Actually not. At least in the U.S. What country are you in? I have a buddy who worked in repo. Police don't go near this stuff.
Financing and repossession
- Thread starter Carlobrand
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Actually not. At least in the U.S. What country are you in? I have a buddy who worked in repo. Police don't go near this stuff.
Comparing a starship costing 500 workers' annual salaries in a far future interstellar society dominated by nobles and megacorporations, with a car costing a few months salary for one worker in an American society balanced between business interests and the will of the majority, might not be the best way to analyze this. Furthermore, human society has seen debtors' prisons and other penalties to defaulters and absconders in the past; American society might not be the best benchmark against which to measure Imperial law.
It remains possible that the powers-that-be, in a far future society based on thousands of years of interstellar shipping and shipbuilding, have a long tradition of having the interstellar government actively help those powers hunt down the ne'er-do-wells who skip off with their very valuable investments. There is no one so well-positioned to help as the government that controls all the starports.
You're certainly allowed to create whatever house rules you like. I'm just basing off of what we know of civil law.
Alaska, for one. Once the title is ordered transferred by the court, refusal to surrender the vehicle is grand theft. Resisting repossession is felony assault. At least, in practice.
Spain, if there's fraud on it (and making the collateral disapear is seen as fraud, AFAIK)
Another canon source: MgT:CB page 138, sidebar about skipping:
(emphasis is mine)
And see it talks about Imperial, not local authorities.
But is it an Imperial crime? Apperently it is, but that raises the problem I pointed out before (see below).
What's the reason for the difference? When do you get hunted by private skip tracers and when do you get hunted by the Imperial authorities for your crimes? It seems to me that it would be either/or; either you're on a list of people being hunted by naval vessels or you're not. What does the die roll indicate?
I was arguing that it was not necessarily an Imperial crime. And the reason I was arguing that is, as I mentioned before, that to me, the bottom line is that if the Imperium did take an active interest in tracking down and recovering skipped ships, I think skip tracers would be out of a job. This is something everyone seems to have just blipped over, yet to me it's the real crux. If the Imperium is looking for you, half the worlds in the Imperium are closed to you. There's no fifty-fifty chance of visiting Regina and maybe conducting business and getting away again. Enter Assiniboia's jump shadow and you're going to get captured by the Navy before the SPA can say "no departure permit". You'll be restricted to worlds with no regular Imperial naval presence.
Nothing implausible about the Imperium hunting you with ships if they think you've stolen a multi-million credit asset. It's just a rather heavy-handed 'game over' situation. If you want your players to worry about skip tracers and half-assed (i.e. resistable) attempts at repossession, you HAVE to keep the Imperial forces out of it.
IMO.
Hans
Okay, a country with an economy the size of SoCal. Not the best example but its something. A far cry from a huge econ though...
I agree with your assessment ... sort of like the difference between being wanted for armed robbery by the County Sheriff and being on the US Government's Terrorist Watch List ... all based on the roll of a die.
One thought that occurs to me is the distinction in the US between robbing a grocery store (Armed Robbery handled by the City Police, County Sheriff [or State Police?]) depending on jurisdiction, and robbing either a Bank (FBI-Federal Crime) or Post Office (also a Federal Crime). There is some reported link between Mega-corporations and the Imperial Government, so perhaps, skipping on a 'bank financed' ship is a local crime handled by skip-tracers, while skipping on a Mega-corporation Financed ship is an Imperial Crime.
I'm just spit-balling an idea here ... personally, I agree that the Navy as a bounty hunter is serious overkill.
Canon is not a house rule. Canon provides a base roll of 12+ (and modifiers) to avoid repossession attempt "if detected by the authorities." That's a pretty high roll to make, and the invocation of "authorities" would very strongly suggest that it's based on whatever Imperial civil law exist. Canon further provides examples of such attempts: they "range from the formal service of papers through legal injunctions to armed boarding parties." Again, the citation of legal injunctions strongly implies Imperial civil law is being applied.
Of course, this is the IMTU forum: you are free to apply U.S. civil law instead of canon, if you choose. And, as usual, there are the typical canon conflicts to consider - the mention in places of skip tracers, for example. Balancing it all, it seems likely to me that there's a body of Imperial law to consider but that Imperial support consists mostly of handling information and granting legal authority to private parties to act against the skipper, which means that what happens at any given port depends on what agents the bank has there, how quickly they can maneuver the local bureaucratic landscape to obtain whatever legal authorization they need for their activities, what that legal authorization actually empowers them to do, and their preferred modus operandi for dealing with skippers.
So, for example, Mad Hatter arrives in orbit. Starport Authority notes its arrival, guides it into port, conducts the usual customs, and posts the ship on its Arrivals. Local bank office computer flags an alert that a ship in the Starport Arrivals board is on the bank's watchlist. Bank officer submits a claim to the Starport Authority. Starport Authority issues authorization for a notice of foreclosure to be delivered to the captain, but the bank office is responsible for hiring someone to deliver the notice - and if it doesn't get delivered, it doesn't count.
Or, Bank officer delivers evidence that a notice has already been delivered on Efate. Starport Authority issues authorization for an injunction preventing the ship from leaving port - but it's still a legal dispute between two private parties: the captain could petition to lift the injunction on some pretext or bribe some local official to "mislay" the injunction. Meanwhile, the bank office's application for a writ of seizure's being denied because there's no evidence that a prior hearing and determination has been logged (it was, but the captain bribed a clerk a couple worlds back to make a little typo while entering the ship's ident code), but the bank office has decided to discretely hire a few thugs to force their way aboard and sabotage the ship enough that it can't lift before the foreclosure can be completed. Had the little typo not occurred and thw writ of seizure been issued, the bank would still be responsible for hiring people to do it - they would be duly deputized to act in the name of the Imperium for this instance, of course. True Imperial entanglement would only occur if the ship did something that endangered other shipping, like trying to launch without Port approval and direction.
And so forth, and so forth. It's all up to the gamemaster's imagination. Key point is that Imperial authority can serve in a support role without necessarily taking over the hands-on role.
How can the Imperial authorities possibly not detect you? Your transponder is broadcasting the identity of your ship. The SPA runs the name against its watchlist and a flag pops, informing them that the Mad Hatter is a stolen ship and worth at the very least brownie points, more likely a reward, to capture and return to the owner. Unfortunately for the SPA, the local Imperial Navy squadron has already noticed the stolen ship and is engaged in a race with local system defense vessels to see who will capture the Mad Hatter first.
What's the difference in treatment based on? When do the Imperial authorities serve papers and when do they intercept with ships and send armed boarding parties? Are the Imperial authorities unable to make up their minds if the ship is stolen (subject to criminal law) or not (subject to civil law only)?
Not that it makes much difference to the PCs. One of the tropes I really disliked in GT: Ground Forces was "when the Imperial Marines arrive the fighting is over". Not because it was implausible, but because it made the Imperial marines useless to me as a GM, because that meant I had to make sure the Imperial marines didn't arrive. It's the same sort of thing here. Given a certain size of Imperial starport, when the guy with the legal papers shows up, the party's over. Note that if the ship's crew resist a representative of Imperial law, they're committing all sorts of serious crimes and will be heard of next on Darkmoon. I repeat, if you want the players to worry about resistable attempts to repossess, you have to make the prospective repossessors private individuals, more or less equal to the ship's crew in the eye of the law.
And if you don't want such attempts to be potentially avoidable, we're back with the game-stopper (No Saving Throw). Might as well not skip in the first place.
And hunting them with ships.
See, that's how I could see things working if the Imperial authorities weren't treating skipping as a felony, if you had to navigate the legal structure of the member world and the Imperials were just looking idly on. Otherwise, being detected by an Imperial ship (or a platoon of SPA guards) would mean game over.
Hans
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Correct. Please show "Cannon" that states that skipping is an IMPERIAL felony crime. Serving civil legal papers shows that it ISN'T.
I'll wait....
The fact that is an imperial crime and you're on Imperial database does not mean there's no place for private bounty-hunters. That will depend on the priority Imperial Authorities give to the repossession of ships.
I don't know well how Law Enforcement Agencies work in the US, but most TV serials show FBI enters in scene when a child disappears, and I guess that there are also some private eyes looking for missing children, even while those same children are in FBI databases. It's just a matter of priority: once a while has passed and the child does not appear, FBI moves his priority to more urging (and probably solvable) cases, and it loses priority, but not for his/her parents, that hire a private eye to keep the case as hot as possible.
That's, IMHO, entirely another matter: how fun will be YTU if the Imperial Authorities take active measures against it?
I like to keep MTU as realistic as I can, and if you call the attention of the Imperial Authorities, yes, you're in deep trouble. And if the Marines appear, the party is truly over (hint: try to avoid them appearing, unless you're on their side).
I've always thought (in any RPG) that if there's some stability in the zone, it's because authorities take the measures and have the power to keep it, so if you're going against them, expect all kinds of trouble.
If you want to allow your players to skipp their ship, of course, my kind of TU will be quite hostile to them. If you make it an Imperial crime, you're sending your players a message: think twice before doing it.
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CosmicGamer
SOC-14 1K
While skipping in a ship may seam more like repo of a car, plane, boat, whatever... why shouldn't defaulting on a loan have some similarities with home mortgage law, business law or other property law? Once proper action by the lender has occurred, the police help the lender recover the property by evicting the delinquent payer and everyone else so that the lender can take possession.
Expect a long wait. You may be confusing me with someone else, 'cause I don't recall saying anything about it being an Imperial felony - or a misdemeanor, for that matter.
Active Imperial involvement? Yes, though I don't think Imperial agents generally take a direct hand: I think they issue the legal authority, but you gotta go hire your own people to do the job. Until the case appears before an Imperial ... judge? magister? arbiter? ... it's a dispute between two civilians, and it could as easily be a computer error or some corrupt bank official as a failure of the ship owner, so putting Imperial officers at physical risk for the benefit of one side in a two-sided dispute is not something I'd do. Criminal matter? Not unless you're fiddling with your transponder signal or endangering traffic in your effort to avoid foreclosure.
(Sorry, I don't have Mongoose and, from what I've heard so far, probably won't get it - or at least it's well down on my priority list. It's enough trying to wrap my head around the MegaTrav and GURPS stuff with only a handful of the necessary books, and I'm thinking strongly of getting the new T5 - if I can figure out how. From where I sit, Imperial ships only get involved if there's an actual court hearing, a ruling against them, appeals are exhausted, and the players somehow manage to get back to the ship and launch despite that - which effort would involve a number of criminal violations, not the least of which would be launching in defiance of Port Authority Traffic Control instructions and thereby endangering other traffic. What can I say - I'm a bureaucrat.)
U.S./Terra, the police get involved after the judge has heard the case and made a ruling, or if someone does something that makes the judge worry about the security of the property prior to the ruling. "Proper action," in this context, means the lender has appeared and argued his case, the holder/debtor has argued his case (or failed to appear and argue after receiving a proper summons to do so), the judge has weighed the arguments and has issued a finding in favor of the lender. The police are then responding to a judicial order. This would only occur after a number of intervening hurdles had been cleared.
What those hurdles are has been left - deliberately, most likely - unstated in the Traveller universe. It's up to the gamemaster to decide how generous or cruel he's feeling. You could conceivably have the player's ship locked down the first time he misses his roll. Or, you could invent bureaucratic chances for him to legally evade the "axe": the lender must first, in the presence of an official accompanying witness, physically present the debtor with a notarized demand letter demanding arrears be rectified by a set deadline; after that deadline, the lender must present a notarized notice of intent to foreclose, with a second deadline by which the debtor can avoid foreclosure by paying all arrears (and perhaps penalties); after that deadline, the lender must file for foreclosure and present a summons to appear before the magistrate. As the ship hops from star to star, the lender may find that previous hurdles need to be repeated: some clerk - perhaps incompetent, perhaps failing to get the expected "fee" from the lender, perhaps bribed by the player or by some meddling third party - failed to enter the notice in the computer correctly, rendering it invalid; or some judge has a private disagreement with the lender's agent and arbitrarily finds some "problem" with the lender's paper trail. As far as I know, there are only hints and clues about the process: you as gamemaster can use those to buy your players time - or you can just drop the axe and leave the players grounded at the first bad roll.
As near as I can tell, CT Book 2 doesn't say anything more than that something happens, and MegaTrav (Imperial Encyclopedia) just parrots CT Book 2. It's up to you what that something is.
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
If the police do come near it, however, they will gladly charge you with grand theft auto. They also won't pull you over for 70 in a 60 where I live - but they'll gladly add that to your ticket if they pull you over for following too closely.
Not necessarily relevant, since we're looking for examples. Otherwise, you're restricted to ... the US, and maybe China.
It's a mechanic to make it a little less than a 50% chance the Imperial authorities will be after you. You can explain it however you like, but it's simply a mechanic to provide resolution.
I think you're taking the only active phrase in that quote ("hunted down") and making it bigger than is implied by the quote. I see that phrase as meaning they will chase you if they encounter you (and know who you are), not that they will take a flotilla and go searching across the subsector for you. Yes, it means you avoid places with a Navy presence if your skip has caught the eye of the Imperial authorities. (I would probably avoid Imperial starports altogether if I were skipping - for LOTS of reasons.)
Yes, I'm making those statements based not on precise statements of canon, but on reasoning out an end result based on what there is in canon.
This is very important to remember: not all felonies are equal (or misdemeanors, for that matter). Some never get attention, some get a lot of persistent attention. But, if your face is on one of those "most wanted" posters and you wander into a Post Office, you take a big risk. In this case, if you wander into an Imperial Navy presence and your ship is on one of those posters, you have just taken a HUGE risk.
Hans, if you will only be happy with canon telling you why it's set up the way it is, you're out of luck. Otherwise, a few posters here have presented some good material on different ways to handle it and remain within canon (as quoted previously). And, obviously, IMTU, YMMV, IMHO, IANACL, and all that jazz.
* IANACL - I Am Not A Canon Lawyer
CosmicGamer
SOC-14 1K
I like this snip and the rest of your post.
One reason I used a vague term like "Proper action" is because it is not defined precisely by the rules. The other being that IMTU things vary from one region of space to another and even two neighboring systems.
The "Proper action" would likely involve time and expense. For example, lawyers are not cheep. The more official hands on "help the lender recover" might not be free either with recovery fees, storage, etcetera. So bounty hunters / repo people can be preferred. There also could be some systems that outlaw outside bounty hunters to take any actions within the systems jurisdiction. Like i said, for me, I like a universe with variety and IMTU things vary from place to place. I'm not even sure if I need to say IMTU here. Since this is not well defined in the "canon", I don't think I'm doing anything that breaks canon, it's just my way of filling in the details.
IMTU, for most of the Imperium, some "Proper action" goes through the Imperial SPA. The initial process of just getting the SPA to, similiar to Mongoose Traveller "logged as criminals in the Imperial database", or in my case the ship information is what is documented and flagged, is generally fairly quick and low cost. What this initial "help the lender recover" does consistently throughout my Imerium is initiate a notice back to the proper parties that the ship was located at such and such location at such and such date. IMTU the notice will likely spread outward to other systems as fast or even faster than the person skipping since the ship usually has more layover time to broker deals, do side jobs, and so on. In general, unless something is done with the transponder, IMTU, it isn't too hard to keep track of where a ship was. As always, there is variation on what each location might optionally do with this information. For example, triggering additional administrative checks like a customs and Imperial ship safety "spot check", or maybe some official deciding to notify bounty hunters themselves for a kick back, ect, ect...
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About the fact of priority Imperial Authorities take on those cases according MgT, see that the modifiers are against it being prosecuted on the first month (default not yet confirmed), maximum tisk is among 1 and 6 months (default confirmed and case hot) and drops past 6 months (case colds). This colding of the case is where I see the niche for private repossessors.
And see that defaulting is not the same tan skipping, as defaulting may happen for a few months, and even negotiated with the bank, while skipping means voluntarely defaulting, trying to hide the colateral, and so bad faith/fraud is involved and that is what makes it a crime, not just the fact of defaulting your payments.
And see that defaulting is not the same tan skipping, as defaulting may happen for a few months, and even negotiated with the bank, while skipping means voluntarely defaulting, trying to hide the colateral, and so bad faith/fraud is involved and that is what makes it a crime, not just the fact of defaulting your payments.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Who are you borrowing the money from and who is going to take an intrest in defaulting and skipping?
Imperial government begins at the subsector level.
Why would this level of government trouble itself with a loan default from the planet of Wonga to a ship purchaser?
If you took out the loan from a megacorp backed bank you may be in for more trouble though, since they appear to be very involved at the planetary level.
Imperial government begins at the subsector level.
Why would this level of government trouble itself with a loan default from the planet of Wonga to a ship purchaser?
If you took out the loan from a megacorp backed bank you may be in for more trouble though, since they appear to be very involved at the planetary level.
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