Getting Rich, the EASY way (re:MGT Ship Accounting)

[e_tenebris_lux]

So I'm tooling around, trying to get a grasp on ship operations costs, and well, I'm not really all that happy with the results... so i'm thinking I'm doing/assuming something wrong ?

The premise: I get a "no money down" mortgage on a Scout ship (27 Mcr), with a monthly payment of 1/240th the value (112, 669cr a month).

I make 2 one parsec jumps a month (the old 'one week planet-side, one week in jump, repeat' deal); which costs me 10 tons of fuel per jump, and 2 tons of fuel per week (24 tons per month, @ 500cr/ ton for refined fuel; for 12,000cr a month in fuel).
The two systems i go back and forth between are both A class Starports (costing me on average 3,500cr per berthing; or 7,000cr a month).
Maintenance (2,754cr per month).
Life Support, whether i use it or not (8,000cr per month).

Total Costs:
112, 699 cr per month, Debt.
12,000 cr per month, Fuel.
7,000 cr per month, Berthing.
2,754 cr per month, Maintenance.
8,000 cr per month, Life Support.
= 142,423 cr per month.

There are 4 staterooms on board. I live in one. I fill the other 3 with High passengers each way, both times per month (6,000cr per month each, x3 rooms, twice a month = 36,000cr).
There is 8 tons of cargo space. I'm not into wheeling & dealing, so i fill it (luckily) with 8 tons of Freight each & every trip (8 tons, 1,000cr per ton, both ways = 16,000cr per month).
= 104,000 cr per month.

I end up OWING ~ 38,423 cr per month !

Ok, so I could go to lower Starport planets (reducing my berthing costs), and I could use unrefined fuel (instead of the expensive stuff), and I could do speculative trade instead of freight (risky perhaps, but better money), but wow, I'm STILL way in debt every month.

Is it POSSIBLE to make LOW RISK money with a Scout ship ? Maybe if i paid 35% of the ship's total cost upfront, and so, reduce my monthly mortgage payment by 35%; then I'd break even every month.


SO, after that harsh wake up, I thought maybe the Scout ship was an anomaly, and that by its very design its not SUPPOSE to make money... so I punched the numbers into a spread sheet for all the other space craft in the book. And making about the same assumptions with each different ship (although i did allow a few more crew for larger ships, which did reduce the # of high passengers a month a little), i got this:

per month
Scout -38, 423 ugh.
Seeker -3,754 better... but still bad.. by maybe mining is better....
Free Trader 417,590 ! WOW, easy money!
Far Trader 11,191 ! Well, its ok money i suppose.
Fat Trader 793,895 ! BIG MONEY !
Lab Ship -161,965 Ugh. however, convert the labs to cargo, then its 238,035 !
Gazelle -800,650 Ugh. but no surprise really. its made to fight.
Hvy.Freighter 1,286,661 ! SUPER BIG MONEY !
Yacht 96,303 ! GOOD money.
Merc Cruiser -1,187,203 Super Ugh. but no surprise.
Corsair 224,125 ! doing freight & pass is EASY MONEY compared to piracy!

Conclusions ?
Well, first off.. am i doing anything wrong ?? Maybe someone can spot some math or assumption errors...

Otherwise.. my advice... is to SKIP the Scout ship (and the Merc Cruiser & the Gazelle, of course), pay as MUCH money as you can upfront, to reduce those monthly costs... and live the easy life, and GET RICH !!

 

[far-trader]

Hi there looong time lurker first time poster e tenebris lux, and welcome aboard

...officially

I can't answer your question too specifically, still no MGT for me, but it does look a little like the old problem of a simplified trade scheme applied too liberally. I doubt you're doing anything wrong exactly, math wise or rules wise. It is more probably simply anticipating results to make sense.

What I mean is taking CT as an example (and MGT is built on that so it should apply more or less), the trade system was really only meant to apply to one situation, a Free Trader crewed by PCs with the goal being for the ref to have to provide "adventures" for them to make the payments now and then.

It's never really been a good economic model, or even supposed to be. And if your numbers are right (and I have no reason to see why not) then MGT has really gone too far the other way, a Free Trader shouldn't be a license to print money, well not imo anyway. Make a small profit yes, but half a million credits after expenses? Not even counting speculative trade? Too much.
[FONT=arial,helvetica] [/FONT]

 

[Mithras]

Remember the scout is well .. a scout. It isn't supposed to be used as a merchantman. Anyone would be lucky to make profits using it that way. And I doubt you'd get High Passage passengers without a steward on board. Maybe Middle passage? I treat it like a first class ticket, and I'm not wasting it on some battered old scout ship with a crazy one-man outfit.

 

[Ghrathryn]

As far as economics is concerned, no ship built for anything that isn't trading cargos or running passengers around will be an economic burden on the owners, which is why you generally see them in the hands of those that make money in some other fashion, either by taxes, grants, raiding, contracts for military assistance or something of the like.

Frankly if you want money through trade, you need something with cargo capacity to spare, either a trader, corsair, liner or a Q-ship, because on most other things, your quarters will be filled with crewmen or specialists and your holds will be stuffed with spares, supplies and munitions.

I've got a near 300 kiloton warship I'm designing using a modded version of the GURPS ship builder, but that, so far, would cost the organisation it belongs to in the region of 500 billion, and that's without the crew costs, fuel, extra munitions, strikes, etc loaded on.

A 300 kiloton merchanter, or even Q-ship, on the other hand, could dump the engines, shielding, weapons and several of the strikes to bolster cargo, giving it a good deal of room to lug goods around, but making it a rich target to pluck.

 

[Merxiless]

Yeah, old hand here, playing Classic since 1977.

The deal is, as others have said, an old scout ship is not the way to go to make a pile as a trader, especially not hauling Base freight.

Nor will you get money (much) with passengers, because for the same Class A ticket a soul can board a liner, first class with a damn swimming pool, dining rooms, a casino, and dancing aboard.

Now yeah if you live out in the boonies where class D ports are common, you can find people who need a ride.

But pursuing dreams of avarice with an "S" scout, with no money up front, not on detached duty...is a loser bet.

Detched duty, you are not making payments...Haul speculative cargo, like Gems or Rare Wines, or computer parts, something like that.

Fill passengers if you need, smarter money is chartering the ship for a special patron (Read: Adventure).

I also didn't see any layout in your totals for Ship Loss Insurance.

Depending on your flavor, and setup of your campaign, piracy might be virtually non-existent, or common.

If common, you're gonna need a lot of firepower, or insurance, or both, plus a stsh of cash as liquid funds to invest in speculative cargo.

Best money if you want to trade is yes a Free Trader, some payments already made, insured, on a good (IN to AG type) route or trade triangle, with a crew of 40 year old guys with a big stash of guns.

A seeker is okay, if you want to lurk in belts and once every few months strike it rich, while the rest of the hauls don't really break even, but help to defray operating costs, until the big score is found... again pirate4s / competitors in the belt can be problems.

Good luck.

 

[evirskeen]

In virtually any traveller campagin I have ever been in, if the players had a scout ship it was as a mustering out benefit from being in the scout service. So the players only had to worry about fuel, life support and maintenance. Even then, whenever possible we would use unrefined fuel and avoid berthing costs by going into a parking orbit and using the "skiff"* to get to the high port or the surface. This tended to make things Easier for the GM as the rewards from any individual mission did not have to be as high thus simplifying the task of manageing the balance in the campaign.

* Skiffs also known as light boats or sometimes dingys are 4 ton versions of the ships boat made to fit in a standard ships air raft hanger.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Isn't maintenance free for a scout ship? At least for those "on loan" from the service?

In that case you only between 15.000 and 27000 Credits/Month to make up, depending on where you aquire fuel.

 

[Icosahedron]

I think the original poster was querying why you can make so much money with a Trader or Merchant, not why you can't with a Scout.

 

[atpollard]

Isn't maintenance free for a scout ship? At least for those "on loan" from the service?

In that case you only between 15.000 and 27000 Credits/Month to make up, depending on where you aquire fuel.

In LBB2, the Scout could run just fine on unrefined fuel - putting the 'typical' closer to the lower end of your scale.

 

[atpollard]

I wonder if the trade system could be modified to favor SOC over trader/broker/world factors - "It is who you know rather than what." That would increase the value of the currently 'least valuable' attribute.

 

[Mithras]

Ha! More money to suck from them!! I pay insurance on EVE for my ship, what on earth do you reckon would be a decent value to pay in Traveller?

I have NO IDEA what would be a good value, lets say it pays back the list price of the PCs ship of that age.

Any ideas?

I also didn't see any layout in your totals for Ship Loss Insurance

 

[mmbutter]

I think the original poster was querying why you can make so much money with a Trader or Merchant, not why you can't with a Scout.

Well, his assumption is that he will always have a full cargo hold and a full load of passengers. This scenario is unlikely to occur since it presumes that you're just jumping between two worlds one jump away from each other and that they ship enough between themselves to always keep you full (if that was true, a bunch of other ship captains would be there doing it already, hence you would have to fight for cargo / passengers.)

If you actually run the numbers for a chain of worlds (where you're taking much of the cargo more than one jump) and assume that you run only about 70-75% full, and only get a few high passage (the rest middle), the numbers aren't so good anymore. ;-) The latter is a more "real world" scenario.

 

[mmbutter]

OK, I did a spreadsheet with some "less optimistic" assumptions.

The changes I did from the original post's assumptions are:

Of the passenger staterooms available, on average you will only fill 1/3 with high passage, the balance will be middle passage. I also reserved some staterooms for other crew, I didn't assume that the owner will be running the ship and serving as steward on his own. I also did not include double bunking.

Of the cargo space available, on average you will fill 75% and of the space used, 1/3 will be one parsec, 1/3 will be 2 parsecs, 1/3 will be 3 parsecs.

Working from those assumptions, even the far trader has to work hard to make money. Of course, the cargo numbers I used would not really be valid for a far trader, which has a strength of longer legs.

Also, the profit/loss column is before any crew salaries.

http://s3.silent-tower.org/Ship Economics.pdf

 

[Merxiless]

I play Eve also.

Certainly, detached duty, the service (one thinks) would assume the loss. Lose your ship, you're done.

A scout purchased, and insured, there'd be depreciation, over time, based on age, paid out as a function of useful service life left.

Of course, you'll have insurance scams, etc. More tools for adventures.

I would think that insurance rates would depend on the relative danger of the sector you are operating in.

Then there is a followup investigation, which m,ight leave little to no debris, depending on circumstances.

EVE rates seem about right, as far as that goes.

 

[savage]

the merchant approach

Just a couple notes to the original poster.

• in a common home rule variation of the game refs would reduce the price of the starship sometimes dramatically (10%,25%,50% of the original cost). You can buy a pretty good yacht for 2.7mil today...for example. And charter it out. And then that used market value may kick in too.
• like todays standards for chartering, fishing..etc. Its not necessarily a great wealth building approach. People that fish..love to fish.
• what about the disaster fund beyond insurance. You've lost the maneuver drive and need a whole new unit. And not part of a minor or major refit.
• Then there was a good track with alternate means of profit. The fixed up scout as a mini-yacht. "we'll go where you want" or somewhere special.
• Corporate deliveries even... Certainly there would be delivery services like UPS or charter companies like the Moorings keeping the boat busy, studying routes for a slice of the take.