Scout Service Basic Training?

[sgt_sevya]

Has there ever been anything published about the initial training for member of the Scout Service? Is it a military boot camp like experience? Or, is it more of on-the-job training?

Thank you,
Sevya

 

[McPerth]

Not that I know, but I expect it to be more like a military or academic camp, with some field work to round it up.

The closest thing that I've read (and the first one dringing in my head) about training centers run by the IISS is GLIPS (Glisten Institute of Planetological Studies), presented in The Traveller's Digest issue 15, page 28 (in the article about Glisten).

While not an IISS center de per se, it was founded by a retired Scout and their directors, being a family post, traditionally join the IISS before taking the office. It is also stated that they work in cooperation with IISS through their base in GListen. As I understand the article, I expect many Scouts to be trained there.

BTW, as I see this is your first psot, welcome aboard!

 

[sgt_sevya]

Thank you for the welcome! I've played Traveller since the early '80s, and I'm just now connecting with the online community.

I was kinda thinking the same thing. They would probably have daily physical fitness work, and a lot of classroom work as well. They would need to watch for people with problems with boredom, as space travel has a lot of down time. Then field work to make sure everyone knows their stuff. In the kind of work the scouts do, one screw up can get you dead fast.

 

[Timerover51]

Has there ever been anything published about the initial training for member of the Scout Service? Is it a military boot camp like experience? Or, is it more of on-the-job training?

Thank you,
Sevya

Welcome to the Forum. Sit back, put your feet up, have a cup of coffee, and join the fun.:coffeegulp:

I envision two types of training for the Scouts. One for what I call the field workers and one for what I call the technical crew.

For the field workers, that is more on-the-job training, with the person enlisting in the Scouts, given a basic training in Survival, Skill Level "0" in either Shotgun or Carbine, and a basic overview of what goes on with a planet survey in terms of fieldwork. Basically, the sort of work done by Shann Lantee that is covered in Andre Norton's book, Storm Over Warlock, which can be found on Project Gutenberg. That would be represented by the basic Scout Character Generation in the Classic series of books, with Survival added as a term skill.

The second would basically be the character going to a college somewhat like the Merchant Marine Academy where they learn more advanced skills like shiphandling, navigation, some engineering, the sciences (biology and chemistry), extra-terrestrial life and contact measures, along with computer skills and leadership training. This would be more like the advanced character generation of the Scout Supplement and later editions. At the end of this there would be a survival test for four weeks, with the students being placed on a planet as individuals with a basic set of survival gear, and needing to stay alive during that time. IF desired, students may group together, but that will take some effort as they will be spread out. This would be similar to the survival test in Robert Heinlein's book, Tunnel in the Sky, or the survival test in his book, Starship Troopers.

 

[kilemall]

Hmm, well there are the ship folks and the survey folks, and then the sneakret folks depending on how much you want the Scouts to be the counterbalancing service.

Heh, maybe you could think of the Scouts as the much feared 'Fish and Game' (movie joke).

Ship people do the xboat thing which would be a waste for pure survey types, but they also drive the courier and sneakret people around.

Sneakrets would be ship or survey people first, then get their spy/agent/SWAT training for their real missions.

The original CT of course had Pilot-1 as a default, which if you think about the xboat/courier/driving surveys around tasks would be a logical default.

So maybe as a QND initial default, you would roll for player's initial Scout branch and get

1-2 (Courier/Xboat) Pilot-1 Commo-0 Navigation-0
3-4 (Support) Pilot-1 Air/Raft-0 Vacc Suit-0
5-6 (Survey) Survey-1 Survival-0 Science(Any)-0

The other outstanding attribute of the Scouts is generating tons of JOAT types.

Not sure you can 'train' for that per se, other then Scout training may involve cramming a LOT of general knowledge, facts/trivia, and specific howtos on all sorts of subjects deliberately trying to cover every likely eventuality.

For some it gels and becomes JOAT-1.

 

[Quint]

Rather than a military-style training and induction-style program, I always tended to think of the Scouts as more "park ranger" in training and temperament.

I also (even years back, pre-Mongoose) allowed multiple careers and tended to view the scouts as a "second career" for lots of enlisted ex-military types. The navy ratings tended towards the x-boat service, army and marines tended towards planetary exploration.

D.

 

[BlackBat242]

I also (even years back, pre-Mongoose) allowed multiple careers and tended to view the scouts as a "second career" for lots of enlisted ex-military types. The navy ratings tended towards the x-boat service, army and marines tended towards planetary exploration.

D.

From when I started playing Traveller in 1983 we allowed multiple careers. To do otherwise seemed illogical in the extreme.

 

[sgt_sevya]

Thank you for all the help and comments on this. Based on all of this and my own thoughts, I am looking at the initial training for the Scout Service being primarily an academic environment. I plan to base this on the training for the Patrol in Heinlein's Space Cadet, and my own experience at the Defense Language Institute. It is like a collegiate environment with stricter discipline and occasional field work.

I have some other questions about the Scouts, but I'll ask them on new threads.

Thank you, again,
Sevya