As a result of the thread on galleys, and food storage requirements, I've been looking at the rules for starship storage of rations and life support parts, and from there parts in general.
When it comes to food and life support consumables Traveller gives prices, but not volume/mass, and doesn't tell us how much storage for the stuff is assumed. We can assume two weeks, but what if we want to provision a ship for a multi-month journey with resupply? How much extra volume should be put aside for this? How much stuff can just be crammed into the standard (invisible) storage?
The same goes for repair parts. In CT and similar rules this isn't too much of an issue, as the only maintenance that costs is the annual overhaul, but on some rule sets there's ongoing work as well, and that presumably has at least some parts requirement, if only broken bulbs and so on (though life support parts are presumably part of that Cr1000 per week per person). Battle damage does require parts, from 'a stock' in CT - but how many parts, to what value? And how much cargo space will extra parts take up?
We can guess some of the answers by looking at RL numbers (as has been above for rations), and by guesstimating from the trade tables - presumably parts would be some mixture of electronics, mechanical, and computer parts and so probably worth about Cr100,000 per DTon. But what value and mass of parts come with a ship 'for free' and are stored 'invisibly' we just don't know.
Running a 'Coalition' New Era game this was annoying, as ship maintenance and repair, and the struggle to find parts is a major theme of space-flight in that time and place. There were useful sections on repair and how many 'parts' were held with each system and a statement that parts for annual maintenance could be purchased and carried (1/2000th of ship's new price - so half the normal cost of annual maintenance is parts, and 1/200th of the ship's displacement) was useful (but it gives a variable value/ton for parts, which might be realistic, but isn't convenient). However, still no general guidance on how much space extra parts would take up. The numbers for annual maintenance parts are repeated in GT.
These numbers have a TNE Type-S' annual maintenance parts consuming 0.5 DTons of volume and costing Cr25,240 (~Cr50,000/DTon). A Far Trader's come in at: 1 DTon and Cr28,605. A Patrol Cruiser's: 2 DTons, Cr98,750 (~Cr50,000 DTon). You could probably generalise this as Cr50,000/DTon for scout and military ships and half that for civilian ships. For small starships the numbers are similar in GT, but very large warship ships in GT can have parts that cost double or more of that per DTon.
MgT 2e does provide a cost and volume for parts for repairs - Cr100,000/DTon (what I guesstimated above), and implies that there is no 'invisible' storage in a MgT ship. No mention is made of the stats of parts for routine maintenance - which is expected to be carried out during every month, and so requires ships travelling in backwater volumes of space to be carrying parts.
IF there's material of this in T5, I was unable to find it.
The best I've got to reconcile these numbers is that perhaps annual maintenance parts are 1) specific items purchased to meet known repair/replacement needs rather than expensive multi-function parts, and 2) generally for those large, heavy, relatively cheap parts that wear out in nice predictable ways, rather than parts for things just just break, 'blow up' apparently randomly, or that tend to break when shot up. Thus the parts required for annual repairs cost less per unit of volume/mass, but wouldn't be very useful for repairing battle damage or the like.
It's a bit annoying that it takes trawling through multiple editions to glean this.
When it comes to food and life support consumables Traveller gives prices, but not volume/mass, and doesn't tell us how much storage for the stuff is assumed. We can assume two weeks, but what if we want to provision a ship for a multi-month journey with resupply? How much extra volume should be put aside for this? How much stuff can just be crammed into the standard (invisible) storage?
The same goes for repair parts. In CT and similar rules this isn't too much of an issue, as the only maintenance that costs is the annual overhaul, but on some rule sets there's ongoing work as well, and that presumably has at least some parts requirement, if only broken bulbs and so on (though life support parts are presumably part of that Cr1000 per week per person). Battle damage does require parts, from 'a stock' in CT - but how many parts, to what value? And how much cargo space will extra parts take up?
We can guess some of the answers by looking at RL numbers (as has been above for rations), and by guesstimating from the trade tables - presumably parts would be some mixture of electronics, mechanical, and computer parts and so probably worth about Cr100,000 per DTon. But what value and mass of parts come with a ship 'for free' and are stored 'invisibly' we just don't know.
Running a 'Coalition' New Era game this was annoying, as ship maintenance and repair, and the struggle to find parts is a major theme of space-flight in that time and place. There were useful sections on repair and how many 'parts' were held with each system and a statement that parts for annual maintenance could be purchased and carried (1/2000th of ship's new price - so half the normal cost of annual maintenance is parts, and 1/200th of the ship's displacement) was useful (but it gives a variable value/ton for parts, which might be realistic, but isn't convenient). However, still no general guidance on how much space extra parts would take up. The numbers for annual maintenance parts are repeated in GT.
These numbers have a TNE Type-S' annual maintenance parts consuming 0.5 DTons of volume and costing Cr25,240 (~Cr50,000/DTon). A Far Trader's come in at: 1 DTon and Cr28,605. A Patrol Cruiser's: 2 DTons, Cr98,750 (~Cr50,000 DTon). You could probably generalise this as Cr50,000/DTon for scout and military ships and half that for civilian ships. For small starships the numbers are similar in GT, but very large warship ships in GT can have parts that cost double or more of that per DTon.
MgT 2e does provide a cost and volume for parts for repairs - Cr100,000/DTon (what I guesstimated above), and implies that there is no 'invisible' storage in a MgT ship. No mention is made of the stats of parts for routine maintenance - which is expected to be carried out during every month, and so requires ships travelling in backwater volumes of space to be carrying parts.
IF there's material of this in T5, I was unable to find it.
The best I've got to reconcile these numbers is that perhaps annual maintenance parts are 1) specific items purchased to meet known repair/replacement needs rather than expensive multi-function parts, and 2) generally for those large, heavy, relatively cheap parts that wear out in nice predictable ways, rather than parts for things just just break, 'blow up' apparently randomly, or that tend to break when shot up. Thus the parts required for annual repairs cost less per unit of volume/mass, but wouldn't be very useful for repairing battle damage or the like.
It's a bit annoying that it takes trawling through multiple editions to glean this.
