I never said the skills only applied to PC's. I said that only the active seller applies their skill. Same is true under ALL non GT rulesets.
ANd, Actually, yes, the whole point of insurance and finance companies IS GAMBLING. Gambling upon the borrower's or insured's lifestyle.
By definition, a loan is a contract to repay. In practice, however, it's a leveraged risk gamble on the borrower.
Insurance is a clear gamble: betting that the insured will not have accidents that the insurer will have to pay for. Hence the rather noisome costs of health insurance, and the rather low rates for non-renwable term life insurance (where the insurer keeps all the premiums, and drops the risk compeltely after the term...). I can insure my daughter for M$1 for under $100/year to her 12th birthday... but the expectation is that for every 7-YO, they will make $500, but less than 1:2000 policies will be paid out... (actually, it's more like 1:10000...)
There is no indication in ANY non-GT ruleset of insurance on ships nor cargos.
Actually, Insurance Companies are Finance Companies by another name. And neither of them gamble. (In fact neither does a Casino.) They use the law of large numbers, and don't accept substandard risks. And while they are called risks, and in most Permanent Life Insurance Contract the insured can not put in more money than they or their beneficiary gets back out, the Insurance Company still makes a profit, usually, like a Bank, via the margins. FInancial Institutions look at a very large pool and determine a statistically, where the profit margin is and set their rates, and acceptable people to deal with, a comfortable margin above that line.
The investment return on starship loans is VERY low... low enough to appear subsidized... in EVERY ruleset, including GT.
It adds up to subsidies at non-investment rates to simply get ships moving.
A typical home mortgage makes you pay for the house roughly 2-3 times over 30 years. Traveller is a game, and they kept it as simple interest instead of compound interest because of that, but you still pay for the ship, 2.35 times (Assuming the standard OTU 13 month calendar.) during the life of the mortgage. A small commercial starship costs (at $3 per Cr1) more than Bill Gate's home.
And if one looks at intercontinental trade in the 15th and 16th C, one finds ship-owners generally speculated, not shipped freight, as their primary mode. Some ships paid off in two trips... MWM has explicitly stated an Age of Sail model... that includes primary mode of long-range shipping being speculation.
Lloyds of London routinely financed and insured ships on extremely risky business plans. Including ones they wouldn't do now. Including quite a few that didn't break even for them on a case by case basis, but since they made more than they lost on average, they profited.
The same MUST be true of speculation, for if it isn't, then there will be no speculation, and all goods will only get shipped, or for that matter made/grown, when orders come in.
Then why can a Jump 1 commercial ship make a clear profit above their mortgage at carriage rates, and anything Jump-2 or higher can not? After all according to your model, nobody should be simply charging carriage rates.
Further by the simple expedient of allowing a charge per Parsec instead of per jump, the profit margin of a commercial ship at carriage rates very close to equals out. (Up to Jump-3 definitely, Jump-4 only when you get a bit larger than typical adventurer class ships.)
Further it does not make sense that if a company wants to transport goods to a destination more than one parsec away, or a passenger wishes to travel to a destination more than one parsec away, it costs more to get there substantially slower on the same type of transport. In fact the slower the journey the more the customer pays.
The OP asked what my rule changes were, well that is the explanation of them. You can argue chapter and verse all you want. I will still not change those rules that work. And regardless of the rules you can not justify, in my mind at least, though I suspect I am not alone on this, that a charge per jump, where any ship with more than a jump-1 capability can not pay its mortgage at carriage rates, will ever get financed. Nor will there be any more than a trickle of trade anywhere off the mains. Making Rhylanor and Trin "backwater worlds" and "Merchant Cruisers" totally useless.
The economics of the Jump-1 ship is far superior under the per jump model than any other ship. In fact the jump-1 ship is so economically superior to any other ship, to include for spec trade use, that there is no economic reason to build a commercial ship that is more than Jump-1 with the exception of couriers (which are obviously not Spec Traders). There is certainly no reason to put a passenger cabin on a ship that has more than jump-1 capability or carry and pay a steward. On the other hand there are plenty of adventure reasons that a Referee may want the characters to operate or make use of a Jump-2+ ship, but in a "hard science" game, that ship has to have an economic reason for its existence, so
I choose to "fix" the economics. It strikes me as strange that the simple change of charging per parsec evens everything out and makes a better case for a Jump-2 or Jump-3 merchant ship to even exist than the standard "it can reach more destinations." After all "it can reach more destinations" is a game reason not an economic reason.
