Tons | Rate_ | Item
0001 | 30000 | Zhodani Passengers
0004 | 04500 | Cigar Salesman
0000 | 03600 | 3 low berths
0005 | 25000 | Mail to Feri
0076 | 91200 | Consignment Cargo
Proceeds : 154.30 Kcr
We will lose approximately 40 Kcr's with this loadout, and it's the maximum profit on the Feri run. There's some additional profit from going to Enope, but only 15 Kcr more, and that's another 2 weeks.
Obviously, consignment cargo is not going to do it for us.
Tons | Rate_ | Item
0001 | 30000 | Zhodani Passengers
0004 | 04500 | Cigar Salesman
0000 | 03600 | 3 low berths
0005 | 25000 | Mail to Feri
0038 | 45600 | Consignment Cargo
0038 | 75000 | Spec Cargo (Assumes selling it for twice what we pay)
Proceeds : 183.70 Kcr
Even if we make a killing on the Spec Cargo, we are likely not breaking even.
I'm not sure of how we can do this as it is. We'll have to have a bargainer negotiate EVERYTHING and get a good price on everything (like, 15%-30% more). Or we'll have to do some illegal stuff immediately. No other way.
Only other thing I can think of we can do that we haven't already talked about is simply blow off the loan and head out into the wild lands, and do cargo in a stolen ship.
The problem seems to be the ship we are in, no offense to the GM.
It's a 216,000,000 ship. A basic far-trader type A with 88Tons of cargo is 36,600,000 ship. The annual payment on it would be 0.736 Mcr, and the two week profit would be 0.03 Mcr, which we could make in a heart beat. We could probably pay it off in 5-6 years.
That "free" ton of cargo would be using the storage closets in the passenger area, not actual cargo hold space. Might be a bit awkward to get some items into and out of the area.
"Hey, who put these barrels of petrochemicals in the hallway? Sorry, the cupboard was already full of those ferrocarb drill bits..."
I was imagining it more for the situations where we have a high passage wanting an extra ton, and a mid passage on the same trip. That extra space the Mid isn't using can hold the high passengers extra ton, thus not taking up the cargo area.
If you are looking for passengers without the added cargo requirements I can roll up a few. I leave it up to you folks.
It's not that, the passengers cargo aren't making that much of a difference, 1.5 Kcr. We still have to make out like bandits on speculative cargo to make our monthly payment. Even if we luck out this time with the Regina thing, that won't happen every two weeks, and we will fail to make our monthly payment, and very soon.
I think we might need a patron, a backer who owns half the ship, so the bank payments are our half? Someone who requests specific runs at times, for no profit/etc in exchange for their half ownership. We could make the payments routinely at half the cost of the ship. Even a used ship wouldn't help with that.
We're just operating a ship that's twice what we can afford. It's like trying to use a Porche as a taxi. We can do it, but we can't keep up the payments on what we can make as a taxi.
EDIT : By half, I mean owns half the outstanding debt, not half the ship itself. Sorry.
Response to using Lysander's Link
I'd forgotten about him. If we buy 36 tons of speculative, and take the carbide tips and him, and we make out like bandits on the speculative, we might make our first payment. It'll still be close, and we'll still need to buy 75 Kcr worth of cargo and sell it for 150 Kcr.
Message 1
Passenger Charter Notification: Hunting expedition to Feri seeks two cabins for three passengers (High Passage only) plus one week of bodyguard services while on planet from an experienced and bondable crew, prices and rates negotiable. Willing to pay full transit costs in advance and offering a 75,000 credit bonus upon the safe and successful completion of the hunt. Contact Tristan Keeler-Maxwell at the Roup Silver Regency for further information.
This would help, although it eats into our second two week period, so it's risky. If I read that right, it's 45,000 up front for passage (15K per person for the tickets), and a 75K bonus if they complete the hunt without dying. I would imagine they are hunting something dangerous. The downside is it's an escort mission, and we know how annoying those are. Taking them and the zhodani couple would work.
Message 2
Consignment Cargo at 1500/ton
This is safer than the speculative cargo. It would up our chances. Depending on how much cargo they need, they don't specify. If it's 80tons, we could do it and get 120 Kcr. If it's 60, we'd get 90 Kcr.
Don't change the link!
But yeah the 60k pales into comparison with 330k monthly rent, which is basically a week. 60*4, if we are lucky, is 240. So you are looking at another 90k in spec cargo over 4 runs to "break even".
For some reason, the forum is putting a space between the W and the 7, that is what was causing the problem. Always use the url= nomenclature for links, or the forums can mess them up.
Yeah, we might break even the first trip now, but looking at it long term, the chances of us hitting every single payment when we're going to have a 3-4% margin based on the default tables if we totally luck out means I can't see us making the payments for more than a few months before we go into default.
I'm sure the GM has something up his sleeve, or it'll be a short game. This is just the outlook Lodic would have, based on crunching the numbers. It honestly looks like a lost cause from an IC point of view.
Ah, good point...
So we have 7 us, so thats basically the 4 double cabins. So we have the following "bunks" available
1 bunk
3 single staterooms
4 low births
As a note, you cannot use the bunk in a crew stateroom as any passage other than a working one. Middle or High Passage clients will not pay to share a cabin with the crew, nor with another unassociated passenger, save in the most unusual of circumstances, and not usually without being granted a significantly discounted fare.
"I can give you a great deal on a cruise to Cancun, but you'll have to share a cabin below decks with the dishwasher..."
This would help, although it eats into our second two week period, so it's risky. If I read that right, it's 45,000 up front for passage (15K per person for the tickets), and a 75K bonus if they complete the hunt without dying. I would imagine they are hunting something dangerous. The downside is it's an escort mission, and we know how annoying those are. Taking them and the zhodani couple would work.
The Zhodani are travelling on to Enope, so they only expect to spend a one week layover on Feri. It is doable but it would be cutting it close. You may need to convince them to take lodgings off-ship for the week as you likely would not want to leave them alone onboard.
The hunters are offering a base rate of 12,000 credits per hunter plus fuel and maintenance costs for the trip (including salaries), as well as a negotiated bodyguard fee with bonus at the conclusion of the hunt.
This is safer than the speculative cargo. It would up our chances. Depending on how much cargo they need, they don't specify. If it's 80tons, we could do it and get 120 Kcr. If it's 60, we'd get 90 Kcr.
Typical "full hold" deals means they want to pack your hold with their products only, in most cases preventing outside arrangements and speculative ventures. IPS mail deliveries are exempted from the "full hold" clause by governmental ruling, as well as a few other emergency or priority circumstances, determined on a case by case basis by governmental arbitration.
Right, so they couldn't go.
Ok, let's forget Enope. Trying to do it as well will make us miss the payment on the ship.
So only going to Feri for two weeks, with the bodyguard run and consignment cargo at 1500 looks like this :
3 Low Berths : 3600 credits
3 Hunters : 36000 credits (Plus no maintenance costs, or fuel costs, for 2 weeks)
81 Tons Consignment : 121,500
5 tons Mail : 25,000
Total for trip : 186,100
That will let us make our payment. Then the extra week nets us another 75K if we decide to go the bodyguard route. We could split the crew up to accomplish that, with combatants going as bodyguard and noncombatants handling ship stuff so we don't lose time.
The hunting contract is dependent upon the bodyguard arrangement; they are not separate and the requirement is not negotiable.
The wealthy like to get what they want, when they want it.
Right, so they couldn't go.
Ok, let's forget Enope. Trying to do it as well will make us miss the payment on the ship.
Enope is still doable, if you intend to travel there after you reach Feri. A few good rolls and you may well convince the Zhodani to spend their layover on Feri planetside, seeing the sites, gawking at the locals. Maybe pack a few travel vids for the big screen, a few movies shot at scenic Feri locales, etc. to show them what they'd be missing out on seeing.
That's really why you need a good face man or steward onboard, to make those awkward situations much more manageable.
We are sorry for the temporary delay in departure. Our captain should be released on bail tomorrow. Yes of course, you are very right. He never should have punched out those two customs agents, but in his defense he did think the security cameras had been disabled...
Yes, but that's 275K out of 447K and 3 weeks of work.
Leaving us 1 week to make the rest of the cash.
Wow, didn't expect so much traffic on the weekend, been rebuilding my desktop.
Typically a ship will make two jumps per month. One week in Jump Space (hard and fast rule, no changing jump time), and one week for in system travel, refueling, the offloading and loading of cargo, crew, and passengers, as well as the time it takes to find the buyers, sellers, brokers, etc. to prepare for the next destination. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Per the core rulebook
Commercial starships usually make two Jumps per month. They spend one week in Jump, followed by one week in the star system, travelling from the Jump point to the local world, refuelling, marketing cargo, finding passengers, leaving the starport and proceeding out to a Jump point again. The week in the system usually provides some time for crew recreation and wandering around the planet.
Non-commercial ships usually follow the same schedule of one week in Jump and one week in a system. If haste is called for, a ship may refuel at a gas giant immediately and re-Jump right away. This allows the ship to make one Jump per week but makes no provision for cargo, passengers, or local stops. *** Note that travel times from the Jump point to the gas giant, the time to skim fuel and process it for use, and the time to travel back to the Jump point must still be allowed, so you will likely spend the better part of a day in system preparing for the next Jump.***
Suggestion 1 - Incorrect assumption about the cargo space,...
I know you gave a discount but I was assuming that the "minimum" size would be the 10 ton vehicle bay that the ATV requires. You will note that I didn't subtract the ATV's tonnage from the total, but rather deducted the amount in excess of the "minumum."
You can drop it from the ship that's fine,
and it will reduce the purchase cost,
Why don't we do that then, if people agree. It doesn't save us a lot of cash but we need the cargo space, and an ATV is something of an extravagance for a merchant vessel.
Suggestion 2 - Not an option, see selling the ATV above. The repair drones are on the ship to make repairs to the ship in times of stress or significant danger.
Sure, but...
I can't find any reference to repair drones in the Playtest or the SRD. How do they work? Do we really need that many?
Suggestion 7 - Drop tanks are included in Mongoose Traveller,...
The idea was to use them when we want to do a longer jump from a given starport. It would really depend on where we want to go. But presumably we could rent one at an advanced starport (though Roup only has a C starport and likely doesn't offer them) and drop it before jump. I'm not suggesting carrying a drop tank everywhere.
Actually, since Roup is only accessible by jump-2, they might have drop tanks available there just to facilitate jump-1 ships being able to travel there, since most merchant ships are jump-1.
Oh yeah, I was forgetting in system travel..
Yeah, we're pretty much screwed. We need to make 3.8k/ton for 90 tons on two trips to break even.
Hauling basic freight and ordinary passengers, this is true. This was a problem in the 1e Lbb traveller as well. Only jump-1 ships could make a profit this way, because travelling extra distance does not make you more money. The Mongoose edition improved this slightly, but not by a lot.
But it's worth noting that speculation gives us much better chances, as long as we have a significant amount of operating capital and we go for high value cargoes.
Profits on speculative trade are percentage based. If we manage to turn around a cargo for +10% of what we paid, and we paid 10k per ton then we made 1k per ton. Not enough. But if the cargo was worth 100k per ton then we made 10k per ton, which is more than enough to pay its way.
In advance I apologize for any tone, but I am not sure how else to say it.
Why don't we do that then, if people agree. It doesn't save us a lot of cash but we need the cargo space, and an ATV is something of an extravagance for a merchant vessel.
If that is the group decision I am ok with it. I will look at the rules or guidelines for vehicle rentals and insurance for when you are planetside on worlds with government, law level, gravity, or other restrictions which will limit the use of your grav vehicles. The three grav vehicles will take up 12 tons of cargo space instead of 10. Without the ATV Bay present there is no double duty space for the discount.
You can save another 10 tons if you reduce the Eclipse from being a ship's boat/gig down to an actual launch/lifeboat.
I can't find any reference to repair drones in the Playtest or the SRD. How do they work? Do we really need that many?
The repair drones are small crab like robots half a meter in size, with small welding and cutting tools, a small vise arm, etc., which are controlled by either an engineer or the ship's AutoRepair software to make ship repairs on the outer hull, in tight confines, within the drive cores, or during combat situations which would hinder a crew member from performing other necessary tasks. You may remove them as well. They will save you 4 tons in total and knock .8 MCr off the ship's purchase price. The number requirement is based upon ship hull size, all or nothing. Dropping the probe drones would save you another ton and .5 MCr.
Actually, since Roup is only accessible by jump-2, they might have drop tanks available there just to facilitate jump-1 ships being able to travel there, since most merchant ships are jump-1.
Jump 1 ships do not generally have the cargo space to make extra jumps with additional costs only to reach Jump 2 markets and still be cost effective. Drop tanks would allow you to reach up to Jump 4 destinations, with two separate jumps and the possible risks associated with Jumping to empty voids to reach far flung places. Again, these are used normally in special circumstances, like fuel tankers are used to allow military planes to reach target zones but they are not used in common commercial or passenger plane services.
It is becoming my understanding that your group only wants to make a go of the campaign by trading in freight consignments and the occasional speculative cargos. Is that truly the case? This week on Firefly the crew of the Serenity fly a herd of cattle from Whitefall to Beaumonde. Next week's exciting adventure, geese headed for Haven, and the season finale, a consignment of ...
There are plenty of opportunities for crews to get out from under the "debt" of a mortgage. Everything from piracy to skipping out on the contract to taking on a patron, bounty work to corporate retainees to pirate hunting, governmental missions to salvage recovery to treasure seeking. You guys need to tell me what you want to do, otherwise I am railroading you into only doing what I want. I offered these first few tidbits to get you started. It's your game too, but if you only want to run the safe and vanilla, we can do it but you are only going to be stressing yourselves out worrying about a starship payment to add to your real house, car, insurance, and electricity bills. Doesn't sound very fun to me.
Not sure we should get rid of the vehicle bay. ATV is not worth getting rid of honestly, and might come in handy.
Not sure we should drop probe drones either, I'd rather have the ability to pop off a drone rather than risk the ship when checking out a 'derelict' or something that could prove dangerous.
As to the game, I think you are taking it a bit too hard off the bat. We are all feeling our way into this, and right off the bat, the easiest thing to worry about is cargo/money/ship/etc. The crew doesn't know enough about each other to decide to go hunt pirates yet. I think the first job being a fairly pedestrian cargo run is more to let us all get used to each other, and to the GM's style, and vice versa.
My $0.02 worth.
It is becoming my understanding that your group only wants to make a go of the campaign by trading in freight consignments and the occasional speculative cargos. Is that truly the case?
Not necessarily. But to be fair, these are the only leads we have so far as to how to make money, and we need a LOT of money to keep the ship afloat. Right now it looks like we will default in our first month.
Varkha is currently fishing for adventure seeds of a more profitable yet dangerous nature (see gameplay post). Hopefully through this or through other means you will be able to throw us some adventure seeds that gives us a reason to think that there is money to be made in other ways.
Re: Ship Economics:
Why don't we do that then, if people agree. It doesn't save us a lot of cash but we need the cargo space, and an ATV is something of an extravagance for a merchant vessel.The three grav vehicles will take up 12 tons of cargo space instead of 10. Without the ATV Bay present there is no double duty space for the discount.
It is still worth it, I think. Even at regular freight rates (which we can't normally afford to give) the extra 5 tons of cargo will pay the cost of the ATV in 2 years. And how often are we going to be allowed to drive around an armored vehicle with a grenade launcher on it?
I don't know about the Mongoose edition, but in Classic Traveller all the adventures that featured ATVs boiled down to "Damn, why didn't we bring the air/raft?"
For the record though, the kind of vehicle I was looking for was something like a motorcycle - you will recall I originally asked about some kind of dirt bike. A smaller motorcycle like that is something I could just keep in my cabin. If it is bigger, like a chopper, it still shouldn't take as much space as an air/raft, which is more like a car.
The grav racer has no life support or cargo capacity so I assumed it was something like that. It is significantly smaller and lighter than Lodic's "grav bike." If not, is there some other vehicle that is smaller and more like what I am suggesting?
You can save another 10 tons if you reduce the Eclipse from being a ship's boat/gig down to an actual launch/lifeboat.
Guys, what do you think of that idea? It had not occurred to me. Most of the time we will be using the main ship to go places since it is atmosphere-capable. Small craft never really pay for themselves in a merchant campaign.
How fast is the Gig vs. a Launch?
I can't find any reference to repair drones in the Playtest or the SRD. Do we really need that many?The number requirement is based upon ship hull size, all or nothing.
Oh, well in that case don't worry about it. If it is all or nothing you would think the number of drones wouldn't matter; it would just say "equipped with repair drones."
Dropping the probe drones would save you another ton and .5 MCr.
So how do they work? Are they one-use only or are they recoverable after they are used? The money and tonnage doesn't seem to be that big a deal, really.
Jump 1 ships do not generally have the cargo space to make extra jumps with additional costs only to reach Jump 2 markets and still be cost effective.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I suspect you may not have done the math, though if I'm wrong I apologize.
Jump-1 ships have more cargo space than jump-2 ships. A jump-2 ship needs more space for fuel and bigger drives. Also the drives are typically the most expensive part of the ship. Thus a typical jump-2 merchant ship costs at least 150% of the cost of a jump-1 ship of equivalent tonnage, and has only about 80% (or less) of the cargo space.
Take the Type R as an example. It is 400 tons like the the Navarro; has 210 tons of cargo space and costs less than half what a complete Navarro does. Assume that 40 tons of cargo space is converted to a backup fuel tank allowing a second jump-1 before refueling, so it only has 170 tons of cargo space available on a jump-2 trip. The Type-R also has more capacity for passengers, but let's forget about them for now.
So in a period of 3 weeks this Type-R can deliver about twice as much cargo as the Navarro can in 2 weeks (or overall 1.33 times as much cargo hauled over a year), while its mortgage payments are only half as much. The Navarro-class maybe isn't the best example to use here as it has maneuver-3, armor, and a host of other things that make it tougher but more expensive.
But the same issue shows when you compare the performance of the Type-A versus the Type-A2. Even sacrificing 20 tons of cargo space, a Type-A still has slightly more cargo space, and taking two successive jumps to deliver cargo 2 parsecs has a much bigger net profit than a regular type-A2, thanks to the monthly payments being much lower.
If drop tanks become available, then a type-A (or other jump-1 ship) doesn't even have to sacrifice cargo space to do this. Planets that can only be accessed by Jump-2 might subsidize such services to encourage trade to their planet.
If customers are willing to pay a premium for goods delivered quickly, (i.e. in 2 weeks instead of 3) only then does a jump-2 ship earn more than a jump-1 ship with fuel to go 2 parsecs.
Quite honestly, I am not interested in micro-managing the ship as presented.
Keep it as it is.
I also don't know why a bunch of people that are choosing to be space merchants would be so adamant about having personal ground transportation.
Let's consider, how often does the typical merchant ship have enough personal vehicles for the crew?
One or two vehicles (like the ATV) that can handle several crew and some cargo make sense for low tech worlds.
I would expect that most starports are gonna have someone with motorbike, gravbike rentals either on the starport, or right next to it, and the rental should be peanuts in comparison to buying one.
Sure, you can buy it for 1500 Cr. Or you can rent one when you need to for 5 CR. How many rentals before buying one (with the loss of ship cargo space) makes sense?
I recall someone mentioning that this ship costs significantly more than the typical merchant ship. I think this is the core issue to address. Why would a bunch of us purchase 'this' ship instead of the standard merchant ship? I doubt we were too dumb to look up average costs and profits for shipping cargo and passengers. So why did we volunteer to buy a ship that will operate on such a small margin compared to a more reasonable ship?
I see a couple of issues here:
1) we should switch to a cheaper mainstream merchant ship that will operate on a margin that actually buys us food.
2) there was a reason we bought this ship (we have a privateer charter, some acronym agency is paying a subsidy, etc)
3) we were actually noobs that didn't think ahead and will pretty m uch be forced to go rogue immediately.
I personally don't see the doc as wanting to jump into a criminal career.
If we are going with the understanding we are going to be doing non-merchant activities, getting rid of the gig and atv is a mistake, they will be more useful on non-standard merchant runs. They are dead weight for a purely merchant vessel.
As to the vehicles, Lodic's desire to keep his grav bike is purely driven by the fact that it's the only thing he has that really reminds him of home. They are bog standard back there, and it's the biggest reminder of home he has.
I guess I'm trying to get my head into the situation and I'm wondering about character motivation.
First off, traveller always assumes that characters are pretty much in late career/retirement. (Why else would I have left my prestigious position after 24 years of active service?)
So, I'm a rich, recently retired individual that just sunk almost all my nest egg into a space ship. One that the bank still owns.
I just am having a hard time seeing how/why I would have done that knowing that I was going to default in a month or two. Why would the bank make the loan knowing I was likely to default in a month or two?
What I see so far is that we will make just enough to cover expenses and the ship payment, and that this is likely to be an ongoing issue. This also means that we are effectively working for free, that this is just a hobby. If our margins aren't high enough to pay wages or dividends, then we aren't doing a good job.
I really don't see a fractured crew like ours going rogue right away, our connections are weak and barely there, we come from very diverse backgrounds. This isn't meeting in a bar and deciding to raid a dungeon based on looking trustworthy. We're jumping into running questionable cargo's and making purchases on those cargo's and we haven't even nailed down how we're all buddy-buddy.
Assuming we can get some of these details straightened out, the Doc can put up 30-50k Cr on spec cargo.
On a personal note, I'm used to pbp's having very little or no activity on the weekends. This one had a lot, but it was not from the entire crew. Posts also included real time deadlines that did come and go when I wasn't logging in.
Is there going to be an expectation going forward of posting on the weekend?
OK, since the finance thing has gotten everyone into a twist over how to survive as pure merchants, let's put it to bed now.
Doc McBride, please give me an Average Diplomat Skill check, you may use a bonus from Education if available.
Lodic, please give me an Average Leadership Skill check, you may use a bonus from Social if available.
Lysander, please give me an Average Broker Skill check, you may use a bonus from Intelligence if available.
Varkha, please give me a Difficult Jack O Trades Skill check, you may use a bonus from Social if available.
Kenneth, please give me a Difficult Computer Skill check, you may use a bonus from Intelligence/Intrusion software if available.
Allrianne, please give me an Average Broker Skill check, you may use a bonus from Intelligence if available.
Your successes will determine the outcome of who or what owns the ship, be it yourselves outright, the bank, an interested third party, etc.
On a personal note, I'm used to pbp's having very little or no activity on the weekends. This one had a lot, but it was not from the entire crew. Posts also included real time deadlines that did come and go when I wasn't logging in.
Is there going to be an expectation going forward of posting on the weekend?
It will be up to the players how active the game is on the weekend. In my Giantslayer PbP we generally go by a 48 hour solid deadline during combats, without much of an issue. Players that fail to post are assumed to be taking defensive only actions that round.
Here I don't recall giving a real world deadline to anyone for the weekend. There was an in-game deadline I gave regarding the meeting time to discuss the freight contract, but that has not arrived yet, everyone is still discussing matters and deciding who exactly will attend the meeting.
Difficult Computer:
Varkha, please give me a Difficult Jack O Trades Skill check, you may use a bonus from Social if available.
Varkha has a penalty to Social Standing of -1. But his score is Charisma instead of Social Standing. Not sure if that matters.
So:
Boxcars! That turned out well. Totally thought I was going to blow that one. If the SOC penalty does not apply then it would be a 13, if that makes any difference.
I would expect that most starports are gonna have someone with motorbike, gravbike rentals either on the starport, or right next to it, and the rental should be peanuts in comparison to buying one.
Sure, you can buy it for 1500 Cr. Or you can rent one when you need to for 5 CR. How many rentals before buying one (with the loss of ship cargo space) makes sense?
It would be reasonable to expect that starports near urban centers will have transport of various kinds available for use in urban environments.
But there are a lot of worlds in the Spinward Marches with low populations and crude starport facilities. Lots of places where you provide your own transport or do without, especially in "wild" areas.
Varkha likes going fast, and generally would prefer not to be cooped up in a cramped ATV with 6 others for long periods. That and ATVs are pretty slow in most terrain. So is an air/raft. As for Lodic, I think he got his vehicle as a mustering out benefit. It would be a shame to say he can't keep it.
Why would a bunch of us purchase 'this' ship instead of the standard merchant ship?
Frankly, I can't imagine that under most circumstances Varkha would end up with the ~8Mcr necessary to come up with 4 ship shares in this ship, though I suppose its possible. It seems more likely that he was owed some kind of favor, possibly through the scouts or possibly personally. Either way, if he found himself with a vested interest in a ship like the Deneb Rising he would probably want to hang on to it.
Varkha is nowhere close to a business man, so the ship probably is the kind of ship that he would like (though he might have gone for a smaller version, in the 200-300 ton range).
However, he would also be involving old friends like Lysander and Kenneth in such a venture and it is hard to imagine them not talking some sense into him, if it was a matter of a situation where we could actually choose the ship we own.
I see a couple of issues here:
1) we should switch to a cheaper mainstream merchant ship that will operate on a margin that actually buys us food.
2) there was a reason we bought this ship (we have a privateer charter, some acronym agency is paying a subsidy, etc)
3) we were actually noobs that didn't think ahead and will pretty m uch be forced to go rogue immediately.I personally don't see the doc as wanting to jump into a criminal career.
Varkha doesn't want to "turn rogue" either, though he is less likely to care about following rules than other characters might be. But he doesn't want to be on the run all the time. If he could find a way to fly around like a pirate without people always trying to kill him, he would be happy. Thus the idea of some kind of anti-piracy mission appeals to him.
But...
1. We could switch to a Type-R, modified to carry fuel for 2 successive jumps if people want. We would still be able to serve jump-2 routes that way. Crew requirements would be about the same, though the ship would be slower and thus would take more of a beating in fights than a Navarro-class.
2. I figured this was going to be the thing and that the GM would explain how we ended up with this ship.
3. Varkha might try to buy a ship like this but I think most of the people here would not let him if they were already partners.
I guess I'm trying to get my head into the situation and I'm wondering about character motivation.
Good question.
I can say that Varkha is not much of a planner, and figures things will work out in the end. He is used to "winging it" and getting away with it. Of course, the Scout Service is very different thatn most outfits and while they do give you ship skills they don't necessarily prepare you for starting a business.
So for Varkha the opportunity to have a ship is one that excites him, and the cooler the ship the better. If he has to do a bit of smuggling to pay for it he is fine with that.
Is there going to be an expectation going forward of posting on the weekend?
FYI I can often post on weekends but my frequency would be much more erratic than on weekdays. I am more comfortable with a slower pace on the weekends.
Counting your ship shares, a favor owed to the Regina Securities and Trust, a favor owed to the IISS, and possibly a favor owed to the Roup Downport Authorities office, you are now sitting on an 82% down payment/discount to purchase a fifteen year old, well maintained military version of the Navarro class Far Trader, as currently updated on the Campaign Tab. We are waiting for Allrianne to make her roll and determine the final mortgage amount and with it your monthly payments/expenses.
As it stands without her roll, your monthly expenses would be less than 150,000 credits per month, including maintenance and life support.
... well maintained military version of the Navarro class Far Trader, as currently updated on the Campaign Tab.
Hmmm so what's changed?
I didn't copy the old one down, so I can't tell for most of the stuff what has changed. The only thing that stands out is that maneuver and power plant are now rating-2 instead of 3. The cargo hold is also now larger, presumably due to the volume savings.
Anything else?