Adventure-Class Ships

[Terry Mixon]

Yeah, I don't treat Engineer as a cascade skill. I can imagine that if I was running a naval ratings campaign, I might care who was a Jump Engineer and who was a Drive Polisher. But that level of specificity just screws the one guy on your team that wants to play Scotty or whoever the latest hotness is in sci fi engineers.

Personally, I also think Sensor Op is a better job class than Navigator. Because the sensor op has stuff to do in space combat and plenty of other situations. Whereas the game has always struggled to make Astrogation do something besides "Save or die".

Maybe astrogation needs to be rolled into sensor ops. I could buy into that.

 

[rinku]

Not a bad idea at all.

 

[WHULorigan]

Maybe astrogation needs to be rolled into sensor ops. I could buy into that.

You can also split astronavigation into two separate skill sets: Jump and InSystem - they have clear differences. You can easily suggest the latter is part of Pilot, and the former is part of Astronavigator, and that both Pilot and Astronav include SensOps skill (and perhaps Gunner does as well). Hence Small Starships have a Pilot and Co-pilot as Captain/1st Officer & 1st/2nd Officer, and trade off tasks as necessary.

So who is unoccupied right now?

 

[swordtart]

Or just have Operate(Spaceship) and have done

 

[phavoc]

Thanks for info everyone.

Skills are one of those odd things that quickly become too much, too little, too defined, or too undefined. If you look at things from a viewpoint of today, smaller ships have a Pilot, and they do the navigation, the simple fixes, etc on their boats. As ships scale up they start getting dedicated crew positions and roles.

Maybe something like that is applicable to the game? As was pointed out in CT, the Scout originally just needed a Pilot and the systems took care of the rest. Obviously the Pilot would be like a small-craft mariner - able to do basic odd repairs, figure out how to get from point A to point B without flying into a planet. As the ships complexity goes up, so too would the need for dedication to the task and not get distracted by needing to plunge the loo after someone ate a bit too much space burrito.

 

[WHULorigan]

Or just have Operate(Spaceship) and have done

Perhaps a little too "non-granular".

But OTOH, a basic "familiarization"-type skill that automatically comes with background in career makes for a good idea.

(E.g. You start with "Career"-0 {or perhaps "Career"-0 and "Subfield"-1} in your 1st Term, and get an automatic increase of 1 level per term in-service. It covers general knowledge, things you pick-up, odds and ends, trivia, details, etc.)

So a Scout or Merchant or Spacer might be able to make a desperate appeal to that as "Operate (Spaceship)" in a pinch (having been in the service for so-and-so long) as a type of "limited" form of Jack-o-Trades as a mitigant against either the untrained penalty (on a skill-level vs. penalty mod basis) or as a default 0-level in the task, at the referee's discretion, depending on what the specific situation is.

This could also work with other careers like "Marine-3" for 2-3 term Marines, "Army-4", "Agent-2", etc. in their particular areas of expertise and background.

 

[Condottiere]

It's more what you want your character be able to do, and how proficiently.

Skill distribution and allocation in Traveller being somewhat arbitrary, and clunky.

 

[Vormaerin]

Well, that's a result of Traveller originally assuming that what's on your character sheet is just what you do better than a regular dude. So if it made sense for a regular dude with your background to have some knowledge of a thing, a skill 0 was just handed out to reflect that.

But the value of a skill rating has steadily degraded to where folks make a reasonable (if, imho, incorrect) argument that Skill 1 is practically noobtastic rather than Expertise as described in Classic Traveller.

Traveller's never tried to itemize all a character's capabilities.

 

[mavikfelna]

Perhaps a little too "non-granular".

But OTOH, a basic "familiarization"-type skill that automatically comes with background in career makes for a good idea.

(E.g. You start with "Career"-0 {or perhaps "Career"-0 and "Subfield"-1} in your 1st Term, and get an automatic increase of 1 level per term in-service. It covers general knowledge, things you pick-up, odds and ends, trivia, details, etc.)

So a Scout or Merchant or Spacer might be able to make a desperate appeal to that as "Operate (Spaceship)" in a pinch (having been in the service for so-and-so long) as a type of "limited" form of Jack-o-Trades as a mitigant against either the untrained penalty (on a skill-level vs. penalty mod basis) or as a default 0-level in the task, at the referee's discretion, depending on what the specific situation is.

This could also work with other careers like "Marine-3" for 2-3 term Marines, "Army-4", "Agent-2", etc. in their particular areas of expertise and background.

That is the Profession skill in a nutshell and exactly what it is supposed to represent. I suppose everyone should automatically get Profession in their career path, but maybe only 1 level per 2 full terms, with term 1 providing the Profession 0 level.

 

[Vormaerin]

That is the Profession skill in a nutshell and exactly what it is supposed to represent. I suppose everyone should automatically get Profession in their career path, but maybe only 1 level per 2 full terms, with term 1 providing the Profession 0 level.

That's what I do, actually.