Hi Timothy,
 
I hope your Christmas and New Year celebrations went well.
 
I have had a wee issue with Traveller's maintenance rules from when I picked up CT 1977.
 
In short maintenance is scheduled on a set time period as determined by the manufacturer and/or governmental body. During my time in the USN we had a material maintenance management system for every piece of equipment used. The system included Preventative Maintenance scheduling that was on card stock about the size of a pamphlet. The maintenance was conducted, based on the system once a watch, every 12 hours, every 3 days, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly, and annually. Then there was refits and overhauls that were scheduled in advance.
 
Tom Rux
On 01/06/2021 12:20 PM Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson at port.ac.uk <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
 
 
 
Hi there,
 
Here was a surprise for me.
 
I so much have the idea of "annual maintenance" in my head from years of Traveller that I was surprised to discover in Mongoose (1 and 2) there's no such thing.  Or at least not quite.
 
Apparently it's supposed to be monthly, and once a year "should be performed in a shipyard". 
 
It's important because if any of the monthly ones are skipped it gives a -DM on a Critical Hit roll.
 
How I've managed to miss this I don't know, but it's finally come up as we approach the one year mark of TTA.  My apologies for those who are fully aware of this.  For those who don't the actual rule is below.
 
My question is that although it gives a cost for this monthly maintenance, and presumably it can be done by the engineer 'wherever' (in the light of the annual one having to be in a shipyard), there absolutely no clue as to how *long* it takes.  The annual maintenance of classic Traveller took two weeks at an A or B class starport (no such limits in Mongoose which I'd also missed and had been assuming).
 
So my best guess is that's an Engineering task (although no one speciality applies) but clearly it can't be a two week process every month.  A 1D weeks time frame is ruled out.   In fact MgT2 Timeframes Table (p.60) only goes up to 1D Days.  That seems a bit rough to impose.  The next one down is 1D x 10 hours which, as it happens, is exemplified by 'repairing a damaged ship'.  It kind of seems reasonable to me to use this also for the monthly maintenance (although I can hear Tess' voice in my head arguing for 1D x 4 hours - the next one down on the table!).
 
Perhaps, if I'd thought about it, we've been treating the maintenance as doable in Jump which makes it rather easy to manage and would be covered by all the times Tess has declared her actions in Jump as this kind of stuff.
 
Having decided that, how about that 'annual' one?  Still two weeks?  Less because of all this ongoing stuff which CT doesn't have?   Until I just read this, I'd been assuming that at the end of the yearish the March Harrier would be grounded for two weeks and we'd a couple of weeks of planet based stuff.  Which is where we came in...  (wow, that seems a long time ago)
 
Thoughts?
 
<re-dons Newbie Ref hat>
 
tc
 
 
p.145
Repairs and Maintenance: A ship needs maintenance, which costs 0.1% of the total purchase price of the ship per year. Maintenance should be carried out each month (divide the year’s maintenance cost by 12 to find the monthly cost. Once per year this should be performed at a shipyard. If maintenance is skipped or skimped on, roll 2D each subsequent month, with a DM equal to the number of months skipped. On 8+, the ship suffers a critical hit. Roll 2D on the Poor Maintenance table and apply the effects. To repair this damage, see page 161.
 
 

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