Ship Maintenance costs

M

MasterGwydion

Emperor Mongoose
Ship Maintenance Costs. Ship Maintenance is paid every 4 weeks. This covers the cost of the monthly maintenance as well as the cost of the Annual Maintenance. Yes? Is that price what is needed in spare parts or in spare parts plus labor? I am curious because most PCs do their own monthly maintenance, and almost no PCs actually do their own Annual Maintenance. The cost you need to pay is obviously not in Credits, as I doubt you can fix a ship with 100,000Cr, the actual physical credits, but no actual spare parts. I have been asked this question and had no idea how to respond. I can't find anything in the rules that covers this. Anyone have any help?
 
I have treated it as the annual cost and labor and parts are included. It's kind of like a B or maybe C check/heavy maintenance process that aircraft go through after soany flight hours and/or landing cycles. It involves removing some parts for things like seal replacements, or checking equipment by breaking it down. And generally requires tools, diagnosatic equipment and skills not normally found with ship crews.

Assuming crew wanted to do it themselves would save them 20-30% of cost since labor is expensive, BUT they'd still need to rent some space and equipment not normally carried or found on a ship (the only exception I'd give would be if it's an engineering ship like a destroyer or submarine tenders are today in the USN). And maybe a time penalty since a dockyard would normally have sufficient workers and robots to do the work.
 
Annual maintenance has to be done at a Shipyard, which implies there are tools and equipment needed that players simply aren't going to have access to unless they own a shipyard, as well as a certification process so it doesn't get grounded for an out-of-date annual. I think there's also a time-cost issue as well. A shipyard would presumably employ hundreds of engineers and techs which allows for a reasonable turnaround. It would take a handful of players weeks to accomplish the same tasks.
 
metlk said:
Annual maintenance has to be done at a Shipyard, which implies there are tools and equipment needed that players simply aren't going to have access to unless they own a shipyard, as well as a certification process so it doesn't get grounded for an out-of-date annual. I think there's also a time-cost issue as well. A shipyard would presumably employ hundreds of engineers and techs which allows for a reasonable turnaround. It would take a handful of players weeks to accomplish the same tasks.
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So then the monthly maintenance payment is just saved up and used once a year for the annual maintenance or is the annual maintenance an additional cost on top of the monthly maintenance costs?

Some of the recent material has suggested that the ship's crews can do all of the maintenance over the course of a year while travelling around and then not need to stop for 2 weeks for the annual maintenance. It seems to be saying that it is just easier to do at a shipyard because turning off your power plant for a week to do maintenance on it is hard to do while flying around. lol M-drive and J-drives are easier. Do you M-drive while jumping and the J-drive while in realspace, but still easier in shipyards. lol
 
I don't read it as an additional cost. I think it's just a much more thorough teardown of systems that would warrant a deeper inspection, and done by technicians looking for wear that most shipboard mechanics wouldn't see. It's not that you can't inspect your reactor chamber, it's that you may not be a licensed, certified reactor inspector with the massive crane needed to remove it from it's housing and with the proper paperwork to give it a rubber stamp. Nothing in the rules says this specifically, but I think it's a dangling carrot for a ref to use as an adventure hook.

Dockmaster: "Looks like your paperwork says you haven't been to a shipyard in over 18 months. I'm afraid we're going to have to impound your ship until it can be inspected."

Player: "How long will that take?"

Dockmaster," Our inspector is currently off on vacation. Come to think of it, he should have been back a week ago..."
 
metlk said:
I don't read it as an additional cost. I think it's just a much more thorough teardown of systems that would warrant a deeper inspection, and done by technicians looking for wear that most shipboard mechanics wouldn't see. It's not that you can't inspect your reactor chamber, it's that you may not be a licensed, certified reactor inspector with the massive crane needed to remove it from it's housing and with the proper paperwork to give it a rubber stamp. Nothing in the rules says this specifically, but I think it's a dangling carrot for a ref to use as an adventure hook.
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This makes sense to Me. Can't really write your own paperwork unless you are a certified and licensed engineer, one recognized locally! lolz.
metlk said:
Dockmaster: "Looks like your paperwork says you haven't been to a shipyard in over 18 months. I'm afraid we're going to have to impound your ship until it can be inspected."

Player: "How long will that take?"

Dockmaster," Our inspector is currently off on vacation. Come to think of it, he should have been back a week ago..."
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lolz! Good Dockmaster!
 
As with all things, it depends.

I would think to avoid getting on a one way trip to the abyss, I'd preflight check all systems connected to dimensional hopping, rather thoroughly.

Though some think that an annual trip to the local garage might be enough to discover any potential issues, and have them dealt with.
 
metlk said:
I don't read it as an additional cost. I think it's just a much more thorough teardown of systems that would warrant a deeper inspection, and done by technicians looking for wear that most shipboard mechanics wouldn't see. It's not that you can't inspect your reactor chamber, it's that you may not be a licensed, certified reactor inspector with the massive crane needed to remove it from it's housing and with the proper paperwork to give it a rubber stamp. Nothing in the rules says this specifically, but I think it's a dangling carrot for a ref to use as an adventure hook.

Dockmaster: "Looks like your paperwork says you haven't been to a shipyard in over 18 months. I'm afraid we're going to have to impound your ship until it can be inspected."

Player: "How long will that take?"

Dockmaster," Our inspector is currently off on vacation. Come to think of it, he should have been back a week ago..."
Click to expand...
I suppose it depends on how you want to look at it and what kind of assumptions are being made for the various non-lifesupport systems on a ship. Many mechanical and electrical items today work until they don't without any sort of maintenance required. And systems built to be more rugged than civilian are more likely to only need intermittent and/or "heavy" maintenance. Some things, like aircraft checks, could possibly go longer between servicing intervals but aren't due to the abundance of caution placed on them.

Starships, in their own way, could easily be expected to have regular maintenance performed on them (even mandated by law and the use of force) for the basic reason that a starship falling out of orbit and impacting the surface of a planet could cause massive damage on a scale much greater than a civilian airliner crashing. It's not at all unreasonable for some planetary authorities to prohibit a ship from entering their 100D-controlled space if the ship in question does not have up to date papers showing the ship has been regularly serviced. At a minimum they may require the ship to stay at a distance or only dock at an orbital station until they are satisfied it's flightworthy. I haven't ready the new SOM, but that little part right there can easily warrant a few paragraphs in source materials to explain why PC's would never be able to get away with not paying the costs of maintenance - or at least it would give the GM some extra info to fluff out a session.

A set of players could possibly have the necessary skills among them to do the annual servicing of a starship - but it would be very unlikely for any one person to have all the necessary skills (not to mention keeping them up to date) to do every bit of work. That's one of the advantages a true repair station / dockyard has - the workers are constantly doing the same jobs versus a person using their skills and knowledge only once a year. The 2nd advantage is pretty obvious - simply having more people to do the work instead of a single person or even a very small group.
 
phavoc said:
I suppose it depends on how you want to look at it and what kind of assumptions are being made for the various non-lifesupport systems on a ship. Many mechanical and electrical items today work until they don't without any sort of maintenance required. And systems built to be more rugged than civilian are more likely to only need intermittent and/or "heavy" maintenance. Some things, like aircraft checks, could possibly go longer between servicing intervals but aren't due to the abundance of caution placed on them.

Starships, in their own way, could easily be expected to have regular maintenance performed on them (even mandated by law and the use of force) for the basic reason that a starship falling out of orbit and impacting the surface of a planet could cause massive damage on a scale much greater than a civilian airliner crashing. It's not at all unreasonable for some planetary authorities to prohibit a ship from entering their 100D-controlled space if the ship in question does not have up to date papers showing the ship has been regularly serviced. At a minimum they may require the ship to stay at a distance or only dock at an orbital station until they are satisfied it's flightworthy. I haven't ready the new SOM, but that little part right there can easily warrant a few paragraphs in source materials to explain why PC's would never be able to get away with not paying the costs of maintenance - or at least it would give the GM some extra info to fluff out a session.

A set of players could possibly have the necessary skills among them to do the annual servicing of a starship - but it would be very unlikely for any one person to have all the necessary skills (not to mention keeping them up to date) to do every bit of work. That's one of the advantages a true repair station / dockyard has - the workers are constantly doing the same jobs versus a person using their skills and knowledge only once a year. The 2nd advantage is pretty obvious - simply having more people to do the work instead of a single person or even a very small group.
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This last bit here. I figure the whole reason for requiring 1 maintenance guy per 1,000 tons on a civilian ship was to actually do maintenance, but maybe I do not know what the word maintenance means. To Me, a maintenance guy does maintenance, otherwise, why is he there?
 
The maintenance guys there are the lowest end of the engineering crew. They are probably as much about cleaning as repairing. And most of the maintenance they are doing is probably either "working under the direction of an engineer" or "the door on Deck 8, Room 6 is broken. Get it working again."

You might have a maintenance guy with a high Mechanics skill and no Engineering skill to qualify for a better job, but I suspect that's a rarity.
 
Condottiere said:
It's the janitor.
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That would be janitorial staff, which starships don't seem to have. I usually assume a cheap cleaning bot for this and not an actual sophont, unless culturally they hate robots. I used to run a property management company. We never cleaned. That was the cleaning company's job. We did maintenance and repaired things. On ships these days, the janitorial staff are not part of the Engineering Staff and the Engineering Staff is who does the maintenance and repairs. Too expensive to hire guys with a QMED to clean the head. Repair it, yes. Clean it, no. You need training to do maintenance, not so much for cleaning.
 
I treat "monthly maintenance" as being ongoing as-it-happens stuff that occurs in the background rather than a specific scheduled event. Annual maintenance is to deal with the stuff that you can't just fix/replace as you go; the monthly maintenance costs cover both for the sake of book-keeping sanity.

The PCs could do it themselves if they had access to the heavier-grade equipment that it's liable to involve (Deepnight Revelation has to deal with this), but it wouldn't change the overall cost (again, for the sake of book-keeping sanity).

The best reason to let the professionals handle it is that the crew gets a week of vacation that they'd otherwise have to spend working. Psych does count.
 
Garran said:
I treat "monthly maintenance" as being ongoing as-it-happens stuff that occurs in the background rather than a specific scheduled event. Annual maintenance is to deal with the stuff that you can't just fix/replace as you go; the monthly maintenance costs cover both for the sake of book-keeping sanity.

The PCs could do it themselves if they had access to the heavier-grade equipment that it's liable to involve (Deepnight Revelation has to deal with this), but it wouldn't change the overall cost (again, for the sake of book-keeping sanity).

The best reason to let the professionals handle it is that the crew gets a week of vacation that they'd otherwise have to spend working. Psych does count.
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As of the SOM, they both maintain the same things. It is a one or the other thing now. If you do monthly maintenance, you do not have to do an annual maintenance. If you do annual maintenance, you do not have to do monthly maintenance. Gone are the days where you have to maintain the J-drive after every jump. They have a whole chapter on it starting on page 124.
 
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