[Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Does "value" in this context mean the cost AFTER it is halved, or before?

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

After, I think. That makes a Very Cheap ship cost more than a Cheap ship to maintain, but not vastly more.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

The intent was that you made up for the reduced financing costs with increased operating costs; I don't recall the intent right now, but 1% of reduced cost sounds reasonable.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Well it makes cheap ships 6x more expensive to maintain (half price, but monthly maintenance, so 1/2*12), and Very Cheap over 10x more expensive (1/5*52).

Which is pretty significant (in my game, anyway).

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

That's kinda the point; they're being sold cheap because they're either old, or have a lot of problems, or are just plain poorly manufactured and/or were poorly maintained previously. Hence the current owners are willing to let them go at a reduced price, but the tradeoff for that is the new owner is going to incur substantially increased long term ownership costs until it's run into the (space) ground or finally gives up the (space) ghost (coast to coast).

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

I get that, it just seems a bit excessive. I mean with the current numbers the maintenance on a very cheap ship will exceed it's purchase price in less than 2 years!

Tack on bank payments, and a group that couldn't afford to buy a new ship, can't really afford to maintain a used one.

(Edit: Actually, I don't even think that Spaceships lists an annual maintenance cost for new ships. That's something I got from T:IW)

And... working out the trade details on my current game... it looks like there is no way (without fudging the numbers) for my group to make a profit. I'm still trying to figure out how to best tweak things to keep the feeling of a run-down old ship, barely making ends meet... but still not going bankrupt in a single month.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Yep, it sucks to be broke when you have to buy things that matter.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

I think the rules do exactly what they set out to do, to wit:
"Thus the total operating cost, including financing, should be roughly constant regardless of original condition." - Spaceships 2, p. 27

If you run the numbers... lets assume a $100M spacecraft base price. This requires a ~20% down payment (Financing, p. 27), or roughly $20M. The other $80M is financed at 1% per month for 12 years (Financing, p. 27), or $800k/month. Thus the total cost per month is $800k.

Take that same ship as a used ship, at cheap it has a base price of $50M, down payment is $10M (cheaper to start), $40M financed at 1%, or $400k/month. Monthly Maintenance is also 1% per month, so that's $500k/month, making the total cost per month $900k.

Now make that ship Very Cheap. Base cost is now $20M with a $4M down payment and $16M financed at 1% per month, for an expense of $160k/month. Monthly Maintenance is now 4%, so that works out to $800k, which makes monthly costs to operate $960k.


Now, you may say that that doesn't make a lot of sense, but in reality it actually does. If the monthly operating costs of an older Cheap or Very Cheap ship were dramatically reduced then nobody would buy new ships if they didn't have to, and they'd just let their ships fall apart because maintenance costs are less than finance costs of new ships. At the same time, the value of a used ship will rise to the point where the total cost of buying or financing it roughly balances out with the cost of operating new ships. It's basic supply/demand curves, the price curve tends to move to the point where all the costs balance out.

The main difference between the Very Cheap, Cheap, and New ship is that the initial investment cost is much lower for the cheaper ones - a down payment of $4M or $10M instead of $20M is required.


Nobody says that real life bulk shipping is a cheap business to be in. On top of the required maintenance and financing costs, you've also got port fees, fuel fees, registration fees, taxes, and a myriad of other costs. To make a profit you either have to make a lot of short runs stuffed to the gills with cargo or fit some very expensive cargo in there and charge an exorbitant price for shipping it.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

I haven't done the analysis, but it's entirely possible that SS2's basic balance isn't set so that you can keep flying on the proceeds of typical legitimate trade while paying for a ship loan. Thus impelling the PCs into hopefully-higher-paying adventure or at least adventurous corner-cutting.

(It's also worth asking if you've over-designed the players' ship and they could make ends meet in something with a higher payload ratio or cheaper components.)

If you don't want to change the overall numbers, you can fudge the running costs pretty well just by shrinking the debt on the ship. Say that they got a great (and probably skeevy) deal or had some way of making a bigger down payment. If (as is typical) the ship procurement is in the backstory this is particularly easy to slip by.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Why would maintenance be based on how much your loan is? This should be based on the base price of the ship giving the cheap ship 500k and very cheap 1 million. Add in the loan payments and you end up with 900k and 1.16M monthly cost for these.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

From what I recall, the numbers were set up so that an efficiently designed freighter will be marginally profitable running as a liner. This means that ships with PC-like features (such as weapons) or schedules are generally unprofitable in routine trade.

The solution is non-routine trade: you can assume that jobs that actually require a PC-like ship will have commensurate pay.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

So, I'm basically running Traveller Jump drives, so each jump is a week of travel time. And given the time needed to search for new cargo, a typical month might be 2 jumps and 2 weeks on the planet. This only gives a chance to make money on 2 cargo trips.

They have about 400t cargo. At $10 per ton, per parsec, per day (so x7), they are making 56k per jump-2 trip. Two trips per month gives them 112k, not even half of the 250k upkeep cost.

They might be able to get a job for a shipment 6 parsecs away (three weeks travel) which would net 168k, but we are still below the point of making money.

But even w/o the loan payments (I AM using T:IW idea of backers that take a % of profits based on downpayment instead of loan payments), they can't cover the basic maintenance cost.

I guess I could just let them miss a few "tune-ups" and lower the ships HT each month. I'm not sure how the rules for the routine maintenance that the crew does interacts with the required paid maintenance for cheap ships. Can the crew put in extra shifts to repair the lost HT?

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Note p27: "Many operating expenses only accumulate when the ship is actually being used." A ship in liner operations would be jumping every 8 days (so 3.8 times per month on average), and freight rates would also be based on 8 days per jump (so 64k x 3.8 = 243k); as that's still unprofitable, either your ship is poorly optimized or freight rates need to be adjusted for the setting.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

It's not. It's based on the base cost of the ship. The 1% per month for the *LOAN* is based on how much you financed. The problem is that when I wrote this out quickly I applied the multiplier to the wrong column in the spreadsheet I used and didn't catch the mistake. I also just realized that the monthly maintenance for a Very Cheap is 4%, not 5%. Let me fix that.

Of course, the maintenance costs go down when you're spending time in port. It looks like the desire is for a Traveller style campaign where ships spend about a week in port for every week of travel, meaning that maintenance costs will be about 1/2 what I calculated because stuff doesn't really break down when it's not in use (I mean, to an extent; mothball something for 10 years and it'll have breakdown issues but that's different than leaving it for a week).

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Then you need to adjust shipping rates or spaceship charter rates to compensate. The best way to do so is to have "adventuring" style shipments or chartered routes offer more money. That way the PCs aren't trying to compete against "Bulk Shipping LLC," but rather they are using some shipment of goods or people to supplement the income they are making for their adventuring missions. I mean, if an important NPC wants to charter the ship to go to Dagobah they either may not be filling all the cargo hold or all the guest cabins, meaning that a PC may be able to pick up some goods or passengers to head in that direction to make a little extra money along the way.

I'm not sure what the rules do with it, but for me I'd have the maintenance costs accumulate until they are either paid or a maintenance or repair roll is failed, at which point there is a breakdown and the cost to fix it is going to be much bigger than if the monthly maintenance costs had been paid.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Also salvage opportunities, side jobs, stringer work and so on. The appeal of this kind of thing is doing whatever it takes to keep flying, right? Usually that probably means trying to get paid more than once for same run. You might have a no-questions-asked passenger, so you can pick up some speculative cargo to sell when you deliver Mr. Nobody, you also have a standing contract with UCLA to collect soil specimens from planets you visit, you happen to "find" some salvage that doesn't have a thing to do with a trail of destruction that was definitely not left in the wake of a passenger you certainly did not transport, and finally you can sell an article about your adventure to JTAS.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

As noted by ericbsmith, you shouldn't be paying maintenance for time your ship is sitting in dock waiting for a job. (Though you would be paying berthing fees.) That puts you on the brink of break-even, which means some bonuses could push you over, not too broken. Except you're only looking at upkeep, not other fees, so probably still pretty broken.

You haven't, that I can see, published what your ship design is. So I can't really do anything to look at why you've got 50M worth of ship with 400t of cargo capacity. You might want to compare that to the Anthem-class light freighter in the book, which boasts almost 25% more cargo at just over half the price. That might be your problem, there... This suggests that either your ship is way overdesigned for a tramp freighter, or your setting has considerably more costly space travel than the SS2 baseline, and thus you should increase the rates accordingly.
Probably not without replacement parts. It's extra cost, not yard maintenance time, isn't it?

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Generally no, though if you've got a qualified mechanic you can pay that person to do labor instead of hiring someone at a yard (assuming your crew is being paid appropriately for their skills, this is unlikely to save you money, as it means either additional crew or overtime, either of which is likely to cost you as much money as you save on yard costs, but fiction is full of implausibly skilled mechanics working at low wages).

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Actually, the ship cost 44M (22M cheap), but I've been using 50M as an example to pad out additional costs (crew wadges, berthing fees, etc.).

Here is the ships (a version of this was previously posted in the Traveller forum):

And yeah, this is based on the "Hero-class" ship from T:IW

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Only if you pay them hourly instead of shares or salary (or if they are robots or slaves).

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Either they're already working at capacity (in which case you'll have to pay to get them to overwork -- if it's even possible), or they're not (in which case you're paying for more people than you need).

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Looks like you're using RPK's Traveller Rules, using the lower fuel cost. First thing I notice is that the Hero probably qualifies as a "Mass Market Design" giving a cost multiplier of x0.75. I also get Load 402.2 (with 400 tons in the cargo hold, 2.2 tons in crew and passengers) and Occ 18+4 (18 in the cabins, 4 in lowberth). Otherwise the stats come out right with what I get.

Its Power Plant is also overpowered. It produces 2 Power Points, and only has two power using systems - the Jump Drive and the Reactionless Drive. Those don't need to be powered on at the same time, and you get $5M in savings by derating the Fusion Reactor. It could also get $3M in savings by dropping to Metallic Laminate armor and dDR 7, or $4.5M in savings by dropping to Light Alloy armor and dDR 5. Considering that this isn't a combat vessel, lacking weapons at all, it really doesn't need dDR 10.

Alternatively it could install a Half-System Advanced Metallic Laminate for $3M in savings, have dDR5, and get an extra 75 tons of cargo hold. Replace the Fusion Reactor with a Half-Sized Fusion Reactor (providing 1 Power Point) saves $5M and a half-sized Cargo Hold for 25 tons.

For another option, replace the J-2 drive with J-1 and you save $10M and replace one of the Fuel Tanks with a Cargo Hold giving 50 more tons of cargo.


Note that those are the rates for bulk cargoes expected to travel at FTL-1. Since the ship can do FTL-2 they can deliver in half the time, so they can command premium prices for time-sensitive cargoes or to transport passengers that far that fast. The thing is, they would have to work to find those premium cargoes and passengers (especially given the quirk of Traveller Jump drives that in order to be twice as fast they have to travel twice as far in the same time instead of traveling the same distance in half the time).

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Yeah, I'm using most of PK's options, except I went with 1 Fuel System per jump... I just couldn't get close enough to the T:IW ships with the 1.5 Tanks per jump range... (and that would put my ship down another 50t).

Good suggestions, though I should have pointed out that the actual ship that the players have has one of the "cargo" systems actually a Medium Battery with no weapons installed (this actually means that they have 45t cargo for that system, giving a 395t total, but again, I was trying to keep nice round numbers.) The power plant was also designed to have that extra power for if/when they added weapons.

Yeah, it isn't a combat vessel, but they wanted to keep the option of some guns (for defense... they say) open. Of course the G:Spaceships combat rules seems like any combat is a crap shoot if the ship isn't outright destroyed with one shot, so I don't know how I feel about this.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Someone who owns a share in the ship is motivated to refit it in their time off (and spend personal funds on it too); a robot might not even have time off.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Here's my take on the redesigned Hero-Class. I kept the Jump-2 engines, but implemented my other suggested changes. This dropped the cost to $27.15M and increased the Cargo Capacity to 500 Tons.

HERO-CLASS (HERO-CLASS 200D-TON PRIVATE MERCHANT)
PILOTING/TL10 (HIGH-PERFORMANCE SPACECRAFT) Page: T:IW206
Length: 100 yd. (300 ft.) Crush Depth: 3.8 Atmospheres (125 ft.)
Power Points: +1 / -2 [4]
Space Performance: Hnd/SR: -1/5 sAccel: 1G FTL Rating: FTL-2
Air Performance: Hnd/SR: -1/5 aAccel: 1G (22 mph/s) aSpeed: 2,500 mph (1,250 yps / 0.69 mps)

SHIP SYSTEMS
Design Switches, Features, & Notes: 4 Airlocks (Capacity: 4 people each)
CAMPAIGN OPTIONS: EBS's Unofficial rules, RPK's Traveller rules
SHIP OPTIONS: Streamlined, Artificial Gravity, Gravitic Compensators, Standard Fuel Processor (25 Tons/hr.), Mass Market Design
[1] Load includes: 2.2 tons of Crew & Passengers, 500 tons in Cargo Hold
[2] Plus 4 in Hibernation Chambers, [3] Crew Requirement (8 total): 5 Control Stations, 1 Technician, 1 Passenger Care, 1 Medical
SYSTEM NOTES: [4] Insufficient Power Points to run all ship systems simultaneously
FUEL USED: [5] Hydrogen, [6] Hydrogen/Helium Isotopes
TROOP STRENGTH (TS): 0 CLASSES: Air, Space FEATURES: Night, Sealed

HABITATS
Created using the GURPS Spaceships Design Spreadsheet Version 2.0 RC 21 copyright © 2009-2017 Eric B. Smith. This spreadsheet is based on information contained in the GURPS Spaceships series of books.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Oh, something else to note regarding Traveller Jump Drives, keep in mind that Jump-2 doesn't just mean that a ship can travel twice as far in a single jump, it also means that the ship can jump some starless gulfs that Jump-1 ships can't without making some modifications to the ship. To cross a 2 parsec gulf a Jump-1 ship would either need to mount extra Fuel Tanks, have some collapsible fuel tanks in the Cargo Hold (I don't know if these appear in the ISW book, they don't appear in Spaceships, but they do appear in previous versions of GURPS Traveller), or use drop tanks (a concept which showed up in some Traveller supplements, but I don't think were ever used in GURPS Traveller). And even with those modifications, the Jump-1 ship still takes two jumps and two weeks to cross the gulf that the Jump-2 ship can do in one jump and one week.

And a Jump-2 ship can, with some modifications, cross a 4 parsec gulf.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

A robot comes under 'not even possible' -- you're already working it at capacity, it simply can't do more.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

A robot working at capacity is already doing more than someone working eight hour shifts. If it isn't, you are better off not automating.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Sure, but my point is, you can't have it take extra time to do maintenance unless you buy extra robots, because its time is already consumed by its regular tasks.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Which, if people really are paying freight based on the Jump-1 assumption, may let you cut literal corners and get paid for more distance than you actually travel. In addition to covering the ground you do cover faster.

(Of course, if this is as advantageous as it sounds, you've got to question why you're the only one with a Jump-2 drive...)

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

The comparison here was to an hourly employee that you would have to pay overtime for any extra man-hours.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

In most versions of Traveller, the cheapest way to move freight over long distances (assuming you ignore the trade rules and just design ships to do the job efficiently) is either J2 or J3, depending on TL, rule set, distance, and route details (for an obvious case, two worlds separated by 3 parsecs will always favor J3, two worlds separated by 4 with a midpoint 2 from either one will always favor J2).

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

I've been working out a few ideas with my group. One is that b/c the Imperium sticks to the trade routes, when Terrans short cut a route (jumping directly across gulfs where normally the route takes a more round-about way), they can still get paid for the the number of parsecs in the "long way" and even get a bonus for taking less time.

We're also looking at having a monthly maintenance roll (made by the Chief Engineer PC) that will modify the monthly cost of maintenance. Basically how well the standard "fixes" go, determine what breaks down or doesn't that month. I'm thinking MoS x 10% (which puts the crit range at 100%), but might shift this down some.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Works for can openers, too.

I used to always buy the cheapo "widget aisle of the supermarket" can openers that cost c. $2.00 but came apart in 2, 2 1/2 years or so.

One time I was in a kitchen store, had just gotten paid so I felt flush, & bought a German-made $8.00 can opener. Boy, did I feel dumb when I got it home. Waste of money.

That was 23 years ago & I'm still using that "dumb purchase." Still works fine. So with the cost of occasional washing I'm still ahead about $12 on that can opener, not counting the hassle of buying a new one every 2.5 years.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Keep in mind that it's not necessarily that "people" are paying based on Jump-1, it's that the rules in Spaceships 2 are based around FTL-1. Unfortunately, while based on FTL-1 they don't even give suggestions, let alone rules, for how much FTL-2 or higher should affect shipping rates (and obviously they should, since FTL-2 or higher both costs more to have on a ship and gets the freight there faster).
But I also get what you're saying in regards to Traveller. A particular Shipping route may be 8 jumps away via FTL-1 but one jump away via FTL-2, which could allow ingenious PCs to get paid for the equivalent of 8 jumps worth of shipping on that particular run.

You won't be. The closest analog today is the difference between bulk freight rates, standard mail, airmail, and overnight airmail. You can mail packages, and for maybe double the price you can airmail them. And for a premium you can overnight them. But if you have 30 pallets of stuff to deliver you schedule bulk freight shipping. Bulk freight and standard mail will generally go by the same route (via freight ships across the ocean), but because you're booking in bulk you can get a bit of a discount.

So Jump-1 is bulk freight and standard mail, Jump-2 is like airmail, and Jump-3 and above are like overnight shipping. With commensurately higher rates and fewer tons of freight using the higher tiers and paying the higher rates.

Not bad. I'd probably keep a floor of 10% unless a crit is actually rolled. It also introduces the possibility of throwing in some negatives to those rolls if the money isn't invested one month on the following months maintenance rolls, meaning if you don't keep up on paying for the maintenance then stuff starts breaking down more often and costing more.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Er, not really - it gives shipping rates in terms of FTL-1 travel times, for hyper and warp drives. Traveler jump drives are neither of those, but (since it takes time to cover distance with them) that's a closer fit than the rules for instant point-to-point jump drives.

But the actual point at issue here is actually quite outside that - it's how the length of the trip is calculated that's the issue. Obviously if your destination is 1 parsec (or whatever your daily distance is) away but you can't FTL in a straight line and have to go 8 parsecs to get there from here, the stardrive freight rate will reflect the latter and not the former. Traveler jump ratings change the connectivity of space, effectively redefining how far apart things are depending on what drive you're using. Which is where it gets back to what assumptions people are using for their freight payments.
That only works if it's actually more economical to move non-urgent cargo (and SS2 assumes that's almost all cargo) by Jump-1. If Jump-2 doesn't more than double your cost per ton payload, there's a very strong possibility that that won't hold up.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Yep. Got me one of these 24 years ago:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001CDEFK0

... and what do you know, eight bucks!

.................................................. ............................................

In every Traveller game I've ever seen: every regularly scheduled freight service is subsidized by the government, either by providing the ships at discount prices, or some mail contract at grossly inflated rates.

Player characters operating a tramp freighter are expected to be merchants, buying low and selling high, taking other's freight only as a last resort.

The problem only arises if you have a player as clever as I am. There is no reason to own and operate one's own ship, leave that to the NPC's, best just to buy and sell and use the commercial shipping lines.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Actually, Traveller "Jump" drives pretty much fit exactly in what Spaceships call Hyperdrives. They don't require Jump points (though they do have the 100 diameter limit), they move you into an other-dimension where you effectively travel FTL, and they take time to reach the destination. That's a Hyperdrive.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

With the rather important difference that a Traveler jump always takes the same amount of time, rather than being proportional to the distance traveled.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

That's background flavor, along with the 100-d limit and hydrogen fuel usage. The difference between Jump and Hyperdrive is kind arbitrary anyways; there's no reason a Hyperdrive can't require a jump point, or a Jump drive can't take some small amount of time to make the jump. As you start tacking on features the one begins to look very much like the other. The one that's really different is Warp Drive, because it keeps you in the same dimension as the rest of the universe instead of tunneling into or through some other-dimension, meaning it's much more difficult to stealth into enemy territory.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

If 'background feature' means 'incredibly important, especially to the matter at hand', I suppose.

In particular reference to the drive classification side-issue, the distance-independent jump time is directly contradictory to paragraph 3 (out of 4) in Spaceships' definition of a hyper drive.
Only if you slice possibilities up in a very particular way and make some enormous assumptions. Plenty of settings have means of sensing into hyperspace, potentially making it less sneaky than a real-space approach that people aren't looking for.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Oh, I mean't "background" as in "world background" not as in "unimportant background." Many background features of technology can be very important, but they often times don't change the fundamental nature of the technology item.

Again, Spaceships (and GURPS Space, going all the way back to it's first edition) tries to draw a clear dividing line between Hyperdrives and Jump Drives, but really there isn't a clear line. Devices called Jump Drives and Hyperdrives have shown up in fiction all over the place, often times with any number of features which would have Space(ships) classifying them as the other type of drive, but the two drive types types really exist on the same spectrum of FTL drive descriptions, just with differing features attached to them. "Instant jump skip" is one of those features, but what if a hyperskip only takes a milisecond, is that a Jump Drive? What about a second? A Minute? Same thing with Jump Points, Spaceships tries to make them a feature of Jump drives, but they can be a Hyperdrive limitation as well. Or even (though probably unusual) a Warp Drive limitation - but I could imagine a Warp Drive that can only engage once it travels to a particular place where the fabric of space/time is weak for some reason. This is one of those places where the genericness of GURPS just kind of fails, because it simultaneously tries to stay generic but also tries to classify things in a much stricter way than sci-fi authors have done.

The distinguishing feature of Warp drive is that you aren't leaving the normal 3+1 dimensions of our universe. You aren't going into "hyperspace," or jumping from point A to point B, but are traveling through xyz+t. Now, yeah, I've no doubt that somewhere in the vast collection of fiction there are any number of descriptions of "hyperspace" which may breach the general description I gave, but that doesn't change my point that the general distinguishing feature is the "otherspace" vs "our space."

As for real-space detection - in space while nobody can hear you scream, but everybody can see you coming. The problem with real space is that despite all the... space... there's no place to hide. The best you can do is mask your approach behind a heavenly body, but that only works up until you have to move past that heavenly body into line-of-sight of any sensor platform. And there will be lots of sensor platforms, if only to keep an eye on all the space junk out there that might be dangerous.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

It is certainly true that the GURPS Spaceships list of types of FTL drive is very far from comprehensive.

I don't agree much with your particular points about it, though.
This is true, yes. Although 'not leaving' potentially includes jump drives - they don't necessarily need an alternate space to pass through, they just definitely don't pass through the intervening regular space.

But the idea that that's more fundamental than whether travel is instant, or whether it has strong path or endpoint restrictions is kind of arbitrary.
Everybody can see you coming...if they look really hard in the right place. Yes, yes, it's basically impossible to hide even baseline thermal emissions, let alone rocket exhaust, from interested parties maintaining a good lookout at in-system distances. (If you're in a realistic setting, which is far from safe to assume when dealing with FTL technologies.) Over longer distances, keeping a good lookout starts to entail a sensor array area measurable in square astronomical units...

Detection of ships in hyperspace, if it's at all useful, is necessarily faster than FTL vessels and thus faster than light - which is not necessarily true for any means of detecting warp or sublight craft. Also, it's really easy to have a hyperspace signature be much more obvious than a ship in real space is - especially if, as I suggested, there's no expectation that you need to watch for ships entering your system without such a signature.

Of course, it's certainly also possible for hyperspace arrivals to offer no advance warning at all. FTL is probably the biggest forced wild-card in interstellar setting building.

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Re: [Spaceships 2] Maintenance on Cheap Ships
 

Ships traveling via hyperspace might encounter each out, meaning fights are possible in hyperspace. Also if using Jump Gate networks Jump-based drives (As opposed to Hyperdrive-based ones) don't need a matching gate at the far end, in fact return may be possible without a Gate at the far end.