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Old 03-22-2015, 12:18 PM   #11
johndallman
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Engineer

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Originally Posted by RogerBW View Post
TInventing stuff has very rarely come up in games I've run; most PCs seem to prefer to improve themselves rather than to build devices.
In a reasonably detailed world, one can often find better-than-standard equipment much more easily than inventing it.

The difference comes when you're working on the edge of technology, or you want to do things that humans just can't achieve by themselves: when your interstellar exploration game gets going again, we're going to want to build an FTL communicator once we figure out the ancient artefacts a bit more.
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Old 07-18-2021, 05:16 AM   #12
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Engineer

Two quotes from another thread about Engineer, which I think are well worth preserving:

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
For the most part, GURPS divides specialties of Engineer up as Agemegos would prefer, with electrical and chemical and civil and so on. The one big exception is that there is no specialty of Engineer (Mechanical). By analogy there ought to be: Electronics Repair goes with Engineer (Electronic), so Mechanics ought to go with Engineer (Mechanical). But instead every optional specialty of Mechanics has a required specialty of Engineer to correspond to it.

I think the simple fix would be to institute Engineer (Mechanical), and have vehicle engineers and power plant engineers and the like take an optional specialty within it: Engineer (Mechanical, Hovercraft) or Engineer (Mechanical, Steam Engines).

It might seem that Armoury ought similarly to correspond to Engineer (Weapons) or the like. But the specialties of Armoury are rather too disparate: unpowered armor wouldn't fall under Mechanical (it might fall under Materials), firearms could be Mechanical, beam weapons would be Electronics, and so on.

Things like millwork, or clockwork, or steam engines, or motors, or nuclear power plants probably don't need special branches of Engineer, though; they're already covered by TL differences—a TL3 engineer designs millwork, a TL6 one designs steam engines, and a TL9 one might design compact nuclear reactors or something.
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Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
When I went to the University of New South Wales in the early Eighties to study electrical engineering it was a design skill too. But many of my classmates and the students in other years were RAN engineering-officer cadets, and there were other naval engineering-officer cadets in the school of mechanical engineering. The bods who go to sea as engineering officers are fully-trained professional engineers who have graduated from the same degree courses as civilian engineers. But the Royal Australian Navy certainly doesn't design its own engines, radars, radios, etc., and wouldn't do so at sea if it did. It's almost as though teaching design was being done as a mean to some other end.

During my brief stint as an engineering student, my teachers (particularly Dr. Churches, my lecturer in Engineering Design) were often keen to emphasise that real engineering is not the design of a product in isolation, but in conjunction with a more profound complement: the design of the process by which the product will be made. Arnolfo di Ambio's genius was not that he invented a huge dome for the Duomo in Florence, but that he invented a practical process for building a dome without a centring. John Roebling's genius was not to suspend suspension bridges from wire-rope cables instead of chains, but the process of spinning those cables in place on an easily-installed pilot cable. The miracle of the cantilever bridge is the process of building them without falsework. Later, when I came to work with civil engineers on road projects, I found that the great bulk of their work was not designing highways, but managing the complex processes of building the monstrous things, and particularly adapting or revising the process to deal with the unexpected as it emerged.

I think that perhaps most of the people that English calls "engineers" manage complex systems, such as industrial production processes or marine engines and drive trains, and they are taught to design those processes as a way of thoroughly understanding them.
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Old 07-18-2021, 06:15 PM   #13
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Engineer

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Two quotes from another thread about Engineer, which I think are well worth preserving:

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Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
I think that perhaps most of the people that English calls "engineers" manage complex systems, such as industrial production processes or marine engines and drive trains, and they are taught to design those processes as a way of thoroughly understanding them.
What I do is to disregard GURPS' definition of the Engineering skills and to define them to be what (IMO) engineers actually do, which is to design and manage technical processes and products. But now they tell me that GURPS is not a reality simulator.

What GURPS skills ought to be used to manage a highway construction project, an electrical power station or distribution grid, a marine engine and drivetrain, an oil refinery, or a smallarms factory? Administration?
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Old 07-18-2021, 09:39 PM   #14
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Engineer

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W

What GURPS skills ought to be used to manage a highway construction project, an electrical power station or distribution grid, a marine engine and drivetrain, an oil refinery, or a smallarms factory? Administration?
Yes, Adminstration for all but the Marine engine which would probably be an appropriate Mechanic skill. Or at least in contemproary times. In days gone by you might be back to Adminstation due to the size of the engineering crew you managed.

Although some modern factories are gettign small enough in numbers of personnel that you might not need Adminstration there either.

Moslty though if you're managing a large number of people to get them to do anything not military you are using Adminstration. .
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Old 07-18-2021, 09:55 PM   #15
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Engineer

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What GURPS skills ought to be used to manage a highway construction project, an electrical power station or distribution grid, a marine engine and drivetrain, an oil refinery, or a smallarms factory? Administration?
Yeah Engineers design things but unless the engineer is the one building it Administration seems most5 likely. If leading a small time, especially on site go with Leadership. But a big staff where you in charge of budget, shifts, resources, and getting the permits I'd go with Administration. Let the work supervisors manage the staff with Leadership.
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Old 07-19-2021, 12:39 AM   #16
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Engineer

That gives Administration an extraordinary scope. But GURPS is not a reality simulator.
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Old 07-19-2021, 12:43 AM   #17
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Engineer

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Yeah Engineers design things but unless the engineer is the one building it Administration seems most5 likely.
An engineer (or team of engineers) usually is the one building a civil engineering project. And an engineer usually is the one managing an oil refinery or an arms factory. But if in GURPS they use their Administration skill and not their Engineering skill nothing more need be said.
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Old 07-19-2021, 01:09 AM   #18
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Engineer

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That gives Administration an extraordinary scope. But GURPS is not a reality simulator.
Administration has ENOURMOUS scope in gurps, if you're playing in the right areas, and I usually do... but I haven't had a good method to split it up yet. The one thing I've thought about is making it separate from Saviore-Faire (Bureaucracy), which it replaces and covers in RAW, in addition to other functions.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
An engineer (or team of engineers) usually is the one building a civil engineering project. And an engineer usually is the one managing an oil refinery or an arms factory. But if in GURPS they use their Administration skill and not their Engineering skill nothing more need be said.
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Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
What GURPS skills ought to be used to manage a highway construction project, an electrical power station or distribution grid, a marine engine and drivetrain, an oil refinery, or a smallarms factory? Administration?
Is this "engineer" managing the equipment or the people? what does "Managing" a small arms factory entail ... what does the "engineer" spend his time doing?


Some of these sound specialized enough to be expert skills. The Oil refinery and Power station are particularly interesting cases. But I don't know that the skill to design a custom refinery that cracks motor oil into drilling mud is the same as the knowledge of how to operate it efficiently. But I don't have a name for the skill of operating a oil-refinery... and it certainly is a skill.
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Old 07-19-2021, 02:18 AM   #19
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Engineer

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Is this "engineer" managing the equipment or the people?
Strictly, it's the process. The materials, the equipment, the way the equipment is used, the balance of speed and accuracy with which machinists work.

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what does "Managing" a small arms factory entail ... what does the "engineer" spend his time doing?
They monitor the process and the product to assess whether the changes (which are continual) require adjustment to the process (and if so what), repair to the equipment, changes to the design and manufacturing method, and so forth.

For example, the production engineer might notice that the proportion of rifles produced that fail QA inspection has increased for the third month in a row. That could be because of chance. It could be because of a change in the specification of the materials supplied. It could be because a die is worn or a jig has got out of alignment. It could be because one of the bearings in one of the lathes is getting worn. It could be because a machinist has developed presbyopia or a tremor. It could be because the oil in the quenching bath needs to be changed, or because the thermostat in the heat-treatment furnace needs re-calibrating, or because a worker has developed slack habits in the heat-treatment. It could even be because the QA inspector is becoming cross and fussy. So the engineer checks in what way the products failed QA, examines the rejected products, and tries to see whether a bunch of them have failed for a common reason. If so, they use their knowledge of the design to try to discern what defect could cause that failure, and then their knowledge of the manufacturing process to try to narrow down what problems could produce that defect, and then they examine the actual machines and their use to work out which possible reason is the actual reason. And then they use their engineering problem-solving skills to devise and execute a cost-effective way to fix the process. Meanwhile they also monitor not just QA failure rate, but output, consumption of supplies and power, tool wear, inventory levels, staff injuries, and any smell of ozone in the washroom. Besides that they might change the process and tooling to effect an improvement specified by the design office, or continually refine the process to improve quality and reduce costs.

Industrial production processes are amazingly complex and unexpectedly dynamic. Changes in supply specifications, machine and machinist time, output, quality, inventory, maintenance time, consumption of lubricants, coolants, fuels, and cleaning supplies occur all the time, and they have to be monitored continually by someone who understands the process and product and who can judge what is insignificant, what has to be adjusted for, and what requires remedial action. That's what (I understand) most engineers actually do.

Quote:
But I don't have a name for the skill of operating a oil-refinery... and it certainly is a skill.
The people who do it are specialised chemical engineers.
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Last edited by Agemegos; 07-19-2021 at 04:01 AM.
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Old 07-19-2021, 06:45 AM   #20
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Engineer

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Industrial production processes are amazingly complex and unexpectedly dynamic. Changes in supply specifications, machine and machinist time, output, quality, inventory, maintenance time, consumption of lubricants, coolants, fuels, and cleaning supplies occur all the time, and they have to be monitored continually by someone who understands the process and product and who can judge what is insignificant, what has to be adjusted for, and what requires remedial action. That's what (I understand) most engineers actually do.
I dunno; maybe it's because I've hung out more with electrical and software engineers, but my experience has a lot more stories that hew closer to the GURPS theoretical (except for the ones who worked at a power plant). Then again, I feel it necessary to give engineers I build in GURPS both the Engineer skill and Professional Skill (X Engineer), to differentiate them from tinkerers, who know how to put things together but have difficulties working with others/standards/etc., and managers, who have let design skills atrophy.
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