On Sat, Jun 14, 2014 at 8:28 AM, Richard Aiken <raikenclw@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 14, 2014 at 5:58 AM, Postmark <postmark.design@btinternet.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Alternatively, you could make it a maintenance nightmare! Minimum inter
>> deck spaces . . .
>
>
> IMTU, smaller ships have interiors which resemble the Millenium Falcon:
> pipework and ducting wandering through the interior spaces, to the extent
> that most deckplan squares (save for those in the cargo holds) count as
> Difficult terrain.
>

BTRC's "VDS" (Vehicle Design System) has some neat rules for trade
offs on volume, mass, price, etc.
Now and then reading them, I get inspired to play with a rule along
the lines of :
"Volume for a component can be changed by up to 25%, with an inverse
10x change in maintenance time (and thus cost) and headaches"

Say you take a 10% reduction, and trim your 10 dton M-drive to 9 tons.
You'd be taking a 100% increase in maintenance time/cost - so the
normal 4 hours a week (or what ever) becomes a full days work, and
there's a lot of less-standard widgets that are smaller and more
expensive that need replaced.

"Yeah, the M-Drive is tight packed. Most of the work on it has to be
done from outside the hull, and I'm talking even routine maintenance,
not just big repairs. "   - flashback to scene of Han and Chewie
working on the Falcon on Hoth, climbing around on the outside of the
hull.