Maintenance Costs

[MongooseMatt]

If we do a detailed spacecraft operator's handbook, this is certainly something to look at. As it is, a flat rate paid monthly is just easier.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

If we do a detailed spacecraft operator's handbook, this is certainly something to look at. As it is, a flat rate paid monthly is just easier.

Agreed, keep it simple for now. If anyone wants a more detailed system, the referee's aid book is still available, or a crafty GM can come up with something.

Put detailed rules in the companion book along with everything else

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I agree too, I wasn't implying that something had to be added to the core book, just pointing out what is "really" going on.

 

[phavoc]

I think the maintenance paragraph needs to be tightened up. The first part should talk about a regular recurring monthly cost for spares and replacement parts. Failure to perform monthly maintenance generates a roll on the failure table. It's a cumulative roll, i.e. if you've skimped on maintenance for three months you have three rolls a month until you catch up.

And then once a year the ship needs to spend two weeks at a repair yard doing heavy maintenance and checks. In theory part of the monthly costs is putting aside money for that, so you could leave it at that. And when you do the annual maintenance you have to be paid up on back maintenance, or else you don't get the full benefit and you still have to roll on the maintenance failure table for every month you haven't caught up on.

That will discourage people from trying to min/max the system. And it's what we do with software licensing too to keep people paying up. Fake problems, real world solutions!

 

[Samcollins]

I think the rules are pretty clear on this. Maintenance is monthly. It is done at a shipyard.

 

[-Daniel-]

I think the rules are pretty clear on this. Maintenance is monthly. It is done at a shipyard.

The monthly should NOT require a ship yard. Otherwise how would those explorers get anywhere? An annual maintenance though, I could see that requiring more. Normal upkeep by the crew should be able to be done out in the field so that ships could go a few jumps out and explore, then return without everything breaking down.

 

[Condottiere]

Currently, you have three warships in order to have one constantly in deployment, one undergoing maintenance and and one working up.

So commercial and military maintenance might be different and differently scheduled.

 

[phavoc]

Currently, you have three warships in order to have one constantly in deployment, one undergoing maintenance and and one working up.

So commercial and military maintenance might be different and differently scheduled.

Having three warships is the preferred method, but only a handful of navies can do that (even the USN is running into deployment issues with too few hulls and too much space/missions to take part. The 10 carriers we have keep 1 in SLEP (multi-year overhaul), 1 in minor repair/training, and the other 8 on station, moving to their station or in port. The USN only actually has 3-4 places in the world they would WANT to have a carrier on station all the time, and they don't always get their way unless they hold one on station longer than it is supposed to be there.

Civilian airliners are probably a better example. The aircraft receive line maintenance weekly or sometimes daily. Aircraft are pulled out of service for defects, and on regularly scheduled timeframes based upon their flight time and landings. There are four types of maintenance checks - A,B,C and D. C and D are pretty significant work and would definitely require the equivalent of a shipyard. A & B can be performed at any properly equipped hangar with the right personnel.

Maintenance should be done monthly (and normally many things would take place during the jump cycle. Only external hull needs would generally require the ship to be in real-space. And minor work would be scheduled while in orbit. Nobody should be going outside on a ship while it's under power unless it's an emergency.

So the two week period of being at a shipyard for the annual checks is reasonable. There was always the assumption (in my mind at least) that there was continual maintenance going on by the crew to keep the vessel in good working order. In the Army we called it PMCS - Preventive Maintenance, Checks and Services. Only something serious or heavy maintenance wise would require us to pull the equipment off the line and hand it over to the mechanics.

Really at some point in a ship's life it should spend considerable time in a shipyard while it gets it's equivalent of a C or D check - and that would be a month, minimum. It's easier game wise to sidestep that because it doesn't bring much to the game, unless the ref is looking to split the PC's from their ship for some adventuring. And even then all you need is a port official with some paperwork and a bad attitude...

 

[Condottiere]

One aspect of very extended periods between tech levels is that they don't need to be modernized, and as for carriers, jeep carriers tend to be overlooked, which brings the total to nineteen.

I think there's an incongruity between the quirky forty year old ship, and somewhere where it's mentioned that some ships can be hundreds of years old. Certainly, some warships hulls are stated to be that old.

Though I suspect that the systems directly involved in jumping, the drives, power plant and controls, are heavily maintained and monitored.

Planes seems to have a fly by date, based on how stressed their airframe is, though again, this tends to be based as to when a replacement was expected to be in deployment, and that was based on superior tech being available and certified.

 

[Nerhesi]

We should figure out a simple (maybe traveller's companion) so how much flat-maintenance value can be reduced by engineer/mechanic levels of the crew. Example 1000 or 500 Cr per level of skill.

This would help explain the Deep Scouts that are staying for months on end surveying or so on with just and engineer and a pilot on board. The equivalent of being to take care of your own small-sized craft (but obviously, the flat rate wont make much of a dent in capital ship maintenance)

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Currently, you have three warships in order to have one constantly in deployment, one undergoing maintenance and and one working up.

So commercial and military maintenance might be different and differently scheduled.

Having three warships is the preferred method, but only a handful of navies can do that (even the USN is running into deployment issues with too few hulls and too much space/missions to take part. The 10 carriers we have keep 1 in SLEP (multi-year overhaul), 1 in minor repair/training, and the other 8 on station, moving to their station or in port. The USN only actually has 3-4 places in the world they would WANT to have a carrier on station all the time, and they don't always get their way unless they hold one on station longer than it is supposed to be there.

Civilian airliners are probably a better example. The aircraft receive line maintenance weekly or sometimes daily. Aircraft are pulled out of service for defects, and on regularly scheduled timeframes based upon their flight time and landings. There are four types of maintenance checks - A,B,C and D. C and D are pretty significant work and would definitely require the equivalent of a shipyard. A & B can be performed at any properly equipped hangar with the right personnel.

Maintenance should be done monthly (and normally many things would take place during the jump cycle. Only external hull needs would generally require the ship to be in real-space. And minor work would be scheduled while in orbit. Nobody should be going outside on a ship while it's under power unless it's an emergency.

So the two week period of being at a shipyard for the annual checks is reasonable. There was always the assumption (in my mind at least) that there was continual maintenance going on by the crew to keep the vessel in good working order. In the Army we called it PMCS - Preventive Maintenance, Checks and Services. Only something serious or heavy maintenance wise would require us to pull the equipment off the line and hand it over to the mechanics.

Really at some point in a ship's life it should spend considerable time in a shipyard while it gets it's equivalent of a C or D check - and that would be a month, minimum. It's easier game wise to sidestep that because it doesn't bring much to the game, unless the ref is looking to split the PC's from their ship for some adventuring. And even then all you need is a port official with some paperwork and a bad attitude...

The "A" check is pretty simple and can be accomplished with a very small maintenance crew. Probably could be done by the spacecraft crew every time the ship is in port or orbit. On aircraft this is about once a week.

A "B" check can be done on an overnight (10pm to 6am) using a crew of less than a dozen people. I still think this is something the onboard spacecraft crew can do and is probably equivalent to the monthly check mentioned. On aircraft, this check is done about every 2 months (ish).

A "C" check is done about every 18 months to 2 years and is probably the equivalent to the 2-week check at a shipyard. The check time varies but goes from several days to a week.

A "D" check is done about every 6-8 years and takes up to a month to complete.

I figure the 2 weeks every year shipyard visit is a combination of the C and D checks. Some are heavier than others, but on average are 2 weeks, so for gaming purposes, that works.

 

[Condottiere]

Actually, the onboard Siri should be able to self-diagnose and complain loudly if anything needs looking at and repairing, cutting down the time for most nominal maintenance.

The more in depth maintenance is for stuff she might have missed or is too shy to mention.

 

[Anonymous]

How much maintenance can you do to an online drive or power plant?

I'm sure an engineer would be monitoring the drives as the ship plies the lanes (with his feet up on the console as the ship's computer does all the work) but can you get the tool kit out while a fusion reactor is running? I'd say not. Under extreme circumstances you might shut the power plant down in system but not in jump as you'll drop out of jump when the power plant stops powering the jump drive. Maintenance has to happen in dock or somewhere relatively safe.

I am 99% sure this kind of detailed explanation won't find itself in the core rule book, the page limit has been hit and there are likely more important things to put in there. There's a better chance that it might show up in the companion or a setting specific book like the Third Imperium.

More likely it's we detail oriented dudes and dudettes that will add it into our own campaigns.

Do you think we could get some kind of agreement about this kind of stuff and start a MgT wiki? Or perhaps just add this to the existing Traveller wiki?

 

[-Daniel-]

How much maintenance can you do to an online drive or power plant?

Can't say, but if I compare it to the kinds of maintenance we used to do on the printing presses, then some, just not the big stuff. Some maintenance would be preventative, like insure the right liquids were at the right levels, tighten bolts, adjust running speeds, conduct calibration tests while in any port, etc.

But I agree hiro, I think this is getting way over complex for a game that at its core is a simple game. We need to stop and let a monthly fee cover what ever is being done and an annual down time cover the "big stuff".

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Welll, they do shiftly (every 6-8 hours) work as well as daily maintenance on operating nuclear reactors on submarines.

NO, you are not gaining access to the Reactor Compartment, but doing checks, maintenance on the secondary systems outside the compartment. I suspect this is going to be similar to what would be done routinely by the crew during any given shift.

Most of your maintenance is going to have to be done when shutdown in port or in orbit.

Also, although we buy a single Power Plant in the design system, there is nothing to say that it isn't several side-by-side plants such that you could shut one down (especially in orbit) and work on it, then switch power plants and work on the other one.

But every once in awhile, you are going to have to open up the containment compartment and service/replace/repair the sensors and flux capacitors; that is the Annual shipyard visit.

 

[AKAramis]

Mongoose is the only edition where maintenance is monthly instead of annual.
Annual maintenance requiring a yard makes sense.
Monthly maintenance requiring a yard does not, unless all starships are manufactured by Harley-Davidson.

Even nuclear submarines do not require a yard for ongoing maintenance; neither should a starship

 

[phavoc]

The new maintenance rules are mixing heavy maintenance with normal, everyday light maintenance. Ships, submarines, planes, cars, etc, all get regular maintenance while being used. But at some point they get taken out of complete service and are given much deeper maintenance.

So a starship would normally be replacing valves, widgets, sensor dishes, the crew's toilet after repeated burrito nights,etc. That would be done on a monthly basis.

But the annual maintenance is when the power plant is taken offline and magnetic bottle emitters are pulled and replaced, power couplings are disassembled, cleaned and repaired, airlock seals are replace, etc. It's the equivalent of pulling your engine and giving it a full ring and valve job. Besides, you REALLY don't want to wait to annually replace the toilet. Space burrito's... oy!

This is a really easy fix. In the paragraph that talks about maintenance, failure to pay for monthly maintenance means you can get minor annoyances and tweaks (the port-side airlock has to be replaced because you neglected to lube it, so it's inoperable until you pull it out completely and replace it - during heavy maintenance is when it's normally done). Failure to perform annual heavy maintenance means things like your power plant can scram because of a faulty sensor, or you risk your cargo deck depressurizing due to a seal failing catastrophically.

But the idea that a ship would never require a shipyard and the downtime associated with it flies in the face of both previous editions and common mechanical sense.

Remember, burrito nights!

 

[-Daniel-]

But the idea that a ship would never require a shipyard and the downtime associated with it flies in the face of both previous editions and common mechanical sense.

I must have missed something, I thought we all agreed there would be a need for both monthly "light " maintenance and an annual "heavy" maintenance. I thought the "do not need the yard" was in relationship to the monthly maintenance. Sorry if I missed a shift in the conversation.

For me, I do no have an issue if we elect to say the 12th month includes a longer visit to a yard. If we are still trying to tie the monthly to a visit to a yard I still would reject that otherwise you could never have explorations etc. There has to be a better way to handle the two types.

So to clarify, is the conversation around how to reflect the need for both types or is it around the elimination of the annual yard visit or is it around the need for a yard visit every month?

 

[phavoc]

But the idea that a ship would never require a shipyard and the downtime associated with it flies in the face of both previous editions and common mechanical sense.

I must have missed something, I thought we all agreed there would be a need for both monthly "light " maintenance and an annual "heavy" maintenance. I thought the "do not need the yard" was in relationship to the monthly maintenance. Sorry if I missed a shift in the conversation.

For me, I do no have an issue if we elect to say the 12th month includes a longer visit to a yard. If we are still trying to tie the monthly to a visit to a yard I still would reject that otherwise you could never have explorations etc. There has to be a better way to handle the two types.

So to clarify, is the conversation around how to reflect the need for both types or is it around the elimination of the annual yard visit or is it around the need for a yard visit every month?

As it stands maintenance is paid monthly, an annual shipyard visit is required, and maintenance is done monthly. But the existing text doesn't make that clear enough. Nor does it say how long the annual maintenance trip is. It used to be two weeks. It's indeterminate now. There's also speculation that monthly maintenance requires a yard. Except that's nuts, and that's also not stated.

Bottom line it still needs to be clarified.

 

[-Daniel-]

As it stands maintenance is paid monthly, an annual shipyard visit is required, and maintenance is done monthly. But the existing text doesn't make that clear enough. Nor does it say how long the annual maintenance trip is. It used to be two weeks. It's indeterminate now. There's also speculation that monthly maintenance requires a yard. Except that's nuts, and that's also not stated.

Bottom line it still needs to be clarified.

I agree, I think it needs cleaner language and input from Mongoose for us to know for sure. 8)