Repairing starships after reduced to zero hull in combat

[Kamingusu]

I have a situation where the PCs were ambushed by pirates at a deep space fueling station, with no stellar bodies in the parsec. Two of their escort craft were reduced to zero hull using the Fleet Combat rules in Highguard for Mongoose 2e, and two pirate ships were likewise disabled with hits that took them both to zero hull. Given the Fleet Combat rules are very abbreviated, heavy damage from particle barbettes took down the ships quickly and I didn't apply each of the critical hits for sustained damage--I approximated with critical hits on a turret and life support systems for each of the PC's escort ships (400t Gazelles). The Core Rulebook talks about temporarily repairing critical hits and hull damage on p. 161. So far, so good. The hull damage gets particularly short shrift in my opinion:

Hull Damage: Each lost Hull point can be replaced with a Routine (6+) Mechanic check (1 hour, INT or EDU), consuming one ton of spare parts for every 10 Hull points repaired.

But what is the goal here for a field fix? Say the critical hits are repaired in x hours; vacc suits will still have air supply as they are typically good for 6 hours. Are the engineers trying to bring ships back to one hull point? How many hull points are needed to be maneuver and jump ready, assuming the drives can be brought back online? Similarly, could a ship that somehow restored power systems and drives be at zero hull points, could they maneuver/jump? If the jury rigs of a j-drive fails in a matter of hours, are these guys now doomed to fail mid-jump, with catastrophic consequences? I could see how distress signals in an inhabited, spacefaring TL system will eventually lead to help, but what about in an uninhabited system?--the PCs are (trying to) cross the Great Rift by using the fuel stations.

Right now these ships are basically dead in space and feverishly trying to bring life support and engines back online (and weapons if possible!). I'm surprised I can't seem to find more on how one recovers from starship combat and moves on. In the grognard old times, CT starship combat rules felt so complicated for my group that we seldom got into this very entertaining part of the game.

(There is also some fun boarding action underway, initiated before all these ships were disabled--longer story, but we know how to play that!)

If repairs cannot be enacted, all these crews will eventually run out of air with the power out.

 

[McPerth]

Well, I've always assumed that when a ship reaches 0 hull points it ceases to be a ship ,but many ship pieces floating arround...

As per how many hull points are needed to maneuver or jump, see that a ship with only 1 remaining hull point can do it, IIRC (though I'd expect the crew to be very busy patching holes and keepin gintegriti for the whole trip if the hull is ,lets say, below 50%, and nore so the higher damage is).

If the situation is such that if there's no repair possibility they're dead, allow them to salvage parts of several ships to make one of them (probably the smalles, or he least damaged) jury rigged (akin of a raft for wrecked sailors), wiht 1 jump possibility (if they have fuel).

P.S. As missjump would be quite likely, it's a good oportunity to take them where you want then to :devil:

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Two of their escort craft were reduced to zero hull using the Fleet Combat rules in Highguard for Mongoose 2e, and two pirate ships were likewise disabled with hits that took them both to zero hull.

The basic rule is:

Once a spacecraft has been reduced to zero Hull, it is wrecked and becomes totally inoperable, and is beyond any repair. Those on board will find themselves without power or life support.

Mongoose believes in simplicity: 1 Hull point left means the ship is fully operational (unless the Referee specifies otherwise), 0 Hull means the ship is totally destroyed.

You are kind of expected to surrender or withdraw before running out of Hull points.

I would be nasty to any ship that tries to manoeuvre or jump with only a few Hull points, and require full repairs to avoid any penalties at all. Perhaps half repaired to be reasonably usable?



Repairs after combat is done as per Core, p150, as you note. Note that you need the proper spare parts to perform repairs, and surviving crew. The Gazelle has enough cargo space to carry spare parts, unless it was used for something else?


Reasonably you have to allow one ship to be cobbled back to usable order, perhaps using machinery from all wrecked ships. It might be interesting if everyone realises they need to cooperate to survive.

Surviving small craft can be used to keep people alive, but not comfortable, for some time. There should be plenty of fuel for the small craft in the wreckage?

 

[Condottiere]

Raise Dead isn't a concept in Traveller.

In theory, a spaceship should be Swiss cheesed well before this point has arrived, and probably split in two, overwhelming self sealant.

You could have dedicated damage control teams patching things up with duct tape, hull points represent structural integrity, and if there had been a more complete system showing exactly where damage is incurred, destroying that integrity at a particular point would make it easier to isolate and repair it.

Since it's abstract, an abstract solution would be that damage control during combat can temporarily reestablish hull points, that give enough of a grace period to permit more comprehensive repairs.

 

[Grav_Moped]

...I would be nasty to any ship that tries to manoeuvre or jump with only a few Hull points, and require full repairs to avoid any penalties at all. Perhaps half repaired to be reasonably usable?



Repairs after combat is done as per Core, p150, as you note. Note that you need the proper spare parts to perform repairs, and surviving crew. The Gazelle has enough cargo space to carry spare parts, unless it was used for something else?


Reasonably you have to allow one ship to be cobbled back to usable order, perhaps using machinery from all wrecked ships. It might be interesting if everyone realises they need to cooperate to survive.

Surviving small craft can be used to keep people alive, but not comfortable, for some time. There should be plenty of fuel for the small craft in the wreckage?

Raise Dead isn't a concept in Traveller.

In theory, a spaceship should be Swiss cheesed well before this point has arrived, and probably split in two, overwhelming self sealant.

You could have dedicated damage control teams patching things up with duct tape, hull points represent structural integrity, and if there had been a more complete system showing exactly where damage is incurred, destroying that integrity at a particular point would make it easier to isolate and repair it.

Since it's abstract, an abstract solution would be that damage control during combat can temporarily reestablish hull points, that give enough of a grace period to permit more comprehensive repairs.

I'm really liking the idea of Frankensteining one marginally-working ship out of the three. You won't get hull integrity (only part of the living quarters can be pressurized, and no way in heck is it going to be safe to bring into an atmosphere), but there's enough of the jump grid intact that it can be patched to allow a jump -- one hopes. Then it'll need repairing again...

If you don't want this to be a total party kill, you need to let them jury-rig some way to get out of there.
Bend rules if necessary -- it's a game, and it's supposed to be enjoyable. If you want to keep them from counting on being able to do it again, require a series of really unlikely task rolls (as far as they know), hide the dice when you roll them, then ignore the dice and let their plan work.

Then when they finally get to a safe-ish place, the patchwork ship crumbles to pieces and they have to start over from scratch. :devil:

 

[Kamingusu]

I'm really liking the idea of Frankensteining one marginally-working ship out of the three. You won't get hull integrity (only part of the living quarters can be pressurized, and no way in heck is it going to be safe to bring into an atmosphere), but there's enough of the jump grid intact that it can be patched to allow a jump -- one hopes. Then it'll need repairing again...

If you don't want this to be a total party kill, you need to let them jury-rig some way to get out of there.
Bend rules if necessary -- it's a game, and it's supposed to be enjoyable. If you want to keep them from counting on being able to do it again, require a series of really unlikely task rolls (as far as they know), hide the dice when you roll them, then ignore the dice and let their plan work.

Then when they finally get to a safe-ish place, the patchwork ship crumbles to pieces and they have to start over from scratch. :devil:

I am liking this solution, too. I have already determined hull repair parts will be available on the unmanned fuel dump, Riftspan Station, with an automatic broadcast from the station explaining this once Maydays/Signal-GKs are picked up within the parsec. If they can get to the station, they can pull out several tons of hull/parts to make patches. I don't want this to be the party kill moment--that will happen later--and if I had used the regular ship combat rules, we would have had more rounds of shooting before getting near zero hull. It turns out particle beam barbettes are very strong in numbers! The combatants would have been able to surrender, etc. if their hull had been damaged more slowly. The main ship is intact and after refueling could jump out with the rest of the crew and any pirate prisoners. But the more interesting question I originally had was what could the pirates do now? Can they repair systems still and try an emergency jump to escape? What would it take to bring the power and a turret back on line to start taking pot shots? They have some salvage that they are using for patches already.

It makes sense that at zero hull, in most cases a ship is blasted seriously and some of the ship is opened up to space. If the pirate ships are Swiss-cheesed, forget their jumpstart; they will be getting out the duct tape as others mentioned and trying to keep the ship from totally breaking up, with probably some serious loss of life and equipment already.

Both pirate ships suffered mutinies and one has surrendered and laid down arms and are trying to restore life support. The other is closer to the intact ship and has sent boarding parties to the PCs' main ship, but was subsequently knocked out. Let's see if the players will come together with the survivors and cobble together a fix for one of the Gazelles if parts are insufficient from the fuel dump. If not, I guess this is where space wrecks come from! http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

I like the idea of a ship that has been repaired in this way will fall apart after they get out of system and suffer a complete collapse.

 

[Kamingusu]

The basic rule is:


Mongoose believes in simplicity: 1 Hull point left means the ship is fully operational (unless the Referee specifies otherwise), 0 Hull means the ship is totally destroyed.

In hindsight it would have sunk home if I had inflicted more critical hits, but the hull scores in Fleet Combat rules are already something like 1/10th of the original hull point scale

You are kind of expected to surrender or withdraw before running out of Hull points.

I would be nasty to any ship that tries to manoeuvre or jump with only a few Hull points, and require full repairs to avoid any penalties at all. Perhaps half repaired to be reasonably usable?

Makes perfect sense to have penalties to movement, jump, other systems going out, etc.

Repairs after combat is done as per Core, p150, as you note. Note that you need the proper spare parts to perform repairs, and surviving crew. The Gazelle has enough cargo space to carry spare parts, unless it was used for something else?


Reasonably you have to allow one ship to be cobbled back to usable order, perhaps using machinery from all wrecked ships. It might be interesting if everyone realises they need to cooperate to survive.

There will be some wholescale scrapping going on.

Surviving small craft can be used to keep people alive, but not comfortable, for some time. There should be plenty of fuel for the small craft in the wreckage?

quite so.

 

[Kamingusu]

The late-arriving escort Kinunir shot up one of the pirate ships further, inflicting critical hits on power plant and fuel systems. Pretty much over for that vessel! I am having it break apart. The escorts can enact repairs once the intact ships can get necessary supplies over to them, and they can make their way to the fuel depot. They should be able to get the drives back up and hull to one or more, with some time and air supply, to make a jump with negative DMs.