Golden Age idea for ships and PCs

[Garyius2003]

Currently the rich and major companies are buying NetJet cards.

https://www.netjets.com/Home/

They end up paying about $600,000 (US) for 52 flight hours in a Citation X, it holds about 12 passengers, is fast, people can hold meetings or work on board. They only charge hours for the actual passenger leg.

They mark off less hours for using a smaller plane, and more for a larger one.

The PCs are hired after their first career to crew an X-ShipX. The planet level rich, minor nobles, planetary or subsector Corp Manager teams.

The ships follow the X boat routes, and allow for privacy and the ability to work or privately party for those who have access to the money to buy into the service, but not the resources or need to buy, staff, and maintain a private ship.

The safari ship storylines, but much broader and making more sense. You would also see 300-500 ton J5 or 6 vessels making sense for more fixed routing in the interior of the Imperium, and how older ones could be refurbed and sent out to the Marches.

 

[Timerover51]

A good use for the noble who would like to get some economic return on his yacht.

 

[boomslang]

A good use for the noble who would like to get some economic return on his yacht.

One of the advantages of these types of on-demand models is that they tend to be most useful for traveling between smaller, regional airports via what are essentially direct charter flights without necessarily having to take scheduled wide-body airliner flights into and out of hub airports for the middle legs of the trip, thus saving time and money.

It would make more sense, for example, for a subsector- or sector-wide corporation to co-lease its couriers and yachts and safari ships and whatnot from a holding and operating company, the lessee paying only for the trips on which its own company personnel fly for business.

This would also make an excellent primarily-passengers-and-Mail alternative financing model for PCs who want the advantages of Subsidy to underwrite their starship operations but are wary of a tedious back-and-forth milk run and the associated need to constantly scrounge up cargo and passengers on the same old couple of worlds.

As I am looking at it, in addition to situations where the vessels are co-owned by the primary lessors, this kind of setup could perhaps alternatively have leasing-company-employee, owner-operator PCs flying a (to them) unpredictable route often to, from, and between subsector backwaters, with plenty of opportunities to conduct "side business" along the way, while still keeping an unwelcomely-tight schedule and facing frequent safety inspections by their employer's representatives.

If using the Xnet as a backbone, a holding company ought to be able to make this service work with J-3 or J-4 starships, or even J-2 ones if concentrating on serving the worlds supported by Type S instead of Type X visits.

Lots of possible Patron encounters are likely to ensue, as well.