I ran across this on the Traveller RPG facebook group. It raises a number of excellent questions to the concept of Traveller crew manning. Future ships will have much more computing power and automation possibilities available to them. But, like everything else, what conceptually sounds good on paper may have other pitfalls that can be ignored at your own peril.
There are many ideas that stick out, but here are two that are relevant to Traveller:
Ships manned by generalists:
There have been other incidents. Because of a design flaw, the LCS engines started to corrode not long after the fleet’s launch, but for a long time nobody on board noticed, which led to costly delays and repairs. When a congressional oversight committee found out about the problem in 2011, it called the ships’ crews to task. Who was in charge of checking the engines? The answer was … nobody. The engine rooms were unmanned by design.
Modular warships
Meanwhile, the modular “plug and fight” configuration was not panning out as hoped. Converting a ship from sub-hunter to minesweeper or minesweeper to surface combatant, it turned out, was a logistical nightmare. Variants of all three “mission packages” had to be stocked at far-flung ports; an extra detachment of 20-plus sailors had to stand ready to embark with each. More to the point, in order to enable quick mastery by generalists, the technologies on each had to be user-friendly—which they were not. So in 2016 the concept of interchangeability was scuttled for a “one ship, one mission” approach, in which the extra 20-plus sailors became permanent crew members.
Both ideas probably have better ways to implement. In the case of the engine oiling, the Navy recognized they failed to give crew the proper training and stood down the fleet for more specific training.
In the case of the modular warship, well, that's not really settled. In Traveller I would think it should be less of a problem, but yet would remain one. A cruiser switching from being beam-armed to being missile armed has a different set of needs and tactics. While pushing the red button remains the same, all the other aspects (maintenance, tactics, etc) are fundamentally changed. If things were to follow the same pattern of the LCS, your beam modules sitting at your fleet base are also staffed with the crew, so that's not very efficient use of them. But if you just swap out weapons modules and not crew then your existing crew has to be skilled in both to reach peak performance.
Here's the link to the article - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/future-of-work-expertise-navy/590647/?fbclid=IwAR1h-P2Y7GlMlAj_aThzZ-fsHoOVGEq3UUNEIzsoDUCg9k8nXOb8ZySXZ34
There are many ideas that stick out, but here are two that are relevant to Traveller:
Ships manned by generalists:
There have been other incidents. Because of a design flaw, the LCS engines started to corrode not long after the fleet’s launch, but for a long time nobody on board noticed, which led to costly delays and repairs. When a congressional oversight committee found out about the problem in 2011, it called the ships’ crews to task. Who was in charge of checking the engines? The answer was … nobody. The engine rooms were unmanned by design.
Modular warships
Meanwhile, the modular “plug and fight” configuration was not panning out as hoped. Converting a ship from sub-hunter to minesweeper or minesweeper to surface combatant, it turned out, was a logistical nightmare. Variants of all three “mission packages” had to be stocked at far-flung ports; an extra detachment of 20-plus sailors had to stand ready to embark with each. More to the point, in order to enable quick mastery by generalists, the technologies on each had to be user-friendly—which they were not. So in 2016 the concept of interchangeability was scuttled for a “one ship, one mission” approach, in which the extra 20-plus sailors became permanent crew members.
Both ideas probably have better ways to implement. In the case of the engine oiling, the Navy recognized they failed to give crew the proper training and stood down the fleet for more specific training.
In the case of the modular warship, well, that's not really settled. In Traveller I would think it should be less of a problem, but yet would remain one. A cruiser switching from being beam-armed to being missile armed has a different set of needs and tactics. While pushing the red button remains the same, all the other aspects (maintenance, tactics, etc) are fundamentally changed. If things were to follow the same pattern of the LCS, your beam modules sitting at your fleet base are also staffed with the crew, so that's not very efficient use of them. But if you just swap out weapons modules and not crew then your existing crew has to be skilled in both to reach peak performance.
Here's the link to the article - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/future-of-work-expertise-navy/590647/?fbclid=IwAR1h-P2Y7GlMlAj_aThzZ-fsHoOVGEq3UUNEIzsoDUCg9k8nXOb8ZySXZ34
