Ship Operation Costs

[rancke]

Originally posted by Sea Tyger:
Yeah, I was thinking that the rules would have to be different for larger vessels...I was just hoping that the rules would support larger merchant ships.

The rules are broken. I'm pretty sure there must be at least one combination of size and jump number that fits the canonical freight and passengers rates just fine, but overall the rules are broken.


Hans

 

[womble]

The rules are broken. I'm pretty sure there must be at least one combination of size and jump number that fits the canonical freight and passengers rates just fine, but overall the rules are broken.

I must respectfully disagree, wrt standard cargos. Operating a J-1 ship in a populous main can actually be quite profitable, just using the "ad hoc trade" the tables in THB represent, up to a hold size where you're really struggling to half fill it with any regularity.

A J-2 ship is more marginal, but allows you to pick and choose more on your speculative trade jaunts.

J-3 really skirts the edge of economic feasibility, hence the Imperial subsidies for liners which jump the Gulfs.

Having to pay back 220% of the new cost of the ship does make it look implausible, but assuming the owner is either a corp with the resources to buy new outright (and therefore just recoup the depreciation per year) or a private citizen using a 220% mortgage to buy an ageing vessel changes things around markedly.

The speculative trade system is too simplistic to be worth using without significant GM fiat. As a source of ideas and guidance on prices, it's fine; as a 'realistic' model of interstellar commodity speculation, it sucks dead goat and is indubitably broken. Woe betide any Ref who doesn't spot that and gets some unlucky (for their game - most players would hoot with delight at their good fortune, at least initially) rolls.

Still, by the time i'm back postinghere, I'll have
had a few days to get my head round G:T - Far Trader... [drool].

 

[jfwking]

Its not that the rules are broken or working that is the problem. The rules work from the point of view of the megacorps and the basic shipping and passanger costs allow them to make a profit. The problems crop up when you add in the loan repayments.

Take the Free Trader. 6 hi passangers, 20 low and 96 tons of cargo. Allowing for 80% load on every trip this ship will make 3.6 Mcr in a year. Costs to run without the loan repayment will be approx 1.5 Mcr giving a handy profit of 2 Mcr per year. For a megacorp or corp over the ships 40 year life they will pay off the purchase price and make 30 Mcr profit plus they claim back the ships age depreciation against Imperial tax

For free traders the morgage payment of 2.5 Mcr on a new ship eats up the profit.

The rules work fine however when you allow that the players are buying the 40 year old ships that the corps are now selling off. At 50% of new the loan repayment on a Free Trader becomes 1.25Mcr allowing a merchant character to make a profit just shipping normal cargo and passengers.

 

[Vanguard]

Capt. Jonah, You're absolutely right. This means that what's broken is that rolling a ship on the mustering out table should give you a old ship by default instead of a shiny new one you can't afford.

(Luckily, one of my players crunched the numbers before we started and pointed out to me that they could never pay for a new ship, so I gave them an old one.)

 

[far-trader]

Hi Vanguard, in case you missed it I detailed my own solution to PC's with a shiny new ship here

The wear feature is for a little more fun/personality for the ship and someplace to soak up those lucky speculative trade deals.

 

[sea_tyger]

Okay, I think I've figured out the profitability issue for large liners:

1. Given the immense purchase price of the ships themselves (on the order of billions of credits), the only corporations that would truly be able afford to operate large liners would be the shipbuilders themselves.

The shipbuilding corporation would constuct the ships, using manufactuing facilities that they already have available (thanks to their government contracts) at a cost of about 1/2 the actual purchase price of the ship. They would then turn the ship over to a transportation subsidiary, which operates the ship for the corporation.

2. Large corporate liners and freighters would be involved in the "resource trade" aspect of the cargo transport industry, meaning they operate outside the realm of Bulk Cargo and Speculative Trade as detailed in the THB. Since this is, effectively, "subsidized" cargo, the large corporate liners would receive a standard fee per ton (similar to the subsidized mail fee), which I set at 3,000Cr/ton. (Note: I still used an average of the bulk cargo availability values to determine how much cargo space a ship would have.)

3. Passenger liners are supposed to be an experience in their own right: a veritable resort in jump space. To reflect the "resort facilities," I installed an additional stateroom for each high passenger and an additional small cabin for each middle passenger, with revenues equal to 5,000Cr/high passenger and 4,000Cr/middle passenger served. These additional staterooms don't require extra life support, since the number of passengers haven't changed. However, The additional services doubles the service crew requirement for the ship.

(I used the 1 per 8 high passengers and 1 per 50 middle passengers formula to determine the number of service crew required for a liner, dividing the service crew between stewards, technicians and cargo handlers for purposes of pay....the additional crew required for the resort facilities are considered to all be stewards for purposes of pay.)

Using these rules, a 6,242-ton Jump-3 merchant liner (133 high pass, 158 mid pass, 209 low pass, 641 tons of cargo) makes a monthly operating profit of just over 5.1MCr/month. While this liner would cost over Cr2.25 billion if purchased, the construction cost is only Cr1.13 billion, making the ship profitable in less than 18.5 years (not counting depreciation, which would be deductible in most situations anyway

).

Using the above example, the liner will make a profit of over Cr1.3 billion over its 40-year life cycle (enough to construct it's replacement outright).

I'm still going to see if I can find a profitable jump-3 airline-style operation within the bulk cargo/passenger rules. Again, stay tuned...

Editor's note: I notice and corrected a typo above. I mistakenly stated 5.1MCr/year when the operating profit was actually 5.1MCr/month. Just a slight difference.

 

[Borodin]

Wow. 40 years just to make 170 MCr (after you replace the ship)? With an initial investment of 1.13 billion cr? I dunno, but that seems like a pretty lousy rate of return. I can't imagine being able to convince a businessperson to part with that much cash for such a low return. That's an annual rate of return of what? 1%? would be better served just putting the cash in a savings account.

Sorry, maybe I'm overlooking something, but that hardly seems profitable to me.

I always understood that for an investment to be at all attractive,as a rule of thumb, it would generally need to pay itself off in 5 years or less, and have a good chance of making money for several more years. That just doesn't seem reasonable to me in this case.

 

[sea_tyger]

Originally posted by Borodin:
Wow. 40 years just to make 170 MCr (after you replace the ship)?

I made mention of the replacement for reference only. Remember that the replacement will make it's own Cr1.3 billion profit over a 40 year cycle, so its purchase has nothing to do with the profitability of its predecessor.

Think of it this way, the corporation made twice what it put into the starship over those 40 years, and it gets to sell the starship to another group (which, in this case, is for Cr1.6 billion). This means that the corporation more than tripled their investment (257% total profit). I think that's considered a good investment, don't you?

A larger variant (9,518 tons...same passenger and cargo capacity, but also able to carry 1,500Td of large ships) made a 227% profit over 40 years (after resale...again, more than tripled the corporation's investment), while a smaller (2,498Td) cargo variant (about 1/6 the passenger capacity and equal cargo capacity) made an astonishing 554% profit over the same period (after resale...a sextupled investment!). A third variant (full passenger capacity and 1/5 cargo capacity) actually hadn't paid for itself within 40 years ("profitability" was calculated at 42 years), and, after resale, would have turned a 135% profit.

For my campaign, I'm using the 9,518-ton variant as my Andraya Doreah starship, which will be the backdrop for the next 2-3 adventures.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Sea Tyger:


For my campaign, I'm using the 9,518-ton variant as my Andraya Doreah starship, which will be the backdrop for the next 2-3 adventures.

If your player's don't catch the name eh Nice bit of subtle foreshadow...

Nice work btw, I may have to borrow much of it

 

[Richard Saunders]

Hello.
2 questions.
1 Am i doing somthing wrong - if a merchant character has broker 10 and market analyst do they get to roll against the broker table with +20 and any skill mods if so how can they fail except on a one to get +3.
If they make the roll twice they get to roll the first two dice on the price table (at this point they still dont have to buy the goods).
if they botch they have to buy.
if they buy they get 3 of the final price, So basicaly the worst they can do is 160% but what player is going to buy that, on average they will pay 70%, when they go to sell it happens in reverse and they get 3 to the price so on average they get 130%.
20% of the speculative table is poor , 60% average and 20 very expensive but if you buy you make Mcr and you only need to do this a few times and you will own your ship.

2. I assume convoys work by all ships entering jump space close together (within 1000k) and all ships use the same plot, if not how do they come out of jump space together in space and time.
BYE.

 

[themink]

Originally posted by Sea Tyger:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Borodin:
Wow. 40 years just to make 170 MCr (after you replace the ship)?

I made mention of the replacement for reference only. Remember that the replacement will make it's own Cr1.3 billion profit over a 40 year cycle, so its purchase has nothing to do with the profitability of its predecessor.

Think of it this way, the corporation made twice what it put into the starship over those 40 years, and it gets to sell the starship to another group (which, in this case, is for Cr1.6 billion). This means that the corporation more than tripled their investment (257% total profit). I think that's considered a good investment, don't you?
</font>[/QUOTE]No a good return on investment.
10% not compounding over 40 years is 400%. All investments compound.
It sounds as if, rather than build the above ship, you should just put the money in the bank! Much less exciting.

 

[jfwking]

Originally posted by Lionel Deffries:
Hello.
2 questions.
1 Am i doing somthing wrong - if a merchant character has broker 10 and market analyst do they get to roll against the broker table with +20 and any skill mods if so how can they fail except on a one to get +3.
If they make the roll twice they get to roll the first two dice on the price table (at this point they still dont have to buy the goods).
if they botch they have to buy.
if they buy they get 3 of the final price, So basicaly the worst they can do is 160% but what player is going to buy that, on average they will pay 70%, when they go to sell it happens in reverse and they get 3 to the price so on average they get 130%.
20% of the speculative table is poor , 60% average and 20 very expensive but if you buy you make Mcr and you only need to do this a few times and you will own your ship.

2. I assume convoys work by all ships entering jump space close together (within 1000k) and all ships use the same plot, if not how do they come out of jump space together in space and time.
BYE.

To answer question 1.

Market analysis allows you to predict what the price may be over the short term. A Broker check against DC15 allows you to pre-roll the first dice and that result stays accurate for 1 day per point by which your roll makes the DC. For example checking a cargo price after your next jump toy need to make a DC 23 roll to pre-roll the first dice due to the 7 days of jump and 1 day (ish) transit time. Say you make this roll and get a 1, you now know that the best you will roll on the value is 13 and the worst is 3 with the average being 8 or 80% so don't buy that cargo. A roll of 6 on the pre-roll makes the potential profit much higher and so the risk of buying the cargo on spec much lower. However the roll you make with market analysis is still the price for those goods for that week. It only realy works if you have enough skill to make week ahead predictions at which point jump planing becomes possible.

Broker skill itself should act as a minus to buy and a plus to sell, roll a single broker check and compare it to the DC given on the broker modifier table. With broker skill 10 you should be able to roll 20 on average which gives a -/+2 on the Actual Value Table. This is enough to make a little profit each time on average but doesn't give vast fortunes in a few goes unless your players are using "thier lucky dice" in which case either steal them or threaten to start using your own loaded dice

Does this help, if not ask again and I or any of the other helpfull folk here abouts are sure to answer

Question 2. Convoys and fleets combine astrogation calculations to reduce the random jump emergence. By having a single astrogation team make the calculations and having the whole convoy/fleet jump together in a fairly precise move you should be able to cut the emergance randomness down to about 10% of the normal. This means the ships should be arriving within roughly an hour of each other. Not the best result but still better than parts of the convoy and escorts arriving a day apart.

 

[jfwking]

Originally posted by The Mink:

No a good return on investment.
10% not compounding over 40 years is 400%. All investments compound.
It sounds as if, rather than build the above ship, you should just put the money in the bank! Much less exciting. [/QUOTE]

However you are not going to get 10% yearly return or even 5%. The Imperium is a very stable market area with next to no inflation and subsequently low interest rates. Putting money in a bank at 1-3% per year will give a tiny return compared to working the same money by buying and running a ship.

Even those banks who are putting out for the starship loans only get a 100% profit after the same 40 years as the buyer pays back twice the loan value.

Wow. Deep fiscal analysis of a fictional game universe. I'm going for a drink before my head explodes

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by womble:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> The rules are broken. I'm pretty sure there must be at least one combination of size and jump number that fits the canonical freight and passengers rates just fine, but overall the rules are broken.

I must respectfully disagree, wrt standard cargos. Operating a J-1 ship in a populous main can actually be quite profitable...</font>[/QUOTE]In fact, operating a jump-1 ship on a regular route is too profitable. Hence my statement that there must be a size and jump number that is right for the canonical freight and passenger rates (because any jump-4+ ship that tries to operate with those rates will speedily go broke). But overall the system is broke. As any system that charges the same for passage/freight on a jump-1 and a jump-6 ship will be.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Captain Jonah:
Its not that the rules are broken or working that is the problem. The rules work from the point of view of the megacorps and the basic shipping and passanger costs allow them to make a profit. The problems crop up when you add in the loan repayments.

No, the problem is that the rules do not allow a ship to base it's rates on it's actual expenses and carrying capacity. If you adjust the loan payments to make sense for the 1,000/1,000/8000/10,000 Cr per dT/low/middle/high passage for a ship with, say, jump-3, they will allow those with jump-1 and jump-2 ships to coin money and cause those with jump-4+ to go speedily bankrupt. If you adjust the rates to make sense for a jump-1 ship, jump-2+ ships will go broke.

There's no way to make that work. A jump-1 ship has smaller expenses and higher carrying capacity than a jump-2 ship, etc. If a ship with a 100 T cargo bay and yearly expenses of MCr10 can make a decent profit charging Cr1,000 per dT, a ship with an 80 T cargo bay and yearly expenses of MCr12 has to charge more to make the same profit.
Changing the loan payments just changes the type of ship that happens not to have problems. It doesn't fix the basic problem.


Hans

 

[sea_tyger]

Originally posted by Captain Jonah:

However you are not going to get 10% yearly return or even 5%. The Imperium is a very stable market area with next to no inflation and subsequently low interest rates. Putting money in a bank at 1-3% per year will give a tiny return compared to working the same money by buying and running a ship.

Ookay, let's assume that a bank will compound savings interest every quarter (like my credit union does).

1% annual interest compounded quarterly over 40 years will result in a 49% profit.

2% annual interest compounded quarterly over 40 years will result in a 122% profit.

3% annual interest compounded quarterly over 40 years will result in a 230% profit.

My CU is somewhere between 2-2.5% annual interest, which means between 122-171% profit after 40 years. Based on that, we're looking at 50% greater profit for operating the ship than a simple savings account.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Sea Tyger:

:
Ookay, let's assume that a bank will compound savings interest every quarter (like my credit union does).

1% annual interest compounded quarterly over 40 years will result in a 49% profit.

2% annual interest compounded quarterly over 40 years will result in a 122% profit.

3% annual interest compounded quarterly over 40 years will result in a 230% profit.

My CU is somewhere between 2-2.5% annual interest, which means between 122-171% profit after 40 years. Based on that, we're looking at 50% greater profit for operating the ship than a simple savings account.

When I try to calculate reasonable freight and passenger rates for a ship, I assume a profit on the owner's investment of 6.25%. It makes it a tad easier to figure out if the profit is the same as the profit the bank makes on its loan.


Hans

 

[Richard Saunders]

Originally posted by Captain Jonah:

Originally posted by Lionel Deffries:
[qb] Hello.
2 questions.
To answer question 1.

Market analysis allows you to predict what the price may be over the short term. A Broker check against DC15 allows you to pre-roll the first dice and that result stays accurate for 1 day per point by which your roll makes the DC. For example checking a cargo price after your next jump toy need to make a DC 23 roll to pre-roll the first dice due to the 7 days of jump and 1 day (ish) transit time. Say you make this roll and get a 1, you now know that the best you will roll on the value is 13 and the worst is 3 with the average being 8 or 80% so don't buy that cargo. A roll of 6 on the pre-roll makes the potential profit much higher and so the risk of buying the cargo on spec much lower. However the roll you make with market analysis is still the price for those goods for that week. It only realy works if you have enough skill to make week ahead predictions at which point jump planing becomes possible.

Broker skill itself should act as a minus to buy and a plus to sell, roll a single broker check and compare it to the DC given on the broker modifier table. With broker skill 10 you should be able to roll 20 on average which gives a -/+2 on the Actual Value Table. This is enough to make a little profit each time on average but doesn't give vast fortunes in a few goes unless your players are using "thier lucky dice" in which case either steal them or threaten to start using your own loaded dice

Does this help, if not ask again and I or any of the other helpfull folk here abouts are sure to answer

Question 2. Convoys and fleets combine astrogation calculations to reduce the random jump emergence. By having a single astrogation team make the calculations and having the whole convoy/fleet jump together in a fairly precise move you should be able to cut the emergance randomness down to about 10% of the normal. This means the ships should be arriving within roughly an hour of each other. Not the best result but still better than parts of the convoy and escorts arriving a day apart.

Dosn't Market Analyst let the player take 10 for broker rolls, this raises base to 20.
Basicaly who cares about the rolls carrying over to the next port,they just roll again, Good,Bad or indifferent they still have a basic price spread of from 4 to 6.
I thought that a low price when you buy was good and a high price when you sell was good to.
Why would you run in a convoy when your escort may turn up before you (GOOD) or may turn up after you (BAD). If they turn up after you 50% of the time do you sit around (perfect target) or do you run for the planet and hope, if you run what good was the escort if you sit your a duck.
You would have to assume that the navy suspects foul play if you get an escort.
BYE.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Lionel Deffries:
Why would you run in a convoy when your escort may turn up before you (GOOD) or may turn up after you (BAD). If they turn up after you 50% of the time do you sit around (perfect target) or do you run for the planet and hope, if you run what good was the escort if you sit your a duck.

With jump travel convoys only makes sense if you have to make several jumps in a row and then only if the intermediate stops are not themselves properly guarded. Going from one defended system to a nearby defended system you just jump.


Impagine an 18th Century where merchant ships can teleport from just outside the Thames estuary to just outside the harbor at Jamaica. How much of an escort would a merchant need under those circumstances?


Hans

 

[jfwking]

To Ranke:

Yes the fixed price does not make economic sense when compared to the cost of shipping. Working round the cannon fact of 1000cr per ton is the problem. Also the trade/merchant part of the game was (I believe, even though I have run and been in full trade campaigns) origionaly a minor part of the rules used to backdrop the actual adventures and thus perhaps not quite as well detailed and considered. My comments earlier were about J1 cargo hauling, the staple of the Imperium. For J2 and above add a % extra cost as priority post. Gurps traveller does this and so do some of the games I have played in over the years. As long as the extra charge for high jump delivery is reasonable the "game" market should pay the prices. Run the numbers and lets see what sort of % we can come up with.

To Sea Tyger:

Firstly leaving the money in a bank is boring, you could be out there using that money to explore new worlds, visit new peoples, trade at new and wonderfull markets and of course rob them blind

Also when factoring the profit on the ship against the profit from a bank account. You also need to add the interest earned by the ships profit made each year. So since the example Free Trader has paid for itself after 25 years you then have 15 years of 2Mcr per year earning interest.

To Lionel:

The feat you are thinking of is calculating eye that allows you to take 10 with broker tests.
The use of market analysis comes when your broker skill is high enough to last more than a week and you are doing some in depth speculation. If you are running a game that isn't dependant on trade profit then its not a usefull feat.
Buy low and sell hi is the essential point for every successful merchant where as buy hi and sell low is the norm for frenc.... sorry european agriculture

For convoys:

Even in the more traveled parts of the empire. If you are in danger of pirate attack an escort makes sense. If traveling from one world to another you can go out to safe jump distance with an escort of SDBs then jump. On arrival however unless they have an escort waiting for you you have a 6 hour trip to your destination (assuming M1), even if the convoy escorts arrive an hour after you they can quickly catch up limiting your unguarded time to under two hours. Also space being large only a very lucky pirate is likely to be able to reach and attack you within an hour of you emerging from jump as the area they would need to cover to intercept you is very large.
As Ranke said for multi jump convoys which don't stop at a world (gas giant/fueling station refueling) then the time they spend in real space is much longer and the danger much higher. If you are jumping from and to worlds with loads of SDBs and patrol ships with high M ratings then you are fairly safe as they should be able to wrap you up in a nice safe escort quickly, on the other hand when shiping goods to or through areas where the defenders are more widely spread or the risks higher I would go with an escort.
I wouldn't haul a full cargo of refined lanthium along the edge of vaugr space without a good escort even if I was in Imperial space all the time

Impagine an 18th Century where merchant ships can teleport from just outside the Thames estuary to just outside the harbor at Jamaica. Hum that sounds like a good idea for a game