Repo Man

[abomination]

Boring day at work today & I got to thinking.

How do the banks recover ships behind in their payments?

Are there licenced agents in most ports checking ships from a list issued by the finance companies? How does that list get updated & how often? Fall behind in your payment once & get greif at every C+ Star port you call at.

Are there specialised bounty hunters* who chase them down?

There's certainly room for an adventure there for ex-navy / marine types, if not a whole new career.


*Fat wives & mullets optional.

 

[far-trader]

Yep, Skip Jacks (iirc) is the OTU term. Agents engaged to track down and recover ships that have "skipped" on payments.

EDIT: In MTU the mortgage is tracked and forwarded to your next financial port of call by the IISS and as part of your own transponder data. You don't get clearance until you have made payments to cover your filed plan to said next financial port of call. Most Class A and B starports are in the system, as well as any on an X-Boat route. Every system (with a Class D or better starport) eventually gets the info through the X-Boat and Scout/Courier network.

 

[sabredog]

Some article I once read referred to a "Red List" in the repo trade: ships that were listed on it were ones who violently resisted repossession efforts and had killed repo agents. Consequently they also had higher bounties attached to them, but banking agents wouldn't allow access to the list by just any bounty hunter who blew into town.

Regardless of where I read of it I use the same rationale IMTU with Lloyds of London being the major insurance agent regulating repo efforts and hiring of bounty hunters. It is sometimes a useful way to involve players in larger events once in a while - on either side of the issue. And sometimes unwittingly.

 

[Samules]

It would probably be required that they stay within a large area of connected banks so agents could be hired/deployed rapidly.

 

[Sifu Blackirish]

"Hi! I'm your local independent skiptracer..."

Highly unlikely.

Making a parallel with today's bail bondsman (which I have a bit of familiarity with)...IMHO they would fall into three categories

*the local person who watches the mainport and rarely goes outsystem, oe even to the outer system, unless success is highly likely

*someone in "hot pursuit" with a trail less than 4 weeks old that will evaporate without monitoring

*a target so big, or so dangerous, it made the "Red List" and every freelancer in the sector is trying to catch the big score

YMMV, of course.

 

[ShapeShifter]

What canon source material features info on a "Skip Jack" career path? What a great idea for an adventure scenario! I'm racking my brainbox trying to remember if it's been covered in any old issues of White Dwarf.

 

[sabredog]

I think there was an article in White Dwarf regarding skip tracing crews and ships (where I got the name "Red List"), but I'll have to dig through the pile. All I have otherwise are my houserules that go back so far I don't know which came from the article and which were mine anymore.

But I have run many an adventure with players starting out as skip tracers to earn enough to buy a ship. And the permutations from there were endless.

 

[rancke]

Making a parallel with today's bail bondsman (which I have a bit of familiarity with)...IMHO they would fall into three categories

*the local person who watches the mainport and rarely goes outsystem, oe even to the outer system, unless success is highly likely

*someone in "hot pursuit" with a trail less than 4 weeks old that will evaporate without monitoring

*a target so big, or so dangerous, it made the "Red List" and every freelancer in the sector is trying to catch the big score

* A target so valuable it would repay a LOT of effort to recover it. Umm... which would be pretty much any ship that isn't a century old.


Hans

 

[sabredog]

Good point - obviously the longer the crew has the ship the less it's worth and the lower the return on repoing it. Unless you are just trying to get it back to make the point. So some crews might end up crossing that line of diminished return where it is no longer worth pursuing them. Could take a while, though.

That means the ones on the Red List might actually increase in value not because the ship is worth more (it's actually hemorrhaging value every day), but because the bounty shifts to the crew who can't be allowed to get away with shooting up repo agents. Actual criminal charges may depend on the local laws involved (if any charges are sought) but the banks might have Imperial Warrants of some kind for this sort of thing, or other extralegal capabilities to handle such issues their own way.

 

[aramis]

The Term used in JTAS is "Repos" per Jolly R. Blackburn's article, Giving the Bank a Fighting Chance, in Best of JTAS 4 p.41 and JTAS 16 p.24.

 

[CosmicGamer]

* A target so valuable it would repay a LOT of effort to recover it. Umm... which would be pretty much any ship that isn't a century old. Hans

Would it be the value of the ship or just the value of the financing that is recoverable by the financier? Would you spend 3Mcr to recover a 6Mcr loan on a 100t ship that is worth 18Mcr?

 

[jappel]

ISTR the term most frequently used is actually "skip tracer", not "skip jack".

As far as career paths, there's any number of options. In LBB 1, they'd probably be "Others", though Merchants are possible. Expanding to Supplement 4 one could look to Law Enforcers, Rogues or Pirates (for the shadier operators). Ditto for MegaTraveller. (Naturally, anyone could begin a career in skip tracing after completing a military or any other career.)

Under Mongoose Traveller, Agents, Rogues look like the most directly related careers.

 

[Fovean]

MGT has, in Spica's Career Book 1, an official Bounty Hunter career, two specialties of which are Skip Tracer and Repossessor.

 

[Garnfellow]

Given the information lag across systems, I would think the banks would issue two pieces of data on all overdue accouts -- a detailed description of the ship as well as some sort of "trued up" code. Ports and skiptracers would monitor system traffic for anything on the overdo list.

When the owner repays (trued up) the bank he or she is issued a code or PIN number that can subsequently be broadcast to port authorities and others indicating the account is no longer in arrears.

 

[Kilgs]

What canon source material features info on a "Skip Jack" career path? What a great idea for an adventure scenario! I'm racking my brainbox trying to remember if it's been covered in any old issues of White Dwarf.

You can get the GURPS Bounty Hunters pdf off e20 for under $10. Also, the new Agent from Mongoose covers this in some detail. It has a decent task chain for tracking a ship down.

I would note that there is likely to be more traveling Bounty Hunters due to the massive renumeration available to recovering a ship. Let's say you recover a 50Mcr ship, that's from 1-4 Mcr you put in your pocket. I think there would be a decent amount of folks running around for that kind of loot.

 

[Whipsnade]

Gents,

Checking the previously mentioned JTAS article shows that access to the "scorched list" (not "red list") requires "connections" which are modeled by having Admin-2.

Many of the suggestions made in this thread were covered in the JTAS article in 1983.


Regards,
BIll

 

[sabredog]

AH-ha! Somehow it mutated into Red List IMTU campaign. I thought there was more to the article, like an adventure that went with it but guess not.

 

[Commander Truestar]

Given the information lag across systems, I would think the banks would issue two pieces of data on all overdue accouts -- a detailed description of the ship as well as some sort of "trued up" code. Ports and skiptracers would monitor system traffic for anything on the overdo list.

When the owner repays (trued up) the bank he or she is issued a code or PIN number that can subsequently be broadcast to port authorities and others indicating the account is no longer in arrears.

IMO the bank would not issue a "trued" code because those breaknig the law might well have the skills to pretend to he skip tracers or be able to bribe someone for the code. So nothing would prevent the properly skilled crew from faking their "paid" status. IMTU, the only way to clear a ship is to provide proof of the elctronic transactions or gani the vouch safe of a bank in the current system that the debts are paid.
It is the same with missiles. If you put an autodestruct on them, there is nothing to stop your enemy from figuring out the right frequency and code and...paff...no more missile.
I also allow for Skip tracersand Skip tracers gone bad(ship's masters beware!)
I also allow for levels of debt and alternate means of debt recovery.
banks may only put a sip trace report out on someone who is behind a few payments. a more substantial debt may trigger a demand for full repayment of the mortgage on demand!
Also, banks that provide mortgages also develop business in mercantile loans and trade so ships will come to them for more week to week business. This means that there is likely to be some bank out there that the ship's are trying to do business with. When legal notice of a debt turns up, this turns that bank into an ally who may well legally sieze the ship as an agent of the owning bank. they would do not not only for the bounty but for the fact that the owning bank may be in a position to return the favor some day.

Marc