Repairing the Ship - a Skill Challenge

So, in tonight's game, the party find themselves with a damaged airship that they have had to set down for repairs. There are some repairs that they will need to do before they can proceed, and others that they can perform or not as they wish. They of course have various resources available to them to allow them to perform these repairs.

Breaking down the repairs that are required, then, there are four broad areas of the ship that are damaged:

• Four sections of the hull were damaged by dragon-breath. Each of these will require 10 'repair points' of work; supplies for doing this are available on the ship.
• One of the two ballistae was destroyed by the a dragon. The ship has a spare; this will require 10 RP of work to install.
• Additionally, the Lightning Thrower was damaged in the attack. This can be repaired, but only by using 2,000gp worth of Mondo's Artificer supplies (that is, party funds). It will require 20 RP of work, which must be supplied by either Mondo or Avon; other characters cannot help.
• The ship's elemental ring was damaged badly in the attack; the ship cannot proceed until this is repaired, at a cost of 30 RP of work.

The ship's crew and complement of the Cerulean Swan is as follows:

• Thirty six crewmen, two of whom are too badly wounded to work. This includes Marion, Cogs, and so on. This gives 3d10 + 1d4 points of available effort.
• Forty mercenaries, led by Axman Gerriol. If used for repair work, they will contribute 2d10 points of available effort.
• Fifteen rogues, led by Buckley. If used for repair work, they will contribute 1d8 points of available effort.
• Avon, Garret, Jag, Mondo, and (maybe) Vixen. The effort they apply varies with the character and the area they repair. For hull or ballista repairs, Mondo provides 1d10 effort, and everyone else 1d4. For Lightning Thrower repairs, Avon provides 1d6 and Mondo 1d10. And for Elemental Ring repairs, Avon is 1d6, Mondo 1d10, and everyone else 1d4.

Broadly speaking, the way it will work is that in every 4-hour watch, the players get to assign the various groups to various tasks. At the end of the watch, assuming no interruptions, roll the dice associated with the groups to tally up the work done (any excess is wasted).

But...

There are a couple of things that the party can do to speed things up:

• If they're willing to use two charges from their wand of cure light wounds, this will get the two injured crewmen up and working again, increasing that 1d4 to a 1d6.
• If they were to release the ship's elemental from its binding ring, that would reduce the cost of repairing that section from 30 to 15 RP. The big problem with that is that they'd then have a huge fire elemental on their hands, which they would need to subdue. If they kill it or it escapes, they wouldn't be able to replace it, so they'd be stuck. But perhaps they could McGuyver up some sort of holding device?

Unfortunately, while they're doing all of that, there are also some other things that should be considered:

• Security. The ship has put down in hostile territory, with dire animals, living spells, drow raiders, giants, orcs, and other nasties about the place. Someone should probably be on watch to keep the workers from getting ambushed. (Note to self: random encounter table!)
• Getting supplies. There are also a couple of local tribes (the neanderthals avoided last week, and the aforementioned orcs) who might be amenable to negotiation. If the party were to get some higher-quality supplies from them, that would help their efforts.
• Treasure! Thos drow from the previous session came from somewhere. The party could always go a-hunting to collect that treasure.
• And then there is the small matter of some ruins...

Ultimately, I expect the process of repairing the ship to take a couple of days of work, and essentially all of tonight's session. But quite what form all of this takes... that's another question entirely.