Bear in mind that 'spaceship' covers a vast multitude of categories. I do believe there are costs somewhere for a 'rocket buggy' which is a sort of spaceship. For 10,000Cr you get a 'broomstick' at most. Clip a rifle and a bucket seat to it. Congratulations, you're now your own space navy. I believe that the information which is there is to provide a guideline for GMs who want to use ships as settings (How big is big? How fast is fast? How many crew are a crew?) and nothing more.

Well, a 747 with a nice interior costs around 300 million dollars. If we assume a small spacecraft costs about the same, and that 1 credit is around 10 dollars, it is just 30 million credits. So you better pony up with a lot of CPs. How I would handle this is to view the spacecraft as owned by an organisation, and this organisation is the Patron of the involved PCs. They pay CP for the advantage of either working for the owners or being shareholders in a spaceship. The organisation can be anything from a merchant company to an anarchist commune. They have responsibilities to the owners (like not breaking the ship, making money, implementing their agenda) but how tough they are depends about the mutually agreed background. The family-owned merchant ship might just have the PCs and a few NPCs as members of the org, and then they have to make money to pay off the mortgage to a lunar bank. Or they could be members of the Jovian dirty ops intelligence community, with a ship that looks like it is owned by a little Ganymedan salvage outfit... Meta: rpgs rarely handle major investments well, because they are *complex*. Most players and GMs can handle buying, selling and owning simple things, but as soon as the legal contracts surrounding them become complex we have to abstract a lot. Just think about how houses function in terms of rents, tenancy, mortgages, rights-of-ways and other legal stuff. Spacecraft are even worse, plus they involve numerous technical details and ongoing costs (have you paid for the coolant isotope regeneration this week? what about the ANAP navbeacon certification? the software compliance check?) At this point it is better to make them scenery and part of the scenario rather than foreground objects people own. "Sure, that ship is mine. I salvaged it myself some years ago, in a belt-crosser orbit. It was owned by Lentech-AIBN, so I thought I was in the clear: they went the way of the dodo in the Fall. Except that Grauman Anne Investments, a lunar law firm, bought up some of their claims. So if I ever get into LLA space they will impound it and ruin me with a lawsuit. And refurbishing it took a bit of effort, so I had to promise the Hadow Gang regular services until 12 AF... the good thing is, they make entrance to Locus easy. Unfortunately they are quarrelling with the Andelics, so in all extropian habitats I get spammed with compliance enforcement. That also led to some bad ratings that have been hell to circumvent when going to Red-aligned autonomist habitats - the nav-rep of the ship is shot to hell, despite it working perfectly. The sensor suit is actually leased from TYH Corp; I can't afford to run it too much, but I know it is reporting back valuable data to them. To pay running costs I set up a deal with the Belt Independence Organisation through a joint stock company. Unfortunately the BIO sold off half of their share to some argonauts who insist on regular reporting of *everything*. Then of course I have my family corp, listed on the Titan market and totally legit. But filing my tax returns is tough - you would be amazed by how complex it is to declare a credit income. As I said, that ship is mine. But a hundred other people have a claim on it."

Quincey Forder wrote:

as character concept, pilot would be a nice one, and basically a pilot would be a glorified truck driver.

Can't leave out Chandler's "Commodore Grimes" stories if you're going to talk about issues of being a 'long haul trucker' or 'tramp freighter' pusher. Chandler was merchant marine in the really real world and brought a lot of the little issues of licensing, impoundment, and the 'interesting' relationship the military and merchant marine enjoy ('testy' ain't the word) to his fiction. And if we're talking about truck drivers, you can't get away without mention of Jack Burton. You know what ol' Jack Burton says at a time like this...

Quincey Forder wrote:

as character concept, pilot would be a nice one, and basically a pilot would be a glorified truck driver.

Of course, they would be truck drivers with Ph.D.s. Another job that matters is the nuke. They are responsible for power, cooling and the drive. The pilots fiddle with the position and velocity of the ship, the nuke makes sure there is enough delta-v to get there. Then there is the life support engineer. While the job can be pretty yucky sometimes they are more than essential. They are the one's who can get the showers and plumbing to work or not. Often combined with maintaining the active nanosystems onboard.

Assuming anyone is biological, Arenamontanus. Of course, in most groups there's at least one ...

There's no restriction per se. It's simply unrealistic for them to afford them. It's kind of incredible how rich the starting 1000 CP characters already are, but that's heroes for you. :) The GM can certainly make such things part of the game (as I said, my current game has the other chars as employees of my mini-merc outfit, with the use of a ship). Corporate pilot (suggested above) is a perfectly good character idea, though one with significant non-'play' duties and restrictions.

Well I'm very new to the system, so I'm sure there's plenty of things I don't understand, but they do seem to be restricted in the sense that there's no prices for them. The restriction on start credits (no more than 100 CP spent on them) would make it trivial to give spaceships and personal habitats prices that are out of the reach of starting characters but attainable down the line. This was explicitly avoided. Also, I'm not sure why they even *need* to cost so much, depending on where you are in the system. I understand that certain economies (Like the Jovians) have lots of restrictions, but if your out in the autonomist alliance than that's a very different issue. Not that I imagine anyone is out there handing out free stuff (physical stuff, obviously there's open source software/freeware) but I think autonomists would be disposed to help people get there own living areas, basic makers, and other items necessary for - well - being autonomous. The most obvious help would be open source plans for micro-habs, solar collectors, and automated mining. Not every ship or hab needs to be huge. It just has to do what it's designed to do. Personally if I ever get to play (I'm probably the only one among my friends willing to RUN this game) I'd like to have a simulspace server floating out in space with some basic maneuverability to hold my backup and maybe create some simulspace because I am PARANOID AS HELL. That wouldn't even need to have life-support - or physical space inside.

this reminds me a game of Vampire, a few years back one of our group was named Prince of Paris, after the apparent final death of François Villon. Our first collective reaction was like it's going to play a game like Civilisation. Instead with had: -assassination attempts -Annarch raid on hunting domains of primogens who demand action -manipulation from the local Justicar to wipe out the local Brujahs etc etc that was in the 18th Century. Imagine what it would be with "simple" mortals, given control of a habitat, single handpicked by the previous governor it gives really good opportunities if your character is chosen like that out of blue for a job he doesn't have the skills for. And the others like know that too. Jealousies, powerplays, undertable negociations etc it's like swimming with hungry sharks

Honestly, you're never going to be *that* rich. It's just very far outside of the 'normal play' and probability curves. Rep doesn't go that high, and the number of credits involved would have to simply astronomical (hyuk). The closest thing I can imagine for comparison are US nuclear naval ships (?), which are half-billion dollar affairs at the low end (plus crew, maintenance, etc.). It's just not really in the game. If you *did* want this stuff in the game, why would you need a number value? Habs are a different story, because they're just tin cans in the sky. They can be the size of a shipping container. They should still be pretty expensive if they do anything useful, though; again, well beyond Expensive and normal amounts of Rep/cred. It's so simple to just handwave it, so why would you need numbers?

Yeah, I'm not saying that it's not nice to have actual dollar values for things, no matter how crazy. But they are crazy enough that it doesn't really matter. Because spaceships have nukes (or equivalents). They also have rad shielding, enviro systems, life support, and so on (unless they're for synths only?). You can get kayaks, they're called rocket sleds. Spaceships and naval ships don't really compare, especially at that level. That's why I jumped straight to a naval destroyer, for a very rough comparison. The closest thing to a costed spacecraft in the book is the the Hard Vac Suit, or maybe the Rocket Buggy. The Hard suit is High, and has only a 10 hours * 0.01 g propulsion (I'm not what happens then, because it says 'explorers have used them for 2 months').

I'm not really a space nerd either, so I honestly can't say really what you can do with hardware. But given there are no rules for habs *either*, it's not really helpful if a ship is just a hab with wings. :D Nor for sails, AFAIK… hope you didn't need to be anywhere soon, though.

@Yerameyahu Ok, Ihink we're on the same page now. All I would add is that, since travel by ship is fairly rare, you're really only going to use it as a hide-away (or a main home if your autonomist/brinker really these are the only people likely to even *want* such a thing) @ Arenamontanus And here I thought I was being a good forum member by posting in an existing thread when I clearly should have used the search box. THANK YOU. That thread helps a lot. Would you say that Autonimists make and test there's in a sort-of Amish barn-raising? Or do most autonomists live together in standard size habs?

This ties into something else that concerns me about the setting/system. I've noticed that a whole lot of time is spent discussing ego-casting as a method of travel but more traditional methods like renting a berth in a ship are barely touched upon. Ok, the description of the cargo ship in the spacecraft section does include a nice description of how passenger berths work, but an exact figure for how much that transport costs is never given. I can see how this might be off-putting to my players when they spend a bunch of CPs customizing their morphs, only to find out that their first mission is going to involve ego-casting across the solar system and using rented synths.

I'm gonna have to agree with Arenamontanus on this one. One of the fundamental aspects of transhumanism as an idea (and I do consider myself a transhumanist IRL) is of the body as a piece of gear. On the flip side, I can appreciate your position with disappointed players. My advice is 1) don't do nonlocal stuff extremely often and 2) throw them a bone every once in a while. Ever gotten bumped up to first class because the airline overbooked coach? The same can happen with morphs (don't let your players get used to it, but it works wonders to counter frustration every once in a while). "Sorry there seems to have been a minor accident, and the Fury Morph you requested was damaged/destroyed. As a consolation, please enjoy this heavily customized premium Remade normally reserved for our platinum customers."

Arenamontanus wrote:

The only reasons not to go by egocast is that you do not trust the receiver with your ego, that you need to bring something material (like warheads or a cargo) or that there is no functioning receiver.

Or you are [i]that[/i] wealthy and the journey and its luxuries are what you're really paying for...The destination is simply a side-effect of the journey. I'm currently working on deck layout, a main adventure campaign, and some additional side adventure seeds for the EP equivalent of a classic luxury transatlantic liner (something along the lushness of the [i]Rex[/i] or the [i][url=http://www.thegreatoceanliners.com/contedisavoia.html]Conte di Savoia[/url][/i]) running from Venus to Titan with all the appropriate stops that orbital mechanics permit. (P.S., if you have to ask how much a ticket is, [i]obviously[/i] you can't afford it.)

Sounds like Mass Effect 2 to me.

There is no rule against having spaceships. However, if you want to keep the setting hard sf and consistent, then spaceships will be extremely cumbersome game-wise. We are not talking about a glorified car bringing PCs from point A to point B, but a very complex technological system involving a myriad of subsystems, legal entanglements, costs, and potential to act as a WMD. Spacecraft are bound by some pretty tough laws of physics, even with the amazingly powerful engines of EP - do you want to get into a discussion with your players whether they have enough delta-v to reach habitat X given their current velocity vector ("But it is just ahead!" "Yes, but you are moving 100 km/s too fast and cannot slow down enough!")? When the players want to engage in battle, how much do you want to take into account stuff like http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/EP%20naval%20strategy.pdf (my so far unfinished analysis of EP-era space warfare) ? You can of course wing the physics, engineering and economy just as you wing the game rules (it is often necessary in any case), but it becomes very glaring for major objects under player control like spacecraft. The reason is that players expect consistency of objects, and it is very hard to maintain consistent winging. I have run a good game with the PCs running a spacecraft. No problems there. But they were not jaunting around the solar system.

Theoretically, a fellow with access to his own backyard canal could build a boat in it. Theoretically, if he had a lot of time, money, materials and equipment, he could build a BIG boat in it. He still has to license and insure it before getting out into the shipping lanes. Oh, you can toodle around the beachfront in your little ten-foot Sunfish all you like, but you don't go out into real blue water in something without a registration number. Now, imagine for just a minute, that with enough time and cleverness, said fellow with his backyard home-built yacht could destroy most of the support-systems of a small town, somehow. That's what a spaceship is. It's not just about 'Is it feasible to build it.' It's also about 'who will object or want to be paid off?' Lots of factions are probably real unhappy to deal with unregistered, cobbled-together vessels, because you don't know WHAT you're letting inside your defensive perimeter. So, going down the list: You need antimatter. Lots of antimatter. You need a big dang fabber. Lots of materials and probably lots of rare elements. You need a blueprint. A tested one that works would be mighty nice. You need a place to assemble it where some equivalent of the local boys in blue or even just the neighborhood watch won't kick in your door and say "Excuse me, we couldn't help but notice you're assembling a powerful drive system in here. We'd like to talk to you about it. Now." For the same reason even anarchists don't casually let their neighbors play with antimatter or micro black-holes or TITAN bioweapons, they won't be happy about someone building a ship next door. The Kzinti lesson applies with a vengeance. Yeah, you can find blueprints on the web that'll let you (given time, training and tools and material) build a hundred-foot sailing yacht. Imagine if there was NO WAY to build that sailing yacht that didn't include installing a giant warhead in it. Now imagine how easy the people around you would make your home yachting program if that were the case. Any spacecraft is a KKV. Or to hammer the point home, EVERY spacecraft is a KKV.

Do what is awesome. All of the points in this thread are absolutely correct, but ultimately it comes down to 'what will make me and my players have a great time at the table?' If the answer is 'spaceships, dammit!' then clearly the answer is spaceships :)

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

Do what is awesome. All of the points in this thread are absolutely correct, but ultimately it comes down to 'what will make me and my players have a great time at the table?' If the answer is 'spaceships, dammit!' then clearly the answer is spaceships :)

And what could be more awesome than someone building a spaceship despite all odds? In fact, that is a pretty good adventure story on its own, or an element in the local setting. Unpopular "Crazy Joe" and his personal project... which one day will be essential for saving the settlement - or wiping it out.

Admittedly, there are a lot of responses here that amount to: Players shouldn't have that. It's dangerous to small animals. That's using resources well beyond what players [i]should[/i] have access to. Your community and government won't like you building such a dangerous thing next door. And a different equivalent occurred to me, suddenly. None of these issues stopped [url=http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/radscout.html]the Radioactive Boy Scout from attempting to build a breeder reactor in his mom's garden shed[/url]. Okay, that's not true. Eventually the government did catch up to him.