Which career's mustering out tables can give a PC 40MCr? Which career's mustering out tables can give a PC even the down payment on a 40MCr loan even if a bank is stupid enough to loan them that money without collateral, a biz plan, and references?
The thing to keep in the back of your mind is this:
When a player musters out a character using the standard Traveller rules - said character has a chance at a ship. If said character is lucky enough to get five rolls in which they get a "ship" result for their mustering out, said character actually OWNS his ship outright. More often than not, characters usually only have one successful roll for ship ownership, and still owe 40 years worth of loan payments for said ship. None the less, by the rules, said characters have already somehow, managed to scrape together, the down payment requirement for a ship that is worth 37.08 MCr (in Classic Traveller). Each subsequent reciept of a starship ownership, essentially grants the character equity in the ship equal to 10 year's payments, and the characters now only owe 30 years payments left.
So, the original question of Shadowrunner actually makes sense in light of the rules as written. If the characters who can gain a ship as part of their mustering out benefits has "successfully" gotten the bank's permission somehow in the past, it would make as much sense for a GM to specify that for smaller or less costly starships, the bank has already granted permission. In fact? Were I the GM and Shadowrunner were a player in my campaign world, I'd likely accept his question, think about it, and then offer the following solution:
In lieu of a Free Trader type A hull worth 7.56 MCr for the initial down payment ownership receipt, a player such as Shadowrunner could trade that 7.56 MCr for the 4 MCr down payment required for a 100 dton ship worth 20 MCR (if it were possible in the original CT book rules, which I am guessing it is not!), then the original fee of 7.56 was still raised by the character mustering out, and can be allocated towards the 4 MCr for the down payment, and the remaining 3.56 MCr could be used to pre-pay the monthly loan payments of 83,333.33 Cr per month - permitting the owner to try and make a go of it. Why?
Because somehow, said character was able to amass the down payment for a 37.08 MCr ship to begin with. Whether he spends it on a Type A free trader, or something else is immaterial.
Now, if Shadowrunner wanted to purchase a ship worth 20 MCR - then we'd just have to bury that 7.56 MCr equity into the 20 MCr ship instead of a 37.08 MCr ship. I might suggest "Why not treat the extra equity as being payment for the ship - a whole whopping 3.5 years worth of payments towards the original 40 year loan. Alternatively? Why not treat that equity as pre-paid mortgage payments in an escrow account, granting the ship owner an opportunity to try and make a living as a tramp freighter with the smaller ship.
It isn't as if CT offered a LOT of vararity of ships for use as "mustering out benefits". Had someone taken the time to create variant ships - we could have had a 160 dton ship, or perhaps a 125 dton ship, or a 100 dton ship, or what have you, and then had a massive "parking lot's worth" of ships that could be had as mustering out benefits. Instead, the original authors kept it simple, and left the "expansions" to the creative GM's as they saw fit. Myself? I don't see the harm in it to specify that the mustering out benefits up to 7.56 MCr for the initial receipt of the ship benefit- can be used as the character sees fit, providing that all of the money is tied up as part of the ship's assets and not easily sold/borrowed against by the player characters for adventuring purposes.
Somehow, the player character managed to gain the initial 7.56 MCr. That's according to the rules
My point, I suppose, was that Andrew Boulton finally got through my thick skull with respect to bridge sizes (20 tons is much too big for a Beowulf).
