Spinward Flow
SOC-14 1K
Think of it this way.
If you upgrade to 2G, it'll cost your J1/1G Free Trader another 5 tons of engineering (meaning you can't use a standard hull anymore, you have to use a custom hull). You'll also lose another 10 tons to increased fuel requirements.
So you're looking at a loss of 15 tons of revenue tonnage (5+10) at an increased cost of an extra MCr12 in drive construction costs, and another MCr12 for switching from a standard hull to a custom hull. That's basically a +54.5% increase in the construction cost of a Free Trader ... just to stuff a 2G drive into it, at a cost of an extra MCr24 (12+12).
15 tons of cargo capacity lost equates to losing Cr15,000 per jump just by itself ... never mind the increase to the construction and annual overhaul maintenance costs of trying to shoehorn bigger drives into a 200 ton hull.
Looked at from that perspective ... Cr2k-4k "every so often" for orbital transfers on a FEW worlds that are Size: 8+ is a small price to pay for having more cargo capacity and lower construction costs, annual overhaul costs and bank mortgage financing costs ... especially since you don't have to pay it every single time every place you go.
Let's just take the Worst Case Scenario and make a straight up comparison.
If you had to pay Cr4000 for round trip orbital shuttle service (down+up) on 200 tons of starship ... how many such shuttle flights would you need to book in order to break even against the MCr24 increase in construction costs it would take to upgrade to a 2G drive (never mind the loss of cargo ticket revenues, that's extra!).
24,000,000 / 4000 = 6000
Just to break even, your Free Trader to would need to make 6000 orbital transfers as cargo to and from a planetary surface just to break even with the increased construction cost involved.
Even if a Free Trader is making 35 jumps PER YEAR (a 2 days normal space, 8 days jump space cycle) ... over 40 years ... you would only be able to make 1400 round trips in orbital transfer services. Last I checked (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, anyone) ... but 1400 falls far short of 6000. I mean, I could be wrong ... but I don't think I am on that point.
So don't think about it in terms of "two kilobux extra" when orbital transfer services are needed ... think of it as being able to buy a starship 1/3 CHEAPER to construct and maintain, with a larger revenue tonnage fraction, that only needs such services RARELY. Given the tradeoffs involved, the orbital shuttle costs start sounding like a "smart business play" compared to the alternative when dealing with the extreme low end merchant transport shipping range.
So the moral of the story is that the classical Vilani J1/1G Free Trader is more of an "interstellar shuttle" with decent specs for use as a microjumper in-system to distant planets and moons ... but one that implicitly relies on some pretty substantial "outsourcing" of support and infrastructure to make it work as a reliable profit generator. It's when you try to push it into the Tramp Merchant role that you start running into the limitations of the basic design. You can operate Free Traders as speculators (and turn a profit with them) ... but you're basically "gambling" with your own money if you do that, which CAN be done, but there are no guarantees that you'll be able to continue any runs of profits indefinitely/reliably that way.
