Fleet Maintenance

[Hal]

Hello Folks,
This topic may be a bit boring for some, but it is one that I am going to bring up none the less

Starship maintenance requires 2 weeks at a class A starport of the right tech level. This implies then, that warships must maintain a regular schedule of operations, juggling operational needs with those of sending a ship to the yards for maintenance.

If a squadron is operating some 8 weeks away from its naval yards, the navy essentially loses the services of the ship for 18 weeks. 8 weeks transit time, 2 weeks maintenance time, and 8 weeks back.

The situation becomes even more interesting when you have to do maintenance on ships of the line - battleships, Cruisers, and dreadnaughts. If you were the commanding officer of a squadron who has been dispatched to a location - and your scheduled maintenance times were drawing near - how would you want it done?

Would you want the entire squadron to be unavailable at the same time? Would you want your squadron maintenance times on a rotating basis such that your paper strength is 100%, but operational strength at any given time is 75%? Or what?

Example:
Suppose you had a squadron with 4 DN, 8 DD, and 16 DE's. How would you arrange for your maintenance schedule to be arranged while still maintaining operational strength at your duty station for the next 6 months?

 

[The Oz]

According to LBB#2, annual maintenance can be performed at any class A or B starport, regardless of the starport TL.

Fleet repair ships (mobile starports) are the answer, if squadrons are deployed far from their bases.

However, in most 3I sectors it's very unlikely that any Imperial squadrons (capable of Jump-4) are ever more than two jumps away from a friendly starport able to do their maintenance, especially in peacetime. Even if you restrict naval vessels to getting their maintenance from naval bases there's usually one within two jumps. So I'd just rotate my ships through the nearest friendly base as their times approached, never more than one capital ship at a time. They'll only be gone for six weeks. With the squadron you describe, I'd have four groups of 1 DN, 2 DD, 4 DE each, and one group would go for maintenance every three months. 50% of the time I'd have my full squadron assembled, and I'd have 75% of the squadron the rest of the time.

And if worst comes to worst, I can let a ship or two run past their maintenance due date for a few months if I have operations going on. It's not like the ships have "expiration dates" on them.

 

[Durkin]

An interesting point, and a problem that Naval commanders have been no doubt dealing with since the Greek Triremse (sp??). In the ST:NG Episode Redemption, Capt picard tries to cobble together a small task force, but has ships that are half busted. IRL, in the movie "Tora! Tora! Tora!", the same thing was seen.


As for the Traveller universe, I think that it would not be too hard to find a local (within 4 parsecs) Class A or B starport to "pop into".

It does raise a problem though. Do you let some "Civilian" ship yard worker have access to the key, even Critiacal systems, of an DN. Places like the Jump drive, the weapons, certianly the Black globe, would probable be off limits to all but Imperial crew, and certainly under gaurd.

The only real problem comes when the ships are invading "unfriedly" space. However, the problems of crew rotation / replacement, and repair of battle damage, will mean that is likely that a ship is quickly rotated to the rear for R+R (restock and refit).

Also, an old JTAS artical states that a ship, if provided with stores =0.2% its displacement, and perform its own annual maintaince in 4 weeks, "in the feild". The time is reduced if more engineers ar employed.

I envision, Repair ships, possibly some variant of the 10K dT Common Transport, with extra parts, and technicians to act as "forward repair ships.".
Only if a ship were sereiously dammaged would it be sent bact to "2nd line" facilities.

 

[womble]

I think a Navy ship wouldn't really need much more manpower to perform its repairs, at a pinch. The shipyard is for facilities, possibly materiel and ancilliary labour like lifter drivers and crane operators. The technical stuff could be handled by the engineering crew, for standard maintenance.

 

[jwcarroll60]

Any vessel that would normally be assigned independent or long duration missions should be capable of conducting its own routine maintenance while 'underway'. Sufficient personnel should be present in the normal crew complement and can be supplemented by teaching nonengineer personnel preventive maintenance (PM) for their workstations/battle stations, and damage control teams. The presence of repair vessels in the fleet train makes sense for the support of battle squadrons and for the repair of battle damage between engagements.

 

[flykiller]

an interesting problem. the u.s. navy deals with it constantly, with yard maintenance and rotation schedules and fuel stores and maintenance budgets arranged years in advance. the fun part comes when a carrier has an accident requiring unscheduled repairs, throwing the whole schedule out of whack.

in traveller this problem is multiplied greatly. the main yards are many jumps back, and the frontier areas have virtually no significant yardspace available let alone the tech to support a main fleet - least not in the spinward marches.

the answer of course is to being the maintenance yards to the fleet, using repair ships. this is not a small investment, but it's much cheaper than building a fleet that can simultaneously maintain a good presence on the frontier and support a rotational schedule to the rear.

 

[BetterThanLife]

When designing the Glisten Subsector Navy, years ago, I had to carefully consider maintenance and built the fleet with enough ships that there were spares to rotate through the squadrons so the squadrons were always at full strength even during maintenance cycles. It required a higher commonality of training and training standards because your Squadron mates would change through out the year.

The nice thing about doing things this way is that combat losses can be replaced with minimal training time. (And combat losses are not always destroyed but can be mission kills, severely damaged etc.)

Repair ships, mobile yards and construction of yards, capture of enemy facilities is how you keep your forward momentum going.

In the US Navy they had a huge floating drydock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard that they could take anywhere in the world to do major repairs on site.

Just some random thoughts.

 

[Jame]

Technically, aren't most naval bases in the OTU supposed to be built at a certain TL, or at least have spare parts of that TL?

 

[Straybow]

Civilian ships carry passengers, military ships carry engineering crew above the minimum levels in LBB2 (or whatever source may be cited) who are tasked with preventive maintenance equivalent to yearly visits required of civies.

 

[Hal]

Guys? I'd like to take a moment to thank you all for responding thus far. Fear not but that I intend to incorporate some of your comments in my thinking.

For what it is worth, eventually, I'm going to have to start thinking about what it is that is involved with Military Shipyards. My "hazy" feeling on this is that based on how canon has progressed thus far - Military shipyards are unfortunately, NOT separate from the civilian shipyards.
One thing that was mentioned here on the list however got me to thinking. Perhaps civilian shipyards are not permitted to wander into the sensitive regions of a military ship - but what may be the case here is that military bases within a system with an A class starport not only have military personnel per se, but also have shipyard workers who are authorized to work on sensitive regions of a warship. This way, the Military has its cake and eats it too. It maintains the personnel, but forces the shipyards to maintain the docks themselves. When military traffic comes in, all civilian work gets graded as being a lesser priority and these ships get worked upon. What a NASTY thing for a GM to do to his civilian merchanter crews who originally thought they'd only have a 2 week down time, instead find themselves with a 6 week downtime as a damaged battle fleet limps home into port from a surprise attack

 

[Hal]

Of course, it would make MORE sense to have the naval base separate from the civilian bases

If there is a general interest in separating the military bases from the civilian - perhaps someday I will do a military starport using GURPS STARPORTS

 

[Jame]

Hal, I'm doing a Traveller's Aide on Naval Bases, so perhaps we could share thoughts. Interested?

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

"Hal, I'm doing a Traveller's Aide on Naval Bases, so perhaps we could share thoughts. Interested?" - Jame.

If I may butt in...

If you had seen the Long Beach Naval Shipyard in it's prime, you would have noticed that it was adjacent to the civilian yard, with its own main gate, security patrols, yard workers, and chain of command. Civilian movement was restricted, but with a high enough clearance and the right 'Need-to-Know', a civilian could go almost anywhere in the yard, with only the usual challenges to be expected from the security types.

There was exchange of personel and materials across the fence, and most of these exchanges took place through official channels.

IMTU, the Torasian Shipyards are leased from the government of Toras, which appoints its administrators and pays the salaries of the permanently-staffed civilian workers. Military people serve a one-year rotation (usually in clerical or technical functions) on detached duty from the Naval base, which is actually an area of the living quarters restricted to military personel only. Military officers serve senior staff functions, supervising the activities of the enlisteds, and making sure that things get done the 'right' way and on schedule.

If a ship is under a regular maintenance evolution, then power is drawn from the shipboard reactors for life support, gravity, communications, and fire control. The minimum required crew is rotated through on 72-hour duty cycles.

If a ship is undergoing refit, a major over haul, or repairs to battle damge, then power is drawn from the yard grid. The crew is usually transferred to the military side of the house, detached planetside or to other ships for training, or given R&R on a reserve duty basis.

Now, as for layout...

I have the living and admin station laid out inside a sphere for minimum surface are enclosing maximum volume. The station has twenty decks, and the outer portion was built around an inner protion that was a research station of only twleve decks. There are lots of ways to get around the station without using the main corridors, and many places to obtain privacy.

The yards themselves do not have a fixed form. Modular gantries are assembled and broken down as needed. A naval ship under construction might be twenty klicks further along the orbit than the station, while a cluster of merchant vessels undergoing drive calibration and certificating might be only a klick or two away.

Now, I can imagine (and probably should work on) a shipyard based on and in a 100km planetoid. Gravity should be in the micro range, but security would be easier to maintain.

I hope this helps.

 

[Jame]

*Snit fit on* No! No! NOOOO! You may NOT butt - *Snit fit off* Hey, that's a good idea, Keklas, I think I will borrow it after all. Thank you! If you have anything else, please PM me.

 

[Hal]

Regards to Naval shipyards and such - Thanks for the heads up Keklas. And Jame? I'm going to need to detail some military bases as such for the Lunion subsector I'm working on. Of COURSE I'd be delighted

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Hal & Jame,

Thanks, citizens! You're welcome to the ideas. I'll keep the actual details to myself, though.

I started playing CT about a quarter-century ago, and only had books 1 to 3 for almost five years. Until I started catching up, I had to develop everything else on my own. I didn't even know about the Imperial timeline, the other major races, or even the 'accepted' principles of Jump Space!

My 'House Rules' now reside in three binders, 2" thick each. I have maps, deckplans, characters, patrons, worlds, star systems, et cetera, that I first put down on paper in the 1980's and I haven't even used them yet.

Maybe "Traveller VII - The Rekobah Files"...?

Naaaah...

-KR-

 

[flykiller]

My 'House Rules' now reside in three binders, 2" thick each. I have maps, deckplans, characters, patrons, worlds, star systems, et cetera, that I first put down on paper in the 1980's and I haven't even used them yet.

ever think of putting it all up on a webpage?

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

"ever think of putting it all up on a webpage?" - flykiller.

Yup. I have TEC-A ambitions, but a TEC-3 budget.

 

[Jame]

Hal, I was thinking of putting the bases for the TA in Gateway Domain, but when I figure out how to build a base I'll help you out...

 

[Hal]

Jame? Start a new thread and call it by the name of the base you want to call it. Request that people help you out on the project. I'll chime in with the start of the information I can give you based on GURPS STARPORTS. What I'd need from you is the general stats of the world itself (population, tech level, etc) plus perhaps the information regarding the trade flows through the system (if any). If the Ianic starport wasn't listed as an E class (GURPS class I) Starport - I'd detail it more and had have it done by now. As it was? My original scenario idea for my piracy PBEM was to have the pirates versus the Navy while the SPA tried to upgrade the port from a class E port (GURPS Class I) to a Class C port (GURPS Class III).

For your base? Using GURPS rules, I can even help you find out how much such a base construction would cost. By setting up a thread of your own? We can build this thing little by little and people can chime in with suggestions and/or ideas. For example: Suppose you had a local crime syndicate involved in the building of the starport? Would the Starport director attempt to quash the criminals, work with the criminals because he has a deadline to meet, or would he find some other method of neutralizing the problem?
It doesn't have to be a really "INTENSE" roleplaying like situation per se, but it can suggest ideas for adventures.