Communications between ships: private or public (in bridge)?

[FraNe91]

Last time (and second session at all in playing Traveller for everyone) one of my players, the Captain of a civilian/merchant ship, received a communication from another ship.
He acted as if taking the communication privately, only between himself and the other ship's captain. I said that the comm between ships captain is "public" in the bridge deck on order to allow officers to hear and eventually help in the situation.
Since I am clearly influenced by Star Trek (and I'm not an expert of it at all, so there can be exceptions) I'm not sure now if it's a right assumption.
What do you think? How's in real life (talking about sea ships of course :mrgreen: ) and how do you handle it?

 

[dragoner]

Unless he took the call in private, such as in his quarters, I'd say it would be public. Of course if it was a text message to his console, that could be private; or maybe a headset, but others on the bridge would still hear him speaking his reply into the microphone.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Cone of silence? :lol:

Like dragoner said. Text back and forth if you want to keep it private from the rest of the bridge. Perhaps even need to request the comm officer to set up a special connection if you don't want the conversation to be in the ship records.

 

[FraNe91]

Thanks to both.
I suppose that the case the captain would take the call as private would be only in special situations, otherwise he would take them in the bridge.

The situation described was a call from pirates, where they intimated the captain to surrender or blow up (they have no weapon turrets on the ship).
Would have been a call from a friend of the captain, the call could have been taken privately.

Cone of silence? :lol:

Interesting idea after all. I recall that Grand Admiral Thrawn and some Moffs used cones of silence in the Star Wars Thrawn Trilogy and Hand of Thrawn books. Of course that would be high TL tech.

Perhaps even need to request the comm officer to set up a special connection if you don't want the conversation to be in the ship records.

And that's a point I never thought about. Oh, being newbie :mrgreen:

 

[Condottiere]

Set up standard procedures in advance; if you don't have a dedicated communications officer, the computer might bring it first to the attention of whoever is on watch. It might be encrypted.

It could be an SMS, if the sender has the Captain's private cell number.

 

[Infojunky]

How's in real life (talking about sea ships of course :mrgreen: ) and how do you handle it?

All depends on the equipment of the ship. I have seen and used both Mic and loudspeaker and/or Handset i.e. like and old fashioned telephone handset. Often the Phone handset setup can be used with the Loudspeaker or privately with a flip of a switch.

Now to flip the Traveller switch I have always figured the Commo operator would be wearing a headset as would a number of people on duty with Comms traffic being switched to the station/person who it was intended for with a general loudspeaker/speakerphone option as well.

In most of our games here ComDots were ubiquitous item of daily apparel, thus comms trafic really was up to what the controlling PCs said it was.

 

[Hopeless]

Why do I get the vision of the person on coms turning to the captain and asking, "Do you want to use the headphones or not?" :lol:

 

[Condottiere]

The privacy prefix would be NSFW.