Having now had the time and the book in hand, I can see where this mechanic is going. Except for the "maintenance must be carried out in a shipyard" part, I actually like it.
In previous incarnations, the shipyard requirement was an
annual thing, but ships would indeed build up negative DMs over months and years (depending on system)
after that first year.
On further examination of the MGT rules on pages 138, 143, 149, and 150, the whole mess is intended to be another way to separate PCs from their money, but is incompletely written.
The Maintenance failure roll refers to damage to "systems", but the tables we are referred to on page 150 are for battle damage and do not limit themselves to what they *also* refer to as "systems", but rather also include hull and structure. The repair rules on page 149 and 143 continue to separate "systems" from hull and structure.
In the face of this, and taking the dangerous nature of space flight into account, I'm inclined to toss the DM per month mentioned on page 138 as a DM on the 8+ roll for mishap. Instead, that 8+ roll happens every month of active ship use with no DM.
So where does the DM go? On the System Degradation table. Yes, letting your maintenance schedule lapse is asking for trouble...
From there, we head to page 150. While
combat offers a procedure for determining which damage table to roll on, the
degradation procedure offers no such guidance. Fine. Roll even-odd for internal vs external tables. We want stuff on both tables, and space is dangerous, so...
Roll each point of damage determined on the System Degradation table separately, and determine internal damage vs external damage separately as well.
Now we get back to performed maintenance. If you are current and up to date on your continual maintenance, make an appropriate skill check for the damaged item. If successful, this damage does not occur or is dealt with very quickly, as you caught the warning signs during maintenance activities and took appropriate action. If your roll fails
or you aren't current on your maintenance, the equipment failure, hull breach, or structural issue catches you by surprise and moves to the Combat Repair (page 149) and long term repair (page 143) procedures. This "surprise" can be un-heralded equipment failure, or a micro-meteor strike, or simply not noticed during its lead up.
It will be up to the Referee to determine whether a month's crises are spread out or occur all at once. A point of hull damage and two hits to the maneuver drive sounds like a perfect opportunity to inflict all three at the same time, while scattered equipment failures seem to make more sense if spread out.
To answer this topic's original question for this modification of the rules, continual maintenance is a full time job, give or take a little, for one person per fifty tons of drives, weaponry, screens, bridge, electronics, subcraft, and other "gadgets" installed. Cargo, fuel, and staterooms are not counted in this total as such, but are still assumed to be covered.
Annual maintenance, which is the part that requires a starport, takes two weeks of down time and is considered a full-time job for the normal crew complement (whether they hire a shipyard crew to do it for them is another matter).
Continual maintenance has no intrinsic Cr cost attached unless something breaks. Annual maintenance costs the listed 0.1% of the ship's list price.
Feedback welcome, not that I can stop you.
