MekHQ - Dropships & Jumpships Bottom lines

[Maus154]

My understanding is that transportation costs are officially described as a "hack" at the moment.  However, I'm trying to get a handle on them nevertheless.  A single dropship is a pretty big line item expense, in the order of half a million in maintenance costs.  So I wanted to know if it was economical to a unit without some fluffy GMing.

For example, when I was doing a test of just starting a fresh game, GMing in a lance of javelins and jumping from Outreach to Hall, my cost per jump was 4 javelins = 99,000 vs 4 javelins + leopard = 140,000 vs 4 javelins + leopard + jumpship = 40,000 (all full complements).

Is there some existing documentation on the transport costs or any economic reason to possessing them?

Even with the jumpship bringing down the cost, it doesn't bring it down near enough that I see anything other than GMing the reason for having a dropship / jumpship (you put a premium on having a way off-world and/or your ship brings in some scratch by doing cargo runs while you're on garrison duty, etc).  And the 2nd example seems to mean having the leopard actually adds to the jump cost.

Also, I learned that, in addition to being completely unfluffy, mothballing a dropship results in being unable to un-mothball the dropship.  Unless I'm doing something just hilariously wrong here (I mean beyond attempting that in the first place).

[Schugger]

I never got DS in my campaign before and I just optained a Leopard recently.
I doubt the cost of their maintainance will ever make up for the saved transportation costs.
Eventually if you have a large number of mothballed units and have a Mule DS thinks might look differently.
Their greatest advantage is their use in the field in my oppinion; you get that +1 increase for your maintainance level so Raid missions will not become a nightmare for repairs.
And their are really big killers on the battlefield.

[pheonixstorm]

The costs for hiring transport is in both FM:Mercenaries(r) and Campaign Operations. Its something like 100,000 per dropship per jump plus X amount to rent Y dropship per month. It is cheaper to actually own your own transport even using the new CO rules as your contract won't always cover reimbursement of transport expenses.

[Kovax]

The cost of transport depends on distance and frequency.  If you're typically taking long garrison contracts 2-5 jumps away from your base of operations (Outreach, a house capital, etc.), your transport costs probably won't exceed the monthly costs of maintaining the dropships and jumpships.  If you're frequently traveling 10+ jumps for relatively short duration contracts, you can make or save money by owning your transportation.

It will still take a while to pay off the high cost of a dropship or jumpship.

[pheonixstorm]

Not entirely true to a point. Greatly depends on the duration of the lease/hire for the transport(s). Jumpship costs will only be for the duration of the trip but Dropship costs can continue even after you arrive at the planet. For a Garrison contract you wouldn't want to keep paying for transport for 12-18 months is you never have to leave the world, but for raids or any combat missions hiring transport to and from the contract location only leaves you stranded with no means of escape if things go south. Plus if you own your own transport you can lease it out when on a garrison mission. Just looking at how Campaign Operations has the contract transport payments setup when you hire on transport you usually do so for the entire contract (Dropships) rather than just to or from a given location. I don't remember how FMMr reads on this but it is probably very close.

MekHQ Most likely does it this way. Jumpship fees are to and from the location while dropship fees are for the entire contract. It has been a looooong time since I looked at that section of the code and it was only briefly.

[Maus154]

Thanks for the replies.  I was mainly looking at evaluating the benefits of the dropship solely on their current implementation in MekHQ, rather than per the rules manuals since the two currently diverge, and I'm not adept at digging into coding.  The +1 to maintenance level is definitely something I should not overlook when justifying the cost. 

[Schugger]

The +1 to maintenance level is definitely something I should not overlook when justifying the cost.

I don't think it's implemented in MHQ yet, so you have to manually assign the repair site for your units.
when your units return from an engagement, MHQ automatically assigns them back to the repair site approbiate for your current contract, so keep an eye out for this to avoid some nasty maintainance surprises ;)

BTW, if you are on a long term contract and you have spare Dropships or even jumpships at your disposal, invent some rules ( i am almost sure some already have) for hiring them out during your term. It will spice up the economic aspect of your campaign.

[pheonixstorm]

The repair site only changes under AtB currently but per (SO) rules if you have a dropship with the appropriate bays everything should stay as transport. Don't recall which the large craft should use, but those aren't coded.

[2ndAcr]

 I have done it with my Jumpships at times. One unit had 3 Jumpships, 2 Invader and a Merchant. The 2 Invaders could carry my entire unit, so I had the Merchant doing commercial runs within 2 Jumps of my home base planet. I think I added about 2-300,000 a month to my accounts. I never did an in depth review, just assumed 50,000 per drop ship per jump. One jump every 15 days etc.

 It at least seemed to help my bottom line.

 

[pheonixstorm]

Easy to do for garrison assignments. I think FMMr it was 50k while CO is 100k per jump, and why every 15 days? Should be easy enough to jump every 7-10 days (think CO calculates it at a week per jump)

[2ndAcr]

 Was mainly just playing the odds. Figured a couple days extra while "looking" for dropships to transport. At the time I was using my memory which was 50 thou per collar per jump.

 Of course if I was based on a planet that had major industry or resources, finding those Dropships to transport would not be nearly so hard and I could see the once per week method. Or a planet nearby anyway.