On 21Oct2021 1508, Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml
list) wrote:
> Sounds to me you've been playing w/ a bunch of 'munchkins' who want to try to micro-analyze the rules to gain an advantage.I know that well.I was one of those folks myself.Always trying to optimize each & every minute to extract the max advantage.IMO, a good GM will lead his PC's into understanding that a role-playing experience is not about seeking to maximize or optimize the rules but in providing  an experience that mimics RL.You want to spend 16 hours/day studying?OK, go for it, but don't be surprised if things don't work out the way you expect.Just as it wouldn't in RL.
Not at all. How much maintenance does a ship really require? is the sort
of thing that sensible people will be asking when they want to buy a
bigger ship and wonder if they will need to hire some extra crew to help
keep her up and running. Wanting one's character to improve, and
thinking that they should have some spare time whilst in jump is hardly
a 'munchkin' thing to want to do, and wondering how much such free time
there is and how that will be impacted by being short a crew member
isn't either. And knowing these things leads to being able to calculate
how much time everyone is spending on maintenance, and on a free trader
trying desperately to make ends meet this might lead to doing the maths
on running short a crewman to cut costs (and hoping the licensing
authorities and/or your insurers don't find out) - hardly a 'munchkin'
thing to do - it's something small businesses do all the time (whether
it's a smart move or not is a whole different thing, of course).

And this doesn't even touch on the utility of knowing these numbers has
for those people who like to design ships and other stuff and play round
with the numbers. Having the design system produce these numbers lets
them play with the assumptions around crew levels, and that can lead to
more interesting ship designs, because they'll have their quirks - one
might have spacious crew quarters and lots of crew, but pay in payload.
Another might have lots of crew in tiny cabins, and pay in morale. Yet
another might have decent quarters but for less crew than one might
like, so plenty of payload but the crew is overworked and tired most of
the time, and so on. As long as the numbers are sensible and there are
good defaults so those not interested in playing round with such things
can just take the defaults and move on, this sort of thing is useful.
It's when the numbers don't work out with the numbers from elsewhere,
and/or they're fiddly and can't just be skipped over by taking some
default that they're a problem for those that'd rather not deal with
such detail.

And again, just what those defaults are, when it comes to maintenance
loads, can give interesting hints as to what the tech 'feels' like in a
setting.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>