On 17Oct2021 0308, Thomas RUX - tmr0195 at comcast.net (via tml list) wrote:
> Howdy Timothy,
>
> Various Traveller source material hints at the use of automation and robots designed to assist in doing maintenance. Also during the lay over in port the crew can contract for maintenance support.
>
> Back when I was on submarines while tied alongside the tender or a pier in a support facility we had tender personnel assisting us doing maintenance.
The problem is that this is not mentioned in the texts as being standard
practice. The texts tell us that the crew perform normal preventative
maintenance and light repairs, etc., and then once a year the ship is
put into the hands of the yard for a two week annual maintenance (or the
crew do it themselves and hate the captain for costing them their two
weeks of leave) at a significant cost.

TNE had a similar issue in that the maintenance number it had often
implied that the crew was spending a huge amount of time just keeping
the ship running, but most of the crew was supposed to be there to do
other things, like fly the ship. This got a lot worse once you factored
in wear values - you rapidly got to the point where a ship couldn't be
maintained. This would've been fine if old ships were treated like
aeroplanes, with a lot of down time per hour of flight time. However,
that's not how they were presented as being treated (the ones free
traders flew, anyway).

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>