HG 2e Crew questions

[snrdg121408]

Hello Condottierre,

I suspect learning the basics of astrogation is a requirement for line officers, and certified commercial starship masters.

Skippers could be the term used of boat commanders, ironic, considering how starships operate.

As regards to the actual rank, depends on the relative size of the crew and importance of the command.

I've taken a look at some of the licensing requirements for the various Officer positions and the Ship's Master does include knowledge of navigation, ship handling, engine room, and other nuts and bolts associated with vessels.

 

[snrdg121408]

Hello AnotherDilbert,

The Air Wing when serving onboard a carrier also has the specialized medical staff they have assigned to them.

It does of course not matter if your shoulder patch says Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, or Starfleet: if you work aboard you are crew. These rules are not specific to one particular campaign environment or state.

The crew of a ship are the bodies that are permanently assigned to the ship for a specific time frame. These bodies are the ones that do the watch standing and all levels of maintenance.

The air wing is not crew since they are not required to stand watches that directly pertain to the carrier's daily operations. When the tour of duty is completed the aircraft all fly to a base taking with them all personnel directly assigned to the air wing. This includes their medical personnel.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The air wing is not crew since they are not required to stand watches that directly pertain to the carrier's daily operations. When the tour of duty is completed the aircraft all fly to a base taking with them all personnel directly assigned to the air wing. This includes their medical personnel.

That is not the definition Traveller uses, see e.g. the Skimkish class carrier (HG p173-4):

Flight wing included in crew.

If you want to organise the crew into a permanent and a temporary section, do it after you have determined the total numbers.

 

[snrdg121408]

Hello AnotherDilbert,

The air wing is not crew since they are not required to stand watches that directly pertain to the carrier's daily operations. When the tour of duty is completed the aircraft all fly to a base taking with them all personnel directly assigned to the air wing. This includes their medical personnel.

That is not the definition Traveller uses, see e.g. the Skimkish class carrier (HG p173-4):

Flight wing included in crew.

If you want to organise the crew into a permanent and a temporary section, do it after you have determined the total numbers.

In CT LBB 5 HG military crew requirements does list a Flight Section as part of the crew. However, I do not see any definitions or text in Step 10: Determine Crew on HG 2e pages 20-21/PDF pages 22/22 or on the Crew Requirements Table that the fighter pilots are part of the crew.

Per the Crew Requirement table a ship requires a pilot and when a jump drive is installed the ship requires an Astrogator. The X-Boat only has a pilot.

The Scout/Courier requires a pilot and because of the jump drive an astrogator. The record sheet shows the crew as being pilot, astrogator, and engineer. With only 16 tons of drives and power plant there is no need for an engineer. However, under the Small Star Ships section does indicate that just having a ship run by one or two-multi-skilled people puts the ship at a serious disadvantage in high stress situations.

Looking over the information the Crew block does not indicate the minimum required personnel needed to operate the ship, but the total number of personnel being carried.

The Crew block is in my opinion inaccurate since it includes personnel not listed on the Crew Requirement Table. What is being shown for military vessels is crew and riders.

 

[Condottiere]

You can have less, you can have more than the guideline, but you have to take account of how it affects efficiency.

One thing the captain of a ship has to know is where he's currently located, and where he's going.

Astrogation is only required when making a jump, which normally is about a couple of hours before a jump, which usually occurs once a fortnight, thus you'd only need one, and you could have him running secondary duties in the meantime.

And since we're talking about four parsec trips down the rabbit hole with sizably crewed warships, you'd want a highly qualified officer making those calculations.

Having said, if he suddenly was unavailable, especially when you're in the middle of nowhere, he can't be indispensable, nor have only one understudy.

 

[locarno24]

Depends on the version of the game.

1st edition Mongoose Traveller had the following crew for a capital ship specifically picked out:

~ Command - namechecking a bunch of deparment heads
~ Engineering - pretty much as the current rules
~ Gunnery - pretty much as per current rules
~ Flight - specifically listing flight crew and ground crew for each craft, and specifically crews for launch tubes.
~ Troops - one thing noticeable for 2e High Guard is that warships don't have a marine complement as standard.
~ Service - Essentially Maintenance/Administrator crew

note that it didn't give you a proportion of officers or medics.
I agree cargo-handlers is a sensible thing to list and the 1-per-1000 dTons sensor operator is a sensible thing to include, despite not being name-checked in the actual 'crew' section of High Guard. Especially with missile warfare and multimode/salvo decoys being a thing, lots of sensor operators is a big deal as you need them to operate or identify the decoys.

Equally, maintenance crews should probably have access to spares. We're told that maintenance can be done, at cost, internally by the crew for up to a year. A year's worth of maintenance components should probably have some size. 1e High Guard had the provision that endurance was one month and was "increased by one month for every 1% of total tonnage dedicated to cargo".
So staying 'out' for a full year would need 11% of your total volume in spares (or else a small manufacturing plant and the ability to gather raw materials!)


It also had the concept of overstrength/battle/standard/skeleton crews, which give you skill DMs and/or reduced your rate of fire. A ship expecting to go into battle would likely have a greater-than-needed crew complement as a matter of course - and, yes, several non-astrogator officers with astrogation/0 (though it's surprising just how hard it is to get that skill!)

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The Crew block is in my opinion inaccurate since it includes personnel not listed on the Crew Requirement Table. What is being shown for military vessels is crew and riders.

Note the remark under the table:

Note that any smaller craft carried by a ship may have their own crew in addition to those necessary for the mother vessel.

Crew requirements can also be conveniently hidden in the text e.g.:

For every ton they consume, shipyards cost MCr0.5 and require 1 Power. They also need 1 crewman for every 10 tons.

Or simply implied:

Because of this, assume that a ship will have one sensor operator for every full 1,000 tons.

 

[Old School]

The sensor operator never made much sense. What the heck do you do with a 60 ton bridge other than put more sensor operators snd perhaps remote gunner stations there? You can only have so many pilots, navigators, and comm operators. I I house ruled that for every 10 tons of bridge, there is one extra seat for a sensor or comm operator. The idea that with a 40, 60, or 80 dton bridge you still needed to dedicate more space to a sensorOp station never jived for me. 10 dtons is a LOT of space in crew workstation terms, but it works well enough.

Another item not well explained is the benefit of multiple sensor systems. Other than redundancy for damage, I don’t think the RAW provides an advantage. It makes sense that each sensor suite is limited in the number operations it can perform or the number of operators, but this isn’t accounted for in RAW that I’m aware of. I suppose multiple packages would allow for multiple EW attacks on a single salvo? Perhaps, but not according to the rules.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The sensor operator never made much sense. What the heck do you do with a 60 ton bridge other than put more sensor operators snd perhaps remote gunner stations there?

I assume you comment is about Sensor Stations, not about the number of sensor operators. The rules do not require Sensor Stations for all sensor operators, by default the bridge has space for a few sensor operators. Sensor Stations are just an extra possibility if you feel you need them, such as if you try to cram hundreds of operators into a 60 Dton bridge or several operators into a 3 Dton small craft bridge. Note that the exact number of workstations on the bridge is not defined.

You could also allocate a Sub-Command Centre to sensor operations to get more workstations, but that is also optional.


Regardless of where they work, the sensor operators still need to be part of the crew and have allocated living space ("staterooms").

 

[Condottiere]

Bridge cost is linked to total displacement, and that becomes expensive.

 

[snrdg121408]

Hello all,

MgT HG 2e Step 10 Determine Crew is effectively the minimum personnel standards set down, in theory, by the Imperial bureaucracy for the safe operation of a vessel.

Those standards can be modified so that there can be more or less crew being carried. Carrying less crew causes issues when repairing system break downs, damage is taken from being hit by space junk or a particle beam, or trying to figure out where the heck you are after a miss jump.

MgT HG 2e page 21/PDF 22: "Note that any smaller craft carried by a ship may have their own crew in addition to those necessary for the mother vessel."

The above statement says that the smaller craft with a crew of its own is in addition to the crew necessary to operate the mother vessel. The Skimkish-Class Light Carrier does not need the assigned fighter pilots to operate the carrier they are not technically part of the ships permanent crew.

The Shipyard crew is not needed to operate the space station or vessel under normal conditions and again do not meet the requirement for crew.

I'm still pondering on sensor operators.

 

[snrdg121408]

Late afternoon from the Pacific Northwest,

MgT HG 2e page 29/PDF page 30 has the following details:

Multiple Warheads Incoming!

"Once ships start mounting bay weapons, the number of missiles they can throw at their enemies increases significantly. When multiple salvoes of missiles (or torpedoes) are incoming, even the finest sensor operator can become quickly overwhelmed. To counter this, large warships tend to have multiple sensor stations operated by several dedicated crew members.

Because of this, assume that a ship will have one sensor operator for every full 1,000 tons. A 7,500 ton ship, for example, would normally have seven sensor operators who could between them perform the Electronic Warfare action on seven different incoming salvoes.

At his discretion, a referee may specify a particular ship has more or less sensor operators, perhaps to reflect a ship in a universe where missile combat is not common or one that is expected to face nothing but missiles, but one sensor operator per 1,000 tons is a good place to start."

Reviewing the warships in HG 2e I did not see any sensor operators as part of the crew. My job onboard the submarines was operating, maintaining, and repairing the boats sonar systems which in MgT I would be considered to be a sensor operator.

I agree that the sensor operators would be part of the crew of a warship. Unfortunately, my review of the warships in HG 2e did not show any sensor operators clearly assigned as crew.

The USS Ronald Regan CVN 76 has a complement of: Ship's Company (a.k.a. crew) of 3,532 and an Air Wing of 2,480. I also agree that the entire ship's complement needs quarters some sort.

I have not said that the fighter pilots or Marines do not need quarters but they are not part of the ship's company/crew when determining the number of medical staff needed by the hull.

 

[phavoc]

The sensor operator never made much sense. What the heck do you do with a 60 ton bridge other than put more sensor operators snd perhaps remote gunner stations there? You can only have so many pilots, navigators, and comm operators. I I house ruled that for every 10 tons of bridge, there is one extra seat for a sensor or comm operator. The idea that with a 40, 60, or 80 dton bridge you still needed to dedicate more space to a sensorOp station never jived for me. 10 dtons is a LOT of space in crew workstation terms, but it works well enough.

Another item not well explained is the benefit of multiple sensor systems. Other than redundancy for damage, I don’t think the RAW provides an advantage. It makes sense that each sensor suite is limited in the number operations it can perform or the number of operators, but this isn’t accounted for in RAW that I’m aware of. I suppose multiple packages would allow for multiple EW attacks on a single salvo? Perhaps, but not according to the rules.

A warship of any size will not have a massive bridge operation. It would split up the functionality among various control spaces. Since warships expect to take damage and continue fighting it just makes more sense to share those functions with other stations and have the bridge be the command nexus for the ship. A fair-sized warship would have a bridge, an aux-bridge, a fire-control section, an EW section, engineering control, damage control, etc. Each one able to communicate to the command spaces on the ship.

Also, the bridge size, even for small ships, isn't all in one room. It's supposed to encompass sensors, computer, and other various command and electronic systems rather than be in one total room.

The rules are good guidelines, but no set of rules can accomodate the various options and choices that a ship designer will want or need to make. Some people (i.e. the ones who pay and operate the ship) will want big bridges, others will want smaller, more distributed ones. It's best to design the bridge/ship as you feel it should be for what you, as the designer, thinks works best. Or even just what you like best.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The above statement says that the smaller craft with a crew of its own is in addition to the crew necessary to operate the mother vessel. The Skimkish-Class Light Carrier does not need the assigned fighter pilots to operate the carrier they are not technically part of the ships permanent crew.

The Shipyard crew is not needed to operate the space station or vessel under normal conditions and again do not meet the requirement for crew.

Whether you call them permanent crew or temporary crew, they are still crew. HG does not make that distinction.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Reviewing the warships in HG 2e I did not see any sensor operators as part of the crew.

Agreed, the sensor operators are questionable. The blurb about multiple sensor operators (but no explicit crew requirement) were added late in beta, possibly not to necessitate the redesign of all the example ships.

Perhaps the sensor operators should be drawn from the legions of engineers and gunners?

IMTU I have chosen to add them, as I think there are too few bridge crew in general, at least for bigger ships.

 

[Ursus Maior]

Perhaps the sensor operators should be drawn from the legions of engineers and gunners?

Maybe officers and gunners? Engineers and maintenance seem not to be involved in sensor operations. That seems to be the domain of gunners, since most sensor operations are relevant for generating targeting solutions. That would cut the 2 gunnerst per turret, bay or screen ratio somewhat, however. But 1 officer per 10 crew members quickly generates an ample force for manning sensors. Of course all that also depends on how many watches your navy is running on, e. g. the USN runs seven watches: https://www.navy.mil/navydata/questions/bells.html

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Maybe officers and gunners? Engineers and maintenance seem not to be involved in sensor operations. That seems to be the domain of gunners, since most sensor operations are relevant for generating targeting solutions.

I was thinking engineers since reading and maintaining sensors is a highly technical task, but perhaps the gunnery section is a better fit.

I don't think officers should be bogged down in such tasks, they should lead and coordinate?

 

[snrdg121408]

Hello again all,

To someone that has experience serving aboard a ship at sea anyone that does not operate, maintain, or repair any of the ships equipment is not crew.

Step 10 does not include any of the subordinate craft crews or the Marines as being part of the the Ship's Crew.

The cited section of "MgT HG 2e page 21/PDF 22: "Note that any smaller craft carried by a ship may have their own crew in addition to those necessary for the mother vessel." does not say that the smaller craft crews are included as ship's crew.

The text a shipyard does not say that they are part of the space stations crew the instructions are the shipyard needs a crew. In my opinion does distinguish Ship/Space Station Crew Requirements since they are not on the Crew Requirement Tables.

From my point of view the more correct heading would be Ship's Complement or even Personnel the term crew is inaccurate when including bodies not directly involved in ship board operations.

I'm glad we both agree that sensor operators should be included as part of the crew.

Sensor Operators should be, in my opinion based on my background as a Submarine Sonar Technician, their own group since they normally operate, maintain, and repair their own equipment. Sonar had a Division Officer and the actual watch standers were enlisted.

 

[Old School]

The sensor operator never made much sense. What the heck do you do with a 60 ton bridge other than put more sensor operators snd perhaps remote gunner stations there? You can only have so many pilots, navigators, and comm operators. I I house ruled that for every 10 tons of bridge, there is one extra seat for a sensor or comm operator. The idea that with a 40, 60, or 80 dton bridge you still needed to dedicate more space to a sensorOp station never jived for me. 10 dtons is a LOT of space in crew workstation terms, but it works well enough.

Another item not well explained is the benefit of multiple sensor systems. Other than redundancy for damage, I don’t think the RAW provides an advantage. It makes sense that each sensor suite is limited in the number operations it can perform or the number of operators, but this isn’t accounted for in RAW that I’m aware of. I suppose multiple packages would allow for multiple EW attacks on a single salvo? Perhaps, but not according to the rules.

A warship of any size will not have a massive bridge operation. It would split up the functionality among various control spaces. Since warships expect to take damage and continue fighting it just makes more sense to share those functions with other stations and have the bridge be the command nexus for the ship. A fair-sized warship would have a bridge, an aux-bridge, a fire-control section, an EW section, engineering control, damage control, etc. Each one able to communicate to the command spaces on the ship.

Also, the bridge size, even for small ships, isn't all in one room. It's supposed to encompass sensors, computer, and other various command and electronic systems rather than be in one total room.

What you write makes sense, but it does require ignoring (again) years of ship plans, which all show one bridge as one large room with lots of stations and absurd amounts of open space.

 

[Condottiere]

There are two types of sensor operators, the specialists and the ones with binoculars.