Non OTU: Military Ships and Crewing

[Darkwing]

Hi,
I disagree. If you look at the accommodations configurations on many newer naval vessels, such as theLCS's and DD1000 etc you will see that efforts have been made to improve the ship's habitability to try and help improve retention rates for the skilled sailors. Specifically, this CRS Report to Congress on "Navy DDG-1000 and DDG-51 Destroyer Programs: Background, Oversight Issues, and Options for Congress" notes the following:

"Habitability Features for Crew. On the DDG-51, enlisted crew berthing spaces accommodate 20 to 60 sailors each. On the DDG-1000, every sailor would have a stateroom, and each stateroom would accommodate four sailors. The Navy believes these features would improve crew quality of life, which can improve retention rates."

LCS is the same as most ships, just a smaller crew, plus the new sit-up racks that all new construction was supposedly going to have. Even before sequestration, that was a broken promise.

DDG-1000 is a technology test-bed for the future CG-21 prototype. Sequestration is n ot going to be kind to an expensive white elephant program, especially one with the primary purpose of developing pie-in-the-sky ideas for a future program. I don't see the Zumwalts leading anywhere. Gene Taylor was right when he told the Navy to spread out the prototypes on a bunch of new-build DDG-51s, but they didn't want to listen.

As for the LCS's (and also the new USCG Cutters, if I am recalling correctly) an attempt has been made to try and accommodate crew into something along the lines of single staterooms for senior officers, double staterooms for junior officers and I think CPOs and four man staterooms for most everyone else. (I'll try and see if I can find a source on the internet for this).

the officer staterooms is the current standard already. I'd be happy if we could just get to 18-21 man berthings for enlisted - small berthings are better than large ones. Getting it to where a 6-man cube becomes a stateroom would be swank. A 4-man stateroom for enlisted would be way too much to expect as the new standard. They still have to make room for the systems that are the ship's purpose, after all, and retention is not such an issue now. With a bad economy and the fact they've been throwing away good sailors for several years, the office talking about quality of life / retention is just selling congress a bill of goods that the rest of Big Navy isn't willing to write the check for. Those better accommodations cost money to install and maintain, and the sailors living in them cost money, as well, and DOD has been blaming us for their budgetary problems since at least the Clinton era.

We cut too deep, turned the corner, and started promoting again, but the looming cuts are gonna dump that back out the chute. Can't cut at the top, gotta cut the middle. Brass creep means too many chiefs protecting each others' attempts to get that 30 - 40 year retirement, and not enough indians getting to the 20-year retirement. I expect to see no significant improvement in quality of life, particularly berthing, and to see even fewer sailors doing more with less for another decade. The peace dividend is always paid for by the little guys.

Considering this, plus added spaces for galleys, messes, and other common spaces I'm not convinced that Traveller rules are really all that far off of what you might see on modern warships.

I'd love to see a ship built to Traveller's standards, but I think it'd end up being an armed Carnival cruise liner being used as a corvette.

 

[Darkwing]

Somebody fed you a tall tale about the AC. There's two reasons we normally keep it cold: Electronics and smell. A hot berthing smells of feet and unwashed posterior. Similarly, the laundry. The head, well, you can figure yourself. The galley gets hot from cooking already, which exacerbates the trash smells. The trash room and plastics room are already ripe enough. And the engineering spaces are also quite warm due to the machinery in them; we have to have heat stress programs to determine stay times for engineers (often seriously gundecked - gundecking is falsifying reports or taking shortcuts on maintenance, etc, from the way loose cannons flew about the gun deck of a sailing ship if you didn't gripe them down properly).

As for sea sickness, look at the horizon, go down below the water line, get the patch, or man up are the usual advice.

 

[Timerover51]

Hi,

I believe most European and Western navies are proceeding along similar paths, in vessels such as the Type 45 and Horizon Guided Missile Destroyers, the FREMM class frigates and the latest German vessels.

As I tried to highlight earlier, I believe that there is a trade-off going on between crew quality of life and crew retention. As the skill set required to service and maintain modern vessels at sea has increased the need to retain qualified crew (as opposed to having them serve a term and leave the service leaving the navy to have to retrain new cew) has greatly increased. If a crewmember who has been taught to maintain and operate a complex piece of computer control hardware finds that he can get a fairly well paying IT related job shoreside once his term is up, there is a good chance that the trade-off between "being crammed into a ship sardine style" an/or "having to hotbunk" versus "having his/her own house or apartment plus the ability to go out with friends every weekend drinking and meeting other people" may lead to many choosing the later option.

As such, as warships have become more complex standards of accommodations typically increase and if you want to assume that you can get away with a significantly lower level of accommodations than in the rules as written it would probably be worthwhile to consider what negative impacts such a move may impart on your vessels and crew in comparison to a Traveller based navy that is designed around the rules as written.

As a ocean going naval analogy I had the opportunity to ride on a high-sped naval small craft on and off for several days as part of its builders trials. On board the temperature was kept very low. When I asked why I was told it was to try and help prevent riders onboard from becoming sea sick. In general it was apparently found that low ambient temperatures can help delay the onset of sea sickness while higher ones can help bring it on quicker.

In this example I suppose one navy coud see air conditioning as a necessity while another can view it as unneeded (because since it wasn't necessarily available during WWII, Korea, or Vietnam why should they go to the extravagance of installing it now, etc). However, once you start trying to use this craft to transport troops and such I would greatly suspect that the navy that opted for air conditioning on its craft may have an advantage over the navy that has decided the same old austere concepts that worked decades ago are perfectly still suitable now, and if repeatedly getting sea sick drives some people to not want to re-enlist we'll just replace them with newer recruits that we'll have to pay to train to bring up to the level of those that have left, etc.

You are looking at ships built in PEACETIME where habitability standards are a major driving force, not COMBAT factors. I am thinking of ships built for wartime, where the service member is in for the duration, and the emphasis is on COMBAT, and the focus is on getting the maximum combat capability within a certain amount of money.

The Coast Guard ships that you cite are not intended as combat vessels as their primary missions. We have several on the Great Lakes, where about 50% of the time they are in port. Do you think that ship habitability is going to have any effect whatsoever on the retention rates of the Coast Guard crew? Discovering that their next assignment is Kodiak Island and they are from Florida is likely to have a far greater effect on retention than ship habitability.

Guys do not leave the Navy because they do not like the ship accommodations, they get out because they are enlisted, are now married with one or two kids, and they have just been assigned to Diego Garcia for a year. Or they are riding a Fleet Ballistic Missile sub and they are somewhere under the North Atlantic or the North Pacific on their first anniversary, at which point their new wife hands them an ultimatum, the Navy or her. Or they are riding a nuke attack and while deployed in the Med get a bit of leave time and decide to fly home and surprise their wife and get a surprise of their own when they get home and find her in bed with another guy.

And if in your example, the guy is getting seasick all of the time, why in heaven's name is he or she in the Navy to begin with? I suspect that the low A/C setting is for when they have VIPs or other visitors onboard.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Guys do not leave the Navy because they do not like the ship accommodations,

There I will disagree. There are folks who get out because they don't like sleeping in a metal bunk in a room with 30 other guys. They are the sorts who make websites all about how they hate the navy. (They are not thought of as highly as those other veterans you mentioned, timerover - not at all.)

And if in your example, the guy is getting seasick all of the time, why in heaven's name is he or she in the Navy to begin with?

Trust me, it's more common than you would think. One prime reason is the number of folks who enlist who have never been on a ship before in their lives. Then, you have folks like me, who had more sea time than some Navy folk, though I was Air Force. (Okay, when I left the AF, the only folks I had more sea time than were the folks who had NO sea time, but still, those people exist in the Navy....) There are also conditions that will induce seasickness - watching a scrolling screen display while the ship moves a different direction, for example. And, of course, some people don't notice any ill effects until they get into their first storm.

And, of course, there's the epitome of fictional sailors (who gets violently seasick): Horatio Hornblower!

 

[aramis]

A buddy of mine is a USCG SCPO... and he's one who gets violently seasick... 1st 2-3 days of every aweigh, and 1st day of every storm. And then he writes home about it. Fortunately, he's been shoreside for the last few years (and likely will stay so - no CPO postings aweigh in his rate).

 

[PFVA63]

Hi,

With respect to the A/C the craft I was specifically talking about was a high-speed amphibious transport meant for relatively short but high-speed runs including the carriage of troops in small compartments with only a small portlight on the entrance/egress hatches. The ride onboard is typically fairly bumpy and might best be described mostly as something akin to a flight in a turboprop transport in bad weather.

With respect to ambient air temperatures and motion sickness here is a link to an abstract for an article from a Chinese researcher that notes as a conclusion - "High environmental temperature and humidity can accelerate the onset of motion sickness and aggravate the symptoms of motion sickness."

http://pub.chinasciencejournal.com/article/getArticle.action?articleId=15833

With repsect to ships in general, modern naval vessels are often typically designed for a service life of 25 to 30 years or more, and because of the time it takes to design and build a ship plus the span of time over which ships of a class may be built this can lead to the later units of a class not be retired until perhaps 50 years or more after the original design was developed. For Traveller type spaceships this can likely be even greater depending on how long these ships are kept in service.

As such, alot of consideratons must be taken into account for a ship, and just because retention may not seem like an issue at any onme given time, a decision must be made as to whether (for example) a Navy believes that designing a ship in 2013 using habitability standards from say the 1980s or 1990s would seem appropriate for a ship class where some units of this class may still be in service in 2050 or maybe even 2060 (or whatever a Traveller type equivalent may be)

While I can easily see that during a wartime some war emergency designs will likely be built to reduced standards, I wouldn't expect these type vessels to remain in service for long once a war ends and as such I wouldn't at all be surprised if the majority of warships in a Traveller type seting wouldn't be designs developed during their "times of peace" as well.

With regards to the US LCS DDG1000, and USCG designs, USCG High Endurance cutters do in fact deploy with the US Navy from time to time, and that ability is also a requirment for the new National Security Cutters being built. In addition the shipyard building them has also offered up more navalized versions of the National Security Cutters as general purpose frigate for the international market. Similarly, the UKs new Type 45 Guided Missile Destroyers have somewhat similar manning concepts as those I noted earlier for the USCG and USNs LCS and DDG1000 programs, with the exception of opting for 6 man rooms in place of the 4 man rooms ( http://navy-matters.beedall.com/daring1-3.htm )

Getting back to an earlier comment that I was trying to make though, I believe that if you were to closely look at some of these modern designs you would probably find that the allowance of 4dtons of space (assuming single occupancy staterooms) or 2dtons of space (assuming double occupancy) as outlined in Traveller is not really anywhere near as "luxurious" accommodations as some seem to believe, especially once you consider the space needed to be allocated to galleys, mess rooms, food storage, life support, and access, etc.

 

[Timerover51]

Hi,

With respect to the A/C the craft I was specifically talking about was a high-speed amphibious transport meant for relatively short but high-speed runs including the carriage of troops in small compartments with only a small portlight on the entrance/egress hatches. The ride onboard is typically fairly bumpy and might best be described mostly as something akin to a flight in a turboprop transport in bad weather.

With respect to ambient air temperatures and motion sickness here is a link to an abstract for an article from a Chinese researcher that notes as a conclusion - "High environmental temperature and humidity can accelerate the onset of motion sickness and aggravate the symptoms of motion sickness."

http://pub.chinasciencejournal.com/article/getArticle.action?articleId=15833

With repsect to ships in general, modern naval vessels are often typically designed for a service life of 25 to 30 years or more, and because of the time it takes to design and build a ship plus the span of time over which ships of a class may be built this can lead to the later units of a class not be retired until perhaps 50 years or more after the original design was developed. For Traveller type spaceships this can likely be even greater depending on how long these ships are kept in service.

As such, alot of consideratons must be taken into account for a ship, and just because retention may not seem like an issue at any onme given time, a decision must be made as to whether (for example) a Navy believes that designing a ship in 2013 using habitability standards from say the 1980s or 1990s would seem appropriate for a ship class where some units of this class may still be in service in 2050 or maybe even 2060 (or whatever a Traveller type equivalent may be)

While I can easily see that during a wartime some war emergency designs will likely be built to reduced standards, I wouldn't expect these type vessels to remain in service for long once a war ends and as such I wouldn't at all be surprised if the majority of warships in a Traveller type seting wouldn't be designs developed during their "times of peace" as well.

With regards to the US LCS DDG1000, and USCG designs, USCG High Endurance cutters do in fact deploy with the US Navy from time to time, and that ability is also a requirment for the new National Security Cutters being built. In addition the shipyard building them has also offered up more navalized versions of the National Security Cutters as general purpose frigate for the international market. Similarly, the UKs new Type 45 Guided Missile Destroyers have somewhat similar manning concepts as those I noted earlier for the USCG and USNs LCS and DDG1000 programs, with the exception of opting for 6 man rooms in place of the 4 man rooms ( http://navy-matters.beedall.com/daring1-3.htm )

Getting back to an earlier comment that I was trying to make though, I believe that if you were to closely look at some of these modern designs you would probably find that the allowance of 4dtons of space (assuming single occupancy staterooms) or 2dtons of space (assuming double occupancy) as outlined in Traveller is not really anywhere near as "luxurious" accommodations as some seem to believe, especially once you consider the space needed to be allocated to galleys, mess rooms, food storage, life support, and access, etc.

Tell you what, let us agree to disagree, and drop the discussion.

 

[navywarlord]

What I know from my own experience

I did 21 in the Navy (11 @ sea) on various aircraft carriers. My berthing areas were usually 60 - 100 man berthings, racks 3 high. Chow was down on the mess decks, which were actually the bomb / missile assembly areas. The A/C was always cracked up - this helped minimize the smell (I spent a lot of time in my radar equipment rooms - more comfortable and less crowded - even had a hammock to put up between the deck frames). Everything smelled like JP5.

Most of those junior to me left the Navy not because of the berthing arrangements but because of family issues, stress, or the realization that the Navy was not what they imagined it to be. I did several cruises where ALL the liberty ports were canceled (for one reason or another) - my longest deployment was 13 months. Hard, yes, but I volunteered for this and accepted it - others couldn't deal with it.

I imagine cruises in the OTU deal with the same issues, no matter how much room the crew has.

 

[Darkwing]

You are looking at ships built in PEACETIME where habitability standards are a major driving force, not COMBAT factors. I am thinking of ships built for wartime, where the service member is in for the duration, and the emphasis is on COMBAT, and the focus is on getting the maximum combat capability within a certain amount of money.

Exactly!

The Coast Guard ships that you cite are not intended as combat vessels as their primary missions. We have several on the Great Lakes, where about 50% of the time they are in port. Do you think that ship habitability is going to have any effect whatsoever on the retention rates of the Coast Guard crew? Discovering that their next assignment is Kodiak Island and they are from Florida is likely to have a far greater effect on retention than ship habitability.

I also agree with this. As for the reasons for getting out, now it's all too often either failing to succeed at Pray To Serve / Prevent Them Serving (Perform To Serve / PTS), getting cut at Enlisted Retention Board, or failing the PRT. And we have a lot of kids who just didn't realize that Accelerate Your Life meant being a Global Force for Good Sanitation Engineers. Most of them think of their four years as a portion of the (short) life they've already led, not as a fraction of the life they're going to have.

There I will disagree. There are folks who get out because they don't like sleeping in a metal bunk in a room with 30 other guys. They are the sorts who make websites all about how they hate the navy. (They are not thought of as highly as those other veterans you mentioned, timerover - not at all.)

D@mn skippy they're not!

And, of course, there's the epitome of fictional sailors (who gets violently seasick): Horatio Hornblower!

Seasick at Spithead! (based on an actual log from the British Admiralty, Forester added that vignette to Mr. Midshipman Hornblower).

Hi,

With respect to the A/C the craft I was specifically talking about was a high-speed amphibious transport meant for relatively short but high-speed runs including the carriage of troops in small compartments with only a small portlight on the entrance/egress hatches. The ride onboard is typically fairly bumpy and might best be described mostly as something akin to a flight in a turboprop transport in bad weather.

Sounds like a fun ride! Sea Lion or something similar?

http://www.warboats.org/NSWG-4.htm

http://covertshores.blogspot.com/2010/06/alligator-sea-lion-class-semi.html

With respect to ambient air temperatures and motion sickness here is a link to an abstract for an article from a Chinese researcher that notes as a conclusion - "High environmental temperature and humidity can accelerate the onset of motion sickness and aggravate the symptoms of motion sickness."

As may be, not something we tend to think of.

With repsect to ships in general, modern naval vessels are often typically designed for a service life of 25 to 30 years or more, and because of the time it takes to design and build a ship plus the span of time over which ships of a class may be built this can lead to the later units of a class not be retired until perhaps 50 years or more after the original design was developed. For Traveller type spaceships this can likely be even greater depending on how long these ships are kept in service.

Depends. Frigates were supposed to be a cheaper alternative to the DDGs. They aged less gracefully than amphibs twice their age, so forward thinking for future refitting isn't always considered. Strangely, this whole section reminds me of some of the writeup in the Star Trek TNG Tech Manual.

As such, alot of consideratons must be taken into account for a ship, and just because retention may not seem like an issue at any onme given time, a decision must be made as to whether (for example) a Navy believes that designing a ship in 2013 using habitability standards from say the 1980s or 1990s would seem appropriate for a ship class where some units of this class may still be in service in 2050 or maybe even 2060 (or whatever a Traveller type equivalent may be)

I doubt current naval architects could remove liquid from a boot given written instructions printed on the sole, so seriously doubt this one.

While I can easily see that during a wartime some war emergency designs will likely be built to reduced standards, I wouldn't expect these type vessels to remain in service for long once a war ends and as such I wouldn't at all be surprised if the majority of warships in a Traveller type seting wouldn't be designs developed during their "times of peace" as well.

If they were more effective, I would expect them to stay. After a war, you reduce the military and get the short-sighted "peace dividend". The sailors remaining are used to the rougher conditions and know the economy is going to suck for them. Retention won't be a problem.

With regards to the US LCS DDG1000, and USCG designs, USCG High Endurance cutters do in fact deploy with the US Navy from time to time, and that ability is also a requirment for the new National Security Cutters being built. In addition the shipyard building them has also offered up more navalized versions of the National Security Cutters as general purpose frigate for the international market. Similarly, the UKs new Type 45 Guided Missile Destroyers have somewhat similar manning concepts as those I noted earlier for the USCG and USNs LCS and DDG1000 programs, with the exception of opting for 6 man rooms in place of the 4 man rooms.

The cutters are either doing drug ops or carrying LE Dets for MIO (Maritime Interception Operations) and for training naval ships' VBSS teams. Not exactly frontline combat ships...

Getting back to an earlier comment that I was trying to make though, I believe that if you were to closely look at some of these modern designs you would probably find that the allowance of 4dtons of space (assuming single occupancy staterooms) or 2dtons of space (assuming double occupancy) as outlined in Traveller is not really anywhere near as "luxurious" accommodations as some seem to believe, especially once you consider the space needed to be allocated to galleys, mess rooms, food storage, life support, and access, etc.

If the coooool! new berthing ideas take hold (depending on manning, automation, damage control, and a whole slew of other technology innovations...), then yes, it wouldn't be so far-fetched. But for Damage Control and the reasons timerover cited, among others, I don't expect to see that pan out.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

One bit on the roomier accommodations: I think that will generally happen in older ships, as automation removes people (wisely or not) from the crew. If you build a new ship that requires fewer people, the general idea will be to shrink the ship to lose that excess space. Two reasons: 1) saves money (and governments are always looking to save money), and 2) it makes the ship more efficient (faster, given the same engines; lower profile; etc.).

If they don't make it smaller, then they will use the excess space for new equipment, not to give sailors a whole lot more room.

I say this mainly because navies and armies are generally capability-focused when it comes to acquisition. If they look to improve the lot of their sailors/soldiers, it is usually as an afterthought, or because they are modifying existing equipment. If they do build a new ship with lots of empty space available for sailors to cavort about in, somebody somewhere will cut the program's budget. It might not be smart, but it is the way acquisition works (at least in the US military).

 

[Hal]

Hi Guys,
What started this thread in part, was the discussion from another thread, but some of the posts in this thread have been educational.

None the less, this is what I'm getting out of this over a period of time, and how it may (or may not) relate to Traveller...

First, we had a comment about how a crew for a Destroyer went from a high value down to a lower level that was about 1/3rd the rate of the older version. Then a rebuttal indicates that the capabilities/functions of the ship classes were modified to the extent that it wasn't really comparing apples to apples as it were. What might be better overall, is to compare apples to apples and find a ship that has its analog in World War II not only by size, but also by mission and armaments, and then try to find its modern day analog based upon mission and armaments and see how the size changed and how the crewing requirements changed. So a ship capable of taking on another warship, capable of shore bombardment, etc - might be a better match for discussion.

Second, we see a series of thoughts regarding retention of crew throughout the active duty cycle of a ship. A while back, I got to thinking about the use of multiple crews for ships such that a ship would go on duty with Team A (or team Red or what ever naming conventions you choose) and have identical class ships being rotated between the crews. This permitted shore time, and also permitted crews to swap out newbies to replace those who have voluntarily separated from service (aka the 4 year term). This has an impact on the Traveller Universe in the sense only if a GM cares to examine that aspect for his/her traveller universe. I would LOVE to look at those details to make my traveller universe seem more alive for the players.

Thirdly? Design decisions of shipbuilders in the past have a definite impact on peace time naval operations into the future. Such considerations probably should be looked at more closely.

In the end? It would be interesting to view various aspects of the Traveller universe based upon the following criteria:

How much maintenance is required to keep a warship operational? GURPS TRAVELLER has rules for this, as does TRAVELLER THE NEW ERA. Do any other ship rules have such a requirement included? If so? It might be interesting to compare them against each other and see what affect it has on the Traveller universe game environment.

 

[mike wightman]

I think it may be a useful comparison to look at submarines:

compare the crew required with the displacement of the sub and how it varies by navy and TL (WW!/WW2/cold war/modern).

I'm trying to find the data but it's a bit tricky to summarise.

 

[Darkwing]

Second, we see a series of thoughts regarding retention of crew throughout the active duty cycle of a ship. A while back, I got to thinking about the use of multiple crews for ships such that a ship would go on duty with Team A (or team Red or what ever naming conventions you choose) and have identical class ships being rotated between the crews. This permitted shore time, and also permitted crews to swap out newbies to replace those who have voluntarily separated from service (aka the 4 year term). This has an impact on the Traveller Universe in the sense only if a GM cares to examine that aspect for his/her traveller universe. I would LOVE to look at those details to make my traveller universe seem more alive for the players.

First, boomers have a blue crew and a gold crew, and it's needed, since they deploy in isolation and are gone for long periods without port calls. Not as much since the Cold War, and they've reduced deployment length, but it's still an issue.
Second, MCMs (minesweeps) have 3-boat rotating teams. Boat Alfa is on-station in the Gulf, Boat Bravo is in workups to go, and Boat Charlie is in the yards getting fixed, giving the crew dwell time. In 6 months, crew Bravo will fly over, replace crew Alfa, who fly back and take over Boat Bravo. 6 months later, repeat. This is because MCMs don't travel well in open ocean transit, and we don't want to spend the time and money to fix them up at the start of their deployment, not getting any use out of them. So we sent enough boats over, fixed them after arrival, and then started rotating crews instead. The problem is, the crews are so small that everyone is loaded down with multiple jobs and collateral duties, so it's wearing on them. It'd help if they could increase the crew a bit, and maybe also shift to 4-boat teams.
Third, I understand manning shortfalls are so severe that a lot of QMCs (navigation CPOs) are not going to the ships they're assigned to. The Desron is short-stopping them and reassigning them to Desron, leaving each ship's QM1 or QM2 to run things on a daily basis. When a ship in that squadron goes out, Desron sends a QMC to be in charge during the underway time. When the ship gets back, that chief may well be walking down the pier to go on another underway with another boat. That got me to thinking that we should have each Desron add a virtual ship crew.
The virtual ship would provide extra bodies when needed (on deployment and a crewman has a family emergency? Send someone who can fill his shoes and let him go home. Got INSURV (Congressional Board of Inspection & Survey, massive inspection to make sure the ship is in good shape and crew knows their business)? Don't just send some TPU (Transient Personnel Unit - sailors transferring to/from ships of the squadron, who often don't care) bodies, send some virtual crew bodies. They're going to be on that ship at some point in their assignment, so they'll help more than the transients. Going underway for a major effort, say humanitarian aid? Take off some of the sailors who won't be involved, put on some virtual crew who will be. Got a sailor asking for an early out, and you don't want to gap his billet? Swap him for a virtual crewmember, and let him get out early. Basically, if you have 6 - 8 ships in a squadron, have 1 -2 ship's worth of virtual crew, but man them at about 120%. Then use them to help where needed.
Additionally, when in-port, have the virtual crews help with ship's maintenance projects that use ship's force, rather than Regional Maintenance Center support. This makes crew life easier for the ship, reduces work hours onboard (one of the issues we have - if things need done, or some khaki thinks he needs to keep sailors busy, worklists can grow to 80 -100 hours a week. If Desron is helping out, that reduces the ship's work hours for legitimate items, and for spiteful busywork, means Desron will hear about it quickly. If the ship's CO is involved, he might get relieved; if it's a junior officer or a chief messing with his department, then he can fired or disciplined, and the CO might not get relieved. But sailors won't be harassed over busywork as much).

Thirdly? Design decisions of shipbuilders in the past have a definite impact on peace time naval operations into the future. Such considerations probably should be looked at more closely.

War-time, too. We go to war with what we have, not what we wish we had. Then the leaders who thought we were well-equipped start to learn where they were wrong, and to fix it. But then they think we're good, and keep building for the last war, with the occasional gasp of bright thoughts.
Eventually someone says "we don't need this anymore", and things change. If they're right, it's a good thing. If they're wrong, the next war will fix it again, but that's when you pay back the peace dividend.

In the end? It would be interesting to view various aspects of the Traveller universe based upon the following criteria:

How much maintenance is required to keep a warship operational? GURPS TRAVELLER has rules for this, as does TRAVELLER THE NEW ERA. Do any other ship rules have such a requirement included? If so? It might be interesting to compare them against each other and see what affect it has on the Traveller universe game environment.

What kind of maintenance? There's the regular preventive maintenance performed by each workcenter on their gear, there's shipyard level maintenance and repair, and a whole world in between. I'd love to see some better background for this, but not to the point of playing "YARDBIRDS & TECHREPS".

 

[Fritz_Brown]

(aka the 4 year term)

It also works with the advanced chargen (1-year assignments in each term) in CT and MT.

First, boomers .../SNIP/... But sailors won't be harassed over busywork as much).

All good stuff, except that last sentence. Ain't no way sailors won't be harassed over busywork. They'd just get bored and get into trouble, otherwise.

 

[Darkwing]

Not suggesting doing away with it entirely. Just cutting down the level of malicious busywork.

 

[PFVA63]

...
The cutters are either doing drug ops or carrying LE Dets for MIO (Maritime Interception Operations) and for training naval ships' VBSS teams. Not exactly frontline combat ships...
....

Hi,

Actually if you take a look at the Coast Guards System Requirement Specification for the Deepwater Program you will see that the requirements for the National Security Cutter calls for numerous frigate-like/warfighting requirments. Specifically it calls for the NSC to be:

..."capable of operating at an operational speed to take and maintain station on a maneuvering Carrier, Fixed Wing Nuclear Powered (CVN) conduction flight operations."

..."designed to U.S. Navy Level I Survivability Standards, with the exception of shock hardening."

..."designed to U.S. Navy Damage Stability criteria."

In addition the ships are required to be able to:

..."detect, track, identify and intercept surface targets using techniques, such as, surface radar, visual, thermal imaging (infrared) and ESM."

..."provide the decision support capabilities to plan and direct the detect and track function for assigned forces."

..."allow Coast Guard personnel to board, inspect, interdict, report, and seize surface vessels."

..."fire warning and disabling shots against TOI in the course of interdictions."

..."transport, deliver, and retrieve Coast Guard Port Security Boats (PSU)."

..."allow Coast Guard personnel to plan, direct, and engage surface threats, independently or in cooperation with other forces, achieving mission kill on high-speed coastal patrol craft beyond small and intermediate caliber gunfire effective range."

..."allow Coast Guard personnel to plan, provide, and direct own-ship defense of escorted units."

..."disengage, evade or avoid surface attack by minimizing radar cross-section, employing ESM, soft-kill measures, evasion techniques, and EMCON procedures."

..."have the ability to plan and direct the above for assigned forces.'

..."launch, recover and refuel (on-deck and in-flight) Navy and NATO Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft, including armed helicopters.'

..."control and direct aircraft."

..."detect and track air targets and exchange track information with other naval forces."

..."perform self-defense from anti-ship cruise missiles, employing hard-kill capability."

..."perform self-defense from anti-ship cruise missiles by minimizing radar cross section and employing oft-kill capabilities."

..."maintain reduced susceptibility to magnetic mines."

..."search, intercept, and Direction Find (DF) emitters in passive mode to identify surface and air contacts and provide for timely defensive or evasion/avoidance actions."

..."maintain an updated threat library."

..."plan, direct and implement operations security measures for own ship and assigned forces, including EMCON."

..."meet frigate-like IT-21 (Information Technology for the 21st Century) standards to support joint tactical warfighting."

..."function as one of the following: Coastal Sea Control Commander (CSCC), Maritime Interception Commander (MIC) and SAR On-Scene Commander (OSC)."

..."provide Command and Control (C2) facilities and support (including work/watch space and communications) for own ship and embarked Harbor Defense Commander (HDC) or CSCC."

..."maintain real-time, two-way voice and data communications interoperability and relay capability with joint allied forces."

..."exchange data to assist in identifying surface and air contacts."

..."support, conduct, and share electronic (ESM) intelligence information collection with joint and allied forces."

..."exchange track data with joint and allied forces using common Navy links."

etc.

http://www.uscg.mil/history/docs/2000_USCG_systemperformancespecification.pdf

 

[PFVA63]

Hi,

Over the weekend I had a chance to dig up a set of plans for the US Coast Guard's 378ft WHEC High Endurance Cutters and took a look at the area/space allocations for personnel.

Below is a copy of the plans taken from the USCG website.



Looking over this drawing, I've tried to figure out which spaces would likely seem to be a part of the ship's "Accommodations spaces", as opposed "Bridge and Basic Controls", "Machinery", "Weaponry", or "Fuel" etc.

Along these lines, I figured that "Accommodations spaces" should probably include all berthing and sanitary spaces, lounges, wardrooms, mess decks, the galley, scullery, chilled and frozen food stores, sea bag stowage, sick bay, barber ship, ship's store, and general stores plus maybe the passageways in way of these specific spaces, and stuff that might be considered "life support" stuff such as, fresh water and sewage tankage, fan room, and the air conditioning plant.

The figure below shows these estimated spaces on this ship. The dark gray colored spaces are for the Captain and I believe the Chief Engineer, the green spaces are the spaces that appeared to be officer spaces, the brown spaces are CPO spaces, red spaces are Crew spaces, and the blue items are overall common spaces.



From the dwg, I added up berths and or lockers to come up with a total accommodations number of 174 (which is a little higher than the current listed manning for the ship, but which may represent the inclusion of spares, etc).

Using the above info (assuming 50 sq ft of deck area is roughly equal to 1 dton of space), plus an allowance for the FW and Sewage tankage taken from a tankage study for the craft gives a total dtonnage for personnel of 328.5 dtons or about 1.97 dtons per person.

As such, for a mid 1960 era design, with crew berthed in spaces up to 30 per space it appears that roughly 2 dtons/person isn't a bad estimate. It should be noted that this is basically the same as the 2 dton/person assumed in Traveller for double occupancy.

Because of this I really don't feel that assuming a 2dton/person allowance for a warship in Traveller is really all that unrealistic to me.

 

[Darkwing]

First, you really went all out to prove your point. But where I still take issue is that will end up as "proof" that giving everyone a 2-man hotel room is feasible and in keeping with current practice.
This DC plate doesn't have really good resolution on my screen, so I'm not sure how accurate your selections are, but I also think that CHT, water, ac plant, and fan rooms should be considered engineering or life support, not berthing, which you used to buff up your numbers. General stores would be cargo, another buff.
And then you average the CO, XO, and officer accommodations with the CPO and enlisted accommodations. Try actually visiting a few ships. Except for the captain and exec, the officers will usually be slightly cramped in comparison to the Traveller standard, and the chiefs and enlisted will be well more than slightly cramped.

 

[aramis]

Timerover - all the gangways should be part of stateroom space except those entirely within a compartment dedicated to some other element... but there are almost none of those on the 378 WPG.

Also, ship's laundry, tho' it looks like you included that.
It looks like you cut out the Peacoat stores or the stores abeam them. Both of which should be included. I'm not certain if you included all the study areas, either.

Also note, the bottom deck might not be full height. It looks to be mostly bilges and sumps, which are often not full height; it looks like you may have treated it as a full height deck. Also, most of the deck is outside the dotted full height line.

Nice work, tho'.

 

[PFVA63]

First, you really went all out to prove your point. But where I still take issue is that will end up as "proof" that giving everyone a 2-man hotel room is feasible and in keeping with current practice.
This DC plate doesn't have really good resolution on my screen, so I'm not sure how accurate your selections are, but I also think that CHT, water, ac plant, and fan rooms should be considered engineering or life support, not berthing, which you used to buff up your numbers. General stores would be cargo, another buff.

And then you average the CO, XO, and officer accommodations with the CPO and enlisted accommodations. Try actually visiting a few ships. Except for the captain and exec, the officers will usually be slightly cramped in comparison to the Traveller standard, and the chiefs and enlisted will be well more than slightly cramped.

Hi,

I'm not really trying to prove "that giving everyone a 2-man hotel room is feasible and in keeping with current practice" but rather I'm just trying to show that allocating 2dtons of space per person isn't really excessive for a warship or patrol vessel.

As for "CHT, water, ac plant, and fan rooms should be considered engineering or life support, not berthing" if the Traveller rules made allowances for such that would make sense to me, however in the rules that I'm familiar with "engineering spaces" seem to be limited to "Power Plants", "Jump Drives", "Maneuver Drives' and "Fuel Processors". And since things like the Collection, Holding and Transfer (CHT) tank and fresh water systems will be probably pretty greatly dependent on the number of personnel carried I think that considering them as part of accommodations space instead of as part of engineering spaces would make sense to me.

As for the A/C plant, refrigeration and fans rooms I could see the possibility that these may be in part based both on accommodations and part on just overall hull size and/or other factors, but in a Traveller setting they kind of seem to fit the bill of being (at least to a large part) "life support systems" and on a Traveller type ship I would kind of suspect that there would have to be systems at least a little similar in concept to treat, recirculate and reclaim the "air" whose size will be based in a large part on the number of personnel onboard (as well as refrigeration for the food stuffs. etc).

As far as stores being "cargo", if the Traveller rules sets being used requires a certain amount of "cargo" space to be carried on a ship to serve as the "stores" required to support the crew that would be fine, but if that is not the case then space for "food", "linens", "spares for lighting", "filters", "office supplies" etc would all have to come out of somewhere.

As far as averaging the numbers, the intent was to come up with an overall number to compare with Traveller type rules and I the individual subtotals in the image to allow people to see (at least a little bit) how the different groups compare.

As such, to me it really looks like allocating 2dtons per person for accommodations on a ship really doesn't mean that the accommodations on a ship will be overly extravagant. Instead to me it kind of shows that if a person were serious about trying to provide spaces to account for pretty much everything that might be required to support a "crew" onboard it might actually be a real challenge to fit all those spaces in.

PS. As far as a "Traveller standard" for which to compare to, I think its probably important to ask what we mean by that and whether we are talking about any specific "canon" rules or whether we are talking a mix of rules and assumptions on compartment sizes.

PPS. Sorry about the size of the drawing. I had tried to scale it down, but have it clickable to enlarge, but I think I did something wrong. Anyway the drawing came from this site http://www.uscg.mil/history/plans/coastguardplansindex.asp (about 1/2 way down under Cutter, Tender, Lightship & Vessel Plans:) and can be downloaded in large scale either as a pdf or a jpg.