FFS Starship design

[jfetters]

Hey all

I am a big fan of FFS V1. The only problem I have is (as far as the classic Traveller milieu is concerned) is the calculation(s) that deal with crew requirements. IMO, the crew reqs for FFS were WAY to high. Granted, MT may have been too low, but I liked the fact you could get away with having 10 people crew a 400-500 ton vessel rather than 30.

Has anyone come up with a metric for use in the rules that alters the crew calulations? I'll probably roll my own here, but I was curious to see if anyone had done anything themselves.

Engineering is the huge culprit in TNE, but the others tend to be OK with crew requirements.

 

[aramis]

ISTR there is a divisor for "automation" burried in FF&S2.

FF&S1 assumes minimum automation (due to setting issues, namely Virus); FF&S2 designs can be less due to more automation and interlinking, at a corresponding risk of succeptability to Virus.

 

[Badbru]

Hey all


Engineering is the huge culprit in TNE, but the others tend to be OK with crew requirements.

Them, and "Command" crew, especially as there is little for a player in the second, third, or forth etc "command" seat during a combat. Pilot gets to roll for maneuver, gunners roll to hit, engineers roll for damage control etc.

Which brings me to point two nicely. I think in Brilliant Lances there is a determiner for what portion of your engineering crew make up Damage Control Parties. It is something like all of the vessels maintenance crew and one third of the engineering crew. I would thus consider the calculated engineering number as regulatory crew and the engineers minus the number of engineers used as DCP members to be the minimum necessary engineering crew level. So for merchants not engaging in battle, or, atleast not expecting to engage in battle you could happily reduce the engineering crew levels by a third. (or by whatever the actual number in the DCP formulae was)

 

[jfetters]

Yep, that's it guys, thanks for the brain jump-start.

The engineering crew calculation is Power Plant MW output multiplied by the Computer control multiplier divided by 30. (The multplier is apparently a somewhat arbitrary number that decreases as tech level increases)

There is also a separate Maintenance crew calculation, which I think is what you are referring to, Badbru, but that only comes into play for the larger vessels, not the smaller ships that a PC party would be operating.

So, I am going to investigate the FFS2 modifier and see what it does. I think the Yves Simon spreadsheet uses that, so that explains where that comes from. As I dig into the code there, I see that it does something, but I don't have the brain cycles to investigate at the moment. I might poke around and experiment with playing with that multplier, but the High Automation mod seems to do the trick most effectively.

 

[Vargas]

The only problem I have is (as far as the classic Traveller milieu is concerned) is the calculation(s) that deal with crew requirements.

If that's the only problem you have with FFS then you're a better man than I.

 

[jfetters]

Hah!

I hear ya. Well, the only problem with Starship design, I guess.

 

[pendragonman]

Heh, I actually enjoy using FF&S. I may even begin using FF&S for my design sequences in my modified CT ATU.

I know, this makes me a sick man.

I am a mathematician, though. So I am a sick man by definition.

 

[GypsyComet]

TNE-FF&S is a wonderful book...except for the opening chapter.

T4-FF&S could have been a wonderful book, if the software IG used had spoken the same markup language the printer's software did, and Marc hadn't insisted on the least ergonomic layout possible.

 

[jfetters]

OK, a bit more research and I think I have it.

So the divisor for High Automation basically divides the engineering crew by half, and that brings a lot of the ships in line with the CT/MT versions. TNE also includes more Electrical crew.

I think that has it - I need to play with it some more to see what kind of differences Thruster Plates vs. HePLaR reveal.

 

[Scott Martin]

According to T4 / FF&S-2 TNE crew levels are at "low" automation. IIRC "Standard" automation reduces crew requirements 2/3 (divisor of 3 for engineerinhg crew) while "High" automation reduces this requirement by 4/5 (divisor of 5 for engineering crew)

This still gives absurd values for crew sizes though, I've looked at bringing these in line with CT crew levels (one engineer per 35 dT of drives is 1 engineer per ~1500 MW of powerplant at TL-15, and LBB-5 is 3x that (1 engineer per 100 dT of drives...)

Using thruster plates reduces the average powerplant sized by 50% for "merchants" and 30% - 40% for warships.

Check out the table towards the end of "Traveller Alternate Maneuver Drives" at www.scottmartin.ca, I'm not going to cut and paste it here, and I'll try to find and post the crew comparisons (I may already have done this but not put in the links for it...)

Scott Martin

 

[jfetters]

Awesome! Thanks, Scott!

 

[Uxi]

For my "old days" crews, I had a table whereby I allowed a certain portion of engineering crew to be taken by either actual robots or robot brains. It went up with TL (IOW, a TL15 robot brain could do the job of X number of normal crew).

As far as command crew, way back when I did my interpretation of the Azhanti High Lightning (starting with Supplement 5 and using Battle Rider and FF&S), I decided it would include the auxiliary bridge (in the AZH's case, the tertiary bridge on the top of the gooseneck, as well). I also had provision for allowing some portion of these for robot brains.