Author Topic: Maintenance Rules  (Read 1869 times)

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Offline Steve Walmsley

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Maintenance Rules
« on: March 28, 2007, 04:41:25 PM »
Maintenance Rules
Every ship needs maintenance or its systems will begin to fail over time. The longer it goes without maintenance, the more common those system failures will become. The following rules explain how those system failures are calculated and what can be done to avoid them.

System Failure
The annual chance of a ship suffering a system failure is equal to half the hull size multiplied by the time in years since the last major overhaul (see below). For example, a 60 HS ship that last had a major overhaul eighteen months ago has an annual failure chance of 60/2 x 1.5 years = 45%. This chance is applied during each any time increment of 5 days or longer so the chance of failure during any given increment is equal to the annual failure chance * (time since last check/seconds in year).

Engineering Section
An Engineering Section is a ship component and each ship design can have as many Engineering Sections as the designer wishes. Each Engineering Section requires 3 HS, costs 30 build points and contains five Replacement Parts that can be used to prevent system failures. As system failures occur the engineering department will fix them (and the player will be notified) by using one replacement part per failure. If no replacement parts are available when a failure occurs, a random system is damaged as if it had been hit by weapons fire. This will need to be repaired at a shipyard or potentially fixed by damage control when spares are restocked.

If a ship receives a major overhaul in a shipyard, all engineering spares are replaced and the overhaul clock is reset (i.e. the time since overhaul to now zero). If a ship receives a minor overhaul in a shipyard, all engineering spares are replaced but the overhaul clock is not reset. Effectively, a minor overhaul extends service life by a year or two, putting off the more expensive and time-consuming major overhaul. A major overhaul costs 40% of the original ship cost. A minor overhaul costs 10% of the original ship cost.

Maintenance Facility
Maintenance Facilities can be built at colonies and require two million supporting population. Each level of Maintenance Facility costs 3600 BP and increases the maximum size of ship that the colony can maintain by 5000 tons. For example, a Level 3 Maintenance Facility can maintain ships up to 15,000 tons. If a ship is in orbit of the colony and is within the maximum size of the colony's maintenance facility, it will not suffer any system failures and will therefore not use any replacement parts. In addition, its overhaul clock will not advance (in game terms the last overhaul date changes so that the time since last overhaul remains the same).

You can therefore establish fleet bases with Maintenance Facilities where you can forward deploy fleet units and not have to worry about maintaining them. If you are establishing a patrol base for destroyer squadrons, that can be a smaller fleet base than a forward base for your carrier battle groups. Perhaps a less obvious implication is that you can build bases (with no space required for engines) that will remain in orbit of a planet to protect it and will never require any maintenance as long as they are within the size limit of the maintenance facility.
Commercial Freight Facility
Commercial Freight Facilities can be built at colonies, cost 3600 BP and require two million supporting population. If a freighter visits a Commercial Freight Facility it receives the equivalent of a major overhaul for free, replacing its spares and resetting its maintenance clock. The facility is a game device designed to reduce the micromanagement of monitoring routine freighter traffic, enabling the player to concentrate his efforts on warships, survey ships and the establishment of new colonies.

The definition of a freighter in this context is any ship that has at least five cargo holds and only mounts the following types of components:
Engine, Crew Quarters, Fuel Storage, Engineering Section, Jump Drive, Passive Sensors, Bridge, Armour, Shields, Cargo Handling System and Damage Control.

From v1.4, the definition is extended to include any ship with at least four Cyro Transport modules or five cargo holds

This is checked automatically by the ship design code.

« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Steve Walmsley »

