Starship maintenance costs... what are they?

[andycowley]

Hi folks,

I've scoured the T5 BBB for any details on starship maintenance costs ... either per month, annual or any other period .... Other than the detail for fuel costs on page 360 I can find nothing ....

To open a debate there is the possibility that the life support costs in starship design on page 344 could be the source of a base value from which a daily/monthly/quarterly % 'resupply' cost could be calculated (perhaps 1-2%?)....

I'm also perplexed by the lack of any detail behind the 'annual' starship maintenance costs which while being mentioned several times (pages 52, 320 & 377) are never detailed in numbers ...

 

[cuTTer]

Hi folks,

I've scoured the T5 BBB for any details on starship maintenance costs ... either per month, annual or any other period .... Other than the detail for fuel costs on page 360 I can find nothing ....

To open a debate there is the possibility that the life support costs in starship design on page 344 could be the source of a base value from which a daily/monthly/quarterly % 'resupply' cost could be calculated (perhaps 1-2%?)....

I'm also perplexed by the lack of any detail behind the 'annual' starship maintenance costs which while being mentioned several times (pages 52, 320 & 377) are never detailed in numbers ...

Best slap a query into the errata thread.

 

[Selandia]

good question,

In CT, operating cost issues were cash flow oriented and very sketchy: monthly (salaries, pp fuel), per trip (docking, life support, jump fuel) yearly (yearly maintenance)

Fuel is not a maintenance cost per see, nor is life support, but semantic aside they are you are right: lifesupport and maintenance are essential to the economic of the ACS and should be in errata .

Have fun

Selandia

 

[Licheking]

Life Support is 1 MCr per 10 people per month with Luxury adding another 1 MCr for the same amount of people. This would then imply 100000 Cr per person per month but that would make the High Passage and Mid Passage under value for the cost of travel. MT used to be 1000 Cr per week per stateroom occupied and thats what i'm going with.

 

[rancke]

Life Support is 1 MCr per 10 people per month with Luxury adding another 1 MCr for the same amount of people. This would then imply 100000 Cr per person per month but that would make the High Passage and Mid Passage under value for the cost of travel. MT used to be 1000 Cr per week per stateroom occupied and thats what i'm going with.

Far too much, logically. Since space habitats are viable accomodations, long-term life support must cost something that can be measured in thousands of credits per person per year. (Guesstimated as one third of the average per capita income). Granted that short-term life support can be expected to be a bit more expensive (more expensive solutions and greater waste), Cr52,000 per year is just not plausible. MgT halved that, which is still on the high side (especially since one trip will consume ten days worth of life support, not 14), but better.


Hans

 

[Spaceresearcher]

Oh it's free, you just get passage from one starship to another.

 

[Selandia]

had some time yesterday, checked CT: 2,000 Cr lifes upport per stateroom per trip WITH or WITHOUT occupation, 100Cr for low berth.

Clearly we are not talking only about food and drink (most likely TV Dinner type food anyway) since it is w or w/o occupation. Heating, lighting, cooking and other energy expenditure are meaningless and dealth with with PowPlant. It most likely grouped all variable operating costs beside fuel into Life support. Not sure that would clear a business school exam but for the purpose of LBB2 economic it worked for you only wanted to create per trip, per month, per year economic pressure on players.

have fun

Selandia

 

[rancke]

had some time yesterday, checked CT: 2,000 Cr lifes upport per stateroom per trip WITH or WITHOUT occupation, 100Cr for low berth.

Which CT source? The Traveller Book, p. 55 says "Cr2,000 per crew member, high or middle passenger per trip (two weeks)."

Clearly we are not talking only about food and drink (most likely TV Dinner type food anyway) since it is w or w/o occupation.

That alone tells you the rule is inexact, since merely saving the cost of the food for a non-existent passenger would be a non-trivial sum.

Heating, lighting, cooking and other energy expenditure are meaningless and dealth with with PowPlant. It most likely grouped all variable operating costs beside fuel into Life support. Not sure that would clear a business school exam but for the purpose of LBB2 economic it worked for you only wanted to create per trip, per month, per year economic pressure on players.

It worked unless your players wanted to explore the possibility of saving a few credits by various dodges.


Hans

 

[esampson]

Really important thing to remember is that with the first three LBBs a lot of stuff was extremely simplified. The rules for generating and recording systems only dealt with the main world, ship construction was done in a very simplified 'plug and play' type method. I don't want to say the rules didn't care about realism because that's not the case but lots and lots of things were handled through simple abstractions.

In this case there was a charge for 2,000 cr per stateroom, occupied or not. Could the rule have been expanded to say 1500 per stateroom + 500 per passenger? Sure. They could also have been expanded to say 500 per stateroom + 1000 if the stateroom is not sealed off from life support + 500 per passenger or even expanded to 500 per stateroom * (1+flux/20 rolled at ship creation) + 1000 per stateroom * (1+flux/100 rolled at ship creation) if the ship is not sealed off from life support + 500 * (1+flux/10 rolled per week) per passenger with crew being assigned a base life support variation depending upon their physical stats and a flux roll at CG modified by a second flux roll during the trip with options for the crew members to take modifiers to the rolls to represent reduced rations at the cost of penalties to their stats.

You'll always find things that could be modeled more realistically, but that doesn't necessarily mean the model is 'better'.

 

[aramis]

In this case there was a charge for 2,000 cr per stateroom, occupied or not. Could the rule have been expanded to say 1500 per stateroom + 500 per passenger? Sure. They could also have been expanded to say 500 per stateroom + 1000 if the stateroom is not sealed off from life support + 500 per passenger or even expanded to 500 per stateroom * (1+flux/20 rolled at ship creation) + 1000 per stateroom * (1+flux/100 rolled at ship creation) if the ship is not sealed off from life support + 500 * (1+flux/10 rolled per week) per passenger with crew being assigned a base life support variation depending upon their physical stats and a flux roll at CG modified by a second flux roll during the trip with options for the crew members to take modifiers to the rolls to represent reduced rations at the cost of penalties to their stats.

Bk2 '81 changed it to "... each occupied stateroom..."

 

[rancke]

Really important thing to remember is that with the first three LBBs a lot of stuff was extremely simplified. The rules for generating and recording systems only dealt with the main world, ship construction was done in a very simplified 'plug and play' type method. I don't want to say the rules didn't care about realism because that's not the case but lots and lots of things were handled through simple abstractions.

I have no problem with that, as long as the abstractions stay inside the ballpark, which, IMO, the life support costs do not.

In this case there was a charge for 2,000 cr per stateroom, occupied or not.

Cr2,000 per person, actually. See reference to TBB above.

Could the rule have been expanded to say 1500 per stateroom + 500 per passenger? Sure.

Or X credits per stateroom, occupied or not, plus four different levels of life support: minimum, adequate, ordinary, and luxury (corresponding to the four levels of long term substitence).

I really don't like a rule that lumps life support for destitute free trader crew together with life support for luxury passengers. It's too coarse.

You'll always find things that could be modeled more realistically, but that doesn't necessarily mean the model is 'better'.

Apart from the need (as I percieve it) for differentiated living expenses, the biggest problem I have with the Cr4000 per month is the inability to figure out what the money pays for. The food should cost Cr100 per trip. What's the rest paying for? Oxygen, waste disposal and sundries, sure. But I don't see that coming anywhere near costing Cr1900 per person per 10 days.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Bk2 '81 changed it to "... each occupied stateroom..."

TBB '82 changed that to each crew member and non-low passenger.


Hans

 

[esampson]

I have no problem with that, as long as the abstractions stay inside the ballpark, which, IMO, the life support costs do not.


Cr2,000 per person, actually. See reference to TBB above.


Or X credits per stateroom, occupied or not, plus four different levels of life support: minimum, adequate, ordinary, and luxury (corresponding to the four levels of long term substitence).

I really don't like a rule that lumps life support for destitute free trader crew together with life support for luxury passengers. It's too coarse.



Apart from the need (as I percieve it) for differentiated living expenses, the biggest problem I have with the Cr4000 per month is the inability to figure out what the money pays for. The food should cost Cr100 per trip. What's the rest paying for? Oxygen, waste disposal and sundries, sure. But I don't see that coming anywhere near costing Cr1900 per person per 10 days.


Hans

Again, I think a good part of it goes back to abstraction. My assumption is that the cost is split between parts (new chemicals for the air scrubbers), fees (the starport is going to be charging you to dump your waste and there will be charges to dispose of the old chemicals used up by your air scrubbers) and labor (prices assume that you have to pay the ground crew at the starport for doing all this maintenance).

Do those parts, fees, and labor still seem high? Probably so but I was surprised to recently learn on a different forum how much the engine for a light aircraft cost. I don't recall it off the top of my head but I have the impression it was in the neighborhood of $30,000, and this was the engine, nothing else. When people asked why it was so expensive the poster pointed out issues such as economy of scale (the manufacturers don't make anywhere close to as many aircraft engines as manufacturers make car engines), the fact that an awful lot of engineering goes into those engines (if your car throws a rod you can coast to the side of the road and stop. If your airplane does that you have to be able to continue flying for a while), as well as some other issues.

It seems reasonable to believe that parts for starships suffer from similar costs, and while on the subject the abstraction never really handles things like 'the primary life support compressor failed but the secondary was able to handle things just fine, like it was suppose to, however now you have to spend 150 KCr to have the life support compressor rebuilt'. Those kinds of expenses are rolled into the regular cost rather than occurring at irregular intervals like they would IRL.

On the other hand maybe you want a game where players are doing their own maintenance, prices are fluctuating at the different ports because they are closer or further from various suppliers, and there are rolls for parts breaking down with increased repair costs. That's all fine and there's nothing wrong with doing that. It's simply that I think the rule was written for situations where people didn't want to have to deal with some much detail.

 

[Selandia]

Which CT source? The Traveller Book, p. 55 says "Cr2,000 per crew member, high or middle passenger per trip (two weeks)."



That alone tells you the rule is inexact, since merely saving the cost of the food for a non-existent passenger would be a non-trivial sum.


It worked unless your players wanted to explore the possibility of saving a few credits by various dodges.


Hans

The original LBB2 said so, Aramis corrected that. I still have the bad habit of using my original book at time, still, for a while, it was it, and it was not bad to my eyes. BTW, I should not using the old book when talking here:file_28: but IMTU that did not change. The whole economic of shipping is build as a pressure cooker for Merchant Player.

BTW 36 TV Diners at bulk price (12 days food) is/should be trivial when talking operating a multi million Cr ship. If the player wanted to explore the possibility of dodging cost, or stealing from the company by signing for out of date food consignments in exchange for a bribe :devil:, don't worry I will make any home rules needed for the game to be fun.

As esampson point out, the original LBB favored simple abstraction. That made the game easy to play to my taste. You are right, all those LBB abstractions do work only in a coarse way. Sadly have T5 found the proper (fun / playable) level of abstraction is not even the basic question here. T5 does provide neither a coarse nor a sophisticated answer to the legitimate question of maintenance & lifesupport cost. We are talking Make Do Home Rules and IMTU if I run a T5 game before the errata comes out I will have to use a coumpound formula for we have now two class of staterooms as well as non low berths steerage class psg.

Since I do not have time to do it now, I will leave it to you guys and promise not to bother you with old LBB while you do it.

have fun

Selandia

 

[rancke]

BTW 36 TV Diners at bulk price (12 days food) is/should be trivial when talking operating a multi million Cr ship.

This is apparently the kind of food you give to high passengers on regular liners. At least, the rules do not differentiate between free traders operated on a shoestring and regular passenger liners.


Hans

 

[rancke]

It seems reasonable to believe that parts for starships suffer from similar costs, and while on the subject the abstraction never really handles things like 'the primary life support compressor failed but the secondary was able to handle things just fine, like it was suppose to, however now you have to spend 150 KCr to have the life support compressor rebuilt'. Those kinds of expenses are rolled into the regular cost rather than occurring at irregular intervals like they would IRL.

Arguably breakdowns of life support equipment could well be correlated to the strain that is put on it. However, that would not be the case with other small breakdowns, where carrying cargo instead of passengers would seem to put less strain on e.g. the maneuver drive. So small breakdowns would seem to be taken care of by the cost of the annual maintenance and the cost of life support would be the cost of consumables.


Hans

 

[Licheking]

I have been using the following formula to work out costs for staterooms.

Low Berth = included in the P-Plants (Operations) costs
Mid Passage = Soc 7 (700/month, 175/week round off 200Cr/week/Stateroom)
High Passage = Soc A (1000/month, 250/week, rounded to 300Cr/week/stateroom. +50Cr/Soc above A)

Ships Maintenance in MT was 1% of the price of the Ship annually, and requires a fortnight in dock. You can easily use the QREBS rating to work out when the maintenance is needed and base the time and costs on that. So a QREBS of 60000 would be once a year as normal, 7000 would be every other year so cheaper on the maintenance because your paying the maintenance cost every other year rather than every year and so on.

 

[atpollard]

Ships Maintenance in MT was 1% of the price of the Ship annually, and requires a fortnight in dock.

1%?
... or 0.1% of the ship cost?

(I know Classic Traveller was 1/1000 of the cost for annual maintenance, but I am much less familiar with MegaTraveller).


I was recently giving this subject some thought and came to some back-of-the-envelope decisions on this for IMTU:

Each component on the Starship creation list requires 1/1000 of its full purchase price (ignore 10% discounts) for annual maintenance at a starport. Like other real world repairs, this cost is roughly 50% parts costs and 50% labor costs.

I assume that starship repair workers have salaries similar to Starship crew salaries with a slightly heavier reliance on the lower end (since a relatively unskilled worker can be trained to perform one specific job). So IMTU most workers will earn 1000 credits per month (160 man-hours of work), some will earn 2000 credits per month and a few supervisors and specialists will earn 3000 credits per month. I assume that the average drydock worker will fall at 2000 credits per 160 man-hours of work. Flipping that around means that annual maintenance in a drydock will require about 1 man working 1 hour for each 12.5 credits of required labor costs.

So a 20 million credit Free Trader will require 20 thousand credits of annual maintenance. That breaks down into 10 thousand credits worth of new parts and 10 thousand credits worth of labor. Ten thousand credits worth of labor is equal to 800 man hours worth of labor (10,000 / 12.5 = 800). So one man could do the job in 800 hours (20 weeks) or 800 men could complete the repairs in 1 hour or using the standard 2 weeks for annual maintenance, that means 10 men working for 80 hours each (two weeks) could complete the job in the standard 2 week time frame.

So what about ships that operate far from home or during the Long Night?
Let the crew do the annual maintenance if they have the skills. The same 20 million credit Free Trader will require the same 20 thousand credits of annual maintenance in a starport drydock, but let's assume that the crew wants or needs to do it themselves. New parts are new parts, so they still need to buy the same 10,000 credits worth of new parts - either wherever they can find them, or before they left the last drydock. The ship still needs the same 800 man hours of work for annual maintenance, but I tend to assume that the ship's crew will take twice as long as a more experienced (at this specific task) full-time drydock crew. So the ship's crew will need 1600 man-hours to complete annual maintenance. Assuming a five man crew (Pilot, Navigator, Engineer, Steward and Gunner) all pitch in to help, the annual maintenance will be done in 320 hours ... 40 days working 8 hours per day or 20 days of working double shifts.

These house rules make self-maintenance possible, but not particularly desirable or cost effective.

So that's my 2 cents.

 

[HG_B]

Life Support is 1 MCr per 10 people per month with Luxury adding another 1 MCr for the same amount of people.

Is this for humans or, some species that has a metabolism that runs on gold? o:

 

[atpollard]

Is this for humans or, some species that has a metabolism that runs on gold? o:

Those prices seem a bargain ... if you factor in 20th century cargo launch costs to LEO.