Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
You only leave them out for barebone budget boats.
Why don't ships have...?
- Thread starter Spinward Scout
- Start date
Insurance need not always be the best solution
Insurance is a legal/financial instrument of risk sharing, which itself is only risk management strategy. Others strategies are avoidance, prevention, mitigation, and acceptance. Not all methods are possible for every type of risk.
I think a GM could work any or all of those ideas into a mercantile-oriented campaign, but getting overly specific could drag you down the accounting-hole rapidly. Understanding risk management helps add subtext to ship operation, safety inspections, customs and quarantine practices, etc. You can imagine the karma that arises from a good or bad reputation for risk management, and how that would affect finding credit, crew, cargo, and passengers.
Insurance is a legal/financial instrument of risk sharing, which itself is only risk management strategy. Others strategies are avoidance, prevention, mitigation, and acceptance. Not all methods are possible for every type of risk.
- risk avoidance is the practice of avoiding the possibility of loss.
- risk mitigation seeks to minimize the impact of a loss.
- risk prevention seeks to minimize the probability of loss.
- risk sharing is a cooperative strategy to spread losses among cooperating parties.
- risk acceptance is the acknowledgement that an activity could result in loss, and doing it anyway -- though the previous four strategies can also be used in conjunction
- Mutual support and cost-sharing groups, such as burial societies, where members agree to split the cost of burial for one another. Members also volunteer for the upkeep of the cemetery grounds: My mother's small hometown in Western Oklahoma has a burial society that's been in operation since the 19th Century.
- You can conceptualize TAS a kind of cost-sharing organization, with member services - emergency and otherwise - funded by dues and revenue from endowments: AAA in space.
- Polities where merchants are organized along guild or family/clan structures may pool funds to share losses and purchase resources for growing family structures or groups of journeymen. There is the expectation of repayment of the expense as well as "paying it forward" to the next generation. The Asian immigrant communities in my hometown back in the 70s and 80s achieved remarkable individual commercial success based on the implicit mutual support within families and groups of families.
- In the age of sail, merchants that owned sailing ships would divide their wares into equal lots and exchange tonnage with other merchants going to the same destination port. That way, if a ship were to be lost at sea, one merchant would lose a ship, and each merchant would lose cargo, but all merchants were likely to have some, if not most of their cargo get to its destination. The profits might even cover construction of a new ship.
- Shipping insurance began more or less as a wager: Underwriters would agree to cover part of a merchant's loss should the unexpected happen. If the merchant suffered no loss, the underwriter was owed a portion of the merchant's profit. The underwriters expected the merchant to avoid unnecessary risk (avoidance), and take basic common-sense safety precautions (prevention, mitigation). They also would fund anti-piracy operations (risk prevention) and investigate claims of loss for signs of fraud (mitigation). I can see a high-risk shipping route (wartime, piracy) where underwriters become a source of patrons seeking adventurers to provide security for merchants, perform search and rescue ops, find lost cargoes, scout for secret pirate bases, etc.
I think a GM could work any or all of those ideas into a mercantile-oriented campaign, but getting overly specific could drag you down the accounting-hole rapidly. Understanding risk management helps add subtext to ship operation, safety inspections, customs and quarantine practices, etc. You can imagine the karma that arises from a good or bad reputation for risk management, and how that would affect finding credit, crew, cargo, and passengers.
MThompson016
SOC-12
I always figured that would be included under the Ship's Locker equipment and basic engineering tools.
It's easily abstracted away at most levels, but should be remembered for ACS.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
My thought as well.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
If the loss rate is that high, then why are lenders willing to finance ships for which they will never be paid for in full?
Wasn't the inability to get (or afford) insurance a big contributing factor in the Hard Times era of the MegaTraveller setting?
any or all of
- Usuary laws prohibiting higher rates
- subsidies that payout the principle remaining owed only
- Government loans crashing the market for private ones
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
One reason could be how taxation in the Imperium is set up. I would suppose they too have deductions and such. So, a megacorp making trillions of credits might well be using this a business deduction.
Or, the government is subsidizing their building the ships because it's felt they're needed or to keep the yards employed and open, so the business only need recoup a certain percentage to break even. After that, it's gravy time.
I could also see a corporations leasing ships to crews as independent contractors of the corporation. So, somebody leases say a far trader for a small service area from a corporation, but they're responsible for all the costs of operation and paying something on the lease to the corporation. Maybe they get a discount on payment for hauling the corporation's stuff to planets on their route. If the ship is lost, then the corporation is out just the residual cost of the ship, rather than having to pay off on cargo and crew too.
There are all sorts of ways that financing could be done.
Then there's the repo business. That might be another angle. A repo business finds and retakes the ship. They split the resale money with the corporation.
There are companies today that do stuff like that. There are even companies that buy bad loans and credit debt for a fraction of what's owed then try to collect on it such that they end up making a profit.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
I've always thought it should also be a skill you can acquire. It isn't mechanical, electrical, or engineering of some sort but rather the ability to fight a fire, pug a hole that's venting the ship's atmosphere, rigging temporary systems or patching a system with a temporary means so the ship can continue to operate. It's really a different skill set from the ones mentioned.
Those skills above would emphasize what to do in an emergency like a fire or loss of hull integrity. They also wouldn't train someone on spotting ways to reduce the ship's vulnerability to damage from an accident or battle.
The equipment would have to include firefighting gear (even if the ship had automatic systems for this the possibility exists these could fail), equipment to strengthen or reinforce a bulkhead to prevent its collapse from damage, means to rig temporary power, etc. I don't see these as something you keep in a daily use area.
True, and there are some other references to insurances in OTU (megacorps specifically dealing with them, the TAS advertisement in MT Journal #1...), but no rules for it...
I guess that ships dedicated to adventure, due to their high risk job, are more difficult to achieve an affordable insurance than just merchants, while those latter ships (mostly those from established companies, as Oberlindes or Al Morai) are more likley to obtain them.
MThompson016
SOC-12
In GT with it's skill-a-rama, you use Shipbuilding(Starship) for damage control. It also has DC lockers as Zero Space items at one per D-Ton. It's 50 cf, MCr0.25.
In other versions, I'd use it as INT/EDU quick check. Use END and Vacc Suit as a basis for use of SCBA equipment. Prior terms in Navy and Merchants can be use as a positive DM as well. Mechanical skill would also be applicable in this case.
My current assumption is that the various Bots are part of ship's equipment. Even the smallest Starships have a Valet/Steward Bot to deal with housekeeping and crew maintenance, and a selection of Maintenance bots that look after the ship under direction of the engineer.
Another thing I add in is provisions for ship's stores, I use the Life support rules from Beltstrike as modified by Letter of Marque. I also asses 1% of engineering volume as Engineering Store out of which repair materials come from.
A large number of things I ponder over ship's needing are actually parts of larger ship's systems.
In the larger picture right now I am pondering a selection of Grav vehicles designed around the Orbit to Ground and Orbital Transfer roles.
baktegon
SOC-12
The crew in my campaign has purchased/"found"/won-in-a-bet several robots to do things on the ship/impress passengers.
We have a Laundry Boy (technically an "Autolaundry") which drives around the ship and attends to the laundry and dry cleaning needs of the crew and any passengers.
There is a Chef Bot (AutoChef (gourmet model)) which prepares food, but is finicky and a bit difficult to deal with.
Finally we've got an Astro-Mech Droid named P0P3 ("Pope") that was bought as a rust bucket but through a miraculous natural 12 roll was restored to working condition.
Robots galore!
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Paper underwear.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
If you want to be in the Traveller insurance game, just go visit a couple of Freetrader captains, compliment them on their ships, and mention it would be a shame if something happened to them.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Traveller is whatever you want...
If you want to play a naval campaign, you do.
If you want to play a military campaign, you do.
If you want to play a scout campaign, you do.
If you want to play a merchant campaign, you do.
If you want to play with insurance, you do.
As WHULorigan pointed out insurance can be a good way to pay for the damage incurred by the occasional space combat, allowing the players to worry less about money and more about the adventure.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
RE robots, I went with a Ship's Robot that draws on ship power with emergency power available and not mobile. All the engineering/steward/cargohandling/security/med type dumbots are controlled by the SR that acts effectively as a Robot Server. Can be kept pretty economical if it's not having to do 'everything at once'.
There's a GEICO commercial in here somewhere... :rofl:
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
What's a "GEICO"? Feminine hygiene?
