Non OTU: Military Ships and Crewing

[Timerover51]

Have any of you ever designed a troop ship, i.e. a military ship intended to carry a large number of people to an area, either under combat or non-combat conditions? There is some interesting data in the Goodrich book on British Operations in Egypt in 1882 about what Victorian-era British troops were expected to put up with in traveling on a troop ship. The space allowed for a man averaged out at 52 cubic feet and for a horse, 126 cubic feet.

 

[HG_B]

Have any of you ever designed a troop ship, i.e. a military ship intended to carry a large number of people to an area, either under combat or non-combat conditions? There is some interesting data in the Goodrich book on British Operations in Egypt in 1882 about what Victorian-era British troops were expected to put up with in traveling on a troop ship. The space allowed for a man averaged out at 52 cubic feet and for a horse, 126 cubic feet.

I once designed a troop ship for multi-parsec distance deployments. Low berths & medical personnel.

 

[warwizard]

I do colony transports cramped seats and fast drug (slows metabolism by X60 two months = 1 day subjective) fast drug antidote at the journey's end.

For a military transport I put the low ranking enlisted under fast drug. The officers and senior enlisted get to do planning and simulations, and have normal berthing and staterooms. Landers are stowed with their combat loadouts already aboard including the fast treated troops. Landers are carried to combat insert some 20% of the troops and assets, some 10% will be battle dress assult formations in drop capsules. the remainder will be landed with the surviving assult landers, (or in shuttles if the LZ is cold). That's 9 troops per Dt in cramped seats with the fast drug. The landers use roomy seats due to the combat loadout the troops are carrying. On the trip back the empty seats are stowed and the space thus opened up serves as your hospital for the woulnded survivors.

 

[PFVA63]

Hi,

Out of curiosity, how do you handle the fact that other stuff is happening at normal speed while the people's operations are slowed down? Specifically, if two months equal about 1 day how does eating and the use of freshers and faucets and stuff work if the people are moving so slow?

 

[Vladika]

how does eating and the use of freshers and faucets and stuff work if the people are moving so slow?

Their metabolism, therefore their bodily functions, are also slowed.

 

[PFVA63]

Hi,

I can understand that, but over a notional 1 day period (on fast drug) I'd still expect the people to need to eat a couple times and possibly use sanitary spaces. And since any food served to these personnel would seem to be subject to normal time issues I'd suspect that the food will still get stale and or go bad at normal rates and the speed of the water in the faucets (if they use water) and the speed of however the freshers work would seem to still be normal.

As such, if a person were on fast drug and he tried to wash his hands would the 25 seconds or so it takes to wash your hands instead become 25 minutes? Etc.

 

[warwizard]

The way I handle these questions is catheters and water bottles, no solid food. Or even better I call it metabolic hibernation and they are hibernating like does a bear, sleeping but can be woken. (there is real world research on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_animation)

 

[Fritz_Brown]

The Valani Breaux ships have families aboard their military ships with 3 and 4 generations represented. The ship is their home and the spaces are designed with an eye towards harmony and peace of mind.

Have you read CJ Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe books (particularly the Merchanter novels)? The Merchanter spacers live aboard their ships as clans, with the ship treated as its own little polity. Finity's End and Merchanter's Luck are the two which give the most insight.

(Personally, I like them for the tech, too.)

 

[warwizard]

Yes I've read Merchanter's luck.
Generally though if you're going to have a caste society aboard spaceships, you pretty much have to raise the children living in that environment to have the ties to the jobs your parents do. There would be steps taken to remove the children from danger as much as possiable, though I could see a 10 year old stepping over his mother's corpse to man her station to try to keep the rest of his family alive.
So my point is that we are looking at the military ship crewing to be an extension of what we as military societies have done aboard our nautical warships in the past. Other societies may indeed take a different approach, for example David Webber's Muntier's Moon has the ship's crew expected to have children and to induct the children into the crew as they become able to take the jobs on.
Perhaps we should first design the society that is going to crew the ships then establish the berthing spaces to reflect that society's expectations of comfort and living space deemed normal and fitting for their space going militaries.
Then we get to the non-human, with the Kkree needing to take their extended families aboard, and the Droyne's need to have the command structure align with the clan/family/coporation structure of their society, and it becomes even more aparent that we can drop the entire concept of the stateroom for some societies, and others will have much smaller or larger allocations of volume per sophont.

 

[DangerousThing]

I do colony transports cramped seats and fast drug (slows metabolism by X60 two months = 1 day subjective) fast drug antidote at the journey's end.

For a military transport I put the low ranking enlisted under fast drug. The officers and senior enlisted get to do planning and simulations, and have normal berthing and staterooms. Landers are stowed with their combat loadouts already aboard including the fast treated troops. Landers are carried to combat insert some 20% of the troops and assets, some 10% will be battle dress assult formations in drop capsules. the remainder will be landed with the surviving assult landers, (or in shuttles if the LZ is cold). That's 9 troops per Dt in cramped seats with the fast drug. The landers use roomy seats due to the combat loadout the troops are carrying. On the trip back the empty seats are stowed and the space thus opened up serves as your hospital for the woulnded survivors.

I have always disliked fast and slow drugs for reasons like this. There are already low berths for this type of situation.

Though a friend ran in an old CT game where the battle with the pirates was fought with fast and slow drug.

I figure slow drug is extremely improbable because increasing your metabolism to run at twice the rate as normal in combat would get them killed from their normal muscle movements accelerated.

Fast drug is a bit more probable, but the estivation drug you mention lower in this thread seems even more useful. But even still, mucking about with somebody's metabolism can do nasty things.

In fiction, the best drug I've seen for this is from David Weber's The Path of the Fury. It was called The Tick, in that the outside world seemed to slow down, but it only effected the user's sense of time. This meant that the user would have more time to think about actions even though they couldn't do more than they normally could. In game terms it might give a +3 to attack and defense, at the price of being violently sick when it wore off. This drug had to be tailored for each user, and the user had to undergo training to speak and act correctly while using it.

 

[PFVA63]

Hi,

I kind of have my doubts about such type drugs myself as well. How exactly do these drugs impact a persons system and do they affect say the microbes in your digestive tract and/or the chemical reactions in your digestive system, muscles and other such things?

Overall, I tend to kind of not mess too much with such items when I play because I'm not really sure how to address such things.

As far as travel, I agree that low berths would kind of seem to make more sense to me

 

[mike wightman]

Don't think of them as chemical drugs - think of them as bionanites

 

[warwizard]

I was all against it for OTU usage, but Mr Tubbs of the Dumerest of Terra series did use Fast drug for Dumerest on some trips where he did not pay for high passege, but also was not in the low berths. He had much less side effects from the fast drug than the low berths. As the Dumerest series is the archetype of traveller... I now allow it, mostly for non-OTU usages like the colony ships and military units. It makes a damn sight more sense to have your "frozen watch" to actually be under fast drug with little effects rather than actually frozen and 1/36 die on revival. http://www.dumarest.com/

 

[Garyius2003]

And you can update drugged 'frozen watch' and troops, as opposed to cold sleep.

Do a brief, slow it down, and shoot it to their racks every week or so.

 

[warwizard]

Just have the computer give them the briefing with a 60:1 slowdown on the video and sound, if they are using the FAST drug as written they are still able to see and hear, and the fast antidote is expensive.

edit: sorry I see that is what you meant.

 

[Darkwing]

Whether it's actual bots bustling about and unnoticed since they are just part of daily life in the future or it's higher end automated systems, I'd think that the crew requirements of today might serve as a guideline but future requirements would be lower.

Agreed, but Traveller uses Merchant standards and doesn't rethink it for military ships.

24/7
First, I see no reason this is 3 8hr shifts. When I was in the Navy our standard rotation was 12 on 12 off. 2 shifts (some jobs, like the barber shop or personnel department, only had one). 7 days a week. On top of that, 1 out of every 3 or 4 days (varied based on needs) was a duty day where you might be cleaning berthing, loading supplies, standing watch and so on. Sometimes duty was to cover an unskilled job that didn't have the manpower for the second shift. There were times I had a normal work day, was assigned a job for duty during the 12 hours I was "off" and then went back to my normal job for 12 hours. 36 hours without sleep. Typically a duty watch was not 12 hours. The 12 hour watch was a easy phone watch were you just took messages but if something warranted it, you went to wake up the appropriate person. Maybe it's no-doze, red bull, futuristic drugs, meditation techniques, devices that manipulate brainwaves and increase the productiveness of rest cycles, or something else, but I'd think the future capability of people to work longer shifts requiring high alertness would be possible.

On average, I'd say that for so called 24/7 coverage there could be less than 2 people per position.

I disagree. Yeah, the Snipes were usually either 6 & 6 or 12 & 12, but back then, a lot of ships used the 4 hour rotation with the dog watches for most non-engineering watches. Nowadays, 6 & 18 or 6 & 12 are common, or 5 & 15. Although when I was on the Blue Ridge, I ran Navigation on 12 & 12. That was our workday, and we ran the watch out of the half of the division that was on. That avoided crowding the chart room, but also gave lots of relief for the watch.

For starters, you wouldn't even port if you thought there was a security issue. In many locals we stayed at sea and took the liberty boats in. Some foreign ports are friendly and you are at a secured location with some security is provided by local forces. We didn't have a squad of marines at each and every access point of the ship. Typically you limited access to the area the ship was in and only needed security at a few checkpoints. The majority of the armed response security forces were unseen and just needed to be ready and available to respond if the folk on watch sounded the alarm.

Mostly, I agree, but nowadays, we assume there are security issues everywhere, to an excessively paranoid level. At least we still go places, even with that mentality.

It's been 20+ years so I can't remember the code but when a ship wide alert requiring a marine response was announced it didn't matter if you were the lowest crewman or a high ranking officer, you hugged the bulkhead because those passageways were narrow and the jar heads took their job seriously (and wouldn't mind the opportunity to mess up a sailor without reprimand) and would make you one with the bulkhead on their own if you were in their way.

As I recall,
Tweet, tweet, tweet "Security Alert, security Alert! Station the Security Alert team and Backup Alert Force (SAT & BAF). All Hands not involved, stand fast! Reason for security alert is _______" Repeat. And every 5 minutes "The ship is at securitry alert. all hands not involved, stand fast".
The covert security alert was usually something like "Seaman Schmuccatelli, Wardroom", where Schmucatelli would be the last name of the commanding officer, and the Wardroom is the example location he was told to go to. We pass the word for enlisted like that; officers are passed "Ensign Timmy, your presence is requested in the Wardroom". The exception is the CO, XO, and Nav. If it's a serious enough emergency, you passed their title and the location. That told them it wasn't just the OOD wanting to make a report, and drop whatever they were doing. Use that only for that officer's career rocks & shoals!

My military experiance was in the Air Force not the navy. When we had alerts and compressed our three shifts into two we had extra bodies that we could give over to pulling guard someplace. <snip>

Seems reasonable.

In the Essex class aircraft carriers <snip>not much different from the TL=5 Essex class or even the TL 6 Enterprise or TL 7 Nimitz.

When I was on the Shasta, we had a crew of about 430. When she became a Military Sealift Command ship (civilian mariners), they reworked her engine spaces, and ran the whole ship on about 80 crew, including the military detachment of about 20 (radar, comms, admin types).

The Jump <snip>whatever else they can think of. Too much idle time in a small steel box = bad.

Today's navy runs the maintenance being performed by the watchstanders in the space, while someone in Main Control watches screens, although they are trying to make the newer ships and Smart ships run more like civilians, with only the Central control Station (replaces damage control central and Main control), and a couple of rovers.

Marines usually don't have guns, and lots of idle time, so they eat, sleep, work out, and stand in lines. We used to form a line, wait till marines got in, then look at our watches and 'huff off' in a rush. Come back later, and laugh at the marines still in line, not knowing what it was for. Wasteful!

So the ship can run on 8 to 12 hours a day doing official jobs or secondary jobs from all personnel, with extra inventive tasking for an additional 4 hours to keep the crew busy.
Does that sound about right to all the folks that served in various wet navies?

Navigation and engineering, communications, and CIC all need to be manned 24/7 underway. Deck (anchor, accomodation ladders, boats, etc) was a normal work day, except when evolutions required. Underway replenishment, boat ops, crane ops, well deck ops, etc could make them work lots of overtime. Admin had a normal work day. Combat Systems, except for the Combat Systems Office of the Watch (CSOW), had a normal work day. Supply was usually a normal work day, except the galley. They had to be up early to cook and serve the food, and were run long-day/short-day. short-day came on around 0430ish, and got off after lunch-time clean up was done. Long-day came on as soon as breakfast secured, and got off after night time clean up. Then there was the guy who did mid-rats (midnight rations, or mid-scraps). And the guy who did breakouts (setting out the next meal's supplies), the Jack o' the Dust, or JOD. That guy worked a couple hours between meals and otherwise did nothing unless he had collateral duties - which we all have.
Divisional collaterals included Work center Supervisor (track and schedule maintenance), Damage control Petty Officer (WCS for Damage control - only one ship I was on was smart enough to merge those two), Training PO, Supply PO (who puts together the order to send to Supply dept, so all they have to do is approve it), and others based on your work center, such as Chart PO (voyage planning, chart correction, plotting track, ordering charts, etc), Deck Log PO (custodian of the log, copies, gets signatures, corrects, and sends off to Historical Center), Weather Log PO, POIC for a given space (all maintenance, cleaning, and paperwork on that space), etc.

There's a whole lot of stuff swept between the cracks that'll keep folks busy besides their official job description...

 

[Darkwing]

Yes, though in-port could be different. This is why you have admin personnel in your crew - to figure that stuff out. (Try putting one of your adventurers on watch while the ship's in port; see whether he assumes it's because something will happen to the ship or if he's simply being cut off from the adventure.)

LOL! Too bluddy right!

Often just ordinary crewmen standing around and looking tough. Though after the USS Cole bombing, they started arming those ordinary crewmen in a lot of instances (sidearms and shotguns a lot of the time).

My experience was that we had guns, but the open-slide .45 (later 9mm) was on strong side, in admin carry, and one magazine was in the weak hand, in similar position, and unless the CO or COD authorized deadly force AND ordered loading, they had better never cross your body. Then the Cole happened, and we suddenly started carrying in condition 1. Not pleasing when 9/11 happened, and I was security escort for busfuls of half-Japanese schoolkids who never got to see guns, and wanted to touch and play with mine, and the bus gave me no room to maneuver away from them!

Oh yeah! One of the few opportunities they get to actually do their thing, and they take great satisfaction in doing it! :smirk:

You betcha! On my first ship, the CO's standing orders were that the first SAT/BAF guy to reach you threw you to the deck, and everyone therefter was required to step on you. He couldn't authorize assault on idiots moving around, but he could order a maneuver that minimized trip hazards to SAT/BAF!

One of the things to keep in mind (as some have mentioned) is automation. However, automation is usually driven by a need to reduce your human resource requirement. (I know, how very specieist of me. ) In a huge empire with oodles of worlds with pop 9-A, do you really need to minimize your crew requirements? In my ATU, the worlds are much younger with significantly less population, with small polities - so automation is key in some places.

Eh, some of it comes from people trying to be smarter. When I adjusted the magnetic compass, I used the maintenance card to justify making the Conning Officer order the use of the autopilot, because I remembered when I was a deck seaman standing the helm watch, and the Conn preferring to make a young kid steer to the half-degree all night, hours on end, in mid-ocean, rather than engage Iron Mike. My second skipper would get up at night, come on the bridge, take the helm, set autopilot, then go to bed. As soon as he left, the Conn and the Bosn's Mate of the Watch would send the helmsman back to take it off autopilot. Also, Conning Officers are taught that they are sharper shiphandlers when they constantly :"take the helm in hand", meaning micromanage the rudder angle. When I needed set courses steered, and they had the freedom to take it in hand, they took too long to get to course or otherwise messed it up. Don't get me wrong, taking the rudder in hand is an important skill - sometimes you need to see how things go before committing to a course - but Conn training over-emphasized it, claiming any opportunity to practice it, actually doing things the hard way too often.

Also, as has been mentioned elsewhere, in some situations - such as damage control - you need lots of people. Automation won't cut it. So you plan your crew for the worst situation... and have to find things for them to do the rest of the time. (The situation is the same in the army, where you need lots of bodies when the bullets fly, and have to find make-work in garrison.) So, your bulkheads get painted - a lot - and your decks get swabbed and brass gets polished, etc. And, if you don't *need* that bit of automation, then you might stick with the manual process - because it means you can do the work of one with two people during that non-critical time.

Just my CrImp0.02.

Abso-fraggin-lutely [/Sheridan impression]
Except that painting, sweeping, and shining brass are also leavings from the days of sail when most enlisted were pressed men, or the sweepings og Bristol Gaol, and had to be kept too busy to plan or execute a well-deserved mutiny. I was always able to find actually useful training for my guys, as opposed to painting or sweeping beyond the necessary amount; I just didn't get the free hand to practice it as much as I'd have liked.

With starships there is a HUGE incentive to reduce as you free up tonnage than can be used better. More armour, drives, fuel, et al.

When you get into a battle, wanting to provide employment for the masses isn't going to make the enemy give you quarter...

It isn't a jobs program. It's about the fact that no computer will be as flexible in thinking as the one between your ears, and in a battle, you want people who can think and see that the standard solution needs to be changed, as opposed to a robot that either can't adjust as well, or if it can, also costs MCr 10 - 20 - per each robot.

No I emphatically do not create duty rosters, (if the game that is being played require such, I have the players create them).
I do however have a feel for how a military ship is organized and can trot out suitible shore parties and boarding parties and prize crews at a few minutes notice, more than that and I have to come up with more details as needed for the game to proceed.
Hopefully the write up of the campaign has addressed crewing strategies of the various polities in the campaign as well as para military and coporate and non military common crewing accepted practices.

Google a Watch, Quarter, and station Bill, and have the players fill it out.

Obviously the computer automation has reduced the crew requirements by over 2/3 of what we crewed such ships with as recently as WW2 where a Fletcher class DD would have a crew of nearly 200.

Try down to 175 on Oliver Hazard Perry FFGs, and realize that that's so small that everyone but the CO, XO, and Dept Heads are on working parties bringing supplies on - inport! At Unrep, it's at least as tight.

IMTU I'm looking at establishing completly different paradgims for the two antignostic culture's crewing standards.
The Valani Breaux ships have families aboard their military ships with 3 and 4 generations represented. The ship is their home and the spaces are designed with an eye towards harmony and peace of mind. Growing green things, small alcoves where one can go and surround onself with nature and in all things an eye towards beauty of design and function. Typically I'd double the volume available per crew person, and qudriple the costs of the habitation spaces, and rack this cost in space and effort to a higher level of "culture", (per pocket empires defination of culture). High automation is the assummed default.

A bit extreme, but I can see it.

The Terran nations have put almost no effort into making the berthing areas of their ships even marginally pleasing to the eye, everything is functional conciderations only, put a "rack" wherever it fits without regard to foot traffic, or noise or operating macherery, except where it represents an active hazard to the person trying to use the rack. If needed assign hot bunking, keep the crews tasked every waking moment. Standard is low automation.

LOL! I can really see that one!

A Valani taking a tour of a Terran ship will likley not recognise a rack for it's function untill specifically told what the things are, and then would be horrified by the brutality and mental stress such spaces imply.

I think the Vilani would realize the rack was a 3-high set of beds, but WOULD freak over the idea of such substandard accomodations.

 

[Carlobrand]

Hi,

I kind of have my doubts about such type drugs myself as well. How exactly do these drugs impact a persons system and do they affect say the microbes in your digestive tract and/or the chemical reactions in your digestive system, muscles and other such things?

Overall, I tend to kind of not mess too much with such items when I play because I'm not really sure how to address such things.

As far as travel, I agree that low berths would kind of seem to make more sense to me

Other concerns: the person on fast drug basically needs to stay confined to a bed or recliner, 'cause there's no way he can protect himself if he trips and falls - and with his slowed perception, there's serious doubt whether he can maintain the dynamic balance involved in walking. The fact that he perceives things at 1/60th speed does not mean gravity is going to forgive him for taking 60 times as long to get that next foot swung forward for his next step. If he moves at all, it'll have to be in a shuffling fashion to take into account the fact that gravity seems to be acting like its pulling him down 60 times faster than normal.

A secondary issue is the mechanics of movement under fast drug. Consider: you are seated in a chair, and your butt grows uncomfortable, so you put your hands on the armrests, push up and readjust your seating. Under fast drug, that activity takes minutes instead of seconds: your simple brief motion is instead the equivalent of putting your arms on the armrests and holding part of your weight up by them for a minute or so. Simple activities and motions will be felt to be much more tiring since they are requiring much more energy from you. In other words the motion may only take a second or two from your viewpoint but, at the end of that second or two, you will nonetheless feel like you've been holding yourself up in that chair for a minute or two.

And, if he suffers a cut or scrape or is exposed to some little germie in the environment, his body's responding at 1/60th speed - but the buggies in the environment are not, and there's no assurance they'll be influenced by the fast drug if they enter a cut or get into the lungs: he might be extraordinarily vulnerable to infection, depending on how the game-master rules it. And, biological processes such as coughing or sneezing are flatly ineffective under fast drug: that urge to cough or clear your throat or that irritant in the nose is just going to stay there until they administer the antidote.

So, the person needs to be kept on a soft surface in a relatively clean and sterile environment, not permitted to walk or transfer independently while under the drug, and monitored closely for signs of infection. And, while a 7-day jump may only feel like a 3-hour jaunt, it will be a notably uncomfortable and somewhat tiring 3-hour jaunt. All other things being equal, the typical passenger may prefer the unconsciousness of cold sleep to the conscious experience of fast drug.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Today's navy runs the maintenance being performed by the watchstanders in the space, while someone in Main Control watches screens, although they are trying to make the newer ships and Smart ships run more like civilians, with only the Central control Station (replaces damage control central and Main control), and a couple of rovers.

Egad, centralized control in a warship. Next thing you know, they'll start having just one of everything on board....... *shudder*

We used to form a line, wait till marines got in, then look at our watches and 'huff off' in a rush. Come back later, and laugh at the marines still in line, not knowing what it was for. Wasteful!

Bwahahahahahah!

(I fixed your broken Quote tag, Darkwing.)

 

[PFVA63]

Other concerns: the person on fast drug basically needs to stay confined to a bed or recliner, ....

Hi,

Those are some very good points. It reminds me of when I was in high school and came down with appendicitis. although I was in the hospital for only 1 week, I did develop bed sores on the backs of my heels where they pressed against the bed. In addition to that I recently began to wonder about your eyes and how what would need to be done to keep them from drying out, etc.