Affording a spaceship?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

If, on the other hand, the character is a wanderer and starts with 100% of starting wealth, then simply reduce the prices of spaceships to that of cars.

Okay...

I build a world, then I GM a campaign set in it, and I decide that in this campaign, the players' characters shall be settled by default, and that defines the cost of spaceships in the world.

Then, a year later, I decide to GM another campaign in the same world, taking place in the same time period as the first campaign, but this time I decide that the default for player characters shall be a nomadic lifestyle. So suddenly all the hundreds of thousands (if not tens of millions) of spaceships in the world, owned by thousands or millions of NPCs, get their price reduced to 1/5 of what it used to be.

Then, the year after that, I decide to GM a third campaign in this world, still in the same time period, but going back to settled-by-default, so suddenly every single ship in the entire universe gets its price quintupled.

I'm confused now. I'm really confused.

And not only am I confused.

The billions of NPCs who live in this world are also confused.

They thought that they understood ecnomics and finance. Not perfectly, even though high-TL Economics is obviously going to be at least slightly more scientific than present-day-TL Economics. But they thought they had a rough idea, they thought their experts, professors at the major business universities, had a rough idea of how stuff works, how money works, how and why prices change. Enough to usually be able to see changes coming before they happen (anticipation - a major benefit of living in an actual world is that you can develop a useful sense for what to anticipate), and always foreseee hugely drastic changes (such as prices getting divided by 5 or multiplied by 5) well in advance, when the cause isn't a paradigm shift (typically a major technological advancement, such as the development of fusion reactors), and to always be able to explain serious changes in hindsight.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

One school of "thought" is that the GM decides whether the PC party starts the campaign owning a ship, and if so, which type of ship, and what modifications, if any, it has.

Nice use of scare quotes.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

It's not rail roading if it's your corporate handlers telling you where to go, not the GM directly. ;)
You're the only "asset" in the area and being ordered to take this mysterious delegate to Nowheresville. Then you can get back to being one of our tax write offs.

Exactly. And while it may seem implausible that the InterStellar GigaCorp almost always gives the trickiest jobs to the same group of 4-6 guys, it starts to make a lot more sense of these 4-6 guys are in-world-observably highly competent individiuals - in GURPS terms built on 150 or 250 CPs - while the other crews of the corp's spaceships are much more typical individuals, either without special competences, or else highly specialized competences.

They might have one crew of 100 CP first-in type planetary explorers, and another 75 CP crew of first contact scientist-diplomats, with the other crew being 50 CP normals, but then there's this special crew, a bunch of 200 CP generalists, that get all the dangerous (and fun) jobs.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

The implementation of Signature Gear in GURPS 4th Edition is ****ed up. Stupidly ****ed up.

I've used it more than once, and it seemed to serve its purpose well when buying iconic personal equipment and software. And it seems okay to represent infallible insurance of stuff. It does kinda break down for larger stuff.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I'm confused now. I'm really confused.

That's because you don't understand what I said, and I think you're looking for an argument.

Reducing the price of spaceships is a setting-based decision, not a campaign-style one. Either spaceships are as cheap as cars (or boats) or they're realistically expensive and only affordable by countries and large corporations. This does not change depending on whether the characters are settled or wanderers.

You don't reduce the price of spaceships to 20% of their original cost; you reduce their price to the price of cars (or boats), because that's how much people in the world actually pay for them.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

That's because you don't understand what I said, and I think you're looking for an argument.

Reducing the price of spaceships is a setting-based decision, not a campaign-style one. Either spaceships are as cheap as cars (or boats) or they're realistically expensive and only affordable by countries and large corporations. This does not change depending on whether the characters are settled or wanderers.

You don't reduce the price of spaceships to 20% of their original cost; you reduce their price to the price of cars (or boats), because that's how much people in the world actually pay for them.

And if you later decide to have some PCsown a ship you arrange for them to have it by one of the methods above rather then cahnge the price of the ship.
Either they lucked into a ship (gifted them points maybe) or they paid for it out of charecter points, possibly using disadvantages.
Changing the overall price of ships is changing the setting which SHOULD be noticed by everyone.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

That's because you don't understand what I said, and I think you're looking for an argument.

Reducing the price of spaceships is a setting-based decision, not a campaign-style one. Either spaceships are as cheap as cars (or boats) or they're realistically expensive and only affordable by countries and large corporations. This does not change depending on whether the characters are settled or wanderers.

You don't reduce the price of spaceships to 20% of their original cost; you reduce their price to the price of cars (or boats), because that's how much people in the world actually pay for them.

So what you're saying is that if you want to play a campaign where the PCs own a ship, you should only do it in a setting where spaceships are really cheap?

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

So what you're saying is that if you want to play a campaign where the PCs own a ship, you should only do it in a setting where spaceships are really cheap?

No he's saying if you want PCs to own a ship you should only do it in a setting the supports the type of ownerships that you want the PCs to have.

You have a problem with having to be obscenely wealthy to freehold a spaceship, then don't run it in a setting where you have to be obscenely wealthy to do so.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

No he's saying if you want PCs to own a ship you should only do it in a setting the supports the type of ownerships that you want the PCs to have.

You have a problem with having to be obscenely wealthy to freehold a spaceship, then don't run it in a setting where you have to be obscenely wealthy to do so.

That of course completely ignores the fact that owning something very expensive and being obscenely wealthy are quite distinct situations. There are very few settings where you're only allowed to own expensive things if your Wealth level is high enough.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

That of course completely ignores the fact that owning something very expensive and being obscenely wealthy are quite distinct situations. There are very few settings where you're only allowed to own expensive things if your Wealth level is high enough.

No it doesn't, that what the word Freehold is doing there is for.