Alternate Crewing rules

[phavoc]

The jump courier got me thinking... There should be classes of ships that have minimal crew who just fly it, they don't do any maintenance on it. Much like a fighter would. All maintenance is done in a port or, very minor stuff, done when the ship is docked or grounded. That would mean fewer crew and fewer habitational areas to maintain. For long-haul ships you could get some very different designs. Even the Seawise Giant (biggest cargo ship ever) only had a crew of 40.

Haven't looked at HG 2022 rules, but do they relax the crew requirements for non-military vessels?

 

[Vormaerin]

To some extent and they have the reduced crew values for very large ships in another table. I think 2300 makes an even bigger distinction between commercial and military crews. I think they overall require more crew than regular traveller does (and don't have the very large ships either). This is the chart for crewing ships in HG22

 

[rinku]

That's an idea for some situations. Basically ground crew, like aircraft use. Definitely something that would apply for an interplanetary ship that's only taking short periods between landings (a Moon shuttle would be a good example, even a really big one).

Either the shipping line employs its own, or you can hire staff at an appropriate starport - I'd say class A through C, although there may be capacity limits on public facilities. Best to book ahead of time.

Bridge crew, service crew and gunners clearly have to be taken normally - they have outside of port duties. Some maintenance crew and engineering will need to be on board - unlike a fighter jet or airliner which are aloft for a day or two at most, Traveller starships are away from port for over a week. You need at least one Engineer to be on board to make jump.

I'm thinking that maybe you could get away with being able to shift half of your rated Engineering and Maintenance requirements (dropping all fractions) to portside crew. Same pay grade, but you don't have to cover their life support or provide accommodation. Note that this will not affect most player ships (400 tons or less) as they usually only have 1 Engineer and no Maintenance position anyway. The Subsidised Liner could shift one of its three engineers to portside, I guess. Or two of them if you go with another way of calculating it.

On the other hand, if it turns out that not enough are available at the port after all, you'll end up being unable to meet maintenance requirements for the ship for a maintenance period. Which is not ideal.

Robot crew may be a better way to reduce life support and accommodation costs.

Military craft should carry their rated crew, though.

 

[Condottiere]

Flight hours, before basic checks, complete maintenance, or ye yearly physical.

 

[ross]

Actually, I think there’s significantly more argument that military cruise should be significantly smaller for certain types of craft. It has always been the case in the Traveller universe that scout ships can and our regularly crewed by a single person. I think it tracks with a significant infrastructure for repair and resupply a smaller crew would be required.

 

[phavoc]

Actually, I think there’s significantly more argument that military cruise should be significantly smaller for certain types of craft. It has always been the case in the Traveller universe that scout ships can and our regularly crewed by a single person. I think it tracks with a significant infrastructure for repair and resupply a smaller crew would be required.

Some of that would be for the particular mission that ship is on. If it's milk-run courier route, sure, you could have a single pilot on board. If you were sending that ship in to chart a new system - I'd expect like 4 crew, minimum, for all the tasks that would be needed.

Once you get above say a frigate or so, you lose that flexibility because you never know where or when your ship may engage in combat. While ships can and do run with less than TO&E equipment and staffing, it's not ideal and no commander does so willingly. That especially becomes an issue if there is a war, threat of war, or threat of action wherever they are deploying to.

 

[Condottiere]

Current edition, flight hours for a jump drive could be six minutes every fortnight.

Not a rocket scientist, but reactionary drives could require less maintenance than solid state manoeuvre drive; perhaps more mechanic.

Speaking of solid state, anything electronic that misbehaves, could just be in a slot, and replaced.

 

[rinku]

All of the above, but the listed minimum engineering and maintenance crew are generally needed to be paid in order to meet the 4 weekly maintenance requirements. Requiring some to be actually on board is more of dealing with crises while away from port. Most of the actual work is usually done in port anyway, so I guess it's okay for to pay portside crew to overhaul it between jumps.

 

[swordtart]

I suspect the majority of on-board crew are refilling the oil bottles and rubbing off the excess electrons rather than conducting major maintenance tasks. They may be swapping out LRUs and the planetary maintenance is actually testing and repairing/replacing the LRUs themselves. Unless you have a workshop (and why waste all that lovely cargo space) you don't have anywhere to do those repairs anyway.

You don't need many engineers to watch the gauges but you need at least one (even if it is a SED).

Navy ships will probably have more people actually fixing things because handing it over to the dockyard matey for work could be a security issue and because they might be reasonably be expected to form damage control crews (any you aren't paid by the hour so they might as well sweat you).