On 4/9/20 1:51 am, Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson at port.ac.uk
(via tml list) wrote:
>
>>     I know in some commercial ports (and other sorts too, but we're
>>     talking about merchant traffic) on our seas, you can have a wait
>>     if the port capacity is reached (same for lock/canal passages)
>>     and one aspect of that follows with one TMLer's definition of
>>     pilot as 'harbour pilot' basically... if you don't have enough
>>     harbour pilots to help bring in the bigger vessels (and ships
>>     crew MUST be supervised by a harbour pilot, then that's another
>>     reason the port can seem at capacity (same effect, you can just
>>     treat this as one of the cases of 'port beyond capacity').
>     I can verify that there where times when my four boats and the
>     tender had time to loiter at sea before being brought into port
>     while waiting for the local pilot to guide us in. The trip into
>     and out of Rosyth, Scotland was a very interesting one.
>
>     However, in Timothy's and Alex's AARs the ship's pilot maneuvers
>     the craft into and out of port including landings and take-offs
>     from the downport, achieving orbit/deorbiting, and/or
>     docking/undocking at the highport
>
>
> That's a good point and one I slightly fudge.  Having spent two years
> on a ship (please, no one search for that phrase in the archives and
> tell me how many times I've said it.... sorry), I'm familiar with
> taking on pilots and have a suspicion I've told anecdotes about such
> here previously.
>
> However, unless there was some plot point that required It (hmmmm....)
> I don't have port pilots as a matter of course, mainly because I would
> want a pilot PC to have something to do.  This is a bit of a fudge and
> might be something I would revisit and think about if we were visiting
> higher tech worlds (perhaps fortunately, our corner of Aramis
> subsector isn't well stocked with them) but in general I'd say it's
> much more exciting - even if it's a relatively Routine task - for the
> pilot (or in a recent session, the Captain) to take the controls and
> have the possibility of rolling very low.

Da Famous Tom R, Collision, et al

I only had "port congestion requiring pilot" when The Boatload O'
Lunatics returned to Terra - upon lobbing, they found all three
highports congested and had to wait for Sublieutenant "Collision"
Collinson to lob and guide them in.

My players were all expecting the go-fast jet-fuel type of pilot, not
the harbour kind.

Extratextually, I was keeping my promise to the real-life Collision to
Tuckerise him, however briefly.  I also didn't want to shunt a PC (Rosa)
aside.  It worked out that the pilot Collinson (rather than the
librarian Collinson) gave her a boon on her piloting roll (given the
sheer amount of traffic, she needed it).

Intratextually, things had backlogged enough that the ports were worried
about some dropkick merchant pilot doing a) something stupid and/or b) a
chunk of the AZS' work for them by causing nontrivial damage.