I kind of want a dual profit factor and influence (sort of like the one from DH:Ascension) system, at least for RT. With Profit Factor representing the valuable assets, both physical and intellectual/information, ie, lands, facilities, trade routes, licensed construction templates, warp map data, etc. And then Influence representing favors, debts of honor, non-monetary obligations, family connections, friends/allies, etc.

You can try to acquire something with one or the other, or maybe attempt both to make it easier/cheaper/better quality, ie, if you want to acquire for yourself a case of plasma pistols for your command crew/senior staff, you can test against PF to just buy them, test against Influence to see if you can get someone to gift them to you or being willing to trade minor favors for them, or test against Influence to see if you can get the supplier to provide a discount or a free increase in quality or maybe they come with an weapon upgrade on the ones you get. Likewise, if you're looking to acquire a new ship for your Dynasty, a successful Influence test means more and better ships are available to you, and likely they're willing to allow you to get a better ship with your PF than someone with the same PF who didn't make that Influence test first.

Simply testing against PF is, to me, a little like buying something maybe on credit or debit, but letting it be covered by the dividends/interest on investments/shares of moneymaking ventures. Burning PF would instead be selling off some of those shares or withdrawing money from the primary account, thus reducing the capital.

This is more to separate things out, and to better represent the differences in Dynasties - an older dynasty almost by default will have higher Influence, even if they've suffered financial (PF) losses, and a brand new dynasty is likely to have low Influence, depending on the reasons of their being issued a Warrant, and a 'new money'-type dynasty (one no longer brand new, but not one that has been around for a long time either) is likely to have a higher PF and lower Influence, ie, are too rich to ignore, but hasn't really been around long enough to be socially established and accepted.

Peer/Rival/etc talents would then provide their bonus/penalties to Influence tests, and probably less often to PF tests.

Successful endeavors would grant both Profit Factor and Influence, and usually more PF than Influence, unless perhaps you were doing something at the behest of someone else or did something that provided someone who wasn't contracting you a significant benefit.

IE, rescuing pilgrims isn't going to directly net you much PF, but it'll help get you Influence. Finding an important ship or relic is likely to be a moderate PF reward, but a larger Influence increase. Establishing a trade route is probably going to be more PF and less Influence.

The problem I see with charging PF for ship maintenance is that it somewhat undermines the concept. Profit Factor is meant to represent wealth, assets, prestige, favors, and other such things you might leverage to get what you want. So how then does it make sense that operating a warp capable voidship, the ultimate symbol of Imperial power and authority, ends up costing you PF? Sure, you spend some monetary assets maintaining the ship and its crew, but you gain the influence that comes with telling people how many macrocannons you can point at them if you don't get your way. In theory, a ship roaming the sector doing nothing and wasting time should still turn you a 'profit', just by virtue of the influence gained by having it at your call.

Actually purchasing a new ship would be another matter, since that's a huge investment all at once, which can be recouped later. If you're trying to reduce your player's PF, that's when to do it, IMO.

I think something you have to ask yourself is how can Winterscale own essentially a a couple of subsectors but still only have a PF of a bit over a hundred? The obvious anwser is because he has to maintain a fleet of a hundred ships and a standing army in the hundreds of thousands just to hold it in a fairly half assed way. I don't think the profit factor system is broken. I think the acheivement system is broken, and not only is it broken but it would be very easy to replace it with an income vs expenses system which is more or less what we've done at our table in a very fast and loose way.

I've got a fast and simple way of doing it in my game.

The Dynasty can handle the supply and running of one ship (choose the most expensive obviously) plus twice it's PF in ship points worth of ship without penalty. Once you go over that number you'll start taking a penalty to your effective PF to represent the burdensome cost of running and maintaining so many ships in relation to your dynasty's wealth and influence. The penalty is equal to -1pf per 10 SP worth of ship.

IE: The dynasty has a profit factor of 53 and 4 ships, it's starting ship (a 51sp Sword frigate), a beat up light cruiser (a mere 60sp), and 2 Vagabond transports (25sp and 24sp respectively). The light cruiser, being the most expensive is obviously what they pick for their freebie and the sum of everything else is exactly a hundred. Double the profit factor is 106 so no problems. But if they decide to pick up another ship, say a 36sp Hezeroth to guard their transports, they are now at 136 out of their 106. Well that's 30 over so they take a -3 to penalty and until they can either raise their PF or reduce their SP worth of ships they operate as though they had a PF of 50 instead of 53.

I decided to do the 1 free ship thing because otherwise those starting with a good ship but a bad profit factor would take further penalties. This way it's fair to both, since once the guy with the good profit factor finds or buys a good ship can then apply it to that.

I do allow buying of ships outright, but you must burn PF to do so. 1/5 it's SP to outright purchase one ready to go, 1/10 it's SP to salvage a near hulk with mostly intact components and a hull worth fixing up. I've considered adjusting the PF burn a little to make bigger ships more expensive, but with the addition of the maintenance penalty I think it works.