Ship Repair Rules - Calling All Travellers!

[Condottiere]

If the pirates have an onboard chop shop, they could be slicing off parts of your hull, for repairs.

 

[JustEastOfTheEdge]

Keep it as simple as possible. It is an RPG, not a simulation of engineering or recycling. Just cost in credits in proportion to damage taken, less a bit of you have relevant skills.

 

[phavoc]

Keep it as simple as possible. It is an RPG, not a simulation of engineering or recycling. Just cost in credits in proportion to damage taken, less a bit of you have relevant skills.

That's where conversations like this, or the JTAS articles, or the Companion book, etc, etc feed into this (and other) boards - levels of detail are tricky. Some of your customers want lite rules, some want some meat on the bones, and others like them fat and furry (rules....). Obviously a source book only has so much space, and decisions have to be made as to what level of detail will work.

For me the goal is always a) a fair explanation of the issue, and b) clear and concise rules/explanation on the what and how to the level of detail that prevents head scratching and threats of dice duels between players and GM. Generally speaking the GM is the final arbiter of things, but it's nice to have (i.e. purchase) a game where you don't have to interpret or rule on things constantly.

There isn't a magical way to do this - I think its statistically impossible to satisfy every Traveller player with the level of details for rules they can all agree upon. They are gamers after all, and they have their street cred to maintain...

So maybe the balance is to have a simplified rule and then some more details (could be optional, could just be a sidebar or somesuch). So long as they aren't contradictory and the layers fit well together then people can determine the level of detail that works best for themselves - and its all complete in a single tome.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I'd split the explanation into two parts - hull and systems. Hull damage can be patched to hold air, but armor points could only be repaired using actual armor replacement parts (so either an engineering ship or a yard). Ship systems can be jury-rigged, but some sort of point-system should be employed (maybe tonnage, or some hull percentage for points?) using onboard spares. By default a ship carries X points in spares, a workshop gives you X+Y points in spares. You could carry more points as cargo if you wanted to (important for ships not planning on heading back to civilization any time soon).

I'd also put some verbiage in there about salvaging parts/points from other ships. There's really not much out there on how that would normally work, and you had a tussle with a pirate (or are pirating yourself) it'd be nice to know what you might expect to get off the other guy to patch your own ship up.

PoD has the rules for "salvaging" another ship. It is x amount of Cr per 100 tons of ship or something like that. It needs reworked, but it is basically what you are looking for. The section is called, "What's not nailed down" on page 24 of PoD Book 1.

 

[CordwainerFish]

Some of your customers want lite rules, some want some meat on the bones, and others like them fat and furry (rules....).

Speaking for myself, I demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.