08-29-2013, 12:58 PM | #11 | |
Join Date: Nov 2004
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Re: The Act of Smuggling
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08-29-2013, 01:55 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: The Act of Smuggling
It only lists rules for Speculative Trade, however, that is receiving a penalty for looking for a buyer but a bonus on the negotiation process. It says for Freight you assume the shipper already arranged bribes, alibis, etc. But I don't think that's always realistic, and there are plenty of times that smugglers charge a risk premium. The big question is: how big is that premium?
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08-29-2013, 02:13 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: On the road again...
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Re: The Act of Smuggling
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08-29-2013, 03:07 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: The Act of Smuggling
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I could try figuring out average profit margins for the owners of the goods, and then give the players something of a finders fee. Thus, if they're delivering stims to a stims-starved world, and the Hutt selling them will be making more money as a result, their premium will be bigger. What percentage is standard for a finder's fee? And should smuggling be more or less than a finder's fee? |
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08-29-2013, 03:15 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: The Act of Smuggling
The amount a smuggler will charge isn't really based on the value of the thing being smuggled: it's based on the perceived risk to the smuggler. Add 'magnitude of penalty' * 'odds of being caught' to the transport price (you will need to come up with a value for non-monetary penalties). This is likely to be highly nonlinear, in that carrying ten times as much of an illegal substance probably doesn't result in ten times the chance of getting caught, ten times the fine, or even ten times the (odds of getting caught)*(fine). In places with high corruption, you can just add expected bribes to the smuggler's fee.
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08-29-2013, 07:17 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Nov 2004
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Re: The Act of Smuggling
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08-30-2013, 04:42 PM | #17 |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: The Act of Smuggling
I think I figured out a pretty good system, and I figured I'd answer my own question for the sake of anyone who was curious about the same topic.
So let's return to the hypothetical situation where a Hutt wants the players to smuggle some illegal stims. First, let's say that Gihrada the Hutt wants them to smuggle 1 ton of the stuff. It's a relatively small ship, and he doesn't want to risk losing more of it if his smugglers are caught. Pharmaceuticals are valued at G$1,000,000 per ton, and stims are pretty much pharmaceuticals. Now, Gihrada has been in the stim business a long time, and he creates his own product with an assembly line of chemists, indentured laborers, and slaves. As such, we'll allow him a bit of a discount from the usual 50% cost to create a product, down to 40%. Gihrada creates a single ton of illegal stims with a G$400,000 investment. The Hutt wants the players to deliver these stims to the planet of Corellia, a Rich, Industrial world on the Inner Rim. There, he has a buyer lined up, ready to take it off his hands for 210% it's market value (100% standard, +3 for Industrial, +4 for Rich, +4 for Low Legality on the Actual Price Table in Spaceships 2), or G$2,100,000. His net profit on this venture is G$1,700,000, nothing to scoff at. And now he just needs some people to get it there. Gihrada offers 20% his profit margin to someone who can transport it safely, or G$340,000. A victory in a Quick Contest of Merchant on the part of the players raises it to G$374,000, and Gihrada assures them that if those stims never reach Corellia, they had better hope they don't either. Anyway, that's my theory on it. What do you guys think? |
08-30-2013, 07:48 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: The Act of Smuggling
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08-31-2013, 03:07 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
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Re: The Act of Smuggling
If the smuggler isn't involved in the production and sale of the product, then there isn't any reason for them to either know what they're carrying, nor to charge based on the potential profit of the product.
The example you gave is of someone cutting the smugglers in on a piece of their action, in that situation the smugglers would be smart to ask for expenses on top of a negotiated 20-40% cut. Normally though, if you're contracting smugglers to run your product, it's none of their business what your profit off its sale will be, so you pay the smugglers for their expenses, plus a risk premium. Expenses are equal to salaries, fuel, wear and tear, docking fees, etc., plus opportunity cost. Mind the opportunity cost, if a shipper can be carrying rebar or cattle in its hold, with the expectation of making 500k profit on the run, then replacing that rebar or cattle in the hold with other product has an additional 500k opportunity cost. |
08-31-2013, 04:31 PM | #20 | |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: The Act of Smuggling
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Also, after thinking about it, I figured I agree. I think the standard rate should be about 15%, adjusted by 1% x Margin of Victory/Failure. If you were to role-play it, they'd probably make an initial offer of about 10% (everyone low-balls), and after a good dickering section you'd end up with the 15 +/- Margin amount. I mean, you'd have to screw up pretty bad (failure by 5+) to actually cause them to lower their original offer (via gratuitous insult or idiocy). The final result would be somewhere between 5-25% of the profit margin. Last edited by Jinumon; 08-31-2013 at 04:36 PM. |
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Tags |
campaigns, economics, smuggling, spaceships, star wars |
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