[Spaceships] What EXACTLY Are The Guys In Workspaces Doing?

[scc]

It might like something of a weird question but I've got some designs where the Lacks Automation design feature would work out really well, apart from the fact that the results are weird.

For example my SM +7 SSTO shuttlecraft now needs one guy performing preventative maintenance or manually adjusting fuel mixtures or something and another guy going something similar to the Control Room to make the craft fly.

Something similar arises on the merchantmen, Control Room, Habitat, and Magsail all require personal to man them. This gets really weird on the SM +10 versions as what are these 10 guys doing? It can't take all of them to balance the Magsail (Live wire, do not touch kind of rules out maintenance).

Please note that this just apply to ships with Lacks Automation, it just becomes a lot more obvious.

[clu2415]

Anything that senses would have to be calibrated by human. Anything that moves would have to be lubricated and tested for wear. Manually balancing the flow of refrigerant to cool various rooms. Manually matching refrigerant pump operation and chiller plant loading to the current heat load. Manually turning on backup systems when the main system needs maintenance or repair. Instead of a computer menu categorizing and hiding thousands of measurements, you would have thousands of individual gauges and displays and you wouldn’t be able to pipe that information to arbitrary places like opening a console on another computer screen. You’d have a person watching gauges and communicating with the guy out making adjustments on the physical controls on the actual equipment.

Source: I worked in maintenance at a hotel built in 1968-1972 and still had the original HVAC controls. *shudder*

[PTTG]

Coolant pump maintenance is a big one. So is mechanical wear and strain inspection, since without automated diagnostics, someone has to inspect every bolt and weld on the tub for cracking.

The magsail has a LOT of components, most notably power converters to get the right voltage and amperage for the field. There's going to be a lot of those and without automation they need careful management. There'll also be diagnostic equipment that needs monitoring, and the guy who fixes the diagnostic equipment. Depending on the computers available to the society, there might even be human calculators figuring out the needed field strength on the fly!

On a large crew, you'll need to care for the crew itself. That's not really accounted for (aside from sickbays and habitat crew, I think), but even if the crew is only in the tens, somebody spends time cooking, cleaning, and nursing. Big ships also have minor machine shops. Not enough to count as a Factory, but there are machinists to make everyday replacement parts or to hammer a part back into shape.

Note also that those crew requirements don't mean that all ten people are working the entire time. There's at least three 8-hour shifts, and it could be four 6-hour ones. Nor does a given system require a dedicated crewman in that system. If those three systems together have a crew of 30, that could mean there's only 7-8 people working at any given time, and one of those is the guy who polish the dials.

One last note, the type of crew can also vary depending on the fluff. If ships travel FTL on the psionic starwinds, then a large portion of the crew are minor acolytes that help catch the winds. If it's a steampunk spaceship, then a good number of the crew will be charming street urchins picked up to clean out the narrower steam pipes.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by scc

It might like something of a weird question but I've got some designs where the Lacks Automation design feature would work out really well, apart from the fact that the results are weird.

For example my SM +7 SSTO shuttlecraft now needs one guy performing preventative maintenance or manually adjusting fuel mixtures or something and another guy going something similar to the Control Room to make the craft fly.

Something similar arises on the merchantmen, Control Room, Habitat, and Magsail all require personal to man them. This gets really weird on the SM +10 versions as what are these 10 guys doing? It can't take all of them to balance the Magsail (Live wire, do not touch kind of rules out maintenance).

Please note that this just apply to ships with Lacks Automation, it just becomes a lot more obvious.

Actually I'd say adjusting and monitoring the magsail would take 6 crew. A ship that large is going to be maintaining a continuous watch, with two on each shift. I wouldn't assume that each workspace is necessarily entirely full although extra guys could be doing cleaning and maintenance of the internal equipment.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by scc

Something similar arises on the merchantmen, Control Room, Habitat, and Magsail all require personal to man them. This gets really weird on the SM +10 versions as what are these 10 guys doing? It can't take all of them to balance the Magsail (Live wire, do not touch kind of rules out maintenance).

Is this for the 3 terrestrial moons of a gas giant setting?

If so, the magnetic fields around the gas giant would be very dynamic and variable, especially if you have something like Io's plasma torus as well, or when you're passing near moons with magnetic fields, or when you move from the dayside of the gas giant to the nightside, or change orbital altitude, or if you want to do any course change maneuvres. All these situations would need all-hands-on-deck, reading magnetic field changes and adjusting ampage in the web, changing angle of attack and such.

How big of a magsail are we looking at? Field fluctuations could be fairly small, so you want magnetometers placed at all the sail's extremities, which would need someone to read them. The crew of a rigged sailing ship would be a good analogy.

[scc]

Originally Posted by clu2415

Anything that senses would have to be calibrated by human. Anything that moves would have to be lubricated and tested for wear. Manually balancing the flow of refrigerant to cool various rooms. Manually matching refrigerant pump operation and chiller plant loading to the current heat load. Manually turning on backup systems when the main system needs maintenance or repair. Instead of a computer menu categorizing and hiding thousands of measurements, you would have thousands of individual gauges and displays and you wouldn’t be able to pipe that information to arbitrary places like opening a console on another computer screen. You’d have a person watching gauges and communicating with the guy out making adjustments on the physical controls on the actual equipment.

Source: I worked in maintenance at a hotel built in 1968-1972 and still had the original HVAC controls. *shudder*

Originally Posted by PTTG

Coolant pump maintenance is a big one. So is mechanical wear and strain inspection, since without automated diagnostics, someone has to inspect every bolt and weld on the tub for cracking.

The magsail has a LOT of components, most notably power converters to get the right voltage and amperage for the field. There's going to be a lot of those and without automation they need careful management. There'll also be diagnostic equipment that needs monitoring, and the guy who fixes the diagnostic equipment. Depending on the computers available to the society, there might even be human calculators figuring out the needed field strength on the fly!

You wouldn't be calibrating or lubricating something while it's in use, which is when you seem to need people in a systems workspace[s]. And if something is electrically powered having it deactivate and it's backup activate if it starts drawing too much or too little power (Or none at all) wouldn't be too hard nor would it, at least in my mind, count as automation. Electrical systems also need regulators, if only because they can change too fast for humans to react.

Originally Posted by PTTG

On a large crew, you'll need to care for the crew itself. That's not really accounted for (aside from sickbays and habitat crew, I think), but even if the crew is only in the tens, somebody spends time cooking, cleaning, and nursing. Big ships also have minor machine shops. Not enough to count as a Factory, but there are machinists to make everyday replacement parts or to hammer a part back into shape.

I figure that cooking is probably the responsibility of habitat personal. Any machine shops needed are presumably part of the workspaces.

Originally Posted by PTTG

Note also that those crew requirements don't mean that all ten people are working the entire time. There's at least three 8-hour shifts, and it could be four 6-hour ones. Nor does a given system require a dedicated crewman in that system. If those three systems together have a crew of 30, that could mean there's only 7-8 people working at any given time, and one of those is the guy who polish the dials.

Spaceships is actually a bit confusing on this, page 10 says that need crew equal to workspaces at all time, while pages 33-34 says total crew equal to workspaces.

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Is this for the 3 terrestrial moons of a gas giant setting?

Yes.

Originally Posted by Daigoro

If so, the magnetic fields around the gas giant would be very dynamic and variable, especially if you have something like Io's plasma torus as well, or when you're passing near moons with magnetic fields, or when you move from the dayside of the gas giant to the nightside, or change orbital altitude, or if you want to do any course change maneuvres. All these situations would need all-hands-on-deck, reading magnetic field changes and adjusting ampage in the web, changing angle of attack and such.

It's more a matter of how hard it would be to co-ordinate that many people quickly in my mind, when you may only have seconds to change the sails and not much warning, ten people is a lot.

Originally Posted by Daigoro

How big of a magsail are we looking at? Field fluctuations could be fairly small, so you want magnetometers placed at all the sail's extremities, which would need someone to read them. The crew of a rigged sailing ship would be a good analogy.

SM +8 to SM +10, but that may drop.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by scc

SM +8 to SM +10, but that may drop.

So how wide does that make the magsail?

Normally readouts and controls would be centralised, but I'm picturing people in small control pods at the end of the sail masts for this kind of steampunk.

[scc]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

So how wide does that make the magsail?

Per page 66, SM +3, so SM +11 to SM +13, but given their gas giant specials they could be smaller.

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Normally readouts and controls would be centralised, but I'm picturing people in small control pods at the end of the sail masts for this kind of steampunk.

Magsails aren't physical structures, or at least that's my reading of the situation

[jason taylor]

Having what amounts to an on-board Spacers Academy? If they apprentice for one or two voyages one day they can be in the hot seat as Nav or Comms or whatever.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by scc

Magsails aren't physical structures, or at least that's my reading of the situation

The variant called a "plasma sail" (which Spaceships with its' low degree of resolution lumps in with magasails) isn't a "solid" structure but needs continual energy input and no doubt serious real-time monitoring because of that.

Plasma sails are meant to maintain an equilibrium against the solar wind and I don't know that they'd work very well in a gas giant magnetosphere.

Most magsail designs are very large loops of conductive cable.