Special Ship Qualities

DivineWrath

Banded Mongoose
On p. 136 in the Mongoose Traveller Core Rulebook (under old ships), it mentions qualities that ships can acquire over time if purchased old. For instance, it could have a leaky reactor core (risk of leaking rads on every jump), or could have been well maintained (reducing maintenance costs by 10%).

I was wondering if this idea was ever followed up upon? I was wondering if it was possible to get some of these positive qualities intentionally (like reduced maintenance costs)?
 
The table is - I think - still in the rules, isn't it?

If not, I may be mixing myself up with the playtest; there is/was a table you could roll on for each 'chunk' of age, which gave you a bit of history and a (more often bad than not) effect. Each bit of age reduced the cost of the ship slightly (I think it was 1D3 ship shares per 10 years of age).

As to whether you can deliberately get the effects.... not specificially in the rules. The "Well Maintained" trait would be a nice one to have; 50% less maintenance costs could save you a packet over the life of a campaign, but there's no specific rules for it. I'd have to handwave a combination of the capital ship endurance rules from High Guard (carrying 1% of the ship's displacement in spares and consumables lets you defer dockyard maintenance for a month with no ill effects) and/or some mechanic or engineer checks to DIY your maintenance for a while rather than paying for it.
 
As regards individualizing classes or ships, GDW's Man 'o' War had cards with upgrades randomly distributed. In Spacecraft Options, weapons can be customized.

I'm sure with some thought something similar could be developed.
 
Well, essentially I want more options and variety than adding specific parts of ship gear. Not everything that might be important about a ship is always the ship components themselves. There were a number of interesting examples on that table I referred to (and some in other books). Some of them I can see being buy able improvements to ships, while others might be due to how well a ship was maintained or abused, while others are tied to the reputation and history of the ship.

I can see a luxurious starship being an option one can buy, increasing the costs of staterooms and other passenger service components. Maybe one could buy a Darrian fusion P-Plant which are supposed to fuel efficient (and thus get a reduction in P-Plant fuel consumption).

Things like maintenance cost reduction because a ship was well maintained would be a bit more trickier. I'm not sure how to reduce maintenance costs of a brand new ship (which in theory should be in perfect condition), nor am I sure how to get to a point where a well maintained old ship requires less maintenance than a new ship. I don't want to require a skill check every month to keep maintenance costs down. Maybe having skill ranks in enough skills (and have enough crew to do the work) will keep things in optimal condition (like having skill of 1 in each of the engineering specialties will get a 5% reduction in overall maintenance costs)? Maybe spending money on quality components that will last a long time will reduce maintenance costs in the long run?

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Basically, the point of me making this thread was to ask if this work has been done already, or would it be something I would have to make up?
 
There's definitely an article about Power Plant efficiency in an old Signs & Portents article - check the index for more details.
 
You can probably achieve 200% fuel efficiency by doubling the size of the alphabet power plant.

Why? I'm uncertain it has something to with Heisenberg's principles.
 
I was reading through the list of topics and hit this one.....

Man, she's a great ship, the entire inside up to the ceiling has got really nice shag carpeting.....
 
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