(3rdR) + Ultra's Luxury Cruise Suites

[Todd_Kes]

For the Ultra rulebook's Ultra Luxury Cruise Suite, I decided to apply them to Starfire 3rdR edition.

Changes:
Code: LQv -> Qvl (I put the 'Q' first so nobody would confuse it with Life Support or Laser)
Tech Level: 6 -> 1 (making things luxurious should not be that difficult)
Research Cost: Developed with Q (Essentially minor adjustments to provide everything the upper-upper crust wants and keep the plebes out)
Cost: 10 MCr / 5 MCr (10 MCr for the full space version, 5 MCr for the half-space version)
Size -> 1 HS / 0.5 HS (they are put in parentheses with a '#' to tell how many there are, similar to tug layouts)
Capacity: 20 Ultra Luxury Passengers per Hull space
Limit: 1 Qvl per 40 MCr Empire Income
Semi-Fragile: Roll 1d2+1 for Collapse rate on a Freighter Hull, 1d2 on a military hull; half spaces collapse when the Qvl next to them collapses
Income per: 1.8 MCr per HS, adjusted if the craft is slower than 4 StMP (so 1.35 MCr income per Qvl if the Qvl is mounted on a craft with a strategic speed of 3, etc)

Instead of making them the 250 MCr/25 HS and earning 50MCr per month, I changed it to be a per-HS basis.

Now for what I found to be an optimal design and its efficiency:
FT1 - Luxury Liner 12 HS TL 1
[2] Hs (Ic)(Qvl#7.5)(Ic)Qs(Ic) [4/4]
12 RCP 7.5 LCP Cost = 120/9
Can carry up to 150 Luxury Passengers at a time
Earns 13.5 MCr per month when assigned to the CFN and if there is at least 300 MCr Empire Income.
Payback is 120/(13.5-9) = 26.67 turns (all other designs I tested had a payback period longer than this)

Why I picked 1.8 MCr/HS:
2 MCr/HS would have the above design pay for itself in 20 turns
1.6 MCr/HS on the above design would take 40 turns to pay back
I preferred an even number in the tenths place to handle half-space Ultra Luxury Quarters

CFN Math:
Take your Empire's planetary income, divide it by 40 MCr, and round down to the nearest half or whole number (i.e. .5, 1, 1.5, etc). Take that number, compare it to the number of Qvl in your empire, and select the lower of the two. Multiply that number by 1.8, rounding down to the nearest whole MCr, and that is the amount of money you receive for having government-sponsored luxury in your empire. The government pays maintenance on craft mounting Qvl (there are likely civilian craft mounting Qvl, but those only earn income for private concerns).

Example:
Empire income is 1035 MCr. Divided by 40 is 25.875 -> 25.5. You have three of these FT1 Luxury liners, for a total of 22.5 Qvl. The 22.5 Qvl is the lower value, so you would multiple 1.8 times 22.5, meaning you would earn 40.5 MCr before rounding down to get 40 MCr. If a fourth Qvl FT1 had been available, the number of Qvl would have been 30, so the economy limit of 25.5 would apply, making the income be 45.9 MCr, rounded down to 45 MCr.

Roleplay:
Depending on the empire you are talking to, you might get a bonus or penalty for having one of these be present on the ship conducting First Contact negotiations (such as if you are talking to a Herd race while reclining on genuine leather seats).

A Machine Race might treat these as dedicated mainframes/laboratories/communications arrays for specialized industrial AIs who work to improve productivity across your empire on the industrial worlds. Instead of keeping track of planetary productivity changing on a turn-by-turn basis, the improvements are budgeted to the Qvl ships.

The Tony Starkmobile might be an EX with a Boat Bay, military engines, an H, and two of these on board as his personal yacht. The Boat Bay is so he can zip off to wherever he wants while testing his new craft. The Military engines are so he can get from one planet to another faster. The H instead of Hs means he can store more raw material/alcohol. The second Qvl is for the auxiliary machine shop (not MS) so he can build stuff en route with Jarvis' help, while the first is for his guests/employees. There would be no payback for this as income would be 3.6 MCr while maintenance would be over 5 MCr.

[Todd_Kes]

Above version looked like the math got a bit too fancy, so I cleaned it up. The luxury liner pays for itself faster, but the limit on income is harder.

Changes:
- Limit: No more than 4% of base income (PU + IU + Asteroid bonus) can come from Qvl, FRD
- Income per: 2 MCr per HS, adjusted if the craft is slower than 4 StMP (so 1.5 MCr income per Qvl if the Qvl is mounted on a craft with a strategic speed of 3, etc)

FT1 - Luxury Liner 12 HS TL 1
[2] Hs (Ic)(Qvl#7.5)(Ic)Qs(Ic) [4/4]
12 RCP 7.5 LCP Cost = 120/9
Can carry up to 150 Luxury Passengers at a time
Earns 15 MCr per month when assigned to the CFN and if there is at least 375 MCr Empire Income.
Payback is 120/(15-9) = 20 turns

The change was to make the math easy. You divide your empire's economy by 25, round fractions down, and that is the maximum income you can have from Luxury. You do get a faster rate of return from these Luxury Quarters compared to IU, but the lower limit for income should balance that out.

Example:
Empire income is 1035 MCr. Multiplied by 4% is 41.4 MCr -> 41 MCr. You have two of these FT1 Luxury liners, for a total of 15 Qvl, which can produce up to 30 MCr. The 30 MCr is the lower value, so you earn the full 30 MCr. If a third Qvl FT1 had been available, the number of Qvl would have been 22.5, the income from them could be 45 MCr, but in this case the economy limit of 41 MCr would apply making the income be 41 MCr.

[Cralis]

Interesting. I'm going to have to dig into the numbers to understand how the impact is different. My initial thought is that if the ROR is better, that this will potentially bump other investments until you fill your capacity.

I do like that you made it "per HS", though I would require it to use only full HS.

Maybe I missed it, but I don't see where you explain how you arrived at a minimum required economy before they provide any value?

P.S. I really love your Stark example, except he'd own the boat and not be renting it

[Todd_Kes]

For a 10,000 MCr empire:
Complex method:
1 Qvl per 40 MCr income = 250 Qvl @ 1.8 MCr/ = 450 MCr income

Simple method:
No more than 4% of the empire's income = 400 MCr limit, which means no more than 200 HS of Qvl can be used by the government for its income.

The Complex method is closer to the 30 turn payback of IU and has a higher income limit, but the downside is that you are multiplying by fractions each time (1.8 MCr per HS) plus you are dividing the empire's income by 40.

The Simple method is just taking the empire's income, double it, divide that by 100, and that is the maximum number of Qvl that the empire can benefit from. If there are fewer Qvl than that value, use the smaller number, double it, and that gives you the income boost. The problem is that your limit is lower.

You are completely right that due to the shorter payback it will be a better investment. The goal with the simple format was to make the math easy, and to do that I decided to make the income limit smaller.


The original required economy was from Ultra where each Luxury Cruise Suite in Q.03 (LQv which I changed to Qvl) cost 250 MCr, took up 25 HS, provided 50 MCr to the empire's economy, with a limit of one LQv per 1000 MCr of income (5% of base income). Since these were smaller and could pay for themselves earlier, I reduced the amount of economy they could exploit. It also allows for the option to make personal yachts (for a few friends and followers) all the way up to the Fhloston Paradise.