The Money Game

[Geesuv]

So, I did some character generation for my budding traveller game today. It went well until it came to buying the ship.
My players decided the Scout was the best way to go, then promptly started to freak out about what they had to pay every month on mortgage.
So my question is this, how does this work in game? This seems like a big monthly drain (over 100,000 creds) Is that normal? How do you deal with it as a DM?

 

[alex_greene]

Scout Service vessels on active duty don't have to worry about the mortgage payments - the Service pays the bills monthly.

Naval vessels, likewise, pay the bills through the Service. That's what taxes pay for.

Now commercial and merc vessels, different matter. They need money each month to pay those pesky bills - fuel, maintenance, life support, mortgage and crew pay.

Time to start casting for brokers and markets, and filling the cargo bays with speculative cargo, or (in the case of mercs) go looking for a ticket which will pay the bills to keep those Broadsword - class flying water tower rust buckets aloft in the sky.

 

[BP]

Many referees use 'creative' approaches to 'provide' PCs with a ship - either up front, or in compensation for deeds performed/to be performed.

The large 'monthly fees' are just one 'carrot' for why PCs would be undertaking adventures. Several careers provide ship 'shares' and some even ships as mustering out benefits (maybe even some events/life events).

Personally, I dropped the benefits a long, long time ago - possessions for PC are tailored to my games - and if they call for a ship, so be it. Same with skill packages - I have been making up my own for decades - MGT provides some off the shelf ones - but, I still prefer my own...

 

[rust]

So my question is this, how does this work in game? This seems like a big monthly drain (over 100,000 creds) Is that normal? How do you deal with it as a DM?

Unfortunately a scout is not well suited to freight or passenger transport or
speculative trading, simply because it does not have enough staterooms
or cargo space to provide a good steady income to pay off the mortgage
in this way.

The three best options you have with a scout is to find another and more
profitable income for the characters (mercenary missions, smuggling ...),
or to find someone else to pay the mortgage for them (a patron who is
the actual owner of the ship, or most of the ship, and sends the charac-
ters on missions for him), or to simply waive the mortgage (for example
turn the scout into a detached duty ship).

It depends on your setting and the style of your campaign which of these
options - or another, even better one - fits the needs of your group best.
Whatever you decide, keep in mind that it is your game, you are the re-
feree, and you make and break the rules of the setting, not some book.

 

[RandyT0001]

There is also Peter's smaller 100 dton J1, M1 Golf Ball Trader from Classic Traveller that could be easily modified for Mongoose Traveller.

 

[Captain Jonah]

You didn't mention what sort of group your players were. This opens options for allowing them a ship without crushing them in debts they have no way of paying without merchant trading or merc tickets.

With a smaller group perhaps lacking in the skills to run and fly a 100-400 dton ship you can bring in a good friend NPC or two to fill the spots the players cannot.

If they are looking for a purely wandering and exploring game they could be sponsored by a noble or collector who sends them to out of the way places from time to time to gather rare plants or animals.

Wandering games can also work as free traders if they either have a player who is purser or hire a skilled one who can do the trade "off screen" advising the group which planets they want to go to will bring in a good return and which will be bad places to trade. Build up some cash from the good trades to cover the side trips and if the players are not interested they just get reports and advise every so on.

Merc games, free lance or retained. Will your intended campaign support the players having been hired to hunt down and kill some really nasty pirate who killed a nobles wife when a ransom went bad and so the noble has hired some players, covered the cost of a ship and turned them lose in the subsector to follow every clue and chase every possible sighting of the target.

These are some ways of giving the players a ship without having to worry about the costs too much and without tying thier hands or restricting where they go.

 

[alex_greene]

There is also Peter's smaller 100 dton J1, M1 Golf Ball Trader from Classic Traveller that could be easily modified for Mongoose Traveller.

Brief digression: Thank you for that magnificent link.

 

[hdan]

I love those golf ball designs btw. I may have mentioned elsewhere that I'm starting up a trade-metagame campaign with my son, and he's also taken with the spherical ship designs - he wants to use the 200t one for his Free Trader.

(On an off-topic side note, it's funny how risk-averse he is. I offered to let him start with a 300t "Stretch Far Trader", but the monthly payment was higher than he liked (forget the fact that he could make more money with it!), so he decided to start with a good ol' Type A to begin with.)

 

[DFW]

Given that a sphere has the lowest surface area to volume and being structurally strong, it would probably end up being a dominant configuration.
That and cylinders.

 

[hdan]

Given that a sphere has the lowest surface area to volume and being structurally strong, it would probably end up being a dominant configuration.
That and cylinders.

That all depends on where you come down on the streamlining "issue" w.r.t. grav vehicles.

(No, I'm not seriously trying to stir that pot again...)

 

[DFW]

Given that a sphere has the lowest surface area to volume and being structurally strong, it would probably end up being a dominant configuration.
That and cylinders.

That all depends on where you come down on the streamlining "issue" w.r.t. grav vehicles.

(No, I'm not seriously trying to stir that pot again...)

I'm just talking space ship hulls. Not much need for high performance atmospheric work. A grav vehicle for planetary use would be different matter, yes. Form following function. The cylinder would be rounded on the ends for entering atmosphere though.

 

[rust]

Given that a sphere has the lowest surface area to volume and being structurally strong, it would probably end up being a dominant configuration.

In the early German Perry Rhodan science fiction series all the starships
were spheres, with the drives located in a "belt" running around the ship
- a sphere with a "drive lifebelt", the bridge at the center and a small do-
me at the "pole" that housed the ship's main weapon (the equivalent of
Traveller's spinal weapon), landing on telescopic, retractable "legs".

I was so used to this concept of starship design that I found Traveller's
"wedges" rather silly when I did see them for the first time, and it took
me quite some time to feel comfortable with them - early on I loved the
spherical Broadsword mercenary cruiser because it "just felt right" to me.

 

[DFW]

Given that a sphere has the lowest surface area to volume and being structurally strong, it would probably end up being a dominant configuration.

In the early German Perry Rhodan science fiction series all the starships
were spheres, with the drives located in a "belt" running around the ship
- a sphere with a "drive lifebelt", the bridge at the center and a small do-
me at the "pole" that housed the ship's main weapon (the equivalent of
Traveller's spinal weapon), landing on telescopic, retractable "legs".

I was so used to this concept of starship design that I found Traveller's
"wedges" rather silly when I did see them for the first time, and it took
me quite some time to feel comfortable with them - early on I loved the
spherical Broadsword mercenary cruiser because it "just felt right" to me.

Trust your instincts Luke (rust). I wonder if I could find translated Rhodan books?

Yes, the wedges, et al, are nonsensical.

 

[rust]

I wonder if I could find translated Rhodan books?

In the lower part of this Wikipedia page is an English Publication History:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan

However, I have no idea how easy or difficult it would be to find copies
of this material.

 

[DFW]

Thanks rust. There is a little bookstore nearby that has tons of used Sci-Fi books. Larry Niven hangs there sometimes. The owner will probably know where to get some.

 

[rinku]

Robert Heinlein had a run on spherical ships for some of his books, too. His fusion torch ones were onion shaped (torch being the cone part).

The main reason for a warship to diverge from the sphere is the spinal mount. If a weapon has to be a given length, it may not make sense to make this the diameter of a sphere when it could be the axis of a cylinder or cone. If the ship isn't intended to operate in an atmosphere, there may be good cost reasons to build it from boxy modules (which don't have to be rectiliniar).

At the end of the day, the materials savings from constructing a sphere may not offset the construction cost in comparison to other configurations. The original High Guard dealt with this quite well, I thought.

 

[DFW]

Yep, the need for a long spinal mount would be problematic if the ships diameter had to be enlarged. That could be wasteful. As for HG, as an engineer, I never found the reasoning to be compelling nor credible. In fact, box type construction costs more than just the increased surface area to volume ratio. It costs internal volume due to the need for increased internal bracing and such.

 

[rinku]

Well, I'd suggest that internal bracing becomes a simpler propostition with modular construction. You lay down the major structural members, then attach the internal compartments to those, then attach the hull plating to the resulting volume. I'm NOT suggesting this is going to be stronger than a sphere, but it would allow similar sections to be more easily reused from ship to ship.

i.e. A 300ton Alpha class escort is basically a 500 ton Beta class cruiser with smaller engine modules and less weapon modules. If a Beta comes in with battle damage to its bridge module and an Alpha comes in with damaged engines, it is possible to salvage the Beta by replacing its bridge module from the other ship. If both were designed as spherical hulls it's less likely that this could happen, or if it could happen that it could be done as quickly.

 

[DFW]

Well, I'd suggest that internal bracing becomes a simpler propostition with modular construction. You lay down the major structural members,

Doesn't matter as you still use more material for the hull AND, especially most important for Traveller, waste internal ship volume that would have gone towards J-fuel thus, weakening the ship from a merchant and military position, for the life of the vessel.

 

[Geesuv]

So, basically, you're saying the key to dealing with the crippling mortgage is... don't?
The problem wasn't the ship. They wanted a scout ship. The problem was the fact that thats the cheapest ship and they were still having to make over 150k a month just to break even.
Frankly, I'm thinking of just doing away with the mortgage altogether. Its beginning to strike me as a needless shackle on the PCs.

Also, I don't like spherical ship designs. They just look a little silly to me. I like my ships to look mean.