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Old 05-20-2019, 05:05 PM   #6
Anaraxes
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Default Re: Can a Scout ship have only one station in the bridge?

Quote:
Originally Posted by hal View Post
If we can build ships that need only one crew station to run the ship (aka bridge), then every dTon of space we can save for use with transporting freight/cargo helps.
This shifts the point from scouts to commercial freighters, which have considerably different design requirements.

The key point is that if you design a ship with one crew station, you're forever condemning it to _only_ be operated by one crewman, no matter what the mission. That's not the same thing as designing a ship to be able to be operated by one person, either expected occasionally (as with scouts) or in an emergency, but also to be able to be operated by more (as those scouts will also be intended to operate).

I'm also taking about the base design of ship classes. If the PCs with one old tramp freighter really want to rip out their bridge and replace it to get an extra ton of cargo space (for entirely licit and above-board purposes, of course; I know how troublesome these old ships can be...), that's possible. But that doesn't mean the Beowulfs and Empress Maravas would have been designed that way. For commercial operations, given the skill penalties mentioned upthread, there may well be Imperial regulations requiring proper crew stations for the required crew for safe and effective operation. Shipping lines might also require that -- why have unhappy crew, or worse, damaged or lost ships because you wanted an extra ton of space? Then there's the operational requirements -- a starport is going to have means to load and unload reasonably standard-sized cargo containers, and an extra 14 cubic meters worth of cubbyhole in a corner somewhere separate from the main cargo hold is going to mean unpacking crates and shifting cargo by hand.

The extra space would be a lot more useful for crew possessions than cargo space, because it's unlikely to conveniently make the actual hold bigger in a useful way.

I remember X-boats as having one crew, most likely from the CT era. But I won't dispute ak_aramis when it comes to Traveller details, at least not without heading down to the basement to dig through my LBBs. If it's two -- well, one less reason to have a ship class designed with only one crew workstation, even as niche as that is.
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