To be fair I certainly got the impression that minimums only applied to 1000+ ships. I took them as an indication of the crews expected on NPC ships and regulatory constraints. I suspect the big lines encourage enforcement of these minimums as they probably impact the smaller traders more than the corporations.
High Guard 2022 example ships crew messed up?
- Thread starter Shardan13
- Start date
They don't need to worry though we'll keep finding them
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Engineering droid.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
Then they should add that to the crew minimums. Only applies to ships above 1,000 tons. If they make a rule, they should follow it on their designed ships. If it's at odds with the rules, there should be penalties in the rules for that.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
It's not a question of minimums, but rounding. Some categories are rounded up, some down, some to nearest whole number, but it is not specified explicitly.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
And some are simply ignored and they give the ship the crew based on who knows what.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
Rule 0 in action...
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
I tend to think multi tasking is alright, if you have the individual skills, and how much attention a specific component and/or activity requires at any particular time.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
The game designer shouldn't be using Rule 0. That's our job.
You can look at the number of rolls required by the average crewman and how long they take against the overall 2 week or so Jump to Jump period. Astrogation doesn't take up much of the time once you have your jump plot you can take the rest of the week off. Once you emerge again orient yourself, plot a course for the starport and you are done. Piloting is landing, take off and setting course to the midpoint, flipping and setting course to the end point. You probably don't need your hands on the conn the rest of the time. Engineering is a few minutes fiddling with the jump drive (but you need to get it right or you will incur delays and the wrath of the captain). There may be a little maintenance during the jump to internal non-jump systems and a little maintenance on internal jump systems when in system, but it is very unlikely to be a full time job, ditto for mechanic. Gunners might spend months with nothing to do but practice (assuming you even have any). The sensor/comms operator is likely to be busiest in system as those might need monitoring regularly. Hopefully any medic will do nothing other than hand our painkillers and plasters for months. The Steward is likely to be busiest as their duties are continual during the day cycle (and possibly night cycle) all through transit and jump and probably for an extended period after landing and prior to take off.
Someone with a term in the scouts or as a scavenger can cover pilot, astrogation and mechanic without too much strain. A graduate engineer who has spent a term in the Merchants could cover off all the other roles and have the skills to make at least an attempt at finding cargo and passengers. A couple of background skills like electronics, medic, streetwise and admin would round them out and with decent education or intelligence would make just these two a fully competent crew for a small vessel (in a safe area).
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Scaling seems to be the issue.
Let's say that after five kilotonnes, you have to seriously address the crewing requirements.
If only to ensure the spacecraft functions as designed, and the crew performs their jobs.
Let's say that after five kilotonnes, you have to seriously address the crewing requirements.
If only to ensure the spacecraft functions as designed, and the crew performs their jobs.
Here's the actual reality: We don't know what most of these people are doing, especially during jump. We don't know how much automation is going on. Clearly a lot, since they don't even need enough crew for proper watches.
Quartermasters in the US Navy (the navigators) manage to find ways to be busy 40 hours a week. No one is making a 30 minute task check every two weeks and getting paid for it, even if that's all we are told the Astrogator does.
There is vastly more work involved in being a ship crew than the game bothers to enumerate. Maintenance, continuing education, watch standing, lots of other things.
As far as the rules go, I don't think there is actually any penalty for not having those positions or having one person fill 8 of them. In CT, not having all your engineers increased the mishap/misjump chance. In MgT2e, I am not aware of anything bad happening if you don't have both Engineers your ship "requires". Because we don't bother to define the actual work they are doing, because it isn't relevant to the gameplay.
Are those crew requirements a legal requirement? You need this many people with this level of certification to operate the ship in accordance with safety laws? Are they are workload requirement? If you don't have that many people, stuff won't get done? We don't know. The lack of mechanical penalties could be taken to mean the former, but it probably just means no one wasted time on the topic.
Quartermasters in the US Navy (the navigators) manage to find ways to be busy 40 hours a week. No one is making a 30 minute task check every two weeks and getting paid for it, even if that's all we are told the Astrogator does.
There is vastly more work involved in being a ship crew than the game bothers to enumerate. Maintenance, continuing education, watch standing, lots of other things.
As far as the rules go, I don't think there is actually any penalty for not having those positions or having one person fill 8 of them. In CT, not having all your engineers increased the mishap/misjump chance. In MgT2e, I am not aware of anything bad happening if you don't have both Engineers your ship "requires". Because we don't bother to define the actual work they are doing, because it isn't relevant to the gameplay.
Are those crew requirements a legal requirement? You need this many people with this level of certification to operate the ship in accordance with safety laws? Are they are workload requirement? If you don't have that many people, stuff won't get done? We don't know. The lack of mechanical penalties could be taken to mean the former, but it probably just means no one wasted time on the topic.
The again I expect navigators on a surface vessel are avoiding rocks, reefs, other ships and having to take into account currets, wind etc. and constantly checking their course. Space navigators point the ship at a the 100D limit and say "thatta way". There is almost zero chance of encountering anything unless it actually decides to come and get you.
Agreed I suspect the watch standing is the most important bit (apart form the poor steward). It doesn't matter how many roles a crewman fulfils they can only stand watch once so two crew will need to spend 12 hours per day on watch each. A 12 hour watch seems a long time but for much of that time you might just be on the bridge drinking coffee ready to press the "awoooga" button if the automated systems kick off. If you are the poor steward that might have been after a long shift of making everyone's lunch.
Assuming a normal working day is 8 hours, you could say that an engineer is expected to service 35 tons of drives and plants per day on average. As the Type S has 16 tons of drives and plant the engineer will need to spend slightly less than half his working time or 4 hours doing that leaving him 4 hours to do other work. The steward can handle 10 high passengers in his watch (which might be spread through day to cover mealtimes in 2 hour chunks rather all in one chunk. If the same Type S had 3 high passengers he might need to spend only 2.75 hours pandering to them. He might need to spend 5/120 x 8 Hours covering the Medic role (checking the supplies).
Yes in MGT2 that is a referee call. I'd be imposing penalties but as you say only if it was interesting.
I'd say it would be a legal requirement but I couldn't say how often it was enforced. Probably part of the normal starport Admin hassle.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
You could assign each component or activity attention points, modified by skill level.
That way, you could figure out by a single crewman could safely operate a two hundred tonne free trader.
That way, you could figure out by a single crewman could safely operate a two hundred tonne free trader.
We have literally no idea what jump space is like. We have no idea what the crew is doing during jump. Merchant ships are 50% in jump space, 40% in port, 10% in real space. We can assume the bridge crew has nothing to do for the whole time or we can assume they are doing things that no one has enumerated.
Astrogators aren't avoiding real space obstacles, because they aren't even required on ships that don't have jump drives. You can go from Earth to Jupiter in real space without an astrogator.
When the rules were changed to make astrogators mandatory on small ships, someone should have decided what they actually do. It is my opinion that the pilot and astrogator have to do stuff to keep the ship on course during jump. You can decide otherwise, of course. It's not defined at all.
CordwainerFish
Emperor Mongoose
If it's a Navy ship, they're cleaning things, stowing things, and saluting things, whether they need it or not.
Arkathan
Emperor Mongoose
Mop the deck.
We mopped the deck.
Good, now wax the deck.
The deck is waxed.
Now strip the deck, and there will be more of the same on the morrow.
wintertraveller
Banded Mongoose
Under-crewing a small merchant ship is well described in C.J. Cherryh's novel, Merchanter's Luck.
I understood that scouts traditionally undertook training while in jump. Given a scout ship is often single crewman I was assuming that there was nothing to do in Jump Space but to kill time (and deal with passenger induced issues).
One of the uses of the Astrogation skill in the Core Rulebook covers navigation in normal space, but it is a niche use. Ships travelling extensively in system might use a navigator to plot a more efficient route (using the gravity wells of in system objects to slingshot up to greater speed), but given the Robot Handbook says astrogation is hard for synthetic brains due to some mysterious Jump maguffin which doesn't apply on normal space, an in-system ship could probably get by with a robot or an expert package.
I am now trying to explore what might drive those crew "requirements" with others in the community. I know I can just make it up, I was looking to see if people with more experience of other versions or access to other supplements have something that might allow us to hang some metrics off it (even if they are vague). There are specific occasions where rolls are required so they are touch points. There are some roles that have a defined level requirement (like engineer) that can be readily extrapolated.
There are other roles that are more nebulous. If these are only for "emergencies" then they are likely mandated for commercial shipping and might require constant drills etc. These are the things that might end up slipping off the RADAR for tramp crews and only become an issue in the event of an emergency. Should they survive the emergency they may find themselves in hot water legally and be sued for negligence by any passenger suffering injury (which could be psychological) or loss or even by the freight insurer. Simply having an appropriately skilled crewman assigned to that duty (or their single secondary duty as allowed in the rules) would indicate they had discharged their duty of care and enable them a legal defence.
The reason this is important to gameplay is that is there is no consequence then players can skimp on crew to cram in more paying passengers. If they are going to run that risk they need to know what the impacts are if that risk event occurs.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
Most ships only spend a few hours in real space, between port and jump.
In jump or port three people can easily keep nominal watch for beeping lights...
