A better subsidized merchant

[AnotherDilbert]

A LBB5 ship with LBB2 drives is a bit cheaper and more profitable:

L1-6611111-000000-00000-0       MCr 97,4         600 Dton
bearing                                            Crew=4
batteries                                           TL=12
                         Cargo=449 Fuel=70 EP=6 Agility=1

Spoiler:

Single Occupancy                                  449       121,7
                                     USP    #     Dton       Cost
Hull, Streamlined   Custom             6          600           
Configuration       Flattened Sphe     6                     48 
Scoops              Streamlined                               0,6
                                                                
Jump Drive          C                  1    1      20        30 
Manoeuvre D         C                  1    1       5        12 
Power Plant         C                  1    1      10        24 
Fuel, #J, #weeks    J-1, 4 weeks            1      10           
Purifier                                    1       6         0,0
                                                                
Bridge                                      1      20         3 
Computer            m/1                1    1       1         2 
                                                                
Staterooms                                  4      16         2 
                                                                
Cargo                                             449           
Demountable Tanks   J-1                     1      60         0,1
                                                                
Empty hardpoint                             3       3           
                                                                
Nominal Cost        MCr 121,69           Sum:     449       121,7
Class Cost          MCr  25,55          Valid      ≥0          ≥0
Ship Cost           MCr  97,35                                   
                                                                
                                                                
Crew &               High     0        Crew          Bridge     2
Passengers            Mid     0           4       Engineers     1
                      Low     0                     Gunners     0
                 Extra SR     0      Frozen         Service     1
               # Frozen W     0           0          Flight     0
                  Marines     0                     Marines     0

Estimated Economy of Ship     Standard                 No subsidy         
       Ship price     Down Payment         Mortgage       Avg Filled
        MCr 97,35       kCr 19 470          kCr 406              80%
                                                                
Expenses per jump                       Revenue                 
Bank                Cr 194 704          High           Cr       0
Fuel                Cr   7 000          Middle         Cr       0
Life Support        Cr   8 000          Low            Cr       0
Salaries            Cr   8 160          Cargo          Cr 356 000
Maintenance         Cr   3 894                                   
Berthing            Cr     600                                   
                                                                
Summa              kCr     222                        kCr     356
                                                                
     Income potential per jump     kCr 134                   
  Yearly yield on down payment     17,2%

 

[Spinward Flow]

13 payments a year would give you 520 payments, so either it's a 36.9 year payoff with 480 payments or it's 520 in 40 years.

I suppose you could say the loan allows a one month payment amnesty to allow for maintenance. That would put you back at 480 payments in 40 years.

The way I interpret it is that you're obligated to pay 12 months out of 13 months per year for 40 years.
Makes the break even math a touch obnoxious, but there's also a practical reason for organizing things this way. Mortgage payments can't be made at all starports.

I forget where the reference is, so I forget the details, but I'm pretty sure that bank financing mortgage payments can be made at any type A or B starport (no problem) ... and I think also at type C ... but I suspect that type D, E and (of course) X will not have any interstellar banking branch associated with them, so you wouldn't necessarily be able to make mortgage payments while operating in those areas. Having an "automatic 1 month amnesty on mortgage payments per year" would then make it easier for free traders to ply their trading business in regions that are "underserved" by interstellar banking.

Cargo-wise I think your looking at about 385 tons, which starts to get to the higher end of the available cargo on smaller worlds.

Depends on how you intend to operate.
If you're doing nothing but Empty/Full/Empty/Full as a tramp with no destinations beyond the immediate next one, then yeah ... having "too big" of a cargo hold is going to be something of a waste.

However ... if you've got a route planned for 2+ destinations from your point of origin, you can sell tickets to ALL of those locations you're committed to going to.

Let's say that you're planning to make a run from Regina/Regina to Efate/Regina in your starship.

You're starting @ Regina/Regina.
Where can you sell tickets to as your destinations?

If you're a TRAMP, you can only sell tickets to your immediate next destination because you've got no idea where you're "going next" beyond your next port of call (it all depends on what the market demand is at the destionation.

If you're running a PLANNED ROUTE, starting from Regina, you could declare that your destinations (plural) are ...

1. Ruie/Regina
2. Forboldn/Regina
3. Knorbes/Regina
4. Whanga/Regina
5. Alell/Regina
6. Efate/Regina

... and you get to sell tickets for passengers and freight cargo to ALL of those locations (until you have no more capacity remaining and your manifest is full).

When you get to Ruie/Regina, you're still running a PLANNED ROUTE, so you can declare that your destinations (plural) are ...

1. Forboldn/Regina
2. Knorbes/Regina
3. Whanga/Regina
4. Alell/Regina
5. Efate/Regina

And you just keep "rolling over" the contents of your revenue tonnage while working your way towards Efate/Regina.
Then you reverse course back to Regina/Regina and do the entire process all over again.

By committing to and declaring multiple destinations along a plotted route, you make it possible to sell tickets and generate revenues to multiple destinations ... not just 1. You then use that "overlapping of demand" to help keep your shipping manifests full while working your way through regions with low population worlds that would otherwise be "uneconomical" to visit if you were only doing "One And Done" trading like a tramp merchant would do.

As for Life Support, I am of the mind it should be folded into Salary and removed from the price of passages. It's far to fiddly for my taste, especially in the case of crew, it's like you're paying them twice.

The reason why it's NOT done that way is because of how the bookkeeping needs to work for subsidized starships.
Under subsidy, the operator is responsible for 100% of the expenses, but receives only 50% of the revenues from ticket sales.

So a high passage (Cr10,000 revenue) combined with life support expenses (Cr2000) yields a net profit of 10,000-2000=Cr8000 for a non-subsidized starship ... but under subsidy would yield a net profit of 10,000/2-2000=Cr3000 for the operator. Note that these results are not direct multiples of each other due to the subtraction of expenses factor in order to calculate the profits from ticket sales.

Take things a step further and in non-subsidized service, that high passenger ticket computes to Cr2000 profit per revenue ton (because, 4 ton stateroom) ... while under subsidy, it computes to being Cr750 profit per revenue ton (due to the 4 ton stateroom). Compare and contrast that with a "revenue density" of Cr1000 profit per ton for freight cargo tickets (non-subsidized) and Cr500 profit per ton for freight cargo tickets (subsidized) ... and that's before including the cost (tonnage, salary, life support overhead) of needing 1x Steward per 8x high passengers in CT (as per LBB2.81, p16).

So yes, it IS "fiddly" to need separate cells in the spreadsheet of accounting ... but there's a good reason for needing to do it that way (to prevent premature optimization).

 

[AnotherDilbert]

LBB2 assumes 12 months per year:

LBB'2'81, p7:
Bank financing is available to qualified individuals for the purchase of commercial starships. After a down payment of 20% of the cash price of the starship is made, the shipyard will begin construction of a specific vessel. Upon completion, the vessel is delivered to the buyer, with the bank paying off the purchase price to the shipyard. Because the bank now holds title to the ship, the price must be paid off in a series of monthly payments to it. Standard terms involve the payment of 1/240th of the cash price each month for 480 months. In effect, interest and bank financing cost a simple 120% of the final cost of the ship, and the total financed price equals 220% of the cash purchase price, paid off over a period of 40 years.

So, 480 months is 40 years, or 12 months per year.


The 13 month Imperial Calendar was introduced a few years later, IIRC in S12 Forms & Charts. I'm sure everyone read that carefully...

 

[Rupert]

The 13 month Imperial Calendar was introduced a few years later, IIRC in S12 Forms & Charts. I'm sure everyone read that carefully...

S12 also says of the calendar:

Imperial dating uses a modified julian system for specifying days within the year. Each day is consecutively numbered beginning with 001. Thus in the year 1105, the first day of the year is 001 -1 105. Weeks of seven days and months of about 28 days are used to refer to lengths of time, but rarely to establish dates.

Also, the form does not have any mention of months.

So months are not a formal part of the Imperial calendar system, and have no formal duration. I assume that the Imperium's banks are extremely conservative, and once forced onto the Terran calendar they've stuck with its 12 months. Prudent holders of mortgages should pay every four weeks, using the remaining 'month' as a buffer. Those running closer to the wire will pay 'on the day', and hopefully before leaving if 'the day' lands when they'll be in jump, but more likely when they land, probably resulting in them slipping further and further behind...

 

[Grav_Moped]

The other thing you might get from C/C/C drives is the ability to take off again from worlds of Size 8 (1g surface gravity) and up... not sure why you'd want an oversized jump drive too but whatever...

 

[spank]

Honestly those aren't what I'd call great prospects for trading.
Regina has TL C, It's neighbors are 7,7,and 9 the best you are going to get is a -3 modifier so anything arriving to Regina will have a penalty It is a Pop 8 world, so you get a +1, but still not great.
Jenghe is the best option from there, TL-9 so coming from Regina you get a +3
Going back you get a -2 from the Pop 6 table, so effectively Pop 4 1d6 major, 1d6+1 minor, and 1d-5 incidental. Not great for anything but a Tramp free trader. But you should be able to pull 85-110 tons 90+% of the time. Going from Regina you are at 8 on the cargo table +3, plenty of cargo outbound.
Ruie is an amber zone, no {Major cargos -6 to PAX}, skip it.
Hefry is Pop 4, which isn't bad, except any thing going to a Pop 4 is at a -4 Forboldn and Ruie are right out, freight from Regina would be OK, because it has a +5 due TL difference, but outbound you are a a -5 to Regina. So skip it.
Foboldn can trade with Hefry, {skip it} Ruie{skip it} or Knorbles. Which is actually an OK prospect for a smaller ship.
Knorbles can trade with Forboldn, {decent prospects} or Whanga {-7 due to TL diff, and -4 due to POP1} Skip trading with Knorbles.
Whanga is POP 1, skip it.
Alell is amber zone, {no major cargo, -6 to PAX} Skip it.
Efate has an excellent option at Uakye, not TL diff, and both are POP 8+
Grant is Red zone, Skip it.
Picias is Red zone, Skip it.
Roup is amber zone and 2 parsecs so Skip it too.
.
Basically your best options are options are Jenghe<->Regina or Efate<->Uakye and Knorbes<->Forboldn
The worst of these 3, leaving Knorbles for Forboldn gives 1D+1 Major Cargos, 1D+2 Minor Cargo, and 1D-5 incedental
which give you 90 tons of freight 90% of the time.

AnyDice

AnyDice is an advanced dice probability calculator, available online. It is created with roleplaying games in mind.

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I wouldn't chance it with any of the others.

The way I interpret it is that you're obligated to pay 12 months out of 13 months per year for 40 years.
Makes the break even math a touch obnoxious, but there's also a practical reason for organizing things this way. Mortgage payments can't be made at all starports.

I forget where the reference is, so I forget the details, but I'm pretty sure that bank financing mortgage payments can be made at any type A or B starport (no problem) ... and I think also at type C ... but I suspect that type D, E and (of course) X will not have any interstellar banking branch associated with them, so you wouldn't necessarily be able to make mortgage payments while operating in those areas. Having an "automatic 1 month amnesty on mortgage payments per year" would then make it easier for free traders to ply their trading business in regions that are "underserved" by interstellar banking.

Depends on how you intend to operate.
If you're doing nothing but Empty/Full/Empty/Full as a tramp with no destinations beyond the immediate next one, then yeah ... having "too big" of a cargo hold is going to be something of a waste.

However ... if you've got a route planned for 2+ destinations from your point of origin, you can sell tickets to ALL of those locations you're committed to going to.

Let's say that you're planning to make a run from Regina/Regina to Efate/Regina in your starship.

You're starting @ Regina/Regina.
Where can you sell tickets to as your destinations?

If you're a TRAMP, you can only sell tickets to your immediate next destination because you've got no idea where you're "going next" beyond your next port of call (it all depends on what the market demand is at the destionation.

If you're running a PLANNED ROUTE, starting from Regina, you could declare that your destinations (plural) are ...

1. Ruie/Regina
2. Forboldn/Regina
3. Knorbes/Regina
4. Whanga/Regina
5. Alell/Regina
6. Efate/Regina

... and you get to sell tickets for passengers and freight cargo to ALL of those locations (until you have no more capacity remaining and your manifest is full).

When you get to Ruie/Regina, you're still running a PLANNED ROUTE, so you can declare that your destinations (plural) are ...

1. Forboldn/Regina
2. Knorbes/Regina
3. Whanga/Regina
4. Alell/Regina
5. Efate/Regina

And you just keep "rolling over" the contents of your revenue tonnage while working your way towards Efate/Regina.
Then you reverse course back to Regina/Regina and do the entire process all over again.

By committing to and declaring multiple destinations along a plotted route, you make it possible to sell tickets and generate revenues to multiple destinations ... not just 1. You then use that "overlapping of demand" to help keep your shipping manifests full while working your way through regions with low population worlds that would otherwise be "uneconomical" to visit if you were only doing "One And Done" trading like a tramp merchant would do.

The reason why it's NOT done that way is because of how the bookkeeping needs to work for subsidized starships.
Under subsidy, the operator is responsible for 100% of the expenses, but receives only 50% of the revenues from ticket sales.

So a high passage (Cr10,000 revenue) combined with life support expenses (Cr2000) yields a net profit of 10,000-2000=Cr8000 for a non-subsidized starship ... but under subsidy would yield a net profit of 10,000/2-2000=Cr3000 for the operator. Note that these results are not direct multiples of each other due to the subtraction of expenses factor in order to calculate the profits from ticket sales.

Take things a step further and in non-subsidized service, that high passenger ticket computes to Cr2000 profit per revenue ton (because, 4 ton stateroom) ... while under subsidy, it computes to being Cr750 profit per revenue ton (due to the 4 ton stateroom). Compare and contrast that with a "revenue density" of Cr1000 profit per ton for freight cargo tickets (non-subsidized) and Cr500 profit per ton for freight cargo tickets (subsidized) ... and that's before including the cost (tonnage, salary, life support overhead) of needing 1x Steward per 8x high passengers in CT (as per LBB2.81, p16).

So yes, it IS "fiddly" to need separate cells in the spreadsheet of accounting ... but there's a good reason for needing to do it that way (to prevent premature optimization).

 

[spank]

I always figured fuel or smuggling space was doable.

I am of a similar mind.
It seems that dividing the ship into "Engineering and Main" sections was a holdover from LBB '77 when ships were torch-ships. It talks about the engineering section needing to shielded and the main hull being pressurized.

" Hulls of different mass displacements come in standard configurations which divide the tonnage into a (shielded) engineering section and a
(pressurized) main compartment. All drives and powerplants must be located in the engineering section, and only drives and power plants
may be placed in that section. All other ship components, including fuel, cargo hold, living space, and computer must be located in the main compartment.

VS
"When hulls are constructed, they are divided into an engineering section for the drives and the main compartment for everything else. All drives and power plants must be located in the engineering section, and only drives and power plants may be placed in that section. "

The book is rather rigid about this, which I don't think is a huge deal, but again I think it's a hold over from when the drive was a giant freakin' fusion torch sticking out the back of the ship. IMTU I'd certainly allow players to modify the size of the engineering section, and to put fuel in the engineering section. I see no reason a standard hull or even a standard design couldn't be modified into a custom design. If I'm paying the architect's fee he can damn well put the bulkhead where ever I want.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

IMTU I'd certainly allow players to modify the size of the engineering section, and to put fuel in the engineering section.

You can house rule whatever you want, of course.

I see no reason a standard hull or even a standard design couldn't be modified into a custom design. If I'm paying the architect's fee he can damn well put the bulkhead where ever I want.

Of course you can, it's just not a standard hull anymore, but a custom-build job, at custom pricing, hence the horrendous price of the Far Trader.

 

[infojunky]

A 400 ton ship needed type C drives to get Jump/Maneuver 1
The subsidized freighter is a LBB 2 '77 design that has been carried forward to later editions.

There a buttload of bits like that sprinkled throughout the corpus.

 

[spank]

TBH the standard hull table is a little strange in lot of ways.
The discount doesn't track smoothly, and the size the engineering compartment is strange.
The 100 ton hull has the engineering section sized for drives to get a performance of 2/2/2, for the 200 ton hull it's sized for 1/1/1
and the rest of the hulls aren't clearly sized for any drive combo,
I think changing the standard hulls so the engineering section is sized for 2/2/2 drives would be a good start, I could see sizing it for a larger powerplant too, to allow extra power for weapons.
As I said, The costs are weird too, the discount doesn't scale smoothly.

If I were going to clean it up I'd do something like this:

Hull	Drives	Main Hull	Engineering	Cost	Time
100	A/A/A	85	15	4	9
200	B/B/B	175	25	10	11
400	D/D/D	355	45	24	14
600	F/F/F	535	65	42	22
800	H/H/H	715	85	64	25
1000	K/K/K	895	105	90	27

The time is a still a little odd, but I think the discount and hull/engineering are better, meaning the discount scales more smooth and the drive sizing follow a paradigm.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The 100 ton hull has the engineering section sized for drives to get a performance of 2/2/2, for the 200 ton hull it's sized for 1/1/1

They're the same drives (Size A). LBB2 provided no way to build a 100Td J1/1G ship.

In a simulationist system, the standard hulls would correspond to the most common ship type at each tonnage, probably J1/1G. In a per-parsec (not the RAW per-jump) cargo rate, J2 ships might be the most common. Maybe.

The discounts were an arbitrary patch to make the usual "starter" ships viable under the cargo rules without re-writing the construction rules from scratch. (With the Type S, it's about the secondary market for the ships -- see the Type J Seeker, for example.)

 

[spank]

There a buttload of bits like that sprinkled throughout the corpus.

While I like CT, there are quite a few instances where it could use some clean up and a few extra rules. Such as how to go about upgrading a ship's drives. The rules are very granular when it comes drive/hull performance. For example there is no 300 ton hull, which would be ideal to fit with C/C/C drives for performance 2. Later products like MGT or CE have improvement that should be folded back into CT, such as an expanded drive potential table, and expanded hull table.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Drive upgrade issues are built into the system, likely on purpose.

HG is actually worse if taken literally. LBB2 lets you swap from J2/1G to J1/2G, HG does not allow replacing any drive with a physically larger drive of that type.

 

[spank]

They're the same drives (Size A). LBB2 provided no way to build a 100Td J1/1G ship.

In a simulationist system, the standard hulls would correspond to the most common ship type at each tonnage, probably J1/1G. In a per-parsec (not the RAW per-jump) cargo rate, J2 ships might be the most common. Maybe.

The discounts were an arbitrary patch to make the usual "starter" ships viable under the cargo rules without re-writing the construction rules from scratch. (With the Type S, it's about the secondary market for the ships -- see the Type J Seeker, for example.)

While I understand the desire to patch the rules to favor the types of craft the game focuses on, I think the discount could be handled better. For example the 800 ton and 1000 ton standard hulls offer no discount at all. So really you only have 4 discounted hulls. I think making the discount linear is better, I started with the 1000 ton Hull, giving it a 10% discount, and discounted each hull size a little more as I went down, 20% for the 800, 30% for the 600, 40% for the 400, 50% for the 200, and 60% for the 100 ton hull. That gives you 6 discounted hulls, and I think a 300 ton hull, and maybe a 500 ton hull would be nice. Couple this with an extended drive potential table and it really opens up the options for smaller craft.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Agreed, a simulationist system would be preferable. But, it is what it is.

 

[spank]

Drive upgrade issues are built into the system, likely on purpose.

HG is actually worse if taken literally. LBB2 lets you swap from J2/1G to J1/2G, HG does not allow replacing any drive with a physically larger drive of that type.

IDK, I think it's kind of odd that a game with so many options would also try to lock you in to a few bad options. Especially considering that MT, T4, and T5 dropped the idea of dividing the ship into engineering section and main section.

 

[Grav_Moped]

DK, I think it's kind of odd that a game with so many options would also try to lock you in to a few bad options

It's not about bad options, it's about making the minimum viable products actually viable when they wouldn't be without the adjustments.

Makes upgrading an expensive proposition (that is, a money sink to keep players from hoarding cash).

 

[Rupert]

While I like CT, there are quite a few instances where it could use some clean up and a few extra rules. Such as how to go about upgrading a ship's drives. The rules are very granular when it comes drive/hull performance. For example there is no 300 ton hull, which would be ideal to fit with C/C/C drives for performance 2. Later products like MGT or CE have improvement that should be folded back into CT, such as an expanded drive potential table, and expanded hull table.
View attachment 6047

Or you could just use a formula, like HG, MT, TNE, T4, etc. did.

 

[RossWinn]

I have always considered it very odd that cargo and fuel space were not modular. That way if you had a J-3 ship and you only needed to J-2 to a destination you could take more cargo.

 

[Spinward Flow]

I think it's kind of odd that a game with so many options would also try to lock you in to a few bad options.

LBB2 (77 and 81) are products of a particular era ... when pocket calculators were rare and expensive, so it "made sense" to present information in more of a table of presets that you pick off a menu. It minimized the amount of calculation that would need to be done by the Players/Referees, keeping things in the realm of KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID (KISS) arithmetic that didn't require much in the way of computational power.

Nowadays, with the Internet of (hackable) Things (IoT), even kitchen appliances have compute power and want to be tethered to home networks.

Point being that as easy access to pocket calculators became widespread, shifting away from a lookup table (limited set answers) to a more formulaic basis (compute your own answers) became a much more reasonable proposition ... not to mention "fun" to do if you've got a Casio Credit Card Calculator in your pocket to do all the number crunching you might want (if there's enough light, of course).

If you're working from a lookup table of a VERY LIMITED collection of preset options to choose from, only a subset of those choices are going to be "viable" in an advantageous way, leaving the rest behind as "junk" that is nice to have for completeness but is otherwise quite useless (because, why use worse options?).



Nowadays, we think nothing of having calculators in almost all of our electronic devices (watches, phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, etc.) capable of doing most basic arithmetic (plus the occasional bit of algebra and trigonometry) calculating.



The simple fact of the matter is that the Drive Performance lookup table of LBB2 was the product of an era in which easy access to computational power could not be assumed ... so a lookup table made sense. It was, however, rapidly overtaken by advancements in personal computing technology (cheap credit card calculators being a good starting point) which made a more formulaic approach (as used in LBB5.80) a better paradigm capable of a wider range of possibilities that could be better "tailored" into a broader set of potential use cases.