Sure there is, if you take a strict reading of LBB2. (Not that I'm saying that's necessarily a good idea...)
So you've lost your ship - what now?
- Thread starter Frankymole
- Start date
Sure there is, if you take a strict reading of LBB2. (Not that I'm saying that's necessarily a good idea...)
Frankymole
SOC-12
Losing a multi-million credit ship is liable to be a major headache - and it may be a life-and-death situation that requires stealing another ship to get away from, if players aren't in the Monty Haul Campaign business.
Quite a common occurance in SF literature, and some of the best SF characters have been obsessed with money (from Poul Anderson merchants to Kerr Avon)... even pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy (and most pirate games, even Sid Meier's) hinge on money... the gaining and loss of. Sure, you don't need a mortgage - stealing's quicker - but you can at least pretend to have one until you're far enough out to skip...
And having payments to keep up - especially if your lender is a Jabba the Hutt type - can be a powerful incentive to try "creative" means of money-grabbing.... or seek out a Patron.
Quite a common occurance in SF literature, and some of the best SF characters have been obsessed with money (from Poul Anderson merchants to Kerr Avon)... even pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy (and most pirate games, even Sid Meier's) hinge on money... the gaining and loss of. Sure, you don't need a mortgage - stealing's quicker - but you can at least pretend to have one until you're far enough out to skip...
And having payments to keep up - especially if your lender is a Jabba the Hutt type - can be a powerful incentive to try "creative" means of money-grabbing.... or seek out a Patron.
Are there armed protection vessels for hire in systems? Is it possible to jump in convoy - safety in numbers like the caravanserai of old?
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Well, then, the smart thing would be to avoid getting into discussions with people who do find such things interesting. That way you don't get bored and we don't suffer disdain for our interests. Everybody wins.
Hans
RainOfSteel
SOC-14 1K
I have to agree. If all Free Traders had to have enough money to pull loans of the necessary size, there wouldn't be many. The ship is the collateral.
As long as you can show you have sufficient experience in the Merchant career, or sufficient logged and documented experience in general, can show you have a reasonable business plan, and have no criminal background, the bank may well give you a loan to obtain a Free Trader.
If you don't have the experience and the business plan, you can kiss your chances of getting a loan goodbye, no matter what collateral was offered. Offering the full value as collateral would be silly, as then you could just purchase the ship.
Personally, just how much all of this matters depends on how much your group cares. The basic mortgage rules are just fine. You can assume that insurance goes with it even though the banks would really scream bloody murder before allowing it. You can assume there is no down payment or collateral, too, although again, IRL, it would never happen.
I think wading through the red tape is going to make some groups go cross-eyed, fall asleep, and wander off.
As a GM, if a player wanted to purchase a ship, I would probably write up a list of things he needed to do and have ready as far as my milieu went, and then he would declare he spent the time doing it, and then we'd make the appropriate rolls. If successfully, viola, a new bank loan and a new ship. I would think of things like insurance as my job to keep track of. If the insurance payments were in addition to the mortgage, then I would just give the total number to the player and let him figure out how to make ends meet; although there would be NPCs about who could provide general advice, but not market advice, as that would usually be cutting their own throats, and they're largely not going to do that.
GT: Far Trader has a lot of rules that can provide suggestions on how to handle most of these issues.
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Skip tracers are part and parcel of the Traveller universe. IMTU they have a guild that crosses Charted Space and provides information clearing houses in starports on almost every world for members. Thieves wishing to make off with starships cannot simply move to a new major starport, they'll be spotted (except possibly at E ports, and obviously X ports really have no one there) unless they have had time to alter the ship's transponders and serial numbers, and their efforts pass standard inspections. Thieves need to do work on the ship, but it is substantial, including alteration of the transponder and all wireless internal serial number beacons (very short-range) and physical plates, some of which are inside the hull itself. Determining which ships have had the necessary hull plates recently ripped off and put back is a strong pointer at a stolen vessel.
Skip tracers spend their time trying to locate ships that have been altered, and more importantly, trying to track down which known criminals were where when ships were stolen.
Really, this is only the tip of the iceberg in an SF universe. At TL-10 or above, every single component of a ship would have an embedded RFID tag. The complete list of RFIDs for a vessel would be on file for its manufacturing record. If an inspector stepped aboard with an RF scanner he/she could tell after a few moments of wandering around the ship whether the it had been stolen as long as a report of theft had arrived and been loaded into the scanner. You couldn't just steal a ship or part it out unless you got away very fast and far, and could sell it to people who were stupid enough to buy it or its components.
My best guess on how to deal with this is that starship thieves work together with corrupted officials, either in the Imperium or in smaller states. When a corrupt official boarded a ship for basic inspection, he or she would have a rigged scanner and simply not report on the ship's stolen status.
It would be the objective of skip tracers to get a way of obtaining evidence legally. I doubt corrupt SPA officials would take a bright view of skip tracers forcing entry just to use their RFID scanner. Oh, they'd happily take custody of the ship and take the reward for turning it in themselves, while the skip tracers cooled their heels in jail. Picking up a job on the ship and smuggling a scanner on board would be a first good step. Of course, every hiring captain of a stolen ship is going to want to review the gear brought on board by new crew members for "anti-hijack" purposes.
Either all that, some variant, or just give up and declare that nobody would actually embed RFID tags into every component. Such things are only a few years down the road for cars today, I can't see why it wouldn't be done for starships.
This really has some negative effects on some pretty standard story elements. Blasted inconvenient reality.
shadowcat20
SOC-12
This whole thread is interesting from a GM viewpoint.
PC's can become Skip Tracers ( There was an article on skipping in one of the Jtas books).
If there is a lot of piracy in a area insurance companies may call in the Navy or even bounty hunters with the job of clearing out the pirates.
All port officials my have a standing reward for turning in skipped ships. Say 1% of value if the ship is returned to the bank.
Then there is the used shipyards full of reposessed ship for a good price.
Lots of ideas to play with.
PC's can become Skip Tracers ( There was an article on skipping in one of the Jtas books).
If there is a lot of piracy in a area insurance companies may call in the Navy or even bounty hunters with the job of clearing out the pirates.
All port officials my have a standing reward for turning in skipped ships. Say 1% of value if the ship is returned to the bank.
Then there is the used shipyards full of reposessed ship for a good price.
Lots of ideas to play with.
I wasn't saying that at all. I'm just saying that IMO it's not something that ever really needs to be discussed during actual gameplay.
Are GMs really going to say "OK, for this gaming session we're going to roleplay a meeting with your insurance agent and bank manager"? That doesn't really sound like fun gaming to me.
rancke2 said:
Snarkiness is another thing that bores me. Maybe you find it "interesting" and it's fair enough if people are just talking about what might happen, but I would be really surprised if anyone is ever actually going to roleplay through all this financial drudgery.
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RainOfSteel
SOC-14 1K
I'm surprised people LARP, but it happens.
Part of any commercial loan is proving you have sufficient cash to be able to make a profit with the ship. In my experience, at least KCr10 per ton is a minimum. And so I require at least that much before I'll cut a new loan to players, in addition to the down.
Logic error 1: just because someone has sufficient collateral doesn't equate to having the ready cash - property makes excellent collateral.
Logic error 2: just because someone has the cashable assets to make the purchase doesn't mean they want to cash-out those assets.
Logic error 3: even having the cash, it's often better to take a loan than to lose one's liquid assets, the liquid assets being essential to operating the ship sufficiently well so as to turn a profit.
RainOfSteel
SOC-14 1K
Your requirement is entirely realistic, so I cannot argue with you on those grounds. From a strictly financial realism viewpoint, you're right.
From a milieu standpoint, there would be very few free traders.
I Totally Invented This: You could almost look at it as a part of an Imperial subsidy to banks to act as a trade stimulus by pushing to add more free traders into the business pool. Sector level banks are given incentives or payments out of Imperial taxes to loan money to prospective merchants who meet certain restrictions (the ones I mentioned earlier) but who do not have sufficient securities to put up as collateral.
I REALLY don't think anyone is suggesting PRing the Ins payments. Anymore than you RP a mortgage payment. It is HAVING one that is being discussed. Did you SERIOUSLY think anyone on this thread meant to RP meeting with Ins & bank guys in that manner?
I don't think there are all that many. I think free traders are vastly overrepresented in the existing setting material, simply because they're the kind of ship most PCs will crew.
You have a bit of a point there, but just what do you consider to be a reasonable business plan? The one most free traders appear to have is "We'll jump around semi-randomly and hope to pick up enough leavings of the regular merchants to keep afloat". I can't really see many bankers being impressed with that.
If you have a couple of good solid long-term contracts to freight dohickeys from Rhylanor to Porozlo and widgets from Porozlo to Rhylanor -- something to give the banker confidence that you won't just take your highly-mobile multi-credit asset and skip -- then, yes, I can see a bank being satisfied with the ship itself as collateral. But the kind of "business plan" the TTG (Traveller Trading Game) implies that most free traders follow? No, I can't see it.
Mind you, I acknowledge that such loans obviously are made in the OTU. Just as pirates can flourish hanging around jump limits and intercepting passing traffic in the OTU. But not IMTU. Well... pirates do exist IMTU too, because pirates are FUN. But not crippling bank loans. Instead, my free traders fly around in fully paid up, clapped-out old bangers with big maintenance and repair bills instead of mortgage payments.
Hans
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Who suggested that it would be?
But it should be obvious that if someone posts such a question and others discuss it, they at least are interested in the subject.
Hans
Fusor, Hans:
Enough.
Fusor - if you don't want to participate in a particular discussion, don't. Your post about it being boring was borderline inappropriate, and further discussion in this thread is off topic.
If you two wish to discuss the separate issue of "boring threads," please take it to a new thread.
Enough.
Fusor - if you don't want to participate in a particular discussion, don't. Your post about it being boring was borderline inappropriate, and further discussion in this thread is off topic.
If you two wish to discuss the separate issue of "boring threads," please take it to a new thread.
The Imperium would subsidize a rather large merchant marine, first to keep the social bonds between worlds (with culture probably) and second as a military reserve transport fleet. The finances of the Imperium are interesting, how much foreign trade goes on? What is the basis of exchange? The Imperium sounds most likely totally mercantilist, so the banking etc, all financial institutions could be subsidized by the Imperial government.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
When you own a car in the US, you have operator insurance to protect you from other drivers. You have comprehensive insurance to protect your lender. They are entirely different. If you don't have a loan, you still have to have insurance, which can be just liability insurance. If you have a loan, however, it must be comprehensive to protect the lender against loss.
You could, after you get the loan, drop the comprehensive insurance (many morons do), but then if you wreck the car you are liable.
And yes (at least partially) your home owner's insurance is part of the mortgage payment (the money you actually send in). The actual loan payment is most of the mortgage payment, but part of it is your homeowner's insurance and part of it is your property insurance.
This kind of set up is how over-the road trucks are financed and how (at least) small sea going craft are financed. Part of you "mortgage" (not the right term, but correct enough) on your big rig, or shrimp boat is your insurance and your property taxes along with the loan amount. These items cost too much for a lender to leave to chance that you will pay your insurance premium.
RainOfSteel
SOC-14 1K
Thanks.
I answered the question posted by the OP, they can take my response or leave it. I didn't say anything about "not wanting to participate in a discussion" (rancke2 was the one who accused me of that), I said it to give the OP some other options that nobody else was proposing.
I genuinely thought (apparently incorrectly) that the OP wanted some practical advice on how to approach the problem during actual gameplay, so I proposed some ideas to immediately get the characters back onto a ship and provide some potentially interesting gameplay in the process. But I guess all people want to do here is talk about banking stuff.
I'm sorry that I voiced a personal opinion and thought a little outside the box (for this board, anyway). I guess that sort of thing isn't allowed around here.
I genuinely thought (apparently incorrectly) that the OP wanted some practical advice on how to approach the problem during actual gameplay, so I proposed some ideas to immediately get the characters back onto a ship and provide some potentially interesting gameplay in the process. But I guess all people want to do here is talk about banking stuff.
I'm sorry that I voiced a personal opinion and thought a little outside the box (for this board, anyway). I guess that sort of thing isn't allowed around here.
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Frankymole
SOC-12
I'm interested in what the players can do to get a ship for travelling again (legitimately or otherwise) AND in what the bank/lender can do to seek retribution (again legitimately or otherwise..) - you're all right!
The shady side of the law is interesting too - C17th-18th pirates being sponsored for their voyages by wealthy merchants, smugglers similarly (Jabba the Hutt style). Some computer games cater for ship replacement (Elite), some just let you die with the ship (Freelancer), but Traveller doesn't mention the subject as far as I could see. Before taking on a dangerously huge debt I wanted to know what options a player would have given that adventuring provides a fair few hazards to the ship.
And you never know, some player might want to move up to growing a merchant line of his own - or start a mining concern, or even a war fleet... mercenary groups will want to replace Broadswords that become casualties of battle or seizures by unfriendly states...
The shady side of the law is interesting too - C17th-18th pirates being sponsored for their voyages by wealthy merchants, smugglers similarly (Jabba the Hutt style). Some computer games cater for ship replacement (Elite), some just let you die with the ship (Freelancer), but Traveller doesn't mention the subject as far as I could see. Before taking on a dangerously huge debt I wanted to know what options a player would have given that adventuring provides a fair few hazards to the ship.
And you never know, some player might want to move up to growing a merchant line of his own - or start a mining concern, or even a war fleet... mercenary groups will want to replace Broadswords that become casualties of battle or seizures by unfriendly states...
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pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
Well, in one game we had a very recently retired Admiral as one of the characters and we had changed operational areas so fast that this Naval Depot had not gotten the news of his retirement.
He just requisitioned us a Gazelle. The con game on the Local Naval Authority worked perfectly, and we got away clean. We then left the Imperium for the Vargr expanses hunting pirates.
We were hunted down an blown up by a pirate fleet waaaaaay before the Imperial navy caught us.
He just requisitioned us a Gazelle. The con game on the Local Naval Authority worked perfectly, and we got away clean. We then left the Imperium for the Vargr expanses hunting pirates.
We were hunted down an blown up by a pirate fleet waaaaaay before the Imperial navy caught us.
Based on the OTU your read on this sounds correct. There ARE alternatives to bank loans (making $ by interest). As per above, with a down payment it is logical that governments would be much more involved, a la the Subsidized Merchie model. An investment in business with ownership shares like stock as opposed to interest. If the gov does not use private banks to inject currency into the econ (and thus giving those entities free money) but invest directly, you could have ships financed without compound interest but % of profit and/or dividend payments. Cheaper for the merchant and more trade and thus grown for the governments econ.
