Why no co-pilot?

[MonsterX]

Yes? Duh.

I would PREFER that Mongoose put in the effort to make Astrogation a skill that has value. I like the idea of the skill. I think it would be neat to have players able to be tricksy hobbitses with it. But the game has no support for that. It says you can do a thing (gravity slingshots) but there's no guidance on actually doing so. What are the conditions that make that viable? What effect does it actually have? Traveller's real space movement system is basically "roll dice and adjust from the average time between two planets.

I'm sure some number of Traveller players are space travel experts and can figure out a system for doing that, but I'm not. And none of the players I've had over the last 47 years have been either (granted, it wasn't expected to do anything for much of that time (aka CT)). So, yeah, I do make a feature of Pilot, which is why I mentioned that earlier. Because the choice between pulling space travel house rules out of my rear or just using CT's jump rules, the latter wins hands down.

I'm no rocket scientist, but a little math will tell you that gravity slingshots are very important when you've only got a few minutes worth of rocket fuel to burn on board and high-efficiency Hohmann transfers are the order of the day. Their effect gets lost in the rounding when you've got a magic M drive that can boost you at multiples of 1G for weeks.

 

[Condottiere]

I'd go for sleight of hand, and switch the dice, without the dungeon master noticing.

 

[AndrewW]

I'm no rocket scientist, but a little math will tell you that gravity slingshots are very important when you've only got a few minutes worth of rocket fuel to burn on board and high-efficiency Hohmann transfers are the order of the day. Their effect gets lost in the rounding when you've got a magic M drive that can boost you at multiples of 1G for weeks.

Can still be useful under the right circumstances, you don't have enough fuel to power that magic M drive and need to conserve what little bit you do have.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Can still be useful under the right circumstances, you don't have enough fuel to power that magic M drive and need to conserve what little bit you do have.

You are being pursued by another ship that out guns you but you have the same acceleration. A well plotted slingshot might give you that slight edge both for acceleration and course change.

 

[MonsterX]

Can still be useful under the right circumstances, you don't have enough fuel to power that magic M drive and need to conserve what little bit you do have.

there are some rules in DNR for using skillz to cut transit times marginally, which is realistic, but it is not going to change much. Doesn't specify slingshots, but I think that's abstracted into the mix.

The main use would be if you had some kind of shipwrecked scenario and need to MacGyver your way out of it.

 

[swordtart]

Is it not for players to suggest how they could use their skills to solve problems / create advantages.

Whilst pointing your ship in a specific direction and hitting the go button might seem a trivial task, being just 1 degree out at 100D ranges might put you 10's of 1000's of KM out from even a stationary target. It might only add half an hour but that is another 800km of rotation so extra time to calculate and negotiate a revised landing approach. The advantage of space in being so vast that you are unlikely to hit anything unfortunately also applies to your target.

With journeys that take days of constant acceleration you are also aiming where things will be not where they are now. The Earth moves through space at over 100,000 km/h. Over 48 hours of 1G transit time it will have moved 4 million Km from where it was when you arrived at the 100D limit. Aim at where it was when you arrived and you will need to make an even longer journey to correct you error once you arrive. Unless you monitor the Nav Station you won't even find out that you are way off course.

If you are trying to make your approach close to the low port rather than on the other side of the planet then you will need to corelate your journey time with the rotation of the planet.

Get any of the above wrong and you could be adding hours or days to your transit time. It probably won't make any difference to your life support, but it might impact your bottom line if you have passengers who are now sitting in cabins for 4 days instead of 2 and getting fractious. If they are ready for disembarkation even a few hours might make them boil over. You might miss your trade window or arrive after the markets close for the day. You might not catch that pirate you were chasing who "just left, not half an hour ago".

If you are trying to sneak into or out of a system Astrogation might be used to select a course that optimises masking by planets or to simulate emissions that could be mistaken for astronomical phenomena.

Astrogation might have other applications in the case of more congested in-system travel, e.g. navigating an asteroid belt (more logical than Belter Profession) or if trying to intercept a ship that has just changed course (or predicting how it migth change course).

Could sophisticated software do this for you. Very probably, but only if you have the parameters of the system you have entered logged into the computer (and entering the correct parameters might need Astrogation skill). You might never have been to this system before. The data might well stale out after months or even weeks. You might need to spend the first few hours after emergence scanning for astronomical objects to determine exactly where on surface of that vast 100D sphere you emerged.

Try hitting thrust for 2 seconds when playing Asteroids and see how easy it is to correct a minor error in even a wholly deterministic system with no gravitational effects

 

[Vormaerin]

So make that a thing that's actually part of the Traveller rules? Because it's not. Not even in T:NE which actually used reaction drives. It also uses the "roll randomly to determine how long it takes to get from world to world because no one expects you to have an orrery for every system" with no suggestion that skill plays any role in that.

In Classic Traveller, Astrogation didn't do anything and no one needed to have it (and it was just called Navigation). In T:NE, you had to make an average Astrogation task before you were allowed to jump, but it didn't otherwise affect the jump itself. You made a separate astrogation check to determine arrival orientation, which was expressed in fuel usage of the reaction drives to reach orbit (normal amount, 10% over, 50% over). You also were supposed to make astrogation rolls to successfully maneuver from orbit to the 100D mark and vice versa, but then T:NE was a game where you had to make an engineering check to make the M-Drive turn on at all

I'm just saying put this stuff in the game if players are expected to know what the skill does, so they can use it. Yes, you can house rule all kinds of things, but If Astrogation is used rather than Sensor ops to analyze the system, then say that. If Astrogation is "space stealth", then say that. If it can affect how long you are travelling in real space, say that. Give rules. Is a gravity slingshot the default way to travel in system? A special case that makes it faster? How much faster?

Btw, the one adventure that actually has a gravity slingshot in it (Theories of Everything) uses Pilot for the whole exercise. It's possible that the astrogation check was made off screen by NPCs, I suppose.

 

[swordtart]

So make that a thing that's actually part of the Traveller rules? Because it's not. Not even in T:NE which actually used reaction drives. It also uses the "roll randomly to determine how long it takes to get from world to world because no one expects you to have an orrery for every system" with no suggestion that skill plays any role in that.

In Classic Traveller, Astrogation didn't do anything and no one needed to have it (and it was just called Navigation). In T:NE, you had to make an average Astrogation task before you were allowed to jump, but it didn't otherwise affect the jump itself. You made a separate astrogation check to determine arrival orientation, which was expressed in fuel usage of the reaction drives to reach orbit (normal amount, 10% over, 50% over). You also were supposed to make astrogation rolls to successfully maneuver from orbit to the 100D mark and vice versa, but then T:NE was a game where you had to make an engineering check to make the M-Drive turn on at all

I'm just saying put this stuff in the game if players are expected to know what the skill does, so they can use it. Yes, you can house rule all kinds of things, but If Astrogation is used rather than Sensor ops to analyze the system, then say that. If Astrogation is "space stealth", then say that. If it can affect how long you are travelling in real space, say that. Give rules. Is a gravity slingshot the default way to travel in system? A special case that makes it faster? How much faster?

Btw, the one adventure that actually has a gravity slingshot in it (Theories of Everything) uses Pilot for the whole exercise. It's possible that the astrogation check was made off screen by NPCs, I suppose.

I do get it, it is frustrating to have what is a smallish skills list with very few examples of how they are used, but to be fair the issue with Astrogation is across the board as most other skills only offer a few suggestions for use. Gun Combat isn't any more flexible than Astrogation but it gets used more as we have come to expect a gun fight every game session. At least we tend to jump every other week. How often do we need to tame an Animal?

We have a few specific functions of game play that explicitly have skills tied to them such as trading but the expectation is surely that adventures are more than those mechanical exercises. No-one is moaning because Medic is a one-trick pony as combat is an expectation. Steward is pretty useless in real terms as the fate of the universe is rarely at risk because the souffle didn't rise - but it could be if the Referee so decides.

Adventure lies where skills are missing. If you have pilot, you shouldn't need to roll it most of the time. It is when the pilot is incapacitated that the landing becomes exciting. We as story tellers need to use the skills as a framework to the action, not as a constraint (and I realise that I am normally the one bemoaning the lack of consistency in skills).

For me the issue is what is the expectation on failing any skill check. If it low impact you might as well not bother, if it is high impact then you risk breaking the story (like failing the Spot Hidden in Call Of Cthulhu). All skill checks need to be the hinges of a story. If you fail it needs to pivot it but not kill it. No skill check can therefore be more than an option and players need to find a way to use skills creatively. If it is just a box ticking exercise there is no point.

Once you have Admin, you could probably get a computer to do everything else for you .

 

[Vormaerin]

There are two differences. One is that the game doesn't require a character with most of those skills. Astrogation is required by any player character group that has its own ship. This is not true of Admin or Gun Combat.

Second, and much more importantly, astrogation is a science fiction skill. What it does is not a thing most people know about from the real world. Whether you are any good at Admin or Gun Combat, most people have real world knowledge of the kinds of things it can be used for. This is aggravated by the fact that astrogator is not generally a role in sci fi media. I bet you can name a bunch of pilots. A bunch of engineers. A bunch of medics.

Star Trek had a navigator, but they didn't know what to do with the role either. So, pre Chekov, the Navigator was the a bit part junior officer primarily used as a foil so Kirk has someone to lecture/explain the plot to that isn't a series regular. But their "navigation" was never more than "lay in a course" and half the time, Sulu did that anyway. I don't recall a single instance of Chekov using *navigation* as part of the plot, either. Navigator was, essentially, just the junior bridge job.

I think Han Solo once makes a comment about navigation, but there's no actual doing it on display. And Han's the pilot. There isn't a separate job of navigator. I don't think there's anyone doing navigation in the Expanse (there was a navigator job on the Canterbury, but she died and none of the series regulars on the Rocinante were "the navigator".

Even the much maligned Steward skill, you know what it is for and can use it on adventures pretty easily.

Astrogation, as it is, is basically the definition of a NPC Skill. You have to have someone who can do it. They have to actually be pretty good at it if your ship is capable of more than J-1. And I seriously doubt there are many players out there going "I'm stoked my best skill is Astrogation". It's a classic "reality vs game" issue. IRL, a navigator is crucial. But what they are crucial at is not generally something game-able.

 

[Terry Mixon]

There are two differences. One is that the game doesn't require a character with most of those skills. Astrogation is required by any player character group that has its own ship. This is not true of Admin or Gun Combat.

Second, and much more importantly, astrogation is a science fiction skill. What it does is not a thing most people know about from the real world. Whether you are any good at Admin or Gun Combat, most people have real world knowledge of the kinds of things it can be used for. This is aggravated by the fact that astrogator is not generally a role in sci fi media. I bet you can name a bunch of pilots. A bunch of engineers. A bunch of medics.

Star Trek had a navigator, but they didn't know what to do with the role either. So, pre Chekov, the Navigator was the a bit part junior officer primarily used as a foil so Kirk has someone to lecture/explain the plot to that isn't a series regular. But their "navigation" was never more than "lay in a course" and half the time, Sulu did that anyway. I don't recall a single instance of Chekov using *navigation* as part of the plot, either. Navigator was, essentially, just the junior bridge job.

I think Han Solo once makes a comment about navigation, but there's no actual doing it on display. And Han's the pilot. There isn't a separate job of navigator. I don't think there's anyone doing navigation in the Expanse (there was a navigator job on the Canterbury, but she died and none of the series regulars on the Rocinante were "the navigator".

Even the much maligned Steward skill, you know what it is for and can use it on adventures pretty easily.

Astrogation, as it is, is basically the definition of a NPC Skill. You have to have someone who can do it. They have to actually be pretty good at it if your ship is capable of more than J-1. And I seriously doubt there are many players out there going "I'm stoked my best skill is Astrogation". It's a classic "reality vs game" issue. IRL, a navigator is crucial. But what they are crucial at is not generally something game-able.

They should remove the negative computer DM and just let the computer do it.

 

[Vormaerin]

They should remove the negative computer DM and just let the computer do it.

That's how it worked in Classic Traveller. Astrogator wasn't even a job on ships 200 dtons and under.

 

[swordtart]

You still don't need a character with Astrogation permanently on PC ships.

You could offer a "Guild" navigator who provides the coordinates to you by radio for a fee or who disembarks at the jump point having set the ship up ready (jump coordinated don't decay for a few hours). This is what the traditional ships Pilots did. If real space navigation is a thing they could be hanging out at the 100D limit waiting to guide a ship back into port. They could be part of the customs function of a system and be a requirement.

Whilst robots are apparently rubbish at Astrogation (for some inexplicable reason) as it requires an Easy EDU check, you can use Expert software. Cr500 for the software and at TL12 a specialised computer to run it would be less than Cr200 and as long as you took time would be generally entirely adequate. Since this is true of all INT/EDU based skills all (or none) of them are arguably waste of a PCs skill potential (unless there is a Butlerian Jihad).

I don't disagree that there could be a rationalisation of skills, but I am not convinced Astrogation is the only offender.

 

[MonsterX]

The question "where are we" and "how do we get where we are going" is pretty important in space travel. Of course you can fold it into Pilot mechanically, if you want to. You can fold all skills into one big skill if you want to. Like have a Space skill for all kinds of spacecraft skills. This is boring. They are left separate for reasons of realism and game play, because having different kinds of characters who have different roles on space ships and in the party makes the game more interesting.

The job Astrogators do is presented in media, for example Mission Control tends to do all this stuff in media about real and near future astronauts, because they tend to do all this stuff for spacecraft IRL. It is a common trope in 50s hard sci fi when the rocket ship runs into trouble and the plucky young Rocket Ranger saves the day by whipping out his slide rule and doing some calculations, but it also comes up in many, many books. The Final Architecture series by Adrian Tschikovsky for example features what are essentially astrogators as being genetically engineered specialists. But more grounded depictions abound, because figuring out where you are, where you are going and how to get there turns out to be important not just IRL, but also in fictional depictions.

It is not depicted in media such as Star Wars because these media don't make any attempt to make any kind of sense, but rather just present a series of visually dramatic but unconnected special effect intensive events in a space-like fantasy environment. Also they don't explain the tasks the characters are doing, which is both because 1) nothing in these films makes any sense so explaining it is impossible 2) this would challenge the attention span of the viewers. That's not the kind of RPG scifi world I want to play in - it just devolves to rolling dice according to a pre-set mechanic, shit happens over which no one has any influence since it is just random stuff. I like also to have thought involved in my game, which means there needs to be a consistent mutually understood backdrop and the easiest way to get that is to stay close to reality. YMMV.

Back to Traveller, if you don't know what Astrogators do, the information is out there (read the old thread started by Vormaerin, for example), the fictional and non-fictional depictions exist, and you can choose to access these or not. For people who like hard scifi, it is an important skill, and although it could be a Pilot (INT) or (EDU) roll, if you want to have characters with different skills having different roles on the ship, then it is important to break them out into different skills, which might be filled by multi-skilled characters, or by different people.

Could a computer do it? Yes, by the time of the setting all jobs in Traveller will be better performed by robots. Either we assume robots don't develop as quickly as they currently are doing (unlikely but possible), or we have a setting like Charles Strauss' Neptune's Brood in which basically everybody is a robot, and humans only exist as fragile pets reincarnated by religious fanatics. The first option seems more fun to me (although I do recommend Strauss's books, which make the robot post-apocalypse seem fun through clever writing, this future is fun to read about but would be less fund to actually live in - or even play an RPG in). We want humans in charge so we have to assume that computers are useful helpers but don't do the whole job.

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on how integral to interstellar tourism you want to make the skill.

 

[Sigtrygg]

It has become too much of a "you must have this skill" to do this. All the adventures and supplements that proscribe a skill check are actually stifling game play.

Once upon a time I didn't understand the CT skill saving throw system. I thought every skill was applied only as the example text said. Then came the roll 8+ method, then came DGP task system then MT... at every iteration moving towards a proscribed "do you have this skill or not" game.

A few years ago I realised what I had got wrong in CT, and how important the 77 edition guidelines on skill use are. This lead me back to the way i think MWM, FC, LKW, RB et al intended the game to be played...

it can be summed up the way I posted on my thread about new to Traveller:

"Don't (always) tell the player what skill to use for a particular situation, let them decide the skill and characteristic they wish to bring to the task.* You may disagree with their choice, but ask them to describe what their character is doing.** This encourages role playing. The only caveat would be to insist the player chooses the most appropriate characteristic modifier, not just their highest every time***"

* the referee's job is to describe the situation, a lot of the time no dice rolling is required
**don't go overboard on this, some people just like saying I use my engineering skill, let them. If they are having fun all is good.
***experience has shown most players will go along with the intent, you will soon spot the outliers

Mongoose has gone down the "a roll for everything" route, yes there are a few statements of when not to insist on a roll but again experience has shown if there is a task roll presented then a referee or a player will insist on using it regardless.

Astrogation is a skill that has been included in the game for what purpose? Jumping from world to world in the 57th century is meant to be as routine as air travel and just as safe. So the trick is to present situations where a player may decide they can find a way to succeed in a situation using this skill. Will it be used every session? Probably not, but when it is the best way out of a tricky situation you will be glad for that single term starman you hired on as astrogator all those months ago...

 

[Vormaerin]

Yeah, I'm totally fine with Astrogation being one of those "you'll probably think of a use for it from time to time" skills. I am NOT fine with it being a mandatory role for the ship's crew, so you either have to have an NPC on your tramp trader or one of the PCs has to be good at it.

If a GAME is going to say "hey, someone has to be the ship's navigator", the GAME has a responsibility to actually show something of how that might actually be fun to play. No one is denying that Astrogation would be important in real life. Whether that makes it a fun gameplay concept is a different kettle of fish.

Space movement in Traveller is extremely abstracted. You don't have a map, you are encouraged to just roll some dice to add variability to the travel times since actually figuring out relative position and pathing is not considered worth the effort. Heck, lots of people think you should just jump in system if the distance is more than across the street in space terms. So having a skill whose job is to do the stuff that's abstracted away seems less than ideal.

Likewise, making their signature activity (calculating a jump path) be just a modifier to the actual task check to successfully jump (the Engineer's) is kind of meh.

Just out of curiosity, can anyone give me an example of a published Traveller adventure that uses Astrogation for anything except calculating a jump?

 

[Vormaerin]

Depends on how integral to interstellar tourism you want to make the skill.

Lots of things are integral to life that are not worth portraying in a game. There's a reason why CIA operatives are almost always some kind of action oriented secret agent, even though 99% of them IRL are data analysts working a 9-5 job.

 

[Condottiere]

There are two ways to look at this.

1. It's annoying to occasionally make an astrogation check.

2. It's taking up space in your limited skill inventory.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I have just wrapped it up as part of the pilot skill, but I increased the pilots' salary accordingly to maintain the crew salaries in HG and the CRB. Calculate the salary for the pilot and astrogator jobs to be handled by one crewperson.

 

[Vormaerin]

No one is suggesting that Astrogation tasks be eliminated. Just questioning the need to have it as an entirely distinct skill. As well as an entirely distinct job role on the ship. This thread is about 'why isn't there a copilot slot'? IMHO, that's what ships should have and the copilot can do the sensor ops and astrogation.