>A long time ago, you all discussed the fact that
>a Free Trader can barely make bank payments, let alone enough to let the
>owner retire in comfort. No real conclusion was reached. Let me point out
>that in the real world, people don't start businesses that they don't expect
>to make money at; and if they fail, 100 other people don't immediately follow
>in their footsteps in the same business.
Actually, in the real world, roughly 2/3 of all small businesses fold
within three years, because they weren't profitable. I've been told
that the single biggest reason for this is that they expected to make
a profit too quickly, and hence didn't have enough starting capital.
>The problem is, as written, the profitability of a
>merchant ship DROPS as size [Jay: actually performance] increases.
Actually, this was a problem that I saw back in the original Traveller,
and have corrected every time I was GM (and in most games I wasn't).
Basically, it would be more consistant to charger freight and
passengers for distance, rather than jumps! In the real world airlines,
the cost of a ticket is related to the fuel used by the planes.
Real world freight charges are for distance. In special cases, fast
delivery costs MUCH extra.
In the traveller case, a ship that goes Jump-6 distance should get
the same base rate if the ship is Jump-1 capable or Jump-6 capable.
Actually, the Jump-6 ship should get a premium for certain types of
cargo (anything which is time-specific); even without the premium,
it has fewer expenses and can make more distance during a year than
a Jump-1 capable ship.
I haven't run the numbers, but even with this system (but without
a premium for faster delivery), I'm not sure that a J-6 ship would
be the most profitable. It would have much less cargo space, due
to increased fuel and engine sizes. I have the feeling that the
most profitable merchant ship would be around J-3 or 4, but that
is mostly guesswork.
[Please forgive me if I am wrong about how freight charges work; the
GM who ran the only MegaTraveller game I was in told me this was
the way things worked, and he had never seen the original Traveller.
I figure if he thought it worked this way, he read it in the rules.
I do know that it worked this way in the original rules, and I thought
it was stupid then. Please email any flames.]
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D. Jay Newman ! Fate: it protects fools, little children,
[email removed] ! and ships named Enterprise... (Cmdr. Riker)
CBEL--Teaching and Learning Technologies Group