Quote:
Originally Posted by RogerBW
I might be persuaded to allow an engineer who put in extra time, beyond the basic maintenance hours, and made some good rolls, to make gradual improvements to a ship's systems; either this would cost a lot in spare parts, or it would end up giving the ship a unique familiarity category such that any other tech working on her would take penalties. Maybe both.
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If enough tweaks are applied to the stock design it starts getting really confusing. Even if the engineer making the tweaks carefully documents the changes (I am an engineer and we almost never ever do this unless contractually/supervisorally obligated) then the guts of the major systems are going to be a patchwork mess. What you gain in efficiency you will probably lose in reliability.
Easiest way to improve a ship is full tear-down and replacement of the engines. You can emulate this by allowing installation of a higher TL engine which improves the mps per ton of fuel carried. You can say the cheap ship has a lower TL engine than baseline so it burns more fuel. The PCs could then spend bags of cash having the old engines torn out and replaced with newer engines. If the replaces are brand new then their costs will probably approach the purchase price of a whole other cheap ship. :)