Food, Docking Fees, Fuel and Maintenance
Here are some ideas that I have come up with for the spacedock system. It is something that is for a series that we are working on right now.
Food, Docking Fees, Fuel and Maintenance
I generated the following for the use in a non Starfleet (a typical Star Trek) adventure. Something like Andromeda, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly or even Farscape where you have to buy fuel for your ship and you can’t just stop by a Starbase and have them fix you ship. A Star Trek Voyager and Enterprise adventure could benefit from these notes.
The idea is a Starship that was once a part of something like the Federation but all has gone and they now have to earn money to survive in the galaxy. All the details haven’t been quite worked out yet but this is the notes that I have worked up so far.
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Food
Even if the ship had replicators the crew may want to supplement their diet with real food to take the strain off the ships Replicator and Fabrication systems. Food cost two credits per number of life forms on the ship per month of food stores on the ships. So a ship with 1012 persons onboard would spend over six thousand credits for a three months supply of food. This can be used a refilling of the materials supplies of the ships replicator supplies as well as one credit per ten crew multiplied by the years of consumables that the ship is in need.
Fuel
Using the method of figuring the fuel as running ten percent above the average use of the ships systems for the duration of the ships fuel is the amount of the power needed on average and giving it a little by rounding up. Then to determine the fuel I divide it by one hundred and that is the fuel. One point of fuel equals one hundred power regardless of what it is being used in such as an auxiliary reactor can run off a single fuel point for twenty rounds. A little math is needed here. I figured out once that the buzzard collectors can collect one percent of fuel over the year of travel. So a have allowed one point of fuel collected this way per day per size of the ship so a starship that is size five can have an additional five fuel per day.
The Fuel costs 5 credits per fuel point so a starship that requires several hundred points of fuel can easily pay up wards of three thousand five hundred credits or more. This price can be tweaked by the dealer and whether or not there is a shortage in the area. The bartering will take a roll of a ten sided dice and adding five and converting it to a decimal form, Giving a price to half off or costing as much as half as much more. Then additions that can be made is it a fairly well used area - .1 or an out of the way place + .1 can be added as such to the GM’s whim.
As an example a galaxy class just running around the galaxy would use 170 power per round and with the power increase the ship would have 36 million fuel points for a three years in storage. This would mean that the Galaxy Class would need 180 million credits to fully refuel the ship.
Landing and Docking Fees
Like the fueling landing fees are variable. The base fee that we use is one credit per ships size for landing and five credits per size for docking to a station and then the cost of additional power supplied to the ship during its time docked per day.
Longer duration storage is figured in months so a ship stored for thirty days would cost one credit per size per day so a size five ship would cost the owner one hundred fifty credits and the ship would be stored in full shut down mode no power needed to keep the ship operational. Most ships would have all fuel drained off as it could be dangerous to have a fueled ship sitting around with fuel in its tanks.
Maintenance
Sooner or later every ship is going to need to have something replace, repaired or just given an overhaul.
An overhaul to the ships entire system cost equals the SU’s of the system and requires thirty minutes per SU and two credit per hour for the ground crews time.
As an example a Galaxy class has 133 SU’s for its Class 12/R Warp core and the overhaul would take sixty-six and a half hours costing the ship 266 credit to perform the overhaul. This would also include any repairs that would need to be done.
Replacement would take a quarter of the SU’s of the system to remove and then one hour per the new system that is being place in. At a cost of ten credits per SU of the new system and five per hour to replace the system.
Battle damage costs fifteen credits per SU and ten per time at twenty minutes. This can be costly for large ships that are badly damaged.
Cargo
The ship can carry cargo to a new destination generating funds for the above amounts that are needed for the above. I figure the an average cargo of twenty-five credits per ten cubic meters or whatever the crew barters out. A galaxy class with 330,000 cubic meters of cargo area can generate 825,000 credits but figure that would be cut down by the need to use the stores for other needs of its own crew.
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I know that this makes a lot more bookkeeping but once there is someone who can manage it and gets the hang of it can use it can use it well enough. The ships fuel is the important part of it. This can give the crew time to adventure at a location. I use the Galaxy class as I use the Galaxy class a regular example for all of my systems changes unless the ship would be in appropriate.
I don’t know if your group wants to use these expanded notes they can be useful for such an adventure as Voyager or Enterprise where the Federation is not there. For Voyager I would have given it a ship that was new ninety percent of its total fuel capacity. Enterprise I would work it the same as the Voyager. Ships that are older and have been in service I would take two ten sided dice and roll them to determine the percentage of the fuel that the ship requires.
Have a good day. Let me know what you think.