Stacking level 0 skills

[Arkathan]

some USN A-Schools are two years long

That particular A School gives you the equivalent college credits of a major in Nuclear science, minus two classes that were too classified to provide to the college review board. (I decided not to take those two classes, since they were only offered in New York (specifically Albany) and there was no such thing as online classes back then.)

 

[ottarrus]

That particular A School gives you the equivalent college credits of a major in Nuclear science, minus two classes that were too classified to provide to the college review board. (I decided not to take those two classes, since they were only offered in New York (specifically Albany) and there was no such thing as online classes back then.)

I knew the nuc engineering schools took awhile, but I was also told that a couple of the aviation rates took awhile too.
I'm Army, so I'm getting my info from the internet. And we both know that isn't the same thing as living in it.

 

[Arkathan]

I knew the nuc engineering schools took awhile, but I was also told that a couple of the aviation rates took awhile too.
I'm Army, so I'm getting my info from the internet. And we both know that isn't the same thing as living in it.

Seal training is also two years.
Officer aviator school is 18-24 months.
Of the other ratings, generally six months past boot camp for the longest of the other schools, like Electronics Technician.

 

[Midnightplat]

I would say that based on the fact that characters receive an initial battery of 0-levels skills when they enter their first career as "basic-training", you can use military basic training as a loose standard of comparison. If an Army character gets Gun Combat-0 in Basic Training, this is comparable to what a modern soldier gets at basic training in the military. So if said soldier goes on to be assigned to the motor-pool, or a company clerk, or the catering-corps for his tour of duty, and receives no further formal training or experience with his firearm, what is his level of Gun Combat going to look like?

You ever hear the Marine credo "every Marine is a rifleman"? The other branches have a similar sentiment.

(To be clear, never served in a military branch. I did work in federal law enforcement for just under a decade surrounded by a lot of veterans who did serve in a wide range of MOSs. I've always been more of a talker of the Columbo variety than doorkicker, so I learned a lot of people's stories).

In U.S. and many other militaries and law enforcement professions satisfactorily completing basic training means they met a qualifying marksmanship standard (I really don't know, leaning to no that the sharpshooter and expert distinctions beyond qualified/marksman would merit +1s since these are marksmanship tests on controlled ranges), plus I think some basic tactical orientation, at least fed law enforcement gets it. That wouldn't be equivalent to the "tactics" skill per se, it's more basic learning how to shoot and move so as to not get yourself or your team killed through If you land in a non combat arms MOS or branch and/or work largely a desk/admin type of assignment, you still have to meet that standard annually (I know fed law enforcement does it semiannually or quarterly depending on agency and field office resources). And between the two you get what I see as a Gun Combat of 0. So in Traveller lifepath terms, without an event that would push or penalize that score, they'd finish that first enlistment term with a Gun Combat skill of 0. Pushes to that in lifepath I'd say derive between specific training in combat arms (maybe you were infantry, maybe you tried out for special operations, maybe your culinary preparation equipment maintenance battalion was deploying to the equivalent of one of those big bases in Iraq/Afghanistan and some Sappers took pity upon you all and taught some drills based on what they've learned from roadside ambushes, etc.) or actual combat experience.

Gun combat 0 is pretty easy to maintain if achieved through proper training so the non combat arms enlistee can deliver that 0 about mustering out. Beyond 0, most folks from that world I used to work with would say the sort of skillset that snipers, special operators, Air Marshals have is a perishable skillset, which is why those professions spend so much of their non deployment time at ranges and shoot houses.

A-school and tech school are just that, schools after basic. Some MOS will give you some cool skills, some ... won't. I think the event table on the lifepath reflects this more than adequately. Not sure about SEAL but I know in Army and Air Force special operations while there is a "pipeline" for Special Forces, PJs, TACP or whatever they're calling it now, that's around two years or more, that pipeline is often interrupted because of lack of school availability or needs of the unit, so you might not be "fully" trained for 3-4 years (Special Forces I believe are supposed to go to both SCUBA and HALO but it often takes a while to get around to it, Air Force TACPs are more complicated because they have to go to everyone else's school on top of theirs). So the sort of patchwork approach in Traveller I still find pretty grounded.

 

[ottarrus]

A-school and tech school are just that, schools after basic. Some MOS will give you some cool skills, some ... won't. I think the event table on the lifepath reflects this more than adequately. Not sure about SEAL but I know in Army and Air Force special operations while there is a "pipeline" for Special Forces, PJs, TACP or whatever they're calling it now, that's around two years or more, that pipeline is often interrupted because of lack of school availability or needs of the unit, so you might not be "fully" trained for 3-4 years (Special Forces I believe are supposed to go to both SCUBA and HALO but it often takes a while to get around to it, Air Force TACPs are more complicated because they have to go to everyone else's school on top of theirs). So the sort of patchwork approach in Traveller I still find pretty grounded.

I can speak to some of that in re: Special Forces.
Yes, there is a pipeline to get someone into Special Forces. This is relatively new, for most of SF's history a soldier had to be in their second enlistment and be an E5 or better. Nowadays, there is an enlistment option where a soldier does two years with a line unit and then is sent to Special Forces Assessment and Selection [ SFAS, aka '5 weeks of Hell'].
SF is one of the longer upper tier schools because of the language requirement. Even those who speak a second language at home still go through DLI to learn the 'the King's English' equivalent of the language and to remove any accents or idioms that are uniquely 'American'. If you're gonna be deployed to Columbia to hunt FARC, you don't wanna be speaking 'Texican', right?
After SFAS and Basic School, each SF operator is taught a specialty and familiarized with a second one. Specialties include Engineering, Communications, Medical, Intelligence and so forth. EVERYBODY is trained in Light Weapons nowadays, but it used to be a specialty all it's own. Of these specialties, Medical is easily the longest school... that school takes 18 months all by itself.
At one time, an SF company was divided into teams by insertion method [Advance Parachute [HALO/HAHO], SCUBA, etc.], but Smokebomb Hill did away with that and wants everyone trained to do it all. But, as you say, even with the extra workload there simply isn't enough students to warrant the expense of an extra school setup. That means that, yes, school slots are the big hangup getting an operator from skill school to deployment-ready.

 

[Midnightplat]

I can speak to some of that in re: Special Forces.
Yes, there is a pipeline to get someone into Special Forces. This is relatively new, for most of SF's history a soldier had to be in their second enlistment and be an E5 or better. Nowadays, there is an enlistment option where a soldier does two years with a line unit and then is sent to Special Forces Assessment and Selection [ SFAS, aka '5 weeks of Hell'].
SF is one of the longer upper tier schools because of the language requirement. Even those who speak a second language at home still go through DLI to learn the 'the King's English' equivalent of the language and to remove any accents or idioms that are uniquely 'American'. If you're gonna be deployed to Columbia to hunt FARC, you don't wanna be speaking 'Texican', right?
After SFAS and Basic School, each SF operator is taught a specialty and familiarized with a second one. Specialties include Engineering, Communications, Medical, Intelligence and so forth. EVERYBODY is trained in Light Weapons nowadays, but it used to be a specialty all it's own. Of these specialties, Medical is easily the longest school... that school takes 18 months all by itself.
At one time, an SF company was divided into teams by insertion method [Advance Parachute [HALO/HAHO], SCUBA, etc.], but Smokebomb Hill did away with that and wants everyone trained to it all. But, as you say, even with the extra workload there simply isn't enough students to warrant the expense of an extra school setup. That means that, yes, school slots are the big hangup getting an operator from skill school to deployment-ready.

SERE is another one of those schools that "everyone" is supposed to go to, but not just SF so it becomes another chokepoint in the pipeline. Night Stalkers, plus other branch air crews and operators, etc. I might be wrong, but I was under the impression you could deploy with your team with some boxes (halo/scuba/sere, maybe that's it) still unchecked if they were outside mission parameters, or the SERE thing where everyone's on a waiting list for class slots.

But yeah by pipeline, I didn't mean specifically the 18x program, whether you went in that way or the traditional already enlisted method, I meant all the boxes that get checked after that. Still think this game's lifepath does a better than average run at the sci-fi/space opera equivalent of that background.

(for some reason the acronym HAHO, and thanks for catching that one, always makes me laugh a little, maybe because it's my preferred insertion method in Fortnite ).

 

[Alqualonde]

So the sort of patchwork approach in Traveller I still find pretty grounded.

If my memory serves me right, Marc Miller served in the U.S. Army before creating Traveller. He had first hand experience.
Mongoose Traveller kept the same characters creation methode than CT & MegaTraveller.

 

[Condottiere]

I would think it depends on how many technical skills and competencies you need to satisfactorily do your job.

Supposedly, it's a year of training, a year of unit cohesiveness and combined arms, and then you're deployed.

If it's an ongoing conflict, six months training, two years deployment, and six months decompression.

 

[WHULorigan]

If my memory serves me right, Marc Miller served in the U.S. Army before creating Traveller. He had first hand experience.
Mongoose Traveller kept the same characters creation methode than CT & MegaTraveller.

Marc Miller was a Captain in the US Army during Viet Nam but was assigned to a non-combat role.

 

[WHULorigan]

You ever hear the Marine credo "every Marine is a rifleman"? The other branches have a similar sentiment.

(To be clear, never served in a military branch. I did work in federal law enforcement for just under a decade surrounded by a lot of veterans who did serve in a wide range of MOSs. I've always been more of a talker of the Columbo variety than doorkicker, so I learned a lot of people's stories).

In U.S. and many other militaries and law enforcement professions satisfactorily completing basic training means they met a qualifying marksmanship standard (I really don't know, leaning to no that the sharpshooter and expert distinctions beyond qualified/marksman would merit +1s since these are marksmanship tests on controlled ranges), plus I think some basic tactical orientation, at least fed law enforcement gets it. That wouldn't be equivalent to the "tactics" skill per se, it's more basic learning how to shoot and move so as to not get yourself or your team killed through If you land in a non combat arms MOS or branch and/or work largely a desk/admin type of assignment, you still have to meet that standard annually (I know fed law enforcement does it semiannually or quarterly depending on agency and field office resources). And between the two you get what I see as a Gun Combat of 0. So in Traveller lifepath terms, without an event that would push or penalize that score, they'd finish that first enlistment term with a Gun Combat skill of 0. Pushes to that in lifepath I'd say derive between specific training in combat arms (maybe you were infantry, maybe you tried out for special operations, maybe your culinary preparation equipment maintenance battalion was deploying to the equivalent of one of those big bases in Iraq/Afghanistan and some Sappers took pity upon you all and taught some drills based on what they've learned from roadside ambushes, etc.) or actual combat experience.

Gun combat 0 is pretty easy to maintain if achieved through proper training so the non combat arms enlistee can deliver that 0 about mustering out. Beyond 0, most folks from that world I used to work with would say the sort of skillset that snipers, special operators, Air Marshals have is a perishable skillset, which is why those professions spend so much of their non deployment time at ranges and shoot houses.

A-school and tech school are just that, schools after basic. Some MOS will give you some cool skills, some ... won't. I think the event table on the lifepath reflects this more than adequately. Not sure about SEAL but I know in Army and Air Force special operations while there is a "pipeline" for Special Forces, PJs, TACP or whatever they're calling it now, that's around two years or more, that pipeline is often interrupted because of lack of school availability or needs of the unit, so you might not be "fully" trained for 3-4 years (Special Forces I believe are supposed to go to both SCUBA and HALO but it often takes a while to get around to it, Air Force TACPs are more complicated because they have to go to everyone else's school on top of theirs). So the sort of patchwork approach in Traveller I still find pretty grounded.

Yes, this is my point. This should be the baseline. But different services might need to be adjudicated differently. In other words, a navy person getting Gun Combat-0: is this basic competency or "Marksman" (I think the case can be made that the two might potentially be different). Certainly a soldier or marine would get more experience with sidearms and longarms than the navy person typically, but that should be reflected in skill acquisition thru CharGen. So what skill levels would constitute Marksman, Sharpshooter, and Expert qualifications: 0-1-2, or 1-2-3?

Remembering that anyone who does not have Gun Combat-0 has a -3 penalty for being unskilled, does that mean that anyone (from any prior-career profession, military or otherwise) who is competent to fire a gun (with Gun Combat-0) is the equivalent of a marksman?

Note that Army and/or Marine characters gain an auto-skill of Gun Combat-1 at Enlisted Rank-0 (and Marines gain another auto-skill rank of Gun Combat at Enlisted Rank-1).

 

[ottarrus]

If my memory serves me right, Marc Miller served in the U.S. Army before creating Traveller. He had first hand experience.
Mongoose Traveller kept the same characters creation methode than CT & MegaTraveller.

MWM was a junior Army officer in Vietnam. It's not something he talks about much. I don't know his officer path, but his wiki biography implies that he was OCS... meaning he was drafted, recognized as talented in Basic and AIT, and offered or applied for a 90-day-wonder commission. At one point I read an interview where he said what branch he was in, but damned if I remember it now. For some reason, I think he said he was an engineer but I may very well be wrong. On every occasion he's mentioned it, MWM tends to downplay and almost dismiss his military service. It was something he was required to do, so he did it and then moved on with his life.
There is a VERY strong veteran presence in GDW's games and their designers, which is why combat in its various forms was one of the big chapters. That was also the state of gaming at the time... there wasn't a lot of ink wasted in making a new character 'interesting'; people wanted combat rules for fantasy /sci-fi situations that that was what was published. None of this is really a surprise given that GDW started as a wargame company first and foremost.

 

[ottarrus]

Yes, this is my point. This should be the baseline. But different services might need to be adjudicated differently. In other words, a navy person getting Gun Combat-0: is this basic competency or "Marksman" (I think the case can be made that the two might potentially be different). Certainly a soldier or marine would get more experience with sidearms and longarms than the navy person typically, but that should be reflected in skill acquisition thru CharGen. So what skill levels would constitute Marksman, Sharpshooter, and Expert qualifications: 0-1-2, or 1-2-3?

Remembering that anyone who does not have Gun Combat-0 has a -3 penalty for being unskilled, does that mean that anyone (from any prior-career profession, military or otherwise) who is competent to fire a gun (with Gun Combat-0) is the equivalent of a marksman?

Note that Army and/or Marine characters gain an auto-skill of Gun Combat-1 at Enlisted Rank-0 (and Marines gain another auto-skill rank of Gun Combat at Enlisted Rank-1).

Army enlisted get Gun Combat 1 [IMTU it's Gun Combat [Slug] 1]; Marines get a choice of Gun Combat 1 or Melee [Blade] 1. IMTU, Marines get Gun Combat [Slug] 1 at E1 and Melee [Blade] 1 at E2.