I didn't see a related question to this in the first seven pages, so...

How much profit should be "burned" so to speak in order to maintain a starship?

To explain, my players have recently "acquired" (to put it gently) a starship from an enemy, and my campaign will give them the opportunity to acquire a lot more, of different makes and conditions, provided that is the route they wish to take and they don't slag too many into space hulks.

Considering even the smallest proper starship is a giant flying space cathedral city, I figure each one should punch a hole in their profit factor simply for having it, due to the monstrous amount of maintenance each one requires to function, but am not sure what would be a fair amount.

I am currently hovering around -2 for Raiders, -3 for Frigates, -4 for Light Cruisers, and -5 for full Cruisers, however, there is also the amount of components in each ship, their condition, and their Ship Point values (which help indicate general value) to take into account, and trying to process all of this in a balanced and fair way is headache inducing (especially considering I have created a plethora of unique ships with wildly different abilities and components).

How would you balance this? For anybody who has already figured a solution for this, what did you do?

This is just an idea from the top of my head as I don't have the books with me, but I would allow the players to roll against their profit factor with an adjustment according to the number and size of their ships, say; +0 for transports, -10 for raiders, -20 for frigates, -30 for light cruisers and and -40 for cruisers. If they have multiple ships they have to roll for these separetaly and certain components may also have to be rolled separately to maintain. These maintanence checks shouldn't happen to often, maybe only once per session and only if the ship and/or crew is damaged. If they succeed no profit is burned, if they fail they loose profit according to their degrees of failure as they have to rely on outside work forces and resources to keep their ship in shape. If they succeed they manage to muster the necessary resources from their own wealth without cutting down on their dynasty's profit factor.

The usual rule of thumb I've seen is deducting the tens digit of the ship's SP cost from their Profit Factor.

If you want something more in-depth, Marwynn is working on some rules over in this thread: http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/110636-your-dynasty-fleet-and-you/

I think they're well worth a look, personally.

I do nothing at all, and allow my players to collect and control as many voidships as they like without affecting their profit factor. Their fleets are usually limited by the need to defend their previous holdings, desire to rent ships out as mercenaries for money, and wish to use their own secret ships for smuggling endeavours and... "tax-exempt" trading runs.

The point I'm trying to make is that the amount of PF you want your players to burn for ships is going to be dependent on the rate of advancement you want to see in game, as well as how you run all other empire building parts of the game.

Yeah, Winterscale has a HUGE Profit Factor, AND controls LOTS of ships, so I'd think that, in some ways, the number doesn't change, based on the fleet. Granted, he's got lots of things MAKING money, but yeah, ships would be a HUGE investment.

For maintenance/upkeep, I'd probably just figure out what ships the crew is actually using, and then make some Acquisition tests to refill ammo, air, food, and whatnot, based on maybe rolling to "acquire" that component, again. Many things, once you are that good, don't require the burning of PF, and the ship IS, itself, a part of your fortune.

I think that ships should impact Profit Factor, as it's actually a nice balance because as a Rogue Trader dynasty grows their PF can easily pass 100, but if they've got territory, holdings or enemies they're going to need more ships for defense, which can keep their costs down.

I toyed around with the 1/10th SP rule, but I went a flat value subtracted based on hull size.

My general rule is:

Transports/Raiders: 1; Frigates: 2; LC: 3; Cruisers: 5; BC: 6; Grand Cruiser: 8

• I've never allowed a Battleship in a campaign, so never bothered with trying to price it for my players. I'd guess it would be 10-12 PF.
• Universe Mass Conveyers require 4 PF maintenance - this represents their massive size requiring a massive crew not only to operate, but to keep it running.
• Goliath-class Factory Ship requires 4 PF maintenance - this represents that complex technology and machinery it is loaded with in order to perform its function. This machinery is not only expensive to maintain and repair, but generally requires an unusually large number of Tech-Priests and Enginseers (that's my thought anyway).
• I acknowledge that many of you will views these numbers as high, especially for the larger vessels. I don't. Ships of that nature/size are generally meant to be owed and operated by only the wealthiest of RT Dynasties.

The above based maintenance cost is also modified by the equipment rating of the ship, whether or not (and how often) it goes to void and also reduced over time.

So, for example, if the ship in question participates in no instances of void combat, avoids misfortunes and literally does little more than sit in orbit/dock and do some warp traveling, the maintenance cost in cut in half for that campaign-cycle (which is 1 year in my campaigns), rounded up. Effectively, the RT would have the other half of the normal maintenance costs of that particular ship to use as temporary PF for that campaign-cycle.

I also increase the maintenance cost of the vessel by 1 PF for every 2 archeotech components and/or 1 xenotech component. Maintenance is further increased by 1 for every 2 poor craftsmanship components. However, maintenance is reduced by 1 for every 3 good craftsmanship or 2 best craftsmanship components (to represent the excellent quality making it less prone to usual wear and tear).

Lastly, for every 3 campaign-cycles the RT owns the vessel in question, it's maintenance cost is reduced by 1 PF, to a number not less than half the usual maintenance cost (minimum 1 PF).

Well, you guys are all more generous than I am. I charge an "Acquisition" fee equal to half the hull's SP in Profit Factor. This is typically reduced by salvage/capturing the ship instead of just buying one. Then I have an "Operations Fee" equal to the other half of the hull's SP in profit factor that had to be paid if they want the ship to be free to go around on adventures with them. Of course, if they send the ship off to fund itself in the background, they get this profit factor back. In theory (though they've never done it) ships could be leased out to get the Acquisition PF back as well.

I've always assumed that buying ships is one of the things that keeps some of the big RTs profit factors reasonable. You might after a generation be able to match Winterscale's 120 PF, but he's got another 300 PF tied up in ships!

Well, you guys are all more generous than I am. I charge an "Acquisition" fee equal to half the hull's SP in Profit Factor. This is typically reduced by salvage/capturing the ship instead of just buying one. Then I have an "Operations Fee" equal to the other half of the hull's SP in profit factor that had to be paid if they want the ship to be free to go around on adventures with them. Of course, if they send the ship off to fund itself in the background, they get this profit factor back. In theory (though they've never done it) ships could be leased out to get the Acquisition PF back as well.

I've always assumed that buying ships is one of the things that keeps some of the big RTs profit factors reasonable. You might after a generation be able to match Winterscale's 120 PF, but he's got another 300 PF tied up in ships!

That's A LOT of PF!!! I thought I was mean... good lord

Wait... I'm pretty much the same.

I don't let players "buy" any ship over a frigate with straight acquisition rolls. And the cost of that purchase would be 1/3 SP of the hull in question for transports/raiders and 1/2 for frigates. That PF in permanently deducted from the dynasty to represent the cost of outright buying a ship. Of course, there are ways to reduce that number - i.e. leveraging some of the ship cost against interest in some of the dynasty's other assets or even "paying" some of the cost of the vessel "in kind" (i.e. with stuff).

My general rule is that acquiring anything bigger than a frigate should be an endeavor in and of itself - with string pulling, move making and favor cashing. Ships may be numerous, but that does not make them cheap. The acquiring of larger ones should never EVER come down to a simple dice roll... or 5.

First and foremost I personally don't even really allow players to roll to acquire actual ships. I force them to salvage. As far as I am concerned the ships themselves are absolutely unique so a recent encounter with a space hulk made all my players eyes light up lol.

As far as maintenance i really don't "charge them" unless the damage is severe but with the attempt to rework the space hulk the parts will be costing a pretty penny.

Periodically I have a Rogue Trader's business ventures critically fail and they sell off a voidship to recoup their losses, or they are killed on a planet somewhere and the Dynasty sells off as many assets as it can no longer support before the loss of their Warrant is discovered. I let my players bid on those.

The first time they put together a truly ridiculous Lunar Class cruiser build and said this is what they would buy. Too bad it's not what was being sold.

Thank you for all the replies. Since I posted this, my players have captured two more ships (a raider and a frigate), and are repairing a third (another raider) that got hulked by Jeremiah Blitz, to become a system ship. As only one of the four total ships they have captured is in use, the others in repair or docked with minimal staff, I have yet to hit them with any penalty for the other three, so the continued feedback has been useful to me in figuring out what seems fair.

I definitely like the idea of an active ship making its maintenance cost back, and then some, if it's engaged in the act of making money. It is only logical that would be the case, if they are investing their ships in decent business at least. It would also better justify the maintenance cost penalty. A hundred ships engaged in trade would be very profitable, but a hundred ships sitting idle would quickly bankrupt a Rogue Trader, unless they're completely shut down and their crew's fired.

I also like the idea above of a seasoned ship costing less to maintain over time as its crew gets more familiar with it, and think that's something I'd be willing to apply in my campaigns

I generally reduce their PF by one per ship smaller than a cruiser, and 2 for cruisers, that is not actively part of a profitable endeavor. If it is guarding a system, running around with the players, guarding convoys, or just sitting around as a backup they have their PF reduced. Pulling a ship out of an endeavor to use it causes that endeavor to yield no PF, and is likely to completely ruin the endeavor if they do not take quick action. That is enough to force my players to pay attention to what their ships are doing and limit their own fleet. I am also run attacks on their convoys and colonies with enough frequency that they maintain fleets for protect both.

I think Navis Primer mentions that the largest civilian fleet in the Imperium belongs to one of the Navis Nobilite Houses and it numbers 47 hulls, and I'll assume that the House has a PF around 130.

Winterscale's fleet is never numbered, that I know, though the description certainly makes it sound large. But, if it's not as large as said Navis Nobilite House, then I'll call it around 30 hulls, just to have a number to play with. It does tell us that Winterscale uses "independent interests" in his fleet, possibly to obscure the true number of his own vessels. And he's got a listed PF of 101.

So, it certainly sounds like maintenance of a starship can't cost more than a few PF each. Personally, I don't charge maintenance unless the ship is purely an escort; it has no ability to engage in the endeavor it is working in. Even so, I keep the cost low.

In my next campaign I'm going to keep a much tighter rein on the accumulation of PF rather than finding ways to get the players to spend it. I'm not going to use APs at all. I'm going to house rule colonization and endeavors to give comparable bonuses for ship components but definitely not paying out the huge PF bonuses RAW can generate.

I had a thought: why not charge by using the tens digit of the space rating, specifically, the amount of space being used?

It seems that, if one had two light-cruisers of the same type, the one with just the bare-bones essential components and lots of space to spare should be cheaper to maintain than the one fully decked out with as many components as could conceivable be fit onto the ship.

Space ratings are similar enough to Ship Point ratings for it to be comparable to the general houserule mentioned above of using SP rating, but also more variable, although I'd generally suggest excluding cargo holds from the equation simply because a cargo hold component is mainly just a large section of empty space with only the necessary components for loading and unloading cargo, and hardly anything as advanced as a warp drive or a macro-cannon.

An idea anyways.

Maintenance just seems wrong if it isn't done on a continuing basis, and that seems onerous. I prefer a limitation method instead. Working ships on endeavors, ships making profit for the dynasty, do not affect the limit. Ships in excess of endeavors, warships not engaged in military ventures, ships just sitting around, can be limited to the tens digit of PF.

I tend to waver between the two.

Profit Factor's scope is wide enough that it should have a capacity for "free maintenance" for the dynasty fleet. Endeavours should also lift this burden from the Profit Factor, at least some Endeavours should.

So I was tossing around this hybrid idea:

- Profit Factor is burned when purchasing new ships

- Maintenance Cost is equal to the tens value of a ship's SP cost

- Up to the Profit Factor in Maintenance Costs of ships can be managed by the dynasty for free. Lowest cost ships first.

So, you have a dynasty with a Profit Factor of 30. You can field 10 frigates? Yeesh. But buying those frigates in the first place would have cost 30+ Profit Factor anyway.

Does that balance out?

I don't know. It sounds high. I'm rethinking my thoughts on scales, quite frankly. What's the upper end of things? How many ships are there in the Winterscale fleet that are owned and operated by Winterscale? 30 PF seems really low for maintaining 10 frigates unless they are on very profitable routes.

That's why I have Ship maintenance costs "lock up" profit factor. Running a frigate requires dedicating X profit factor to it's operations (remembering this isn't just physical maintenance, but also crew wages, fuel, provisions, etc.) The dynasty's profit factor is reduced by this amount. If they sell the ship, that PF comes back, as its no longer dedicated to a ship's operations. If the ship is off doing it's own thing it generates a static PF that may be less, equal or higher then it's operations cost depending on the quality of actions.

For the listed RTs, like Winterscale, I assume that the listed PF is his Current Effective PF, and therefore doesn't include all the operations costs he's paying for his starships, or anything else for that matter.

I like your application in theory Quick, but I'd have to go completely back to AP bonuses in Endeavors, and let them run the Orion Luxury Liner with its +25 PF per endeavor.

Bah, there has to be a better way. I really like PF. It was a brilliant idea on someone's part. There has to be a way to separate accounts receivable and accounts payable while still allowing for credit leveraged against assets, all in a nice abstract 2-digit number like PF.

What about penalties to acquisition rolls? Instead of lowering the PF, we just indicate that there's a large and ongoing expense via penalties to any rolls?

I have a PF of 40 but suffer a -27 because of all my dynasty ships. I can still leverage influence and assets with a PF of 40, but it just takes more work since so much is tied to the ships.

I don't know, they don't really need to get +25 BF per endeavor unless you're really expecting them to buy a new transport at the end of every endeavor. (or save up three endeavors for a cruiser!) I just give out slightly above the module recommended and it seems to work fine. It's also been nice because it's let them 'dynamically' decide what ships they need for a given endeavor. Like a couple of adventures ago when they were transporting crusaders to the Margin Crusade they spent the first couple months (in game) finagling the resources and waiting for the dynasty transport to get back to Scintilla so they could free it up (and take the PF hit) to use. They anticipate being able to release it back to regular transport work soon to get it's "background running" PF back.

I agree though - I really like the basic idea behind PF. Handling acquisitions in a unified economic number is a mile ahead of most system methods for dealing with organizations with this kind of wealth and power. It just needs a little tweaking to get it t work just right. (I personally would like it to work over a larger range, but that's just me, and slightly off topic.)

The cost of operating a voidship should be immense, and noticeable even to a Rogue Trader. Even paying to feed your transports crew (at 1 throne per person per day crap-food wholesale) is 7.3 Million Thrones a year.

I think rather than using the currently used Space of the ship, perhaps use the tens column of the total Ship Point worth of the ship. So a pimped out cruiser could be reaching 8PF operating costs.

These numbers may seem high if you are supporting a number of ships but if you factor in how high players can easily get their PF, and can come up with house rules that certain facilities will offset running costs (a star port may not generate PF per se, but it might offset 4PF worth of running costs due to the amount of people passing through the station that sign on as crew or work in the docks as maintenance and repair crew)

It starts to make me wonder how anyone else is operating a voidship. If you stop and think that some Rogue Traders are more loaded than many Planetary Governors, it seems a bit terrifying to imagine them having next to no available PF, because their two ships, if not more, are eating up all of their resources. I get that the Navy can shrug it off, but not many other agencies, and they aren't as well-provisioned as a 50 PF RT.

Let's look at it from this perspective: how much should it really cost to operate a ship? Fuel is cheap. The plasma reactor gets filled OCCASIONALLY, and stars aren't rare. Food is made by the planetload, and you pay for it when you go to port. Oxygen is the same, and recycled. Ammo might be the spendiest bit, but it shouldn't cost more than the weapon, and those don't cost PF to buy. Repairs a re close, but they can also just take forever. Much of the crew probably ISN'T paid; they get access to food, supplies, air, and shelter, and they do a job, the same one their family has done for generations, in return for those things. They rarely leave ship, so would maybe not have frequent need to spend money, and even a decent handful of Thrones isn't much compared to a single point of PF. Aside from Profit Factor is more than just "how much money you have", or even just the liquid, accessible assets, I could see you moving a copious amount of money without having to adjust PF. If it isn't, then it offends me that you could do something netting you 5 PF, a lot of gain from some endeavors, and still not come out ahead, because some part of your ship costs more than seems feasible for keeping it operational.

I can see that it is nice, and maybe even almost required, to have some mechanism that adequately diminishes Profit Factor, especially after you players figure out a way to munchkin-maximize their net gains, and start getting +20 PF for each endeavor, but I don't know if I feel this is such a great way. This sort of hearkens back to Errant Knight's comment about attrition in fighters is too low, and you might never lose any, even though they are described as overly cost-prohibitive, and not what the Navy likes. Yes, operating a voidship SHOULD cost something, but not just for enterprising Rogue Traders, and if the gains at the end of an endeavor are calculated at "your operating expenses + x PF", which I sort of feel they might be, even if the book doesn't come out and say it, then this system doesn't even work; upkeep is covered by succeeding Endeavors, why your crew makes them move, in the first place. I like "Cost is No Object," but I'm not sure I want to be debilitated because I'm operating a cfew ships, when operating ships is one of my cardinal points, and something I must do to make profit.

So we've come back to the "PF system is broken" position.

It boils down to this. Is PF a bad measure? I've never heard a complaint to that effect and many to the contrary. So people seem happy with the concept. It's the calculation of it that rubs us all wrong. Well, it's supposed to be representative of capital, investments, and influence. So what makes us PF in the game? Colonies, paying passengers, trade routes, plunder, charts of new routes and territories, and ancient and alien technology. Did I miss anything?

Edit: special stuff, like exotic organics and the 3-eyed babies fit under the umbrella of trade routes.

Technically, nothing costs us PF, either because the cost is considered insignificant, or more likely, in the feudal structure of the Imperium, you don't actually pay for large services (i.e. repairing a nearly hulked starship or obtaining a desalinization plant for your colony) as much as you now owe a certain number of future favors. But doesn't that still mean that your bank of current favors is low? I mean if you can add to your bank of PF but never lose any except to Misfortune, you can always borrow on tomorrow forever.

We've all come to those points in our campaigns that we had to ask ourselves if the party could reasonably handle this in the little time they've had. Most of us have probably assumed that administrative infrastructure was already in place and just permitted our erstwhile heroes to grow. What would be in their way? What would cost PF if PF were a spendable commodity? For starships we'd have new ships, maintenance, salaries, and repairs (certain things, like torpedoes, small craft, and nova gun ammo would raise this total). Colonizing equipment and infrastructure made the list of things that cost, though I still question this assumption since it didn't figure the amount made back from the colonists (you get to charge them passage to get there and rent once they reach the destination, and let's not forget they're buying everything from the company store).

One of the largest expenses we deduced from our last game would have been orbital facilities and defenses. The Wayfarer Station from core correlates with the Space Dock from BFG and that thing is the size of a cruiser. You'd need a larger variety for purposes of loading and off-loading if your party runs a capital ship. The orbital loading facility would save lots of time, hence improving profits...over time.

Of course, all this undefended profit-generating coolness invites pirates and rivals, so you need orbital stations to lend in the defense. Then there's the surface defenses. You'd want ground installations to attack ships in low orbit trying to land invasions troops, and troops to defend those installations, not to mention troops stationed to prevent insurrection from all those colonists that might want a larger share of the profits they are making for you. Unlike everything else, defenses never pay for themselves. They are an investment that makes sure you don't lose other investments. You can make a profit from offensive military campaigns, in the form of plunder, but most RT groups would likely just reinvest that in repairing the damage they've done to whatever colony world they've just conquered.

If I've missed anything, please chime in. Perhaps if we list everything that generates profits and everything that spends it, we can come up with a simple mechanism of our own to fix this system.