MGT Only: Rules around rewards for safe ‘flying’.

[chipla]

So my players brought up an interesting point. Safe piloting/actions should result in rewards when it comes to insurance and the like.

As context my players have started a shipping line to act as a front for their piratical/empire building activities.

Being miserly sorts (they are players after all) they’re trying everything in their power to reduce costs - one of which is shippers insurance.


One of them suggested something similar to Naver’s drive safe app (screenshot below).


This is from my app about an hour ago, as you can see my rating is 81, I’m in the 55th percentile of drivers using Naver, and I sped (defined as over 25kmh above the speed limit) for a total of 3.8km this month. In the last six months I’ve driven 1706.8km and had an average score since last august of 72 (someone hit me last November reducing my score).

Why is NAVER tracking my driving? Insurance. If I keep my score above 70 I get a 500,000won discount (given my insurance has a base rate of 1.8milion this is a good deal).

My basic outline of how this would work in Traveller is something like this:

The TAS (with shipowner permission) sticks some software on the ship’s computer - this tracks the various subsystems of the ship and tracks things like velocity, transponder activation, weapons fire, internal atmosphere sensors, etc etc.

Every ship starts with 100pts and loses points for ‘incidents’ - pirate attack, ignoring velocity limits in regulated airspace, fires in the galley, etc. The ship gains points by travelling x amount (in real space) without incident (1000km? I want it to basically add up to roughly 100 each month unless the ship has a massive run of bad luck.)

How this would work for ships the travellers own but allow others to operate would be a 2d6 roll minus the sum of the two highest crew skills (I.e. pilot with skill 2 and gunner with skill 2 means -4DM if they are the two highest). The result of this roll would be the penalties for incidents this month. At the beginning of the month each ship would get 1d6 points back.


The idea is that if the players hire better crews they’ll spend less on insurance - I also vaguely want some way of having the routes the ships use matter.


Any changes and advice would be most welcome.

 

[whartung]

The idea is that if the players hire better crews they’ll spend less on insurance

This is typically done a couple of ways.

First, "new customers" with no history pay a base rate.

"Long term" customers get a "loyalty" discount.

People who file claims have their insurance raised appropriately.

Monitoring doesn't really help, because the causes of accidents are mostly inattention. Speed can exacerbate that, but there's a difference between going 80 on an empty freeway, and doing 50 in a clear lane on a crowded freeway, and someone makes a sudden lane change. "50 on the freeway" was far too fast for conditions at that point.

It's a grand experiment. I'm curious to see what their long term data shows.

But people are more than data, ask any baseball player. History is a better indicator, but even that can not predict tomorrow.

 

[chipla]

Monitoring doesn't really help, because the causes of accidents are mostly inattention.

One of the things the app tracks is the number of times you break suddenly or accelerate quickly which supposedly indicates a prediction towards inattentive or aggressive driving.

NAVER is Korea’s version of Google and basically everyone in Korea uses Naver Maps (which tracks safe driving). I’m fairly sure there’s some algorithmic wizardry at work where it tracks the data and works out what the factors of inattentiveness are.

 

[Marcatlas]

So my players brought up an interesting point. Safe piloting/actions should result in rewards when it comes to insurance and the like.

The idea is that if the players hire better crews they’ll spend less on insurance - I also vaguely want some way of having the routes the ships use matter.


Any changes and advice would be most welcome.

I my game, stated insurance rates ARE for those with "safe flying" records. They go up if you have "incidents".

 

[whulorigan]

One of the ideas explicitly brought out in a sidebar in GT: Far Trader is that the reason TAS maintains its Travel Zone Codes is for insurance purposes for those it insures. AMBER ZONE: If your flight plan includes one, depending on its nature, you pay an additional premium up front to maintain coverage, or else risk loss of coverage and claim payment. RED ZONE: Not covered, and potential default on policy.

 

[whartung]

I my game, stated insurance rates ARE for those with "safe flying" records.

Also, there's a word for pilots and such that are not safe operators.

They call them "ex-pilots". Or "fired". As a broad rule, misbehavior in those fields tend to not be well tolerated.

 

[kilemall]

IMTU….

Ship insurance is baked into the ship payments. It’s primarily to make sure the bank gets its principal back on value of the ship and secondarily not bankrupt merchant owners- assuming they were not found negligent or pirating/defrauding.

The first 20 years a goodly portion of the mortgage is going to insurance. On loss the bank gets back the value of the ship and the ship loanees get a similarly lowering value of their down payment.

The percentage of the mortgage payment drops as insurance liability/payout drops, which the bank usually pockets as profit. The mortgagee never gets more for their long term payments, theoretically they pocketed profits after payments and expenses, and it incentivizes no loss behavior.

House money, House rules, House wins.

Now if players want to get additional insurance, where they get at least full down payment plus a portion of their investment, that’s where your program may come into play.

But, a lot of shady side trips and such may allow the insurers to deny payment and impose unwanted ‘operational’ limits.

Cargo insurance isn’t normally the purview of the ship, that is the responsibility of the shipper. Ships trade more in reputation, which should translate to more cargo lot rolls, and a bad reputation in less cargo lots.

But ships could sell insurance as a profitable sideline. The downside is unending liability and lawsuits.

 

[kilemall]

Ok, I posted this in wrong thread- a reexpression of the above with a bit on passenger regulations-

My usual inflection point for things like starship monitoring is regulatory for passengers, insurance for cargo is one thing, passenger safety is another.

So to get to advertise and take full price passage money, ships have to be safe. That would include full certification yearly as part of the maintenance cycle, and presentation of logs for flight operations.

Ship insurance I figure is baked into the bank loan and is primarily there to get the bank its principal back. So first 20 years a lot of that payment is going to the insurers, after 20 years the insurance is paid less and the bank is taking its profit.

The ship operators/loan people get nothing until somewhere around the 25 year mark, and only the down payment not the full sunk money/value. The House always wins, and the idea is they are incentivized to not lose their investment.

Getting full payback on player sunk investment may be where they get more insurance, but of course will get more scrutiny and costs and difficulties getting paid on loss.

On cargo insurance, that’s on the shipper and the ship is more about reputation, garnering more tons/rolls for cargo lots and less for damage/loss outcomes.

Ships might offer insurance as a side profit line but of course is often risking millions of liability in a very rough line of work.

 

[Spinward Scout]

When I drove a truck, I got a 250,000 mile award one year.

I could see a 250 parsec award and discount for Merchant Independent Traders.

Detached Duty Scouts would only get a patch for their jacket if the Scout Service owns their ship.

 

[Condottiere]

I figure credit union would be more likely, for starship captains and local interstellar corporations.

My guess, in Traveller jumpspace physics, awards would be more for how many jumps are made per annum, rather than parsec distance.

 

[gchuck]

So... every so often a Bwap shows up on your nav screen and praises your safe flying in high traffic areas?

Along with an ad for their insurance.