Maintenance Costs

[phavoc]

Pg145 – Costs and Maintenance: The poor maintenance table is rolled monthly if no maintenance is paid? Or every month AFTER failing to do annual maintenance??

The repairs and maintenance paragraph is sending mixed messages too. It talks about annual maintenance requiring a shipyard (no duration listed though), and then says maintenance should be carried out monthly. Here the explanation that it needs to be carried out monthly (missing from the above listing… should be consolidated instead of split up). But it still contradicts annual maintenance.

Life support costs are listed at Cr2000 per stateroom in the table, and then Cr1000 in the description below. Costs should be broken out per person, rather than per stateroom. And unoccupied staterooms should generate no costs, or diminished costs since there is no food/water being paid for and the life support system is being used at a lower rate, thus extending the duration of parts that need to be replaced by use. This is somewhat alluded to in the “Each person on board a ship not in a low berth will cost an additional Cr1000 in life support costs”. This contradicts the Cr3000 for a double-occupied stateroom.

 

[AKAramis]

Pg145 – Costs and Maintenance: The poor maintenance table is rolled monthly if no maintenance is paid? Or every month AFTER failing to do annual maintenance??

Mongoose's maintenance is monthly, not per annum.

The repairs and maintenance paragraph is sending mixed messages too. It talks about annual maintenance requiring a shipyard (no duration listed though), and then says maintenance should be carried out monthly. Here the explanation that it needs to be carried out monthly (missing from the above listing… should be consolidated instead of split up). But it still contradicts annual maintenance.

I concur...

Life support costs are listed at Cr2000 per stateroom in the table, and then Cr1000 in the description below. Costs should be broken out per person, rather than per stateroom. And unoccupied staterooms should generate no costs, or diminished costs since there is no food/water being paid for and the life support system is being used at a lower rate, thus extending the duration of parts that need to be replaced by use. This is somewhat alluded to in the “Each person on board a ship not in a low berth will cost an additional Cr1000 in life support costs”. This contradicts the Cr3000 for a double-occupied stateroom.

I've been arguing for this since the first draft I was in on... Changing it would require changing the spreadsheet (and the ticket prices).

 

[AndrewW]

I've been arguing for this since the first draft I was in on... Changing it would require changing the spreadsheet (and the ticket prices).

Even before there was a draft the idea was around...

 

[phavoc]

Pg145 – Costs and Maintenance: The poor maintenance table is rolled monthly if no maintenance is paid? Or every month AFTER failing to do annual maintenance??

Mongoose's maintenance is monthly, not per annum.

The paragraph in question states both.

Repairs and Maintenance: A ship needs maintenance, which costs 0.1% of the total purchase price of the ship per year and requires a shipyard. Maintenance should be carried out each month (divide the year’s maintenance cost by 12 to find the monthly cost.

The inference is that maintenance should be performed monthly, but the allusion towards a shipyard is (I am assuming here) the annual 2week maintenance previous versions have said that takes a shipyard. We agree on the mixed message. But the question (in my mind at least) still goes back to what happens if you perform your monthly maintenance, but skip your annual? It's not clear as to when the maintenance problems SHOULD be rolled for.

These ships last for decades. So they have to be pretty hearty. Not doing maintenance on something that is say only a year old and has had regular maintenance shouldn't normally generate a breakdown roll. If we can make cars and air conditioners and refrigerators to last longer than that, shouldn't ships as well?

It would make more sense for the rule to read if a player's ship has not had it's annual maintenance done then for every month past the annual maintenance a roll on the breakdown table should occur. You could get even more creative for players running on the fringe/cheap that for every annual maintenance skipped, they roll once per year skipped. So the SS Cheapskate has missed three annual maintenance service calls, and the player rolls three times per month to see if something breaksdown.

 

[DickTurpin]

Repairs and Maintenance: A ship needs maintenance, which costs 0.1% of the total purchase price of the ship per year and requires a shipyard. Maintenance should be carried out each month (divide the year’s maintenance cost by 12 to find the monthly cost.

Read that sentence carefully. I have placed the important sections in bold. Maintenance is required each month. There is no additional requirement for annual maintenance. The cost each month is 0.1%/12, which if totaled for the entire year adds up to the 0.1% mentioned in the first sentence.

Perhaps the cost should be stated only as monthly cost to avoid this sort of confusion.

 

[phavoc]

I did. And the section you didn't bold - "and requires a shipyard." If you have monthly maintenance costs, why the requirement for the shipyard? Did ships all of a sudden become so weakly they need an overhaul every month??

Granted, there are potential rule changes afoot. However, and MGT has stressed this a lot, the majority of the changes are not wholesale. So, with only the single paragraph to go by, we are left with the idea that maintenance is required monthly AND requires a shipyard.

Common sense should tell us that monthly ongoing maintenance should NOT require a shipyard. Previous editions said that ANNUAL maintenance required two weeks IN A SHIPYARD. Previous editions have also said that most ship captains set aside their annual maintenance MONTHLY.

So without no other information to go on (and if I've missed it somewhere please do reference it), it makes the most sense to assume that annual maintenance remains the standard. At least until it is otherwise clarified and that snippet quoted above is removed.

And again, using common sense, if ships have suddenly become so maintenance heavy and weak then it bodes very bad for those that travel the stars in the far future. How then would ships get to be 60-80 yrs old? They'd fall apart in storage waiting for a Cap'n Mal to come along.

 

[Condottiere]

You want to pull it out of the ether and scrape off those space barnacles.

 

[allanimal]

Life support costs are listed at Cr2000 per stateroom in the table, and then Cr1000 in the description below. Costs should be broken out per person, rather than per stateroom. And unoccupied staterooms should generate no costs, or diminished costs since there is no food/water being paid for and the life support system is being used at a lower rate, thus extending the duration of parts that need to be replaced by use. This is somewhat alluded to in the “Each person on board a ship not in a low berth will cost an additional Cr1000 in life support costs”. This contradicts the Cr3000 for a double-occupied stateroom.

The table does not disagree with the text, though it assumes the staterooms are occupied. Costs are broken out per person (plus the cost of the stateroom) And unoccupied staterooms do have diminished costs.

The text reads:

Life Support and Supplies: Each stateroom on a ship costs Cr1000 per month. ... Each person on board a ship who is not in a low berth will cost an additional Cr1000 in life support costs.

So a stateroom with no occupant costs Cr.1000
A Stateroom with 1 occupant costs Cr.2000 (1000 for the room, 1000 for the occupant)
A Stateroom with 2 occupants costs Cr. 3000 (1000 for the room, 1000 for each occupant).
etc.

 

[phavoc]

Life support costs are listed at Cr2000 per stateroom in the table, and then Cr1000 in the description below. Costs should be broken out per person, rather than per stateroom. And unoccupied staterooms should generate no costs, or diminished costs since there is no food/water being paid for and the life support system is being used at a lower rate, thus extending the duration of parts that need to be replaced by use. This is somewhat alluded to in the “Each person on board a ship not in a low berth will cost an additional Cr1000 in life support costs”. This contradicts the Cr3000 for a double-occupied stateroom.

The table does not disagree with the text, though it assumes the staterooms are occupied. Costs are broken out per person (plus the cost of the stateroom) And unoccupied staterooms do have diminished costs.

The text reads:

Life Support and Supplies: Each stateroom on a ship costs Cr1000 per month. ... Each person on board a ship who is not in a low berth will cost an additional Cr1000 in life support costs.

So a stateroom with no occupant costs Cr.1000
A Stateroom with 1 occupant costs Cr.2000 (1000 for the room, 1000 for the occupant)
A Stateroom with 2 occupants costs Cr. 3000 (1000 for the room, 1000 for each occupant).
etc.

And... you left out the contradiction stated in the rules. You can cram 4 people in one stateroom. The book says a double-occupied stateroom is Cr3,000. Another passage states "each person on board a ship not in a low berth costs an additional Cr1,000 in life support costs". So four people in one stateroom is Cr5,000? Cr4,000? Cr3,000??

Previously the life support costs included food. And 4 people consume 4x the oxygen and water that 1 person does. Assuming there is a baseline cost for just keeping the lights on, the air system working and the recycling system working, the numbers aren't adding up in a coherent and logical manner. I'm fine with a per-person cost, that makes sense and makes for very easy cost tracking. What doesn't make sense is the jumping around on costs that are internally inconsistent. Having a consistent cost for life support also translates in scaling up into bunkrooms and larger berthing compartments. Also makes for less debate and discussion on just how much it costs to carry people around.

And unless you are running a Monty Haul campaign, yes Virginia, expenses and correctly tracking them means something.

 

[allanimal]

Life support costs are listed at Cr2000 per stateroom in the table, and then Cr1000 in the description below. Costs should be broken out per person, rather than per stateroom. And unoccupied staterooms should generate no costs, or diminished costs since there is no food/water being paid for and the life support system is being used at a lower rate, thus extending the duration of parts that need to be replaced by use. This is somewhat alluded to in the “Each person on board a ship not in a low berth will cost an additional Cr1000 in life support costs”. This contradicts the Cr3000 for a double-occupied stateroom.

The table does not disagree with the text, though it assumes the staterooms are occupied. Costs are broken out per person (plus the cost of the stateroom) And unoccupied staterooms do have diminished costs.

The text reads:

Life Support and Supplies: Each stateroom on a ship costs Cr1000 per month. ... Each person on board a ship who is not in a low berth will cost an additional Cr1000 in life support costs.

So a stateroom with no occupant costs Cr.1000
A Stateroom with 1 occupant costs Cr.2000 (1000 for the room, 1000 for the occupant)
A Stateroom with 2 occupants costs Cr. 3000 (1000 for the room, 1000 for each occupant).
etc.

And... you left out the contradiction stated in the rules. You can cram 4 people in one stateroom. The book says a double-occupied stateroom is Cr3,000. Another passage states "each person on board a ship not in a low berth costs an additional Cr1,000 in life support costs". So four people in one stateroom is Cr5,000? Cr4,000? Cr3,000??

Previously the life support costs included food. And 4 people consume 4x the oxygen and water that 1 person does. Assuming there is a baseline cost for just keeping the lights on, the air system working and the recycling system working, the numbers aren't adding up in a coherent and logical manner. I'm fine with a per-person cost, that makes sense and makes for very easy cost tracking. What doesn't make sense is the jumping around on costs that are internally inconsistent. Having a consistent cost for life support also translates in scaling up into bunkrooms and larger berthing compartments. Also makes for less debate and discussion on just how much it costs to carry people around.

And unless you are running a Monty Haul campaign, yes Virginia, expenses and correctly tracking them means something.

I guess I don't see the contradiction. The table is incomplete, for sure, but the text states that each person is Cr1000 on top of the base Cr1000.
Now why the stateroom, unoccupied, costs Cr1000, is debatable, and how much that would be for different sized accommodation arrangements (barracks, cargo converted to bunks, extra-large luxury staterooms, etc.) but I think it is clear that 4 persons in a room is Cr1000 each and on top of that is the Cr1000 for a standard stateroom itself. So Cr5000 in total.

I agree the table should reflect the fact that staterooms can be empty, single, double, triple, quadruple, etc occupied.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

The repairs and maintenance paragraph is sending mixed messages too.

That's what referees are for.

 

[phavoc]

The repairs and maintenance paragraph is sending mixed messages too.

That's what referees are for.

No, that's what rulebooks are for. Otherwise every time you change referee's you have a potential new interpretation.

A referee's job isn't to interpret every rule in the book. A rule system is just that - a framework by which you play the game. Ref's shouldn't have to interpret every rule. That's just insane.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Okay, two issues here.

On maintenance, I have changed it so everything is done monthly, but that a shipyard should be visited once per year. The idea here is that most maintenance can be done on-ship, but once a year you need to pull major systems out.

On life support, I have altered the table to say Cr1000 per Stateroom, removed Double Occupancy, and added Cr1000 per Person on board (so, one person in a Stateroom totals Cr2000).

 

[Condottiere]

So a warship with three shifts hotbunking it in quadruple occupancy would incur a cost of thirteen thousand schmuchers?

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Yep, if you want to squeeze 12 people into a single stateroom, you are going to have to pay for that life support.

I figure most of the CR1000 per person is for air and water recycling, food, etc. The CR1000 per stateroom covers the electricity and other incidentals. Remember, the cost of a stateroom also includes things like the Galley, Lavatories, hallways etc.

 

[phavoc]

Okay, two issues here.

On maintenance, I have changed it so everything is done monthly, but that a shipyard should be visited once per year. The idea here is that most maintenance can be done on-ship, but once a year you need to pull major systems out.

Will the explanation be updated in the CRB to explain that more clearly?

On life support, I have altered the table to say Cr1000 per Stateroom, removed Double Occupancy, and added Cr1000 per Person on board (so, one person in a Stateroom totals Cr2000).

The old Merchant book had a stock barracks transport container that could support 20 individuals in 10 Dtons and was totally self-contained. Will that be retained, and if so, how would this particular rule be applied? Average living expenses (including food, lodging and clothing) were Cr300/week. Which would mean the consumable life support costs average Cr700/week.

The normal starship costs should cover the maintenance costs of life support machinery, which must be run if there is one or 100 onboard. And that can be hand-waved away for the most part.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Will the explanation be updated in the CRB to explain that more clearly?

Of course.

The old Merchant book had a stock barracks transport container that could support 20 individuals in 10 Dtons and was totally self-contained. Will that be retained, and if so, how would this particular rule be applied? Average living expenses (including food, lodging and clothing) were Cr300/week. Which would mean the consumable life support costs average Cr700/week.

The livestock transportation upgrade is indeed in High Guard.

 

[phavoc]

The old Merchant book had a stock barracks transport container that could support 20 individuals in 10 Dtons and was totally self-contained. Will that be retained, and if so, how would this particular rule be applied? Average living expenses (including food, lodging and clothing) were Cr300/week. Which would mean the consumable life support costs average Cr700/week.

[/quote]The livestock transportation upgrade is indeed in High Guard.[/quote]

So then the Cr1000 per person / per week life support charge is not applied then if you are transporting slaves in a stock barracks? Assuming slave 'gruel' the charge would be 20-30credits per week per person, using the example living expenses from 1.0.

Or, are the costs for transporting people in a stock barracks waved and not included in ship costs? If that's the case then it becomes not as pleasant, but it would be cheaper (and safer) to travel in a stock barracks than in cold sleep. Couldn't be as unpleasant as a WW2 submarine or travelling as steerage on an old sailing ship.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Regarding the new Monthly Maintenance costs with the annual shipyard visit...

I know we are not trying to get too detailed here, but the montly maintenance is handled by on-board Engineers and other crew (what do you think the sensor operator does in Jumpspace - he cleans all the contacts in the sensor board). These maintenance tasks (called Preventive Maintenance in the real world) aren't going to be that expensive. Engineers are changing CO2 Scrubbers and lubricating pumps etc.

So you have 2 maintenance costs: Monthly and Annual. They are tied together and most operators just amortize the entire cost over 1 year and call it good, but the reality (or a ship operating on the ragged edge of profitability) might need to know that detail as they are scrimping by, doing the minimum and hoping they get a big score before and Annual comes due.

The Annual maintenance should cost at least as much as all the monthly maintenance combined (probably more).

So I suggest the following:
Using a total costs per year are 0.1% of the cost of a new ship.

0.003% per month (x11 months = 0.033%)
PLUS
0.067% for Annual (includes monthly, thus the 11 months above)

That might be way to fiddly for the Core Book, but is something to keep in mind as you are rewriting the section.

The Annual has to cost more than the Monthly - you are spending it in a shipyard.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Regarding the new Monthly Maintenance costs with the annual shipyard visit...

I know we are not trying to get too detailed here, but the montly maintenance is handled by on-board Engineers and other crew (what do you think the sensor operator does in Jumpspace - he cleans all the contacts in the sensor board). These maintenance tasks (called Preventive Maintenance in the real world) aren't going to be that expensive. Engineers are changing CO2 Scrubbers and lubricating pumps etc.

So you have 2 maintenance costs: Monthly and Annual. They are tied together and most operators just amortize the entire cost over 1 year and call it good, but the reality (or a ship operating on the ragged edge of profitability) might need to know that detail as they are scrimping by, doing the minimum and hoping they get a big score before and Annual comes due.

The Annual maintenance should cost at least as much as all the monthly maintenance combined (probably more).

So I suggest the following:
Using a total costs per year are 0.1% of the cost of a new ship.

0.003% per month (x11 months = 0.033%)
PLUS
0.067% for Annual (includes monthly, thus the 11 months above)

That might be way to fiddly for the Core Book, but is something to keep in mind as you are rewriting the section.

The Annual has to cost more than the Monthly - you are spending it in a shipyard.

The referee's aid series does touch upon this in the free/far trader book. The monthly costs (for spares, supplies and stuff) are 20% of the total maintenance, and 80% of the total cost is for the annual overhaul at a spaceport. So for an economically unattractive month, it would with this model be ok to only pay 20% of the monthly maint fee, as long as the captain makes sure there are funds available when it's time for the annual service.

Paying the full maintenance cost for a month would mean using 20% to buy and fix the urgent stuff and putting 80% aside, saving it for the yearly.