Quote:
Originally Posted by ak_aramis
More explanation on what I showed.
So, without changing the costs of drives, fuel, or hardware (because in Traveller, those are assumed to be based upon man-hours and materials taken to make them) and the same proportional profit margin... just changing the fuel used for jump and the time taken (because that affects the prices needed to make the payments).
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If you do those things, the slower drives are immediately priced out of the market and have no effect. However, there's no reason a
different type of jump drive needs to have the same cost. For a simple example, let's just assume that our slow drive has exactly the same stats at J3 as a regular drive at J1 -- it occupies 2% of hull, requires PP-1, and uses 10% fuel to jump. This means a 'slow J3' ship costs about the same as a J1 ship; in terms of cost per unit cargo, it's typically about 40% of the cost of a standard J3 depending on which rules you use. This won't be terribly competitive even then, as it's much slower, but it may reach the point of having specialized uses.