Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
That’s my thinking as well. Ditto virtual crew.
Ship's Brain Interface sizing and use
- Thread starter jaysm
- Start date
There's also nothing wrong - and a lot to like about - a group that starts out unskilled in some areas.
If they find themselves with a skill hole, eight weeks and a successful EDU roll can fix that. Or, maybe you can get by shooting at the pirate with a -3 for a while. Beam lasers help; throw the DEX 9 farmboy in a turret and he's -3 for skill, +1 for DEX, +4 for weapon, so still hitting on a 6+ at Medium range.
If they find themselves with a skill hole, eight weeks and a successful EDU roll can fix that. Or, maybe you can get by shooting at the pirate with a -3 for a while. Beam lasers help; throw the DEX 9 farmboy in a turret and he's -3 for skill, +1 for DEX, +4 for weapon, so still hitting on a 6+ at Medium range.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
If he's a cityboy, would competency in video games count?
CordwainerFish
Emperor Mongoose
Skill holes also foster creative really bizarre solutions to problems.
(This is good.)
(This is good.)
Or a player character that is a robot (since those are a thing in RH).
8 weeks is a long time, when you find you need a skill, generally you need it sooner than that.
I like characters with low skills and skill gaps, and that farm boy is going to be able to knock down small craft piloted by mooks who cannot land a shot on target after a few shots and maybe that'll be fun.
Against even a Type A however it is going to take him a dogs age to make any impression on his target. With a beam laser you need the effect (and preferably crits) to make a dent, just hitting isn't really enough (even with a triple turret). A pulse laser makes hitting only a little harder so you might miss or get 2 less effect damage, but it doubles the base damage and moves it to the point where 8 points might get through armour.
And as has been pointed out in the weapons for merchants thread, medium range is not where you want to be if you are facing someone who actually has a real gunner and credible weapon systems if you are handling that equivalent to a red rider for the first time in your life.
I can attest that us farmboys are just as or more likely to be gamers.
Player agency or really good software would be the main reason to do it. Fire/Control still helps an unskilled gunner, so you either have that auto-shooting for no bonus to hit (+0), or applying its bonus to the meat puppet sitting in the chair. If the gunner is DEX 9-11 (likely, since if no one has Gunnery or JoT you do want your dexiest character at the controls), that's a starting net -2, which happens to be offset by the bonus for Fire/Control 2. If you are running better than F/C 2 you will be better with unskilled gunners at the controls than letting the computer kill the fleshy ones.
(As touched on above, any level of JoT boosts an unskilled gunner into useful territory, too. JoT 3, DEX 12 might not even bother studying...)
A good pilot can help, as can software (see my previous post).
Obviously the intended way to cover it is the skill package, as was previously mentioned. A group that is expected to get into space combat should be taking an appropriate skill package, just as one that expects to get into ground combat takes one of those, or a group facing an espionage campaign takes one suited for that.
And... this MAY be Traveller heresy, given how few real jobs there are in space combat to fill... but you CAN hire someone to shoot the ship's guns.
