Just a note of preference here, I would stipulate both Medical and Steward as required skills. In my games the steward is generally the person tasked with Life Support functions.
Thought Experiment- drop the ship price
- Thread starter kilemall
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Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
I started with that position too ... that a Medic and a Steward are required, but then later came to the conclusion that it doesn't quite work like that for Life Support and the all important Environmental Controls.
The way I see it is that the Medic is responsible for Health & Wellbeing of everyone aboard (crew and passengers), while the Stewards are only there to fulfill the customer service demands of high passengers (stewards are not needed for middle passengers, since those passengers have to "fend for themselves" when it comes to meals and laundry and other bits of personal upkeep).
It's an imperfect analogy, but it gets the point across for the distinction I'm trying to draw here.
In a restaurant, you have cooks in the kitchen and servers in the dining area.
So you have specialists to make the food that gets served (cooks), who are not public facing ... and you have servers who deliver food and drink to tables and handle all of the personal interactions with customers and are the "face" of the establishment that the customers "see" and can ask for (waiters).
So with regenerative life support of the Environmental Control Type V-a through Type V-e ... it is the responsiblity of the medical staff (health, nutrition, wellness, etc.) to act as the "engineers" of the regenerative life support system (the "kitchen crew" part of the above analogy), while it is the responsibility of the stewards to handle and manage the customer service needs of the high passengers (the "servers crew" part of the above analogy). Point being that with high passengers you need both (medical and steward staff) ... but without high passengers, you only need medical, because you don't need stewards for middle passengers (and crew are essentially "salaried middle passengers" as far as that goes).
Now, if you want to get EXTRAVAGANT with your crew amenities and give them what LBB5.80 calls a Service Crew to handle basic services (shops and storage, security if there are no ship's troops, maintenance, food service [there's that waiter angle again] and other mundane operations aboard) ... you can effectively do so by adding Stewards. Using the LBB5.80, p33 entry on Service Crew as a guideline, you're looking at 2 Service Crew per 1000 tons of ship (round to nearest integer) with ships troops aboard, or 3 Service Crew per 1000 tons of ship (round to nearest integer) with no ship's troops. Standard salary rules for having more than one Steward aboard (Purser gets +10% salary on top of all other computations) apply as head of the department.
Steward positions assigned as Service Crew (LBB5.80, p33 style) are NOT available for high passenger service, since that is a separate crew position. However, since a single crew member can fill two crew positions (at -1 skill to each respective crew position) ... and because high passengers only require Steward-0 skill, it is possible to have a single crew member fulfill two duty assignments concurrently.
A 400 ton merchant ship (for example), if it had a Service Crew position assignment with no ship's troops aboard would need 400/1000*3=1.2=1 Steward crew position to fill the role. If the same ship also had accommodations for 8 high passengers, that would be a second Steward crew position required. So such a ship would have 2 Steward crew positions to fill.
The skill requirement to staff a Steward crew position is a minimum of Steward-0 skill.
So a crew member (PC or NPC) with Steward-1 skill would be able to fill both crew positions (yielding Steward-0/Steward-0 throughput to both positions, but meeting minimum requirements for the crew position).
Such a crew member would have +1 skill above the minimum skill level required for their position and earn +10% salary for that (native) skill level. They would also be filling 2 crew positions and get paid 75% for each position (LBB2.81, p8, p16).
So using the LBB2.81 pricing for crew salaries, the formula would look like this (use the skill level going "into" the crew positions, not the skill level you get "out" of them for the salary computation):
- Steward-1/Steward-1: ((Cr3000*1.1)+(Cr3000*1.1))*0.75*1.0 = Cr4950 per month
If you had multiple "double crew position" Stewards, the Purser's salary as a Department Head would be computed like this:
- Steward-1/Steward-1: ((Cr3000*1.1)+(Cr3000*1.1))*0.75*1.1 = Cr5445 per month
- Steward-2/Steward-2: ((Cr3000*1.2)+(Cr3000*1.2))*0.75*1.1 = Cr5940 per month
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Might explain why life support is now an engineering specialization.
Reading the Stward skill in Book1 "Steward skill represents a general awareness of cooking, personal care and attention, and other areas of experience which will make passengers and crew happy and content
with their conditions of passage."
Is both specific and general at the same time. I tend to lump a bunch of life aboard ship skills under it. Note living in a closed environment has greater overhead in terms of housekeeping that are mentioned but are implied under the skill.
Though note Medic is also a required skill for ships as well.
Both skills cover the some of the same ground, thus my requirement of both....
Note Mechanical is the skill that covers repair and/or operation of Life Support gear as well.
I have frequently ported this back into book2, in the form of a Steward requirement for population of the crew. though with the Small crews of small ships the Medic requirement mostly covers it.
Yep...
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Medics are required only on starships of 200+ tons.
Non-starships do not require medics.
My surmise for this requirement is the notion that ships of 200+ tons will have a significant complement of crew (pilot and engineer are functionally mandatory) so you're no longer in the "one man scout" regime of crew. Additionally, a starship while in jump is going to be out of contact from any support external to the ship for a week during each jump. If a medical emergency occurs during a jump, it may take too long to reach a medical facility ... hence the requirement for a medic onboard starships.
Non-starships, however, can presumably be "within 7 days" of a medical facility in the star system they're operating within, so an onboard medic is not required.
Ah, dangit.
And just after I'd convinced myself that Medical skill was all that was needed to cover cooking and meals preparation!
Curse you for making too much sense with your arguments and citations!
Honestly I adds a bunch of Credibility to the Medic requirement.
Though note there is a First Responder Certificate as part of a Watch standing officers license requirement in the real world.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Medic life support is specific to the patient.
Aspects that are mechanically related, such as plumbing, would be mechanics.
Artificial gravity would need an engineer, or at least, electronics.
Aspects that are mechanically related, such as plumbing, would be mechanics.
Artificial gravity would need an engineer, or at least, electronics.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Uh ... Gravitics skill ...?
As do I.
As the regenerative biosphere aboard becomes more sophisticated, a higher level of medical skill is needed to oversee it and prevent any feedback loop medical problems from manifesting.
It also keeps the Steward skill as a high passengers only crew position.
