Things I learned from the Repair/Maintenance/Salvage section

[Lagrange]

• All tech teams and medics are elite.  It requires 280 hours of training to create an elite team. Given the value of these teams, no sane military would field an incompletely trained team.
• Warships and Space Stations cannot leave the hanger.  They require 24 or 19 hours of maintenance, with the crew able to put in 8 hours of time.  The only way to maintain these things is via a naval repair bay (1/2 time) with crews working overtime.  This is so extreme that the technology is basically not viable.
• Clan crewed units are hanger queens.  A clan dropship with Tech level F (+3 TN), Quality F(-2 TN), Elite crew maintaining individual components (-1 TN) has a target number of 5 implying that it inevitably degrades quality rating in a cascading failure towards salvage and destruction.... unless the unit is refit.
• Clan Experimental items are hangar queens.  3 (-2 TN) elite tech crews maintaining Tech Level F(+3 TN) Quality F(-2 TN) Experimental (+2 TN) individual items (-1 TN) inevitably have a cascading faiure.
• Era modifiers are ruinous.  A +1 era modifier drops crew maintained units to Tech level D.  A +2 modifier makes crew maintained units nonviable.  With a +3 modifier, you can only maintain Tech level D using 3 elite tech teams.
• Using multiple tech teams is easy.  Unit maintenance times are at most 1.5 hours, so with a tech team/unit, 3 units can share tech teams to accomplish all needed maintenance in 4.5 hours.  Of course, this breaks down when substantial repairs are required.
• Clan Tech sweat shops work.  An elite inner sphere tech team can fabricate (TN +2) tech level C (TN +0) clan tech items (TN+2).  Thus inner sphere units can freely source clan-tech mech mortars (Tech Level B) at a cost of x24 as well as (heavy) machine guns and flamers at a cost of x36.  Costs here take into account the probability of fabrication failure.
• Experimental tech sweat shops work.  Just as above.  Options include Artillery Cannons, Battlemech melee weapons, Chaff Pods, Reinforced Naval Repair Bays, Rifle Cannons, Superchargers, and Battlemech or VTOL Turrets.

[Acolyte]

You do realize than there's probably more than one tech crew on a dropship/warship/space station, right? That they can split the maintenance time between them? That you can usually take the Extra Time and get a bonus of up to +3?

Your sweat shop ideas have merit, though....

   - Shane

[Khymerion]

I like this analysis.   It is results like this that allow for easier justification for house rules but it also is a nice stick to help keep people in line.

Thank you.

[jh316]

You do realize than there's probably more than one tech crew on a dropship/warship/space station, right? That they can split the maintenance time between them? That you can usually take the Extra Time and get a bonus of up to +3?

Your sweat shop ideas have merit, though....

   - Shane

Well, in the example on page 169, it seems to suggest that a Fox-class corvette's crew only provides 8 hours of maintenance time.

[Dreyf]

I don't see the problem.  The 19 or 24 hours is how long the required maintenance checks take which are between games in a campaign.  They are not a daily requirement.

[jh316]

I don't see the problem.  The 19 or 24 hours is how long the required maintenance checks take which are between games in a campaign.  They are not a daily requirement.

Well hey, should be easy then. Warships rarely get into an actual fight, depending on the era that might mean decades between maintenance checks. Should be a breeze.

[Lagrange]

You do realize than there's probably more than one tech crew on a dropship/warship/space station, right?

I don't see any evidence for this in the rules.  Apparently, the entire crew is needed, and if you overprovision a crew the needed man-hours of maintenance grow linearly.

That you can usually take the Extra Time and get a bonus of up to +3?

The table is ambiguous about whether you can take extra time for maintenance or not, but the rules are not.

To increase the potential for a successful repair/replacement, a player may spend extra time..

In particular, there is no mention that this is valid for maintenance.

The 19 or 24 hours is how long the required maintenance checks take which are between games in a campaign.  They are not a daily requirement.

The rules disagree here.  The Time section says:

Unless agreed otherwise... players have eight hours between each scenario during which they can carry out maintenance and repairs.

and reiterates

If players are tracking time across days... then each day provides eight hours of productive work.   This is referred to as the Maintenance/Repair cycle.

This says the same thing twice: you have 8 hours for maintenance.

[Acolyte]

Actually, Dreyf is correct. You have 8 hour per day, but maintenance only needs to be done once after every scenario. In terms of extra time, you can indeed use this for Maintenance.

Try looking things up in the rules questions forum for StratOps.

   - Shane

[Lagrange]

Huh, interesting.  I carefully read the errata, but not the Q&A.  Here are the relevant bits of Q&A.

There is as much time as desired between scenarios to do maintenance/repair:
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=42892.0
and extra time rules apply to maintenance.

You have only 8 hours for maintenance+repair between scenarios:
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=37507.0
"Warships would just need 3 days of maintenance after each Scenario..."?  If you have 8 hours how can you use 3 days?

8 hours of maintenance are needed each week for each unit
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=24918.0
(but the proposed errata has not made it in yet)

I'm not sure what to make of this.  The rules seem reasonably clear except odd in that they make some units fall apart and are a bit hard on high tech levels.  The Q&A makes maintenance much easier except I can't parse the second Q&A.   Seems to contradict itself? 

[Acolyte]

I think that the Q&A stuff isn't finalized. I think - but I'm not sure - that they are trying to tie it in to StratOps Companion and make it fit. At that point we'll probably get some errata that's actually definitive. Until then I'm handwaving it. :-\

   - Shane

[theagent]

1. That may be more of a personal choice. you can perform maintenance with Geen teams, or we wouldn't have rules for them; they will just be limited in what they can work on & where they can work. Also, I see rules that allow tech teams to increase their experience rating by the number of scenarios they survive (StratOps p. 187), but nothing saying that you can spend 2 weeks to turn Green tech teams into Elites.

2.  Completely wrong.  Unless the errata has changed it, maintenance happens in between scenarios in a campaign (StratOps p. 169).  Now, you may run into time factors that limit how much time you can devote to maintenance vs. repairing battle damage, but we have modifiers for that. We even have a TN for when the unit is unattended (i.e. hoping it doesn't break while you're busy somewhere else), or for example when the crews of 2 WarShips team up to fix ship A (heavily damaged) & roll the dice on the undamaged one.  Also, naval repair facilities reduce the TN, not the time factor (StratOps p. 172).

3.  You have some really high expectations for success.  A TN of 5+ on a 2D6 is really good (83.33% chance of success), & unless the unit in question is at Quality Ratng C or lower you only drop a Quality level if you roll a 2 (MoF 3)...& even then, once you hit Quality Rating D even a failure doesn't hurt you.

4.  As with #3, the actual TN of 7+ is still pretty good (58.33%) given that it's experimental tech.

5.  That's a worst-case scenario, & even then only applies a) during the 3rd Succession War, & b) only to some factions (i.e. Capellans, mercs, etc.).  At wors, it's the difference between a Green team working on it vs. an Elite team.

6.  I wouldn't say 'easy'.  If you have the time, you get to improve your chances of successful work, but if you lack the time then the unattended units can really suffer. That doesn't work for the big stuff, though (DropShips, WarShips, Space Stations, JumpShips, Latge Naval SVs, & Mobile Structueres); they can share crews to provide extra time, but only if physically docked (& even then their available time is pro-rated).

7.  TN is spot-on, but at 9+ that's a high failure rate (27.78% chance of success).  At x10 cost & 20 hours per attempt per item, that gets to be awfully expensive instead of just buying them from a Clan Sea Fox (née Diamond Shark) merchant (minimum of 320k for a Clan Mech Mortar 4, more if your roll fails).  Not the best method for setting up a cottage industry for manufacturing Clan parts, but good for in-field replacements.

8.  See #7.

[Jayof9s]

-Snip-

I'm not saying everything Lagrange said is true (no idea where the tech training portion comes from) but most of it is actually fairly accurate to trying to apply the maintenance rules, as written, in actual practice. Especially if you use the more in-depth maintenance rules that go by individual parts. The standard maintenance rules aren't nearly as unforgiving but still will result in quickly dropping quality.

My experience is that you need some heavy tweaking of the rules to make them usable. You can play around with them in MekHQ if you're curious to see how they work out in practice vs. in theory. (However, it only supports the 'by individual parts' method.)

[theagent]

At least it's not the old "Maintenance Points needed = Combat Value of the unit" and "Maintenance Points produced depend on the individual levels & numbers of your chief engineer/engineers/engineering assistants"...

[Daryk]

If you're using A Time of War, I think the maintenance points produced should depend on the individual skill levels and numbers of the techs in the unit.  The simplified case of when you're not using AToW should yield the same number of points as an "average" team of whatever experience level (e.g., a "Regular" team could be 1 tech with Level 4 in the relevant tech skill(s), with 6 AsTechs with Level 1).

[idea weenie]

At least it's not the old "Maintenance Points needed = Combat Value of the unit" and "Maintenance Points produced depend on the individual levels & numbers of your chief engineer/engineers/engineering assistants"...

Maintenance points should be proportional to the unit mass (times a multiplier), but if your techs don't have the skill to maintain Star League weaponry, it steadily decays into 3025 era weaponry.  If you skip that maintenance, you subtract 1 from the ranges and damage until it is effectively worthless.

I.e. a Star League ER Medium laser does 5 damage, and has ranges of 4/8/12 (from here)
So after 1 month with only 3025 maintenance capability, the weapon could be D 4, 4/8/12, or D: 5, 3/8/12, or D: 5, 4/7/12, or D: 5, 4/8/11.  Repeat often enough and soon the players will discard it in favor of a new weapon (or get their techs trained).

[theagent]

If you're using A Time of War, I think the maintenance points produced should depend on the individual skill levels and numbers of the techs in the unit.  The simplified case of when you're not using AToW should yield the same number of points as an "average" team of whatever experience level (e.g., a "Regular" team could be 1 tech with Level 4 in the relevant tech skill(s), with 6 AsTechs with Level 1).

The main problem with using the old Maintenance Points system is that not only did your engineers' skill level affect how many MP you had available, it also affected how long repairs would take (a level 1 engineer with a full team needed double the time to complete the repairs as a level 2, more if the team was short). Plus, the listed crew sizes in D&S not only don't match the TRO 3057 entries, but don't match the current construction rules (Star Lords have 26, 30, or 20, for example).  And we have no entries for how many engineers the WarShips have.

This is definitely an area where StratOps has helped make things more uniform & easier to work out.  Now, if only I could figure out why BMR made repair times faster (repair times for gyros, sensors & life support were cut in half, engine critical repairs were cut in thirds), but replacement times were left unchanged (?!?).  For the real-world equivalent, which is easier:  pulling & replacing a complete engine, or rebuilding the engine to OEM specs while it's still connected to everything under the hood?

[jh316]

The main problem with using the old Maintenance Points system is that not only did your engineers' skill level affect how many MP you had available, it also affected how long repairs would take (a level 1 engineer with a full team needed double the time to complete the repairs as a level 2, more if the team was short). Plus, the listed crew sizes in D&S not only don't match the TRO 3057 entries, but don't match the current construction rules (Star Lords have 26, 30, or 20, for example).  And we have no entries for how many engineers the WarShips have.

This is definitely an area where StratOps has helped make things more uniform & easier to work out.  Now, if only I could figure out why BMR made repair times faster (repair times for gyros, sensors & life support were cut in half, engine critical repairs were cut in thirds), but replacement times were left unchanged (?!?).  For the real-world equivalent, which is easier:  pulling & replacing a complete engine, or rebuilding the engine to OEM specs while it's still connected to everything under the hood?

Doing a rebuild of an engine wouldn't be a repair, that would be a refit.

[Lagrange]

...

I gave specific quotes in the followup here http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=49502.msg1144989#msg1144989 .  To convince me that the StratOps rules say otherwise, you'll need to be similarly specific.   (Yes, I understand that there is some contradictory Q&A now http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=49502.msg1145341#msg1145341)

W.r.t. time to train you just need to connect the dots: 8 hours per maintenance/repair cycle + one m/r per scenario + the number of scenarios needed to advance a level. 

[JenniferinaMAD]

Are you sure the 8 hour cycle per battle is a strict schedule?

It sounds to me more as an assurance that there will be at least a full cycle between scenarios unless otherwise stated by the GM. It is entirely feasible, and probably likely, that there will be far more time between scenarios, just that it should be assumed that it will be at least 8 hours.

So that training time you calculated would be the absolute minimum needed assuming a round the clock constant battle rotation for the entire time.

[FedComGirl]

Concerning time

Unless agreed otherwise... players have eight hours between each scenario during which they can carry out maintenance and repairs.

To me that reads that the amount of time for maintenance and repairs between scenarios is up to the players to decide. There could be more time or there could be less. The 8 hour rule exists in case the players can't agree.

[JenniferinaMAD]

Concerning time
To me that reads that the amount of time for maintenance and repairs between scenarios is up to the players to decide. There could be more time or there could be less. The 8 hour rule exists in case the players can't agree.

That still doesn't mean 8 hours is the only time that passes. People need to sleep, eat and so forth. And it doesn't sound like it includes uneventful deployments like routine patrols, false alarms or just plain holding positions for long times against attacks that don't materialise or even just travel times to and from the mission site.

As a rough guess, I'd say 8 hours of repair time means a full day has passed on average.

[FedComGirl]

As far as I can tell 8 hours can be what you and your group agree too. To me that's as much time as my techs will have to do as many repairs and reloading as possible unless other events (player agreement) prevail.

[JenniferinaMAD]

But if you daisy chain scenario-8 hour repairs-scenario-8 hour repairs-scenario-8 hour repairs...you've basically not let your tech crews have more than a few minutes rest all day.
When do they sleep?

When the rules say 8 hours of repairs are available, that basically means a work day passes.
 

[FedComGirl]

But if you daisy chain scenario-8 hour repairs-scenario-8 hour repairs-scenario-8 hour repairs...you've basically not let your tech crews have more than a few minutes rest all day.
When do they sleep?

When the rules say 8 hours of repairs are available, that basically means a work day passes.

When they're not on duty. They're sleeping while the force is out patrolling or fighting or while a different shift is working. It's not like they're working 24/7 unless they're forced too. And if they're forced to work 24/7 lack of sleep is probably the least of their worries.

[JenniferinaMAD]

But if you assume that '8 hours for maintenance' means '8 hours pass and no more', when are they not on duty?

[Iracundus]

The main problem with using the old Maintenance Points system is that not only did your engineers' skill level affect how many MP you had available, it also affected how long repairs would take (a level 1 engineer with a full team needed double the time to complete the repairs as a level 2, more if the team was short).

Why is this problem?  Isn't that the whole point of having different skill levels?  The Green teams take longer and do not generate as much effective maintenance because they are inexperienced.  They are referring to the manuals and doing everything step by step by the book, taking longer, or having to correct mistakes due to their inexperience. 

[FedComGirl]

But if you assume that '8 hours for maintenance' means '8 hours pass and no more', when are they not on duty?

When they're not maintaining the units. As in during the scenario. Unless that is the scenario. Otherwise they go to work when the troops get back.

[JenniferinaMAD]

Then how long is a scenario?

That was exactly my point: simply multiplying 8 hours by the number of scenarios required to reach elite level isn't enough to get the 'training time' required. In general, people spend as much time asleep as working at full capacity during each day with the remained spent maintaining their own bodies and sanities.

[FedComGirl]

Then how long is a scenario?

That was exactly my point: simply multiplying 8 hours by the number of scenarios required to reach elite level isn't enough to get the 'training time' required. In general, people spend as much time asleep as working at full capacity during each day with the remained spent maintaining their own bodies and sanities.

Scenarios can vary in time. They could be a half hour they could be a few days or more. While the scenarios are going on the techs aren't doing anything but polishing their tools, and restocking their supplies. Unless of course you want to deploy them in the field to repair someone. Otherwise they don't get really busy until the scenario is over. Then they have 8 hours, unless otherwise agreed upon, to complete any repairs and rearming.

As for training and increasing in skill level, that takes time. Eight scenarios that take place in a week time span may not be enough time. Eight scenarios that take place over a year could be.

[JenniferinaMAD]

Which is exactly what I was arguing against the below statement:

W.r.t. time to train you just need to connect the dots: 8 hours per maintenance/repair cycle + one m/r per scenario + the number of scenarios needed to advance a level.

That formula will, as I read it, at best lead to a third of the time needed to advance to the desired experience level (as most people work 8 hours out of every 24), assuming a scenario occurs every day.