What is the working life time of a space craft?

[JAFARR]

Under standard financing, it takes 40 years to pay off a ship. Is the working life time baring combat damage, accidents, etc. ever stated in any version of Traveller canon?

Personally I assume 120 years if maintained as required. Also I assume banks will not finance any ship unless it will be less than 100 years old at the end of the finance period.

 

[spank]

That would certainly make sense under current rules, ships devalue at ~10% every 10 year period. That however does not make sense to me. Aircraft, for example if properly maintained retain their in value. the only reason they really lose value is due to technology increases, A DC-3 for example cost 75,000 new and sells for 175,000 or more. Adjusted for inflation the new cost would be ~750,000
On the surface this may seem to fit the 10% model, but you also need to remember that the aircraft has gone from being cutting edge to trailing edge, that does not happen in traveller, at least not in the same time frame.
One possible solution might be to require a spaceship to have a Major overhaul every 10 years to reatain it's value. I think I might have the refit cost 2d6+2%, or the ship loses 10% of it's value. For a free trader this would be 1.4 Mcr to 5.1 Mcr and average 3.3 Mcr Verus a loss of 3.7 Mcr in value.
I am sort of leaning towards using the square root of age*10 for depreciation value. That would give a value of 20% for 40 years, and complete devaluation after 1000 years. Or just over 70 years if major overhauls are not done.

 

[aramis]

TNE gives the raw numbers to figure it out. The failure check (weekly for ships) is 1d10 vs Wear Value. Minimum WV increase is 1 per 10 years. a good crew can keep that WV 7 running (since it's a difficult, Relevant skill task to avoid an actual breakdown), but everyone is working overtime.

Realistically, figure about 80 years given the TNE forumlae and double crew to meet increased maintenance after 40 years.

A truly insanely dedicated crew with the correct funding could make it more than 100, but they are always on the ragged edge of a disaster.

 

[GypsyComet]

While I really like the TNE system for Wear Value, I also consider it closely matched to the setting. As such, it's a good match to TL12 or so.

 

[aramis]

Which brings up a decent fix for it, Gypsy...

Minimum wear value could be changed to 1 per TL years... thus giving a TL15 craft about 120 years of useful life, and almost 200 before it becomes impossible to carry enough crew to meet the maintenance hours....

 

[pendragonman]

Which brings up a decent fix for it, Gypsy...

Minimum wear value could be changed to 1 per TL years... thus giving a TL15 craft about 120 years of useful life, and almost 200 before it becomes impossible to carry enough crew to meet the maintenance hours....

Interesting idea.....


Worth a good study to check on game effects...

 

[GypsyComet]

"Game" effects will come down to whether you have a PC engineer.

The CT Darrian module suggested that ship longevity increases by a more-than-linear relationship with TL, at least in the TL 15-17 range.

At extreme ages I prefer to keep wear values at a more detailed level. The hull might be filled with holes and sagging, but if the electroncs and drives are newer, and LS has been redone, you might still have a flyable ship. Hot reentry isn't recommended, however...

 

[tinker123]

macroeconomic model?

I think this touches on one part of the overall economic model implied by the Traveller rules. You could imagine some formula for the time taken to build a ship (in the rules) and the number of class-A starports with shipyards and the number of ships that can be built in parallel (based on the rule that you have to wait before your ship starts being built). Those add up to the total tonnage of new shipping produced each year.

Now, if you add in the working life of a ship, you can derive the total tonnage of shipping in operation at any time, and the total amount of trade. Or you can use the trade tables to tell you the total volume of freight, and work back to the total tonnage, and back again to the working life of a ship.

Of course, this is all based on a constant tonnage in operation (because the trade tables don't need to know what year it is), so the same number of ships are scrapped as built each year. (Although that doesn't tell you how old they are when they're scrapped).

Thinking about that last point, it occured to me that there is a good reason for ships to be scrapped at a known age (and not just because they stop working on-or-about their 100th birthday) - commercial insurance. You may not be able to insure a 200-yr-old Trader for commercial operation, but a good engineer could still get it to jump (at your own risk).

Just some random thoughts

 

[BlackBat242]

Which is when the no-longer-insurable ship gets sold to a disposal yard.

That yard then either scraps it for re-useable parts, or sells it to someone who doesn't need to get insurance.

You know... independent free traders operating in non-aligned space/the fringes of settled space; groups who want to get away from civilization and not come back; small planetary/system governments that will be covering their own costs & liabilities; smugglers/pirates... all those types.

 

[selunatic2397]

During my campaign, set in the early colonization of the Marches, My players found a 2,500 year old scout ship.

It was derelict, drifting in an orbit that took it out to the cometary halo and back in.

I showed them a picture of the Rumblefish gunboat, and since I was not using the Darrians, told them it was similar to a Russian design...the Koltov long range scout. I got that name from a box in my back to school freight...the box came from Koltov California.

They thought it was so cool! their plans to have it rebuilt as an elint/recon scout took large sums of credits from them...and made them cash in lots of favors too!

They had lots of fun in it...until the player known as Mr. Wizard, lost it in a poker game!

It's still out there...currently in the hands of an academic/poet who is using it as a test bed for jump drive experiments...

 

[spank]

Working life time.

A working life time of only 120 years seems short for a space ship, of course this may be about right without an occasional major overhaul. Maybe you could have the major overhauls reduce the maintaince factor by 1, every 10 years the owner can either lay the ship up in a yard for 1 year for a major overhaul, or increase the maintaince factor by 1.


On an unrelated note, one of the aircraft they used to fly at work came from South America. They bought 2 jets from.... Uh somewhere in the jungle, after they bought them the seller told them they had 1 more they could have for free, so they sent some guys down there, cut the airplane out of the trees, and after some work got 3 of the 4 engines to start. They welded the landing gear down and flew it back home. They flew that aircraft for several years.

 

[PFVA63]

Environmental Effects

Hi,

Awhile ago I was reading in some books on spacecraft and space station design about the impact that being in space would have on their structures. In general the books I looked at breifly noted some stuff like;

- the impact the impinging atmospheric molecules may have on the chemical and structural composition of the spacecrafts structure (including erosion)

- the potential for the spacecraft structure and equipment to release absorbed gas upon exposure to the near vacuum of orbit

- the potential for build up of electrical charges and issues related to being exposed to electric fields, etc in orbit (which, if I am understanding correctly, one of the books suggests may be even more severe at higher orbits)

- Additionally, particle radiation is also listed as being an issue not just for the potential from direct radiation damage but also for something identified as "deep dielectric charging" both of which apparently can mess up onboard electronics as well. The slow accumulation of long term "total ionizing dose" radiation is noted in one of the books to lead to power loss in solar cells and cause the degradation and/or failure of micro electronics, etc.

- the potential for photon radiation (including ultra violet radiation) which can degrade the properties of many materials used in spacecraft surfaces.

- Finally, there is also a danger from micro meteoroids and other stuff in space

As such, even though the stuff in the books was dealing with present day stuff in Earth orbit, I believe that some of these factors would also be an issue in any futuristic spaceships, especially if they are to orbit and/or land on other worlds. Anyway, I guess these are just some additional things to consider that could probably lead to things like hull plating and fittings wearing out and needing to be replaced over time. I guess would be that lower tech hull materials might wear out sooner and more advanced stuff might be longer lived, but since alot of the stuff in Traveller doesn't really exist right now, I guess its anyones guess how the materials will stand up to aging.

Anyway, just some additional stuff to consider I guess.

Regards

PF

 

[G. Fieendish]

One could argue that a working life of a spacecraft could be determined by the availibility of replacement spare parts for the vessel...
Another factor could be how "easy" it is to upgrade their avionic systems, i.e does said vessel's avionics meet current Imperial specs & if not, is there a "upgrade" kit available for said vessel....
(Higher tech vessels (TL 12+) avionics would be more modular with regards to upgrading their systems, while Tech 9-10 Vessels might have more "Dedicated" systems, possibly hardwired into place...).
Needless to say, the more popular the Vessel is/was, the more likely that aftermarket parts or kits exist....

 

[JAFARR]

That would certainly make sense under current rules, ships devalue at ~10% every 10 year period. That however does not make sense to me. Aircraft, for example if properly maintained retain their in value. the only reason they really lose value is due to technology increases, A DC-3 for example cost 75,000 new and sells for 175,000 or more. Adjusted for inflation the new cost would be ~750,000
On the surface this may seem to fit the 10% model, but you also need to remember that the aircraft has gone from being cutting edge to trailing edge, that does not happen in traveller, at least not in the same time frame.
One possible solution might be to require a spaceship to have a Major overhaul every 10 years to reatain it's value. I think I might have the refit cost 2d6+2%, or the ship loses 10% of it's value. For a free trader this would be 1.4 Mcr to 5.1 Mcr and average 3.3 Mcr Verus a loss of 3.7 Mcr in value.
I am sort of leaning towards using the square root of age*10 for depreciation value. That would give a value of 20% for 40 years, and complete devaluation after 1000 years. Or just over 70 years if major overhauls are not done.

Which current rules?

 

[JAFARR]

TNE gives the raw numbers to figure it out. The failure check (weekly for ships) is 1d10 vs Wear Value. Minimum WV increase is 1 per 10 years. a good crew can keep that WV 7 running (since it's a difficult, Relevant skill task to avoid an actual breakdown), but everyone is working overtime.

Realistically, figure about 80 years given the TNE forumlae and double crew to meet increased maintenance after 40 years.

A truly insanely dedicated crew with the correct funding could make it more than 100, but they are always on the ragged edge of a disaster.

Do any other rule sets have anything? I don't remember ever seeing anything. Would Spank's major overhaul reset the wear value or at least retard it? What about the mothballing from Arrival Vengeance module?

 

[aramis]

TNE is the only one with full wear value rules that I've seen.

A major overhaul is covered; it resets the wear value to the number of major overhauls the ship's been through, IIRC.

 

[Peter Newman]

TNE is the only one with full wear value rules that I've seen.

I figured that was because TNE was the one that _needed_ wear values the most. One of the things that troubled me about wear values is that they affected the value of a vehicle, and listed how much more upkeep the ship needed to stay running but they didn't say anything about the experience of using a ship with a higher wear value, or what it might look like.

For instance I'm driving a 1995 car. The windshield is cracked, the passenger side rear view mirror is gone, the paint has lots of small scratches, if you look really closely in the wrong spot you can see the start of the rust, and there's a very minor ding in the back bumper. On the other hand the engine has less than 45,000 miles on it, it always passes the IM tests easily I've always had any other minor problems it has had fixed. What is its wear value?

Do we say my car is wear value 6 becuase it is worth one sixth of its new value or do we say that the car is wear value two because is needs only twice the maintenance (if that) it did when it was braqnd new? How do we apply this to a starship? Maybe we could use some tables similar to the ones in Space Opera to describe that problems with the specific systems of the ship.

What about ships that have issues even when they're brand new, like the air systems on Scout Couriers?

 

[aramis]

I figured that was because TNE was the one that _needed_ wear values the most. One of the things that troubled me about wear values is that they affected the value of a vehicle, and listed how much more upkeep the ship needed to stay running but they didn't say anything about the experience of using a ship with a higher wear value, or what it might look like.

For instance I'm driving a 1995 car. The windshield is cracked, the passenger side rear view mirror is gone, the paint has lots of small scratches, if you look really closely in the wrong spot you can see the start of the rust, and there's a very minor ding in the back bumper. On the other hand the engine has less than 45,000 miles on it, it always passes the IM tests easily I've always had any other minor problems it has had fixed. What is its wear value?

Do we say my car is wear value 6 becuase it is worth one sixth of its new value or do we say that the car is wear value two because is needs only twice the maintenance (if that) it did when it was braqnd new? How do we apply this to a starship? Maybe we could use some tables similar to the ones in Space Opera to describe that problems with the specific systems of the ship.

What about ships that have issues even when they're brand new, like the air systems on Scout Couriers?

Well, you should know my answer on your car: it's WV 2...

I figure WV 0-2 is "New or Gently Used"... ht it with the "New Ship Smell Spray" and people won't likely notice. WV 3-4 is like most used cars in dealer lots.5-6 is drivable junkers. And WV 7+ "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!"

I consider Star Wars' Millenium Falcon to be about WV 7... massive maintenance and frequent minor failures. I consider Serenity to be about a 4.... needs a lot of care, but usually nothing major goes wrong.

But, from the outside, aside from micrometeoroid pitting, it's not going to look much different no matter the WV... at least for airworthy & spaceworthy craft... except on a real failure.

 

[G. Fieendish]

Re: used car example
It's dependant on who is certifying said vehicle....
Under U.K MOT (Ministry of Transport) testing, said 1995 car would automatically fail it's MOT test, due to the cracked windscreen, & as such is regarded as unroadworthy....
As such, WV 5-6.....?

 

[spank]

Wear value/Deprication

Which current rules?

By this I mean at least 2 traveller products, t20 and CT.

Would Spank's major overhaul reset the wear value or at least retard it?

In TNE the major overhaul reset the wear vaule to the number of major overhauls the vehicle had been through, for example a 150 year old ship that had been thru 2 major overhauls would have the wear value rest to 2, but if it had 5 major overhauls it would have a wearvalue of 5.