star ship pricing

[Jak Nazryth]

Am I doing something wrong?

For calculating monthly payments for 40 years, the rules say(p 138 core book) to divide by final price 240. But there are 480 months in 40 years. Is this a typo?

The cheapest ship (free trader) costs 36.567 MCr stock.

That's a monthly payment of 152+ thousand credits per month.
Then add 25,000 credits for operational costs
Add crew salaries 15 - 20 thousand a month.

Total cost per month = around 190 thousand credits per month.

88 tons of cargo yields a max of 88 thousand credits per jump 1.

Max out high passengers = 36 thousand (not likely though)

Max out all your low passengers = 20 thousand (not likely)

You would need to max out every single time, every 2 weeks on the dot to make payments and profits.

Am I making a mistake somewhere?

Rolling on the trade speculation can get you more money per ton, but the randomness of dice can also loose you the same amount so in the long run it's close to a wash.

And if the ultra cheap, slow, no range free trader can't make a profit, is the only way for ship captains to get by is going into piracy?
Just wondering. Anything larger with more range is going to be badly behind payments in no time flat.

I know the rules are written to make players struggle with shipping etc... but it seems way to expensive for anything more than 200 tons.

I guess the max range for any ship that has a chance of a profit is J-2?

I knew operating a ship was expensive but SHEEESH! :lol:


Oh, and besides outright piracy and smuggling, can anyone suggest what a J-3 200-400 ton ship can do to make monthly payments?
To small to be a privateer.... hmmmm.
Thanks for any advice.

 

[far-trader]

Nope, no mistake, that's how it's done. It's the financing costs of the loan.

The J1 Free-Trader can make it, if well managed. Even without lucky breaks on speculative trade. Even more so in MgT with a Broker aboard (a broken rule imo but that is another topic, and a rant, so skip that for now ) and other questionable (imo again) options.

Anything above J1 M1 P1 unarmed no frills freighter though will have a hard time making the standard loan payments. Oh what is a ref/player to do??



Several things...

Ignore the loan/purchase costs. What? You think Pirates put on their three-piece suit, sit down with a banker and talk a sound business plan to finance their Corsair? lol Of course not! They got their ship the old fashioned way... they stole it!

Contract for a Subsidized Route.

Inherit a Yacht from a distant relative who happened to be a Noble who took a shine to you as a wee lad.

Accept that offer from the Navy to act as deniable assets that comes with the use of small Cruiser.

A mysterious man approches you with an offer too good to be true. In exchange for a ship he has all he asks is that you be available should he need "special" transportation. (aka a benevolent Patron)

Congratulations! You just won the Mongoose Publishers Clearing House Lottery! Your prize is a brand new ship of your choice!

...and a million more ideas I don't have the time to continue thinking up and typing out.

One thing that is not going to happen is the bank giving you a loan for a multimillion credit starship that can't make them money.

 

[far-trader]

Oh, and besides outright piracy and smuggling, can anyone suggest what a J-3 200-400 ton ship can do to make monthly payments?

Two readily come to mind.

The aforementioned Subsidized Route, though it will take a good ref and willing players to be stuck to a limited area of operation. Players tend to want freedom, and refs tend to want to allow it so they can have more freedom as well. A limited route though is imo ideal for a starting campaign. It allows connections to be made and more time spent on detailing the location making it more interesting and real.

Charters. Either the sole Patron kind or harder earned kind where the players have to work to attract business. The Safari ship is a classic example of the second kind.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Way Waaaaaay back in the depths of time when Traveller first saw the light of day the , Ahem, oddities of the trade system and ship mortgages etc was noticed and questioned.

Small ships, free traders etc had a huge task just to stay solvent and make those payments or have a new kind of adventure (on the run from the repo men).

Without the mortgage ships can make money, lots of money. SO much money in fact that it was worried that they would do trade and not be bothered with those (I'd like to hire you for a shady job and I'll pay you KCr10 each) adventures. 10,000. Bah we make more than that in a single run hauling cargo, not to mention passengers.

No its a long time ago but I believe that the trade system (along with mortgages, ship costs etc) was done intentionally to push players into those shady side line adventures.

Every version of Traveller has followed this idea, except Gurps, who had a go at creating an actual working trade system.

Far Trader has come up with lots of ideas to try out. There are a great number of possible reasons why the players would have a ship. A few things to beware though. With a few high passengers and a range of cargo space ships that trade without a mortgage will build up a lot of money fast. Merc contracts pay out a lot of money to cover the expenses the star mercs have, no payments on that pocket warship means more profit. Also once one of your players actually gets organised and plans out how to make cash by using his own broker shill or hiring brokers and doing speculative deals then the players will rapidly have so much cash you will feel the need to start crushing them with back luck, pirate damage and forcing them into adventures to burn up their cash.

If you are looking for a trade based game then perhaps the best ships are going to be the two subbies, the free trader and the far trader, the 400Dton subby merchant can be run with the same crew as a free trader or the Subby liner which may require hiring some NPC crew. Give them a trade area the size of the subsector for some reason and turn them loose. The subsidised agreement keeps the profits down but makes the ships viable, the merchant can haul a lot of cargo slowly and the liner has the speed to cross the subsector in a few weeks giving the players a lot of mobility.

Perhaps they are a floating advert for a company’s new product, the whole hull is a tri-D projection of ads and they must deliver a few Dtons of advertising materials to every world in the sub sector every few months or as Far Trader said perhaps they have a sponsor or patron who just wants the odd cargo or passenger carried no questions asked.

Bottom line, you are the ref, if you want your players to have a ship then make it so :lol:

 

[barnest2]

If you want to see a trading ship that might be able to make a profit, check out the second traveller play by post. We're trying, and we might just make it. And we didn't cheat the mortgage at all (though we did have 20 ship shares)

 

[locarno24]

you will feel the need to start crushing them with back luck, pirate damage and forcing them into adventures to burn up their cash.

Agreed. Making a viable profit with the core trade rules is all but impossible. The system is pretty much deliberately set up to force the players to go to patrons, legitimate or otherwise, for...something a bit different?....in order to keep flying.

 

[Treebore]

It also depends on how many ship shares are gained via retirement. They can have ships paid off to a great degree, even completely with certain ships. I had a short term game not too long ago where the group pooled their ship shares and had the ship like 70% paid off. They made over a 100K in profits per Jump 2 run they did from the beginning. That was after all costs.

 

[Pyromancer]

Oh, and besides outright piracy and smuggling, can anyone suggest what a J-3 200-400 ton ship can do to make monthly payments?

I ran a small campaign, where the group was flying a modified 400t J4 close escort for a delivery company. They had to charge outrageous prices, so they only got the most desperate customers -> instant adventure!

 

[zero]

Easy solution - design your own ship with the rules in the Core and High Guard.

You can also design a ship on Darrian, a TL 16 world and use lower tech parts (High Guard details this) to create a frankly awesome ship on the cheap. There is a thread here where I had a go, but got called up on the M-Drive not being Gravitic for TL 7. Kinda couldnt be bothered to finish it. You can take that ship and customise it to your whims if you so please.

As said above, you've done the math for payments right, but with ship design you decide how much profit you can make with your crew.

 

[GJD]

Easy solution - design your own ship with the rules in the Core and High Guard.

You can also design a ship on Darrian, a TL 16 world and use lower tech parts (High Guard details this) to create a frankly awesome ship on the cheap. There is a thread here where I had a go, but got called up on the M-Drive not being Gravitic for TL 7. Kinda couldnt be bothered to finish it. You can take that ship and customise it to your whims if you so please.

As said above, you've done the math for payments right, but with ship design you decide how much profit you can make with your crew.

Fine if you are in the Marches, but what if you want to play in the Solomani Rim? It's a looooong way from Darrian there.

Personally I'd also actually up the price for anything more than 3 TL below the planets baseline, as after that you'd start to need artisans to hand build those antique systems.

G.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

The idea behind the 4 ships I've designed (all jump 3) is to exploit frontier routes.
I reality (out of game) the players want to use it as an adventure ship and making money by filling their cargo holds and 2 or 3 staterooms with passengers to help pay their way towards the route. The real money comes from what ever the "adventure" yields. These guys are from a Dungeons and Dragons background. They are very excited but it is their first time ever in playing Traveller and I don't want to spoil their game enjoyment by forcing them into reams of spread sheets just trying to keep their ship out of the repo yard. I have a feeling most of them won't enjoy the "spreadsheet" aspect the Traveller sometimes get's bogged down into.
And I don't want them to leave the game spreading the word that. "Traveller sucks, it's all one giant game of how to make a car payment. I do that in real life, I want to play a game to have fun, not get stressed out" Ok... that was, to the best of my recollection, an actual quote from one of my gaming friends back around 98-99 when we were discussing our favorite games...
ANYWAY...
I knew you paid off a ship in 40 years so I always divide my construction costs by 480 to get a ball-park figure of monthly costs. Once I added in monthly expenses and crew salaries my designs still had a good chance of meeting payments and perhaps even a small profit.
OOPS!
Now I see the major error in my tactics.
Screw adventuring aboard a star ship.
We all need to be freaking bankers! :lol:

Ok, well the game starts tonight.
Even though it would be great (as a player) to have a J-3 capable ship, the money just does not add up. Even with my variable sized fuel tanks/cargo space doing all J-1's it still falls short. (I use dismountable tanks for jump-2 and 3, which can be disassembled and turned into extra cargo space... you get an extra 15 tons of cargo on a 200 ton ship that way for each jump under 3)

Nobody took Merchant as a career because all these players are so new at Traveller, I don't think any of them realize how useful a Broker is for star ship operations.

But they will be purchasing what ever ship they get through the Winters group...(medium sized but growing, very aggressive "new kid on the block" with manufacturing facilities spread between the 5 sisters and Glisten) so I think they can have a built in client for doing "special" runs outside the Imperial boarders if it came to that. AND there are rules for buying older, more run down, but much cheaper ships. "Smiling Joe's used ship yard right this way!"

 

[Jak Nazryth]

Forgot to add.
All Winters Ships are based on TL 14

 

[barnest2]

One of my favourites is "I'll pay for your ship, as long as you do everything I ask"... which can be everything from cargo running, to smuggling, to blowing the crap out of competition. Fun fun

 

[Jak Nazryth]

Easy solution - design your own ship with the rules in the Core and High Guard.

You can also design a ship on Darrian, a TL 16 world and use lower tech parts (High Guard details this) to create a frankly awesome ship on the cheap. There is a thread here where I had a go, but got called up on the M-Drive not being Gravitic for TL 7. Kinda couldnt be bothered to finish it. You can take that ship and customise it to your whims if you so please.

As said above, you've done the math for payments right, but with ship design you decide how much profit you can make with your crew.

Zero, all my ships are TL-14 and yes, I've already done that! 8)
The additional cost of a hull is much cheaper in quick order once you purchase less expensive lower TL drives.

Also, a minor cost savings but my favorite trick is use a Closed structure hull (10% savings) so a 10 MCr hull gets reduced to 9 MCr; then add streamling (10%) increase raising your 9 MCr hull to 9.9 MCr. You actually get a streamlined ship AND it is cheaper than the base cost! :lol:

 

[DFW]

The idea behind the 4 ships I've designed (all jump 3) is to exploit frontier routes.
I reality (out of game) the players want to use it as an adventure ship and making money by filling their cargo holds and 2 or 3 staterooms with passengers to help pay their way towards the route.

Just chuck the cargo & passenger rates out the window as others have pointed out it isn't system that was design with ANY real econ in my. It is just a whip to make PCs adventure all the time.

Just adjust cargo prices per parsec up until moving freight & passengers allows for a FREIGHTER to make a small profit @90% capacity.

Done.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

OR....
I could ditch the HUGE mark up for financing and let them make payments based on 360 and have the Winters Group finance them, but their ship will act like a scout vessel. I roll randomly at the beginning of each session, and on an 11 or 12, the Winters Group comes-a-calling. "Sorry guys, but you have to do something for us..."

 

[barnest2]

I think close structure (which I assume you got from the high guard book) Is mutually exclusive of streamlined (which is in the same table).
I say this mainly because a close structure is already noted as being partially streamlined structure, so you can't actually have both.

The lack of explanation of what a close structure is is part of the problem, but since that table comes in the capital ship design section of the high guard book, I would say you wouldn't be able to apply them to non capital ships. For the same reason, you can't use percentage based drives for non capital ships. Because they are not in the space craft options section, but specifically the capital ship design section.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

Yes, you can add streamlining to a close structure.
Been doing it for years! 8)

 

[barnest2]

Yes, you can add streamlining to a close structure.
Been doing it for years! 8)

But you just end up with a streamlined structure. They're mutually exclusive, not compatible.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

The Non-capital design rule is new to me. I didn most of my designs via GURPS and T20. I guess it's a Mongoose rule.
Happily I will ignore it. :lol:
In all seriousness though not all smaller than 3000 ton ships fall into the neat category of wedge, needle, etc...
A close structure is defined as several components similar in size and shape connected together (sorry going by memory, not reading out of the book since I'm at work now) But there are many ship designs that easily fit into the close structure hull type, and they don't have to be over 3000 tons.
The traditional 600 ton liner IMO is a close structure. You have a round head, and skinny neck, and a big shoebox all connected together.

Bit a closed structure designation is such a MINOR cost savings trick, I don't want this thread to get bogged down into what you can and cant do with a closed structure based on over or under 3000 ton rule.

I just want ideas of how to make my players have fun with an adventure class ship and not pull their hair out making payments.