Thought Experiment- drop the ship price

[kilemall]

In the CT LBB4 book there was a little errata section dropping the price of LBB3 equipment/vehicles, like air/rafts, ATV/AFVs etc.

So got to thinking today, what would happen if we dropped the price of the ships and their operating costs and charged fees by -1, but not the monthly salaries or cargo speculation.

Cr100 per freight ton, Cr1000 high passage, etc.

A lot more access to ships, a lot more trade going space borne to start, etc. for starters.

 

[infojunky]

I have always felt ships are overpriced. In my games ships are a lot more common than what would be indicated by their prices.

Heck the stated model supports the more smaller ships model. The prices often were set on a ad hoc basis, which lead to so many heated conversations over the years.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The prices often were set on a ad hoc basis

The Type S benefits from a MCr8 discount for its standard hull (and on a MCr29 ship, that's a big savings!)

 

[infojunky]

The Type S benefits from a MCr8 discount for its standard hull (and on a MCr29 ship, that's a big savings!)

That is part of the problem I run in to.

 

[Condottiere]

It's sort of the same issue, just wrapped slightly differently.

I tend to view it in three different lights:


1. Is it realistic, in the sense relatable to real life.

2. Is it consistent within the game mechanics.

3. Is there a point to it, in the sense that the game (or just the dungeon master), wants to make life easier or harder for your character, or what do they call it, challenge level?

 

[kilemall]

It's sort of the same issue, just wrapped slightly differently.

I tend to view it in three different lights:


1. Is it realistic, in the sense relatable to real life.

2. Is it consistent within the game mechanics.

3. Is there a point to it, in the sense that the game (or just the dungeon master), wants to make life easier or harder for your character, or what do they call it, challenge level?

I look at it as more a setting issue. The fiscal challenge is still there although ship combat becomes less of a disaster. But it becomes a setting where ships are more ubiquitous and accessible.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Would it matter at all?

For the average space-going adventurer, all it would do is cutting costs and income by a nominal factor 10, no other difference. Combat damage would take just as much time and freight as usual to repair.


OK, speculative cargo would be an even faster and surer way to instant riches...


For the company trying to sell its wares in a few nearby systems it would be a vast difference, but are we generally playing with that situation?


For major shipping companies it would presumably mean much larger freight volumes, meaning much larger (and more impersonal) ships?

Navies would have even larger and more ships, looking over the players' shoulders more of the time.

In the end the result would not be more Free Traders, but more Imperium, more order and civilisation, and less room for adventure.

 

[Condottiere]

It's not a coincidence that occasionally I sit down and design the cheapest possible starship.

There are two aspects, capital outlay and operating costs.

We know annual maintenance is one thousandths of the starship sticker price, but life support is somewhat contentious.

And it's usually engineering (for commercial shipping) that's the big ticket items.

 

[whartung]

Would it matter at all?

If you're scaling the ship prices and income, then, yea, it doesn't much matter at all.

As an anecdote, in 1980 dollars (which is roughly what 1Cr is), the Queen Elizabeth II cruise ship cost about 100MCr. But it's a 45K dTon ship.

Now, obviously star ships are going to be more expensive (if nothing else, they're going to have better windows! ). But just to give some idea of "real ship cost" vs what they cost in Traveller.

A 45K basic mostly empty hull in Traveller is 16BCr. Pretty pricey windows. The drives (J, M, PP) are 62% of the cost. Maybe we can lower the cost of the main systems and keep the hull costs similar.

Considering the ubiquity of fusion power plants, they do seem a bit pricey. Like to see a BOM cost breakdown on that.

 

[Tobias]

In the CT LBB4 book there was a little errata section dropping the price of LBB3 equipment/vehicles, like air/rafts, ATV/AFVs etc.

So got to thinking today, what would happen if we dropped the price of the ships and their operating costs and charged fees by -1, but not the monthly salaries or cargo speculation.

Cr100 per freight ton, Cr1000 high passage, etc.

A lot more access to ships, a lot more trade going space borne to start, etc. for starters.

I think that is a really fun idea that would lend a different "feel" to the universe, and make interstellar travel more common. Actually, it would make the OTU make more sense as it is. It would also mean that not every character with any stake in a ship is a millionaire to begin with.

I really like this idea. If I can keep up with my current "rewrite CT" schedule, I will include this as one of three major alterations for my variant OTU. (Along with the "medium ship universe" and the "1 hex = 10 parsecs with many minor systems" hack.) Coupling it with the latter should also serve to offset the economic effect of swamping the universe with ships. Yes, the number of ships in the universe would increase by a factor of 10, but the number of systems would increase by a factor of 100+.

 

[kilemall]

It's not a coincidence that occasionally I sit down and design the cheapest possible starship.

There are two aspects, capital outlay and operating costs.

We know annual maintenance is one thousandths of the starship sticker price, but life support is somewhat contentious.

And it's usually engineering (for commercial shipping) that's the big ticket items.

Well people could do as they like for the effect they want. My idea is that operating costs stay the same so player characters both have more options and are still under the gun to keep flying, just more along the lines of making the next fuel and life support cost not the mortgage.

 

[Tobias]

By the way: As an option, you can keep the economics pretty much the same without changing the prices for passages and freight by reducing the standard "payment period" from 10 years to one. (And a full pay-off period from 40 years to 4.)

 

[Condottiere]

Ignoring starship transportation expenses for a moment, you can write off freight charges as part of normal business expense.

It's the cost of passage that creates a barrier for most Imperium citizens.

If Disneyworld is six parsecs away, and I wanted to go on a family outing, I don't think even the collective college funds would cover the costs of the excursion.

 

[mike wightman]

What has been needed for a long time IMHO is a mechanism to allow a PC group to buy a war surplus transport that is almost falling apart that they have to find the money per trip to:
pay for the repair parts that their latest trip has necessitated
pay for fuel, life support, berthing fees
wages (optional)

each major system would have its own quirks table - no malfunction should be a tpk but ingenuity will be needed to deal with the current malfunction.

In the medium term the crew would try to amass the wealth to upgrade systems by various means both fair and... ethically challenged.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

As an anecdote, in 1980 dollars (which is roughly what 1Cr is), the Queen Elizabeth II cruise ship cost about 100MCr. But it's a 45K dTon ship.

Now, obviously star ships are going to be more expensive (if nothing else, they're going to have better windows! ). But just to give some idea of "real ship cost" vs what they cost in Traveller.

Comparisons between 53rd century spacecraft and current ocean liners are questionable...

What did a Space Shuttle cost? What would a Space Shuttle the size and weight of QE2 cost?

A 45K basic mostly empty hull in Traveller is 16BCr. Pretty pricey windows. The drives (J, M, PP) are 62% of the cost. Maybe we can lower the cost of the main systems and keep the hull costs similar.

QE2 has a displacement of 45000 tonnes of water, not liquid hydrogen as in Traveller.

At ~45 000 tonnes and ~70 000 gross tonnage it would be in the region 10 kDt, and perhaps GCr 5?

With a PP-2 it would produce, deliver, consume, and cool about 200 EP × 250 MW = 50 000 GW power or ~400 M GWh per year, about 20 times the Earths current electrical power production. What does the Earths entire power grid cost? I would say a GCr or two is cheap...

 

[kilemall]

If you're scaling the ship prices and income, then, yea, it doesn't much matter at all.

As an anecdote, in 1980 dollars (which is roughly what 1Cr is), the Queen Elizabeth II cruise ship cost about 100MCr. But it's a 45K dTon ship.

Now, obviously star ships are going to be more expensive (if nothing else, they're going to have better windows! ). But just to give some idea of "real ship cost" vs what they cost in Traveller.

A 45K basic mostly empty hull in Traveller is 16BCr. Pretty pricey windows. The drives (J, M, PP) are 62% of the cost. Maybe we can lower the cost of the main systems and keep the hull costs similar.

Considering the ubiquity of fusion power plants, they do seem a bit pricey. Like to see a BOM cost breakdown on that.

On the hull cost question, big difference between commercial wet ship environmental needs and spaceships.

I don’t read QE2 as a 45k dton ship, but the largest 220k gross ton cruise ships fit that. QE2 works out to 14k plus.

Far as I knew 1Cr = 1 1977 dollar, at roughly 5:1 conversion that means one of the classic high passage tickets cost $50000 today, my version would be $5000.

One thing I might keep at full price is starship weapons. That would make patrolling ships very expensive, a major cost to arm up a commercial ship with even a single simple turret, and pirates rarer but that much more dangerous, destructive and desperate.

 

[Condottiere]

If you think about it, why can't you just have a stainless steel hull?

That must cost peanuts compared to fifty kilobux (quarter of a million bucks adjusted for inflation) per fourteen cubic metres.

 

[Tobias]

One thing I might keep at full price is starship weapons. That would make patrolling ships very expensive, a major cost to arm up a commercial ship with even a single simple turret, and pirates rarer but that much more dangerous, destructive and desperate.

Also a good call, even if it would make recalculating canon ship prices a bit more of a hassle. I also like the added effect that for military ships, the cost of armaments (and screens, presumably) would be a much higher percentage of the total cost.

 

[kilemall]

If you think about it, why can't you just have a stainless steel hull?

That must cost peanuts compared to fifty kilobux (quarter of a million bucks adjusted for inflation) per fourteen cubic metres.

To me the hull means everything supporting the ship operations including pipes, power lines, life support/control conduits, etc.

Reasonable to assume most expensive subsystems scale to cost/capacity of installed components, but hull is not just an airliner skin, has to handle all the in between transport of control/support. The most powerful power plant means nothing if cheap hulls break fuel or power lines.

 

[Condottiere]

The fuel tanks can be next to the jump drive, reactionary rockets, and/or power plant.

I think you can isolate connectivity.