Mobile Mechanic?

[Grav_Moped]

Small craft (and perhaps non-starships) operating independently in a system that lacks a Class B starport need maintenance and annual overhauls too.

Their options are:
1. The planetary government can do it themselves up to their tech level, but won't support non-governmental craft (LBB5 '81 domestic production rule).
2. Small craft and non-starship owners can have their craft shipped as cargo to a world that does have a Class B or Class A starport.
3. The Class B shipyard can come to them.

Mongoose Traveller High Guard, 2nd Ed. (MgT2) has rules for shipyards in space stations (p. 62).
- 2Td per Td (Traveller Ton, Displacement) it can build (or service)
- MCr 0.5 per Td (MCr 0.75 for starship construction)
- 1 MgT Power Point per Td (about 0.03EP per Td in LBB5 terms)
- 1 crewman per 10Td.

Using this as an outline, a mobile Class B starport capable of building/maintaining any small craft (<100Td) must occupy 200Td, costs MCr100, needs 6EP, and requires 20 workers.

This all fits into a canon Type R Subsidized Merchant if the lifeboat and low berths are replaced with staterooms, and everybody's double-bunked. (It's pretty crowded, though, until the work crew spreads out into the workbay.) The cargo bay can hold one canon Modular Cutter for maintenance; anything larger will have to be worked on outside. Bring a (space) tent (stat it out like collapsible fuel tankage?)...

So it could physically work. I need to work out whether there's an economic case for it. The alternative is to ship the small craft as cargo to the nearest Class B starport, at Cr1000/Td per jump and losing 2 weeks of its use per jump (plus the 2 week overhaul).

 

[Condottiere]

I'm inclined to think that someone would set up a private garage, depending on the start up costs.

If a corporation has a major presence, and has to maintain spacecraft, they'd likely have facilities.

 

[Fovean]

So that’s why there’s so many Type P vessels out there - they used to be repair ships!

 

[Spinward Flow]

Small craft (and perhaps non-starships) operating independently in a system that lacks a Class B starport need maintenance and annual overhauls too.

Their options are:
1. The planetary government can do it themselves up to their tech level, but won't support non-governmental craft (LBB5 '81 domestic production rule).
2. Small craft and non-starship owners can have their craft shipped as cargo to a world that does have a Class B or Class A starport.
3. The Class B shipyard can come to them.

Mongoose Traveller High Guard, 2nd Ed. (MgT2) has rules for shipyards in space stations (p. 62).
- 2Td per Td (Traveller Ton, Displacement) it can build (or service)
- MCr 0.5 per Td (MCr 0.75 for starship construction)
- 1 MgT Power Point per Td (about 0.03EP per Td in LBB5 terms)
- 1 crewman per 10Td.

Using this as an outline, a mobile Class B starport capable of building/maintaining any small craft (<100Td) must occupy 200Td, costs MCr100, needs 6EP, and requires 20 workers.

Change the assumptions from being able to handle any small craft up to 100 tons.

If you're looking at being able to handle any small craft up to 50 tons instead (so, Cutters basically) you get the following:
100 tons displacement
MCr 50
EP: 3
Crew: 10 (single occupancy staterooms, 40 tons, MCr 5)

You could certainly fit THAT into the 200 ton cargo bay of a Subsidzed Merchant (LBB7) and still have some cargo space left over. Interstellar small craft maintenance facility established. Revenue would be whatever the annual maintenance price is for the small craft being serviced ... which won't be much for the tonnage. Worst case scenario would be a 50 ton Cutter, which would earn Cr 28,000 for 2 weeks worth of overhaul. Life support ALONE for the 10 crew of the maintenance shop would be Cr 20,000 per 2 weeks. Add in salaries for those workers (let alone the Subsidized Merchant crew's salaries and life support) and you're operating at a loss on every overhaul you and your crew completes.

Sadly, the economics just won't support this idea as a profitable business model.

However, I applaud your efforts to find a solution to this particular problem. The first such solution that comes to mind is ... Robots (LBB8).

If the maintenance crew is made of robots, rather than sophonts, then the Robots do not require "living spaces" and life support. If the robots only require energy from the power plant (and occasionally, storage space), we then get to the BURN-E (youtube video link) reference point ... and the mobile maintenance ship CAN become a profitable venture (maybe), although it will need to use speculation to make ends meet.

Using the passenger accommodations to host the owners of small craft aboard ship on a charter basis during the overhaul would probably work. An interstellar 2 week charter of the 8 high passage staterooms would generate Cr 72,000 on top of the Cr 28,000 annual maintenance fee for a Cutter ... although that doesn't make a whole lot of sense since the crew size of a Cutter isn't 8 (it's 2). Still, that Cutter crew is going to be stuck on board the Subsidized Merchant for 2 weeks while the overhaul is being done, unless they can be shuttled off to a world somewhere (for cheaper accommodations while the overhaul is being done).

Conversely, an interplanetary charter of the Subsidized Merchant would be Cr 400 per hour ... and 2 weeks is 336 hours, so ... Cr 134,400 for 2 weeks ... er, that's even more expensive than the interstellar charter rate for 8 high passage staterooms! o:

So ... yeah.
Good luck finding a way to finance your operations on as little as Cr 28,000 every 2 weeks using a Subsidized Merchant with a lot of life support and crew salaries to pay for. Fun exercise in lateral thinking though.

 

[Condottiere]

Remember the trope about building a spaceship from the contents of a junkyard?

Having a retired engineer take it over would sort of account for labour costs.

 

[Grav_Moped]

So that’s why there’s so many Type P vessels out there - they used to be repair ships!

I'd considered that as a platform for this... figured a Subbie would be more appropriate due to their ubiquity. But those would definitely be able to fix Type S and Type Js.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Change the assumptions from being able to handle any small craft up to 100 tons.

If you're looking at being able to handle any small craft up to 50 tons instead (so, Cutters basically) you get the following:
100 tons displacement
MCr 50
EP: 3
Crew: 10 (single occupancy staterooms, 40 tons, MCr 5)

You could certainly fit THAT into the 200 ton cargo bay of a Subsidzed Merchant (LBB7) and still have some cargo space left over. Interstellar small craft maintenance facility established. Revenue would be whatever the annual maintenance price is for the small craft being serviced ... which won't be much for the tonnage. Worst case scenario would be a 50 ton Cutter, which would earn Cr 28,000 for 2 weeks worth of overhaul. Life support ALONE for the 10 crew of the maintenance shop would be Cr 20,000 per 2 weeks. Add in salaries for those workers (let alone the Subsidized Merchant crew's salaries and life support) and you're operating at a loss on every overhaul you and your crew completes.

Sadly, the economics just won't support this idea as a profitable business model.
...

Deployed logistics is going to be expensive, but it ought to be able to command a premium. Even at Cr1K/ton/jump and a single jump from the Class B Starport, you're looking at an additional Cr100,000 in transport costs for that Cutter, plus having it out of use for at least a month instead of two weeks.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Deployed logistics is going to be expensive, but it ought to be able to command a premium. Even at Cr1K/ton/jump and a single jump from the Class B Starport, you're looking at an additional Cr100,000 in transport costs for that Cutter, plus having it out of use for at least a month instead of two weeks.

If you're going to do the accounting THAT way (include interstellar freight cost) then a 2 week "interstellar" charter for Cr 72,000 for the 8 high passenger berths plus Cr 8100 for the 9 low passenger berths (the standard unmodified Subsidized Merchant loadout) ... paying Cr 80,100 for 2 weeks of charter during a 2 week overhaul, rather than Cr 100,000 for 2 weeks of jump in addition to 2 weeks of overhaul (4 weeks out of system minimum) ... that starts looking like a bargain.

Pay Cr 19,900 less and get the work done 2 weeks faster than freight transporting out of the system? That could be enough to make the economics work for both the maintenance shop AND the local small craft owners. So long as Everybody Wins™ the incentive to do this can not only manifest but take root.

Scale up to larger ship sizes to handle bigger starships and you've got yourself a scalable business model that can support small craft operators in star systems that have type C, D, E (and of course, X) starports. Once you've "done all the maintenance" of craft in a particular star system, jump to the next one on the rotation and do it all over again. Just make sure to return the overhaul shop ship to a type A or B starport with sufficient tech level to overhaul the maintenance ship as a part of your interstellar route and you could make a business out of the whole endeavor.

Sounds like the sort of thing the governing entities in control of those type A/B starports might be interested in subsidizing so as to build an economic hegemony around their services beyond their own star system.

Okay, this is starting to sound like it might work.
Your turn to build some test case ships.

For extra bonus points, try starting with a LBB2 200 ton Free Trader and rearrange the passengers and cargo situation ... you might be able to make it all fit into one of those, which would then be "dirt cheap" to acquire the base ship for conversion into a mobile maintenance facility (the conversion would be the expensive part). The main question would be ... how many high passage berths would you be able to keep after the conversion, since those will directly impact your charter revenue earnings while overhauls are in progress.

Additionally, remember that the maintenance facility would be capable of handling up to 50 tons of small craft at a time ... which would be a 50 ton Cutter ... or a 20 ton Launch plus a 30 ton Ship's Boat concurrently at the same time. Since small craft tend to have a crew of 2 per small craft, you would want to have at least 2 high passenger berths and preferably 4 (6 if you can swing it) just so you can host the crew of multiple small craft if needed while those craft are being overhauled.

 

[Condottiere]

Going by the current High Guard, a four hundred tonne full hangar capable of housing and repairing a two hundred tonne starship costs eighty million; parts and labour separate.

You can scale that up or down.

 

[Grav_Moped]

If you're going to do the accounting THAT way (include interstellar freight cost) then a 2 week "interstellar" charter for Cr 72,000 for the 8 high passenger berths plus Cr 8100 for the 9 low passenger berths (the standard unmodified Subsidized Merchant loadout) ... paying Cr 80,100 for 2 weeks of charter during a 2 week overhaul, rather than Cr 100,000 for 2 weeks of jump in addition to 2 weeks of overhaul (4 weeks out of system minimum) ... that starts looking like a bargain.

Pay Cr 19,900 less and get the work done 2 weeks faster than freight transporting out of the system? That could be enough to make the economics work for both the maintenance shop AND the local small craft owners. So long as Everybody Wins™ the incentive to do this can not only manifest but take root.

Scale up to larger ship sizes to handle bigger starships and you've got yourself a scalable business model that can support small craft operators in star systems that have type C, D, E (and of course, X) starports. Once you've "done all the maintenance" of craft in a particular star system, jump to the next one on the rotation and do it all over again. Just make sure to return the overhaul shop ship to a type A or B starport with sufficient tech level to overhaul the maintenance ship as a part of your interstellar route and you could make a business out of the whole endeavor.

Sounds like the sort of thing the governing entities in control of those type A/B starports might be interested in subsidizing so as to build an economic hegemony around their services beyond their own star system.

Okay, this is starting to sound like it might work.
Your turn to build some test case ships.

For extra bonus points, try starting with a LBB2 200 ton Free Trader and rearrange the passengers and cargo situation ... you might be able to make it all fit into one of those, which would then be "dirt cheap" to acquire the base ship for conversion into a mobile maintenance facility (the conversion would be the expensive part). The main question would be ... how many high passage berths would you be able to keep after the conversion, since those will directly impact your charter revenue earnings while overhauls are in progress.

Additionally, remember that the maintenance facility would be capable of handling up to 50 tons of small craft at a time ... which would be a 50 ton Cutter ... or a 20 ton Launch plus a 30 ton Ship's Boat concurrently at the same time. Since small craft tend to have a crew of 2 per small craft, you would want to have at least 2 high passenger berths and preferably 4 (6 if you can swing it) just so you can host the crew of multiple small craft if needed while those craft are being overhauled.

I targeted a modified Type R for the 100Td "shipyard" capacity -- that's one Shuttle, two Cutters, or three Ship's Boats simultaneously. The idea is that it'll jump into a system and run through all available customers before moving on. The opportunity cost of Jump duration might even suggest using the J2 version of a Type R, but with a 75Td max service capacity. Heck, for large customer bases such as freelance asteroid miners in the Bowman system (SM1132) or Caliburn (SM1430), it might break even with a Subsidized Liner as the platform. Maybe not, though (if we're using LBB2, it has to be something with a "standard" hull to be affordable).

This could also be owned by a starport/world government or megacorp, or contracted out by them.

But (especially in the larger sizes) operations like this could be a great source of adventure hooks, even if not run by the PCs themselves.

 

[Spinward Flow]

I targeted a modified Type R for the 100Td "shipyard" capacity -- that's one Shuttle, two Cutters, or three Ship's Boats simultaneously. The idea is that it'll jump into a system and run through all available customers before moving on. The opportunity cost of Jump duration might even suggest using the J2 version of a Type R, but with a 75Td max service capacity. Heck, for large customer bases such as freelance asteroid miners in the Bowman system (SM1132) or Caliburn (SM1430), it might break even with a Subsidized Liner as the platform. Maybe not, though (if we're using LBB2, it has to be something with a "standard" hull to be affordable).

This could also be owned by a starport/world government or megacorp, or contracted out by them.

This is why I'm recommending that you test out multiple different "standard" starship platforms for this ... Free Trader, Subsidized Merchant, Subsidized Liner ... and see if the different starship sizes wind up being better for different niche roles in this "mobile shipyard" business for overhauls. Just like I'm finding out in my own research, sometimes there will be "sweet spots" in the engineering where you can achieve a confluence of positive elements lining up nicely in different form factors.

Obviously the larger starships would be able to have larger facilities for overhauling larger craft, but if you're limiting yourself to only small craft there's going to be an upper limit on how large a starship can get with one of these "mobile shipyards" before things start becoming inefficient (due to overcapacity, etc.). Have fun experimenting with ships and options to see if you can find those "sweet spot" builds.

But (especially in the larger sizes) operations like this could be a great source of adventure hooks, even if not run by the PCs themselves.

The rumor mill potential, with that many people working in that trade, starts getting mighty impressive ...

 

[Grav_Moped]

And there might be a sideline for larger ships of this mission type: repairing or overhauling ships that would rather not visit a real starport...

 

[Grav_Moped]

It's not just rumor mill stuff. Lack of (or exclusive control of) maintenance facilities raises the cost of entry for small-craft or non-starship operators. Keeps things exclusive, even if (especially if) you don't literally own the place.

Some security presence might be advisable...

 

[Spinward Flow]

Some security presence might be advisable...

Sounds like you're going to want to have at least a Fire Team (4) of Ship's Troops for security who will pull double duty as Gunners for turrets ... however, any increase in crew aboard will also necessarily increase the overhead costs for the ship (life support, crew salaries). This is why you need to actually build the ship(s) and run the numbers for operational costs to determine how much profit margin (if any) you have to play with based on the business model you're using for this.

 

[infojunky]

Looking at starport classes I would say Class C and better can take care of all a Smallcrafts needs.

And honestly repair and maintenance of smallcraft a Dport and below is probably done like dirt airfields in the boonies, the owner of said craft and his buddy and case of beer working out of the shed.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Looking at starport classes I would say Class C and better can take care of all a Smallcrafts needs.

And honestly repair and maintenance of smallcraft a Dport and below is probably done like dirt airfields in the boonies, the owner of said craft and his buddy and case of beer working out of the shed.

Routine maintenance, sure. This is specifically about the annual overhaul, which by definition requires a Class B starport (or in this case, 200Td of Class B starport stuffed into a Subsidized Merchant's cargo hold).

 

[Grav_Moped]

Sounds like you're going to want to have at least a Fire Team (4) of Ship's Troops for security who will pull double duty as Gunners for turrets ... however, any increase in crew aboard will also necessarily increase the overhead costs for the ship (life support, crew salaries). This is why you need to actually build the ship(s) and run the numbers for operational costs to determine how much profit margin (if any) you have to play with based on the business model you're using for this.

One can expect a few volunteer guards from those awaiting maintenance... might not be well-trained or heavily-armed, but they will be motivated.

 

[Spinward Flow]

One can expect a few volunteer guards from those awaiting maintenance... might not be well-trained or heavily-armed, but they will be motivated.

Sounds like the perfect way to have an "inside job" compromise your security for a takeover/capture by hostiles. I mean ... "volunteer guards" would wind up being a step below rent-a-cop in terms of loyalty to the operation. :CoW:

 

[BackworldTraveller]

The argument about the "Routine Maintenance" isn't that the ship should work, but that the paperwork certifying it should work is filled in - and the tax paid.

 

[Condottiere]

That would be administration and bribery, possibly liaison, intimidation and carousing. Plus social standing modifier.