Deep Night Revelation: Trying to Understand How the Design was Calculated

[Yenaldlooshi]

Deep Night Revelation: Trying to Understand How the Design was Calculated
Specifically how it arrived at 195 engineers for the vessel with the verbiage; "The engineering and maintenance complement of Deepnight Revelation is slightly higher than a naval ship of the same class, reflecting the amount of repairs and maintenance that will be required in the course of the mission." (page 43 of the Campaign Guide for DNR)


Assumptions:
Per CoreU22 a ship requires 1 engineer per 35 tons of drives and power plant
DNR has:
m-drive=3000 tons
j-drive=7505 tons
PP=4500 tons
(It also has a Deep Space Maneuvering System = 1500 tons, but leaving that out for now)
Making for 15005 tons at minimum for drives+pp

195 Engineers can handle 6825tons and with the High Guard Large Ships Crew Reduction Modifier of 50% could handle 13650.

Based on this, not only is it not slightly higher, it falls short of the 15005 requirement by 39 engineers.

What might I be missing? I am asking to help my understanding of crew requirements on larger ships and ship design in general.

 

[Alqualonde]

It's hard to understand how this ship was designed. It doesn't follow all the rules for High Guard.
The ship also have Virtual Crew & Virtual Gunner softwares. I haven't seen the breakdown of Bandwidth use. Best guess, a large part of the crew is virtual.
Also, the ship has 3 Core/100 computers. I think the 3 of them are running concurrently (or at least 2 of them & the 3rd being used for science) as the various software BW is over 200. And I just used the basic cost for Virtual Crew & Gunners. You can get 5 more crew per extra BW & 10 gunners per extra BW.
It should require 45 gunnery crew (if using civilian requirements) or 62 (if using military requirements). It has 12 (8 gunner, 4 Gunnery team leaders) + officers (4 officers).

 

[Condottiere]

Three kilotonne manoeuvre drive - forty three engineers, four engineering officers.

Forty five hundred tonnes power plant - sixty five engineers, six engineering officers.

Seventy five hundred five tonnes jump drive - one hundred eight engineers, ten engineering officers.

Two hundred sixteen engineers, twenty engineering officers, likely one chief engineer.

Not accounting for smallcraft and donkey engines.

 

[Yenaldlooshi]

It's hard to understand how this ship was designed. It doesn't follow all the rules for High Guard.
The ship also have Virtual Crew & Virtual Gunner softwares. I haven't seen the breakdown of Bandwidth use. Best guess, a large part of the crew is virtual.
Also, the ship has 3 Core/100 computers. I think the 3 of them are running concurrently (or at least 2 of them & the 3rd being used for science) as the various software BW is over 200. And I just used the basic cost for Virtual Crew & Gunners. You can get 5 more crew per extra BW & 10 gunners per extra BW.
It should require 45 gunnery crew (if using civilian requirements) or 62 (if using military requirements). It has 12 (8 gunner, 4 Gunnery team leaders) + officers (4 officers).

I saw the Virtual Crew and Virtual Gunner stat too. VC can give extra pilots and sensor ops, but to use them for engineers, you need a lenient GM who will accept the idea that since in combat rules you can virtualize engineering, that you could also do so with VC and repair drones +intellect/expert (without a fancy robot explanation). VG handles all your lack of gunner crew woes though. You would never use VC for gunnery (though you can) if you have VG loaded since VG is less BW per gunner. DNR has 750tons of repair drones so you could make the case that VC should cover any engineers you need maybe with the requirement that you purchase Expert - Engineer packages to do so.

That could be used to shore up less crew but that does not explain why the book thinks that 195 live engineers meets the minimum plus a bunch extra.

Was there a Mongoose first edition version of the DNR using the old 2005 rules? If so, then the numbers change based on 1 engineer per 50 tons of drives/pp and so would bring it down to only 166 engineers needed.

Limited gunners can be explained away saying it is not on a truly military mission. If you have less gunners than guns, then you just don't get to use some of your guns. Not having enough engineers, and you can keep the entire ship fully operational for long.

 

[Yenaldlooshi]

Three kilotonne manoeuvre drive - forty three engineers, four engineering officers.

Forty five hundred tonnes power plant - sixty five engineers, six engineering officers.

Seventy five hundred five tonnes jump drive - one hundred eight engineers, ten engineering officers.

Two hundred sixteen engineers, twenty engineering officers, likely one chief engineer.

Not accounting for smallcraft and donkey engines.

Yes, I get almost the same numbers when I go by Starship Design in 2e Mongoose.

That does not answer my question why DNR Campaign Guide states on page 43: "The engineering and maintenance complement of Deepnight Revelation is slightly higher than a naval ship of the same class, reflecting the amount of repairs and maintenance that will be required in the course of the mission. There are 195 personnel in the Engineering Division."

I know what the design rules state (hence my post), I am trying to ascertain if there is something I am missing in the thinking the authors had when making the DNR design. That's what I was asking in the OP when I said "what am I missing?"

Maybe, you and I are not missing anything and this should be an errata to DNR, but it might just be that we are not factoring something.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

It's presumably made with HG2017:

MgT HG17, p20:
Large Ships
The number of crew required to effectively operate a ship increases hugely with the size of the vessel, but large ships do have efficient centralisation of systems.
For ships of more than 5,000 tons, the referee can opt to reduce the required crew by two thirds.

 

[Yenaldlooshi]

It's presumably made with HG2017:

I just found that like two seconds ago and was writing a post that said "MYSTERY SOLVED!!"

Thanks and yes that explains it. HG2017 was probably the rule set used. HG2022 says 50% for the tonnage that DNR is. Thanks!

 

[Yenaldlooshi]

Ok next question that still applies to the title of this thread: The Deepnight Scouts, why do they have no software listed on the main spec sheet on page 54? Is it listed somewhere else or was this an oversight?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Also, the ship has 3 Core/100 computers. I think the 3 of them are running concurrently (or at least 2 of them & the 3rd being used for science) as the various software BW is over 200.

You don't have to run all the software concurrently. Use any combination that fits the situation and the BW limitation of your computer.

You can also run several instances of the same software, at several time the BW, perhaps several Fire Control to control several weapons.

BW (~processing speed) is limited, storage (~harddrive space) is not.

 

[Yenaldlooshi]

You don't have to run all the software concurrently. Use any combination that fits the situation and the BW limitation of your computer.

You can also run several instances of the same software, at several time the BW, perhaps several Fire Control to control several weapons.

BW (~processing speed) is limited, storage (~harddrive space) is not.

And licensing? meaning, must you pay the price for those extra instances or is it as many as you want but only on one single device (computer)

 

[AnotherDilbert]

And licensing? meaning, must you pay the price for those extra instances or is it as many as you want but only on one single device (computer)

As far as I know you pay once per ship, unlimited license.

And if you bought FC/4, you can also run FC/1, 2, or 3.

 

[Yenaldlooshi]

Any thoughts about what software is on those 8 Deepnight 200ton Scouts? I don't see software listed at all.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Any thoughts about what software is on those 8 Deepnight 200ton Scouts? I don't see software listed at all.

Anything from the mothership?

 

[Yenaldlooshi]

DNR has software that might be valuable on the scouts. but if you "you pay once per ship, unlimited license" then that might not follow.
btw, can you quote a rule about that unlimited license thing? Nothing I can find supports that, neither does it say you can't.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

DNR has software that might be valuable on the scouts. but if you "you pay once per ship, unlimited license" then that might not follow.

Agreed no. But the mothership is presumably expensive enough that the cost of software doesn't matter?

btw, can you quote a rule about that unlimited license thing? Nothing I can find supports that, neither does it say you can't.

No, nothing definite, but that was my understanding during the beta-program. It was how I used it, and the authors didn't correct me, as weak as that argument is...

The best I can find quickly is:

CSC23, p72:
A licensed package can run on one computer at a time and loading onto new computers requires revalidation of the license.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

btw, can you quote a rule about that unlimited license thing? Nothing I can find supports that, neither does it say you can't.

https://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/threads/core-computers-in-non-capital-ships.118077/post-896269

Reasonably you can run several instances of the same software, but they should never stack. Running, say, two web-browsers at the same time doesn't display web pages any different.

This have been undefined since LBB2, so it would be great if it was clarified.

An interesting point, Erin. We have not stated that you cannot run the same software twice at the same time... and I am not sure I want to restrict that.

Yeah - running the same software more than once to get more bonuses to other turrets is one thing - and is fine. Running the same software to COMBINE bonuses, is absolutely ludicrous on so many levels. Consider this strong vote for "no combining any software, the same or otherwise, that gives bonuses to the same roll".

 

[Condottiere]

Assuming each software suite is customized for each spacecraft.

Piracy may have performance penalties.

 

[Yenaldlooshi]

Does anything in rule canon state there is a time frame for "loading onto new computers requires revalidation of the license"?

Personally, I like the idea that just like storage is infinite, that moving a program from one computer to another at TL 8+ it is instantaneous. No special delays due to customizations, installations etc. I would really just want my players to pay for their software benefits once. Did you pay for it? Then you have it. One license per device. If you need it on two devices at the same time, then you buy another license. That said, I would make it that software piracy is never cost effective. If Bitcoin at TL 7 can know what drive it is on and be unbreakable, so can TL8+ Traveller software. Do the rules support this already or do they contradict this?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Does anything in rule canon state there is a time frame for "loading onto new computers requires revalidation of the license"?

Personally, I like the idea that just like storage is infinite, that moving a program from one computer to another at TL 8+ it is instantaneous. No special delays due to customizations, installations etc.

Installation is still not trivial in the far future:

Core23, p110:
Software packages of more than Bandwidth 1 cannot be copied easily, as they require a non-trivial amount of bandwidth to transfer.

 

[Yenaldlooshi]

"non-trivial amount of bandwidth"

I really hate writing like that in a gaming rule book. If just giving atmosphere for an adventure that is one thing, but they could have used this space here in the book to state a simple rule. This should read something like "Transferring software from one PC to another takes 1D+(bandwidth of the software times 3 minus the bandwidth max of the destination computer) hours to complete with a minimum of 1 hour" Example; Expert 2 transferred/installed on Computer/3 takes. 1D+ (6-3) or 1D+3 hours. Or make it times that instead of plus or lower or raise the time length increment.