Redundant Skills

[GypsyComet]

After reading over the original CT Engineering skill as well as the Mongoose version it became clear to me that the intent was for Engineering to focus on starship engineering, not engineering in general.

Apologies. I keep forgetting that not everyone realizes that Traveller's "Engineer" is Scotty, LaForge, Torres, and Kaylee. In terms of modern college degrees they are Mechanical and Chemical Engineers with a large side order of High Energy Physics, Quantum Physics, and Life Support Chemistry. That doesn't make them necessarily good with the plasma cutter or the drawing board, though some of them are. They are hands-on Makers first, Designers second, and they are specialized, as most Mechanical Engineers are.

One of my favorite descriptions of a spacecraft Engineer was from Heinlein. As the young protagnist came aboard he was introduced to the Chief Engineer and the Second Engineer. When he asked what a Chief Engineer did, the chilling answer was "If something happens to the drive that we can't fix from inside, the Chief puts on a heavy radiation suit and goes outside to fix the problem directly. Then the Second becomes the new Chief Engineer."

 

[Jame Rowe]

3) Engineer/Naval: You're talking about someone trained aboard a military vessel and their training would be specifically towards working aboard an often state of the art vessel and not a civilian ship. Its all well and good if he was replacing a naval engineer but his skills would all but be negated if he used them on a civilian vessel or any of the usual ships available to a Traveller character.

In that case I would rewrite Engineer to be split between Electronics and Ship.

I'd think that life support systems would fall under Electronics with sensors, comms and such while Ship would cover guns, power plants and drives and the like.

 

[Bardicheart]

Apologies. I keep forgetting that not everyone realizes that Traveller's "Engineer" is Scotty, LaForge, Torres, and Kaylee.

Yeah and its apparently a pretty common mistake, one I'll confess I made myself. The name itself is misleading because in modern thinking we tend to imagine something other than what the text itself states. That was why I decided to change the name to from simply "Engineering" to Space Engineering (Technician), more of a distinction that makes someone stop, let go of preconceptions and ask "okay what does that do?". Reading through the various books, its clear virtually every author that has written for Mongoose has made the same mistake. I think its something Mongoose needs to consider correcting. If somone did read any part of the skill description, they read only this part under the specialization...

Electronics: All forms of computing hardware, sensors and other electronics and electrics.

Which is misleading because many apparently miss this important paragraph above it regarding the general skill which applies to all the specializations.

The Engineer skill is used to operate and maintain spacecraft and advanced vehicles. This skill has several specialties. See also Spacecraft Operations, page 137. Engineer can be used to make repairs on damaged systems on spacecraft and advanced vehicles. For repairs on simpler machines, see Mechanic on page 56.

But apparently nobody caught that and a lot of misconceptions followed. I'd would hazard a guess most of us have played using that specialization as a general electronics skill for all things electronics, in part because every published book has supported that implied misconception. Its not til you dig into the rules and how it all gets applied you start realizing the mistake and that the Engineering specialization is completely obsolete. That becomes clear when you read the following paragraph from the Core Rules, p143.

System Damage: A damaged system can be jury-rigged back to functioning, but it will stop functioning again after 1d6 hours. Repairing a damaged system requires not only an Average skill check (Mechanic, Engineer (appropriate speciality) or Science (appropriate speciality)) taking 1–6 hours, but also spare parts. The Effect of the check determines how many spare parts are required. Spare parts can be purchased at the cost of Cr. 10,000 per ton.

I underlined the really important bit, because what that makes clear, particularly when taken with the skill descriptions, is that a) Physical Science (Electronics) is just as capable of making repairs to electronics and indeed that is what that skill is for, b) there is no penalty or time difference for using Physical Science (Electronics) it works just as well as Engineer (Electronics), and c) Physical Science (Electronics) should be the skill used for designing new electronics such as new prototypes (cf. Central Supply Catalog, pp.12-17).

It becomes even more painfully obvious when realizing that if Engineering (Electronics) applies only to the electronics of space craft and advanced vehicles (which btw, advanced vehicles really means vehicles with gravitic propulsion systems, every example given of them is of air/rafts, G-carriers, grav sleds, etc.) then what do you use to fix the electronics in your ground car? Mechanic? No, that's just simple machines (i.e. pumps, exhaust systems, cam shafts, etc.) Physical Science (Electronics) is the correct skill. Which begs the question, if Physical Science (Electronics) can be used to fix space craft electronics, and also fix your personal comm, your desktop computer, your ground car, etc. Why would anyone ever spend points in Engineering (Electronics) which only applies to space craft? Answer, they wouldn't.

Indeed, why should the Engineering (Electronics) specialization even exist? The answer, especially after going back to CT and seeing how Marc originally handled this, was that those specializations should never have been added at all. Mongoose goofed creating them, then goofed even further in misapplying the Engineering (Electronics) skill to careers and skill tables and rules where it shouldn't have been used at all (i.e. Supplement 8 - Cybernetics where either Mechanics or Engineering (Electronics) is used to design and create cybernetics but there is no mention of using Life Sciences (Cybernetics)). Or funnier still, Book 6 - Scoundrel, p4 the Intruder (Hacker) career specialization skill table also gives the computer hacker the Engineering (Electronics) skill... and then a player asked me one day...

Player - "Umm... so my hacker has Engineering (Electronics) 3. Does that mean he can use Engineering (M-Drive) or (J-Drive) at skill 0?"
::me with that rut roh look on my face as I look at the rules again:: "Ummm... apparently"
Player - "Why does a computer hacker know anything about a ships jump drive?"
Me - "Ummm... er.... you hacked into a ships computer once an studied up on it...."
Everyone - "RIIIIIIIIIIIIGT"

Thus my decision to go back and remove the Engineering specializations, creating instead just the Technician specialization which deals with the hands on applied repairs and maintenance just as the original CT Engineering skill did... and made Naval Architect a second specialization... since I reasoned knowledge in one area would likely give you skill 0 knowledge in the other area. In other words, I used the specialization rules to create a skill group. Then re-organized the Physical Science skills to create another logical skill group. Doing so solves all the problems nicely, removes the redundancy and its not hard to adjust existing characters this way. In fact, I'm finding it gives them a slight edge because now those engineers, by using the Phys Sci group, have some new skills at Skill 0 that they didn't have access too before... and it makes them in play seem a bit more like the Engineers we would expect them to be... someone who knows a bit about physics, chemistry, electronics, and so forth... enough they can tinker in all these areas without having to spend 20+ skill points to do it. That makes sense to me... after all... just 3 skill points in Medic makes someone a Surgeon. That's Traveller.

 

[rust]

I'd would hazard a guess most of us have played using that specialization as a general electronics skill for all things electronics ...

This is what I use the Electronics skill for, a counterpart of the Mechanic
skill. Someone with the Electronics skill can operate and repair most of
the devices which have electronics at their core, but he normally cannot
design new advanced electronic systems.

In settings where I have to introduce several new specific skills and want
to avoid "skill creep" I use a Repair skill which covers both Mechanic and
Electronics.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I usually don't differentiate the Sciences too much. There is so much theoretical overlap.

I use:

Science (Life, Physical, Space, Social)

Levels in one specialty give Level 0 in others. I even considered combining Physical and Space, but decided to leave them separate more as a matter of scale. A specialist in Quantum Mechanics would be Science (Physical) and an expert in Dark Matter would be Science (Space). BUT, there is a lot of overlap between all the specialties and if a character can come up with a logical way to use their specialty, I would give it to them.

The problem that I have is how do you skill up a character that is a Math Genius? Math is not listed as a Science skill but is used in all four specialties above.

After all most Travellers are going to be generalists rather than specialists, so going into much more detail just spreads out those few skill points that a character has.