Laboratory Ship benefit

[Adam Dray]

I recently made up a character for Ben Forest's MgT2 game at Dreamation (Morristown, NJ). His guidance was just 4-5 terms and make sure the last one is Scout. The convention blurb for his adventure mentioned Andor / Five Sisters (Spinward Marches 0236 / C695735-9).

I made a fantastic "spoiler" character, tailor-suited for the adventure: four terms of Scholar and then one term of Scout. Maybe I'll post him later.

I wasn't entirely sure what to do about benefits rolls, as I understood that Ben wanted us to be currently in the Scouts. Did that mean that I didn't get my final benefit roll, as I hadn't actually mustered out? I took the benefit roll and figured Ben could always say no later (turns out, he didn't care either way).

I rolled a lab ship. Cool! (In retrospect, I might have received it from one of my Scholar benefits, actually.) While I realized that we'd need J-3 or at least a ship capable of multiple jumps without refueling to reach Andor, it was still neat to imagine my character owning this lab ship.

Then I started computing the monthly costs. These things are very expensive. I had 25% share in it, and it was a sort of "beat up" ship with three rolls on the "Old Ship problems" table, which ultimately increased its maintenance costs by a factor of three.

In the end, I calculated that my combined mortgage + maintenance costs were around 711,000 Cr. o:

If I received it at the end of my Scholar / Field Researcher career (3 terms of Scientist, 1 term of Field Researcher, after University with Honors), then I was probably paying the mortgage for four years while it sat in dry dock. I gave myself a 25% "equity" in the ship and imagined a sort of reverse mortgage where I paid off the ship costs with the equity.

At the start of the game, I'd have only a few months before the bank totally repossessed the ship!

Even so, I can't imagine how I'd ever pay for the thing. Are there science-related Traveller jobs that are gonna pay more than 711,000 Cr per month? How do people make that work?

Let's say I hadn't joined the Scouts, and left the Field Researcher career with 25% share in that ship. Could I have reduced the finance cost of the ship by 25%, divided by 48 or whatever, and gotten a reduced mortgage payment? Even so, it would have been around 450KCr/mo. Better, but still pretty daunting.

How do people handle stuff like this?

 

[ffilz]

Interesting dilemma. In Classic Traveller, the only ship that comes with a mortgage is the Free Trader which using the trade rules is able to make it, or at least close enough that the side jobs that will make for an interesting game have a chance of making up any difference.

On the other hand, the captain is still one major battle to damage the ship enough to maybe make it hard.

I haven't looked at whether the annual maintenance would make it hard to keep up.

 

[whartung]

How do people handle stuff like this?

They put them on eBay and then buy a cheaper ship.

Or take the money, arbitrage it by putting it all on the red, and see if you're adventuring career is starting off on a high note or a low one.

 

[mike wightman]

Go back to the original CT source:

Scientist characters may receive a laboratory ship as a benefit. This ship must be
assumed to be provided by some scientific foundation, and cannot be sold or
disposed of.

 

[Fovean]

For a one-off convention game, I’d not worry about it. Your lab ship is being leased by the Scout Service because they only have a few research vessels in the region and you can provide one immediately.

If you were to continue on with the situation in a normal game, you have to discuss it with your Ref. Is the ship to be a centerpiece of the game? Then you should be subsidized by a patron or organization, with ship finances taking a back seat for the most part. If the Ref is unwilling to do that, then yeah, I’d sell the thing ASAP and put your 25% to better use.

 

[Adam Dray]

I'll probably play this character in multiple "one-off" games that Ben runs at cons, but I'm confident he doesn't care about the ship. I should just sell my shares, yeah.

But if I wanted to make it work, how?

 

[jcrocker]

He leases it out to an agency that matches supply with demand. That's the way a large part of contemporary aircraft are handled in some parts of the industry, from what I read. They handle the administrative bits, a client gets a ship for whatever science they need, and it's been earning a (probably small) income the whole time and not sitting in a parking orbit somewhere.

Or, if he got the ship before he entered the Scouts, maybe that ship was the reason they took him on - all those starry-eyed wanna-see-the-Imperium 18 year-olds wanting to join up, and they take on someone pushing forty with a lifetime of bad habits the Scouts would have to train him out of? Solution - Scouts really really needed to get a ship for the long-term study of gas-giant Yavin (the subsector director has a pet theory he wants to prove) and he can't get caught hiring a ship through normal channels - but, he has Scouts he can assign, and spare parts are spare parts, and this way he gets to look for Clarke's Jellyfish in high atmosphere and keep it off the books, plus keeps his sister's kid in some safe backwater like he promised her.

 

[nobby-w]

[ . . . ]
Even so, I can't imagine how I'd ever pay for the thing. Are there science-related Traveller jobs that are gonna pay more than 711,000 Cr per month? How do people make that work?

So, here was the answer to a similar question that somebody else asked where, which was effectively 'How do we make money off a lab ship?':

Set up a charter business, acting as a mobile base for remote scientific expeditions on the fringes of Imperial space. You're the pilot, ship crew and the muscle. What could possibly go wrong ... ?

• Any one of the innumerable variants on 'The specimen gets loose.' See Alien.
• Pirates show up and try to take your spaceship.
• Someone tries to nick the research.
• You get into race for the prize (hidden temple or some such) with your patron's arch-rival, who will stop at nothing to get there first. Shenanigans ensue. See Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• You encounter a derelict spaceship. There may or may not be somebody on board in cold sleep. There may or may not be something dangerous in the cargo. This may or may not be wanted by various third parties, who will stop at nothing to get it and eliminate anybody else who knows anything about it to hide their tracks.
• You land the pinnace and find the ruins of an ancient civilisation, only it's still working. See DA1: Shadows, A3: Twilight's Peak.
• The party on-planet in the pinnace loses contact with the mother ship. When you get back it turns out that something being prepared in the labs got out and into the air conditioning, turning everyone onboard into crazed zombies. See DA3: Death Station.
• You set up camp on the planet, and have some trouble with the local wildlife, especially the Greater Spotted ATV Eater. See Dune. See also: Growing on Me.
• You set up camp on the planet, and have some trouble with the natives/bandits/rebels.
• First Contact. Oh, shit! what do we do now?. See A10: Safari ship.
• The scientist chartering your ship finds evidence of some lost civilisation on the planet he's investigating, with references to something on a nearby world just outside Imperial space. Time to boldly go where no sophont has gone before (at least not recently). See Drak'ne Station.
• Murder mystery - whodunnit. The chief scientist chartering your ship is also a local noble and tries to pin it on the crew. See A11: Murder on Arcturus station.
• Your patron captures a xenomorph and wants you to help him smuggle it back past imperial authorities. What could possibly go wrong?
• Your patron is Walter White and has found a way to synthesize vast amounts of illicit narcotic substances outside imperial jurisdiction. Now he wants you to help him smuggle it back past Imperial Authorities. You realise that if you get caught the Imperials will assume you're in on it.
• Exploratory trade and research work looking for new markets and new botanical specimens to process into saleable pharmaceuticals. See A4: Leviathan.
• A war starts up on the planet you're doing the research on. The patron has spent years wheedling for his grant and knows he'll never get another one. He insists on staying.
• The patron is using the research expedition as a cover for espionage operations. You're on planet when the Gestapo turn up ...
• You land the pinnace in the desert and set up camp and retire to bed. That night there's a flash flood that half buries the pinnace in gunge and debris, which will take days to clear out and need some specialised equipment. You need to drive some distance to an old scout way station and see if their emergency supply cache is still intact. The local wildlife also come out to play at night. See Pitch Black.
• Some escaped prisoners or other riffraff hijack the pinnace when you've landed it on-planet. Now you've got to get it back somehow.
• All the vegetation and life on land has been stripped bare, but there are still some signs of a previous civilisation and the oceans are teeming with life. You pick up a faint radio beacon. See DA5: The Chamax Plague.
• All of the wildlife on the planet is hostile to you, in eerily coordinated ways. See Deathworld 1. See also: Drop Bears. See also Australia.
• Your patron captures several breeding pairs of tribbles. Unfortunately they don't capture any examples of their natural predator ...
• It turns out that your patron has failed to properly licence their research/failed to bribe the right official. The local department of antiquities turns up and impounds the ship. To get it out you need to pay a fine of Cr3 million. However, the head of the department of antiquities has a little problem that perhaps you can help him with ...
• Your party is outside imperial space and encounters the last remains of a group of exiles marooned on the world you are exploring, who attempt to hijack your ship. Their leader may or may not be named Khan.

One could also do some combination of the above. For example, try combining Tribbles with one of the other adventure hooks. Feel free to show this to your D.M. if you want to suggest plot hooks.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Interesting dilemma. In Classic Traveller, the only ship that comes with a mortgage is the Free Trader which using the trade rules is able to make it, or at least close enough that the side jobs that will make for an interesting game have a chance of making up any difference.

On the other hand, the captain is still one major battle to damage the ship enough to maybe make it hard.

I haven't looked at whether the annual maintenance would make it hard to keep up.

ISTR that all ships comes with a mortgage.

As for the lab ship, well … as long as it comes with a freshly stocked meat locker :devil:

 

[kilemall]

Or it's a privately funded ship by a superrich megacorps sent to work on the protoatom, money is the least of your concerns.


Or this is a university subsidized ship, you got 25% of her not as a ship per se but 25% of the value of any discoveries/patents/resource rights you find with her. They own and pay expenses, you are incentivized to head up and find stuff.


Or the university is working with the Scout service, Scouts get scientists with defrayed budget, university gets prestige and perhaps a cut of any valuable knowledge.

 

[GypsyComet]

How do people handle stuff like this?

Like real scholars do: start submitting Grant Proposals until some Imperial or NGO is found to fund your field research. The group that granted you the ship is just the beginning.

We did a brief campaign a few years ago using a Lab Ship provided by a combination Ambulance Company and Freelance Medical Research group. They would find the contracts, we would go fill them, complicate them, and/or accidentally create new work.

 

[BlackBat242]

Go back to the original CT source:

Scientist characters may receive a laboratory ship as a benefit. This ship must be assumed to be provided by some scientific foundation, and cannot be sold or disposed of.

For a one-off convention game, I’d not worry about it. Your lab ship is being leased by the Scout Service because they only have a few research vessels in the region and you can provide one immediately.

If you were to continue on with the situation in a normal game, you have to discuss it with your Ref. Is the ship to be a centerpiece of the game? Then you should be subsidized by a patron or organization, with ship finances taking a back seat for the most part. If the Ref is unwilling to do that, then yeah, I’d sell the thing ASAP and put your 25% to better use.

He leases it out to an agency that matches supply with demand. That's the way a large part of contemporary aircraft are handled in some parts of the industry, from what I read. They handle the administrative bits, a client gets a ship for whatever science they need, and it's been earning a (probably small) income the whole time and not sitting in a parking orbit somewhere.

Or, if he got the ship before he entered the Scouts, maybe that ship was the reason they took him on - all those starry-eyed wanna-see-the-Imperium 18 year-olds wanting to join up, and they take on someone pushing forty with a lifetime of bad habits the Scouts would have to train him out of? Solution - Scouts really really needed to get a ship for the long-term study of gas-giant Yavin (the subsector director has a pet theory he wants to prove) and he can't get caught hiring a ship through normal channels - but, he has Scouts he can assign, and spare parts are spare parts, and this way he gets to look for Clarke's Jellyfish in high atmosphere and keep it off the books, plus keeps his sister's kid in some safe backwater like he promised her.

Or it's a privately funded ship by a superrich megacorps sent to work on the protoatom, money is the least of your concerns.


Or this is a university subsidized ship, you got 25% of her not as a ship per se but 25% of the value of any discoveries/patents/resource rights you find with her. They own and pay expenses, you are incentivized to head up and find stuff.


Or the university is working with the Scout service, Scouts get scientists with defrayed budget, university gets prestige and perhaps a cut of any valuable knowledge.

These answers fix all your problems, and are even backed up by the CT rules - so why not go with them?

Your PC is on a normal scout enlistment, and his "investment" lab ship is off elsewhere earning him charter and/or finders' fee money on the side.

 

[Arsenal]

If you own 25% of the ship and YOU have to contribute Cr100,000 in capital, the other 75% owners should also contribute CR100,000 each to capital.

That's how it works under Solomani Revenue Service law.

This could be another adventure. Track down the other owners and convince them to pony up some extra CRs to fix the ship. Who are the owners? Why did they buy a lab ship? What were they going to research? Were they going to produce some illegal item? Do they have the CRs or interest to continue being owners of the lab ship?

Finally, I seriously doubt the other owners will want to abandon their ownership in the vessel, especially if they can sell it and recover some of their investment.

 

[Qstor2]

Go back to the original CT source: Scientist characters may receive a laboratory ship as a benefit. This ship must be assumed to be provided by some scientific foundation, and cannot be sold or disposed of.

If I was the referee I'd go with this.

 

[Adam Dray]

Some great ideas here. Thanks, everyone!

None of them supported by the MgT rules, but no surprise there.

I wouldn't have come up with a lot of these solutions myself, largely because I don't understand how the scientific sector works in terms of grants and ownership and stuff.

 

[mike wightman]

A man of science:
independently wealthy and can afford to investigate stuff
sponsored by a rich patron
employed by a government, university, research institute
employed by a corporation
a genius tinkering in the garden shed

I think it was Coleridge who termed the epithet scientist to describe his good friend and chemical stimulant supplier Sir Humphry Davey, it would see print a decade or so later...