Spacecraft Ops

[BP]

Just thought I'd share this.

IMTU, I feel that spacers - specifically Navy and Scout characters (and probably Belters) - should be familiar with all aspects of spacecraft operations as part of their basic training. So I've added a skill of Spacecraft Ops-0 that is equivalent to all spacecraft skills at level 0 (Pilot, Astrogation, Engineering, Comms, Sensors, Computer, Gunner, etc.).

This is a level 0 skill only (all other 'levels' are specialties - i.e. the other skills) and is automatic for Navy and Scout chars. So no negative 3 penalty, but still only ~40% chance of success on an average skill check (sans characteristic DMs). I look at it as a ~60% of marginal failure. (I.e > 50% chance task seems to succeed and may temporarily or in some partial fashion).

For non-military careers (such as Merchant), this would normally not apply.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Depends very much on the size and power of the navy.

Scouts yes I can see them being cross trained like that.

In something like the Imp Navy a gunner is not going to be cross trained in pilot, Engineer or astrogation but may have some of the other four as they link to gunnery. A pilot may well have pilot, astorgation, sensors plus computer but not gunnery or engineering since they would be handled by specialist crewmembers. Skills which are the job of a ships department are going to be trained mostly to those in that department. Over the years personel could cross train or just pick up new skills but to start with they are going to be trained in what they need to know to work in thier asigned department.

Same with a merchant line or a tramp trader. THe merchant line will have engineers and pilots in designated roles, the tramp may have a crew of three one of whom is the pilot and also helps with the engineering watches, the steward also does comms, sensors and guns since the other two are busy when flying or running a jump and the ships nominal engineer may also run the computer, act as gunner in the second turret and act as co pilot.

These are all the sort of skills you would pick up over the years though rather than something that is formaly trained in the first term.

 

[far-trader]

Strictly my opinion but if anything I'd see it more likely the other way around.

Belters and Free-Traders being self reliant, independent, often undercrewed would need to be Jacks-of-all-Trades (the idea, not the skill of same name) much more so than the big, specialized departments structure, ranked organization of the Imperial Services (including the bigger Merchant Services like subsidized ships and MegaCorp ships).

In the Navy (and even Scouts) one wouldn't expect every crewman to know every job. Why does Chief Engineer Enerii need to know the first thing about flying the ship or talking to other ships, those are jobs for the Bridge Crew, mostly officers. Likewise Captain Biilii won't know the right end of a Multi-Spanner to apply to torque the jump governor, nor have the faintest idea just how much torque is needed.

Even the Scouts would be highly specialized as large as they are, and the one assigned to solo ops would be chosen from the vast pool of talent for their more rounded skill set (honestly earned Jacks-of-all-Trades again not the skill of same name).

...but that's just this old trader's take, your take and TU may vary and the idea itself looks good

p.s. and I see Captain Jonah has beaten me to the button with much the same post

 

[rust]

I could see a basic familiarization with all aspects of shipboard
life as a part of the early basic training of all spacefarers, but I
am not sure whether this would have enough depth for a Level
0 skill. While I would consider it plausible for future officers, be-
cause there are many navies where midshipmen are expected to
learn to be able to handle the basics of almost every job on a ship,
the others would probably only learn enough for a Level 0 skill in
everyday space skills like Comms (even a vacc suit has a commu-
nications device), Computers, Vacc Suit and Zero-G, perhaps also
Sensors (again, even a Vacc Suit has sensors) and in the military
perhaps also Gunner (which in my view is just another use of the
Computers skill). Astrogation, Engineer and Pilot seem too specia-
lized to teach even the basics to everyone.

 

[BP]

Thanks - excellent feedback!

I don't like seeing the spaceship = submarine analogy pushed too far, but the RW inspiration for this is the U.S. Navy Submarine training. To quote from http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/faq.html:

• 9. ...each crew has to be able to operate, maintain, and repair every system or piece of equipment on board. ... Regardless of their specialty, everyone also has to learn how everything on the ship works and how to respond in emergencies to become "qualified in submarines" and earn the right to wear the coveted gold or silver dolphins on their uniform.

The aspect that makes the analogy appropriate I take from http://usmilitary.about.com/od/navyassign/a/silentservice.htm:

• “The difference in damage control philosophies between us and a surface ship is that if we start sinking because of a casualty, there’s nowhere to escape,” said Chief Electronics Technician (SS) William Murtha, USS Maine’s (SSBN 741) Blue Crew 3M and drill simulator coordinator. “We can’t jump on any life boats, abandon the ship or parachute out of a plane to avoid the fire, flooding or catastrophic mechanical failure.”

(Well, technically, they do have some limited 'escape' options and probably better chances than a stranded spacer, but only just.)

So, for the Scout service in particular, I see something akin to the 'warfare qualification card' as part of the basic training and first term of service. The Navy, like Captain Jonah points out, probably should depend on scale (i.e. Capital ships 'of the Line' versus smaller ships) which is also setting dependent. I excluded capital ship skills from the skill, but excluding Pilot and Gunner (see below) takes care of this, I think.

Far Trader, I certainly see where for Belters (just haven't look at their career) and Free Trader and Merchant Marine specialties of Merchants might apply, but hesitate on Broker. Mostly though, the fact that civilian training tends not to worry as much about life and death - its more about ROI and, bottom line, ships can be salvaged. So I see it less likely that their 'basic training' would encompass such.

rust, the Navy basic training already provides for Pilot-0 as does Scouts, which is the reason I included it. Scouts has Astrogation for everyone and Navy has Gunner, but I agree these don't really fit the idea so much. So, I'll exclude Pilot, Astrogation and Gunner.

However, Engineering(Life Support) is especially important and the other specialties can be critical if damage or casualties are sustained. I also didn't want to over complicate by calling out individual specialties under a skill. I think our read on level-0 skills is different. I see level-0 as basic familiarity training - by the definition in the book and since the rule mechanics assume one will fail (~60%) of the time at that level on even average tasks. In an initial four year term I wouldn't expect its too much to cover basics of Engineering - operation and simple repair.

Most of these skills can be acquired in the Navy and Scout careers - the problem I see is they are still a crap shoot and they seem fundamentally essential (most especially for Scouts). Metagame-wise, MgT offers package and connection skills which compensate for these, but they are level-1 and I like more characters to have level-0 ship skills to encourage 'risky' play. Also, a general spaceship operations skill just makes since for careers that are spaceship bound.

So, I have Spacecraft Ops as part of basic training for Scouts and maybe Navy, to include at level-0: Engineering, Comms, Sensors, Computer, Vacc, Zero-G, Mechanical.

Any ideas on making this available in other careers (without re-writing them)? Other feedback also appreciated, of course!

 

[rust]

In general, while Mongoose Traveller's basic career training is
limited to six service skills per career, I would have no problem
to treat each basic training as a more comprehensive training
leading to a kind of generic "Career 0" skill which includes all
the basic knowledge and tasks one could expect of a person
with four years of career experience.

In fact, this is how I treat the basic training of colonists for my
typical colony settings, after an entire career term of four years
the colonist can handle all the common tasks of a colony's eve-
ryday life, even if he does not have the specific skills for them
on his character sheet - he is always treated as having an equi-
valent of "Local Culture 0" or "Colonist 0".

 

[BP]

Ironically, the idea of a Spacecraft Ops skill was inspired while developing rules for another game where career was a skill (ala Doctor, Soldier, etc.).

In MgT games, I've found myself giving Pilot skill automatic Comm, Sensor and Computer level-0 skills - because it makes sense. Just as you mentioned Vacc really implies some Comm and Sensor skill. But then that makes skills like Pilot 'unbalanced' against other skills. Spacecraft Ops fixes that and makes it easier to have a small PC party that can crew a ship with 2 and 3 term PCs that can wear (minimally) multiple hats in various situations without having a ton of level-1 skills that really aren't appropriate for the individual characters.

The ship's (Scout) Medic can thus feel like he can attempt a call for help, detecting an enemy, or initiate jump (fingers crossed) without having a back story that somehow includes more than level-0 familiarity with these specialties. This avoids players pursuing another term just to get one missing skill (and ending up with several more) to backup other player's PCs.

Hmmm, an elegant (i.e. minimal rule changing) way of integrating such into the rules occurs...

Add Spacecraft Ops as a 'default' skill when any Skills and Training table with Pilot is used. So Pirate specialty for Rogue; Merchant Marine and Free Trader specialty for Merchants [nod to Far Trader]; Advanced Education for Marines [nice twist there!]; Scavenger (Belter) for Drifter [nod again]; and, of course, Service Skill for Scouts and Navy. This also means it is only gained for certain specialties when changing careers into Navy (Flight or Officer) [hello Captain Jonah!*] ; or, Scouts (3 core Specialties). (*Note: there are no explicit capital ship skills with Spacecraft Ops as I've dropped Pilot, and Gunner anyway [thanks rust!]; also, consistent with the rest of the rules, there is no distinction of scale or type in Engineering - one is left presuming equivalent tech for such...)

Suspect this would work for the expanded careers in the books other than Core, but haven't checked.

 

[GypsyComet]

The mediated solution here is a form of Jack-of-all-Trades.

Spacecraft Ops would be JoT Jr. Using the same mechanic of mitigating non-proficiency penalties, but applied only to the skills listed instead of everything. It could thus sit on a skill table normally, or sit as a Skill of 1 on the rank chart or in the events, and be rolled multiple times to represent the gradient from "you'll pick it all up over time" to explicit cross-training. The danger, if there is one, is that it detracts from positive skill chances on the tables AND could potentially be wasted rolls if the other rolls for the character end up covering all the appropriate skills. To mitigate this, I would state that Spacecraft Ops rolls can be saved until career generation is complete, and traded in on a roll-for-roll basis for any of the covered skills as long as this would not result in a skill higher than 2.

So if a Navy character rolled two Spacecraft Ops results but also got broad space skills coverage from his other rolls, he would trade in the two rolls for specific skills, but if all he got was VaccSuit-1 and Sensors-1, he could keep those two rolls as Spacecraft Ops and only suffer a -1 on the other shipboard skills instead of -3. Not "good", but not totally clueless, either.

 

[hdan]

If you re-categorize Pilot, etc. as specializations of Spacecraft Ops, then you get the "level 0" effect for free by way of the usual specialization rules.

I like this idea a lot.

 

[BP]

GypsyComet, while the concept of the skill is similar to JoT, the game mechanics are not.

JoT-1 has less than a base 42% chance of success for a Routine (+2) task check (like requesting landing permission). Level-0 represents minimal competency (as defined on pg 5 or the like), which is what I am aiming for.

The concept of the skill is based off the RW training of U.S. Navy Submariners. Given the 4 year nominal terms in chargen, this does not seem at all unreasonable, especially since the skill gained on a relevant table is generally related to experience gained for spacecraft operations.

JoT like skill is fine with high stat DMs, but otherwise players are unlikely to use it unless they have multiple levels in it. JoT or a limited version does not address the fact that a Pilot needs Comm and Sensor skill to be useful, nor that a small player party needs multiple skills for multiple players to adequately cover all positions and have backups instead of an NPC manned ship. Which means older, often over-skilled PCs just to reach that goal.

Substituting skills on the tables is quite a change, and one I generally would avoid making. Spacecraft Ops as a group of default level-0 skills might seem unbalanced, but then the net result is likely to end up with younger PCs that are more satisfactory to a non-metagaming group of players. And the metagamer isn't gonna be happy with level-0 skills.

hdan, pretty much - that was my original thinking, though it would make for 'sub-specialty' arrangements and rust talked me into not including Pilot.

 

[Vargrz]

I agree that the concept makes complete sense in the real world, but that it would be an unbalanced skill. Truthfully, I have never like Jack of All Trades either (and in my campaigns limit or eliminate it).

My reasoning is this: When playing with a group of three or more, there needs to be division of skills. This "encourages" cooperation and teamwork. It also can put players in a jam if they are lacking certain skills areas, which forces more creativity from them. I want players to be well rounded, but I don't think any one player should be able too independent. Where's the fun in that?

For there to be any sense of risk, things need to get hairy from time to time. For the players to care about the fate of their fellow creme members, then they should need each other.

 

[BP]

Agree about JoT and division of skills... but this is a level-0 limited skill set.

No one player is likely to be independent just because of this skill and level-0 certainly provides opportunity for challenges (encourages the risk actually).

The effect of this skill is to discourage higher levels and higher skill count with small parties. Especially with only 3 PCs, backups become important to keep things moving. Lower level backups provide more risk. (Unless you are playing home ruled or cyber metagamer stat DMs of +2 and greater ).

 

[locarno24]

In general, while Mongoose Traveller's basic career training is
limited to six service skills per career, I would have no problem
to treat each basic training as a more comprehensive training
leading to a kind of generic "Career 0" skill which includes all
the basic knowledge and tasks one could expect of a person
with four years of career experience.

In fact, this is how I treat the basic training of colonists for my
typical colony settings, after an entire career term of four years
the colonist can handle all the common tasks of a colony's eve-
ryday life, even if he does not have the specific skills for them
on his character sheet - he is always treated as having an equi-
valent of "Local Culture 0" or "Colonist 0".

Don't forget the party skill packages. 'Starship skills package' covers most of this for a party.

 

[rust]

Don't forget the party skill packages. 'Starship skills package' covers most of this for a party.

Not really, because in a party of four characters each of
them will get only two of the "missing" skills, and each
of them will get different two skills, so it is unlikely that
the entire spectrum of "Spaceship Ops" skills will be co-
vered for each of the characters. Besides, the packages
give Level 1 skills, they are professional training, not just
a familiarization.

Moreover, they are not much use for characters who de-
cide to change careers, and who are already treated ra-
ther badly because they can get only one service skill
from the basic training of their new career.

To use my colonist example, the character who decides
to settle down planetside after years as a spacer spends
four years on his new homeworld and in these four years
normally picks up only one service skill and perhaps two
more skills through the term skill roll and promotion or
an event, so after four years on the job he only knows
the basics of about half of his career's service skills and
is still completely untrained in the other half of the ser-
vice skills - this does not seem very convincing to me, in
my view he should be able to become familiar with all of
his new career's everyday skills, and "Colonist 0" would
cover that.

 

[Gee4orce]

You could just create a 'related skill' ruling - if a player has a related skill to the required skill, they may instead use 'skill-0'. In this context, any ship-board skill is regarded as related to any other ship-board skill. So, someone with Pilot-2 may make any Astrogation, Engineer, Comms, Gunnery, etc rolls at skill level 0 (ie. avoiding the unskilled penalty).


Alternatively, you could just use the rules for characters aiding another - but allow the character to aid himself, using a different skill. So a character with Pilot-2 skill needs to make an Astrogation roll, for which he has no skill. He first rolls Pilot, and then uses the success on that roll as the DM to the unskilled Astrogation roll, as per the table on pg 51.

This second approach is a bit harsher (because at best you can only get a +2 bonus), and requires two rolls, but I think I prefer it. The first idea makes getting secondary ship-board skills at skill-0 effectively worthless if you've already got a skill at 1 or better. The second idea keeps the value of 0 level skills, as well as protecting the various shipboard niches, yet at the same time improves a PCs chance of doing something if they have a related skill.

 

[BP]

Yeah, I've used lots of house rules to cover this problem. I like the 'aid myself' one (since its not automatic level-0) - that might be an interesting one outside the use of Spacecraft Ops. But, that would be one I'd only allow situationally with a Referee call.

I don't want it to be an across the board thing, nor so highly conditional. Level 0 represents competency due to familiarity and some training - in this case, formal for military, informal for the likes of Belters and Free Traders. I prefer that level of skill built into the chargen background, so it makes sense.

With Spacecraft Ops only applying for terms checked against skill tables with Pilot on them, when the background doesn't support the level of familiarity with spaceships, the skills don't automatically confer it (ex: Comms, Sensor). Without some background, the 'related' skill approach really fails with Computer, which should probably be related to many skills, but not so much the other way around.

 

[IanBruntlett]

This is interesting. Any chance of hammering out the details re: related skills packages?

For example what are related skills to, say "Colonist" or "Space"?

And are there any ideas for other related skills packages?

 

[BP]

For my part, no. The basic service skills and the skill specialty mechanic covers this for most careers and skills.

I created Spacecraft Ops to cover some specific 'holes' related to spacecraft - which have a large skill set requirement. I feel the RAW either forces PCs to higher terms or level of skill, or unrealistically implies no skill in areas that common sense and comparable RW analogies dictate otherwise. My further aim being to easily incorporate such into chargen with minimal impact. For my use, this discussion helped refine it as a default skill for certain services and service specialties based on the presence of Pilot skill.

rust has a more 'career skill' approach, ala his 'Colonist-0'. Currently mine is just a collection of related skills at level 0 that cannot go higher in an of itself. I could see Colonist as a new skill that also incorporates other skills and could go to higher levels, and might also cover checks not normally covered by other skills. (My interpretation - rust may not be using it this way at all!)

I have played in games, and toyed myself, with related skills house rules. So, a very experienced Pilot might get related 'cascade skills' at a reduced level. Actually, I'm not too fond of the current organization and delineation of skills, but that is too game changing a subject and more individual taste, to dwell on...

 

[rust]

The meaning of "Colonist 0" would probably depend a lot on
the technology level of the campaign and the specific planet.
In my current Altiplano setting "Colonist 0" is the equivalent
of Animals, Athletics, Drive, Mechanic, Survival and Trade at
Level 0 - the character has an idea what agriculture is about,
he can drive a ground vehicle from A to B, he can operate al-
most all of the colony's general equipment, and he has lear-
ned to work under the colony's high altitude conditions.

However, this "Colonist 0" covers only the Altiplano colony's
culture and technology. The domestic animal of Altiplano is
the llama, so the character has Animals (Llamas) Level 0, but
is treated as untrained when encountering a cow or horse. The
dangerous terrain of Altiplano consists of high mountains, so
the character has Survival (Mountains) Level 0, but would be
treated as untrained in a desert or a forest - and so on, you
get the idea.

This "Colonist 0" cannot be used as a stepping stone to any
higher skill level. For example, if the character wants to have
the Animals skill for all kinds of animals, he has to learn Ani-
mals Level 0 the usual way (more difficult in my setting than
with the core book rules), and if he wants to be able to drive
other vehicles than the ones used on Altiplano, he has to get
Drive Level 0 the normal way.

 

[BP]

Ah, so Colonist (Altiplano) 0!