On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 02:56:27PM +1100, Traveller Mailing List wrote:
>
> ============================================================
>
> The average one ? It doesn't.
>
> Without spares, parts and repair facilities, significant things stop working, the
> crew jump ship and the owner has their ship repossessed. If the bank can find it.
>
> Average merchant ships don't go to the wilds.
>
> Far Traders go to the wilds. Fair traders have skilled crews, who can jury rig
> stuff, with the higher percentage of their cargo space they dedicated to bringing
> spare parts so their crew can jury rig stuff.
>
> Far Traders know the locations of pirate bases, where they can get repairs done off
> the books.
>
> And Far Traders don't get paid Cr 1000 per dalton per jump. Far Traders need far,
> far more than that to get out of bed.
>

Every contemporary ship that I've traveled aboard had a fully crewed machine shop. Assuming
a reasonable cutoff, if something "broke" in the wilds, the machine shop and crew had a
reasonable chance of fixing it. I think this is where Mechanical, Electronics, and some
Computer skills come in. Obviously, the cutoff line doesn't include things like a borked
Jump-Drive after a mis-jump. But all the rules handwave here and there about being able to
repair battle damaged power plants and manuever drives.

--
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]