Advanced Low Berth?

[Terry Mixon]

No, it's a Referee decision. But it's not unreasonable to grant it for a fully equipped and staffed hospital or specialist revival clinic that's not working under ER conditions.

I'd not hand it out to a typical starship medbay operated by a typical ship's doctor.

But seriously, the +4 bonus for taking 1D6 hours does get most patients through without issue, even with Medic-0 and no other mods.

Expert (Medic) and Medic-1 will be enough to process END 6 or more patients in 1Dx10 minutes each.

The longer time is +2, not +4. I was thinking you were lumping medic 2 onto that. It's your universe, so rock on, but you might as well just pay for a better low berth and save all the other hospital expenses.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Further thought.

If there are a large number of passengers, the revival of any frail ones would be overseen by the most skilled members of the medical team, with special care and maybe with more than one person helping. The healthy passengers could be left to the average skilled members of the medical staff. It's not as if the health of the passengers would usually be a mystery to the medical professionals responsible for all of this, although of course in a frontier or free trader context things may well be different ("You the popsicles? Report to Zoidberg in room 3...")

And if we're talking established passenger liners, they'd likely employ ground staff to come on to the ships to help with processing, both for freezing and revival. That makes more sense to me than crewing more that is needed to safely monitor the cargo during flight.

Sure. One thing to remember about the low berths from the Robot Handbook is that they have arms and each patient has a medic right there in electronic form. A liner likely has an advanced autodoc that can revive recently deceased people and that covers it. A crash team or two and the robotic low berths would save you from needing herds of medics. the robotic low berths are capable enough to put people into extended revival times if called for.

 

[Condottiere]

Steerage might be cheaper.

 

[Arkathan]

I agree with that, but the boon for a medical facility isn't spelled out in the rules. Just looking at the rules as written, that's a non-trivial death rate that will catch up with those kind of people without better low berths.

Boon:

If a Traveller has help, such as good tools, competent
aids or other beneficial circumstances, they receive a
Boon. This means they roll an extra dice during a check
and discard the lowest.

I was going to say, someone helping the Traveller means the Traveller has help.
But then maybe I am misconstruing aids with aides...
My players try to double up on macro-tasks to benefit from an extra set of eyes and another pair of hands.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Boon:

I was going to say, someone helping the Traveller means the Traveller has help.
But then maybe I am misconstruing aids with aides...
My players try to double up on macro-tasks to benefit from an extra set of eyes and another pair of hands.

Hmm. I haven't used that mechanic, so I misunderstood. Sorry @rinku. My bad.

Personally, I'm not sure I'd make that a boon. It's replacing the medic with a different medic. Maybe granting an additional +1 for the hospital. Not sure.

Even so, I think the more advanced low berths are a cleaner way to handle it for a company, and they are a lot cheaper than a hospital and staff.

 

[rinku]

The longer time is +2, not +4. I was thinking you were lumping medic 2 onto that. It's your universe, so rock on, but you might as well just pay for a better low berth and save all the other hospital expenses.

My apologies, I got in my head the base time was 1D6 minutes, despite actually looking at the task several times. Indeed.

Although I did leave off the +1 for TL12+, which would also be usual. So let's call it Medic-1 INT 9, with an expert system at TL12 getting that essential +4 needed to not lose any passengers of average health unless rapid revival was needed.

And I am NOT dismissing the robotic option in the slightest. Especially for very large scale operations you would want it, and while the rules don't directly address very long term storage you'd expect that automatic monitoring and care would be important for that.

 

[rinku]

And above all... regardless of the modifiers and the dice, you only need to use the revival rules if it helps the story.

Stressed out Free Trader crew getting by on medical aid from someone with JoT and brains? Yeah they have to roll, and the corpses are a big fat hint they need a proper doctor.

Medic-4 surgeon with TL15 medlab and nursing staff (I had one in a group I used to run)? Don't bother rolling. If they lose a patient it should be only due to Plot, and be as much of a shock to them as everyone else.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Beyond the initial cost, all that needs paid for is the maintenance of the low berths. Even the most expensive one that Terry designed was like what? 800k and change? 800,000Cr x 0.1% = 800Cr for a year or 62Cr per month. A base Medic costs 4,000Cr per month plus a Stateroom and life support. Better the up-front cost next to no monthly cost for absolutely 0% chance of ever dying, not even if your already almost dead. Just makes more financial sense than trusting to a Medic/1 who could be tired, sick. drunk, or otherwise impaired. Also, those medics can still fail, the machine can't.

 

[Terry Mixon]

My apologies, I got in my head the base time was 1D6 minutes, despite actually looking at the task several times. Indeed.

Although I did leave off the +1 for TL12+, which would also be usual. So let's call it Medic-1 INT 9, with an expert system at TL12 getting that essential +4 needed to not lose any passengers of average health unless rapid revival was needed.

And I am NOT dismissing the robotic option in the slightest. Especially for very large scale operations you would want it, and while the rules don't directly address very long term storage you'd expect that automatic monitoring and care would be important for that.

Agreed. The robotic low berths include the TL12 +1 bonus. Low berth travel is dangerous.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Beyond the initial cost, all that needs paid for is the maintenance of the low berths. Even the most expensive one that Terry designed was like what? 800k and change? 800,000Cr x 0.1% = 800Cr for a year or 62Cr per month. A base Medic costs 4,000Cr per month plus a Stateroom and life support. Better the up-front cost next to no monthly cost for absolutely 0% chance of ever dying, not even if you’re already almost dead. Just makes more financial sense than trusting to a Medic/1 who could be tired, sick. drunk, or otherwise impaired. Also, those medics can still fail, the machine can't.

Half that. KCr460.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Beyond the initial cost, all that needs paid for is the maintenance of the low berths. Even the most expensive one that Terry designed was like what? 800k and change? 800,000Cr x 0.1% = 800Cr for a year or 62Cr per month. A base Medic costs 4,000Cr per month plus a Stateroom and life support. Better the up-front cost next to no monthly cost for absolutely 0% chance of ever dying, not even if your already almost dead. Just makes more financial sense than trusting to a Medic/1 who could be tired, sick. drunk, or otherwise impaired. Also, those medics can still fail, the machine can't.

The use of a medic’s stateroom for middle passage plus not paying the salary would still take decades to break even, so I’m not sure many will count that as a factor other than major lines.

Even so, an Advanced Plus low berth is just more than double the cost of a basic one KCr120 vs KCr50 so more within reach and under all circumstances will allow survival in exchange for added time in some cases. It’s a good deal. Pay KCr110 for the standard advanced low berth and only END 0 folk have a 2.7% chance of dying.

 

[Arkathan]

Hmm. I haven't used that mechanic, so I misunderstood. Sorry @rinku. My bad.

Personally, I'm not sure I'd make that a boon. It's replacing the medic with a different medic. Maybe granting an additional +1 for the hospital. Not sure.

Even so, I think the more advanced low berths are a cleaner way to handle it for a company, and they are a lot cheaper than a hospital and staff.

No really. I'm second guessing whether assistants grant boons. Another case of ignorance being bliss.

 

[rinku]

Is there any extra cost for them to be mobile? I still think my idea of a wheel on, wheel off unit makes a great deal of sense in many situations. Very low liability for the ship too; essentially it's just fragile cargo.

As far as boons go, that rule is there purely to allow a greater chance of success while retaining a chance of failure. Whether it's appropriate is up to the Referee for that very reason.

Normally I'd use the group task rules as the base, with an eye towards circumstances.

One undeniable advantage of the roboticised low berths is that each of them can revive in parallel. In a Free Trader with standard berths, your one ship's doctor with their +4 mods is still averaging half an hour plus to revive each one. Robot berths can get everyone unfrozen in the same time and make it more practical to take more time to revive.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Is there any extra cost for them to be mobile? I still think my idea of a wheel on, wheel off unit makes a great deal of sense in many situations. Very low liability for the ship too; essentially it's just fragile cargo.

As far as boons go, that rule is there purely to allow a greater chance of success while retaining a chance of failure. Whether it's appropriate is up to the Referee for that very reason.

As long as the cart is separate from the low berth and not built in, it would add no cost. The units have their own power supply and would be fine being removed.

If they are meant to be self locomotive, I’d have to build one to see how that affected things. Might not be possible without making them bigger and that would mean they couldn’t fit in standard housings.

 

[AndrewW]

Mobile low berths:

Hey, something happened to the low berth, is it the fault of the ship it came from or the ship it was transferred to?

I've only got this old beat up unit to trade for the brand new unit your passenger is in.

 

[MasterGwydion]

The use of a medic’s stateroom for middle passage plus not paying the salary would still take decades to break even, so I’m not sure many will count that as a factor other than major lines.

Even so, an Advanced Plus low berth is just more than double the cost of a basic one KCr120 vs KCr50 so more within reach and under all circumstances will allow survival in exchange for added time in some cases. It’s a good deal. Pay KCr110 for the standard advanced low berth and only END 0 folk have a 2.7% chance of dying.

When you are paying for them over the 40 years of your mortgage, the costs are negligible.

 

[Condottiere]

It probably comes down to the reason you have low berths available.

If it's to keep passage costs low, there's going to be a lot of cost cutting, and cut corners.

If it's for some other reason, that allows heavy ancillary expenses, then the odds will ever be in your favour.

 

[rinku]

Any ship can benefit from having one or two of them. They're low cost items and useful for keeping critically injured crew alive, or transporting someone or something you really don't want running around the ship.

I know space is tight on a Type-S, but you could easily justify one for that very reason. Prisoner transfer. Specimen retrieval. Mission needs more than eight crew.

Johnson and Gvaaagh REALLY can't stand Cheryl and Eneri anymore and beg to be put under during jump...

 

[Condottiere]

That would be the point.

What is their primary usage?

If it's for emergencies, whether medical or catastrophic hull damage, the low berths would be viewed differently, as compared to minimizing life support costs, for cattle class.

 

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