Re: Free Traders (again)

Steve Higginbotham:

>Adam Naylor:
>>Free Traders get their vessels from say a fellow free trader whose
>>retiring, a bankrupt orgainization, etc .
>
>Then why are they mostly brand new?  At least you pay new prices for
>them.

>>The payments are large for paying of a vessel agreed, BUT those
>>people want to be merhants they didnt get talked into it . The corp
>>captains could be in it because they want to be independant .
>
>The payments are too large to achieve breakeven.

>You have to be wealthy just to buy a ship (MCr7+ down payment on a
>free trader).

>>The bank repayments are large on a free trader (About 175,000/Month),

I connection with our discussion about warship maintenance I
came up with the idea of making maintenance more expensive the
older the ship was. I'm still working on the calculations (no,
I tell a lie; I've put them away for the nonce, but I'll get
back to them someday. Really!), but so far I'm thinking of
adding 2% per year (with two different types of maintenance:
the yearly one that just keeps the systems running and major
overhauls that reduces the effective age of the ship). That
makes a 50 year old ship twice as expensive to run. I know what
you're thinking: As if it wasn't hard enough for the poor
freetraders to make ends meet already! But wait! There's
method in my madness, because that will make old starships
undesirable to the major corporations and reduce the _price_ of
old ships. Thus we enable comparative paupers to buy their own
starship for perhaps 1/10th of the price of a new one. With
bank backing that could even become managable. And while
maintenance becomes more expensive, bank repayments become
less. What I haven't worked out yet is the precise reduction in
ship price that would be reasonable.

>Interesting.  My calculations show that starship loans run 5.575%
>annual interest.  Hardly back-breaking.

Remember that the Imperium has (had) a very stable economy. No
inflation. That makes small interes rates the norm. I once
calculated that the return on investing in a Subsidized Merchant
(provided sufficient cargo and passengers were guaranteed to be
available) was roughly 3%.

>               Starships are still too expensive.  Remember, most of
>the discussion about the costs of those ships doesn't include mention
>of ownership.  A free trader (type A) owned by Tukera STILL won't make
>any money.

True, but I assume that Mega-corporations can collar the runs
and contracts that guarantee full ships on every trip, leaving
the marginal routes to the freetraders.



      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     [email removed]
- ------------
        "And now to conclude and to finish my song.
         Let us hope that these hard times, they will not last long.
         I hope soon to have occasion to alter my song;
         and sing: All the good times of the Empire.
              In the Empire are jolly good times."
                                - Traditional