Re: Companies in Spelljammer

>--- George LaValle <flamebringer@???????.com> heckled:
> > ...
> > Yeah...
> > Pirates are suddenly going to start stealing MANGOES!!! SOMEBODY
> > PROTECT THE
> > MANGOES!!!
>
>If they are such valuable cargo in the first place you bet they will.

I think that it would be wise to make a distinction between _valuable_
cargo and _profitable_ cargo.

If you can buy and ship mangos to market for 3 days ship's crew
wages, 1 days dock crew wages, and 200 3rd World day laborer
days pay, and sell for twice that, you have a profitable cargo.

_However_, that is not a _valuable_ cargo.  If overhead and
maintainence come to 1000 gp/month, and you can complete
7 runs with a profit per run of 300 gp, say 30 gp/HS, you
are doing pretty well.

If you have to spend 2 months for a run with cargo worth 10,000 gp,
you would need more than a 10% markup to break even.

Finished items, like steel bars, might sell for 10 times that cost per
ton of ship space, but with only a 10% mark up, they would be a
much more capital intense cargo, and vulnerable to small percentage
change fluctuations in the market.

>
>Then why is anyone carrying them as cargo?

Some cargos are going to be seasonable, based on when the transit
time is short enough to justify the small mark up.

A run for ice or mangos could be worth it when the source is
fairly close by, because of the low cost of the good at the
source.

Sometimes a consistent income is worth it.  A spaceport might
be served by one ship making the ice run.  If someone else
started making the ice run too, the price would crash, so there
is no worry about competition, as there would be no point.

The low value of the good means that robbery isn't much of a problem,
just worrying about someone taking the ship.  For these runs, use
really cheap helms, like Create Minor Helm spells and you don't even
need to worry about that, it would be too much trouble for most
pirates to even bother, and the crew would keep most of their
valuables in port.

Figure 10,000 gp for a barge and a spell, and at 1,000 gp/month
profit over wages and you could pay it off in under a year.  That
looks like an appealing venture to me!

Michael Sandy