Ship Economy and Ownership

A ship is the most expensive thing most crews will ever touch. What it costs to buy, what it costs to keep flying, and what happens when the crew cannot cover either are the pressures that turn a ship into a campaign.

This chapter covers the Cargo Unit, the cost tiers used throughout this book, hull prices, the used market, financing and ownership models, operating costs, module and hardpoint pricing, and what a ship is worth when you sell it.

The Cargo Unit

A Cargo Unit is a unit of secured hold space. One holds a tonne of ordinary packaged freight; dense goods pack more into it and bulky goods less, and a hold can never carry more than twice its rating in tonnes whatever the density.

The full rules, including Density Classes, the mass ceiling, and the Encumbrance conversion, are in Chapter Three. This chapter uses Cargo Units only as a price and capacity reference.

For scale: a road freight trailer is about 22 Cargo Units.

Cost Tiers

This book describes many costs by tier rather than by number, because the same repair means something different to a courier crew and to a bulk hauler operation. A tier is read against the ship's Scale.

Trivial is one jump's fuel. That is the anchor the whole ladder is built on, and it is a useful sanity check at the table: if a cost would not make the engineer look up from refuelling, it is Trivial. Each tier above is roughly five times the last.

Read every tier reference elsewhere in this book against this table. A Minor repair on a Scale 4 freighter is 300cr to 1,500cr. The same word on a Scale 6 hauler means 2,000cr to 12,000cr.

Hull Prices

The prices below are for factory-new hulls at builder-authorized yards, in the builder's home market, with the factory module package installed and no additional systems.

Almost no player crew buys a ship this way. These figures are the reference the used market discounts from.

Note what the prices say about the market. Cargo capacity is cheap. Armor, hardpoints, speed, and build quality are expensive. The CM-440 carries one sixth of the Model 20's freight and costs more, because you are buying an armored hull with weapon mounts rather than a hold. The KR-41 is the value purchase in the Scale 4 band: nearly the Model 20's capacity, rougher finish, fewer module slots, meaningfully cheaper.

Scale 5 is the ownership ceiling for individuals. A Scale 4 hull is a working crew's ship. A Scale 5 hull is the largest most people will ever hold title to without a company, a lender consortium, or a government standing behind them. Above Scale 5, ownership stops being personal: the crew of a Scale 6 hauler works for whoever owns it.

The VN-53C1 liner is the clearest illustration of the gap between capability and price in this book. It is the second most expensive commercial hull in the catalog and one of the least capable in a fight, because most of what the buyer paid for is fittings rather than performance. See Chapter Thirteen on why underspending a hull's build budget does not make it cheap.

Sovereign military hulls are not sold to private buyers at any price. A military vessel in civilian hands arrived there through prize capture, corruption, or theft, and its price is whatever the seller can extract from a buyer who cannot go to the authorities. Treat any such transaction as a campaign event rather than a purchase.

Buying Outside the Home Market

Builder hulls cost more away from the builder's home space, because you are paying for delivery, import duty, and a service network that does not want to support you.

Condition and the Used Market

This is where crews actually shop. Apply the condition multiplier to the new price.

A high-hours Model 20 costs 122,500cr. That is the ship a starting crew owns.

Deferred maintenance is real. A ship bought at High Hours or below begins play with its Maintenance Clock already advanced. The GM should place it at the Quarterly interval with one skipped servicing, which means one random system is degrading and adds 1 Bane Die when used. Restoring the ship to a clean clock costs a Significant expense and takes yard time.

Inspecting before buying. A buyer may make an Average Craft Trial to assess a used hull before purchase. On a success, the GM discloses the ship's true condition tier and any hidden defects. On a failure, the buyer learns nothing beyond the seller's description. On a Calamity , the buyer forms a confident and incorrect impression. A professional survey at a licensed yard costs a Moderate expense and grants 2 Boon Dice to the Trial.

Component Availability and Pricing

Every component carries an Availability, which is who may legally own it. Availability drives price. Capability does not: a component's rating is what it does, and the two are tracked separately. Chapter Ten covers both axes in full.

Two further labels describe where a component came from rather than what it is permitted to be.

Restricted and Military components are plainly better than open-market equivalents. They are balanced by cost, by acquisition difficulty, and by the fact that possessing one is evidence of something.

Financing a Ship

Direct purchase is rare outside wealthy families, corporations, and governments. Most crews finance.

Standard Commercial Terms

The 2.5% figure covers principal and interest at Verge commercial rates for an asset that can leave the jurisdiction at will and be destroyed on any given day. Lenders price that in. Use it directly; there is no amortization table at the table.

Worked example. A crew buys a high-hours Model 20.

• New price 350,000cr, High Hours condition ×0.35 = 122,500cr purchase price
• Down payment 10% = 12,250cr
• Financed amount = 110,250cr
• Monthly payment 2.5% = 2,756cr per month for ten years

Against a 9,600cr freight month, that payment is 29% of gross and about 60% of what is left after fuel, docking, supplies, and maintenance. One missed run and the crew is a month behind.

Terms by Lender

Not every crew qualifies for standard terms.

Missing payments escalates through the consequence ladder in Chapter Eleven.

Outstanding Balance

For payoff, bounty, and deficiency purposes, outstanding balance = financed amount × months remaining ÷ 120. A crew 22 months into a standard Model 20 loan owes 110,250 × 98 ÷ 120 = 90,037cr. Paying that figure in full ends the loan. The lender does not refund interest already paid; the rate was the price of the risk.

Ownership Models

The six ownership models in the Player's Guide resolve to the following terms.

A lease costs more per month than a mortgage and builds nothing, but it needs almost no capital up front. A crew with no savings leases. A crew with a payout buys.

Operating Costs

A ship costs money every month whether it flies or not. These are the running costs before debt.

Fuel

Fuel is consumed per Slipstream jump. Sublight maneuvering within a system is covered by the same charge.

Forced entry, extreme offset exits, and hard burns consume an additional half charge each.

Docking and Berth Fees

Charged per day docked. Ships in open space or on a planetary surface outside a facility pay nothing and receive nothing.

Long-term berth contracts cost 60% of the daily rate when paid monthly in advance. A crew with a home port usually holds one.

Crew Wages

Owner-operators take shares of profit rather than wages. These rates are for hired crew.

Hazard pay: add 50% for work the crew knows is illegal, and 100% for conflict zones or jobs where the ship is expected to be shot at.

Board: hired crew eat and sleep aboard at 75cr per person per month, included in supplies below.

Hired crew who go unpaid do not simply quit. They talk, they take a better offer mid-contract, or they arrange compensation themselves.

Supplies and Maintenance

These correspond to the Maintenance Clock intervals in Chapter Eleven. Skipping a servicing saves the money and advances the clock.

The Monthly Nut

A crew's monthly nut is the total of fuel, docking, wages, supplies, maintenance, and debt. This is the number that decides which jobs they can refuse.

Worked example. Four owner-operators on a high-hours Model 20, six jumps and ten docked days at major independent stations.

One full bulk freight contract of 9,600cr covers this and leaves about 1,750cr to split four ways. That is the intended baseline: honest freight keeps the ship flying and the crew fed, and nothing else. Getting ahead means carrying better cargo, taking worse risks, or trading on the crew's own account.

Module and Hardpoint Pricing

Modules

A module's price is the base slot cost for the hull's Scale, multiplied by the module type, multiplied by its grade.

Base cost per module slot:

Module type multipliers:

A medical bay on a Scale 4 hull costs 15,000 × 1.6 = 24,000cr at Open availability, or 38,400cr at Licensed.

Installation costs 20% of the module price at a yard, or nothing but time and a Craft Trial if the crew does the work themselves with a Workshop aboard. See Chapter Ten for the Trial difficulties and project timelines.

Hardpoints

Costs to install new weapon hardpoint capacity on a hull rated to carry it.

Upgrading an existing hardpoint costs the difference between the two mounts, multiplied by 1.5 for the structural rework. Upgrading a Scale 4 Light mount to Standard costs (30,000 − 12,000) × 1.5 = 27,000cr, plus the Trial and dry-dock time in Chapter Ten.

Downgrading recovers 40% of the original mount cost and follows the same timeline one difficulty step lower.

Weapons themselves are priced separately in Chapter Nine of the Equipment Guide and in the weapon catalog entries.

Selling a Ship

A crew selling a hull recovers less than its assessed value. Assess the ship at its current condition tier, then apply the buyer.

A ship under finance cannot be sold until the outstanding balance is cleared. A crew that sells a financed hull without clearing it has committed fraud in every jurisdiction that matters, and the lender's response follows the escalation ladder in Chapter Eleven from step three onward.

Salvage Value

A ship stripped for parts rather than sold whole recovers 45% of assessed value, requires a salvage rig or a yard contract, and takes two to six weeks. Components pulled for the crew's own use are priced by the salvage and integration rules in Chapter Eleven.