Assuming that TL15 pre-packaged meals are no better than TL5 pre-packaged meals, yes. That's not an assumption I make. I assume we're talking three-course gourmet meals at TL15. Just press the button, wait for 15 seconds, remove lid and serve.
Hans
Amenities and Perks...
- Thread starter Zutroi
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Hans
How do you know what TL15 pre-packaging techniques are capable of in the way of preserving food? Why shouldn't TL15 pre-packs be as good as fresh food? (And in some cases perhaps even better since it could have been prepared by expert chefs (though that would probably be more expensive than standard TL15 pre-packs)).
Hans
I know folks like to Bag MRE's and there equivalents, but I know a AJ who is in no way a passable Civi Street Cook and they won't let him in the back of house at the Canteen or Mess, but give him a couple of CR5M's or a CR5M and a couple of CR1M's of the right sort and it was Magic, better than a lot of Take-a-ways and some restaurants.
Edit: Heck what He did with CR5M's was better than what his GF a two star Michelin Chef did in there home kitchen (but not a lick on what she did in her work kitchen)
Edit: Heck what He did with CR5M's was better than what his GF a two star Michelin Chef did in there home kitchen (but not a lick on what she did in her work kitchen)
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What Hans said about the TL15 meals can go for lower TLs too. There's a lot of pre-packaged diet meals available these days. They look good, and one company I'm thinking of is making a killing. They couldn't do so well if their food wasn't actually any good.
While fresh fruit and veges are best, a cook can mangle good food if they've poor skills.
In YTU if you want to have pre-prepared meals available on starships to be the same as tins of bully beef added to tins of peas, that's your prerogative. In MTU though by TL10 they've got meals whose nutritious and delicious ratings increase with the money one's willing to pay, available in bulk at A-C starports, and meet all the nutrition requirements one would expect from fresh rats.
shadowcat20
SOC-12
MRE's were not bad, and neither are some frozen meals.
But with cryo tube tech everywhere why not have cryo freezers? Butcher a bunch of critters and throw them in a tube. They come out fresh and ready to cook. Of course in an emergency explain to the captain why his low berth tubes smell like a stockyard.
If low berths use stasis rather than cold you could also store fruit in them.
Not enough low passage customers??..Just pack the tubes full of that great fruit crop and sell the remainder at the other end. Or better yet pack them with live food critters (that may have other issues though).
There is another skill avalible in character gen now...Space cook
All scouts get a rating of 1 on a die roll of 5+ at character generation.
SC1: Short order cook
SC2: Natural cook
SC3: asst Chef
SC4+: Chef
Each rating in this skill will earn you 1K extra credits in pay per month on all shipboard jobs. (The captain finds this skill worth it)
Every passenger ship of 1Kt or larger requires at least a rating 3 cook on board. 5Kt or larger require a rating 4 with 2 rating 2 helpers.
But with cryo tube tech everywhere why not have cryo freezers? Butcher a bunch of critters and throw them in a tube. They come out fresh and ready to cook. Of course in an emergency explain to the captain why his low berth tubes smell like a stockyard.
If low berths use stasis rather than cold you could also store fruit in them.
Not enough low passage customers??..Just pack the tubes full of that great fruit crop and sell the remainder at the other end. Or better yet pack them with live food critters (that may have other issues though).
There is another skill avalible in character gen now...Space cook
All scouts get a rating of 1 on a die roll of 5+ at character generation.
SC1: Short order cook
SC2: Natural cook
SC3: asst Chef
SC4+: Chef
Each rating in this skill will earn you 1K extra credits in pay per month on all shipboard jobs. (The captain finds this skill worth it)
Every passenger ship of 1Kt or larger requires at least a rating 3 cook on board. 5Kt or larger require a rating 4 with 2 rating 2 helpers.
Adding much in the way of costs will bankrupt many tramps. Just so y'know. So, at most, only stewards should be eligible for that bonus, otherwise, well, you've just rendered only 600-1000Td ships viable economically.
I've always assumed knowing a bit about cooking, preparing meals , mixing drinks, and taking care of the basic domestic skills was a part of the steward skill, and part of the duties of a steward on a starship.
I can see the duties being broken up on a larger ship, such as a liner or warship, but on a small ship I sort of viewed the steward slot as a catch all for the domestic needs of aboard a ship,
I can see the duties being broken up on a larger ship, such as a liner or warship, but on a small ship I sort of viewed the steward slot as a catch all for the domestic needs of aboard a ship,
The steward on a small ship would have to get some assistance from other crew though, otherwise it'd be a punishing schedule for them. They'd likely get little rest in the layer at a starport having to clean up after the last lot of passengers and prepare for the next. I could see a bit of burnout happening for some of them.
at 1 steward per 8 HP, and 40 hours per week, that's 5 hours per passenger... about 40 minutes per day per passenger of face time.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
That is one reason why in My Traveller Universe, the ship staffing is based on a 3 watch system, so crew size is larger by a factor of 3 or more, and crew staterooms assume double occupancy, except for Captain, Chief Engineer, and Head Cargomaster.
For those interested, per US Army reference manuals, 100 cubic feet, or about 3 cubic meters, or about one-fifth of a Traveller dTon, will hold 1 long ton, or 2240 pounds of varied food items. Allowing 5 pounds of food per day for one person, that equates to just under 450 man-days per ton of food. Five pounds of food per day is quite a generous ration, and that would include fresh and refrigerated food. The US Army "Class A" ration in World War 2 weighed less than 5 pounds and provided 4050 calories per day per person.
The "Class A" ration included fresh meat, fruits, and vegetables along with fresh milk, and did require refrigeration to be available. The "Class B" ration was the non-perishable equivalent of the "Class A", and included powdered milk, canned evaporated milk, and dehydrated vegetables, along with powdered eggs.
I also have available menus served the US Troops in the Normandy beachhead prior to breakout, for those interested.
With one steward on a free trader at a 40 hour schedule, most of his time is consumed just preparing, serving and cleaning up after meals. There are short-cuts: you can do a continental breakfast, provide buffet meals so he isn't tied up waiting tables, the sort of thing a large liner can't get away with but a tramp has no choice about. There are windows between the meals, but some of that has to be given to his own meal breaks, and if you're planning to make beds and clean rooms, that eats up the remaining time. You relieve the load by having the medic do, "other duties as assigned," when he doesn't actually have patients to serve. Or you put the steward on a week-on, week-off schedule. More likely some combination: have the steward work 8 10's, giving him 6 days off in port and one day in port for ship's needs, and have the medic provide some coverage for socializing and assisting with entertainment.
Unless there's a great deal of automation, the engineer is likely to put in some pretty long hours when in flight as well. The pilot - depends on how you handle that sort of thing when in jump space, but I'd prefer he stay on the bridge and monitor the security systems if he doesn't have anything else to do. Very awkward having no one on the bridge when someone tries a hijack. And with only a pilot and engineer to monitor the ship as a whole, I'd put them on alternating 12's with the pilot handling day shift and the engineer handling nights. They do have the advantage that, since they're mostly monitoring controls, they can find small ways to entertain themselves while still on duty.
That depends - there's no requirement for stewards for less than 120 mids, nor for fewer than huge crews, so it's clearly NOT cooking time.
Which implies that it's more laundry and entertainment services.
Note that for Aslan, it explicitly includes telling stories...
I don't see your logic. I'm discussing a free trader treating high passengers - total crew of 4. When you start talking about huge crews, you're getting into ships large enough to invoke High Guard's rules about a service crew. If a ship is so big that it has its own kitchen staff, then certainly the steward would be free to do other things.
As for mid passengers, it is expressly stated in the rules that they receive no steward support, at least not in a ship small enough to slip beneath High Guard's crew rules. The mid passengers can pull microwaveable Stouffer pot pies out of the stateroom freezer, heat them in the microwave themselves, and eat them in their own disposable containers with plastic sporks and be glad of it. They pay Cr285 less per day, they can't expect to get the good meals.
Nothing in either of those cases implies that the steward is not cooking meals for high-passage passengers, and the meal is probably the most important daily social function across the various human cultures. While there are tricks that will ease the load while maintaining a minimal standard of taste and quality, it still comes down to the free trader's steward spending time before the meal preparing food for 8 people, delivering the food to his passengers in some manner, being available during the meal for any needs that come up, and cleaning up afterward. Even if you assume very high quality microwave products (shudder) in very advanced and sophisticated microwave machines, it will take time to prepare and present them in an acceptable manner.
Of course, some of this is a rather abstract debate. When we talk about free traders and similar small ships, they're like staying at a budget motel. Does that continental breakfast mean the waffle-maker with the batter standing by for me to make my own waffles, along with a selection of yogurts, hard boiled eggs, and so forth, as it is at the typical Best Western, or does it mean just coffee, toast, little packets of jelly and butter, and packages of vending-machine quality cheese danishes, as I found at another place? Are the breaded veal cutlets prepared and cooked by the steward, or did they come pre-cooked and frozen out of a box and get heated in the oven - or the microwave - while the steward is reading his dime novel? Does housekeeping mean fresh towels in your room every morning or is there a sign telling you they're available on request? It's more likely to depend on the attitudes of that captain and the skills of that steward than anything else.
Still, I can't see how having a lounge singer is better than having someone to prepare your meals. What service do you propose to offer that would both require a person and be worth an extra Cr2000 for the trip, if not to offer them a decent quality of meal?
Black Vulmea
SOC-11
Wrt starship cooking, one of the problems I see in this thread is too much Solomani thinking.
IMTU, most starship cuisine comes from the Vilani.
Remember, the Vilani adapted to an environment where raw foods by and large would kill them, so they developed complex food preparation techniques based on fermentation. Once they achieved interstellar flight, they forged an empire of more than 10,000 worlds full of new bacteria and other organisms with which shugili experimented. The Vilani were preparing meals aboard starships for millenia before the Solomani first achieved powered atmospheric flight.
Our terrestrial processes of fermentation would look like Easy-Bake Oven recipes to the Vilani. Their food science involve the timely introduction of bacteria to cook food biochemically, often starting before it's even brought aboard the starship; additional bacteria may be added and heat or pressure applied to accelerate reactions immediately prior to service, along with spices and fresh garnishes.
For us, dishes like kimchi or casu marzu may be an acquired taste, but to the Vilani they are primitive attempts at the diverse, flavorful cuisine they enjoy and, more importantly, that they've spread through Charted Space for thousands of years.
IMTU, most starship cuisine comes from the Vilani.
Remember, the Vilani adapted to an environment where raw foods by and large would kill them, so they developed complex food preparation techniques based on fermentation. Once they achieved interstellar flight, they forged an empire of more than 10,000 worlds full of new bacteria and other organisms with which shugili experimented. The Vilani were preparing meals aboard starships for millenia before the Solomani first achieved powered atmospheric flight.
Our terrestrial processes of fermentation would look like Easy-Bake Oven recipes to the Vilani. Their food science involve the timely introduction of bacteria to cook food biochemically, often starting before it's even brought aboard the starship; additional bacteria may be added and heat or pressure applied to accelerate reactions immediately prior to service, along with spices and fresh garnishes.
For us, dishes like kimchi or casu marzu may be an acquired taste, but to the Vilani they are primitive attempts at the diverse, flavorful cuisine they enjoy and, more importantly, that they've spread through Charted Space for thousands of years.
That's a punishing schedule, which was why I lean in the direction of a lot of pre-prepared meals to cut down on cooking time (this can be done quickly, but takes focus: cooking for a family of 6 after getting home from work, while concurrently bathing kids and supervising homework, is not for the faint of heart and I wouldn't want to do it nowdays)
I also see a lot of small robotic assistance WRT cleaning, so that the steward does a lot of schedule checking and inspection of outcomes.
That is excellent and rich colour! Thanks very much, I'm using this tomorrow night in our game!!
The steward skill is the same skill on small ships and large. The same rates apply to both.
So... it can't be food prep time eating most of their time, otherwise, there would be a much steeper requirement for stewards based upon total crew, and stewards would have a much higher need for mids as well. (in MGT, perhaps, one can argue it's food prep, but MGT is way the F* out there in terms of steward requirements - about 5x as many as any other edition. 1 per 2 HP, and one per 10 MP...)
The steward ratio is (in CT, MT, TNE, T4): 1 per 8 HP and Command Crew, 1 per 120 MP and other Crew.
In T5, it's specialties include executive assistant and servant... but not cook. Chef is a separate skill from Steward.
So, it's not about cooking. (Tho' it probably includes fetching the right autochef prepared meals.)
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
Okay, so in T5 it's not about cooking. In CT, I've got a pilot, an engineer, a medic and a steward, and I've got 8 mouths to feed for 7 days with that staff. Someone's gotta do it, even if we assume microwaves and very high quality Stouffer's meals, and it still takes time to do, and it still needs to be served in some fashion to people who payed Cr2000 more to be treated better than the rest. So with due respect, I have to either disagree or put the medic to work microwaving meals. Even if the man is little more than a highly paid flight attendant, he's a very busy highly paid flight attendant.
Of course, I could use a bot in the kitchen, but then I get the, "why there are no bots," debate.
Maybe on them nice big liners the steward can play butler, but until such time as the rules add another crew or the captain buys a bot, on a small ship he's cook/waiter/dishwasher/housekeeper and anything else the captain wants him to be. Well, anything legal, anyway. The man gets paid more than the nurse and almost as much as the engineer for a job with few technical skills - now he knows why. :devil:
