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Thread: Food, Docking Fees, Fuel and Maintenance

  1. #1

    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.

  2. #2
    Join Date
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    Post Costs of Maintenance

    (Apologies for necromancy)

    Interesting ideas, so I ran some numbers for 1 year worth of supply:
    Ferengi D'Kora (Size 7, 2039 SU used):
    Food (C+P = 750): 2 * 12 * 750 = 18,000 Credits

    Fuel (Main & 1 Backup SIF = 11 Power, Environmental Systems: 50 Power, WF 6 Cruise = 30 Power, Operations Systems: 46 Power = 137 Power per round for basic operations.
    1 round = 5 seconds. 1 year = 365 days = 31,356,000 seconds = 6,307,200 rounds
    137 Power/rnd * 6,307,200 rounds = 864,086,400 Power per year -> 8,640,864 Fuel points needed (100 Power per Fuel point)
    Size 7 = 2,555 Fuel gathered per day via Bussard collectors
    Net = 8,638,309 Fuel points needed, at a cost of 43,191,545 Credits per year (5 credits per Fuel point)
    (This is assuming that the ship travels at Cruise the entire year due to it being a freighter and needing to move to make money. Note that each pt of power used per round will cost 315,360 credits per year)

    Docking Fees: 35 Credits (per day?) Power cost is already handled via Fuel costs above, but would be 118,333 credits (no warp drive is countered by needing to use transporters)

    Annual overhaul: 2039 SUs
    Cost: 2039 Credits (equal to # of SUs)
    Time: 1019.5 hours (half of SUs)
    aka ~42.5 days (6 weeks)
    Ground Crew fee: 2039 Credits (2 credits per hour)
    Total: 4078 Credits

    Full Replacement (much rarer):
    Removal (SU/4): 509.75 hrs (3 weeks)
    Installation: 2039 hrs (12 weeks)
    Cost: 20,390 Credits
    Crew fee: 10,195 Credits

    Cargo capacity: 400,000 m^3
    Assume all of it is used for profitable cargo
    25 credits/10 m^3 = 2.5 credits/m^3
    Cargo shipping income: 1 million credits

    Net result: as long as the Ferengi D'Kora makes 44 trips per year, it can turn a profit (The first 43 trips and part of the 44th are just to pay for its fuel. The food costs and annual overhaul fee are less than 23,000 credits, vs fuel being over 43 million credits)

    With 6 weeks needed per year for annual overhaul, that means ~1 trip per week.

    At Cruise WF 6 (~400c), that means it an travel at most 7.67 light years per trip (assuming it takes zero time at each destination to drop off and pick up cargo). It also has no room for internal spare parts, which will also reduce the cargo fraction, meaning it cannot even reach 7.67 light years per trip. Given such short distance options, this vessel is often used for non-legal transportation.

    If the D'Kora uses its short trips to go at its Sustainable speed (warp 8.2) instead of its Standard speed (WF 5), that means it can travel ~1000c, meaning it can handle trips of up to ~19 light-years.



    Comparing that to the Federation Deneva, we see the following:
    Federation Deneva (Size 5, 1623 SU used)
    Food (C+P = 1190): 2 * 12 * 1190 = 28,560 Credits

    Fuel (Main & 1 Backup SIF = 9 Power, Environmental Systems: 46 Power, WF 5 Cruise = 25 Power, Operations Systems: 41 Power = 121 Power per round for basic operations.
    1 round = 5 seconds. 1 year = 365 days = 31,356,000 seconds = 6,307,200 rounds
    121 Power/rnd * 6,307,200 rounds = 763,171,200 Power per year -> 7,631,712 Fuel points needed (100 Power per Fuel point)
    Size 5 = 1,825 Fuel gathered per day via Bussard collectors
    Net = 7,629,887 Fuel points needed, at a cost of 38,149,435 Credits per year (5 credits per Fuel point)
    (This is assuming that the ship travels at Cruise the entire year due to it being a freighter and needing to move to make money. Note that each pt of power used per round will cost 315,360 credits per year)

    Docking Fees: 25 Credits (per day) Power cost is already handled via Fuel costs above, but would be 104,519 credits (no warp drive is countered by needing to use transporters)


    Annual overhaul: 1623 SUs
    Cost: 1623 Credits (equal to # of SUs)
    Time: 811.5 hours (half of SUs)
    aka ~34 days (5 weeks)
    Ground Crew fee: 1623 Credits (2 credits per hour)
    Total: 3246 Credits

    Full Replacement (much rarer):
    Removal (SU/4): 405.75 hrs (2.5 weeks)
    Installation: 1623 hrs (10 weeks)
    Cost: 16,230 Credits (10 Credits/SU)
    Crew fee: 8,115 Credits

    Cargo capacity: 600,000 m^3 * 6 external pods = 3.6 million m^3 (Deneva's internal 200,000 m^3 is for its own supplies)
    Assume all of it is used for profitable cargo
    25 credits/10 m^3 = 2.5 credits/m^3
    Cargo shipping income: 9 million credits

    Net result: as long as the Deneva makes 5 trips per year, it can turn a profit (The first 4 trips and part of the 5th are just to pay for its fuel. The food costs and annual overhaul fee are less than 32,000 credits, vs fuel being just over 38 million credits)

    With 5 weeks needed per year for annual overhaul, that means 47 weeks are available, for ~9 weeks per trip.

    At Cruise WF 5 (~214c), that means it an travel at most ~37 light years per trip (assuming it takes zero time at each destination to drop off and pick up cargo). It also has room for internal spare parts


    Net result: Fuel costs are the biggest issue and large internal cargo bays are great. To make the situation less lopsided, the below numbers are for if the fuel costs were cut to 1 credit per fuel point, and the income is reduced to 1 credit per cubic meter of commercial cargo space.
    For the Ferengi D'kora, this changes fuel costs to 8,638,309 credits, income for its cargo holds to 400,000 credits, needing 22 trips per year to pay for its fuel.
    For the Federation Deneva, this changes fuel costs to 7,629,887 credits, income for its cargo holds to 3,600,000 credits, needing 3 trips per year to pay for its fuel.


    Recommend: guidelines on duration for using Standard vs Sustained speeds. For example, if Sustained speeds had higher power demands, that would encourage people to prefer to use Standard speeds instead. However, doubling the fuel demands for Sustained speeds would only increase fuel costs by ~25% (since max speed only needs 50 power, but you have to provide power to lots of other stuff on board)
    Last edited by Coalition; 07-05-2019 at 04:42 AM.

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