Quote:
Originally Posted by Stormcrow
The trouble with owning a spaceship in GURPS is that space settings tend to treat ships like cars in outer space. Realistically, spaceships are way more expensive than that, and the GURPS prices reflect the realistic cost, not the trope.
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Realistically, spaceships as seen in rpgs (and movies and TV series, etc) do not exist and all prices for them are made up. The 10s and hundreds of millions you see some places are just someone's idea of what a ship _should_ cost. It's no more "realistic" than any other number.
Multiple editions of the Star Wars RPG have told us that the price of a used "Stock Light Freighter" is 25,000 credits. Given their commonness in the SW universe this is probably consistent with the prices of comparative items.
Chris Thrash who has worked on the ships in the Serenity RPG tells us that Mal spent the equivalent of a few 100k on hi ship and that this is quite close to what a small used cargo ship costs on 21st century Earth.
If your universe is conciev3ed as a place where small and cheap starships are common then any system that tells you they should cost 10s of millions is _wrong_ (for your universe at least).
Just remember to be consistent. If small starships are cheap then power plants and computers and weapons of that size are cheap too. Perhaps building ships in your universe is 100x easier than Gurps Spaceships seems to think. Divide all prices by 100. Nobody connected with it is likely to complain.
Go through UT and adjust prices downward there too. If a sued ship is 25k then a heavy blaster pistol won't be $5600. Same for armor and so forth. Dividing by 10 looks about right.
If you don't want to reprice everything individually tell your players that the in-game "credit" is actually worth 10 meta-game Gurps $.
So remember, prices in settings not at all like contemporary 21st century Earth are all _arbitrary_. Change what doesn't work in your game.