J-2/J-200 Prospector

[Sir Brad]

An ancient designed the J-2 or more correctly the J-200 is almost identical to the even earlier Terran 200 ton Prospector mining ship that was common during the Interstellar Wars and first years of the Rule of Man. in the modern era most are Built using the same Hull as the Type A Free Trader, but due to extensive (but standardised) modification it is impractical to convert Type A Free Traders (particularly the more Veteran Ships) to J-2's. Apart from Prospecting the Type J-2 is also used as a Freight Hauler

Using a 200t streamlined Hull the Type J-2 mounts Jump Drive-A, Manurer Drive-A and Power plant-A Flue Tankage is 30 Tons to support the Power Plant and allow for 1 Jump or extended In system Prospecting adjacent the Bridge is a Model/1 Computer, their are Four Staterooms and Eight Tons of Mutly-Purpose Space on the Crew Deck, Four tons of which is normally configured as a Workshop/Laboratory and the other Four is normally used for the storage of Prospecting Equipment and Supplies to extend Expedition length or either or both can be converted in to additional Staterooms or additional living space for the normal crew, on the Cargo Deck their is 100t of Ore/Cargo space normally split in to two 50t bays, the Ship has two Hard-points each fitted with a Double Turret carrying one Pulse Laser each (that are used as Mining Lasers and for Deference), on the Cargo deck their is an eight ton Auxiliary Space that can be configured for Cargo, Vehicle Storage or Workshops, the ship dose not come with any Sub Craft or Ships Vehicles standard but Prospecting Buggies and other small craft are popular, the Type J-2 requires a crew of three a Pilot/Navigator, an Engineer and a Medic the forth stateroom is normally filled by a Gunner/Mission Specialist. the Type J-2 costs 28.08 MCr (including 10% discount for standard design) and requires monthly payments of 117,000Cr if purchased financed. as a Freight Hauler it can earn 200,000 per month and still have 16 tons left for Speculative Trade, Mail and other profit making opportunities, basic costs range from 29,500 Cr to 48,500Cr per month before Bank Payments (117,000cr) and Annual Maintenance Fund (23,400cr/month).

 

[robject]

Sounds a bit familiar... ah, the original Type J "Seeker" is 100 tons. You've extended the metaphor nicely.

 

[FreeTrav]

Clean this up, generate some deckplans for it, and some color text beyond the basic descriptive "stat sheet", and submit it to Freelance Traveller!

I assume the hull is a Beowulf?

 

[Sir Brad]

Any type of Type A works, Thing is with a full Crew you can just make bank payments, cover other costs and bank a few Cr a month on average rolls mining C,N & I Type Asteroids, now you don't bank enough to survive even one bad month a year on a strait diet of C,N & I mining. For that you need to make a Big Strike that can be worked all month long, a Rich Strike or find a sellable Claim.

 

[Sir Brad]

Had a Player point out this a standard design and thus much cheaper than the flat cost I first figured, I went back and fixed the costs, also If the Crew goes on Shears as a Prospecting Vessel they can get buy on Nickle/Iron once they can find a workable Rock and can make three round trips per month, once they pay off the Ship they can get buy on Ice and Carbonaceous asteroids (just)

 

[robject]

Any type of Type A works, Thing is with a full Crew you can just make bank payments, cover other costs and bank a few Cr a month on average rolls mining C,N & I Type Asteroids, now you don't bank enough to survive even one bad month a year on a strait diet of C,N & I mining. For that you need to make a Big Strike that can be worked all month long, a Rich Strike or find a sellable Claim.

Do you need a full crew? Couldn't you get by with as little as one person?

 

[Sir Brad]

As a Skeleton Yes, but you would never make payments unless you run a fraction of your Hold capacity in Raidoactives back every month, If you want to do a solo opp your better off with a normal Type J.

 

[rancke]

Any type of Type A works, Thing is with a full Crew you can just make bank payments, cover other costs and bank a few Cr a month on average rolls mining C,N & I Type Asteroids, now you don't bank enough to survive even one bad month a year on a strait diet of C,N & I mining. For that you need to make a Big Strike that can be worked all month long, a Rich Strike or find a sellable Claim.

That sounds realistic enough. Hopeful prospector buys ship from bankrupt former owner. He either makes above-average strikes and keeps the ship or goes bankrupt and sells the ship to a new optimist.


Hans

 

[Sir Brad]

Play testing the design, mostly as a dice rolling exercise, to get 20 Belters to serve as Crew for five example ships I had to generate 30 characters to fill all the posts (Pilot, Engineer & Medic, Prospectors where easy) with Required skills, I'm a bout six months in, all but one of the ships have bean on Finale notice (missed and/or short on two payments running), one has bean foreclosed on and all Crew Members have loaned their CR balance to the Ship at least once. given RW venture failure rates the numbers so far have bean good given apx 60% of all businesses fail in their first 12 months and half of those in the first six.

 

[Sir Brad]

It Lives!!

Started playing around with this again, this time with Mods, the most profitable one so far has bean to mount two additional Staterooms and carry a crew of 6, with 8hr rolling shifts half the Crew is working at any one time with at least two mining and the 3rd also mining or conducting maintenance, you can fill the hold in half the time it takes to do if your running a 4 person opp, taking in to account Fatigue and such. doing this is much more profitable than running a normal 4 man crew, provided your Working Claims and not out looking for Rocks to mine

Tried running it with a Two Person Crew, even if you draw no pay you still lose the ship in about nine months tops running it as a mining opp, but make out like bandits if you hall Freight.

As a 3 person mining opp, doable but unless your very lucky everyone has to go on to shares. Hauling Freight, once again a profit spinner

other options, mount one or more Missile Launchers and increase your number of Sensors in operation by using Sensor Drones to help with seeking out likely targets.

 

[Sir Brad]

Tried Double occupancy for a crew of 8 and 12, the Hold fills too quick and you spend more time looking for new Rocks or Transiting back to Market, Crew Wages and Supply requirements kill you, you're better off with a larger Hull, If everyone goes on to shares it becomes a Profit Spinner, but the Principle will be looking for new Crew too often as the Crew make their Stake in a Type-J in about 12-18 months or if they hold on for about 18-24 their own J-200.

 

[Sir Brad]

bean a year since I've done anything serious with this, but some players want to re-try a campaign that didn't get off the ground at the end of last year, so I'm playing with different Configs and Qho! Wow five years almost to the day since I've posted in this topic.

Re-ran the Mining Sim for the base config. came out fairly much the same, this time I ran it out to five years, of the five ships I ran two made it to the five years mark with an owner paying the crew wages, one was on Final Notice for the umpteenth time and an other was doing well (a bout a years worth of Payments and Costs banked).

an other sim of Mining only with the crew on Sheres and the Owners came out well ahead until the crews abandoned them because they made enough for early retirement or deposits for their own ships, longest run was three years till the owner couldn't re-crew and was foreclosed on because they couldn't run their ship.

ran a sim working as Freight Hauling out to ten years, only one ship lost to the bank, two where doing better than brake even and the other two where 50% ahead on their payments.

want to run a mixed enterprise sim but it will be too much work to run in a timely manner on my own.

preparing to run a six crew mining sim working Valini style days next IIRC they do fairly well.