Science and Engineering (and Trades)

[Klaus Kipling]

The science and engineering lists are getting there, but need a bit of work. Engineering in particular is predicated on starship operations.

Engineering:
M-Drive
J-Drive
Electronics
Life Support
Power Plant (should not be limited to power plants on starship, but reactors and heavy duty power supplies everywhere)

some additional specialism suggestions.

Robotics (should be engineering rather than science - the science aspect of this is covered by Cybernetics)
Civil or Architecture (the design and building of conurbations and civil infrastructure)
Spaceframes (replaces Naval Architect and is used for repair and modification of hulls and control surfaces)
Terraforming (perhaps requiring Sci: Planetology at level 0)
Vehicular (the design and build of cars and grav flyers)
Weapons Tech or Military (for designing and building those lovely spinal mounts)
Biotechnology (the engineering of organisms for industrial purposes - ties in with Robotics too)

Sciences:

Ok, the categories have some duplication. Lets ditch Space Sciences, as it really is just a subset of Physical Sciences, and then we don't need to pad them out with awkward specialsms.

Electronics and Robotics should become strictly engineering, a) to avoid pointless duplication (what is the difference between E: Electronics and S: Electronics?), and b) because these are applying the discoveries of science rather than looking for first principles.

So....

Physical Sciences:
Astrophysics (here's the space sciences!)
Physics (for more pure physics and allthat lovely quantum stuff)
Jumpspace Theory (this is the OTU version - each setting would have it's own one, depending on how FTL works. eg: Star Trek would have Warp Theory and B5 Hyperspace Theory)
Chemistry
Planetology
Cybernetics (surely more of a physical science than a life science?)

Life Sciences:
Xeno-Biology (why have Xenology and Biology - what's the difference?)
Genetics
Biochemistry
Psionicology (or whatever setting specific stuff is needed)
Plantetology (a cross discipline, as life has as much influence on planetary formation as physical laws)
Cybernetics (well, if Planetology is cross-discipline, so is Cybernetics )

Cultural Sciences: - I prefer this to Social Science given the particular meaning of Social Standing as a characteristic
All good really, but maybe lets ditch Psychology and roll it into Sophontology and Medic for it's theoretical side and therapeutic side respectively.

And I just want to talk about Trades a little bit, as these seem to have been forgotten about on the playtest.

As written, they seem pretty much redundant as other skills, scientific or engineering or computer should cover them. I do understand that they are for actually earning a living, but as they are right now completely unconnected from skills they'd need to function I think they need amending slightly.

Examples as they stand -
Biologicals: Engineering and managing artificial organisms. - covered by Eng: Biotech above...
Construction: Building orbital habitats and megastructures. - this works as the necessary skills to actually do the grunt work as a construction worker but not as a designer or architect.
Hydroponics: Growing crops in hostile environments. - a bit specific - how about Agritech, to complement Animals/Farming in a high tech environment.
Programming: Writing or growing computer programs. - surely Computer 0 or 1 is absolutely necessary to do this; right now they are unconnected.
Polymers: Designing and using polymers - isn't this a function of Chemistry?

Trades seem to less describe an actual skill and more familiarity with an industry.

Suggestions:

Software - requires Computer 0
Agritech
Manufacture - for making complex devices, like cars and computers, possibly on a production line
Construction
Metallurgy
Mining
Polymers - ok I was questioning it above but it compliments Metallurgy
Waste & Recycling (more industrial a scale than life support - for plumbers and sewer operatives)
Pharmaceuticals

There's probably more... I get the feeling, too, that these skills are more of a health and safety knowledge than anything else useful...

 

[TrippyHippy]

Engineering

The problem is that the Engineering skill is too specific to starship operations, currently when it should apply to any design or construction discipline based upon physical sciences. That's all it is.

Science
Is Planetology: Geology? (an Earth Science), or Ecology (a Life science)? Either way, make up the mind and include it in the right place once. Twice would be confusing!

Cybernetics, in the real world is often referenced with 'Bio-mechanics' which is a physical application to Biology. In order to be able to successfully implant a prosthetic into a body it needs to compatible with that tissue. Certain materials, for example will evoke an immune response or cause an infection. On this basis, and because it has medical applications, I think it should remain as a Life Science. The actual physical design and construction of the prosthetics, is an engineering skill, of course.

I agree that there is some cross-over in the sciences, from different fields, and agree that Astro-Physics is a physical science too. I disagree that Psychology should be ditched, and feel that it is an important inclusion as part of Life sciences, for reasons I've outlined in the other thread. I'd prefer to keep it a lot more than Sophontology, at least.

I don't necessarily think you need to need to drop Social Sciences as a moniker for the group, but agree that those disciplines that are included there should be about cultural studies (i.e anthroplogies), primarily. If the specialities pertain in any way to living processes, including the mind (Psychology), then they should be listed as Life sciences.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

Science
Is Planetology: Geology? (an Earth Science), or Ecology (a Life science)? Either way, make up the mind and include it in the right place once. Twice would be confusing!

It should go in both because these divisions are not separate skills, but categories within a skill, and as such do not need clear differentiation like a distinct skill would. Planetology is equally are physical science and a life science - using it to survey lifeless worlds would look silly if it was just a Life science.

Cybernetics, in the real world is often referenced with 'Bio-mechanics' which is a physical application to Biology. In order to be able to successfully implant a prosthetic into a body it needs to compatible with that tissue. Certain materials, for example will evoke an immune response or cause an infection. On this basis, and because it has medical applications, I think it should remain as a Life Science. The actual physical design and construction of the prosthetics, is an engineering skill, of course.

It may be often used in reference to bio-mechanics, but just as often it isn't. It is also bout researching computing and artificial intelligence. Trying to neatly stick it either category is going to annoy one group or another. It quite easily, like Planetology, covers both areas.

I don't necessarily think you need to need to drop Social Sciences as a moniker for the group, but agree that those disciplines that are included there should be about cultural studies (i.e anthroplogies), primarily. If the specialities pertain in any way to living processes, including the mind (Psychology), then they should be listed as Life sciences.

Again, you could argue similarly with Linguistics. Especially when we're extrapolating into the far future, not just using current terminology. What is more important is how it's going to be used in game. is Psychology going to be used for treating or studying mental illnesses or neuroscience, or is it a more general thing that feeds into advertising or politics or generally being able to work out what someone else is thinking or being able to manipulate them into a particular train of thought. Basically, it depends on what definition Gar wants to go for.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Is Planetology: Geology? (an Earth Science), or Ecology (a Life science)? Either way, make up the mind and include it in the right place once. Twice would be confusing!

It should go in both because these divisions are not separate skills, but categories within a skill, and as such do not need clear differentiation like a distinct skill would. Planetology is equally are physical science and a life science - using it to survey lifeless worlds would look silly if it was just a Life science.[/quote]

It would not be useful to duplicate skills in different categories, if all it means that we end up in confusion as to what the skill is around the game table, as well as the issue of knowing what baseline Skill-O default we should apply the skill to. If we get science like Planetology causing confusion then it should be split into two names for clarity. As a matter of fact, Planetology is a reference to Dr. Keynes in Dune - and would be best described as an 'Earth Science' like geology, certainly how it's described by Frank Herbert anyway. Ecology, on the other hand is definitely a branch of Biology, although a lot of 'Environmental Science' is associated with it, which also would make it an Earth Science. In this case, maybe having a fourth category for Space/Earth/Environmental Sciences would be preferable, perhaps.....just as they are at universities.

It may be often used in reference to bio-mechanics, but just as often it isn't. It is also bout researching computing and artificial intelligence. Trying to neatly stick it either category is going to annoy one group or another. It quite easily, like Planetology, covers both areas.

Again, cybernetics is more of a sci-fi reference than a well defined real world discipline. However, if it involves living processes and organisms, then it should be a life science. Otherwise, again, make a new category of science.

Again, you could argue similarly with Linguistics. Especially when we're extrapolating into the far future, not just using current terminology. What is more important is how it's going to be used in game. is Psychology going to be used for treating or studying mental illnesses or neuroscience, or is it a more general thing that feeds into advertising or politics or generally being able to work out what someone else is thinking or being able to manipulate them into a particular train of thought. Basically, it depends on what definition Gar wants to go for.

I don't see the connection to Linguistics, which is clearly a cultural study. Psychology isn't. It's about behaviour and the mind, in different applications, and literally evolved as a science from medical practice (Freud). Some of those applications are social, sure, but a lot aren't. Much of your discussion of AI in cybernetics, is a branch of cognitive science, for example.

I agree that the question really boils down to how it is going to be used in the game, though. as an alternative they could include a seperate Psychiatry speciality as the Life Science medical discipline, along with Neurology perhaps, keeping Psychology as the more generic Social Science category, to make the distinction.

My argument is that, particularly in a far future setting, the human brain is going to be a lot better mapped to it's function than it is now. A lot of the mysteries of the mind, which are plentiful currently, are going to be increasingly explained in biological terms. The best sci-fi analogy I would make is Dawkins concept of memes (being analogous to genes). If we extrapolate rapidly evolving dicoveries in real world neurology too, we should make a good case for explaining all psychological phenomena in biological terms in the future.

As ever though, my real issue is how the terms are defined. I don't think that Psychology is accurately or clearly enough defined as it stands.

 

[Tychus]

From the Career thread:

Another issue that has been raised is the Engineering skill. It's too specific to Starship Operations - and I'd rather that the broader skill would just be called that. 'Engineering', in a more general application, could then be placed as a speciality of Physical Sciences (where it belongs).

Engineering is to Physical Sciences as Medic is to Life Sciences.

After the volume of discussion concerning "what is science" over the last few weeks, I'm a little surprised to see this even come up.

I agree that the current list of Engineering specialties are important to maintain because of how the interact with the starship operation gameplay. This recongizes that a large percentage of Traveller games will involve space travel, and skill checks relating to these specialties will be common.

From a realistic categorization perspective, Engineering should probably be a metaskill like Science, with skills listed beneath it according to the major engineering disciplines (i.e. Chemical, Civil, Electrical, Mechanical), and specialties within each skill. The current Engineering specialties could be grouped under the a Ship's Engineer skill, falling under the Engineering metaskill. This method has the least impact on the rest of the rules as written (skill tables, starship operation), but creates a bunch of skills and speciailties that will only rarely see use. Also, the Ship's Engineer skill doesn't fit so well with the other skills - it's an amalgam of mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering. In today's world, there aren't many degree programs that encompass this set of knowledge, though the USMMA's Marine Engineering is a specialized exception.

To simplify things a bit, the Engineering metaskill could have just two skills - Ship's Engineering (as currently implemented), and General Engineering (specialties of Chemical, Civil, Electrical, etc). This abstracts Engineering a bit, and means that anyone who knows something about Civil Engineering will also know a bit about Chemical, Electrical, etc.

To simplify things further, including engineering as a specialty to a science skill is the least realistic and most abstract method. This means that anyone who knows anything about Physics, for example, is also a passable engineer of all disciplines. There's a pretty significant difference between analyzing the forces, stress, and strain on a simple beam, and designing a reinforced concrete girder to carry the design load, or developing chemical compounds in a lab and designing systems to manufacture those chemicals. However, from a gameplay perspective, this level of abstraction may be fine - how often are these sorts of skill checks going to come up in actual play. (Of course, I said the same thing about Science specialties, and there are currently 17).

So what level of abstraction is desireable?


Trades

I think this skill might be a candidate for breaking the rule on specialties. This is kind of a catchall skill, the specialties really don't have much in common, so knowledge of one trade probably shouldn't confer a skill rank of 0 in every other trade.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

The point about Science subheadings is that they're just lists from which to choose from. There's no mechanical effect of a sublist, apart from limiting the choices of certain rolls to a particular category.

If a character rolls Life Sciences then by rights they should be able to specialise in Planetology or Cybernetics because they have relevance to life science.

Similarly if a character rolls Physical Sciences then they should be able to pick either of those skills too, because they are also have relevance to physical science.

If we try and come up with a new heading for them it will only be awkward and potentially misleading. If a discipline has equally the features of more than one category, really it should appear in that category. It is not, after all, giving more chances of a particular skill being acquired (Science categories are not skill tables).

 

[AKAramis]

To be honest, I would not put Civil Engineering with Ship's Engineering at all.

Ship's Engineering is an operate, maintain, and repair skill.

Civil Engineering is Design, oversee construction, and diagnose failure mode after the failure.

Civil Engineering should be, IMO:
Environmental
Architechtural
Mechanical (not to be confused with the specialty of Ship's Engineering)
Naval Architecht
Electrical
Aviation Architect
Nautical Architect

 

[Deniable]

I agree with most of that except, civil engineering (including structural) is a specific discipline and not the overall field. The break-down probably needs to be Engineering and Ships Engineer.

 

[EDG]

Speaking as someone who was once actually a planetary scientist, "Planetology" is a lot of things.

There's the Geological aspects of it (interpretation of surface images, or actual hands-on geology of the surface), the Space science aspects (magnetic fields, ionospheric interactions with the solar wind, etc), the Geophysical aspects (gravity field, mass concentrations, moments of inertia/internal structure, tidal effects), Atmospheric aspects (meteorology, atmospheric chemistry, interaction with the surface), Oceanographic aspects (if applicable - ocean currents, composition, atmosphere/ocean interaction etc) and the 'Gestalt' aspects that put the whole thing together to make a unified, consistent story.

And that's not even talking about any Life on the surface, which adds its own aspect as well (e.g. the effect of life on the atmospheric and oceanic chemistry). Personally I think the life-related stuff should come under "ecological/biological sciences" rather than "planetology".