Ch. 5 Asset maintenence costs

[Athos69]

One thing that has been noticed in a few campaigns I have played in is that when you take ito account all of the army units, ships, spy networks and assets that are attributed to specific realms, quite often you will find a realm has a negative income before the game even starts. One good example is Avanil. For a realm with a huge treasury, it runs at a deficit.

I propose changing the asset maintenence costs as follows: Castles/Province Fortifications: 1/3 GB per level
Holding Fortifications: 1/6 GB per level
Ports: 0 (excise and import taxes offset)
Bridges: 0 (tolls offset)
Ferries: 0 (tolls offset)
Shipyards: 1/6 GB per level (you may only 'repair' as many ships per month as levels of shipyard)
Highways: 0 (tolls offset)
Wondrous Structures: .5 GB per level (gain 2 RP per level ala Vassalage ie it counts above max collection)
Palaces: No change
Transportation and trade assets should pay for themselves in tolls. I realize that the largest changes and probably the most controvertial changes is slashing Most other maintenence costs in 1/2. With the asset lists of most kingdoms, I feel that it is necessary to balance the budgets.

[Athos69]

I would also like to point out that as this information is of vital import to the Atlas, that we need to start discussing this quickly, and put it to a vote. It will affect every nation on the map.

-Mike

[The Jew]

Could you give a couple examples of before and after costs vs. income?

[Athos69]

The only immediate example I have the time for is the Brecht realm of Berhagen.

The income of Berhagen is 26-2/3 GB.

The Army sucks 9 GB at garrison
The Navy (active, since a navy in port is useless) eats 2-1/12 GB

The writeup specifies that all holdings are fortified. There are 22 levels of province, so that's 22 levels of Fortification
There are 3 forest roads (one *could* be mountain) according to the map.
The map also states that the capital is also a Port
If Berhagen has a navy, it needs a shipyard to repair them and construct new ships. I have assumed a Level 4 shipyard.

Total (BRCS) asset maintenence is 17-1/6 GB, plus military, and not even counting a Court is 28-1/4 GB.

Total (proposed) asset maintenence is 8 GB, when added to military is 19-1/12 GB. This will allow a decent Court *and* some operating budget.

[The Jew]

I agree with the reduced fortification costs, at least from a accuracy standpoint. From my understanding of fortifications, they are expensive to build but have little upkeep. I believe the main cost was in garrisoning them.

[The Jew]

Their are 3 other ways to help balance the books. Lessen the number of troops, add trade routes for guilds with a tax by the relevant landed regents, and figure that those with shipyards can probably sell ships for a profit. The benifit of the 1st and 2nd solutions is that it can be tailored to the individual realms. Otherwise I am guessing that their will be other realms which will become overly wealthy. Whatever general forumula is found will require some amount of tailoring.

[Osprey]

I actually like the asset maintenance costs from the BRCS. I think there are a few cases where realm maintenance might be higher than income, but I think you're forgetting one very essential element that would likely be present in those realms: tribute.

I can't comment much on Berhagen, since I don't own Havens of the Great Bay, but I would ask: who are the guilders? What is paying for all of those fortified holdings? What about income from trade routes? If trade routes are run by a foreign guild, wouldn't they pay a slice tot he landed regetns? If guilds and temples are fortified, wouldn't those costs be paid by their respective regents, not the landed regent?

Here are a few ways I've managed to justify asset costs IMC:

1. As guilds are the connecting points for Trade Routes, it makes sense that the guilds should be responsible for building and maintaining the roads as a built-in expense of operating a trade route. Landed regents should expect to be able to use these roads as a side-benefit of promoting trade in their realm. Alternately, landed regents could build the roads and maintain control of them, then allow guilders to use them for trade and charge seasonal tarrifs for their use. This would help justify the landed regents earning a percentage of the trade income from the Trade Routes.

2. Law regents have excellent bargaining power. While law holdings don't make much money themselves, they have superior strategic power in that they may support, oppose, or contest any law, temple, or guild holdings.

I have assumed that powerful regents with patron temple and guild regents (like Avanil and Boeruine) would have an arrangement to recieve a portion of those domain's profits in exchange for supporting them in their realms. This would be even more blatant in the case of puppet guilders whose every move is controlled by the landed regent.

For instance, I expect Darien Avan recieves between a third and half of PAI's net profits in Avanil - in exchange Darien Avan not only tolerates PAI's existence, but actively supports PAI's domain actions with his Law holding levels and maybe even RP from time to time. Knowing Avan, I suspect PAI is also invested as a Vassal and pays some RP in addition to GB.

Likewise, I expect the Western Imperial Temple also pays some tribute to Avan in exchange for the law's continued support against its rivals. As temples (especially militant ones) are less money-making machines than guilds, I ruled 1/4 of the WIT's net profits was sufficient tribute.

Boeruine I would expect to have a very similar arrangement, as would Taeghas (mentioned as having a pet guilder too).

Other landed regents could set up more general policies, like 1 GB per trade route in their domain, and maybe 1 GB per 3 guild levels as well.

As for shipyards and navies, consider this: guilders, having the main use for ships, would probably be expected to contribute to the naval defense of ports they operate from. So demanding some tribute to pay for a navy, as well as a fee for leasing the shipyards to build merchant vessels AND having the guilders use ther ships in case of attack, could all contribute to supporting naval expenses.

Also, not all naval fleets, especially those used for coastal defense, need be considered active. I use as a default that about 1/3 of a nation's fleet are typically on active patrol while the other 2/3 are garrisoned in port. The ships then rotate duties seasonally, so a different third is active each season. The only time they would all go active is when the whole fleet is needed for a major naval action, like attacking a pirate base or defending against an invasion fleet. Having the ships and crews around in garrison keeps them available in time of need without paying for them to be out and about at all times.

Fortifications: a Provincial Castle should be able to fortify at least its own level in holdings in addition to the province itself. So a Level 4 castle could also fortify the regent's Law(4) holding at no additional cost. Note that this is my own interpretation of the BRCS rule, as I don't think there should be an unlimited number of fortified holdings up to the castle's level - it gets a bit ridiculous at that point.

Fortification expenses do include garrisons - a castle is always assumed to have a basic garrison in it, even if there are no additional troops stationed there. So the maintenance would include pay for the guards and officers as well as the castellan, servants, bulk supplies in case of siege (many of which must be replenished each season), etc.

Now all that being said, I agree that fortification upkeep is still quite high. I'd be okay with a modest reduction, say to 1/2 GB per level for provincial castles and 1/4 GB per level for fortified holdings.

I also don't mind roads, ferries, bridges, and ports being without maintenance if it's assumed that tarrifs and taxes will provide for their maintenance. This simply reduces book-keeping of nattering details, which is fine by me. They should remain as listed assets, however, since they provide important functions (and have a decently high Build cost as well!). And since they cost money to build, a regent can still expect a cut of trade routes to eventually pay for those construction costs and eventually make a little money off of them.

And as an aside, I'd love to see all asset costs restructured to negate thirds and sixths of GB's - it's a pain in the arse. By keeping it at 1/4 and 1/2 fractions only, it streamlines the maintenance tables and meshes them with troop costs much more seamlessly.

The Wondrous Structures should, I think, be an entirely seperate issue - your proposal there is quite a revision to the game, and one I am personally not sure is a good addition. I much prefer Wonders to be non-generic (I've posted a number of wonders previously in the Royal Library) and much more unique - they are supposed to be Wonders of the World, right, not Monolith #18 (a level 4 RP generator / pseudo-vassal).

Also, concerning the idea that wonders could be vassals: I'd say "no way." It makes it too easy to get vassalge RP (you only need to be wealthy) without going through all the difficulties and headaches of acquiring real vassals. Such a possibility would beg the question: why wouldn't every regent build a wonder if he could scrape together the money?

Osprey

[epicsoul]

While it may be overly complex, why not this:

If a fortification (perhaps this could be extended to other assets) HAS a garrison, such as a unit of troops, THEN it pays the reduced maintenance cost... as the troops there, while in garrison, PERFORM the maintenance required in the expenditure. However, if no troops are present in a province with a fort, then you pay the increased labour cost, bringing in outside labour to perform the duty.

[tcharazazel]

Well, remember when troops attempt to take a fortification (ie castle wall) they are automatically attacked by missle fire. Thus, its obvious that castles are assumed to have garrisons which protect them.

Also, dont forget the Provincial fortifications is not just the central castle it includes all the little garrisons along the roads and on the boarders, ect. So, it makes sense that it would require more than just a unit to garrison all of the fortifications.

[Osprey]

Yep...fortification maintenance always include active defense costs, which means permanent [skeletal] garrisons, regular patrols, rotating food and munition supplies in case of siege, structural maintenance (repairs, whitewashing, etc.)...

I think 1/2 GB per level for provincial fortifications and 1/4 GB per level for fortified holdings is quite reasonable given their usefulness in preventing enemy movement and sacking of a regent's province and holdings.

If a regent is so heavily militarized that they must fortify every province and holding in the realm, and maintain a large army and navy, then they SHOULD be rather wealthy to be capable of supporting all of that. If land, tribute, and trade combined isn't paying the maintenance bill, then the realm is obviously living beyond its means and needs to either trim the fat from its expenses or convince other regents to help foot the bill that is likely helping to protect their own interests. Agreed?

The other problem I have reflected on concerns having seaports, bridges, and roads be self-sustaining in maintenance, which is that it guarantees that trade routes will be even more lucrative than they already were, especially land-based routes (which will now have no overhead costs other than tribute demanded by local landed regents). On the other hand, I can see the logic in these constructions actually generating a small amount of revenue in usage fees.

Finally, I agree that shipyards had rather high maintenance in the bRCS, and dropping this to 1/4 GB per level would be reasonable.

So let's try this on for size, assuming that Build costs will remain the same as in the BRCS:


Domain Assets Maintenance Costs
Court: 1 GB per level
Palace: 1/2 GB per level
Provincial Fortifications: 1/2 GB per level
Holding Fortifications: 1/4 GB per level
Shipyards: 1/4 GB per level
Seaports: 0 (excise and import taxes offset)
Bridges: 0 (tolls offset)
Ferries: 0 (tolls offset)
Highways: 0 (tolls offset)
Wondrous Structures: 2 GB per level

[Athos69]

Even these reductions should help to slash some expenses and hopefully bring realms like Ilien back into the black. I like it Osprey.

[irdeggman]

Shipyards are especially expensive to maintain.

This involves diverting craftsman from money making radesto maintain their proficiency on shipbuilding/maintenance. This is real expensive. If a shipyard doesn't continuously build ships it becomes less efficient and the cost/time goes up due to erosion of the skills. While many of the craftsmen come from other trades, it is the time they spend building ships that makes it a real shipyard instead of a woodworking shop.

This comes from real life experience. I've working at the 2nd largest Naval Shipyard in the world for 21+ years (it was the largest for 10 of those years) now and have seen other private yards go bust because they were competing for the same pool of skilled labor.

Do not underestimate the real costs associated with a shipyard capable of building warships at any point in history.

[Osprey]

The question this brings to my mind is whether or not there is any income derived from owning shipyards. Mainly this would be based on an assumption that there is some assumed use by the private sector (fishing boats, local transports, pleasure craft, etc.), and that this would help offset the maintenance costs.

If there is NO assumed income, then I can understand that shipyard maintenance should be higher than 1/4 GB per level per season.

[Raesene Andu]

I've been using the info Osprey posted to work out the maintenance costs of most of Anuires non-landed regents for the Atlas of Cerilia and it works quite well, making it a lot easier to calculate everything thing.

So far, a large number of organisations come in with a income of X GB + 1/3 or 2/3 of a GB, and most the maintenance is either a whole number, or with 1/2 1/4, or 3/4 tacked on, which should be easy enough to follow. The difference in the fractions between income and expenditure does concern me a bit, but it isn't hard to round the income down to the nearest 1/4 of a GB.

Most of the organisations come in with a positive income, as you would expect, while most of the realm are close to the edge, or with a negative income. But that is before you include tribute.

Take the example of Boeruine.
It has a maintenance of 47.5 GB, while its income is 48 GB. Then I add in a court wizard payment of 2 GB, which increases maintenace fo 49.5 GB and 13 GB of tribute from other regents and this brings the income up to a healthier 61 GB.

The Gorgon is an even more extreme example. He has a basic income of 69.33 GB (Provinces, Law, Temples) and an expenditure of somewhere around 80 GB (still working it all out :). He then gains tribute equal to 63 GB from his vassals (include 30 GB from vassal Tollan), leaving him with a huge profit each turn. And if he cast's an alchemy realm spell each turn, he could potentially gain another 20 GB+ of profit due to the number of RP he pulls in each turn (potentially a shade under 200 RP/turn). Of course he strips the resources of his vassal leaving them with very little (Approved Temple of Markazor gains on 1/3 GB each turn).

[irdeggman]

Originally posted by Osprey@Sep 3 2004, 10:25 PM
The question this brings to my mind is whether or not there is any income derived from owning shipyards. Mainly this would be based on an assumption that there is some assumed use by the private sector (fishing boats, local transports, pleasure craft, etc.), and that this would help offset the maintenance costs.

If there is NO assumed income, then I can understand that shipyard maintenance should be higher than 1/4 GB per level per season.
Shipyards are different than ports.

A shipyard makes its money from selling the ships it makes and performing maintenance on others. That is something that is generally missing in this equation IMO. That would be to treat building a ship like a craft skill. The basic costs are less than the market price of thecompeteditem. This would reflect the inherent benefit of actually owning (and maintaining the shipyard) vice buying the ship.

The monthly income would be generated by the transfer of funds from the maintenance of ships to the appropriate shipyard. Let's face it not all of the regents with navies in the 2nd ed material actually had shipyards, they had ports where they docked their ships.

So something along the lines wher a shipyard could provide maintenance to twice its capability to construct vessels might help in this case.

[Raesene Andu]

Thinking about maintenance of roads/bridges/etc. I agree that bridges, ferries, ports, and most roads should have no maintenance cost (covered by tolls, fees, etc), but there are a couple of situations where this should change. One is roads through mountains. Any road travelling through high mountains is going to be subject to slips, rockfalls, etc and is going to need repairs more often than normal roads cutting through the plains. Also the repairs are going to be more labour intensive (hence more expensive). Repairing a road on the plains, means going along and filling in the holes, not so in the mountains.

Roads through swamps, tundra, glaciers, etc may also need repairs more often, so perhaps a maintenance for the more expensive roads would be required. I'd like to keep it fairly simple though, so perhaps 1/4 GB for swamp/tundra, and 1/2 GB for glaciers/mountains. What repairs are needed to other roads can be covered by tolls. Bridges just don't need the same amount of repairs, and ports and ferries can levies tolls, docking fees, and the like to cover repairs/maintenance.

The shipyard issue is a little more complex. I'd suggest changing the maintenace to either 1/4 or 1/2 GB, just to keep everything on the same fraction. Then add something to the description about allowing the regent to repair and maintain his own ships at a lower cost than normal because he is getting the labour and materials at cost price.

Another issue that has been raised before about shipyards is the 2X level build cost. This means that you need a level 8 province at least to build a galleon (15 GB), which means only the Imperial City can construct galleons. I'd suggest changing this to either 2.5 X level which means you need a level 6+ province to build a galleon, which still limits it to around 7 or 8 provinces in all of Anuire that can build galleons.

You may also wish to put in something about how much construction can be completed each turn (i.e how many ships a shipyard can work on at once). If it is 1d4 GB, then it is going to take a long time to get any ships done. I'd suggest allowing 1 ship/2 level of the shipyard to be built at once, all at 1d4 GB/turn. It will still take ages to build a ship, but it gives a higher level shipyard more benefits and makes them more worthwhile.

[Osprey]

I've been using the info Osprey posted to work out the maintenance costs of most of Anuires non-landed regents for the Atlas of Cerilia and it works quite well, making it a lot easier to calculate everything thing.


Excellent. Easing the math was definitely one of the main reasons to standardize things somewhat. Now only ship maintenance remains as an annoying source of tiny fractions. :huh:


Roads through swamps, tundra, glaciers, etc may also need repairs more often, so perhaps a maintenance for the more expensive roads would be required. I'd like to keep it fairly simple though, so perhaps 1/4 GB for swamp/tundra, and 1/2 GB for glaciers/mountains. What repairs are needed to other roads can be covered by tolls. Bridges just don't need the same amount of repairs, and ports and ferries can levies tolls, docking fees, and the like to cover repairs/maintenance.

Good point. 1/4 GB for swamps/tundra, 1/2 GB for mountains/glaciers seems reasonable to me (cheap, even).

SHIPYARDS: Geez, this is a sticky issue. IMC I had allowed Level 7 shipyards to build Galleons (rounding up), limiting them to Ilien, Anuire, and the Imperial City in 551 MR. That worked pretty well on the basis that galleons were simply too big, expensive, and advanced for war-torn Anuire to produce in most places. But it also put a number of realms right on the edge of such capability, by ruling up their capital one more level...(like Seasedge in Boeruine).

Raesene, doing some math with build potential = Shipyard Level x 2.5 actually works pretty well (other than being yet another fraction to calculate) - caravels will still need level 3 shipyards, and there aren't too many level 6 coastal provinces who would actually have the shipyards anyways.

Also, raising the shipyards' build potential helps justify raising their maintenance to 1/2 GB per level each season - meaning those level 6 shipyards (likely the biggest that would be constructed) would cost 3 GB a season.

With that higher maintenance value, we should expect there only to be occasional working yards dotting the coastline of Cerilia. Which in turn makes selling completed ships, or leasing the shipyards (and thus allowing the shipyard owner to spend Court actions on things other than building ships), a more viable and likely option to help pay for them when they're not building up the owner's own navy/trade fleet. It wouldn't hurt to add a note about this practice in the description of shipyards, pointing out a mechanic for DM's to use.

I would expect ship maintenance not to require the same level of shipyards as necessary to build them. In fact, I would expect that most routine maintenance could be handled by a seaport's facilities, while more major (probably annual) maintenance would require shipyards.

Here's an idea: what if shipyards could simply absorb the maintenanence costs of some ships - say 1/2 GB per level of the shipyards? ;) Thus, shipyards behind decent navies would sort of pay for themselves, as the maintenance savings would (at most) equal the maintenance costs of the yards. This would assume that the ships maintained visit the shipyards for at least a month out of each year.

So a level 6 shipyard in Anuire could reduce ship maintenance by 3 GB - allowing perhaps a few galleons and some caravels to be garrisoned there without additional maintenance.

As for Build speed, well...since ships are built using Build Court Actions, it would seem that the size of the court will really determine the speed of construction. IMC I had always assumed that shipyards could build more than one ship at a time, as it made no difference in the overall game (spreading Build actions between multiple ships really just makes each ship take longer in the current system).

IMC there were some serious shipbuilding sprees...and I found that the d4 GB per Build action was quite fast enough if loads of Court Actions were poured into the shipbuilding process. For instance, Ilien (w/ L7 shipyards) was building Galleons in preparation for a big Southern Alliance offensive against Diemed (this being Medoere, Ilien, and Roesone, plus IHH and EH). By lending Court Actions and lots of GB from its allies, Ilien's shipyards managed to produce 5 galleons and a few caravels in about 2-3 seasons' time. Extremely fast by Renaissance shipbuilding standards.

Also, I allow Profession (Shipbuilding) to be used just like P/Engineering is for land-based constructions - spend a Standard domain action to begin the project, DC 20 skill check by the master builder, and build actions for that building or vessel may be maximized (4 GB per Court Action spent). This should probably also be added to the Shipyards description in the revision.

Osprey

[epicsoul]

Another issue that has been raised before about shipyards is the 2X level build cost. This means that you need a level 8 province at least to build a galleon (15 GB), which means only the Imperial City can construct galleons. I'd suggest changing this to either 2.5 X level which means you need a level 6+ province to build a galleon, which still limits it to around 7 or 8 provinces in all of Anuire that can build galleons

Of course, you COULD always build a holding larger than what the level of province is. So, there could be a level 8 shipyard in a level 2 province. Just as there is no size limitation on fortifications. This would mean that several of the major powers COULD have shipyards capable of constructing galleons.

[Raesene Andu]

Originally posted by epicsoul@Sep 5 2004, 01:34 PM
Of course, you COULD always build a holding larger than what the level of province is. So, there could be a level 8 shipyard in a level 2 province. Just as there is no size limitation on fortifications. This would mean that several of the major powers COULD have shipyards capable of constructing galleons.
That would mean that you could create a shipyard anywhere when the original intention of the rules was to limit where you could place major shipyards (availability of labour, skilled trademen, materials, etc). Therefore the BRCS specifically states that you CANNOT build the level of the shipyard higher than the level of the province. I think we should keep this limitation.

[Athos69]

If we are trying to get rid of those annoying fractions, perhaps we could do an across the board conversion of income and expenses.

1/3 GB will become 0.35 GB
2/3 GB will become 0.65 GB

1/12 and 1/24 (used for ship maintenence) would become 10% and 5% respectively.

Law regents would see a (very) slight increase to their incomes, Guilders and Temples would see an (very) slight reduction in their incomes, and the smallest portion of a GB that we would need to wory about would be 0.05 GB (which if people adopt 2 decimal place accounting, is dead simple to work with).

[Raesene Andu]

The fractions generally work out ok now. If you keep all the 1/2, 1/4, etc in the expenditure side of things and then keep 1/3, 2/3 in income, there are no problems working them out quickly and easily.

[The Jew]

To represent the increasing production capabilities that larger shipyards should have what if their was a limit on the number of court actions that a shipyard could use. maybe 1 for a level 1-2, 2 for a level 3-4, 3 for a level 5-6 and 4 for a level 7-8.

The reasons ship yards are limited in number of court actions while other builds are not, is because they are the only build which requires construction of production facilities. It seems reasonable that if no ships can be built without a shipyard, then a very small shipyard would be able to build fewer ships than a larger one, no matter the size of the court.

Shipyards could also provide maintenance for ships in port. This reduces thier production capacity though, for every 1/2 GB (rounding down) of ships which are maintained free of cost the shipyard counts as 1 level lower in terms of number of court actions which could be used.

[Osprey]

To represent the increasing production capabilities that larger shipyards should have what if their was a limit on the number of court actions that a shipyard could use. maybe 1 for a level 1-2, 2 for a level 3-4, 3 for a level 5-6 and 4 for a level 7-8.

And 5 for a level 9-10 I hope. ;)

Ya' know, at first I thought this seemed too restrictive, but the more I do the math the better I like it - large shipyards with large courts behind them could still put in significant resources and crank out ships in a hurry, but small yards can only putter along steadily... I like it. :)


Shipyards could also provide maintenance for ships in port. This reduces thier production capacity though, for every 1/2 GB (rounding down) of ships which are maintained free of cost the shipyard counts as 1 level lower in terms of number of court actions which could be used.

I think providing routine maintenance for ships wouldn't seriously tie up a shipyard's facilities, so long as they weren't overburdened. I think the ability to routinely maintenance 1/2 GB worth of ship maintenance per level of the yards seems reasonable to me as an additional advantage of larger shipyards. These are high-maintenance structures, so giving them "an additional power" seems in-line with keeoing them game-balanced.

[Osprey]

Hey Folks,
I'm posting here to bring to everyone's attention where the original thread discussing shipyard costs and maintenance was found. Read over the stuff in here to get a better sense of what has already been thrown around.

Osprey

[irdeggman]

Osprey I knew I could count on you to find the discussion. All right so instead of early last summer it was late last summer. I was close. I have mentioned that old thing before right ;)

Wasn't there something else about building shipyards higher than the province level but at increased cost/maintenance?

Overall this discussion was pretty good and kept things in perspective. The 2nd ed material had a limited number of galleons and Zebecs available IIRC.