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07-19-2019, 05:01 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Dec 2013
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[Spaceships] What are the mechanical consequences of not meeting crew quotas?
Spaceship has numerous rules for exactly how many crewmembers are necessary for any given component of a given size, how technology affects this requirement, etc.
However, I've so far been unable to determine what happens if someone tries to crew a spaceship with less than the required amount of crew. (I imagine it's primarily Maintenance-related and should probably result in something akin to losing HT - but I haven't found anything concrete on this.) |
07-19-2019, 06:09 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Nov 2015
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Re: [Spaceships] What are the mechanical consequences of not meeting crew quotas?
Haven't found anything myself, but I'm still searching
The easy answer is that, w/o the required crew, the system doesn't work, much like high power systems when they're not allocated power. It's also possible for a GM to apply penalties to checks for reduced crew, instead of shutting down the system immediately. |
07-19-2019, 06:49 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: [Spaceships] What are the mechanical consequences of not meeting crew quotas?
I can't find anything either, but considering that a small ship without an engine room has no maintenance staff and has -1 to base HT, I'd say running a ship with less maintenance crew than required would result in -1 HT to start with. I'd rule that if the shortfall was minor, the captain (or chief engineer, or even the crew as a whole) could choose between having the ship slowly get worse, or have the crew work extra time, and slowly run down. If the shortfall in crew is major, say under 50% of the expected levels (working 16 hour days), or maybe under 70% (working 12 hours days), both things would start happening.
How to represent this? HT rolls for the ship, probably with an increasing penalties as time goes on, (a failed roll means an under-maintained system is disabled) and increasing levels of FP loss for the crew (that won't go away without days off, doing nothing). How often the rolls should be made and/or FP lost depends on how robust you think a ship in this condition should be. Losing 7FP means the crew will be, overall, moving and working half as fast. Losing 10FP and they aren't working at all.
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07-19-2019, 07:39 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: [Spaceships] What are the mechanical consequences of not meeting crew quotas?
Presumably there will be some minimum limit below which the ship cannot operate … although the GM might want to allow cinematic dashing between workstations to make do in an emergency, subject to skill rolls. Presumably this will apply in spades to specialist roles - a lack of deck hands might just make for a dirty ship, but putting off without a navigator or reactor tech is probably asking for trouble...
Undercrewed ships might also be subject to various other penalties - for example a lack of control over the propulsion system might make flying the ship a lot harder. Lack of stewards might impose small penalties to virtually everyone's skills as dirt, fatigue and poor food catch up with them... |
07-19-2019, 08:47 AM | #5 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: [Spaceships] What are the mechanical consequences of not meeting crew quotas?
I'd penalize under-staffed ships through monthly job rolls. If you're trying to do more than one job, that's a multitasking penalty.
The habitat crew positions are an interesting case, because they cover both life support and basic hygiene. I'd emphasize the life support aspect of them.
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07-19-2019, 10:11 AM | #6 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: [Spaceships] What are the mechanical consequences of not meeting crew quotas?
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Fred Brackin |
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07-19-2019, 11:25 AM | #7 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: [Spaceships] What are the mechanical consequences of not meeting crew quotas?
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One idea might be to require a monthly roll against the average skill of the technicians working in a given system. Having half the workspaces filled means rolling at +0. Otherwise, every full +1 SSR (that is, +1 step on the Size and Speed/Range Table) is +2 to the roll, to a maximum of +4 at 100%. Every -1 SSR, or fraction thereof, is -2 to the roll. Optionally, allow for half SSR steps. Have a table: Code:
% Mod 100 +4 85 +3 70 +2 60 +1 50 +0 40 -1 30 -2 25 -3 20 -4 17.5 -5 15 -6 12.5 -7 10 -8
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GURPS Overhaul |
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07-19-2019, 12:05 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Sep 2018
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Re: [Spaceships] What are the mechanical consequences of not meeting crew quotas?
I made a system where I multiplied half of the crew by 8 to get the crew hours per day. This is all of the Engineering, diagnostic, maintenance and record keeping. If you don't have enough crew you either have to work longer hours to keep up or you have to hire techs on the ground to catch-up on maintenance when you're not in flight. If you miss SM X 100 Crew hours you have a point of malfunction. lights in corridors fail. Temperature goes a bit wacky. Air smells bad in some rooms. The higher your malfunction goes the more problems you have. At about 10+ things get seriously bad. There are malfunctions that become dangerous, fires, leaks, dangerous power shifts. Also it's harder to fly a ship with things going wrong, Each level of malfunction after 3 is a penalty to any roll that uses ships systems.
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07-19-2019, 12:45 PM | #9 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: [Spaceships] What are the mechanical consequences of not meeting crew quotas?
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This is why I suggest long-term penalties, rather than short-term ones. Now, being short of control room crew is likely to be far more serious in the short term, as people have to multi-task, find that they can't effective manage the engines and calculate flight paths at the same time because the controls just aren't set up for that, and so on.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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07-19-2019, 03:09 PM | #10 | |
Join Date: Oct 2007
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Re: [Spaceships] What are the mechanical consequences of not meeting crew quotas?
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Navigation could be mapped out in advance and then rechecked at intervals. If you're off course, you could spend time plotting a corrected course, which would take time but not be fatal unless supplies run low due to navigation errors. Navigation would also be of less importance during combat in most cases. Piloting may not be actively required while enroute in open space unless combat happens. When near objects like an asteroid swarm, space station, planet, other spacecraft or space creature, it does become a lot more important to focus on. Sensors could also be put at a lower priority if you're in open space. This can obviously lead to being surprised by another spacecraft, an asteroid or a giant space goat. But most of the time if you're not near known objects a quick glance once in a while should be good enough if you lack staff. Communications would likely be a low priority if you aren't near civilized space and haven't noticed any other spacecaft nearby. Any gunner position would only need to be manned in a scenario where combat is expected or asteroids need to be shot down. You could likely get away with 1 or 2 people just checking that nothing is happening for large stretches of flight, as long as it isn't a "gate/warp to system/planet in 10 ingame seconds, then action" type of setting. |
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