How to Gauge Profit

[Rizzo]

So I'm working on a plot, been building it for a while, and I'm wanting to get some infrastructure in place to finance the plot. My idea is to have my character create a shipping company of both legitimate and illegitimate items.

Now there's no point trying to micromanage the minutiae of hundreds, maybe even thousands of NPC sales a year. I believe a guide of sorts would nice to have and could be created based on this discussion.

So how do we manage the finances of commercial entities now?

 

[Zack]

I'be been tying Uso's avalible funds to how much activity has been going on in the plot. Things have been going well so She has a decent amount of cash laying around.

As far as wealth levels go, I treat it like the FATE system. Uso's finances are maybe 3 stars? She can afford to hire a few people, or buy stuff without being poor. She can buy a starship maybe once a month, and anything more expensive than that would send her down a wealth level. It seems reasonable for someone who is just selling ice and food.

 

[Legix]

Personally, I think it depends on how much you can roll a story. Dhaval and Ronin, two of my characters, are a good example of a bad-case. Dhaval runs on minimal funds/promised wages per job, so he has little income beyond post-jobs. It essentially allows him to keep everyone contracted, manage the ship... but only if the crew does good.

Ronin, on the otherhand, has taken out loans in preparation to repair and fund his initial ventures. With him, the group'll have fixed amounts due to it being bounty-oriented.

Then there's someone like Xun. Just operating the Reva Maya sustains itself due to passenger rent. Additional funds (though there's not much necessary in Iroma plots) are really as simple as doing work.

So it really boils down to the set-up you have. With a full-blown faction, I think book-keeping is more necessary. With a simple corporate plot (initially, as it remains a small factor), I think you don't really need to worry much on exact numbers but have a range (100,000-300,000 KS, for example) to assume your current wealth within.

 

[Rizzo]

I like those ideas, it seems like they work pretty well. I personally like rolling my D20 to account for life's unpredictability.

I was thinking about buying ships and hiring NPC(and rarely PC) captains as business partners, each captain would be responsible for the ship's maintenance and staff. The net profits would be split at the end of each month with 40% returning to Candon until the vessel is paid off, after which 20% returns to remain in the company. I'll roll my D20 for each ship at the end of each month and multiply it by... something. I'll have to figure it out. Bigger ships would have larger returns but also higher cost for inventory, crew, and repairs. Should be accounted for somehow. A ship may also incure a deficit, a low roll should reflect that too. Formulating an equation that works shouldn't take too long.

 

[Syaoran]

How you manage the wealth will also depend on the position of the characters and the size of the company. Like if it's a small company where the players are the ones doing all the work, you can literally have their missions be the company's source of income and just pay appropriately. If it is a bigger company then yeah like the others said, you don't actually manage how much money they have but rather you pay attention to how much money it seems they have based on how frequent and large their purchases are. Rolling can be a good way to do it too, but you end up having to deal with the temptation of "Well I'll just reroll that, no one knows" So that comes down to how much you trust yourself.

As for ships, easiest way to take it would probably be something like, first figure out how capable the ship is of making money, so for example let's say 5 stars. Then figure out how much maintenance cost , let's say for a giant super ship it's 3stars in maintenance. So subtract it's maintenance from it's profitability and then you get 2 stars, so go to whatever chart you made and just roll a 2* level wealth roll. It's not the way to do it, but if you're handling several ships the overall is more important than the minutia of each individual ship.