Vagueness generally works for star Trek. Especially NuTrek which has incredibly fast warp drives when you think about how quickly Enterprise's fleet made it to Vulcan.
Ok, the ship needs to make long unsupported patrols, cruising from one star to the next and putting loads on its engines the whole time. I see two possibilities for this in terms of maintenance. They can either have a large store of spare parts and significant space for replicators and machine tools or they can stand down at the end of a patrol, give he crew time with their families and turn the ship over to a dockyard who work it over. The first one presents a problem-it requires people or robots to operate the machines and conduct repairs. The matching problem of the other method is that if something breaks while you're out there and you can't fix it, which is likely, you'll need to limp back to a spacedock or call Starfleet for a tow. If they can provide one.
Since you've stated that you want a small crew, it's the second option for you! This also helps keep the costs down when building the ship, although it might make it a pain to have to head home when a circuit breaker on C deck gets stuck and you can't bypass it because there's no way to access the part outside a ...what the hell do you call a drydock for a spaceship anyways?
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Date: 2009-10-30 05:28 pm (UTC)Ok, the ship needs to make long unsupported patrols, cruising from one star to the next and putting loads on its engines the whole time. I see two possibilities for this in terms of maintenance. They can either have a large store of spare parts and significant space for replicators and machine tools or they can stand down at the end of a patrol, give he crew time with their families and turn the ship over to a dockyard who work it over. The first one presents a problem-it requires people or robots to operate the machines and conduct repairs. The matching problem of the other method is that if something breaks while you're out there and you can't fix it, which is likely, you'll need to limp back to a spacedock or call Starfleet for a tow. If they can provide one.
Since you've stated that you want a small crew, it's the second option for you! This also helps keep the costs down when building the ship, although it might make it a pain to have to head home when a circuit breaker on C deck gets stuck and you can't bypass it because there's no way to access the part outside a ...what the hell do you call a drydock for a spaceship anyways?