9 October 2023
The crew has decided to accept the offer of the Drinaxian king (ahem, the Emperor of the Sindalian Empire) to become privateers on the Empire's behalf.
This means the following for the players:
- the players need to figure out a decision-making structure: principle agreement: aim for something that is flexible and allows for rotation of command roles, but lets characters with domain specific skills act on them.
- the players needs to figure out a way to handle money. Principle agreements "the ship eats first" and "expenses that benefit the mission-readiness are considered shared".
I see three likely models:
1) The Commune
All characters pool all of their resources to improve the ship maximally and provide starting capital.
All characters who work on the ship, receive an equal salary / profit share.
This probably feels nice for us as players.
Eliminates a lot of character-level bookkeeping.
It seems at odds with in-game reality, and may be unacceptable to some PCs.
It requires liquidation of all private assets, meaning that a lot of backstory / plot hooks become obsolete.
2) (Soon-to-be) worker-owned
All characters who work on the ship receive an equal salary / profit share.
Characters who have ship shares at the start (or 5 MCr in cash), can choose to apply the ship share (or 5 MCr) to the ship for improvements. This entitles them to a(n additional) profit share.
The ship pays out ship shares over time and slowly becomes a fully worker-owned collective.
Decreases wealth + income inequality among all characters (or all PCs) over time to the point of meaninglessness.
Gives characters free choice about using private wealth to improve the ship.
May make ship improvements slower if people choose not to contribute.
Is in line with in-game economic logic, but diminishes in-crew inequality, which may be nice for players.
Creates space for politically colored gameplay (corporations hate us! :P)
3) Capital feeds only itself
All characters who work on the ship, receive an equal salary / profit share.
No one donates private wealth to the ship.
The ship can take out loans on crew-owned ship shares or other assets to improve itself.
Paying off loans on ship shares become part of the operating expenses of the ship.
Increases income / wealth inequality among PC's, but (if the salary is sufficient) probably not in a way that is salient since we all have "enough" money.
Nicely hypercapitalist, like the rest of the in-game universe.
Higher operating expenses due to loan repayments.
Allows for easy leaving / joining of new characters.
Seems at odds with the clearly materialist leanings of some PCs to leave such an amazing asset unowned.
- This means the following for the characters:**
- we get to name the ship
Suggestions here:
| Hippocampus | (after the sea horses of Sink) |
| That Second Certain Thing | (Death and... taxes, of course, and a Culture reference) |
| Brick's Beautiful Bride | (he did meet her after his Bachelor party) |
- which / how many ship shares does each player want to sell off to improve the ship?
- which ship improvements to we want to make (first)
| Improvement | Current state | ship shares needed | |
| Turret | nonfunctional | 1 | |
| Holographic hull | partial function, power drain]] | 1 | |
| Maintenance cost | 10.000 cr/mth | 4 (to 2667 cr / mth) | |
| Hull strength | 72 | 2 (to 88) | |
| Countermeasure suite | DM+4 | 2 (to DM +6) | |
| Power plant | 75% (195) | 1 (260) | |
| Jump drive | DM -2 | 2 | |
| Manoeuver drive | unreliable (1/36 nonfucntional) | 2 |
Total ship shares needed for full repair: 15 or 75 MCr
- Referee Question:** do we use original rules or PoD rules for valuation of ship shares?
If PoD, do we adjust the payouts associated with ship shares / ship ownership? An annual return of 1000Cr on a 5MCr investment (1 ship share, as per PoD) is ludicrous. It also does not explain why a 25% owned yacht has an annual return of 25000 Cr if the 5 MCr share valuation means you only have 3 ship shares.
- Which characters do which jobs on board (and do we want people to (be able to) do more than one job?
| Role | Mandatory? | Character | |
| Captain | M | on rotation / watch? | maybe we use a 'commander' role instead? |
| Pilot | M | Randy / Diogo / (Persy) | |
| Astrogator | M | Persy | |
| Engineer | M | Pent / Stigo / Diogo | |
| Maintenance | M | Pent / Stigo / Diogo | |
| Gunner (barbette) | M | ? | |
| Gunner (turret) | X | ? | |
| Medic | M | Heloise | |
| Broker | O | Persy | |
| Steward | O | Persy | |
| Marine 1 | O | Brick | |
| Marine 2 | O | Franky | |
| Marine 3 | O | 2 |
- What kind of watch schedule do we set?
With a crew of 8 we could do a schedule that gives everyone 1 day + night with just 1 three hour shift every four days, and between 6-9 hours 'on' on the three intermittent days. We could pair 'command-capable' crew with 'non-commander' crew like so: https://www.followingseas.media/blog/2017/5/8/best-watch-schedule-ever
This seems like a very gentle, and relatively sociable schedule.
- other?