentage of a more expensive one. There is no reason a small craft might not have a mortgage or be second-hand as well. A small craft could fit in the "main ships" cargo or a docking space can be made for it or a clamp used if your drive has the beans.

Small craft are great as lifeboats, planetary insertions and for exploring a system, but also assuming compliant air traffic control the quickest way to visit a destination on the other side of the planet is ballistically. With the distances most traveller main cities seem apart and often no fast transport shuttling there in half a day would be ideal. They are also less expensive to risk if the scenario could result in ship loss (e.g. a hostile insertion) in some cases the payoff might make them disposable.

The Small Craft Catalogue introduced a large number of utility craft that are more budget friendly (sub-MCr in some cases).

 

[Vormaerin]

Push come to shove, when you decide on running a ship based campaign you fundamentally have to decide how much of the business side of shipping do you want to deal with. I would not be surprised if most groups treat the ship economics with about as much attention as a TV show typically gives it.. aka "the ship mysteriously breaks even and all our profits come from the adventures". Because keeping a ship in the black is a lot of work. Unless you've got a ship with no mortgage, in which case it's a massive money spinner if the rules are taken literally. (which they aren't intended to be, btw).

I think that one of the larger small craft that's got quarters for the PCs (so you can take longer trips) and enough thrust to travel around solar systems is a great option. And I would tend to think that some kind of jump ferries would actually be pretty common to make hauling shuttles and system ships around reasonable, assuming you aren't just going to do an Expanse/Firefly style single system campaign. But it is one of the few play options that's basically doesn't have any published examples of in any edition of Traveller that I am aware of.

I think the ship shares the way Mongoose does them is not good. A few million credits is not enough to make a dent in a full starship and if you aren't doing a ship campaign it's kind of wtf now?. IIRC, T5 ship shares are basically just "you own 50 tons of ship", which you can claim now or later. So like 2 ship shares is needed to have a Type S Scout, while 8 is needed to have a Close Escort. I'm not sure just how frequently ship shares actually turn up (though Merchants seem to get a lot) because I've never put the T5 chargen through its paces, but that seems like a lot.

As I mentioned earlier, I like the T:NE method where ship shares are pooled and the players can choose what kind of ship category they want to go for and make decisions to put their shares towards bigger ship or newer ship or more paid off ship, etc. And, if like many of my campaigns, the players don't want to deal with a ship at all, there is a clear cash value (Cr10k) for unused ship shares. That leaves it in the players' hands. If they want to do star mercs or pirates, roll for a warship. If they want to be rogue traders, try the merchant table. Just want transport, there's the a table for that. etc.

I think that if you are going to have a ship, the ship should be a character in its own right and you should make it matter beyond just being how the PCs get from point A to point B. Because just doing without the ship is a lot less hassle if it's just an excuse to change planets.

 

[Condottiere]

It's possible to obtain an affordable starship.

Affordable could be in two senses.

You can persuade a financial institution to loan you the money for the (higher) purchase.

An institution has a large enough surplus, it's willing to get rid of it's older examples, either by lending them out, cost minus depreciation, or disposing of them at scrap value.

Manufacturing one in your garage is unlikely, though you could do the old picking up the pieces from a scrapyard, and welding them together trope.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

My neurodiverse brain struggles with this. The Free Trader is MCr43, the Yacht is MCr67 and the Lab Ship a whopping MCr136. MCr10 per ship benefit is low.

The Free Trader has 10 MCr being nearly 25%. The others are worse of course and will be harder to handle. But then again none of those ships have any of the design features that lower the price so budget ships are by definition more affordable if less durable.

Also you would in none of these cases be likely to acquire a brand new ship but instead an old one that may very well be depreciated by 1/3 or more. I would allow the whole group to pool their combined 25% and ship shares, since it is possible for a single character to get 25% enough times that the ship is already paid off by the rules being able to pay off that 1/3 depreciated Free Trader is entirely possible, harder for the more expensive ships but even those would be possible, I rolled up a pair of characters one had 4x25% and the other had 7x25%, they could have bought TWO Free Traders brand new and paid off a used Lab Ship easily.

Now if the characters are short on a down payment (for me that would be 25% unless subsidized) those shares would be bringing in an income while they build up their funds to buy a ship. They start off shipless and buy one later or maybe they get to salvage one and use the money to overhaul enough to get into action.

 

[rinku]

I'm pretty good with the rules as written. As well as ignoring them or ruling that they have to be taken as pensions if the campaign does not call for a benefit derived ship.

 

[Condottiere]

The game concept is to permit the player character party to have access to interstellar transportation, that they can control.

On a financial basis, it doesn't quite make sense.

In a fantasy campaign, you can hike, or get a horse, to get anywhere, which is affordable.

Current or near future, a Scooby van.

Smallcraft is doable, especially if a group pool their ship shares.

It's with the starship, that you tend to have to stretch your sense of disbelief.

Where do those ship shares originate from?

I rather suspect a number of intangible assets and contributions are involved, rather than closing your joint banking account, and cashing in your four oh one kay.

 

[OriginalCaruso]

I don’t imagine player ships to be more than tramp steamers schlepping cargo from port to port and scraping by.

 

[Vormaerin]

That's the design intent behind the original CT rules. Firefly type just scraping by was the general theme, where the players are taking on risky deals and side adventures because that's the only way to actually stay in operation.

You can do that by crunching the numbers or you can do that like TV shows do, by fiat. But the "rags to riches" storyline has never been properly supported with Traveller's merchant rules.

You can clearly make functionally endless wealth if you treat the speculative trade system as an end product, because it has zero opposition built into it since that was supposed to be the GM's job. As you can see with how they handle speculative trade in the actual adventures (Like The Traveller Adventure). But other than a couple published adventures, there's never been system support or guidance on how to run a tramp to corporation arc. They always assumed that the point of the merchanting was to justify adventures, not to actually be successful merchants.