On Mon, Jul 21, 2025 at 07:36:22AM -0700, Traveller Mailing List wrote:
>
> ============================================================
>
> Hi Evyn.
>
>
>         Have we ever seen something like this "engineer-ship" in Traveller? An auxiliary
>         support ship able to jump to a downed ship like Victrix and repair its jump (and
>         maneuver) drives, at least well enough to enable it to make its own way back to a
>         shipyard?
>
>
>     Ok, I briefly served on a Repair Ship many years ago. From that experience I wrote up a
>     1000 dTon-ish Repair Ship. Looked a lot like the Scout Tender with more crew, workshops
>     and variety of smallcraft.
>
>
> Oh, I like that too!
>

There's got to be a whole class of these things. I can think of few types at the start:

* An orbital "dry-dock" style ship that you would use when you built new ships. In CT Book 5
  terms I'm thinking Jump-0, Manuever-1, Power Plant 4+, and a bigish Computer to handle the
  organization of ship building. There's also going to have to be accomodations for all the
  builders in addition to the crew. Think an oil exploration ship in contemporary terms.

* An Jump-3ish tug that's a Dispersed Structure. This ship would be Jump 3 or more by itself
  and Jump-1+ when it has cargo which would be at least one other ship. Assuming that your
  Navy won the battle, a few of these guys could Jump in-system and haul anything that's
  worth saving back to a repair yard. In contemporary terms I'm thinking something like the
  _[MV Blue Marlin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Blue_Marlin)_ and her sister ship, the
  _MV Black Marlin_ or larger.

* A Jump-2+ repair ship. This ship could jump in-system with supplies to repair battle or
  other damage. Again for the Navy that won the battle. Again for the purpose of getting
  anything worth saving back to a reasonable repair facility so it could live to fight
  another day.

* Finally, all of this came about because I was thinking about rifts one day and I was
  imagining a 10k ~ 50k dton, dispersed structure, Jump-4+ "rift carrier" whose main reason to be
  was to ferry smaller cargo ships across a rift in space.

It's worth noting that all of these ships would have a variety of support craft. I know that
per discussion some think that wilderness refueling at a Gas Giant is going to be far more
difficult that the rules make it seem. But none of the ships above work without a set of
fuel skimmers.

--
Chris

      __o          "All I was trying to do was get home from work."
    _`\<,_           -Rosa Parks
___(*)/_(*)____.___o____..___..o...________ooO..._____________________
Christopher Sean Hilton                    [chris/at/vindaloo/dot/com]