Here's a question for all of you Starfinder nuts out there.
The Colony Ship Framework expands the number of people it can sustain ten times its maximum crew, which is based upon its base frame. Relevant text below:
Habitable: The primary purpose of a colony ship is to serve as a long-term habitat for its occupants. As a result, colony ships are optimized for communal living. A colony ship can house a total number of occupants equal to 10 × its base frame’s maximum crew size, though its maximum crew size doesn’t change. A colony ship multiplies its base frame’s total number of available expansion bays by three. These additional expansion bays can be used only for cargo holds, escape pods, guest quarters, life boats, recreation suites, or other expansion bays intended primarily for civilians, as determined by the GM.
Here's my question: Where do the colonists sleep, eat, and perform their bodily functions?
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Bed, where they find food and a corner?
Serious note. Guest quarters for simple trips, Cry for a long journey. Maybe an amenities suite or a recreational suite for some entertainment/living stuff.
Edit: Since the extra bays are for pure Civ use, you get your Colonist needed expansion bays from there.
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In the crew quarters.
Exactly, colony ships just have ten times as many.
So there is no point in guest quarter and passenger bays if you can take a small price upgrade to get 3 times as many bays and the ability to transport around 200 people?
Edit: Just add, using the base example, 10BP for the Heavy freighter to be a Colony ship. It would cost over 30 bp to buy the rooms for 200 people, and thats before you add the other benefit of 16 extra expansion bays without paying a speed penalty.
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It's only really useful for passenger ships, colonization, troop ships, or lots of cargo bays. Only the latter is theoretically useful to 99.9% of PCs, and few of them will have a Large ship, and fewer may have enough vehicles/mechs/big, bulky stuff to need lots of cargo holds at the expense of 10 BP that could go toward a weapon upgrade.
It's only really useful for passenger ships, colonization, troop ships, or lots of cargo bays. Only the latter is theoretically useful to 99.9% of PCs, and few of them will have a Large ship, and fewer may have enough vehicles/mechs/big, bulky stuff to need lots of cargo holds at the expense of 10 BP that could go toward a weapon upgrade.
So much this. Colony and space station frameworks are neat but impractical for the vast majority of PCs. For those other groups? Well, it's nice that they're cheap.
Common space travel 50 creds a day. 10 days is around the average near space travel. So 500 a passenger. Meaning 100,000 credits in addition to any quest rewards. Yes, they won't get a full taxi but its the potential. Adding up to 20K each player (5 player group) will throw out the wealth per level. So unless the GM is going to be harsh and prevent the players from using the ship they just designed he will need to cut back on any additional wealth the mission would have given... Which won't be enough for the lower mid tear players.
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Common space travel 50 creds a day. 10 days is around the average near space travel. So 500 a passenger. Meaning 100,000 credits in addition to any quest rewards. Yes, they won't get a full taxi but its the potential. Adding up to 20K each player (5 player group) will throw out the wealth per level. So unless the GM is going to be harsh and prevent the players from using the ship they just designed he will need to cut back on any additional wealth the mission would have given... Which won't be enough for the lower mid tear players.
You really just have to apply a dash of world building to stop PCs from getting that much money. I'm not even talking about suddenly adding operating costs to the PC's ship.
Where are they finding 200 people that want to go where the PCs are going? Why are those 200 people trusting the PCs, who are not affiliated with any reliable travel company, to actually take them where they are going and not some horrible other fate?
Sure, you can probably always find some passengers to take from place to place, but you'll be taking time out of your mission, and at higher levels, probably not even making a decent wealth per encounter level of credits.
It's not like cruise liners have pure profit off of passanger tickers either, you have to advertise, you have to have someone take reservations, there are always unfilled seats, and the road to adventure is by definition not one where 200 people regularly want to go because you know, they like living.
Hello, I'm from the insurance company, let's talk about your premiums per passenger. Did you want the impound protection, piracy/hostage, or violent passenger interactions coverage, or just the required medical and scheduling/lateness penalty coverage required to operate in the Pact Worlds?
We'll also need a lien on your ship in addition to the monthly premiums. Don't worry, you can sell off most of your weapons, sensor upgrades, and armor if you don't have the cash handy. You're an insured travel liner, what do you need that stuff for anyway? Attacking anyone, or defending yourself against a known Free Captain you can't easily defeat who is promising their standard surrender terms voids your insurance, of course, and means you'll probably lose your ship in the resulting law suits.
Yeah, the 200 people was just a base number. I am aware they will most likely not hit the highest peaks.
However, if the GM just turns around and says no, its not so great since they built themselves that ship. At higher levels it doesn't become as apparent but even a couple jumps at 30-40% capacity could still throw out the APW at lower levels.
If you can point out where the rules give you a operational cost, I would appreciate it as I don't remember seeing one. So suddenly adding it in because the players found a loop hole is a bit poop.
Edit: Just to add, it would be like someone building their character to be a hacker then suddenly saying you can't hack a console.
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Yeah, the 200 people was just a base number. I am aware they will most likely not hit the highest peaks.
However, if the GM just turns around and says no, its not so great since they built themselves that ship. At higher levels it doesn't become as apparent but even a couple jumps at 30-40% capacity could still throw out the APW at lower levels.
If you can point out where the rules give you a operational cost, I would appreciate it as I don't remember seeing one. So suddenly adding it in because the players found a loop hole is a bit poop.Edit: Just to add, it would be like someone building their character to be a hacker then suddenly saying you can't hack a console.
No, it's more like someone building a hacker and wondering why they can't hack the console on an azlanti planet in against the aeon throne while they're on Eox going through the dead suns adventure.
If your group is playing space liner tycoon, your group is playing space liner tycoon not some other adventure. Your GM should figure out a passengers vs expenses rate that end up with you around wealth by level per level you attain fighting space pirates and negotiating advertisements while playing space liner tycoon.
You aren't going to get a GM to handwave that your group is taking 6d6 days off the adventure to take dozens of passengers from one world to another so they can make money. Your GM is going to ask if you want to keep playing the adventure they had planned, or if you want to switch to space liner tycoon.
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Fortunately the game has a way to calculate how much profit you make running your ship as a business. Have everyone take a relevant profession skill related to space commerce and roll those for income. How much did marketing cost, fees, taxes, food for passengers, fuel and docking, etc vs ticket price x number of passengers you found? All just abstracted away with a single dice roll.
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Too bad that insurance does not exist in Starfinder, otherwise PCs would have them (same goes for taxes, docking costs, etc.), and ships are completely free.Hello, I'm from the insurance company, let's talk about your premiums per passenger. Did you want the impound protection, piracy/hostage, or violent passenger interactions coverage, or just the required medical and scheduling/lateness penalty coverage required to operate in the Pact Worlds?
We'll also need a lien on your ship in addition to the monthly premiums. Don't worry, you can sell off most of your weapons, sensor upgrades, and armor if you don't have the cash handy. You're an insured travel liner, what do you need that stuff for anyway? Attacking anyone, or defending yourself against a known Free Captain you can't easily defeat who is promising their standard surrender terms voids your insurance, of course, and means you'll probably lose your ship in the resulting law suits.
It doesn't exist in the average campaign because it's a pointless level of complexity in the average campaign. Where one handwaves things like that to get to the space opera story.
The concept obviously exists and if you want to shoehorn it into a campaign you are free to do so via houserules.
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However, if the GM just turns around and says no, its not so great since they built themselves that ship
Presumably, the players would have told the DM WHY they were trying to build such an unusual ship, rather than trying to slip a plan to start a passanger cruise liner past the DM, and the DM would have told them know then, or would just rewind time and give the build points back.
But infinite money loops are banhammered in nearly every campaign for a good reason, if they worked someone would have already done it.