Vehicle Maintenance/Reliability

[R_Kane]

Has anyone out there developed any rules/guidelines for a vehicle maintenance system, along the lines of the starship maint costs and effects?

Or adding some sort of Reliability stat to vehicles, which adjusts Mechanic rolls when trying to maintain the vehicle?

I'm thinking of some thing along the lines of:
A shoddily made jeep-like vehicle which has never seen the inside of a repair bay drives over a 10 foot drop-off, lands on all four wheels which all promptly fly off their hubs, the tranny falls out of the bottom and the doors become jammed in-place as the entire structure twists and bends.

A finely crafted, well maintained version of the same vehicle drives off the same drop-off and suffers a popped tire and maybe some frame bending, but is still drivable (after a tire change) and fairly easily repaired.

-Roger

 

[Granpafishy]

I know a lot of people don't like T4, but the Central Supply Catalog, has a small section on maintence. IIRC, it's primarely for the power plant, but that's a start.

 

[chrisr]

How about assigning a wear value. Similar to the one in Twilight 2000, as an item gets older and more worn you assign a wear value between 1 ( a few scratches) to 10 (lucky if it still works).
Each time the item undergoes some more stress, make a d10 roll. If you equal or beat the wear value it keeps on running, otherwise some repairs are necessary.
You can also adjust the price of second hand goods accordingly.
I'm trying to sort out a similar system for starships, with wear on specific systems...that sensor package that keeps failing on emergence from jumpspace etc.

 

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

Find yourself a scale that you're comfortable with (say, 1-100).

Describe the values on the scale (1= flimsy, a paper kite. 100= exceedingly durable, a Grav Tank).

Assign each vehicle a number on the scale.

Every time the vehicle suffers damage from neglect, wear and tear or combat, subtract from that number.

Repairs can fix the damage up to the base number for the vehicle, assuming plentiful supplies, proper tools and a proper facility to do the work.

As repair conditions degrade, so does the maximum number of damage points even a skilled technician can repair.

For example,
In 1941 a brand-new Grumman F4F Wildcat fighter plane might have 75 Structure Points (an arbitrary number). A year later, after flying off Henderson Field on Guadalcanal with limited supplies in tropical conditions and daily being exposed to combat, that number by be permanently reduced to 50 Structure Points, and even Leroy Grumman with Henry Ford helping him couldn't make it any better. The wear and tear has simply been too much.