Engineering crew sizes

A thread of 2 messages, 2 June 1994 to 3 June 1994, in the order they were sent.

#7858 Engineering crew sizes

Arthur Green · 2 June 1994

Gentlesophonts and those from beyond the Black Curtain -

    Well, here are the first results of my whiz through the various
generations of Traveller rulesets looking for engineering crew sizes
and believe me, it wasn't easy ...

I discovered that I actually have copies of CT (3-booklet set and The
Book), Highguard, MT and TNE -- I thought I'd dumped at least one set
of rules. Ah, the nostalgia of looking through the 3-booklet set once
again ...

Anyway, comparing the number of engineers you need depending on which
set of rules you use isn't easy. CT and Highguard use x engineers per
displacement ton, MT uses some benighted formula using control points
and FFS uses a figure based on peak power output. Trying to reduce this
morass to a nice figure per tonnes mass or power output gets a little
bizarre because of the MT formula. As a first cut, here are the
engineering crew requirements for the "standard" starships as specified
in CT, TB (the Traveller Book), MT and FFS.

Ship            CT  TB  MT  FFS
Type S scout    0   0.5 0.5 2(0)
Type A trader   1   1   1   4(2)
Type R merchant 1   1   2   5(3)
Type Y yacht    1   1   1   5(3)
Type C cruiser  4   4   3   5(3)
Type M merchant 3       2   7(5)
Type T cruiser      3   2   7(5)
Type L lab ship     2   1   3(1)
Type K safari       1   1

FFS figures in brackets are the number of non-manoeuvre crew required.
It looks like engineering crew requirements have doubled in FFS.

I'll be producing figures on engineers required per tonne of drive and
per MW produced as soon as I can get them to make sense ;-)

 - Arthur Green
   University College Dublin Computing Services
   Phone: [phone removed]  Fax: [phone removed]  Email: [email removed]

#7869 Re: Engineering Crews

Steven M Bonneville · 3 June 1994 · reply to #7858

Arthur Green [email removed] writes:

[engineer comparison table deleted]
>It looks like engineering crew requirements have doubled in FFS.

It's actually worse, and might be worst of all at lower tech
levels, depending on how the computer multiplier comparisons
work between MT and TNE.  In TNE you have "Engineers" who are
calculated based on the power produced by your power plant and
your computer multiplier.  You also get "Maintanance" crew
that are calculated based on, among other things, drive tonnage.
So the whole question is complicated by differing definitions
of what an engineer is.  I suspect that the maintenance crew
requirements have also risen, but I don't have FFS with me right
now.

One of the effects this new rule has is that high-tech power
stations will have computers built in to reduce the number of
engineers required to run them.  Otherwise, your 5000 MW tech-17
antimatter plant requires the same number of engineers to run
as your 5000 MW tech-5 steam boiler.

Incidentally, one of the things that is good about FFS is that
they've dropped those awful control point calculations from the
rules.  One thing I find annoying, however, is the inconsistency
of units for calculations.  Sometimes the rules call for cubic
meters, sometimes kiloliters (which are the same thing) and
sometimes for displacement-tons, for instance.  You have to stay
pretty alert to avoid making stupid errors.

  Steve Bonneville
  [email removed]