Ship Maintenance costs

[phavoc]

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?

Or he's just the unlucky one to draw the short end of the stick. Maintenance is just a catch all bucket for the myriad of things that have to be done to keep a ship operational. Think of all the chores there are around a house to reasonable maintain it.

While I'm sure there are some guys who could care less they are performing maintenance on something, not all jobs are equal. Ask the guy who has to service the equipment inside the room where they add the smell to natural gas. It's a masked / burn your clothes after you are done type of maintenance job. Not hard, but the other parts make it an undesirable task.

 

[metlk]

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.

I really want to get that book. It's on my list for sure!

 

[MasterGwydion]

I really want to get that book. It's on my list for sure!

It is light on mechanics, but it is a very good read.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Or he's just the unlucky one to draw the short end of the stick. Maintenance is just a catch all bucket for the myriad of things that have to be done to keep a ship operational. Think of all the chores there are around a house to reasonable maintain it.

While I'm sure there are some guys who could care less they are performing maintenance on something, not all jobs are equal. Ask the guy who has to service the equipment inside the room where they add the smell to natural gas. It's a masked / burn your clothes after you are done type of maintenance job. Not hard, but the other parts make it an undesirable task.

Tons of chores! Even more with kids in the house. I have 5, plus grandchildren. I have never heard of a house hiring a maintenance man to wash the dishes, fix the dishwasher, yes, but actually wash the dishes, never.

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on whether you need a college degree in order to operate the dishwasher.

 

[ottarrus]

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?

The ship's crew does the cleaning, small parts replacing, painting, and other watch maintenance. This is the necessary ticky-tack maintenance that they can do while the ship is underway and operational.
The starport maintenance [whether you do it monthly or annually] is the replacing of major components, a full LS systems flush with antiseptic solutions, recertifying the electronics, and all the other stuff that has to be done either groundside or in a hangar.
IMTU, if you have a mortgage on your ship you're required to keep maintenance and recertification records that can be reviewed upon request by the Imperial Navy, local customs, or bank inspectors. 'Failure to maintain' is a cause for foreclosure on the loan. A lot of luxury car leases here on Terra Prime have the same kind of strictures in their contracts, and it always seemed to me that a bank loaning 50 million credits to a down at heels merchant captain would require that for the insurance alone.

 

[phavoc]

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.

Really? personally I think that's a mistake. That's not how it works. "Regular" or monthly maintenance is akin to changing the oil, rotating the tires, etc. Annual maintenance is doing the seals on the block, replacing CV joints, etc.

That sounds like a solid miss to me.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Really? personally I think that's a mistake. That's not how it works. "Regular" or monthly maintenance is akin to changing the oil, rotating the tires, etc. Annual maintenance is doing the seals on the block, replacing CV joints, etc.

That sounds like a solid miss to me.

Could be. Only time and playtesting will tell. Although it probably changes more for Me since I do a lot of worldbuilding stuff. For more casual players and Referees, they may not even notice the difference.

 

[phavoc]

Could be. Only time and playtesting will tell. Although it probably changes more for Me since I do a lot of worldbuilding stuff. For more casual players and Referees, they may not even notice the difference.

I think you aren't far off. Though the direction they took is a wrong one I think. For casual players it's simply the cost and two weeks and magically waived and back to adventuring. No muss, no fuss.

For those that have played it that way since LBB it's a really big change. Possibly positive since costs are lowered. However it also means that a common adventure hook (what to do during your ship downtime) is tossed out. Plus it does route adventurers back to civilization at least once a year.

So there are positives to it and ways to dismiss it w/o an issue.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I think you aren't far off. Though the direction they took is a wrong one I think. For casual players it's simply the cost and two weeks and magically waived and back to adventuring. No muss, no fuss.

For those that have played it that way since LBB it's a really big change. Possibly positive since costs are lowered. However it also means that a common adventure hook (what to do during your ship downtime) is tossed out. Plus it does route adventurers back to civilization at least once a year.

So there are positives to it and ways to dismiss it w/o an issue.

As always though, use however works best at your table. No one actually plays in the OTU. We are play in Our own individual TUs.

 

[phavoc]

As always though, use however works best at your table. No one actually plays in the OTU. We are play in Our own individual TUs.

I guess it depends on what you are doing and what you want. My friends and I played in the OTU through TNE.

I see settings as different than the rule interpretations. The maintenance rule change is a change, but I'd not consider it an OTU vs TU issue. With so many publishers and rule changes in Traveller (even within MGT v1 and v2) things can get a bit murky.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I guess it depends on what you are doing and what you want. My friends and I played in the OTU through TNE.

I see settings as different than the rule interpretations. The maintenance rule change is a change, but I'd not consider it an OTU vs TU issue. With so many publishers and rule changes in Traveller (even within MGT v1 and v2) things can get a bit murky.

Either way, your universe is your own. Definitely run it how you want. I do with Mine.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Does anyone else feel like the maintenance costs for things are off? Right now, maintenance costs are 0.1% per year for most things. Doesn't this seem exceedingly low to anyone else? That means that 1,000 years of maintenance costs the same as buying the car new. Cars average 2% per year. That is 20 times the maintenance costs in Traveller.

 

[Arkathan]

Modern cars are built for planned obsolescence. You can't have that model for interstellar transport. The fact that they are built to last more than a hundred years attests to the reliability mindset over new model year mania.

 

[Condottiere]

Warships should cost ten percent per annum.

And then, there is the option to mothball them, for next to nothing.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Modern cars are built for planned obsolescence. You can't have that model for interstellar transport. The fact that they are built to last more than a hundred years attests to the reliability mindset over new model year mania.

Homes are 1%-4% annually, including historically protected homes. Office buildings average 1% annually. Large cargo ships are also 1% annually. US Navy Frigates average 6.667% annually.

 

[Arkathan]

Now imagine a higher tech level that uses its engineering to build for permanence, instead of like it went to the lowest builder.
Even the lowest builder is going to be using AI to avoid the common mistakes/intentional shortcuts found everywhere.
You certainly are not going to have a sub test to periscope depth only to come back up and discover that the only thing that prevented it sinking was a pipe covered by duct tape that was painted over. The duty ensign was walking the deck and noticed the indentation...

 

[AndrewW]

You certainly are not going to have a sub test to periscope depth only to come back up and discover that the only thing that prevented it sinking was a pipe covered by duct tape that was painted over. The duty ensign was walking the deck and noticed the indentation...

I meant to do that, it is part of the design process. We have to test the durability of painted over duct tape while underwater to make sure it can work as an emergency patch.

 

[Condottiere]

If you keep it simple, less chance of it going wrong.

Possibly, cheaper.

 

[Midas]

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.

<Thread Drift> I know it came up some where, but has anybody considered that if a month consists of four weeks, there are thirteen of them in a year? If you do repairs in four week increments, your year ends somewhere in early December (Trav Equiv).
Personal suggestion is to do twelve months of casual maintenance, and put the ship in port for the annual maintenance in "month thirteen".