On 21Oct2021 1018, Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml
list) wrote:
> They, of course, always failed to improve their skills due to havbing to attend to all the many things  constantly breaking down( gee I wonder why? ;-) ), right?
> PC's can do whatever they want but the PC's don't run the game, the GM does, last I heard.
And the players, once they're told they can't study all the time
successfully because of breakdowns, will be wanting to know what the new
rules are, so that they can intelligently play their characters. It's
hardly unreasonable to want to know how much time maintaining their ship
takes, so that they can know what spare time their characters have to
devote to self-improvement, hobbies, etc.

And, it's hardly unreasonable to want to know how this will change if
their characters get holds of a different ship that could be more or
less worn, bigger or smaller.

And, this being the case, it's not surprising that many GMs would want
some guidance from the rules, especially if they themselves know little
of maintaining a ship or aircraft today, let alone in the 56th century.

Such guidelines are also of assistance to a GM in setting 'colour' - if
ships require minimal maintenance, that implies very mature technology
that very seldom breaks down and which lasts for a very long time or has
a lot or inbuilt self-repair capability. It probably looks all shiny and
new all the time, too. If instead ships require constant tinkering with
and tuning from a team of mechanics, they probably look like the inside
of the /Millennium Falcon/ with replacement wiring poking out all over
the place, the access panels mostly missing (because they're never in
place anyway), and so on.

An example of why this matters would be the Type S, which many rule sets
tell us is designed for a crew of two, but which can be handled by a
solo crew member. But what does this really mean? That one person can
fly the thing but it will break down in a few weeks unless they pay for
ground crew to work on the ship at every stop over? Or will it run as
normal, but the solo pilot/engineer/mechanic must spend every waking
moment either flying or maintaining the ship, so after a while they
themselves start showing the wear and tear of having no downtime or
personal maintenance? Or does it just mean an extra hour or so a day
spent in maintenance, the slow loss of fine tuning and that 'spick and
span' look, and having to get annual maintenance done every 6-9 months
rather than once a year?

Note that whatever the answer to the above, it has follow-on
implications for other ships, and while some groups of players might not
explore those, others will.

--

Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>