Halfbat said:
Why not let a share be 2% of a specific ship, making the calculation much easier? And even hike the number of other shares, perhaps?
I agree. It definitely should be a percentage of value. The cost to finance over 40 years should be about 2 to 3 times the cost of the loan.
This offsets the ships that would be player designed and not assigned share value by the table.
If you take a loan for the full price of a ship, you pay a value equal to X% of the cash price of the ship over 40 years.
Scout 86%
Seeker 92%
Free Trader 203%
Far Trader 243%
Fat Trader 208%
Yacht 227%
Corsair 108%
Lab Ship 167%
Sub Merc 179%
Cruiser T-C 204%
Now, I think the Traders, yacht, and Cruiser actually come in at about the right price for a long term, low interest loan. The subsidized merchie is arguably in the right range simply by being subsidized. The Lab and Corsair are on the low side and represent higher risk than most banks would accept (especially given the trouble posed by repossessing a starship in an environment where communication can take months).
The Scout and Seeker values are simply incorrect. No bank would finance for a net loss.
Here's my suggestion. Multiply the actual amount borrowed by 200% and divide by 500. Ship shares should be counted as cash removed from the loan. a share value of 2% would reduce the cost of the loan and lower payments.
Take a ship valued at 100Mcr if financed at 100% (something only a large corporation or government could really pull off) the loan payments would run 400K per month. The total cost of purchase would be
That same ship with a crew owning 30 shares (60% down) would cost 160K per month.
Alternatively, you could use shares to reduce the cost after the loan. The first 10% would represent the down payment (no ship loan would exceed 90% of the value) and the remaining shares would represent paydown over the life of the loan. You would first calculate the cost of the loan minus the 10% down payment (100-10) and then find the loan cost (90*2). After determining the cost, you would need to determine payment (360K).
I know this sounds like it's too complex but it's easily broken down into formulas not terribly worse than the one on page 29.
The first example (large downpayment) would be final
value of the loan = ((total cost - (shares*2))*2) or in the example, ((100-(30*2))*2). Minimum payment would remain unchanged at loan value/500 (or 160K)
The other (paydown) method would look like this final
value of the loan = ((ship value*0.9)*2) or ((100*0.9)*2) again dividing by 500 for payments. To determine the remaining payments on the loan take the value of shares not used in the down and divide by the current monthly payment or
(500-(40/.36)) for my example. This leaves a rounded figure of 389 payments left on the loan.
Both methods can be further simplified by using shares as 1% of the value but handing out more shares, or accepting that times are tight and making the shares worth 1% of value and handing out the same number in the tables. Either way, it would remove the shares*2 part of the equation
I prefer my first example for simplicity's sake but the characters in question might not feel the same financial pinch if they have sufficient shares available.