Shipyard Maintenance

[PsiTraveller]

Pg 145 of the core book has maintenance needs of a ship.
A ship needs maintenance, which
costs 0.1% of the total purchase price of the ship per year.
Maintenance should be carried out each month (divide the
year’s maintenance cost by 12 to find the monthly cost.
Once per year this should be performed at a shipyard.


An SDB cannot Jump to a system with a shipyard, so if the SDB is in a system that does not have a yard, what can be a reasonable substitute? Could a visit from a Magenta Class Repair ship be considered good enough to do annual maintenance? Or would a ship need a larger Full Hangar/Construction deck to be considered enough of a shipyard to qualify?

There could be a business opportunity for a travelling ship of higher Tech Level going around repairing ships in lower TL systems or systems that lack the needed Starport facilities.

 

[Sigtrygg]

If the system can build its own SDBs then it has a shipyard.

Similarly if a system has military bases and operates SDBs then it can have shipyards/maintenance and repair facilities.

It has been long accepted in the OTU at least that the starport and shipyard denoted in a world's UPP is for civilian infrastructure, a world government can have military starports and shipyards that are unavailable for civilian use.

That said if you ship SDBs to a strategically important system that lacks the population or world government to have built military infrastructure you will have to consider shipping the SDBs back to perform maintenance or having some sort of maintenance ship pay a visit.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

An SDB cannot Jump to a system with a shipyard, so if the SDB is in a system that does not have a yard, what can be a reasonable substitute?

You could use a carrier to lift the SDBs to a shipyard for maintenance.

Could a visit from a Magenta Class Repair ship be considered good enough to do annual maintenance? Or would a ship need a larger Full Hangar/Construction deck to be considered enough of a shipyard to qualify?

I would require a full Construction Deck or Shipyard (HG p62) to count as a shipyard for maintenance.

 

[Ursus Maior]

In short: Military logistics is more than buying raw firepower. There are numerous instances of navies, armies and air forces of third-rate military nations that get shiny toys bought for them by their leaders, but no maintenance contracts or sites constructed. This usually ends with your fancy jets, tanks or ships being permanently grounded, moored or mothballed quite soon.

 

[Ursus Maior]

I would require a full Construction Deck or Shipyard (HG p62) to count as a shipyard for maintenance.

And I would rule that it would still be a poorly equipped yard for yearly maintenance. There are reasons navies fly their jets to land bases and not keep them on aircraft carriers for all of their service lifes.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Well that's the question of the thread. What is the minimum standard for a ship to provide a reasonable level of maintenance? I would have thought a Construction deck would imply the ability to do extensive maintenance on a ship, or even a full hangar and a workshop could provide good technical support.

A shipyard would have to be Class B or better I am assuming since it can make Jump capable ships. Or a Class C shipyard can repair non Jump capable ships. (pg 225 Core book). Why is a construction deck not a good as a shipyard?

 

[Condottiere]

Default would be, sure.

Otherwise, you'd have to expand a bit on the background regarding acquisition and construction of that particular spaceship, and maintenance in relation to the local facilities and infrastructure.

If they have to hire out of system private contractors, and import and stock spare parts.

 

[Ursus Maior]

Why is a construction deck not a good as a shipyard?

I'm speculating here, but given that the current Highguard puts both the Construction Deck and the Full Hangar at a 2:1 ratio of volume used and maximum displacement serviceable (one states "half" its own size, the other needs "twice" the displacement of craft to be held; by the way: that's poor editorial language), a construction deck cannot offer a lot more than a full hangar if logic applies. Then there is also the matter of space stations being able to construct crafts and ships in a dedicated "Shipyard" at 5 dtons of volume per single dton constructed or maintained. That two and a half times more volume consumed and this volume needs to mean something.

For the record: I do not understand, why space stations are treated in any way different than ships, when in fact they are just space vessels with different rules for bridges (mainly: cheaper and smaller) and a couple of extra options of what to install (shipyards, residential zones, manufacturing plants etc.). I would like to see the chapters on ships and stations to be merged and simple remarks written, where a space-born construct with a m-drive rating of "0" (and thus 0.25 g thrust) differs from ships with actual maneuver drives. I don not see, how or why a space station and any other space-born vessel could not use all components interchangeably. Currently, about 90 percent of the chapter on Space Stations is redundant information and where that is not the case, the section on ships could have been amended by sentences like "space stations of vessels with a thrust-rating of below 1 multiply this by 0.x".

This would safe both Mongoose and the reader from having pages 50-58 to be read or even produced. These nine pages could then be used to reduce the price of the book or be filled with more stuff, e. g. a couple of space stations common to Imperial space or detailed sensor and missile detection rules etc.

 

[AndrewW]

For the record: I do not understand, why space stations are treated in any way different than ships, when in fact they are just space vessels with different rules for bridges (mainly: cheaper and smaller) and a couple of extra options of what to install (shipyards, residential zones, manufacturing plants etc.). I would like to see the chapters on ships and stations to be merged and simple remarks written, where a space-born construct with a m-drive rating of "0" (and thus 0.25 g thrust) differs from ships with actual maneuver drives.

That is what I wanted to do actually.

 

[Ursus Maior]

I understand apologize, if my comment came across too harshly; it was meant as a review not and insult.

 

[AndrewW]

I understand apologize, if my comment came across too harshly; it was meant as a review not and insult.

Oh it didn't, was just agreeing with you.

 

[Condottiere]

1. If you're building a ship, you'll want space.

2. I doubt there's ever been any clear clarification what manoeuvre drive factor zero is, or how many gravities it's supposed to be able to accelerate.

 

[Reynard]

"A maneuvre drive with Thrust 0 allows for station
keeping to maintain position (such as with an orbiting
station) but is not sufficient to move the hull any great
distance."

In other words a fraction of a G, just enough to adjust the small corrections to hold in place. If the thrusters were to be activated only in one direction, the station would move very slowly over enormous time in one direction. Good adventure seed if a station is hacked or taken over and induced to leave orbit (or where ever it was placed) for nefarious reasons.

 

[Condottiere]

1. Acceleration accumulates, like solar sailing.

2. Also, it's listed at technological level seven, and categorized as gravitationally motivated.

 

[Garran]

Given how the Self-Maintenance Modification is described in Deepnight Revelation, a fixed facility isn't necessarily required for the yearly/long-term maintenance; a system without a proper spacedock could keep equivalent portable equipment on-site for servicing its own vessels, and if the place sees regular traffic and doesn't have a proper starport for some reason then it'd probably have extra on hand to deal with the expected demand (which might still involve a lot of waiting if you show up without being on the schedule).

Having a proper facility certainly makes the process far more convenient for all concerned, and given the cost involved, I doubt that a typical tramp freighter would be given Self-Maintenance, although a subsidized merchant that was chartered to work exclusively in a low-tech/backwater region could warrant it.

 

[GamingGlen]

I also thought the space station chapter in High Guard was quite redundant, except for the specific station items. But, all craft in space are space craft. I wouldn't mind a revised HG with those pages containing all the other shipbuilding items used in other sources.

Re: < 1G drives. Just to be pedantic, I put in options for 0.25 and 0.5 G thrust drives in my shipbuilding spreadsheet.

 

[TheMachine]

On a tangentially related point - how long does maintenance take? I can't find this specified anywhere in the MgT2e rules.

I'm currently thinking of ruling:
Standard maintenance, performed on time: 1 day.
Standard maintenance, performed late: +1 extra day per month previously missed.
Annual maintenance: 2d6 days.

What does everybody rule for this? Or is specified in the books somewhere and I'm just being blind?

 

[AndrewW]

I also thought the space station chapter in High Guard was quite redundant, except for the specific station items. But, all craft in space are space craft. I wouldn't mind a revised HG with those pages containing all the other shipbuilding items used in other sources.

I've suggested consolidating things in a High Guard Companion. That is one thing that was getting bad about 1st edition, ship stuff was getting scattered all over the place, we did consolidate most of that into the 2nd edition of High Guard.

 

[Ursus Maior]

I also thought the space station chapter in High Guard was quite redundant, except for the specific station items. But, all craft in space are space craft. I wouldn't mind a revised HG with those pages containing all the other shipbuilding items used in other sources.

I've suggested consolidating things in a High Guard Companion. That is one thing that was getting bad about 1st edition, ship stuff was getting scattered all over the place, we did consolidate most of that into the 2nd edition of High Guard.

I think, I mentioned a similar idea either here or in the core rulebook discusison. I would be 100 percent on board with this, as rules scattered over numerous publications are a natural way of things for a rule-system that goes well and is vibrantly alive. So at some point one needs what (Roman) lawyers would have called "digests" or a compendium, i. e. compilations of what's out there.

I could see this being a nice project for Kickstarter, since a Highguard Compendium could grow via stretch goals into a more fleshed out second volume of Highguard. A corrected "printing" of previously published ships - maybe as PDF only - would be nice for example, since there seem to have been quite a few errors in calculations in the original Highguard.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Any chance someone could post the paragraph on what self maintenance says in the Revelation product? I don't have that one yet. (On my list of things to get, just not yet.)

I was thinking of the opportunities for a GM and player to have a ship that was workshop capable, with a crew that could offer the maintenance service. It's an area that could offer a crew some extra money and contacts within a system. It would allow a ship and crew to utilize their advanced tech base of a TL 12 ship (and engineering education) in a lower TL system. Rumours, or off the books black op jobs could be negotiated while the engineers recalibrate the coils and reset the turbo encabulator
marzle vanes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag