I need skill help please

[McPerth]

The fact that a small party (let's say 4-5 characters) might run a comercial ship, away from any help, always seemd me quite irreal (any emergency whould leave your engineer without sleeping, being only one person to control the drives, as whould a pesting passenger with your steward, unless some other crewman could double as needed), but it was quite game sound, allowing most parties to run a ship without needing extras to round up the crew.

In this sense, MGT is (IMHO) more reality sound both in specialized skills (engineering being the most clear case) and in the game rules (e.g. you need 3 pilots instead of one to make up for shifts), but at expense of needing more such NPCs.

 

[BytePro]

For military ships on extended in-system patrols, sure... for commercial starships just moving between jump points? Not seeing the need.

 

[aramis]

Excellent guys!

Think that all backs up what I was saying - MgT chars typically having more skills level counts than CT, with specialties offsetting that fact, but to the point where typical small parties can't operate a starship proficiently.

Hence, my house rules for specialty skills.


LOL - in CT, when the rolls were hot for chargen skills, the law of averages typically resulted in failing a survival roll. Probably adding to my experience that MgT generates higher skill level counts than CT.

Thing is, the TYPICAL MgT character only has 1-2 levels more than a CT character... about 1 per 4 terms. (WHile this is more than the averages tend to indicate, it also has to do with the distributions of them.

The Typical MT character has 1 plus 1 per 2 terms or so more than CT.

In play, the difference is that MgT characters are less competent than MT or CT characters, since the specialties are narrower and don't have the crossovers of MT.

 

[McPerth]

For military ships on extended in-system patrols, sure... for commercial starships just moving between jump points? Not seeing the need.

As long as all goes right.

If the PP begins to go erraticaly on day 3 of the jump and needs constant monitoring, a single engineer may go very short on sleep fot next days, and this uses to lead to failures and errors. And if there's no other engineering trained crewmember, he's truly alone, as he cannot rely on outside help.

If your **** passenger on stateroom 3 is pesting your only steward all day arround, then is the steward who will go short on sleep, and at least he will be on terrible humor (not good when attending passengers).

That's why I still think quite irreal to have people doing those constant works on a full time basis (24/7). But this is also what allows a small starship to be crewed by just the players...

 

[BytePro]

Good examples - but then its always possible to find some scenario where it would be nice to have more crew, even on a fully staffed military vessel. Like, what if all three pilots become ill?

In the example - PP failures that would require constant 'nursing' for extended periods would be both extremely rare and easily subject to untrained parties acting as alarm monitors, and that is assuming automated systems couldn't wake a sleeping engineer at set points.

Even the crews aboard the ISS and the space shuttles had no need of 24x7 staffing. Granted, they were monitored by earth stations - but what if the redundant communications systems and there alarms all failed?