Playable approximation for Buying a Spaceship

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Just giving the PCs the ship for a campaign that assumes one amounts to this later case, you're charging 0 points for whatever the ship is worth with the effective pact that selling the ship will end the campaign. Personally I prefer that, the ship is normally central to the campaign plan after all. And where it isn't *not* having a ship is pretty central to the campaign plan - your political intrigue or city cops or high-school romance campaign plan isn't going to work if the players go and buy a cargo ship and start sailing the world either.

That's how I've done it in the past to good effect. It seems odd to me to charge points for ownership of something that when used either a) serves all PCs and tag along NPCs roughly equally, or b) effectively removes you from the campaign.

[munin]

GURPS Supers has a Headquarters mechanism (p. 85) for owning large signature assets without being wealthy. You determine what would be the Status required to just have it as part of what your Cost of Living gets you (p. B266) and pay what that Status is worth. This gets you only the headquarters, not the actual status or the staff for the headquarters, but you don't have to pay the increased cost of living that status would usually require. Usually, the transportation provided by Status CoL is worth less than the living space provided, so it shouldn't be a problem to swap the provided living space for the provided transportation.

For example, Status 6 [30] would get you a private jet at TL8, so Signature Gear (Status 6 HQ) [30] might get you an SM+5/6 spaceship at TL10. Status 7 [35] gets you a private jumbo jet at TL8 so SG might get you an SM+7/8 spaceship at TL10. Status 8 [40] gets you a private airline or an ocean liner so SG might get you an SM+12 spaceship at TL10.

[Peter Knutsen]

The purpose of such a mechanic is to empower the players to make a choice, so that they might or might not decide to allocate some of their character creation currency towards creating characters who happen to own a spaceship, instead of towards creating characters who happen to have DX 14 and Combat Reflexes and good combat skills, or characters who have high Astrogation and other science skills and Eidetic Memory and good IQ, or Charisma and Smooth Operator and a bunch of Contacts.

The test, to see whether the mechanic is good, is to subject a lot of character-creating players to it, and if some of them opts for owning a spaceship, then it is good.

It has to be some. Not too few. And certainly not all players, but it is equally wrong if no players decide to start with a spaceship. Out of a reasonably large and reasonably broad sample of players, of course.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

The purpose of such a mechanic is to empower the players to make a choice, so that they might or might not decide to allocate some of their character creation currency towards creating characters who happen to own a spaceship, instead of towards creating characters who happen to have DX 14 and Combat Reflexes and good combat skills, or characters who have high Astrogation and other science skills and Eidetic Memory and good IQ, or Charisma and Smooth Operator and a bunch of Contacts.

The test, to see whether the mechanic is good, is to subject a lot of character-creating players to it, and if some of them opts for owning a spaceship, then it is good.

It has to be some. Not too few. And certainly not all players, but it is equally wrong if no players decide to start with a spaceship. Out of a reasonably large and reasonably broad sample of players, of course.

This is something of a challenging test to run even as a thought experiment, because it calls for a game premise in which 'own a ship' and 'don't own a ship' are both reasonable options.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

This is something of a challenging test to run even as a thought experiment, because it calls for a game premise in which 'own a ship' and 'don't own a ship' are both reasonable options.

Strangely, in my current campaign, the original premise was that none of the PCs owns a ship. Still, one player decided to fork over 30ish points and buy an aerospace craft that can fit the whole party (comparable to a large minivan among cars). I don't think it's disruptive, even though this quickly made hired NPC pilots and their craft less interesting in the campaign.

The primary 'trouble' with the 'own a ship' premise is the incomes which the PCs can gain through putting said ship to work. Simply put, either they're going to go broke, or they'll have so much surplus income that personal gear becomes comparatively cheap (even if they can't upgrade to a better ship). Of course, there are wonderful gonzo settings where this is not the case, like Rogue Trader (where ship components can easily be of a cost comparable to a personal item).

[SCAR]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

The purpose of such a mechanic is to empower the players to make a choice, so that they might or might not decide to allocate some of their character creation currency towards creating characters who happen to own a spaceship, instead of towards creating characters who happen to have DX 14 and Combat Reflexes and good combat skills, or characters who have high Astrogation and other science skills and Eidetic Memory and good IQ, or Charisma and Smooth Operator and a bunch of Contacts.

Precisely, Player Choice

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Strangely, in my current campaign, the original premise was that none of the PCs owns a ship. Still, one player decided to fork over 30ish points and buy an aerospace craft that can fit the whole party (comparable to a large minivan among cars). I don't think it's disruptive, even though this quickly made hired NPC pilots and their craft less interesting in the campaign.

Showing that sometimes a player does want to make that choice!

While the GM can just give the PC's a ship, he might not want to for a number of reasons - an obvious one being that the Players might simply decide to sell the spaceship for a big wadge of cash - and preventing that requires further rules, and/or restrictions, etc.

So, assuming I want to give the players a choice to own a ship, or not, how does my rule hold up?
The point cost is roughly derived using PK's Points for Cash house rule, which basically gives cash equal to double the 'standard' Starting Wealth for the same points expenditure.
This means that simply selling the spaceship won't give any more cash than could have been gained by simply converting the points to cash in the first place.

Using the Cheap/Very Cheap Spaceship option from Spaceships 2, reduces the effective value of the Ship, which can be convert to a point reduction; Cheap would be [-5], Very Cheap [-15].

The 'Base' Rule from Supers is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it converts to a Spaceship as well as it handles fixed buildings - it would require GM judgment on exactly what 'Status' a spaceship should be equivalent to, and it would still suffer from the selling it for cash issue.

The 'Base' Rule did lead me to another thought: Take the Monthly Costs for the Spaceship (SS2 suggests a flat 0.5% of the Value per Month as a simplification) - so an SM+8 Spaceship (~$60M) would have a Monthly Cost of $300K - and compare that to the Cost of Living for a given Status, which would make it Status 5 which has a CoL of $600K.
You could then use the cost of the Status [25 points] for the Point Cost of the Spaceship; or; the Cost of the appropriate Wealth Level, which for Status 5 would be MM1 [75 points]. The former seems like a better deal, but I haven't crunched all the numbers to see how it works out.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by SCAR

If the characters are all Soldiers, shouldn't their Weapons and Kit be simply provided by the GM?

Sure.

Originally Posted by SCAR

Being DF Adventurers requires weapons and armour, so shouldn't the GM simply provide those?

No.

It all depends on your job. Generally I figure if you take a Duty and some Rank you probably get some free gear out of it, often with limitations on how you're allowed to use that gear when you're not fufilling your duty.

My general prefered solution is to figure out what level of wealth would be required to purchase the ship, using the signature assets limitation, and then split the cost between players however they wish. That's IF it's important to them that they own their own ship. And generally for a used ship, and I encourage taking some levels of Debt.

My more prefferred solution is to start the game working as crew for someone who owns the ship and give them the opportunity to acquire their own somehow down the road in-game.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

My more prefferred solution is to start the game working as crew for someone who owns the ship and give them the opportunity to acquire their own somehow down the road in-game.

That gives you ample opportunity to control what kind of ship the PCs can eventually become owners of. Which is exactly why it is preferable to have the freedom to choose to make a ship-owning character, via allocating some of the character creation currency, during character creation.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

That gives you ample opportunity to control what kind of ship the PCs can eventually become owners of. Which is exactly why it is preferable to have the freedom to choose to make a ship-owning character, via allocating some of the character creation currency, during character creation.

Meh.

If I offer a campaign concept that requires a pc-owned starship, and the players sign up for that campaign ... then at least one of the player-characters will be a ship-owner; or there is no campaign and I start to wonder why they wasted my time. Choice is highly overrated in certain situations.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

Meh.

If I offer a campaign concept that requires a pc-owned starship, and the players sign up for that campaign ... then at least one of the player-characters will be a ship-owner; or there is no campaign and I start to wonder why they wasted my time. Choice is highly overrated in certain situations.

As I've said before, and will say many times again: Why don't you just create the characters for the players. Why don't you decide what kinds of characters they are to play?

The reason for having point-based character creation is to give the players freedom of choice, as to what kinds of characters to play. "Owns a ship" is an as legitimate a character concept component as "has above-average IQ".