Or more to the point, how many of them are trained enough to do it well?
That is, just how skilled are Navy pilots and ship's boaters IYTU?
IIRC, High Guard puts the average skill level at 2. But I also know how hard it is to roll up a decent Navy starship or boat pilot both in LBB1 and LBB5.
A recent experiment with a random character generator gave me, out of 100 navy characters rolled, NONE with more than Pilot-1 or Ship's Boat-1. Gunners, too, tended to be at skill 1:
5 starship pilots, skill level 1
9 ship's boat pilots, skill level 1
28 gunners, 1 at skill 3, 8 at skill 2, all the others skill 1.
Only 6 had both ship's boat and gunnery skill; of these, all were skill level 1 apart from one with gunnery 2.
Now, if any of these were PC characters trying for these skills, there would have been a higher incidence of them. But by how much?
It's not a major issue if High Guard is the combat system used - but with LBB2, pilot skill can make a difference, and gunnery skill can make a huge difference in the ability of otherwise similar fleets to defeat each other. The availability of great pilots might have an effect on the kind of fleet a world constructs: Do you have a vast navy crewed by tyros, with a small core of elite ships? Do you have a small navy of powerful ships with crack crews, with your lesser crews aboard transports, patrol ships, and desks?
That is, just how skilled are Navy pilots and ship's boaters IYTU?
IIRC, High Guard puts the average skill level at 2. But I also know how hard it is to roll up a decent Navy starship or boat pilot both in LBB1 and LBB5.
A recent experiment with a random character generator gave me, out of 100 navy characters rolled, NONE with more than Pilot-1 or Ship's Boat-1. Gunners, too, tended to be at skill 1:
5 starship pilots, skill level 1
9 ship's boat pilots, skill level 1
28 gunners, 1 at skill 3, 8 at skill 2, all the others skill 1.
Only 6 had both ship's boat and gunnery skill; of these, all were skill level 1 apart from one with gunnery 2.
Now, if any of these were PC characters trying for these skills, there would have been a higher incidence of them. But by how much?
It's not a major issue if High Guard is the combat system used - but with LBB2, pilot skill can make a difference, and gunnery skill can make a huge difference in the ability of otherwise similar fleets to defeat each other. The availability of great pilots might have an effect on the kind of fleet a world constructs: Do you have a vast navy crewed by tyros, with a small core of elite ships? Do you have a small navy of powerful ships with crack crews, with your lesser crews aboard transports, patrol ships, and desks?