[Spaceships] Making a setting work...

[eclipsek]

It could also be pointed out that those considered pirates by one group might be the registered privateers of another. So essentially there could be a world (or a commonwealth of worlds) funding an underhanded economic war against another.

Essentially - we'll give (or loan) you a ship if you go out and disrupt any ships that aren't ours that are using X shipping route. BTW if you claim you work for us we will refuse to acknowledge you and our legitamate ships will come after yours (and you go from being a privateer to a pirate).

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

If we take the costs in Spaceships as reasonable, we are left with one inevitable conclusion: the genre is economically unrealistic.

This shouldn't be all that much of a surprise - the genre is economically unrealistic. You need lots of wierd assumptions to make it even kinda-sorta work, and even then it's usually a stretch. Much easier just to say 'ignore all that 'economic reality' stuff and just obey genre conventions, okay?'

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Yeeeeaaaahhhh, but the real money-sinks in spaceships are engines and power plants. Take the TL10 Outlander-class Deep-space Freighter from Spaceships 2. After the $30M engine, the next most expensive component is the control room at $6M. The armor only comes in third at $4.5M for the whole ship. A major battery weapon (what's a tramp freighter doing with one of those?) would only cost $15M; smaller weapons would be much, much cheaper.

The Outlander is already civilian-built. Its 'light alloy armor' gives it a sturdy hull, not anything that would actually be considered serious armor at its TL. Replacing that with nanocomposite would make the armor cost more than the rest of the ship combined, even without hardening.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Even if you wanted to buy a "very cheap" Outlander-class ship, you'd still need $9.24M, which at TL10 means you'd still need to be a Multimillionaire to support the genre convention of "entrepreneur buys ship, lives hard life as tramp freighter captain." If we take the costs in Spaceships as reasonable, we are left with one inevitable conclusion: the genre is economically unrealistic. You must make everything to do with ships cheaper to simply buy a ship the way the genre works.

The Anthem class might be a better model to think about...it's got the super-science kit appropriate to the setting. It also costs less (being smaller).

If your model of the genre expects a captain to pay full price in cash to buy the ship and then live a Struggling lifestyle to keep it...that's not impossible, but it's not too likely when a very minimal freighter costs over 5M.

If you're willing to allow the captain to maintain a somewhat higher standard of living, though, it gets rather more believable. A small-trader captain should probably be Status +1, anyway...and can't afford to be Status -1!

And of course allowing credit helps.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Langy

Much easier just to say 'ignore all that 'economic reality' stuff and just obey genre conventions, okay?'

Sure, but it gets tricky when one player wants to be rich enough to own the ship the other players crew on.

During some early Tales of the Solar Patrol games, the player of the ship's commander decided to be Wealthy, and he wanted to replace one of the ship's lifeboats with a non-regulation runabout. I didn't have a problem with letting the Patrol look past this, but there was just no way his character could have actually afforded the runabout. Fortunately, most of the players didn't really care about actually sticking close to the GURPS rules, so I just okayed it and we moved on.

But there are no advantages supporting this particular genre convention — it's very hard to "just own a ship," even in settings like, say, Star Wars where owning a ship isn't all that big a deal.

According to the genre, owning a spaceship is the equivalent of owning a boat in the real world, and all costs are likewise. Realistically, it's quite reasonable to own a boat, but not a spaceship. That's the problem.

[Langy]

Well, you can always buy the spaceship as Signature Gear (or Signature Assets) and hand-wave away how he got it ('he won it in a lottery, but part of the rules is that he isn't allowed to sell it!', for example). That won't significantly impact his actual Wealth level, but it does adequately show that, yes, he does actually own a spaceship.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Langy

Well, you can always buy the spaceship as Signature Gear (or Signature Assets) and hand-wave away how he got it ('he won it in a lottery, but part of the rules is that he isn't allowed to sell it!', for example). That won't significantly impact his actual Wealth level, but it does adequately show that, yes, he does actually own a spaceship.

Buying a ship as Signature Gear by RAW involves point totals better suited to cosmic-grade superheroes than spaceship captains. Buying a ship as Signature Assets involves having enough Wealth to do so in the first place, and while you can't sell the Signature Assets you still get the general benefits of the Wealth level.

Buying a ship by trading points for cash via RPK's exponential scheme and then registering it as sig. gear could work. It's still pretty expensive, but that's not unreasonable for owning a spaceship.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

But there are no advantages supporting this particular genre convention — it's very hard to "just own a ship," even in settings like, say, Star Wars where owning a ship isn't all that big a deal.

So in Star Wars a new Stock Light Frieghter costs 100,000 credits and a used one like the Falcon goes for 25,000. That's 10x the cost of a used landspeeder where a new blaster is about 500.

The prices of Stock Light Freighters, landspeeders and blasters all being speculative as well as existing in a universe with 17 kinds of superscience technologies it's all as likely as anything else.

[Anthony]

A significant part of the problem is that, well, owning a ship will generally produce income that is roughly appropriate to the cost of the ship, because trade rates are normalized based on the cost of trading vessels; you can assume that a ship, in normal operation, produces revenues that exceed its operating costs (including crew salaries) and mortgage costs (if possibly narrowly). On a $5M ship, that's probably at least $25k/month in excess of operating costs (and probably significantly more); in a TL 10 game, without a loan, that's going to be at least Wealthy.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

A significant part of the problem is that, well, owning a ship will generally produce income that is roughly appropriate to the cost of the ship, because trade rates are normalized based on the cost of trading vessels; you can assume that a ship, in normal operation, produces revenues that exceed its operating costs (including crew salaries) and mortgage costs (if possibly narrowly).

Did all that back in 3e too. Calculated maintenance costs for used ships typical of the Gloria, added in crew salaries and decided how much they needed to charge to meet that figure based on a hold 50% full (the bank had been paid off a long time ago). I think the number was a couple of bucks per cubic foot.

Since it was a cheap ship it made for cheap shipping. Expensive ships will make for expensive shipping. One of these assumptions will probably fit your genre better than the other.

[BlackLiger]

At best, in any sci-fi setting, your average star system will see 20 ships a month. That's hauling luxuries, people wealthy enough to move planet, military vessels and 'police' patrols. Planets HAVE to be self sufficient in basic goods, or they don't survive.

Economically, you might see an ENTIRE GROUP of player characters band together with their money, loans, favours owed etc to afford a ship, with shares in it between them (which also prevents it being sold by 1 of them, as they can sell their shares in it, but not the ship itself. One of them might professionally captain it, being the front man and negotiator for the crew, but they all are owners) That'd give you A) a decent starting point on buying a ship, B) a reason the PC's are together and having to work together, even if they don't get on 100% of the time, and C) an opportunity for adventures, when different things affect different people.