Calculating Maintenance Costs or "Your big end's gone, mate!"

[Scarecrow]

In the Firefly RPG, ship creation has a rule for calculating what a ship costs to repair and maintain on a monthly basis, based on it's age and complexity. It basically represents wear and tear on parts. I like this idea. Has any version of Traveller ever had a similar thing?

How would you go about calculating such a figure for Traveller?

Crow

 

[Pickles]

LBB2 has a 'Routine Maintenance' rule. It's basically an annual overhaul at a class A or B starport. It costs 0.1% of the ship cost and takes two weeks.

I've used a house rule in the past to the option of 1-day maintenance periods costing 0.005%. This only requires 20 periods (at 2 to 3-week intervals), on the basis that little-and-often is better than once-a-year.

Only really worth doing if your players are into that kind of campaign, though.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

TNE has rules for it.

 

[Spinward Scout]

The figures for Serenity RPG were derived empirically from actual freighter costs -- I know, because I wrote that chapter.

You?

Personally?

Wrote that?

(Why am I typing like William Shatner all of a sudden?)

 

[JAFARR]

My understanding is that a ship can come out of jump and jump again in about an hour providing it is carrying enough fuel to jump again,BUT under normal circumstances, it needs to be 8 hour to allow routine maintance on the drives.

What does that mean? I take this statement (and having spent 8 years in the navy working on the engines)to mean that routine maintance goes on all the time. The annual mantaince period takes care of things that wear out over time. Routine maintance is things like re-calibrating instrumentation, making minor repairs, and replacing consumables or parts that are designed to wear out to prevent others from wearing out.

If you have a car, you need to chance the oil and filters every so often as specified by the manifacturer. Say every 3 to 6 thousand miles. The average American male over 18 is capable of doing this. Every 60 to 120 thousand miles you need a major tune up. Lots of American males can do this, but most chose to take it to a pro, than to do it themselves.

My point is that with proper maintance, a car or space ship if properly maintaned will last almost forever, providing it is mainained.

 

[Pickles]

I'd also like to see a bit more parity between maintenance and purchase costs. One could argue for an ultra-reliable black box universe, where things are expensive, but almost never break down and are impossible to fix when they do (RW cars are going that way).

However, I personally prefer the Firefly/Das Boot/Millennium Falcon kind of situation, where things break down on a regular basis but can be fixed with skill and ingenuity.

I believe others have raised the matter of over-priced ships in the OTU elsewhere, so I won't go into that again.

"10,000 credits?! We could almost buy our own ship for that!"

 

[TheEngineer]

What if the TU is a customer friendly universe, where the purchase of a ship includes refitting of most important (and expensive) parts, if proper maintainance is done ?

Anyway, both TNE and MT provide operation rules, which statistically lead to much higher maintainance costs, because of broken parts.
E.g. a consequent use of MTs operation tasks usually result in a couple of superficial up to
major damages to various ship systems, which have to be repaired.
Well, there is no explicit mapping of tasks to damaged ships component, so thats up to the ref...

 

[Black Globe Generator]

Originally posted by thrash:
...many (most?) versions of Traveller do not account for the cost of routine consumables, nor unscheduled replacement of components.

CT includes costs for life support, of course, and somewhere there is a reference to minor repairs being made using "ship's stores," which I've always assumed is a part of the engineering section and includes replacement parts for the most common repair needs on the ship.

As far as the original post, I don't have my books handy, but doesn't T20 include something on routine maintenance performance and cost?

As for me, I handle this two ways. First, I assume that the adventurers are smart enough to do the little things without having to tell me - part of being the ship's engineer is handling the routine inspections each week that get entered into the ship's log. Second, I use the malfunction rules in JTAS 15 (I may have that issue number wrong...) - because minor malfunctions are fairly frequent under this system, it does a nice job of keeping the players on their toes and requiring the players to expend a few credits on a sputtering m-drive or a balky air recycler.

I tend to think that unless the circumstances of the game dictate otherwise, most players would not allow their characters to space without making some effort to maintain their ships, so I don't see the need to put this in the forefront any more than the malfunction and annual maintenance rules already do.

That's how we roll.

 

[GypsyComet]

TNE went into the most detail regarding routine maintenance, at least in terms of time requirements and the long-term effects of *not* doing it. This was fairly important in the default setting, which put enough constraints on supplies, and had enough 80-year-old hulls still flying, that neglecting your routines (or, as could often happen, losing your engineer on some forsaken world tens of parsecs from home) meant that *anything* you needed the ship to do could have a chance to fail.

Great set of rules, TNE, but often suffering from the "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" syndrome, due to the allergic reaction so many people had to Virus...

 

[Fritz_Brown]

thrash, happy to see your input on that part of Serenity. For the maintenance, I wouldn't start the increase until the first ten years are up. Why? Basically, cars run pretty well with only normal maintenance up 'til their warranty runs out. I think this would give a pretty good reason for why there are so many used craft out there - the folks that can afford it (megacorps, etc.) trade their ships in every 10 years or so to avoid that increasing repair bill.

And, BTW, there should be a cost maintenance penalty for custom designs. If you have the newest TL15 drives, 'specially built for your ship, costs should go through the roof. I just sold a 10yo Saab for parts because it cost more to maintain (due to part prices) in a year than buying a newer used car would.

My "new" Nissan I can maintain by just stopping at the auto parts store at any starport and picking up the bits I need.

BGG, do you remember if there was an amount for refilling "ship's stores" regularly? (And, I'll have to look for that article. By JTAS, I really hope you mean the stuff in the reprints....)

And, do you really mean: "allow their characters to space"? I only space people I really don't like.

 

[aramis]

One can assume that a small but significant chunk of the cost of LS is actually hardware consumables, including replacement light diodes, filters for the air/water purifiers, even probably a small container of lube for hatches and valves....

 

[robject]

Expanding a bit on Aramis' post, quite possibly a lot of maintenance is swapping out modules, especially if their Mean Time Between Failure is known and has been reached.

At lower tech starports, module swapping might be all the techs know how to do.

 

[Black Globe Generator]

Originally posted by Fritz88:
BGG, do you remember if there was an amount for refilling "ship's stores" regularly? (And, I'll have to look for that article. By JTAS, I really hope you mean the stuff in the reprints....)

Yes, it's in the second JTAS reprints book - no, I don't recall a replenishment price - I take that to be part of the annual maintenance fee.

Originally posted by Fritz88:
And, do you really mean: "allow their characters to space"? I only space people I really don't like.

Whups - dropped the word "enter" from that sentence, apparently!

 

[Scott Martin]

There are also some factors that would significantly extend service life, without needing more maintenance. These would mostly fall under "avoiding severe stress" categories. T two biggest factors that I would include:

-Avoiding GG skimming
-Avoiding atmospheric re-entry

Both of these add a *lot* of stress, not just to the airframe (spaceframe? whatever) but also on the sensor systems as well as the CG (if present) and maneuver subsystems. It's not a coincidence that many of the space probes from the '70s are still running, and it isn't just because of their "rugged" construction: they don't suffer the effects of a corrosive atmosphere (O&sub2 atmospheres are pretty nasty after all) don't suffer a constant ~10 m/sec&sup2 accelleration and aren't subjected to soap opera reruns (Ok maybe not the last one)

Unstreamlined insystem bulk transports probably don't need a whole lot of maintenance outside engineering and life support.

Jump entry / exit probably puts a fair amount of wear on systems as well, but this depends on how it works IYTU: IMTU jump is initiated with a significant gravitic event, so tidal stress is a constant maintenance issue as well.

And those worlds with "Exotic" atmospheres would certainly have less traffic if merchants needed to pay to refit their landers every trip

I'll echo Gypsy's comment about TNE: nice rule set, pity about the setting.

Scott Martin

 

[GypsyComet]

Originally posted by Scott Martin:

I'll echo Gypsy's comment about TNE: nice rule set, pity about the setting.

Scott Martin

I'm actually one of the pariahs that like the setting, including the plot elements that lead to it. I just refused to be driven off the "main" forums because of the anti-TNE invective of the early 90s. Since the place most of that invective was hurled is now a pathetic shadow of it's former self due in no small part to driving off the TNE fans, I consider justice done...

 

[TheEngineer]

Dont feel so alone Gypsy.
I really like the setting. In fact I tend too like it more and more, though I use MT ruleset to play the sessions (ho ho, I dont like the rules).
Anyway I like any Traveller setting, if its Mileu 0, CT era, Rebellion, TNE, 1248 ... afabulous background for any "timer" campaign.
Its just a thing for mentally more flexible people...and here the problems starts

 

[Andrew Boulton]

I like the setting and the rules, but it's just too different from "real" Traveller.

 

[Scott Martin]

I like my SF (and SF RPG's) like my Ice Cream: With Maple Syrup. No wait, I mean "hard".

mmmm... Maple Syrup

I would like TNE much better if it was a post "Hard Times" setting with various pocket empires climbing back from the rubble. The various "Deius et Machina" that kept the rebellion factiones "balanced" really turned me off Traveller for a number of years, and coming back to The New Era with "Virus" didn't help any. Kind of a nice concept, but "Twilight 2000 in space" works better if it isn't "Mystery Horror science theater twilight 2000 in space"

This topic's been done to death, but my point is that TNE is a *lovely* rules set for playing hard times campaigns precisely because it has such well thought through maintenance rules. The only thing lacking was how to do an "Overhaul" when you had access to a class A or B starport, but didn't have any (living) staff in it except for the crew and engineers that you brought with you.

Somewhere I have rules for this (It generally turned the two week maintenance into 6 or so) which made discovering mostly intact starports and bringing them back on line a primary plot pursuit for several of my players (which they were competing for with corsair groups and pocket empires)

And an abandoned shipyard is an *excellent* place to use as a training ground for future engineers.

Scott Martin

 

[aramis]

I converted the maintenance rules for use in MT... TNE had some great stuff, and it was well worth the time to mine.

I've run TNE, in the RC... neither I nor my players liked the setting. Including the non-traveller-fan players.

I don't like hard; TNE was hard in all the wrong places for me. Craft design was way too hard. CG was harder than it needed to be... specifically that odd die-rolling for stat losses. Avoiding virus was Hard... it was in all the encounter tables. The rules tried to be Hard SF with Magical AI Computer Virus... and the general approach was way too simulationist. Coordinated teleport marine actions were WAY too hard....

... Ok, to be honest, I run Traveller in such a way that it feels to be a saturday morning serial starring Errol Flynn as at least one of the PC's.

But some elements, especially maintenance, contacts, and aging; these things really worked well. So well I've snagged 2 of the three for my MT games.

 

[Chuck Anumia]

Originally posted by Aramis:
I don't like hard; TNE was hard in all the wrong places for me.

Avoiding virus was Hard... it was in all the encounter tables.

HHmm....
I suppose it could be hard for some people.

I simply made virus an NPC and ran it like some. I had 4 basic virus personalities and I let the characters "Experience" virus as one of the personalities whenever there was a call for a Virus encounter.

The personalities were:
1) God
(this personality thought and acted as if it were the supreme being in the universe and was usually benign)

2) Collector
(This personality like collecting humans and examining them while they lived aboard the star Ship)

3) Suicider
(This personality felt it neded to infect other systems and then die a fiery death)

4) Psycho
(This was my personal favorite. He (or she) could seem perfectly normal, agreeable and even helpful for a time and then go through a change at the drop of a hat that lasted one minute to one hour before reverting back to another personality)