Doubling up crew positions

[abomination]

It strikes me that many of the crew on an average ship would spend a long time twiddling their thumbs.

Gunners for instance. The guns are absolutly redundant while in jump. Are they going to be manned 24/7 while in real space? Or just when leaving jump space & other potentailly risky times

Surely these guys would be the stewards / brokers / purser etc who man the guns as nessecary. After all the passenger would be locked in their cabins during an potential emergency (like the fasten your seatbelts sign on an airliner) so it's not as though the stewards are doing anything during "action stations".

Can anybody think of a reason why these positions can't be doubled up?

 

[robject]

It strikes me that many of the crew on an average ship would spend a long time twiddling their thumbs.

Gunners for instance. The guns are absolutly redundant while in jump. Are they going to be manned 24/7 while in real space? Or just when leaving jump space & other potentailly risky times

Surely these guys would be the stewards / brokers / purser etc who man the guns as nessecary. After all the passenger would be locked in their cabins during an potential emergency (like the fasten your seatbelts sign on an airliner) so it's not as though the stewards are doing anything during "action stations".

Can anybody think of a reason why these positions can't be doubled up?

Nope. Especially aboard a commercial trader.

 

[rust]

Of course they can be doubled up, and almost all versions of Traveller have
rules for this (usually more pay, but a negative DM on the relevant skill roll).

 

[hdan]

I usually categorize jobs by "scene" - you have the "in starport" scene, the "normal ship operations" scene, the "ship combat scene", etc. Each crewman has a role to play in that scene. Some crewmen, like the Pilot, will always be flying the ship, but that same crewman might be the Broker planet-side. The Steward and/or Doctor are logical choices for Gunners, etc.

Most of my crews are small enough that we can just about cover the necessary roles in any given scene.

 

[atpollard]

As an IMTU House Rule, I noticed that the crew required to operate a ship in CT/MT tracks quite well with an ultra-simple 1 crew member per 100 tons of ship.
This would exclude 'fighter pilots' and 'troops' since these 'passengers' are not actually part of the normal ship operation.

Once you know how many warm bodies you need, 'Job Titles' are just semantics - allowing you to focus on the collective crew skills.

 

[Max]

I've often wondered the same thing, do pilots pilot in jumpspace? I allow gunners to double up but arguments can be made the other way. What would gunners (who probably don't work too hard, look at their relative pay) do all the time if they were actually being gunners instead of stewards (off the tiop of my head).

Gunners would not only fire the weapons they also maintain the weapons. They would also practice their skills. Gunners might also be tinkering with the targeting systems to produce what they think are the optimal targeting programs. Reading up on the latest traffic digests to optimize for the targets they are most likely to encounter. Analyzing all the ships' specs they can lay their hands on to determine how best to handle those ships. And they have to familiarize themselves with their own ship so they can function as damage control after the battle (I imagine ship captains hire-and-fire gunners fairly regularly depending on what they think the likelihood of being attacked is).

 

[flykiller]

imtu by law when passengers are aboard then pursers/stewards have no other responsibility or job or assignment other than care and safety of the passengers. of course frontier and small-time operators may stretch this a bit.

also, a civilian gunner position is always described as "gunner/deckhand". they handle cargo, provide groundside security, and have auxiliary skills such as mechanics 1 or electronics 1 to assist engineering with standard maintenance during jump.

"gunner/broker" would be a very strange combination. brokers with any level of skill probably won't want to work routes that require gunners, let alone be gunners themselves. a broker aboard a ship likely is there because he owns the ship.

... many of the crew on an average ship would spend a long time twiddling their thumbs.

yep. puts a crimp in any "Traveller, The Movie!" concept.

there's lots of things to be done in jump, especially if you consider interactive holographics. weightlifting, aerobics, target practice, education, writing, programming, gaming, training, religious practice, hand-to-hand combatives, writing a thesis, you name it. I imagine some worlds would have a tourist bureau that would publish virtual reality simulations of their entire planet. "tour equus, ride the waves!", that sort of thing.

a job that alternated between seven days of mostly free time and three days of frenetic activity, while touring the galaxy, would appeal to many people.

 

[ThunderChilde]

In my current campaign, the (p)Pilot is also the lead Navigator, and the best Sensors operator, oh and a poor gunner. The Engineer is also the best computers operator and Naval Tactician and a poor gunner. The (p)Marine, is security, Boat Pilot and has mechanicand steward as skills, oh and a okay Gunnerand broker. The (p)Medic is ex-marine, so useful as a back stop in a fight, and has Steward. The gunner has weapon skills, and well, the skills of a 5 term Pirate and a fair broker. The 2 Gunners also fit as security and roustabouts.

There are a alotta cross skill categories, and the pc's are persuing cross training further, the Marine is learning Nav and pilot as a back up Astrogator/Pilot for instance. That and the junior fight club so they don't have to default to blades and guns in a bar fight

(p) pc
npc

 

[far-trader]

Can anybody think of a reason why these positions can't be doubled up?

Just one. They are all full time jobs. You may think the Pilot has nothing to do during the week in jump but I think they can be kept busy maintaining their qualifications, studying the latest flight rules, perusing the specifics of the destination and committing it to memory (there's not time to "look something up" in the middle of a crisis), maybe even running some simulated landing/docking routines for the destination.

Ditto every other position. Engineers are busy all the time. Stewards are busy either with passengers aboard, boarding, departing or being found. Medics are either preventing, examining, or treating someone or studying their craft to keep their knowledge current. Gunners as noted aren't always shooting something but they will be maintaining their weapon and skill. And Navigators (Astrogators) in MTU are busy actively monitoring and tweaking the jump through jumpspace (but that's just mtu it seems) while their "downtime" in normal space is typically filled with co-pilot duty or prepping the next jump plot (which imtu, can and is routinely done well in advance of the actual jump, and tweaked leading up to it, jump plots are not like dusting crops boy).

You can always find work to do. If you want to be a layabout you can avoid a lot of it, but your skill will suffer and you might loose that cushy starship job.

But I see all the crew positions as work units so I have no problem with anyone properly skilled to take on two work units. Even going as far as a ship that requires 2 Engineers having the job done by a single sophont with at least Engineering-2 (basically being Chief Engineer skill-1 / Assistant Engineer skill-1) by pulling double shifts.

That's why the multiple position rules impose a penalty, imo. You're basically working two shifts, and have zero personal downtime that isn't sleeping or resting (i.e. no hobbies or personal improvements).

If you have just one work unit/full time position then you will have some downtime to pursue hobbies, shore leave, and such.

 

[ThunderChilde]

Mmmm, at least for the ship that was just stolen out from under the players, between the Engineering, Mechanical droids and repair drones the engineers load was light, Luxuries meant the stewards load was almost non existant, though they kept busy anyway. I do not subscribe to active measures in jump, so the navigator and pilot have plenty of time for study and personal development. Granted, an older, decrepit, spit and bailing wire vessel would require a higher maintenece cycle.

But seriously, if your ship needs 16-24 man hours of maintence every day in transit, you need to find another ship, its just looking for a chance to kill everyone onboard, every transit is a game of russian roulette, and you never know what missing spares are gonna kill the whole crew.

I just don't see thousands of years of of starship engineering and development leading to maintence intensive standard designs.

 

[mbrinkhues]

GT says that the non-engineering crew helps on maintenance within their specific area of expertise. So gunners will likely help maintaining the guns, crews will sweep the decks etc.

Then there will be the watches, at least engineering and bridge should be permanently manned by a qualified person. In GT they have a long list of certificates (Actually skill-sets in the rules) and what they will allow the holder to do. So even while in J-Space the average bridge-bunny will stand watch. After all you never know when you'll leave Jumpspace

IMHO it is quite likely that a civilian ship won't have dedicated gunners but rather someone is cross-trained for that job. Quite a few cargo ships during "Age of Sail" used the same arrangement. No need for a cook when Blackbeard drops by for a visit.

 

[aramis]

TNE crew requirements are pretty much driven by maintenance hours. Doubling up is discouraged, simply due to the massive hours needed

 

[Whipsnade]

I never got to use TNE but the maintenance hours would have controlled manning levels like nothing else in the game. Seeing as my groups nearly always contained either current or ex-military players, we used maintenance rules too, just not at the level TNE did.

As Mike suggested, the gunners in my groups generally had other "primary" jobs. Most of the other crew positions had some secondary job too. I written before that my players never wanted to deal with the steward requirements and regularly "out sourced" the job as soon as they could. Their caution with having NPC crew also meant that their stewards were often the only ones aboard without secondary jobs!

IMTU, at a minimum both the bridge and engineroom must be manned while in normal space and either the bridge or engineroom must be manned while in jump space. Watches were set and a watch bill devised. Maintenance was a regular job for all hands in jump space, because "dirt time" was usually either too harried or used for recreation.

Just how jobs and roles were divvied up depended on how the PCs' skills turned out:

- One of my groups had a doctor-navigator who was also the best computer operator aboard.
- Another had a navigator with a skill level of one and a liaison level of four! He handled a lot of the paperwork and so used the ship's office despite not being the group's "captain".
- As previously noted, the gunners in my groups tended to have other primary jobs. Some were assistant engineers, others "security" types with gun or combat skills.
- There always seemed to be a Rogue or Other in the party. Those PCs rarely have any real ship skills, so they generally helped out with general maintenance while in flight and worked in other "capacities" in port.


Regards,
Bill

 

[lucasdigital]

Some random thoughts on the subject...

1) Space Opera always errs on the side of drama over realism. Or, "never let a machine do something that is more dramatic for a character to do". With this in mind, I'd suggest you don't scrutinize Traveller crewing requirements too closely. Plausible is good.

2) There most definitely would be a lot of potential for thumb-twiddling, especially in jump. Training, drilling and maintenance have always been as much a matter of keeping your crew sharp, even sane than actually fulfilling operational needs. For me this certainly makes doubling up/cross training something you can readily apply to Traveller.

3) I recall the adage that amongst U.S. Submariners, every man is qualified to handle two posts, while in the ol' Soviet Navy there was still the old surface navy doctrine of carrying "deck hands", not trained in any role, and requiring close supervision from a trained crewman for them to have any use. When a U.S. sub got into trouble, even with half its crew out of commission, there'd be a chance the crew could still be putting up a fight. On the Soviet side, forget being combat effective, you'd be dead in the water. Don't quote me on this - half of everything I know about the U.S. military came from Tom Clancy. ;-)

However, I always applied this to Traveller. Ex-Navy tend to be disciplined spacers, more likely to have cross training in a number of posts. Merchant spacers generally crossed trained in either Poker or distilling low grade booze.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Actually even today critical systems (say a nuclear power plant) retain manual emergency read-outs and controls. They have tons of computers running what is basically an expert system, fault tolerance far beyond the "tripple computer" concept of MT/TNE and still there are humans and a few emergency switches and gravity feeds. Just in case.

Computers are useful. But not to be trusted. Just ask Mr. Bowman

 

[Max]

2) There most definitely would be a lot of potential for thumb-twiddling, especially in jump. Training, drilling and maintenance have always been as much a matter of keeping your crew sharp, even sane than actually fulfilling operational needs. For me this certainly makes doubling up/cross training something you can readily apply to Traveller.

I'm not so certain of this. I think it could go either way. I tend to allow some crew doubling but there is nothing which dictates that crew members are just passing time when they are not doing their "job". Not definite but possible either way depending on how your Traveller universe works.

Let's take the gunner as an example, it could be that gunnery targeting instruction is:

when da red dot gets in da green circle youse presses da trigger and da gun go boom​

It could also be that gunnery targeting instruction starts:
laser gunnery is an exercise in probability, trying to put the most firepower into the most likely places a ship will be. lasers are unfortunately limited to the speed of light and by the time the laser has crossed the several light seconds to target, it will have had several seconds to change it's position. this wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for those lazy pilots who dislike the extra effort it takes to fly a ship full of holes and insist on maneuvering to make a poor gunners job more difficult.
Instead of thinking of a ship as having a distinct position think of it as have a sphere of possible positions. The gunners job is to coordinate getting the laser pulse into the portion of the sphere of possible locations at the same time as the target is actually in that location. Information is the key to this, the more information the gunner has about the target the better able the gunner is to determine where in the sphere of possible locations the ship is more likely to be when the laser pulse reaches the sphere.

The view that gunnery is a moron job is as supportable as the idea that gunnery is specialized field requiring advanced training on par with a college degree. Neither is definite. I say go with whatever works for your feel of the game. Don't think merely because a rule doesn't match the "reality" as you view it that it is "wrong" though, the rules are merely abstractions of one "reality". If doubling up on crew positions works with the feel you want and produces a balance of ship crewing you like then do it, if you don't like the feel or it unbalances your game then don't allow it.

When changing rules I do impose a caveat - players are ingenious and will be able to find ways to abuse any change you make - watch the effects at the extremes. Also be aware of the change in balance which from a rule change, it may fit the needs of the game fine or it may not (if 4 players are running a type M then doubling up is almost mandatory, if 8 are players running a type A2 then doubling up is going to leave characters with no position in the crew).

 

[lucasdigital]

I'm not so certain of this. I think it could go either way. I tend to allow some crew doubling but there is nothing which dictates that crew members are just passing time when they are not doing their "job". Not definite but possible either way depending on how your Traveller universe works.

When changing rules I do impose a caveat - players are ingenious and will be able to find ways to abuse any change you make - watch the effects at the extremes. Also be aware of the change in balance which from a rule change, it may fit the needs of the game fine or it may not (if 4 players are running a type M then doubling up is almost mandatory, if 8 are players running a type A2 then doubling up is going to leave characters with no position in the crew).

I'm sure there's more to gunnery than pointing and pulling, however, once you've learned gunnery it's a matter of drill, turning the operation into muscle memory - and to this end you can over train. In the military they try to find a balance as simply drilling front line forces continuously tends to erode performance.

The strongest argument against doubling up is operational safety, which is what applies in real world navies. If crew members become incapacitated, you wouldn't want to be losing two crew positions for a single crew member.

 

[far-trader]

The strongest argument against doubling up is operational safety, which is what applies in real world navies. If crew members become incapacitated, you wouldn't want to be losing two crew positions for a single crew member.

An excellent point and one I see in the way the rules are set up.

Civilian ships (merchies and such) are the ones that seem to be implied as operating routinely under double duty, and they also require single passage staterooms for crew.

Military ships (navy and such) don't seem to allow double duty, but do allow double passage staterooms for crew.

On the whole it balances out and makes sense. Civilian ships don't face the same threat of crew loss (routinely) that Military ships (in combat) would. And there's also the implied routine of Military ships having frozen watches for just such contingencies (which I've usually imagined are largely cross-trained crew for versatility).

 

[Max]

I'm sure there's more to gunnery than pointing and pulling, however, once you've learned gunnery it's a matter of drill, turning the operation into muscle memory - and to this end you can over train. In the military they try to find a balance as simply drilling front line forces continuously tends to erode performance.​

I'm not sure that gunnery is something that can be learned as muscle memory. I can envision a system where all the trigger pulling is done by the weapon itself, the gunner is more of a computer programmer who sets the parameters for the weapon and armorer who maintains the weapon while the weapon does the actual firing. There are beginning to exist in the RW weapons which are self-targeting and firing (Phalanx anyone) with a limited human role in the combat operation of the weapon. Some of the armourer functions can be muscle memory, putting the new missile into the missile launcher, but as automatic as programing can become it isn't likely to become muscle memory.

Crew doubling depends on what the crew actually does. So what does a gunner on a starship do? There are two extremes, they either just target the weapon during combat or they are skilled professionals who work with complicated systems which a non-gunner would not even be able to figure out how to get started (similar for other crew positions, gunnery is the example because it is the most difficult to envision a system where it cannot be doubled up). The major limit the game imposes on what a gunner does is that the skill as used has an effect on likelihood to hit with the weapon - either extreme is within that limit. If you want to allow crew to be able jump into turrets and man the weapons make gunnery towards the "when the red is in the green circle" extreme; the less you want crew to be able to double up the more you shift gunnery towards the skilled professional extreme.

 

[Zutroi]

My 20 millicreds...

Engineers are always busy... in Jumpspace the maneuver drives get worked on, likewise for the Jump drive when inbound from Jump.

Stewards are either dealing with crew and pax needs, or preparing to.

Good pilots spend Jumptime running drills and simulations.

If the ship can afford dedicated gunners, Jumptime is spent on simulations and maintenance tasks. In normspace they drill - running targeting exercises on other ships in the area (IMTU the gunners are usually the sensor operators, mostly to divide up the rolls during space combat situations).

IMTU, doubling up is typical for smaller lines - remember the crew 'requirements' are positions, not bodies! Brokers are useful dirtside, but extraneous resources in Jumpspace. An owner/captain needs to decide if a deadheading broker in Jump is worth more than a gunner on the ground working on the weapons systems. If the answer is 'no' then gunner/broker makes more sense than gunner and broker. If you don't expect trouble, gunner is a part-time post, and readiness and skills are going to be less than ideal.

In a wealthy area, robots could fill a number of these type of posts; the economics of Traveller are pretty much designed to make people a better value than robots though... If the ref doesn't want to deal with a blortload of npc bodies, than maybe a ship might have robotic gunners and cargo handlers... but then we can't have fun making the players deal with the chronic understaffing problem they have! (cue maniacal laughter)