[Basic] Skills of the week: Electronics Operation and Electronics Repair

[johndallman]

Electronics Operation/TL and Electronics Repair/TL are the IQ/A skills for operating and repairing electronic equipment. They use the same, lengthy, list of required specialisations, which makes them easy to consider together. The actual technologies covered vary with TL as new devices are invented, and as - it seems - some older ones become so easy that an operation skill isn't needed any more. All specialisations default to each other at -4 within the individual skills. Electronics Operation defaults to IQ-5, Electronics Repair for the same specialisation at -5, or Engineer (Electronics)-5. Electronics Repair defaults to IQ-5, Electronics Operation for the same specialisation at -3, or Engineer (Electronics)-3. Electronics Repair also has a (Computers) specialisation defaulting to Computer Operation -5. Both skills take equipment modifiers, but the modifiers for unfamiliarity and variation defy brief summary.

These skills are Use and Repair skills within the Design/Repair/Use triads, but the Design skill for all of their specialisations is a single specialisation of Engineer, (Electronics). It may be that at higher TLs there will be fewer specialisations of Electronics Operation and Repair as everything they deal with becomes computer peripherals, but we'll have to wait and see.

Some activities that don't actually involve electronics seem to be treated as Electronics Operation (Communications), such as visual signalling with flag hoists, lights, heliograph, semaphore and the like. In the same way, wired electric telegraphy without amplifiers, as used at TL5, doesn't technically involve electronics, although the distinction isn't worth worrying about for game purposes. True electronics skills appeared at TL6 with the invention of radio, although there were a remarkable variety of ways of building radios before vacuum tubes took over in the mid-1920s.

Electronic Operation seems to get simpler as a given specialisation advances through the TLs. A would-be early 1920s radio listener with a crystal set probably needed to use Electronics Operations/TL6 (Communications) at a bonus to make it work, but there's no question of needing that with a modern radio. A modern Air Traffic Controller probably doesn't have Electronics Operation/TL8 (Sensors) or (Communications), although there may well be people elsewhere in the system using those skills. In much the same way, as equipment has grown more reliable, the proportion of electronics users trained in Electronics Repair has decreased. The military are an exception to that, because they expect equipment to get maltreated, and thus train many operators in at least the basics of repair.

These skills show up on lots of templates for high-tech settings, far too many to list. Action has a lot about which specialties you need for particular situations, with (Security) ever-popular for intrusion. Basic has the rules for operating parachronic conveyors, and for using Electronics Operation with the Telecommunication power. Bio-Tech has material on (Medical), (Scientific) and (Surveillance), and High-Tech and Ultra-Tech have toolkits, devices, and lots of details about how you use equipment with specialisations. PU3 and PU7 have lots of examples. Psi-Tech has a lot on (Psychotronics).

In the game, these are usually enabling skills, allowing characters to use or repair vital equipment. The large number of specialisations makes them one of the more grittily realistic aspects of GURPS, but it's easy to relax this by merging specialisations, or even discarding the concept. They can also be "sleeper" points on a character sheet: one character of mine invested a lot of training time in learning Electronics Operation and Repair/TL6+1^ (Psychotronics) before discovering that doing anything significant with that school of machinery required a talent he didn't have, but they've had assorted uses since then, and haven't turned out to be a waste.

What have you done with these skills that was electrifying?

[RogerBW]

To over-generalise:

Electronics Operation (TL6) is waiting for it to warm up, twiddling knobs, inserting and removing jumper plugs, and reading dials and oscilloscope-style CRTs.

Electronics Operation (TL7) is twiddling knobs and pushing buttons, and still reading dials and CRTs, but the display area to volume ratio is higher.

Electronics Operation (TL8) is navigating the menus to tell the control processor what to display on the LCD.

On that basis I would give the modern air traffic controller the E.Op (Sensors) skill, but at a low level and quite possibly with Hyper-Specialization (Power-Ups 2) in the relevant system.

One could argue that a modern mobile phone or even wallyphone (walkie-talkie) is an expert system with its own skill in E.Op (Comms), and it is what's rolling against the skill, not the user.

As one would expect from the sort of games I run, lots of characters in my files have these two. Typically they have either one or two skills, or the entire suite.

EO (Medical) is a bit of an odd case; normally I'd just roll it into Diagnosis, or maybe use it as a complementary skill.

[Vilobion]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

EO (Medical) is a bit of an odd case; normally I'd just roll it into Diagnosis, or maybe use it as a complementary skill.

EO (Medical) is either the primary skill, or one of the primary skills, of radiologists.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Vilobion

EO (Medical) is either the primary skill, or one of the primary skills, of radiologists.

Sure, but how often do you play a radiologist who's using his primary skills?

The closest I've come has been a forensic pathologist in a Laundry campaign, and he was generally looking at X-rays which had been taken by other people.

[johndallman]

Sometimes, like when EO (Medical) shows you the large implant inside the skull, you don't need Diagnosis. But yes, in a hospital, the radiographers usually have enough bonuses from equipment and routine tasks that they're a "Don't fumble" roll.

[Vilobion]

I work at a prototyping center that produces circuit boards. None of the current Electronics Repair specialties really captures the grit of fixing circuitry- Electronics Repair (Computer) comes closest, but it's a gap that irks me conceptually.