Ah well, better to get a notice. Hope your health improves. Good luck!
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"The hunting expedition is one of the more lucrative contracts we have, and can be accomplished by splitting up without loosing time, assuming we can limit the body guard to one week." Lodic responds. "I can meet with them to gather the information. I have a background in an agricultural planet which encourages hunting, and thus can speak the language. I was even a vet's assistant in my youth. My aunt and two of my uncles were with the Planetary Forestry Service."
Not sure it matters who we share a cabin with, since we'll be off shift at different times.
Is it possible to 'pool' the crew quarters into one larger area with sealed bunks? Example : See the Jovian or Crew Capsule bunks. Basically, one 'common' crew area with these in the wall. We aren't going to need desks/living area for every crew all the time in the crew area. Instead of 6 bunks, we could take up all 3 rooms and use one room for 9 coffin bunks, and the other two rooms for a common crew area, including storage lockers on the wall opposite of the bunks.
5 tons for the mail is a nice check, 25K. That leaves us with 31 tons for speculative cargo. The Regina stuff should sell well.
I believe Lodic is complete, other than the sensors vs comm change.
I assume the shares of profit are after paying off those who contributed the cash, because, while Lodic has the lowest shares of the ship, he's got the highest cash in pool value. :) Also, as we pay off the ship, additional shares need to be split amongst the crew. That is, if we pay off 1% of the ship, each person receives 1/7th of a ship share (or whatever the number of crew is). Thus after we pay off 7%, everyone's ship share goes up by 1.
Darrian culture finds private ownership mildly bizarre. He's investing in cargo so far (worked out well since he didn't roll any ship shares on muster out anyway, had to roll a 6 to get any). I believe the motivation for Lodic currently is to get out of Darrian space and try to rebuild his life. I think he's mostly joined up as an expert/advisor/minor investor since he didn't have any ship shares. My understanding is that should change as they progress, as since he's investing his money in cargo/putting his life on the line/etc to get teh ship paid off, he'll be earning shares going forward. He may find them amusing when he gets them... :)
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.
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.
Lodic frowns. "No, my... friends... are not in this sector of space." He rubs his chin, and then taps a black dot on his hand. "Micah on Micah. Micah, connect to the ship computer. Monitor the ship's communication ports. If the firewall on the communication port flickers at all, alert the crew. Micah confirm Micah." A clear voice with no gender inflection responds from the dot. "Micah on. Confirm, connect to Deneb Rising main computer. Perform monitoring of all communications ports. If any intrusion occurs, or is attempted, alert Deneb Rising crew immediately. Micah end." "Micah confirm Micah. Micah off Micah." Lodic responds. "Micah off." The dot confirms. "My personal system will be monitoring the ports as an extra precaution. Unfortunately, Micah is... limited. I have not had time to upgrade him properly. If I still had Linat..." He trails off and shrugs. "I do not like this. I believe we should alert Montague Lysander's contact that this has happened, using code phrases, that we are not going to take the contract. Whoever is doing this has access to technology far beyond what any of us currently have access to."
Yes, but that's 275K out of 447K and 3 weeks of work. Leaving us 1 week to make the rest of the cash.
Lodic responds to Lysander. "We have an offer of full hold cargo for 1500 per ton. If you take 10 tons of it, we cannot take that contract, and it's the only contract I see that will pay for our trip. If you wish to take this contract on, we'll need to find additional cargo to make up the difference. The full hold contract would be 146,500 credits, when combined with the mail cargo run to Feri. If you can find more than that via your sources, then I approve the 10 ton passenger. If not, I recommend against 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. 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
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.
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.
Message 1
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tons | Rate_ | Item
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
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.
Just want to clarify some numbers with the new things...
I think this is correct.
Operating Costs Anually
Note, the Stateroom and Low Berth life support costs range from 0 (if we take no passengers, there's little/no life support overhead, no food, oxy-scrubbers used less, recycle of waste takes less, etc) Annual Ship Payments : 4.35 Mcr
Not including crew salaries, or fuel costs (since we can scoop fuel), the total annual cost to operate the Deneb Rising is: Min Total Annual Operating Costs : 4.83 Mcr
There are 26 two-week "periods" per year Min Monthly Costs : 185,769
The above numbers are slightly different than Varkrs due to rounding, but also are a bit more conservative and probably handle minor variances and issues. So we need to earn 196 Kcr every jump in order to break even, and this is assuming we don't take salaries or pay for fuel. We have 86 tons of cargo space. We have total 3 staterooms for High/Mid passengers. We have Low Berth space for up to 4 passengers. High passengers get 1 ton of space, Mid passengers don't (If I read the GM's specs right on the two), but it's built into the ship that each stateroom has 1 ton of storage, that means if we don't have a passenger, or we have a High Passenger with no cargo, then we get a 'free' 1 ton for cargo to haul for other reasons. Next posting will look at what we'd get for going to Feri, just off what we could do with the passengers going to Feri, Mail, and Consignments.
That's pretty much what I got. My personal thought (and Lodics) is that a new crew should keep to legal stuff certainly until they shake out the kinks in their crew and ship. Putting an untested team into a dodgy situation on an untested ship is a Bad Idea (like, french kissing light sockets while standing in a puddle of water naked Bad Idea). Off hand, I think we should go with about a 50/50 mix of consignment and speculative cargo on the first run, that way we know we'll make a profit, and it'll either be slim or huge, depending on how the speculative goes. 25K from the mail is a good solid haul with little or no risk. Consignment cargos we should pick the ones with the highest ratio of risk/reward. Some of the consignment cargos are worth more than others, and some have higher risks associated with them.
I still don't see where you're getting 69 tons is what I am saying. 1 for Passengers
29 tons, not 69 tons. Where's the other 40 tons coming from? Also, the sheet is not available via the link.
No problem on the sleep thing, I know how that is, having chronic insomnia. I'm still a bit confused. Just want to clear up. So, a high-passage uses one of the staterooms. And the couple, paying for two tickets, would still stay in the one stateroom, leaving the other two available for passengers. The other married couple would also be in a stateroom or a double bunk? The reason I ask is that I'm not sure what the difference is on our ship between a high and middle passage, as we appear to have only two sets of passage rooms, Staterooms and Low Berths (3 and 4 respectively).
Cargo with insuffucient information :
12,500 : 5,000/ton : 2.5 tons Mail
Passengers
Passenger Tonnage : 6 tons
15,000 : Human newlywed couple travelling to Enope (2 jumps required) Passengers : Low Berths
1,200 : Human male docks worker travelling to Feri Chan Wong Lee 1,500/Ton : Human male shopkeeper with 4 tons of Greenpoint Tobacco Cigars travelling to Feri Malcolm Grissom 1,200 : Vargr male vagabond travelling to Feri Graa'h Egron Passenger Value of Trip to Feri : 36,600
Leftover Tonnage (After Passengers) : 86-6 = 80 Tons If we take 5tons of mail to Feri, that's 75 Tons left. We need to know the consignment load. Where are you getting the 60K on 69 tons of cargo from?
Lodic can contribute 50K (keeping some in reserve in case of emergencies, etc). That would bring us up to 75kCr
Lodic pulls up an encrypted mail application, and begins typing up a notification to his partners using the encryption key set up by the consortium. From : Relsanth Kelser
In researching potential business opportunities, we have the opportunity for a relatively short and potentially profitable run. There are passengers wanting passage to Feri and Enope, enough to fill our passenger compliment at least 50%. Feri is currently in the grips of a Regina fervor amongst the upper class, who are attempting to redecorate in Regina fashion. The Ilya Murumets is currently in orbit around Roup with a large cargo of Regina products that they are being forced to sell below cost to pay for a hyperdrive repair. I suggest we purchase at least 50 tons of various Regina products and take them to Feri along with the Feri passengers, on the first leg toward Enope. It should be noted that there are two potential issues with the passengers. The first is that a terrorist cell was recently decimated on Roup, and the wife of the founder managed to escape to Enope. The terrorist group had a large stash of fake IDs. Any passengers we take off planet should be checked and double checked with planetary immigration to ensure they are legitimate. We should also check all their cargo and luggage for weapons or other things that could be used to take over the ship, and not allow them on if they have anything unusual. The second issue is that one of the passengers is a Zhodani and his wife, and there is currently a large amount of anit-Zhodani sentiment in the sector, meaning we could have issues carrying such a passenger. Additionally, several of the crew have had... interactions... with the Zhodani worlds that left them as wanted criminals on those worlds. Additionally, Feri is currently experiencing labor issues with the starports and stalks, and offloading passengers and cargo may be complicated. It is suggested that papers be handled by the Imperial Naval vessels, rather than local government, until the situation is resolved to avoid delays. Finally, the Ilya Murumets captain is looking for someone to deliver a consignment cargo, and it may be worth talking to him concerning it. Signed,
Lodic does a check to see if the local market for Regina crafts is going up or down. If it's going down or staying even, he sets an alert on it if it moves more than 4%. If it's going up, he will contact someone about purchasing a few tons of cargo speculatively.
Lodic specifically pulls up details on the following : Enope : Sabarbin: The elder vargr, believed to be Khairiah Sabar, the third wife of the kashrii requested asylum today from official warrants... Pike: The Pike Division of the IBI is investigating after an armed bank robbery occurred last evening at the Imperial Finance building... Feri :
Crisis at Muzila as hundreds of passengers are stranded after immigration transit talks stall... Hefry :
Roup :
Shikii City: Roup PMA elite forces discovered the vargr kashrii's last hideout, and the bloody war again came...
Lodic sits on the gig, awaiting transport to the ship he's agreed to work on. It may turn into a partnership, depending on how things go. As he waits, he pulls up the feeds, looking for news on Darrian worlds, although he doesn't expect to find any this far out of civilization. He also pulls up the data he was sent by his contacts on interest for the maiden voyage, and a starmap, all inside his visor. His boarding suit made several people in the starport a bit nervous, given it's lethal sleek look, but he wasn't too concerned about it. It was far from illegal this far out in the boondocks. Seeing that they have plenty of options toward Feri and Enope, he pulls up the news feeds for both planets, especially the survey on what new items might be needed and the crisis. He also pulls up the Roup news and Hefry news. It looks as if they could drop cargo at Feri, and then hop to Enope. He begins making notes on that, as well as notes on Hefry. Only one set of drops in that direction, but, if they're more lucrative, it would be worth it, given the shorter hop time. His personal computer begins processing data, estimating cargo space, time, cargo numbers.
Need to decide on what Lodic's Grav Bike looks like. Found 3 I like so far... Note, it's called a grav bike, but it has a ton of cargo space, and room for a passenger, and can go into orbit. So it's not a star wars speeder bike with an open top (to the best of my understanding).
Grav Floater: A grav floater is a forerunner of the grav belt, a platform upon which a single person can stand and be carried along. It cannot achieve any great speed but can, like an air/raft, achieve any altitude up to orbit. 500cr (You can make it enclosed floater for 50cr more). Gravitic Racer : Vargr might not share the same taste in design as humans but both races do share a love of speed and grav racing. Unlike human grav racers Vargr designs incorporate a passenger or co-pilot seat; such is their need for companionship they like to share the racing experience with their brethren. The racer can be driven alone but the co-pilot usually serves as the navigator so they have more participation in the race. 2000cr Gravitic Speeder : These open-topped vehicles are the Vargr equivalent of the Air/Raft commonly found in Imperial space. However, the Vargr speeder is much smaller with space for one passenger but what it lacks in size it makes up for in speed. 2000cr
There are some nifty gadgets in the Agent source book that are under 2,000. If you want some suggestions, you can see some in my profile.
Personally I'm partial to The Erstwhile Fortune. Seems appropriate for this lot.
How about an artefact? Lodic's previous event was to steal an artefact. Maybe Kenneth was also supposed to be stealing one as well this time, and Lodic was on the same mission? Twigged to his boss, and let Kenneth take it. Kenneth succeeded at his mission, but wasn't happy about what he had to do to do it (the killing thing).
No, that's fine. I just didn't see it fitting in with mine as written, if you have it modified as per above, I think it's fine. I'd rather them not know each other were Psionic though. Given the state of how people respond to Psionics, it's dangerous to let it be known. Lodic only ever used it defensively (thus only the 0 Telepathy to guard his mind from other telepaths). As to why he's on Roup, leaving Special Arm left a bad taste in his mouth (mostly the part about why he left). He'd have reached out to those who knew outside Darrien space (everyone in Darrien space assumes you're still with Special Arm and just on an undercover assignment) to get away from the reminder of it.
Psi checks other than telepathy: So, Lodic has potential for Awareness, Clairvoyance, and Telekensis, beyond Telepathy, but no training in using them.
@Kenneth - You could have been involved in Lodic's superior's treason. He was selling information stolen from Special Arm to local corporations and foreign governments. You may have had to kill some witnesses (possibly kids?) and the remorse you felt caused you to approach Lodic and give him evidence against his boss to help cement his treason conviction.
Things people know about Lodic : Those who had connections with Lodic (Two People on the ship) : Lodic is relatively young for his race, but seems to have seen an awful lot. He was an agent for his government for over 15 years. At least one person knows he was successful at infiltrating Zodhani space. They know he's older than he looks (given he looks in his early 20's). They know they are allowed to call him Lodic. They know he's more dangerous than he looks. Those who don't have connections with Lodic (Everyone else) : They 'know' he's a really well traveled kid. They know he has more skills than most people his 'age'. They know he's hard to get angry. They know he's not afraid of a fight, but doesn't seek them out. They know he's got some weird hangup about ship shares. They know he gets annoyed if people call him by his first name (Lodic), to the point it's one of the few ways to really tick him off. He insists on being called either Relsanth-Lodic (as one word) or Kelser, or Relsanth-Kelser. Only the people he's known for awhile seem to be able to call him Lodic without getting into an argument about it. Things nobody in the crew know : They do not know he worked for Special Arm. They do not know he is a telepath. They don't know how much money he has in his bank account. They don't know about all the espionage and counter espionage equipment in his quarters and storage lockers. They don't know he has augments.
Ship Name Suggestions : Albatross Black Pig Borealis Crescent Star Erstwhile Fortune Hesperus Roupian Belle Sasquatch Star Tiger Star Witch Stumbling Dutchman Vulkan
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Ok, updated my character sheet with connections skills and package skills (will update again if the other players object to the connections I suggested). Also did some more shopping, got a few undercover agent items (all less than 2,000). Finally, found a different armor for Lodic, cheaper than the battle armor the GM approved, and doubles as a vacc suit. Also much cheaper than the armor the GM approved. Boarding Vacc Suit (TL11) Also known as boarding armour or
Still waiting for an ok from the people I suggested Connections to.
If AGamer70 and Varkha are ok with the connections I suggested, I'd like to take the following skills for those connections, with GM approval : Pilot (Smallcraft) 1
From the campaign skills, I'd like : Gun Combat (Energy Pistol) 1
This gives Lodic the ability to act as Navigator/Astrogator/Backup Pilot/Smallcraft Pilot/Comms Officer, which is a nice rounded package.
Engineering are more likely to be Int checks than Edu, unless you're doing testing exams (like in school). As to the tie in, it could still involve Darrien space. The system being investigated might have been on the edge of Darrien space, and Fnord72 and Varkha were both in their space, and Lodic could have been assigned as a local Arm liason. It could have been that his boss was trying to steal the research to sell it locally, which led to Lodic's decision to leave Darrien space after revealing it. Would tie in nicely then.
Well, the event did say you explore 'foreign space' if I remember, so it might work well. Lodic has melee skills, just needs to pick up gun skills. I'm thinking pistols or lasers...
Here's Lodic (Relsanth Lodic to ship-mates). I would like a chance to pick up a pilot and a gun skill, if possible. Not sure how many other people want that. It's the only two skills I didn't get. On the other hand, if Vharka and AGamer70's characters are ok with Lodic having met them previously, then I could pick up both from their characters (piloting from AGamer70 and guns from Vharka). I'd feel better if we had at least two people who could fly ships. :) |