Old starships as homes around lowports

[Matt123]

Reading a couple of posts on Scout ships being so common and boneyards, got me to wondering what happens to ships that land but for safety or other reasons cannot leave the gravity well. Perhaps some get turned into accommodation around the starport.

Perhaps an old Scout ship occupying a section on the main street of Jane's Town, occupied by a retired grizzled old scout and beside it a large shed (or perhaps two old cutter modules) filled with air-raft parts and half finished robot projects.

Two doors up is an old, dented Free Trader. The victim of a hard landing and too large to move, she caused the starport to be moved. Today she has been leveled, repainted and renovated inside to host a saloon in her hold and make hotel accommodation from the staterooms, charged by the night or the hour.

Perhaps a nice bit of colour and quite possibly very common in backwaters, maybe less so as you get closer to 'civilised society'.

 

[Timerover51]

Reading a couple of posts on Scout ships being so common and boneyards, got me to wondering what happens to ships that land but for safety or other reasons cannot leave the gravity well. Perhaps some get turned into accommodation around the starport.

Perhaps an old Scout ship occupying a section on the main street of Jane's Town, occupied by a retired grizzled old scout and beside it a large shed (or perhaps two old cutter modules) filled with air-raft parts and half finished robot projects.

Two doors up is an old, dented Free Trader. The victim of a hard landing and too large to move, she caused the starport to be moved. Today she has been leveled, repainted and renovated inside to host a saloon in her hold and make hotel accommodation from the staterooms, charged by the night or the hour.

Perhaps a nice bit of colour and quite possibly very common in backwaters, maybe less so as you get closer to 'civilised society'.

I can readily see that, considering the number of cargo containers being turned into housing around the world. An unrepairable ship on a low Tech Level or frontier world would make for nice accommodations.

 

[Condottiere]

And possibly a nice little fortress, considering how tough the hull is against most groundside infantry and support weaponry.

 

[Lycanorukke]

I can readily see that, considering the number of cargo containers being turned into housing around the world. An unrepairable ship on a low Tech Level or frontier world would make for nice accommodations.

I'm not entirely sure about starships though. Even if the thing doesn't work it can still be stripped to the frame for replacement parts and scrap. The metal in the hull alone would be worth a bit, let alone things like grav plates, reactors and lanthanum components. The cost of a ship means you want as much back as possible when you write it off.

Space craft/Small craft would be fine though, as their cost is vastly less than a ship. A busted cutter, an ATV with the grav plates ripped out and sitting on bricks, shipping containers, even a shot up tank left by some mercs during a police action...

 

[BlackBat242]

I think this kind of thing would be common on X or E starports on low-tech (<4) or low-pop worlds.

There is simply no scrapping capability, or use for the materials if you do... the useable drive/etc components will likely be stripped, but not the hull itself.

 

[Timerover51]

I'm not entirely sure about starships though. Even if the thing doesn't work it can still be stripped to the frame for replacement parts and scrap. The metal in the hull alone would be worth a bit, let alone things like grav plates, reactors and lanthanum components. The cost of a ship means you want as much back as possible when you write it off.

Have you ever heard of insurance payoffs? Oh, my error, insurance does not exist in the Traveller Universe. It does in mine however. Also, a lot depends on what you make the hull out of. I am more than a tad heretical on that as well.

Space craft/Small craft would be fine though, as their cost is vastly less than a ship. A busted cutter, an ATV with the grav plates ripped out and sitting on bricks, shipping containers, even a shot up tank left by some mercs during a police action...

The following are the prices for various small craft listed in Starter Traveller. Prices are in Millions of Credits.

Launch, 20 dTons, 14.00
Ship's Boat, 30 dTons, 16.00
Pinnace, 40 dTons, 20.00
Cutter, 50 dTons, 28.00
Slow Boat, 30 dTons, 15.00
Slow Pinnace, 40 dTons, 18.00
Shuttle, 95 dTons, 33.00

Price for a 100 dTon Scout, 29.43 Million Credits
Price for a 200 dTon Free Trader, 37.08 Million Credits

Based on the cost per Traveller displacement ton of the various craft, small craft would be much more likely to be fully salvaged than the larger ships.

 

[Matt123]

If the ship ended service as planned at a destination with an active boneyard, I think yes you would scrap it. If it just died of old age, that choice may not be there.

If it died from a cause that you have insurance for (crash, hijack, fire, local insurgency...) once you take the pay-out, you no longer even own it. The new owner, the insurance company, will likely seek to off-load the hulk as quickly as possible. Which places the assessor in an ideal place in some far off backwater to take back-handers to get rid of it cheap to a local, while telling the insurance about all the red tape and environmental issues he has managed to avoid.

There could be an adventure in that, escort an assessor to a backwater, investigate a very large insurance claim which may not be legitimate (dodgy people those adventurer types!) and watch the assessors back while he attempts to offload the wreck to the locals.

 

[Hemdian]

I have had for a long time IMTU, the Porta Ludovica... an aging Lord Somerset class subsidized liner (M-72135).

Two years ago she was on final approach for landing at Down Frankline Port (Efate) when her M-Drive failed. Her crew were able to land her with minimal damage but she has been stuck here ever since. The ship now serves unofficially as an on-site bar and recreation area for starport personnel and some visiting spacers. The owner, Captain Jake Hazor, makes enough to cover the regular berthing fees and a little besides. The starport personnel like it because being inside the XT line means no sales tax on the drinks, and some of the port's engineers have 'adopted' the ship as their own personal project, frequently tinkering with her systems for free. Meanwhile, Captain Jake will tell anyone who will listen that just one more round of repairs and the ship will be space-worthy again.

The Captain, and barkeep Jacqueline Stella, live on board (not as a couple).

 

[Timerover51]

If the ship ended service as planned at a destination with an active boneyard, I think yes you would scrap it. If it just died of old age, that choice may not be there.

If it died from a cause that you have insurance for (crash, hijack, fire, local insurgency...) once you take the pay-out, you no longer even own it. The new owner, the insurance company, will likely seek to off-load the hulk as quickly as possible. Which places the assessor in an ideal place in some far off backwater to take back-handers to get rid of it cheap to a local, while telling the insurance about all the red tape and environmental issues he has managed to avoid.

There could be an adventure in that, escort an assessor to a backwater, investigate a very large insurance claim which may not be legitimate (dodgy people those adventurer types!) and watch the assessors back while he attempts to offload the wreck to the locals.

That would depend on the view of the insurance company. If far enough from the regular trade routes, they may view any further effort as not worth the return, and simply write if off the books. In one recent case in Canada, a ship being toward for scrapping in Turkey broke the tow in a storm and went aground on the rocky shoreline of a Canadian marine sanctuary. The ship was abandoned by the owners and the insurance company, as any attempt at salvage would entail expenses far greater than any value of the damaged vessel. The provincial government finally paid to have the ship cut up in situ, and the scrap hauled away, at the expense of the province.

 

[rancke]

Oh, my error, insurance does not exist in the Traveller Universe.

Or, more likely, is ignored for game purposes, the rules being written for free traders operating on a shoestring budget.


Hans

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Well, since it was my dad's career...

Have you ever heard of insurance payoffs? Oh, my error, insurance does not exist in the Traveller Universe. It does in mine however.

/snip/

Funny, I don't recall anywhere in my admittedly at the moment limited reading of Traveller editions insurance being mentioned one way or another, so it is quite possible that Traveller does indeed have insurance, but most folks want to play space adventure more than work space paperwork. I suspect that it is handled much like taxes are there, just as part and parcel of that monthly payment you make on that multimillion Credit starship.

And since my pop worked it, let me remind you all the job of the insurance company is to try and not pay out. So, if you are all that hot for ultra-realism remember that when they file a claim it is assumed by The Company that the players messed up and will fight tooth and nail not to pay out. And if you run a realistic/dark TU then that process could take decades and they still might lose.

It is sort of like say you were in the Navy (and unless your dad is rich and connected) when your get your boat cut in half they really make you prove it wasn't actually in some way your fault.

 

[WistfulD]

So I think the one agreed-upon factor is that recycling the ship will depend on the ease of hauling it off and scrapping it, and the value that can be recouped doing so. I get the impression that the official conception of traveller ships is that they have improbably thick, durable hulls. I would think that that much metal would be unneccessary for building houses, and valuable even in the far future, and thus it would not take a very industrially developed planet to justify turning it into scrap metal instead of turning it into a house.

If the hull is some kind of space age ceramic that can't readily be melted down into new products, well then that adds a new twist to the economics.

 

[jeffepp]

In the Star Wars photo-comic, darthsanddroids.net, they made Mos Eisley the remains of a crashed dreadnought. It's very likely that a ship that goes down, and cannot get back up, may not have a lot of reusable parts. The hull may not be sound enough to fly, but sound enough to live in.

To tell the truth, I thought the title was talking about doing this in space. That is, either connected to a space station, or in orbit nearby. Or, possibly using a bunch of old ships strung together as an ad-hock station.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Funny you should mention that.

So I think the one agreed-upon factor is that recycling the ship will depend on the ease of hauling it off and scrapping it, and the value that can be recouped doing so. I get the impression that the official conception of traveller ships is that they have improbably thick, durable hulls. I would think that that much metal would be unneccessary for building houses, and valuable even in the far future, and thus it would not take a very industrially developed planet to justify turning it into scrap metal instead of turning it into a house.

If the hull is some kind of space age ceramic that can't readily be melted down into new products, well then that adds a new twist to the economics.

Yeah, that does seem to be the consensus, which brings us to your second point.

Are starship hulls made of materials that a TL-4 or less society can not salvage?

You mentioned ceramics which I see in T5's ACS Hull Coatings like Reflec, and possibly some of the Hull Armor like Charged or possibly even Frame & Plate, though that I tend to think of as hyper-alloys since you can't really build starships till around TL-8 to A depending on the Edtion with most at TL-9 for Low Interstellar and Starship Construction. [Note: I am not account for both HG or TCS, which may not work like Core Rules.]

 

[Major B]

To tell the truth, I thought the title was talking about doing this in space. That is, either connected to a space station, or in orbit nearby. Or, possibly using a bunch of old ships strung together as an ad-hock station.

That is exactly what I had in mind from the thread title.

Sort of like houseboats, in space.

A great place to unload the damaged Far Trader that you just seized at maybe half the going salvage rate but with no questions asked by those looking for the added living space as well as the parts that can be salvaged for re-use.

 

[salochin999]

I like this as an idea especially as landed near a river or lake a length of hose could maybe fuel the power plant so it's not just a house but potentially a town's power supply as well.

(This was one of my ideas for low TL (and thus small) specialist colony ships: effectively a portable fusion plant with a cargo hold full of power cables, electrified fence components and perimeter watchtower lasers.)

Another idea I like is a group of mercenaries turned bandit who set their Broadsword down in a remote world somewhere and use it as a castle.

 

[JimMarn]

I've seen several instances of old aircraft being turned into houses and restaurants. DC-3s for one. So turning an old starship into an apartment building, etc. should also work.

 

[Matt123]

To tell the truth, I thought the title was talking about doing this in space.

Lowports are at the bottom of the gravity well. Highports are in orbit.

 

[Condottiere]

Invest in a battery and some solar panels, and that should keep the fridge and the washing machine running.

 

[BlackBat242]

I've seen several instances of old aircraft being turned into houses and restaurants. DC-3s for one. So turning an old starship into an apartment building, etc. should also work.

The Airplane Restaurant Colorado Springs