Ship Benefits Thoughts

 You rolled a ship but so did another party member . . .

"If two or more Travellers have gained ships, you should debate who actually gets a ship. The other players will receive an additional pension of Cr25000 every year for every time they rolled a ship as a benefit. This represents part ownership in a commercial vessel and the dividends received on the investment." - Traveller Core Rulebook, Mongoose 2e.

That kind of sucks, IMO. You get 25% of a ship as a career benefit, a value of KC3 11,333 or more and you get 0.2% (or less) annual return on that. (Scout ships are different because you only get the use of it, you don't get to own it). I'd rather keep my 25% and lease the ship out to an NPC group.

The design goal is that each party should have only one ship. Understandable. But maybe there's a better way to get to that goal where cool career benefits can still contribute in significant ways. Maybe a matrix?

I note that it is entirely possible, and actually probably, that a Traveller party can be generated with no ships shares or ship benefits at all. How do they start with a ship? 

To buy an older ship, the maximum discount is 50% for a ship over 100 years old with 10 rolls on the Spacecraft Quirks table - this is likely to be very damaged sensors, more difficult repairs and much higher maintenance costs (there are only 11 results on that table, only 3 of which are positive - and if those quirks stack (the rules are unclear), that's going to be horrible.

But a decommissioned Scout/Courier that age woudl cost only MCr 18.384. Without ship shares, I don't think that's achievable to a party unless they have MCr 2+, i.e., ~10% down.

Player Ship Matrix (first scratch draft)

This assumes removing ship and ship share benefits from career benefits tables, those items could be replaced with various things such as ship's boats and personal vehicles.

The party must have a veteran of one of the careers in a column to choose ship. The number of shares is a function of the number of terms in a career and sometimes rank in that career.

Initially, I tried to base the above on the Free Trader - 25% is approximately MCr 11, and with one generic ship share being equivalent to MCr 1 towards the purchase of a ship, that would mean 11 ship shares (which I set down to MCr 10 for round numbers and the impacat of negative quirks). However, with the randomness of the benefit table and the fact that several careers have no ship shares as benefits, I reduced the share cost and added incremental steps to allow players to purchase down negative quirks or add positive quirks to preserve the value of ship shares. (The best possible benefit result for Rogue can skew things as it is 2D ship shares, an average of 7, meaning an experienced and lucky Rogue with a one term Merchant colleague could start with a Free Trader. I don't think that's a problem I'm bothered to solve, in fact, it sounds like it could a Rogue using a naive Merchant as a front/fall person).

Ship shares become a function of number of terms in a career with a bonus if the character has reached rank 5 or greater. I did my best to approximate the chances of a share from how often they appear in the published benefit tables. 

What if no qualifying career or enough shares?

Older ships is probably the answer. I did some math (with a little tweak or two for simplicity) and you're still going to want some ship shares, but even just one can get you started. I think any assortment of Agent, Army, Citizen, Drifter, Entertainer, Navy, Rogue, and Scout ought to end up with at least one ship share. (I'm assuming that the most available ship will be Free/Far Traders).

Expanding Ship Benefits for Merchants, Nobles, and Scholars

While we're here . . . what if Subsidized Merchants, Subsidized Liners, and Safari Ships were added? In this case, I would strongly consider being more generous with ship shares.