Ship Upkeep

Nexes

About how much gold per day would a minimally viable (no weapons) cutter cost versus a strider (also no weapons for the sake of comparison)?

Sena

I'd say around 200 gold per RL day with a small crew. It could be as low as 30-40 gold per day with a tiny crew.

My windcutter had 10 crewmates at 6 bits each and 3 shipmates at 1 gold each (the crew considers those wages "a bit low", they won't lose morale but they won't gain much either), eating normal common rations. So the total wages were 9 gold per Achaean day, and food costs were about 0.255 gold per Achaean day.

You'll probably want about twice the crew on a strider, so roughly double that cost.

Nexes

Oh wow, that's considerably cheaper than I thought. I was worried that a strider would cost thousands of gold a day.

Sena

It could be thousands, if you have a huge crew with higher wages. At the wages I used, the upkeep cost for a strider with max crew would have been about 1300 per day, and for a new crew that's not already at max morale you'll probably want higher wages.

Nexes

Can't seem to mark your comment as the answer. How do computers work

Jonathin

Unless it was changed, the amount you pay is considered low because some people pay their crew waaayy too much and it skews the scale. Just ignore what the crew thinks.

Sena

Jonathin said:

Unless it was changed, the amount you pay is considered low because some people pay their crew waaayy too much and it skews the scale. Just ignore what the crew thinks.

It was changed, it doesn't matter any more what other people are paying.

Eld

Jonathin said:

Unless it was changed, the amount you pay is considered low because some people pay their crew waaayy too much and it skews the scale. Just ignore what the crew thinks.

As far as I've seen, "average" pay (i.e., half of the max, 8 bits for crewmates, 12 bits for shipmates), and a little bit to either side, is always considered "fair", max pay (for all crew) is always considered "kingly indeed", with varying levels of "generous" in between. If the opinions were determined by an actual average wages of existing crews, you'd expect the "fair" point to move around some, which I've never seen evidence of (afaik, "average" is always half the maximum).

Edit: And ninja'd because I took the time to check the numbers. When it was actually determined by what other people paid, was there still a cap on wages?

Sena

Eld said:

When it was actually determined by what other people paid, was there still a cap on wages?

I'm not sure, I didn't even know about the current cap. I've never tried setting the wages that high.

If there was a cap, it was ridiculously high (>100 gold). Edit: It could actually go as high as 2000 gold, so I'd assume there wasn't any cap. Edit2: Some more research shows the cap was implemented before wages were made static. So for the first couple years wages were relative with no cap, then for a year they were relative with a cap (I'd guess that the cap was also relative to the average wages), then they were static with a cap.

Nexes

Does anyone know exactly how much morale you lose each day if you pay the absolute minimum wages?

Sena

I'm testing morale now, but since it only changes every hour, it will take a while.

Sena

Still checking different wage/ration settings, but average wages and normal common rations gives +2 morale per day. From that, minimum wages is -10 morale and half rations is -2 morale. So the minimum would be -10 morale per day at minimum wages and half common rations.

In case it matters, this is on a cutter with a smallish crew (10 crewmates and 3 shipmates, no swashbucklers), at near max experience and morale (Elite VII and 60k+).

Nexes

Wouldn't the minimum be -12 morale per day then? Puts it a bit over the daily morale generated by the level 1 morale artefact.

Sena

The base (average wages and normal rations) is +2, then the minimum is 12 less than that, so -10 total.

Nexes

Oh, I see.

I wonder if the morale/gold is the same for fine rations vs simple crew wages. I bet it skews towards fine rations, I have so many of those and it wasn't that expensive to fill up.