Again, not the rabbit hole I want to go down… I’ve been down the path of trying to set up skills for SF games, and it was crazy. In the last Traveller game I ran back in the day before my current “old school back to basics” movement, I actually gave up on a detailed skill system and went with a small skill list (maybe smaller than Book 1’s) with a set of check boxes for each skill to indicate specialties you were qualified in. Eventually, trying to be “realistic” about skills broke modern and SF gaming for me.
More recently, I wanted to get back into Traveller, and went off trying to set up a “realistic” 3-D map based on real stars. And spent months down a rabbit hole on that. And that started to die as I thought about “well, what the heck would REALLY make sense to trade between stars? If a star system doesn’t have what it needs to be self-sufficient, why stop there (especially with the fact that I was using ideas from Paul Gazis’s 8-Worlds campaign http://paulgazis.com/EightWorlds/index.htm with 30 parsec jumps). My interest in Traveller was on the verge of collapsing.
Then I read Christopher Kubasik’s blog, Tales to Astound https://talestoastound.wordpress.com/
And over the course of a few months, I tried various experiments with sub-sectors before genning up my Wine Dark Rift setting: https://ffilz.github.io/Gaming/winedark.html and settling on using Classic Traveller 1977 Books 1-3 with a few house rules (including a new skill table for Supplement 4). I no longer care how Traveller “skills” map to any sort of real world measure or classification of proficiency. I’m taking the skill list mostly as is, with some small house rules for interpretation, including my Ship’s Boat/Pilot house rule.
So all I am doing is offering my solution to the question of how to resolve the question about operating various kinds of ships, and do so in a way that works well with the probably incomplete skill coverage of a small group of Book 1 PCs who don’t try to maximize their number of terms. And given that, it makes sense to allow Navigation to be useful on world also. Other than vehicle skills, “engineering skills (electronics, mechanical, engineering, and computer), and personal combat skills, Book 1 is very short on skills useful on planet.
Now I can totally understand the desire to develop a rich set of skills to make realistic CVs for characters, and if that’s your game, go for it. I think there’s room for both kinds of games, just as we can enjoy both Star Wars and Gravity (and complain about scientific blunders in both movies, while also acknowledging that they are at opposite ends of the realism spectrum).
Frank
From: xxxxxx@simplelists.com [mailto:xxxxxx@simplelists.com] On Behalf Of xxxxxx@gmail.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2020 1:41 PM
To: The Traveller Mailing List <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
Subject: Re: [TML] Pilot position
On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 2:57 PM Frank Filz <xxxxxx@mindspring.com> wrote:
For my game, I rely on CT 1977 Books 1-3 (plus Supplement 4 with new skill tables to remove almost all the new skills). I don’t see the Traveller skills as necessarily actual skills.
Then they are pretty poorly named then, yes? ;)
Remember that a Scout ship is supposed to be run by a single person, but Scouts are only assured of getting Pilot-1. They may not (most likely don’t) have Navigator or Engineer (or Air/Raft for that matter). I see the skills more as where the character can do well in an emergency. So maybe almost any character could fly/land any kind of ship (or Air/Raft) but they may not be good in an emergency. Now the crew requirements does force a bit of “qualification” onto skills. But I’m not sure those have to be hard and fast with my view of skills.
So with that change in picture, my idea that Ship’s Boat is the skill when maneuvering, and Pilot is the skill when dealing with jumps (note that Navigator isn’t JUST astrogation, it’s mentioned at least one place as also covering navigation on a world) though it’s not so clear to me what the Pilot does in jump (and really the rules don’t make much call for any of these skills).
There's another hilarity now that you remind me - land nav, water nav, airborne nav, and likely extra-atmo nav around systems are all fairly different. I know the coastal navigation courses I took to manage a keelboat on the ocean and on rivers and so on would be mostly useless if you handed me a map of a woodland hilly area and a typical orienteering compass vs. the equipment on a boat and the realities of navigation on water. I know from work I did with simulating navigation gear for air force tactical navigators that that is nowhere similar to land nav or coastal navigation. I am quite sure space is a whole other thing too. So having one skill cover this is some kind of insanity.
Now, caveat: One you go to GPS, and as long as you can get signal and nobody or no environmental condition is futzing with it, navigation on water, on land, or airborne (at least as far as position determination) is very similar.
There's an element to water navigation that is more than just knowing where you are and where your destination is - navigating around obstacles, handling currents, handling the impacts of hardware on the boat on the binnacle compass, knowing how to use ranges, various RDF techniques, and, when all goes South, how to do dead reckoning estimation when all you have is a rough idea of speed through the water, wind direction and strength, and currents. In land nav, I may be able to see my next waypoint from my current waypoint, get a bearing, and head off, but if you have to deal with rivers, forests, swamps, etc, and the place you are looking to get to is say a cache somewhere that isn't obvious, then the techniques for staying on the line of direction you need to take and the ways to measure distance are part of that skill. In airborne contexts, you have navigation with the ground in site and navigation on IFR and you have to realize sometimes the sensors on planes tell you things that aren't what you would believe if you weren't well trained.
Navigation should at least be limited to on-planet (and maybe be penalized on other planets one is not familiar with) if not broken down to wet nav, land nav, and air nav. Astrogation should handle system navigation and jump navigation.
Now since the skill tables generate both skills, but don’t make it easy to get both, I decided to make Ship’s Boat a subset of Pilot, and then provide a rule for how to handle if you get both skills. Someone else will have a different idea how to break these down.
This is one place where I think GT was more sensible in how they packetized skills for a career.
Anyone who will single hand a ship should have (or have an automated computer that has):
Nav (astrogation) - 1, Pilot (spaceship) - 1, Commo - 0 (enough to use onboard comms to call for help), vacc suit-0 (it is space...)
Engineering... maintenance.... those could be handled only at stops but it would be good skills to have (maintenance and repair... engineering might live in ship design moreso).
In fact, the whole discussion below is just the kind of rathole that I don’t want to go down. The reality is no real person in the modern world will have a CV that looks like a Book-1 character’s skill list. I know lots of people who can do cool computer stuff that I can’t do who can’t do the cool computer stuff I do. But I don’t want a game with 2, 5, 10, 100 different computer skills…
I've used MT skills and built most of my friends skills to reasonable fidelity.
Yes, medicine, science, computer programming, and other skills can be very specialized. But some of the skills and approaches will still apply. A level 2 in one of the areas of specialization might translate as a 1 in other areas of the skill.
Frank
From: xxxxxx@simplelists.com [mailto:xxxxxx@simplelists.com] On Behalf Of xxxxxx@gmail.com
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2020 10:36 PM
To: The Traveller Mailing List <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
Subject: Re: [TML] Pilot position
If you have Pilot skill, does this change in HG mean you don't generate Ship's Boat for characters? I don't think so.
And you are right about Pilot's often (but not always) moving up in increments; I know one who went directly to learn how to fly multi-engine jets at a School in Australia. That said, if you can fly a multi-engine jetliner, I'm quite sure you can fly a Ship's Boat.
----- if you looked at this beyond canon ----
What makes more sense?
Categorizing skill into vehicle types (watercraft, aircraft, etc - perhaps sm watercraft, lg watercraft, etc as MT) or into the skills required to operate them (Nautical Pilot)?
Let's look at some muddy profiles:
a) Ship's Boat - can fly small craft, including anywhere in the system they can reach, including flying liftoffs, landings, dockings, various approaches through traffic, etc. - this suggests sensors, comms, etc. as well as a user (someone who can use some position determining gear and a basic digital radio plus a basic passive or active radar). You can go to orbit and enter and orbit and beyond to anywhere in the system (fuel and life support permitting). Can do fuel skimming in the right small craft.
Tech wise: Depending on the Trav Version, controls, sensors and comms can be the exact same as starships have. The small craft will use contra grav and thrusters of some sort (thruster plate, or ?), some fair amount of computer / nav software is required for orbital trips as is some kind of life support.
b) Grav Vehicle/Air Raft - can fly grav powered vehicles that are not considered small craft, but that are powered by contra-grav, including liftoffs, landings, dockings, traffic approaches, etc. and that can certainly get to orbit (and the sensors/comms/etc comment above applies here) and presumably could enter an orbit
Tech wise: Depending on the Trav Version, controls, sensors and comms can be the exact same as starships have. The grav vehicles will use contra grav, some fair amount of computer / nav software is required for orbital trips as is some kind of life support.
c) Pilot - can fly 100+ dTon ships (which might only be 1 dTon heavier than a 99 dTon small craft) and can fly liftoffs, landings, dockings, various approaches through traffic, etc. - including entering and exiting orbit, fuel skimming from gas giants, entering and leaving orbit, travelling around the system, and flying an approach given to you by the navigator to line you up for jump entry. And note that system ships of 100dTons go here and they have *no jump related aspects*.
Tech wise: Depending on the Trav Version, controls, sensors and comms can be the exact same as small craft or vehicles have. The spaceship will use contra grav and thrusters of some sort (thruster plate, or ? - M-Drive), some fair amount of computer / nav software is required for orbital trips as is some kind of life support. Fuel skimming is possible with the right gear. There could be a jump drive present (or not for system ships) but most of that is owned by the engineer and the navigator with the pilot doing very little (fly a provided approach vector).
d) Astrogator/Navigator - does the jump calcs, checks them twice, looks for numbers that are naughty or nice... and feeds the numbers to his pilot and maybe some to his engineer.This guy does the head-hurting math (well, moreso than in-system travel but even that could be head-hurting too). THIS is the guy who does the jump work, not the pilot, who only flies a directed vector prior to jump.
So, A, B, C have at least a 2/3rds overlap in capabilities. It seems a stretch to me that we need 3 skills for that. You can make a justifications to fit RAW (rules as written), but if you were designing a game from scratch and you knew you wanted a streamlined skill list, it seems pretty likely 3 skills here is overkill.
Looking at this list, it really feels to me if I was designing a game, I'd be looking for a way to put these three skills together.
There have been some games that said "if you know system/ship/weapon X, you may treat system/ship/weapon as having skill level of X - 1".
For ships, this might make real sense if you want detail. A 50K dTon agroproduct hauler that has no atmo capabilities and runs only with refined fuel and no jump is vasly different than a torpedo fighter with no jump, crazy Gs of accel, lots of weaponry, and is super manouverable which is different again from a 300 dTon trader with jump drive, fuel scoops and purifying gear, and that is very streamlined for landing on frontier planets.
In some campaigns, I've provided players with lists of what gear they know. I've then made calls in play about how similar that gear is to what they know such that their skill may apply with a penalty.
I mean, if you know how to fly a contra-grav grav vehicle that happens to be 50 dTons to orbit safely, you can likely do the same with a 100 dTon spaceship. But you may never have skimmed fuel nor learned how, nor would you necessarily be good at world to world travel without some additional training time. It's hard to boil that all into a single omnibus skill but equally hard to make sensible 3 different progression trees.
On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 11:29 PM Thomas RUX <xxxxxx@comcast.net> wrote:
Hi Frank,
> On 06/29/2020 2:05 PM Frank Filz <xxxxxx@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>
> > Hello Frank,
> >
> > > On 06/28/2020 11:01 AM Frank Filz <xxxxxx@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Here's my answer to the Pilot/Ship's Boat dilemma:
> > >
> > > Pilot and Ship’s Boat
> > >
> > > Ship’s Boat is a subset of Pilot that only applies while piloting a ship in M-Drive.
> > Pilot is required to pilot a ship through a jump and also applies when piloting a
> > ship in M-Drive. If a character earns ranks in both skills, the levels should be
> > added together and listed as Pilot skill.
> > >
> > > So Ship's Boat skill lets you pilot any space craft in system and for landing and
> > takeoff, but Pilot skill is necessary to pilot a ship into and through jump.
> > >
> > > Frank
> >
> > CT LBB 1 1977/1981 p. 21 Pilot Skill minus 1 allows a character to operate small
> > interplanetary craft (under 100 tons). Under the Referee example a ship's boat
> > pilot is not able to pilot hulls 100 tons and over.
>
> That's actually added in 1981... So since I run 1977, I have to house rule...
>
Thank you for the clarification that you are using Basic Traveller 1977 edition and I did indicate that the information was added in 1981. My Basic Travel books from 1981 have the copyright date of 1977/1981.
>
> One I don't like though is that if you earned Pilot-2 and then rolled Ships Boat, you have a wasted skill roll unless you roll Ships Boat again. And I struggle with how there is something sort of in common but not really. So I made my house rule.
>
There is a difference between a pilot's license for a Cessna 172 and an Airbus A380 even though they both are basically the same skill. From a number of programs I've watched over the years a majority of pilots have started with pilot licenses for aircraft like the Cessna 172 and worked there way up.
The 1981 rule I think fixes the issue. In CT LBB 5 HG 1979 and 1980 Ship's Boat has been moved to a subset of Vehicle Skill only for planetary navies.
Tom Rux
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