Condottiere said:
Spacecraft: Maintenance Crews
If the ship has any launched craft, it should have a flight control officer, crew for each craft, and at least 1 maintenance person per craft.
Seems rather low, even in the age of advanced technology and diagnostic systems, especially for something as finicky as a cutting edge fighter.
May need multipliers dependent on tonnage and complexity.
I would agree, on small ships where the crew only has one or two shuttles at best this could be handled by the ships own crew and basic systems. ( adding at least one workshop to a design is a good idea) a full hanger has equipment for basic maintenance and repair as part of it's tonnage, Using at least one full scale hanger plus a full sized workshop, as a base, then adding a team based on the small crafts engine and reactor tonnage along the same lines as the way starships calculate the number of techs, and engineers could give you a rough guesstimate of how many crewmen a group of small craft would need.(total tonnage of all craft boarded,with a minimum of one engineer, and one mechanic)
I'd go with 10% of the construction time for a small craft as the time needed to completely tear one down,run diagnostics, and repairs and put the small craft back into service one a at least once a year. one hour per 10 flight hours of routine service in the hanger would be enough to keep it in a good state of repair.with at least one hour per craft needed for checkout and to run internal diagnostics. If the craft isn't operating on a regular basis someone still has to climb in power it up, static test the reactors, drive plates, flight controls and electronics....of course they could be setting in the cockpit pushing buttons and running checklists most of that time.
triple the number of hours of required work if the craft has been used for more than routine flight.( and in the case of combat a one to one ratio)
adjusting per tonnage of drives, and reactors with at least one hour per craft per week ...you get something like this.
drive total tonnage +power plant total tonnage +1 per craft x (number of flight hours per week/10) = maintenance times required
work crew weekly hours/ required work hours per average craft = number of craft that can be maintained per week by one crew using one hanger
total number of embarked craft/Number of craft one crew can manage per week =number of ground crews, and hangers required
of course you can reduce the number of hangers needed by running multiple crews per hanger in rotation, one crew replacing the other at the end of the shift.
You could cheat (sort of) and purchase repair drones, and a basic computer set up to run self repair programs in addition to the hanger. assign a single engineer or technician as "crew chief", and run the hanger 24/7
base the tonnage of drones needed off the tonnage of the largest craft that can be serviced by the hanger so 1% of the hangers maximum size vehicle( minimum 0.5 tons)and a computer capable of running a repair program rating 1. At this point you total up the hours in a week, and divide it by hours per craft, and get the number hours required per craft, to get the number craft an automated hanger can service weekly.
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