Shipboard life support and food per person per day?

[FreeTrav]

Reminds me: in comparing modern titles to thos[e] in the game, it's best to not fixate on the titles, but the duties.

This concept should extend to "stuff", not just people/titles - if someone is dealing with meals by reaching into a storage unit, and pulling out a package that contains all of the components of a proper meal, with nothing more needed than to stick it into a heating unit, it doesn't matter whether you call it "MRE", "TV-Dinner", "MealPak", or et cetera. Sure, freshly prepared using the steward's creativity (or even following a stock recipe with no creativity) is better, but space - especially non-revenue space - is at a premium in most Traveller starships, and you might have to save those meals for scheduled morale-repairing exercises, and use MealPaks the rest of the time.

Honestly, even today, while I wouldn't call the frozen dinners you can get in your local Stop-and-Shop or Kroger's "gourmet dining", and many of them are suboptimal nutritionally, if you have a sufficient variety, they're mostly no worse than "meh", and many of them are better.

Just because I call 'em "MRE" when talking about them as shipboard rations doesn't mean that they're the low-quality/high-calorie/marginally-inedible Defense-procurement disasters that soldiers make black-humor jokes about...

 

[casquilho]

Reminds me: in comparing modern titles to thos in the game, it's best to not fixate on the titles, but the duties.

In other words, if you're serving the food, doing the laundry, and seeing to it it gets cooked, it doesn't matter if the title is shipswife, steward, or domestic affairs technician... for game purposes, you're a steward.

True, this is a good point. It also works for both careers and skills in my opinion.

(Now if only trek fans would get over "Marine" vs "Space Army" vs "Naval Infantry"...)

Now you are really asking for miracles.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Just because I call 'em "MRE"

Meals Rejected by Enemy

 

[Dragoner]

Reminds me: in comparing modern titles to thos in the game, it's best to not fixate on the titles, but the duties.

In other words, if you're serving the food, doing the laundry, and seeing to it it gets cooked, it doesn't matter if the title is shipswife, steward, or domestic affairs technician... for game purposes, you're a steward.

(Now if only trek fans would get over "Marine" vs "Space Army" vs "Naval Infantry"...)

Chief Steward or Purser is the feature, the running of the ship: administration, cargo, passengers, and service (including security) is the Steward's Dept. The actual work is done by robots or whatever random deck hand/rating. Though I don't think anyone would want to play just the cook.

 

[whartung]

Though I don't think anyone would want to play just the cook.

Guess you've never seen "Under Siege".

 

[Dragoner]

I have, though still ...

 

[Condottiere]

Hail to the Chef!

 

[yallambie]

I was originally in the "fresh food will keep for a week (perhaps with chilling), frozen meat, fish and vegetables are usually indistinguishable from fresh once cooked well (and may actually be fresher at the end of the week) and I can't cook for a high passenger but I don't need to rely on pre-prepared meals" camp.

Then it suddenly occurred to me that this attitude isn't just Solomani, it's positively Terran. We evolved alongside our food. Yes, we have selectively bred things like cabbage and brussels sprouts and cooking is a good idea for texture and killing bacteria and parasites but most of our food won't kill you if you just wash the dirt off and eat it raw. The Vilani, on the other hand, were planted on a planet with different biochemistry. A lot of their food is edible if properly prepared but poisonous in varying degrees if you get it wrong. If they don't have a trained cook aboard, whether they are crew or middle passengers, they may actively WANT their food to be industrially prepared, individually packaged, ready-to-heat (or ready to eat without heating). They wouldn't feel safe with anything else.

 

[FreeTrav]

Then it suddenly occurred to me that this attitude isn't just Solomani, it's positively Terran. We evolved alongside our food. Yes, we have selectively bred things like cabbage and brussels sprouts and cooking is a good idea for texture and killing bacteria and parasites but most of our food won't kill you if you just wash the dirt off and eat it raw. The Vilani, on the other hand, were planted on a planet with different biochemistry. A lot of their food is edible if properly prepared but poisonous in varying degrees if you get it wrong. If they don't have a trained cook aboard, whether they are crew or middle passengers, they may actively WANT their food to be industrially prepared, individually packaged, ready-to-heat (or ready to eat without heating). They wouldn't feel safe with anything else.

This. And not only this, but there is probably an organization - or perhaps several organizations - that check to make sure that such foodpacks are prepared in ways and with ingredients that are proven safe, and certify it (think kosher heckshers or the equivalent for Islamic halal as an analogy).

 

[Condottiere]

I, for one, refuse to believe that Vargr bury their food, nor that the Aslan drag their kills up a tree.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I, for one, refuse to believe that Vargr bury their food, nor that the Aslan drag their kills up a tree.

Vargr might well have multiple small refrigerators hidden throughout their staterooms, though.

 

[RossWinn]

Is it true that all the Vegans died? I was sure I heard it…

 

[Condottiere]

I think they mutated.

 

[casquilho]

Is it true that all the Vegans died? I was sure I heard it…

Isn't that what the K'Kree are? Vegans with guns?

 

[RossWinn]

Isn't that what the K'Kree are? Vegans with guns?

I meant Humaniti. I heard they were so boring that nobody slept with them and eventually they died out...

 

[mike wightman]

Apologies in advance

 

[aramis]

This. And not only this, but there is probably an organization - or perhaps several organizations - that check to make sure that such foodpacks are prepared in ways and with ingredients that are proven safe, and certify it (think kosher heckshers or the equivalent for Islamic halal as an analogy).

Heck, not even just analogy to them - it's likely all of the major terran religious purity observers will have spread during the Ramshackle period.

 

[mike wightman]

We don't have much canon on how nationhood and society evolved on Earth during the ISW era.

We know in the early years world governments granted authority to a world organisation to fight the war. The fact that it is a Turkish company and Turkish ship that encounters the Aslan, and a similar Turkish company ends up at Darrian shows that nationality is alive and well back on Old Earth.

 

[aramis]

We don't have much canon on how nationhood and society evolved on Earth during the ISW era.

We know in the early years world governments granted authority to a world organisation to fight the war. The fact that it is a Turkish company and Turkish ship that encounters the Aslan, and a similar Turkish company ends up at Darrian shows that nationality is alive and well back on Old Earth.

We do know many city names survive well into the 56th C (Invasion Earth), and that the Pyramids and Sphinx have been preserved into the 57th, surviving the invasion in the prior century (TD13)... and in the 120 years between the two, sea levels changed upward. (WTF did the Impies do?!?!?! - Map, TD 13 p27) Oh, and Starbase Phoenix is off the map, and Starbase Paulo is on the map...
Note that this puts the age of the pyramids roughly twice present... so the acidic rain issue in the med had to have been solved before too much damage.

Circa 1113:



Circa 1090

 

[Timerover51]

Given that you are projecting to the 56th Century, when we are currently somewhat into the 21st Century, you are talking about 3500 years into the future. That is about the same period of time as from the present back to the reign of the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose the Third, circa 1500 BC. How many countries and empires have disappeared since then? For that matter, how many empires have disappeared since 1900? We write based on present conditions, somewhat like the British authors did around 1900 when they assumed that the British Empire would be around forever. That did not last past the Second World War.