[email removed] says:
>The only problem I have with this ruling is that if I decide to have a
>minimum bridge crew of 2 then I will be unable to use any ships made by
>someone who decided that the minimum should be 1. Many of the ships in the
>encyclopedia have a bridge crew of 1 and many ships that I have downloaded
>have bridge crews of 1. These facts pretty much force me to reduce the
>minimum bridge crew.
My assumption is that the Bridge Crew requirements exist for one real
reason: determining how many seats to put on the bridge deckplan.
What with reconfigurable control panels, semi-intelligent computers
(during the Imperial era, anyway), and the Han Solo "wall-banging"
method of repair, only one person is required to actually _run_ a
bridge most of the time: the pilot/astrogator. So long as a person
who can pilot the ship (and knows which way to point it) is present,
you can get by. He can wear headphones to monitor the Comm
station, and (in a really small ship) keep the several most important
engine telltales in view, thus monitoring Engineering.
But safety and sanity dictate that there be an extra control station
installed on the bridge. Why? So someone else _can_ help if needed.
So your just-fried control station doesn't leave the ship without
controls. So the padding on one chair doesn't wear out quite so fast.
Etcetera.
How you (as a referee) keep your players running around in a
bridge too big for them is either to be ignored, subjected to player
ingenuity, or played for comic effect. Standing watch on a civilian
ship requires only that the person on duty know who to wake up in
case of emergencies...
The bridge crew question isn't a MegaTrav problem, BTW, it's an older
problem that was carried over without due consideration. Anyone who
has looked at MT construction without benefit of High Guard and Striker
can tell you: there are NO EXPLANATIONS. The Craft Construction rules
in MT are the poorest documented in Traveller history, and among the
ommissions is the older note regarding really small ships.
Not to beat a dead horse, but TNE fixes this problem by rigorously
defining Bridge size in terms of crew stations. The number of
stations you decide to keep manned is your problem ;)
To summarize: Bridges have at least two stations (seats), but don't
always require two people to run them in the smaller ships.
James Kundert [email removed]
[email removed]
There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was much faster, much faster than Light.
She departed one day in a relative way,
And returned on the previous Night.
--Albert & the Heart of Gold