I have a character who is a fairly common archetype. The engineer's engineer. The illbegotten bastard child of scotty and mcguyver.
Now this character is about to be stranded on a Low TL world, and the player has been asking about TL15 automated factories so that he can build the toys that he should be able to make.
From a quick look through of the THB the concept of manufacture is covered mainly in the skill chapter (specifically the skill of Leader, and the cascades of Technical and Craft)
A quick rundown is that over a time period (often a week) the output of a craftsperson is a skill check result multiplied by the difficulty divided by 10 per week in credits. So a difficulty 20 item, with a skill check result of 20 generates 40Cr of value per week (which seems a little low to me). Oddly you can hire assistants for 75 Cr per day, which in most cases will be economically unhelpful.
The other places manufacture could also be construed is in the design chapter. Both vehicles and starships have an option of shop facilities, which add to appropriate technical facilities. I assume that this could be construed as the same thing as masterwork tools.
From the 3.5 SRD there is the possibility of raising the difficulty value, which in some cases may help the speed of processing.
With these concepts in mind there is the possibility of using MANY assistants and raising the difficulty by a LARGE number to acheive a more reasonable output.
For example a model T factory, with 100 workers and a cheif engineer. A model T costs arround 1000Cr all up. Assuming the engineer can take a 10 and the assitants are helpful (leadership) that is looking at a raised difficulty of about 220, and a similar sized craft roll, for a weekly output of 48,000 Cr or about 48 model T's. Raw materials cost a 1/3rd of final price (16,000 Cr) and salaries come to 100*75*5 Cr (37500), which means that before other factors the factory looses about 6000 Cr per week. With 200 workers a small profit (~40,000Cr/week) could be made producing ~175 vehicles a week, 9000/year.
Those rules seem to cover (in a basic way) the concept of workshop and factory. There is no difference in the output between tech levels (oddly enough) though this is probably adequately handled by cost differentials between tech levels and what vehicles cost at a variety of tech levels.
So does anyone have any ideas for how to handle automated fabrication units?
Now this character is about to be stranded on a Low TL world, and the player has been asking about TL15 automated factories so that he can build the toys that he should be able to make.
From a quick look through of the THB the concept of manufacture is covered mainly in the skill chapter (specifically the skill of Leader, and the cascades of Technical and Craft)
A quick rundown is that over a time period (often a week) the output of a craftsperson is a skill check result multiplied by the difficulty divided by 10 per week in credits. So a difficulty 20 item, with a skill check result of 20 generates 40Cr of value per week (which seems a little low to me). Oddly you can hire assistants for 75 Cr per day, which in most cases will be economically unhelpful.
The other places manufacture could also be construed is in the design chapter. Both vehicles and starships have an option of shop facilities, which add to appropriate technical facilities. I assume that this could be construed as the same thing as masterwork tools.
From the 3.5 SRD there is the possibility of raising the difficulty value, which in some cases may help the speed of processing.
With these concepts in mind there is the possibility of using MANY assistants and raising the difficulty by a LARGE number to acheive a more reasonable output.
For example a model T factory, with 100 workers and a cheif engineer. A model T costs arround 1000Cr all up. Assuming the engineer can take a 10 and the assitants are helpful (leadership) that is looking at a raised difficulty of about 220, and a similar sized craft roll, for a weekly output of 48,000 Cr or about 48 model T's. Raw materials cost a 1/3rd of final price (16,000 Cr) and salaries come to 100*75*5 Cr (37500), which means that before other factors the factory looses about 6000 Cr per week. With 200 workers a small profit (~40,000Cr/week) could be made producing ~175 vehicles a week, 9000/year.
Those rules seem to cover (in a basic way) the concept of workshop and factory. There is no difference in the output between tech levels (oddly enough) though this is probably adequately handled by cost differentials between tech levels and what vehicles cost at a variety of tech levels.
So does anyone have any ideas for how to handle automated fabrication units?
