[Spaceships] Making a setting work...

[Ejidoth]

So, I'm currently running (sort of; still in the initial phases) a space game of sorts. After some false starts as I'm adjusting the spaceships rules and such, I think it'll work out okay mechanics-wise. I'm hoping some of you can help with rationalizing and justifying why the setting is the way I want it to be, though. :P

Suppose I should list assumptions first:

1) There is one type of reactionless drive (using the stats for 'hot reactionless'), called an Etheric Drive. It only works within a limited radius of a star, and if it accelerates something too fast (1% c, I think) relative to the star, the ship goes ethereal until it slows down. This doesn't prevent all problems, but it lets me avoid pseudovolocity and lets me make handwaving 'why can't we crack planets?' a little easier.

2) Similarly, planetary point defense have Ether Wave Projectors, which can push relatively small objects they hit into the ether for a few seconds. In the even that someone does work out a planet-cracker, the idea is that civilized planets can just make the kinetic weapon phase through them harmlessly.

3) Travel between systems uses a Phase Conveyor. It's a sort of Jump Drive that requires you to be a certain range from the nearest star (75 to 100 AU, multiplied by the stellar mass relative to sol), takes an hour to activate and then about another week to arrive. During the week of arrival time, the location you will arrive at in the target system has some ether turbulence that sensors can pick up, alerting pirates and patrols and stuff that someone will be at that location within a week or so. The only info about your ship it gives them is your rough mass, though.

4) The phase conveyor doesn't actually convey the ship any distance, it just shifts it to a star system in a parallel universe based on the coordinates input into the computer when it was activated. This means no two inhabited systems are in the same galaxy, or even the same universe. It also means you can go from any system to any other system you have the coordinates for.

5) No alien life, so far. I might add some alien races, but in general they probably won't have the etheric superscience technology that enables reactionless drives and phase conveyors.

6) The setting is TL10^, with the only superscience being the etheric tech, torch drives, and plasma weaponry. Most worlds are fairly safe-tech, with some fringe worlds and such more heavily into cybernetics, bio-tech, etc.

7) There are psis and mutants and such with supernatural powers, but they're uncommon, many have unique powers, and nobody's pinned down a way to reliably produce them.

8) There are space pirates, often based in uninhabited systems. Since there's a nigh-infinite number of possible Phase Conveyor coordinates, they can just put an outpost in a system that's not on the normal maps, and when patrols and stuff finally do figure out the coordinates, they just relocate to another uncharted system. The pirate ships themselves tend to hang around in the phase conveyor zone (the 75 to 100 AU thing) watching for vulnerable ships to phase in, which they try to intercept.

9) There are tramp freighters and such, usually wandering around in the less pirate-infested systems, but occasionally heavily armed ones wander into the frontier systems to make a better profit.

[Ejidoth]

So, my first question is simple enough.

It takes Filthy Rich to afford the cheapest little ship, and Multimillionaire to afford one that can survive an assault by weak pirates without it costing so much as to make the trip worthless.

How do I justify all these poor traders with ships and stuff?

[Diogenes]

<ingame>Honest Al's Used Ships sells starships, or acts as ship's agent for you to get you a cheap but reliable vessel of your own! Loan and leasing plans at reasonable rates! We're licensed and certified by the Ship's Agents' Association for being reliable and law-abiding.</ingame>

Is that an Idea? Honest Al's customers will have to to trade in order not to default on an instalment :)

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

How do I justify all these poor traders with ships and stuff?

In the good old days of shipping the captain didn't own the ship. A rich patron would own the ship and the captain would be contracted to run the ship for the owner. Given the communications available at the time the captain had considerable leeway in running the vessel so long as he made a profit. This still happens with smaller vessels such as fishing boats, but not very often with larger vessels where the captains are essentially just another employee taking orders directly from corporate HQ.

Another option is to have lots of old ships which are relatively cheap. Or you can do the Traveller route and have the military give out ships on extended loan to some retired personnel. Both of these require a long history or spacefaring.

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

How do I justify all these poor traders with ships and stuff?

The various options from Spaceships 2:Traders and Liners can probably lower the level of Wealth required a little. It is also a question of relative Wealth, being able to buy a large ship to spec is clearly more wealthy than someone who has to buy a smaller, factory basic model, which in turn is more wealthy than someone who has to meet a 20 year repayment schedule and pay off the debt for the loan on the down payment. Poor traders are probably those who have blown most of their money getting a down payment and so have most of their wealthy assets tied up in the ship itself. So it may be possible to see Very Wealthy, or even Wealthy, individuals buying a ship owning it. I don't see anyone at Comfortable or lower getting a spaceship by buying it without stretching my suspension of disbelief though.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

How do I justify all these poor traders with ships and stuff?

There are two possible approaches to this.

You can vastly lower the price of ships. In the age of sail model for this sort of setting, ships were cheap, a ship crew could build one in any wooded harbor in a season, so if you were rich enough to pay the crew, you could probably afford the ship too.

Or you can make it impossible to sell the ship. The traders don't actually own it is one approach to that, but only works if you have a lot of civilization (i.e. pirates selling ships to hardscrabble worlds on the frontiers is inconcievable). But other approaches might be possible - "Everybody knows hyperdrives bind the soul of the human sacrifice used to first activate them, and only his genetic descendents can use the propitiatory ancestor rites necessary to control one."

[David Johnston2]

And of course there's always "Being in debt up to your eyebrows".

[Ejidoth]

I'm struggling slightly over how to really enforce serious debt in the setting where law enforcement is lax enough to let piracy be a major profession too.

That is... if you try not to pay up on a debt, law enforcement wants to catch you. If you pirate, law enforcement wants to catch you. Piracy includes stealing ships, so the monetary value of both crimes are similar in this case, so both are roughly equal priority.

So.

If I have a setting where pirates tend to be able to often escape punishment, how do I enforce debt? It seems like the end result is that companies won't give out big loans like that to free traders.

[Ulzgoroth]

Well, there are two well-established ways to be poor despite 'owning' productive assets.

Sometimes, the cost of living plus operating and keeping the asset is quite close to the income the asset produces. That's what Firefly seems to do. Mal owns the ship free and clear, but fuel, repairs, and crew eat up basically all the profits. Of course, in this case, there's the question of why the owner doesn't sell off the ship. Some sort of ulterior motivation, whether emotional (tradition, desire for independence) or more exotic (maybe they're some sort of spy using a tramp freighter captaincy as cover) can answer here, but another possibility is that self-employment is the only way they're employable. I don't think Mal could hold a job as captain on any ship he didn't own...

When the asset is a spaceship, one has to wonder why it was ever built if it's so unprofitable to run. If the ship is obsolete, aging (and thus more expensive to maintain), or originally built for another purpose (stripped and decommissioned former warship) that might be justified.

Alternatively, the asset really is profitable, but the owners don't get to keep the profit. Bank debt is obvious, and explains how they got the ship in the first place in the bargain. Confiscatory taxes or tithes could also work. Or perhaps the captain-owner belongs to a trader clan that takes the lions share of the profit (in cash or in service) but acts as a Patron. In these cases, in addition to the previous possibilities, the 'owner' may not be permitted to sell the ship.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

If I have a setting where pirates tend to be able to often escape punishment, how do I enforce debt? It seems like the end result is that companies won't give out big loans like that to free traders.

Not quite. They won't give out big loans to typical "free trader" PCs. They might be perfectly willing to finance free traders who actually have ties to a community where the law does get enforced. The loan officer of the bank that has dealt honestly with your parents and grandparents, who still live here, knows you aced your college business classes, and remembers you fondly from when you and his daughter did all those Girl Scout civics projects together might be willing to write you a loan if you turn up with a reasonable business plan. A bunch of scruffy ex-mercenaries arriving from offworld three months ago probably aren't a risk he'd be very interested in even if law enforcement *were* good.

Some people are bad risks is not the same as all people are bad risks. The problem from a RPG perspective is that people willing to do things that qualify as adventures, particularly the different kinds of adventures you need to keep the game sessions from being too repetitive, are almost poster examples of "bad risk". You don't get your money back from people who die in the wilderness somewhere.