The Close Escort: not viable?

[AnotherDilbert]

The consideration to take into account is the cost per person compared to the pay for each, with the basic package your stuffing 60,000 cr worth of gear into someone who is only paid 3,000 /mos.

Does it matter? It costs millions to train a fighter jock, yet how much do they earn?

The USN and most airforces finds it worth investing millions in their skills, yet does not exactly make them rich...

Edit:

It currently costs the taxpayer about $6 million a year to train one fighter pilot in today's Air Force.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07 ... 25000.html

So training a fighter jock seems to cost 10s of millions by now...

[baithammer]

For starters, most of that price is equipment operation and that same piece of gear can be used by several sets of pilots which minimizes the real cost per pilot.

Next point, that equipment isn't embedded into the pilot so the pilot doesn't require a long service life in order to justify the investment, where as once implanted the service life requirement becomes less attractive.

There is a specific instance where this might be desirable in that if faced with a constrained pool of personnel, it would be advantageous to heavily invest in the individual.

The Empires Navy has the opposite issue, where there is an extremely high available pool of personnel and only really constrained by the vastness of its holdings.

[AnotherDilbert]

Next point, that equipment isn't embedded into the pilot so the pilot doesn't require a long service life in order to justify the investment, where as once implanted the service life requirement becomes less attractive.

The training is time-consuming, expensive and very much embedded into the pilot, necessitating keeping the pilots for more than just a few years.

From the same source as before:
"Air Force, facing fighter pilot shortage, offers retention bonuses of up to $225,000"
So the AF seems to value its pilots...

[steve98052]

In the 3I you would install a wafer jack and hand them a gunnery wafer...

That strays pretty far from my vision of the Traveller universe, where intelligent robots are very unpopular (except in Hiver space), and cyborgs are seen as steps toward intelligent robots. It's more Shadowrun than Traveller, in my opinion. Other than possibly better-than-original prostheses for lost body parts (or as culturally scorned extreme body modifications, maybe), I'm inclined to rule against augments, and forbid mental augments altogether.

That said, if the technology is there, it should be something a crew member can get if they have the ambition and temperament for it. Such crew might be very high ranking in terms of status aboard ship, but not on a command track.

And as a few others mentioned in this thread, total cost of operation would be a significant consideration in how widely such things are offered (or, if they're banned from a vision of the setting, how often extreme training is offered).

On the topic of cost of fleet operations, I would assume that death benefits for families of killed-in-action crew are substantial, particularly for crew recruited from advanced worlds, because people are important to an advanced civilization. That's something to factor into seemingly expendable fighters.

[AnotherDilbert]

We don't need wafer jacks, we can build an expert system into the sights of a long-arm (Intelligent Weapon, CSC, p144), and hence into any workstation aboard ship.

[steve98052]

When it comes to things like crew skill, regardless of whether it's intensive training, augmentation, computer workstation assistance, etc., on a fleet against fleet level, it's fair to assume that every party in a battle is going to do the best they can with their budget and technology. So on a fleet scale, it's fair to ignore details of what makes a crew most effective, because opposing fleets will tend to cancel out.

[paltrysum]

In various incarnations of Traveller, has the close escort gig ever been mounted on the outside of the close escort? I seem to remember a version in which it was outside, a la the launch on the subsidized merchant.

[AnotherDilbert]

In the original CT version, the gig was mounted on the outside, ventrally.

[DickTurpin]

The Gazelle got a nice weapon upgrade in the conversion to 2nd edition, but they turned it into a tin can by dropping the armor from 8 points to only 3. I do not understand the reason for that drastic reduction unless it was to guarantee that a Gazelle "invariably suffered disproportionate losses".

With the current design, the ships would be better off using their speed to keep away from other combatants while using their particle barbette's range advantage to get some solid hits in on their opponents. The beam lasers would be solely used for anti-missile defense unless they get too close to another ship. Those tactics would not be very useful in a convoy escort role as an escort should be interposing itself between the merchant ships and attacking ships rather than running away.

In my Traveller universe, the Gazelles get their armor back so that they can at least function in their designated role.

[paltrysum]

In my Traveller universe, the Gazelles get their armor back so that they can at least function in their designated role.

Not a half bad idea. I hate how they gimped this ship. I think I'll run it through the spreadsheet and do the same. Thanks for the idea!

[baithammer]

MGT HG 2ed Gazelle looks more like a scout than a close escort with J5 + drop tank.

[AndrewW]

The Gazelle got a nice weapon upgrade in the conversion to 2nd edition, but they turned it into a tin can by dropping the armor from 8 points to only 3. I do not understand the reason for that drastic reduction unless it was to guarantee that a Gazelle "invariably suffered disproportionate losses".

It was because the ships where based on the Classic Traveller ships (S9 Fighting Ships Gazelle has armour 3).

[Condottiere]

Depends on what they were actually used for and what they found themselves facing.

Perhaps they were the Littoral Combat Ships of their era.

[AnotherDilbert]

I believe the original HG'79 Gazelle was fairly well armoured. (TL15 = factor 9 armour, which I think is maximum possible in HG'79.)