Universe
Economics

Introduction

A favorite (now cancelled) TV show of mine, Firefly, is a break from the usual TV SF fare. Rather than being members of the military or intrepid explorers, the main characters in the show are crewmembers of a small transport ship, Serenity; and instead of saving the Galaxy or discovering strange new worlds, they're just trying to make a living—honest or otherwise.

That got me to wondering how feasible it would be for someone to make an honest living in the Universe universe as a ship owner. I decided to do a few cost analyses to see what kind of revenue and expenses there would be, and if the profit could justify the undertaking.

I made a few basic assumptions:

1. The voyages I would consider would be from one starport to another, one way. I would not take the energy expenditure of ship takeoffs into account. (Things would be complicated enough as they were!)
2. There would be no shortage of passengers or cargo. All berths would be filled, every ton of cargo capacity used. (Later on I would consider things like the minimum number of passengers needed to break even.)
3. Energy is list price; it's not abundant or scarce anywhere.
4. Ships would accelerate at 1 G unless they needed to go slower for economic reasons.

Trade goods

Prices of anything in Universe that costs more than 1 Tran (1T) —in other words, anything interesting—are all affected by the Actual Price Table. This table adjusts the prices of goods and materials semi-randomly, between 50% and 200% of their listed price. The die roll that determines price is affected by whether the item is manufactured on-planet or imported, whether it's exported to other planets, whether it's higher-tech than the planet's current technological base, and whether or not it's legal. On average, prices work out like this:

(Raw materials, like bulk aluminum or silicon, are affected similarly. Substitute abundant for exported, not found on world for imported, and ignore Civ Level adjustments.)

Illegal items—which includes military-issue weapons, restricted items without a permit, and anything more than two Civ Levels above the prevailing tech—have their price multiplied by 10 times the Law Level of the world, in addition to the adjustments above.

Now, obviously the greatest profit to be had is in high-tech goods manufactured off-planet. CL8 body armor, for example, runs an average of 35T on a planet with iron and abundant gold, but sells for 487T on a CL6 planet, and even more on a lower tech planet. Compare that to 66T on a high-tech planet that just doesn't happen to have abundant gold.

A greater profit might be had in items that are illegal for their own sake, like military weapons. But the Actual Price Table affects buying and selling both, so unless the ship owner has a special supplier willing to sell at less than the standard illegal-item price, the profit is diminished (and the risks increased).

Raw materials fetch much less of a profit. The most expensive material is magnetic monopoles, at 2T per gram. However, it's only available at single sites (per the World Resource Table), and so only one gram of ore is mined at a time (see the Mining skill description). The most valuable bulk commodities are gold and platinum: each fetches 1T per gram, but the right mine can produce kilograms of gold ore. Most other materials are priced in trans per metric ton; the most valuable of these is cesium at 50T/ton. This is far below the price of manufactured goods. CL8 body armor weighs 16 kg per unit; even with packaging, that's at least 30 units per ton, or a list price of 1,380T/ton!

So we can draw three conclusions from this:

1. Manufactured goods are far more profitable than raw materials.
2. Illegal goods are far more profitable than legal ones.
3. Very illegal goods—i.e., weapons—are the most profitable of all.

A typical trip

Let's try an example trip, from Petromir (82 Eridani II) to Terraster (Delta Pavonis III), a distance of 19 light-years (LY). Our ship for this exercise is the Martha Stewart, a Corco Mu, one of the bigger commercial ships.

From Petromir to the 82 Eridani jump point is 87.5 AU (90 AU for a G-class star minus 2.5 AU for Petromir's orbit). The Stewart has a hefty burn rate of 16, so covering 87.5 AU at 1 G takes 432 energy units.

The jump takes no additional energy. (This becomes important below.)

Finally, traversing the distance from the Delta Pavonis jump point to Terraster is a journey of 88.5 AU (Delta Pavonis is also class G, but Terraster orbits only 1.5 AU from it). The difference in distance turns out to be negligible, and we expend another 432 units. Our total energy for this voyage is therefore 864 units.

The Stewart can hold 176 units in its hull, so we need to have sufficient space for another 688 units. Energy pods hold 144 units each, so that's another five pods (rounding up). Stewart-class hulls aren't streamlined, so we can cram two energy pods into the space normally needed for one. So we only need three pod berths (again, rounding up) for our five pods. The Stewart can hold 12 pods total, so we have nine berths to fill up with our chosen combination of pods.

For purposes of this example, we're only interested in three kinds of pods: standard cargo, standard passenger, and luxury passenger. (Petromir to Terraster is a green route, so we can take on luxury passengers.) We'll look at four different scenarios:

1. All cargo. Nine cargo pods and no passengers (apart from those that can fit in the hull).
2. Standard passenger. Nine standard passenger pods.
3. Uprated passenger. Three luxury and six standard passenger pods.
4. Hybrid. One luxury passenger pod, three standard passenger, five cargo.

Revenue

Standard fare is 20 milliTrans (M) per AU plus 100M per LY, or 5.5T. Luxury fare is 2 1/2 times that, or 13.75T. It's hard to say what we'd get for our cargo, because it varies so much. But we can calculate how much it would have to be for us to break even.

Expenses

We already know we need 864 units of energy (cost: 259.2T). Leaving aside salaries, supplies and other (relatively) minor costs, there's one big cost: the ship itself.

The Stewart costs 14,500T, and that's without pods. Luxury cabin pods are 1,500T each, standard cabin 1,200T, and cargo pods a measly 35T . The total price varies from 15,515T (option 1) to 26,900T (option 3). It's unlikely most people would be able to pay this out of pocket, so they'll probably get a loan from a bank.

For our discussion we'll assume 10% down and an 8% APR compounded monthly.

All cargo

The Stewart, outfitted with nine cargo pods, can hold 315 tons of cargo in its pods and an additional 15 in the hull, for a total of 330 tons. The ship costs 15,515T; monthly payments on our loan are about 168T . Our trip from Petromir to Terraster takes about 1.75 months, so prorating the payment and adding it to the fuel cost gives us a total cost for the voyage of about 553T. Dividing the numbers, we need to make at least 1.68T per ton to break even.

Not too bad. We could even turn a profit like that on some of the raw materials, like titanium or crude oil (carbon-based organic chemicals). It'd be a snap if we're shipping manufactured goods. (Assuming we can fill the hull, of course.) And we can still carry 25 passengers in the hull (standard fare only).

All passenger

Standard passenger pods hold 30 passengers; nine of these plus 30 in the hull is a total of 300 passengers. But wait! The ship needs five crew members, and each passenger pod another three. That's a total of 32 crew, so we really only have room for 268 paying passengers. Also, the ship now costs 26,000T, for a per-trip prorated payment of 493T .

Still, at 5.5T per passenger, that's 1,474T revenue, 921T above expenses. Much better than cargo; we can travel just over half full and still break even.

Uprated passenger

Replacing three of the standard cabin pods with luxury cabin pods costs us 51 passengers (luxury cabin pods only hold 15 and require a crew of 5), but each one is paying two and a half times standard fare. The ship now costs 26,900T and payment is 510 T, but our revenue goes up to about 1,565T . If we fill every luxury cabin we only need 28 standard-fare passengers to break even. Of course, we also now have to pay salary for 38 crew (or split profits 38 ways), not 32, because luxury cabin pods require five crew each. (Maybe the additional two are in charge of pillow mints.)

Hybrid

A compromise: five cargo pods, three standard cabin, one luxury cabin for the filthy rich. The ship only costs 20,475T, for a trip payment of 388T on revenue of 762T . Even without cargo, we can make a (small) profit, provided we find 101 people willing to pay 5.5T each and another 15 willing to pay 13.75T per head.

Passengers versus cargo

You may have noticed something in the discussions above. If our trip had been five LY instead of 19, the cargo wouldn't care, but passengers would be paying 1.4T less per head. We've seen how passengers are more profitable than cargo; for sufficiently short voyages, this may not be true (or will at least be less true).

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