Rigours of a starship crew

@DATA.SEARCH @PROG40062 @FILEPATH 9707/04//PER.ADB.REV2//EIB @FILEFORM..D.PAD/DOWNLOAD @START FILE: Notes on The Grand Struggle Rigours of a starship crew Rigours of a starship crew

With thanks to the authors of Traveller: The New Era, © 1993 Game Designer's Workshop.

Having observed a good number of our independent contractors and those who bring with them the family heirloom light freighter into the Alliance, my respect goes to these incredibly hard-working shipmen. Oh sure, it might seem like easy money and lazy days on the holovids and on your first tour in a mint-from-the-factory spacecraft, but within weeks something is burned, scorched, bent, fragile, flaky and generally in need of maintenance. Good mechanics and engineers are worth their weight in gold to the Alliance.

In every recurring crew I've seen, there has been at least one mechanic with a true passion for spending most waking moments with the starship, performing maintenance and small repairs all the time. A band of YT-1300-based operatives I travelled with for a time told me they spent anywhere from twenty to two hundred man-hours a week just to keep the old crates from breaking down _too_ often. And getting this old crate tangled up in a blockade or interstellar battle can push it downhill real fast. Detailed rules for the care and feeding of starships... New skills

Machinist (MEC)

This skill allows the character to make machine parts to fine tolerances. It allows the character to create replacement mechanical and engineering parts using a machine shop, and repair many pieces of equipment (including most mechanical devices not covered by other skills, and can make a try at devices covered by other skills at -(1-3D), (max 5D).) New ship stats

Routine maintenance amount (in person-hours per week):

- a new stock light freighter => about 15-30 hours - a sturdy starfighter => about 60 hours - a maintenance-heavy starfighter => about 120 hours - corellian gunship => say, 600 hours or so

Overall wear (0-10) 0 = just rolled out of the factory (less than a month old) 10 = sagging, air-leaking heap of junk barely worth the term spaceworthy Maintenance and wear

Routine maintenance = RMA person-hours => are this (minimum) effort spent?

Preventative maintenance - spending twice the minimum amount of maintenance reduces effective wear by two for the week, triple reduces it by three, etc. - may be used to effectively "foolproof" a ship against breakdowns for a week by reducing effective wear to zero...

Potential breakdowns - roll 1D10 against overall wear once per day => if lower than or equal to wear, a potential breakdown has occured in some ship system (the GM should usually give the players a hint now, if he wants to be nice - e.g. "As you fire up the lateral thrusters for a minor course correction, you notice a power spike on the power plant readouts")

Load reduction - if characters notice a potential breakdown and immediately reduces the load on the system by an amount the GM thinks proper, the roll for the actual breakdown may be postponed for another 1-2D hours - which may be enough to make a safe landing somewhere.

Actual breakdowns - if less than routine maintenance has been spent during the preceding week, an actual breakdown automatically occurs. Otherwise, the character that last performed maintenance on the ship has to succeed at a Difficult task to avoid having an actual breakdown.

After having avoided an actual breakdown, a potential breakdown occurs once a day until the characters take the time to give the ship its recommended routine maintenance in hours. Avoiding these further potential breakdowns is a Difficult task performed by any character during intermittent pauses in use.

When an actual breakdown is determined, determine if it is minor or major by rolling a D10 against wear. If the result is less than or equal to wear, it is a major breakdown. Determine randomly what system suffers the breakdown. (Usually power plant, ion engine, hyperdrive or lateral thrusters - but occasionally other systems like sensors, shields, life support, airlocks, weapons, communications etc.)

A minor breakdown can often be fixed without replacement parts - roll above wear on a D10 for this to be so... - a minor breakdown results in Light Damage to a system.

A major breakdown always requires replacement parts. A major breakdown results in Heavy Damage to a system. (damage can never go beyond heavy due to breakdowns alone - combat or crashes are needed for that)

After having suffered 10 actual breakdowns, a ship's (or optionally a ship system's) wear is increased by 1 permanently.

Annual overhaul - this costs 5% of the ship's new price, and takes two weeks at a well-equipped starport. If the characters prefer the do-it-yourself approach, they may do so, taking four weeks and costing 2.5% of the ship's price in parts. At a frontier-style starport or landing field, this takes eight weeks due to the abscense of the proper machinery.

The annual overhaul can be skipped - for each month overdue, a D100 is rolled against the number of months overdue. If the number rolled is equal to or less than the number of months overdue, the ship's overall Wear is increased by 1, and is reversible if an annual overhaul is conducted within a year of the increase. This increase can only occur once a year. Repairs and rebuilds

Note: repair rolls are made after the necessary time has been spent.

Note: usually, a ship carries a standard assortment of replacement parts. If parts are used up and not replaced, there is a chance that further breakdowns will be unrepairable due to lack of parts. Roll 2-4D (depending on GM-perceived size of spare parts cache) whenever parts are needed, if roll is less than number of parts unreplaced from earlier repairs, one or more needed parts is not available. Refilling the spare parts cache costs 1% of the ship's factory-new cost, if proper parts can be found at all that is. Light Damage

- jury-rigged repair of light damage is an Easy task, takes 1Dx10 person-minutes and may require 1D-3 replacement parts. - repair of light damage is a Moderate task, takes 1Dx30 person-minutes, and may require 1D-2 replacement parts. Heavy Damage

- jury-rigged repair of heavy damage is a Moderate task, takes 1D person-hours, and requires 1D replacement parts. (Until permanent repairs are made, this system operates with a wear value one higher than normal) - permanent repairs are only possible with the help of starport repair facilities. (Difficult at Standard+ class starport, Heroic elsewhere) It takes at the very least 1Dx10 person-hours, and requires 2D replacement parts. Severe damage

- This generally requires lengthy rebuilding of the whole ship at a Standard+ class starport to make it resemble something spaceworthy again. 2D weeks and 75% of the previous worth of the ship may be a reasonable figure. Cannibalization

A fine source of parts in wild places might be crashed starships et cetera. If the needed portion of the system to be cannibalized is undamaged, the required parts may automatically be taken from it. (But if the ship has been down for longer than a few days and is in an accessible area, it is likely to have been stripped already). If the component comes from a part of the ship that has taken damage, the component may still be salvageable. (Very Difficult roll against the proper skill - space transports repair, computer prog/repair, etc.) A success means that the character knows how to make the part work like what he needs (1D minus 1D hours of work modifying the part needed to make it so). The roll can be made once per part only. Fabrication

Characters may fabricate new parts if they have access to a machine shop and/or an electronics shop. Each part requires 2D hours in the shop. Fabrication is always a Difficult or harder test of Machinist for a mechanical part, computer repair / droid repair for an electronic part. The roll is made after the fact, and failure means the part is unusable.

The GM may, at his option, allow the remanufacture of a worn or damaged part at a lower difficulty level (for example if the fabrication of something quite unusual was Heroic), but stipulate that the presence of this sub-standard part increases the Wear value of the system for future breakdown rolls. Rebuilds

Major starship components may be rebuilt, which reduces their current wear value. The wear value to which a component may be rebuilt depends on how many times it has been rebuilt. The first time it is rebuilt it may be rebuilt to Wear 1, the second time to Wear 2, and so on. A rebuild costs 5% of the original purchase price of the component per wear value reduced. Rebuilds may only be performed at Imperial-class starports.

If a character has an appropriate (A)Engineering skill, the characters may try their hand at a rebuild themselves - at a cost of 4% per wear value in materials, and a hopefully small risk of failure (roll against twice the number of wear values to be removed) Repair crew

Not everyone assisting in repairs needs to be a skilled engineer. All characters that have increased the appropriate skill from the base attribute may have a number of assistants equal to the number of D he has increased the skill, for purposes of reducing the time taken. (The task doesn't get any easier) Upgrades Maintenance

After having performed a regular upgrade, unless the upgrader rolls twice the needed difficulty number to perform the upgrade successfully, minimum maintenance increases by 1D person-hours/week.

After having performed a jury-rigged upgrade, minimum maintenance increases by 2D person-hours/week while the jury-rig is in effect.

Any mishap modifiers the ship may have suffered to specific systems by application of other rulesets can be used as-is here as a modifier to effective Wear of a system. Overall Wear is equal to the highest Wear of the ship's systems. Of course, when a breakdown does occur, the most worn systems is most likely to break down. The GM decides which one actually breaks down by the time-honored process of creative improvisation. Additional Light/Heavy/Severe damage result suggestions Light damage

- Life support degraded performance, smoke, bad smell, stale air after a while. - Inertial compensator damaged, Moderate DEX roll to get anywhere within the ship while maneuvering. - Repulsorlift unit damaged, any attempt to land or take off from a planet becomes a Difficult task instead of automatic. Failure means an aborted attempt, failure _and_ 1 on wild die probably means crash. Heavy damage

- Life support put out of business, emergency life support comes on-line after a few tense seconds. (Unless this is the second time this result comes up...) - Repulsorlift unit destroyed, attempts to land on a planetary surface becomes Very Difficult. - Sickbay, lab, machine shop or electronics shop, if any, hit and partly or fully voided to space. Grisly. Severe damage

- Life support and emergency life-support destroyed, hull breached, characters had better get into spacesuits as soon as possible. Stamina roll each round after hull breach, very easy first round, increasing by one level each round. DEX, acrobatics or similar skill used to get into spacesuit. I assume I don't have to go into details about what happens if someone passes out before they get into their spacesuit. - Bridge destroyed. If no secondary bridge, ship is effectively disabled. - Spinal damage. The whole superstructure is thrown out of alignment. The ion drives' line of thrust is no longer centered on the ship's axis of mass, so any acceleration must be accompanied by constant corrections to avoid a tumble. Piloting difficulty +3D. Spinal mount weapons (like the Kumauri Cal's 9D capital-scale mass driver) are rendered unusable.

Copyright ©1997-2001 Erik Inge Bolsø. Comments? Questions? Praise? Mail me at [email protected]!