Alright, so now we know all the things that can go wrong when you’re flying a spaceship. Now we can find out how to actually get the spaceship, assuming your character didn’t get one mustering out of the Scouts or Merchants. And so, we now come to a brief economics lesson via the far future.
Purchasing a starship starts with a down payment of 20%.
Well, that’s pretty extreme, depending on how much the ship costs in the first
place. I doubt it’s going to be something you can afford on your mustering-out
benefits, no matter how good your rolls were. And, over time, you’re going to
pay more than double the cost of the ship in interest payments over a 40-year
period. That’s a lot of time for a mortgage. Hopefully there’s anti-aging technology
so you can enjoy the ship before your funeral in space.
Oh, and you get to submit a payment plan before you buy, as
in explain to the lender exactly how you’re going to spend your time over the
next forty years earning money to pay them back. Oh, joy. Traveller meets actuarial tables.
The nice thing is that the government might subsidize you if
it’s a really big ship. A type 600 hull or better qualifies, although I don’t
know what that number means yet. Still, these subsidized merchants are running
predetermined routes, so it’s basically a job where you’re working for the
local government as their own personal cargo ship captain. You still have to
pay 20% down, but the rest of the payments are taken care of by the government
in exchange for 50% of whatever you earn. Well, that’s not a terrible deal, I
suppose, although you’re still responsible for all expenses and costs involved
in running the ship. So, you’re screwed either way.
Even better, as a subsidized ship, you’re at their
beck-and-call if they need you to serve as auxiliary military, maybe as a
transport or cargo ship. But if you survive for forty years you get the ship.
You’ll be eating your meals through a straw and wearing hi-tech Depends, but at
least you’ll have a ship of your own to do it in.
So, what are these aforementioned operating expenses? There
are five of them, although only one of them is mentioned on this page: Fuel.
It’s not that expensive compared to some of the weapons you can buy; 500
credits per ton for the good stuff, or 100 for the cheap, unrefined stuff
(which can also be sucked up for free from the local gas giant. There’s a name
for a Traveller fueling station: The
Local Gas Giant. It’s an unrefined place.
Okay, you need a power plant to use that fuel, and there’s a
formula for how much fuel you’ll need: 10Pn, where Pn is the power plant size
rating, which will be explained in more detail on a later page, I hope. The
amount is in tons, so if you have a power plant with a rating of six, you’ll
need 60 tons of fuel, costing 30,000 Cr. Alright, that’s a bit pricey. Fully
fueled, though, the power plant will allow you to maneuver in combat even as
you’re heading out to the nearest jump point.
Tomorrow, more expenses. In the meantime, though, check out my science-fiction debut, Bard Conley's Adventures Across the Solar System, available on Amazon right now in both e-book and paperback formats.
No comments:
Post a Comment