Hi Geir,
First my apologies for not replying earlier, unfortunately when I clicked on the notification link I saw lacarno24's reply and did not check for any earlier posts.
Geir said:
Highguard is kind of all over the place on crew, especially the engineer requirement.
I had read it as 1 per 35 tons of drives, round up, so a scout needs 1 and a close escort, for instance, needs 4, but then along comes the lab ship, which should have 2 but has 1, and the corvette which should have 3 but only has 2, so for them it's round down. For a close escort or a fleet courier, it's round up.
And no small craft seems to ever need an engineer.
Also, the corvette has no maintenance or admin crew members, but a close escort and fleet courier do (all are 400 ton military ships)
CRB 2e page 5/PDF 6 Rounding: Unless otherwise stated, whenever you are asked to divide in Traveller, always round down."
A small craft hull has a total of power plant of 0.6 tons and a 1 ton MD for at total of 1.6 tons of drives and power plant. Per Crew requirement there is 1 engineer per 35 tons of drives and power plant. Dividing 1.6 by 35 returns the result of 0.045714485714. Following the CRB 2e instructions the small craft does not require a dedicated engineer. The scout/courier has a 2 ton MD, a 10 ton JD, and a 4 ton power plant for a total of 16 tons divided by 35 equals 0.457144857143 rounding down means there is no dedicated engineer required.
Using the rounding method of if the decimal fraction is >=0.5 round up and if the decimal fraction is <0.5 drop the decimal fraction. In both examples I used still would not require a dedicated engineer since both numbers are less 0.5.
In CT the scout/courier's minimum crew requirement is 1 the pilot.
Medics don't appear for 100 ton ships but do for 200 ton ships and above (even the lab ship, so it's not about passengers or low berths), so suddenly it is round up, even if the crew is all of 4, including the medic.
It's part let's emulate CT designs, part round it whichever way you please, part ignore the rules.
1. CT LBB 2 1977 page 16 "Medic: Each starship of greater than 100 tons mass displacement requires a medic aboard. Starships carrying more than 120 passengers require 1 medic for each 120 passengers or fraction thereof." The instruction state that 1 medic is required per any fraction of 120 passengers which means to me that a hull carrying 121 passengers requires 2 personnel with medic skills. One person could have primary skill as medic and a secondary skill as steward. The other person could have the primary skill of steward and a secondary skill of medic.
The scout/courier being 100 tons does not require a dedicated medic but a 150 ton hull does. A hull expected to carry passengers requires 1 dedicated medic for the first 120 and additional medics for any number of passengers past the first 120.
2. CT LBB 2 1977/1981 page 16 "Medic: each starship of 200 tons or more must have a medic(medic-1 skill or better). In addition, there must be at least one medic per 120 passengers carried. If there is more than one medic, the most skilled is designated ship's doctor and draws 10% more pay. Non-starships and small craft do not require medics."
One medic is required for hulls >= 200 tons and additional medics are needed per 120 passengers carried. Note that in the revised CT LBB 2 instruction that the wording of "or fraction thereof" was omitted. To me a hull carrying 121 passengers need only 1 medic while 2 medics are required for 240 passengers.
MgT HG 2e page 21/PDF page 22 Commercial 1 per 120 crew and passengers and Military 1 per 120 crew.
I agree that the MgT crew requirements are based on CT. I consider rounding whichever the designer wants to as ignoring the rules.
Crew is fungible all around in my opinion, since, as I mentioned, there are no good rules for crew shortages other than at a tactical level where a character can only do one ship function per round.
It seems the "real" requirement for civilian ships would be whatever the registering body says is required: Licensed pilot, engineer, medic, etc. Hopefully in line with operational considerations, but with government regs, who knows. For instance, a detached duty scout probably only requires a scout and is governed by the IISS, but if you buy a used scout ship and register it commercially, there might be more crew requirements, at least on paper.
In the military, the ideal would be enough for someone to stand every watch at every required station, which could be a lot more than minimum, especially on a small ship (but notice, the corvette doesn't follow the 3 pilot rule either).
It seems the way to handle it is to either to make up some house rules, or wait for MJD to create some new rule in a new publication, or just wing it.
But I think a drawn-out discussion on whether the ship's troops should count against the ship's crew, and whether the medic counts as a part of the troop or the crew is probably not that important, especially if you're looking for a Sixth Millennium answer based on the current US Marine Corps use of Navy corpsmen. To the Far Future, that looks like arguing how many shaman you need per cohort, (definitely 3, except during a solar eclipse, then it's 4 shamans and a rabbi[reformed, not orthodox]) or how many political officers you need on a SEAL team (depends on whether they're Democrats or Republicans - the officer, that is).
You are basically correct that the commercial crew requirements are to some extent variable to the nation flagging the ship. However, the basic requirements are based on international agreements that are taken seriously.
The problem I have with house rules is that they are never covered in the write-up of the design which would be a big help allowing individuals like me from not being able to come up with the same crew count.
CT LBB 5 refers you back to CT LBB 4 for the Ship's Troops organization which does include medical support requirements. CT Striker also has additional requirements.
In creating the TU the authors based their requirements on sources that they had available. CT LBB 5 is to Commander Charles Arthur Miller, USN, Retired which strongly indicates High Guard is based on USN practices.
Thank you all for your comments.
