12-31-2018, 04:14 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Sep 2013
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Insurance and Shipping?
Are there any rules how high insurance rates are for interstellar shipping?
And how much do you pay for the insurance of a free trader? I can not find anything in GT - Far Trader.
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""The origin of everything good is due to games." - Friedrich August Wilhelm Froebel, creator of the kindergarten. |
12-31-2018, 07:10 AM | #2 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Insurance and Shipping?
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Seriously I assume most adventurers can't get insurance - anybody who takes jobs risky enough they have more than one "adventure" per lifetime is simply not coverable. For that matter even if you avoid really risky jobs, insurance is mostly limited to stuff routine enough the insurers can calculate the risks. Sure if you fly the same route over and over you can probably get it, but the typical adventuring free trader doesn't hit the same ports regularly. Of course logically he shouldn't be able to get a bank loan on a business plan like that, and Traveller glosses over that too, so you can allow it if you wanted, but realistically people putting up money for something that isn't routine are shareholding investors, not "insurers" or "bankers". They'll want a cut, not a flat fee.
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-- MA Lloyd |
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12-31-2018, 07:43 AM | #3 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
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Re: Insurance and Shipping?
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"... but the seller must pay for insurance (0.1% of the goods' value) ..." Quote:
"The mortgage payments include loss and liability coverage for the bank's interest, but the owners must arrange for insurance on their own." Given the mortgage rates from CT (which are carried over into Far Trader directly) and the canonical 0% inflation rate, the bank's coverage works out to 2-3% of purchase price per year. This is comparable to historical shipping loss rates prior to the use of radio and aircraft for search and rescue. Corporations and governments almost always self-insure. That is, they carry enough cash reserves to make up any losses out of pocket, rather than rely on third party coverage. Realistically, it is unlikely that a lone free trader is going to qualify for insurance in the traditional sense for either ship or cargo. It is simply too hard to quantify the risks (and a lot of work for not a lot of fun from a gaming perspective). There is also the problem that insurance is essentially a bet on the part of the insurer that the insured will succeed -- which means they would need overwhelming evidence that a PC group is motivated to do more than fold and take the payout when things get tough. |
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12-31-2018, 01:26 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Nov 2013
Location: near Seattle WA USA
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Re: Insurance and Shipping?
The ability of adventurers to be able to afford a starship is pretty much a lot of hand-wave for the sake of the game. Starships should (probably) cost way more; scaling the cost of an adventurer scale ship to an airliner or cruise ship of equal per-volume cost would be much more money.
The cost of a mortgage seems implausibly low for a movable asset; what does a yacht mortgage cost? Insurance companies would probably refuse to cover anything but routine operations, along the lines of a subsidized merchant's contracted route; anything intentionally adventurous would lead to the insurer refusing to cover losses, and mortgage lenders foreclosing on grounds of violating the level of risk permitted on their at-risk funds. On the other hand, maybe manufacturing is so inexpensive at starship technology levels that ships really are as affordable as they are. But that still wouldn't explain the cheap mortgages and mortgage insurance. |
12-31-2018, 07:13 PM | #5 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Insurance and Shipping?
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Perhaps you would say "But that doesn't match the art!". I can only shrug and say "It's the art that does not match the stats".
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Fred Brackin |
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12-31-2018, 08:44 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Insurance and Shipping?
I had an idea somewhere in "Exotic government" that noble families could have their lineage insured. Much like race horses in fact.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
12-31-2018, 08:49 PM | #7 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Insurance and Shipping?
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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01-01-2019, 06:29 AM | #8 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Insurance and Shipping?
Who would the insurance pay out to? The racehorse case pays the owner, but if "nobles" have one there's something considerably more exotic about that society than the insurance policies. If your lineage goes extinct you are dead and have no living heirs, so who did you think deserved some extra money if that happened?
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-- MA Lloyd |
01-01-2019, 08:51 AM | #9 | |
Join Date: Nov 2013
Location: near Seattle WA USA
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Re: Insurance and Shipping?
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On the other hand, as I mentioned, that's not so far wrong that it's beyond a reasonable guess about what could be done with advances in manufacturing technology. So maybe that part of my thesis statement was closer than I thought. On the other hand, it's hard to guess how a healthy economy would work with zero inflation, which makes the mortgage question hard to decide. And insurance (mostly the insurance component of a mortgage) is deeply subsidized by the rules for the sake of playability. |
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01-01-2019, 09:14 AM | #10 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Insurance and Shipping?
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One of the odder correlates is that illegitimate births are much more common in inflationary periods than in periods of stability. I have no idea why that might be so, or even of the direction of causation.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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