wastedfly wrote:BobfromSydney wrote:I think it is not only a matter of expense of the bigger, better equipment (Military vs. Commercial).
It seems quite evident that one of the reasons why military ships have crew sizes two orders of magnitude bigger than similar displacement merchant vessels is because there is a lot of maintenance that needs to be done to enable military ships to ride the bleeding edge of acceleration, velocity and hyper bands. I think the main difference in running costs between military and commercial vessels is actually crew costs (assuming you discount the cost of actually fighting).
Dispatch boats have tiny crews. So, NO, bleeding edge hyper generators/navigation do not require large crew size. EoH, Dispatch boat had 8? Hmm bad memory, 12?
Crew size militarily is derived from need for unforeseen circumstances, manning/marines more than a single vessel due to seizure, bureaucratic inertia, and damage control.
Dispatch boats are certainly numerous(and small) enough that they could afford to go into yard hands for relatively quick and more frequent overhauls.
EoH's dispatch boat had half of its crew on shore leave, so probably closer to 30. Interestingly, that's around the same as a Manticoran merchantman, though Solly freighters carry closer to 50.
We don't know the average maintenance cycle for a freighter or a dispatch boat. IIRC, On Basilisk Station provided some details on heavy cruiser refit cycles and there were more regarding SDs during the aftermath of Trevor's Star being seized by White Haven. Not much else, except perhaps the refit of Grayson's first wallers, but I wouldn't consider those as there was battle damage to deal with.