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	Archive through November 13, 2019	25		11/14 01:58pm

Michael Grafton:

Jeff Wile's comment aside, the reality is that "bean counters exist."

An example is that when someone took command of a local company of military police, he was all full of ideas of what he was going to do to enhance training. I calmly mentioned to him that he would not be allowed to do any of those things because the bean counters would not let him add that wear and tear to his equipment, nor provide insurance coverage.

A few months later he commented to me that the above was indeed the case.

When I was on active service I encountered the same thing in the first rifle company I was assigned to.

There is also, I think, the problem of a miscommunication.

The officers of Ship A and the offices of Ship B might conduct a "computer duel" on the internet (like one of those flight simulator things) and everything, including "firing the phasers" is done in the computer simulation. Running the computers and communicating back and forth is indeed such a small number of "kopecks" that it would not matter. But actually using ship power (accelerating the ship, generating electronic warfare, straining the hull for erratic maneuvers as part of "the duel," and I can take it a little further than that) uses "real resources." And given the game background makes the opportunity for the average freighter to use its phaser(s) very rare (as in the majority of merchant crews go through their entire lives never encountering a dangerous deep space phenomena, or a pirate, or a raiding ship from an enemy empire) is just not worth the cost of a high degree of training. (NOTE: The Andromedan War was a very different thing.)

All that being said, it is noted that in some cases a very ancient or otherwise near the end of its service life freighter might be packed with a few skids and used as a "local defense ship," and it might find enough in the colony's defense budget to allow it to conduct "real training" to at least some level.

But an actual "deep space duel" for practice between civilian freighters is just not going to happen, because a true duel would involve, as noted, accelerations, decelerations, electronic warfare, shield reinforcement, erratic maneuvers, basically any combat action possible to the freighter. And that is money.

So, yes, you can play "Aces High" computer game duels with another freighter and practice using the controls, but you are not actually going to do any maneuvers with the ships.

By Douglas Saldana (Dsal) on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - 06:42 pm: Edit

I don't see why you would need a holodeck. You could run simulations on the bridge or the emergency bridge. A holodeck is only necessary if you want to simulate the psychological impact of combat conditions such as a hit on the bridge itself (in which you needs sparks flying from the consoles, beams falling from the ceiling, etc.)

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Thursday, November 14, 2019 - 11:56 am: Edit

SPP:

I was unclear. By duels I meant what you suggest that the freighter crews conduct simulated engagements that are entirely electronic against each other for fun, not that they drive the actual freighters in a duel. My bad for not communicating more clearly.

I see it more as two freighters passing on an established route and the two crews agree to a game with a friendly wager or for pride and play an engagement as an all electronic game while the crews are in quick computer range to exchange data. Good team building and possibly a morale booster, also just a way to break up the tedium of cruising in space and feel a little less alone out in the void.

I actually sat down and ran the engagement last night of two small freighters determined to kill each other. It is pretty weird. The freighter cannot get enough shield reinforcement to guarantee blocking a phaser 3 in one arc and still attack. Five points of power. 1 to shields, 0.5 to life support, 0.5 to low power fire control, 0.5 to phaser. You can cover the deficiency once and get three points of reinforcement with the battery but only once. You also need a tac so you are looking at one point of reinforcement most of the time. If you close to range 0 you can use passive fire control instead because doubling the range means nothing. The key thing that breaks the slow plinking away at shields is when you choose to deploy your shuttle as it doubles your firepower and taking out the enemy's shuttle probably becomes your highest priority when it launches as every hit on it is moving it towards death. One freighter landed their shuttle once it took hits and got some repairs.

The objective is to kill the shuttle and knock out the phaser on the other ship or knock out its power or hit the sensors or (even better) the scanner track. Even the small freighter can fix a phaser 3 in one turn but they can only do it twice and each turn it is down you are getting behind in damage dealt. My experience was it was a death spiral the first time you take a phaser hit.

I think if freighters did conduct a "real" simulated duel that it would only involve closing to somewhere between ranges 0 and 2 and taccing. Obviously still takes fuel.

The sneaky thing to do if you are playing a standard duel and allow Commander's Options is to buy a bunch of boarding parties (I believe I remember Petrick doing this for his freighters in the Orion Pirate campaign he was involved in) and try to beam them over. If your opponent does not do the same your first transporter action on a down shield probably wins the engagement. Another tactic would be to crash land your shuttle in the enemy bay the first time you knock down a shield. Without any boarding parties to capture it or disable it you can sit in the bay and fire until you knock out the power and weapon systems or blow yourself up or both. You have a good chance of getting the first solid blow with this approach.

That brings up one weird thing for me. Why are civilian shuttlecraft as well-armed as military ones? Seems odd companies would pay for this on non-armed freighters. I could see an independent owner buying a nice shuttle for prestige or planetary governments that use them for hauling in an early stage colony getting them because it gives the colony some firepower. Train has probably left the station on this but default unarmed shuttles for freighters is a thought for the Millenium/Resurrection edition of SFB.

By Jeffrey George Anderson (Jeff) on Thursday, November 14, 2019 - 12:46 pm: Edit

Jon, the question about armed civilian shuttlecraft isn't weird; I've thought about the same thing.

(Okay, since it's "Me" thinking about it, maybe it is weird... )

While I've never discussed this with anyone at ADB, Inc., it seems not unreasonable to me that maybe they have armed shuttles for the same reason that they have their own defensive phasers; after all, ADMIN shuttles in the Early Years are unarmed, as are freighters during that time.

However, if, in your campaign(s), you and your fellow players choose to forbid freighters from using phaser armed shuttles, then why not. I mean, if it's something mutually agreed on, then why should there be any problem?

By Steve Zamboni (Szamboni) on Thursday, November 14, 2019 - 01:58 pm: Edit

Maybe the ships and shuttles didn't go from "unarmed" to "armed" when EY ended, maybe that's just when the ubiquitous spacejunk defense system found on everything that leaves the atmosphere becames potent enough to affect shields.

It could be that everything is "armed", but most of the early civilian and commercial systems are lasers and slugthrowers that the game system can wave off as irrelevant.

(Insert Ronco FAZER! Junkzapper 3000 commercial here.)

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, November 14, 2019 - 02:26 pm: Edit

Jon Murdock:

As I (thought) I had indicated in my previous response there was a mis-communication.

As I think I noted, I do not have a problem with playing "space aces" (may not be the term I used previously, but it gets the idea across) with another ship obviously is so ridiculously cheap that even the bean counters would accept that it might help break up the tedium of long trips.

There would, however, always be the disconnect between "a game" and "reality." When the adrenaline is pumping because your life is really at risk, and no matter how good a simulation is, the "real thing" always throws the proverbial spanner in the works. As I noted in an even earlier response, you could have the happy circumstance of the gifted individual who spends so much of his free time "playing space invaders" in the computer's fire control/combat simulation that when the real thing comes up he manages to do very well. But such people are very, very, VERY rare.

As an example in the game, there are far, far, FAR more trained shuttle crews than there are weapons officers and fighter pilots/crews combined, but the rules for fighter aces notes that there are no "green" shuttle pilots/crews or "ace" shuttle pilots/crews, they are all "average."

As to armed shuttles, the first time I played the "First Command" scenario about Karg's F5 squadron attacking a gathering convoy, the Klingon player got a very rude shock when he discovered the "ad hoc fighter squadron" the convoy of freighters launched savaged one of his F5s. The scenario was then revised to defang the gathering convoy's shuttles. The original author had apparently never considered the firepower of the convoy's shuttles.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 12:21 pm: Edit

JGA:

In an Orion campaign I was going to run we had a die roll for freighters as to whether they were armed (I think it was 1/3 chance per shuttle). Similar rolls in lieu of Commander's Options for freighters with Legendaries and Crew Quality also rolled for. We did add a "Legendary Merchant" who could convince the pirate to take almost worthless cargo instead of the good stuff. The ability to buy your own commander's options for a freighter convoy leads to weird strategies like stuffing them with extra boarding parties and crew (for militia conversion) and

SPP:

Agreed that it would be rare but dealing with the stress of battle is what training and wargames are for. When I spent several years learning unarmed combat the idea was to make the moves instinctual so that you could slip into auto-pilot on the routines when in combat. My understanding is military training is intended to work the same way. It does not always work and you do not know how you will react in combat until you get there. You might barely muddle through or you might excel or anything in between.

Yeah, someone becoming capable of being a legend that learned on a freighter would be rare but legends in general are rare. You do not become one just by practicing. You just have it and it comes out when you do it. The -1 you give your freighter's phaser-3 the one time in your career where you are part of a convoy that is attacked by a raider or an Orion is unlikely to win you accolades.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 01:23 pm: Edit

I think a legendary officer on a freighter would be rare beyond rare and then some.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 05:35 pm: Edit

Jon Murdock:

And indeed that is why much effort is put into making combat training as realistic as possible, but it often fails once again because of "bean counters."

Even though almost every merchant crewman can be imagined as going through "gunnery training" as part of coming up through the system (and even really, really, REALLY basic "ship board combat training"), none of them have it as a primary job.

Consider that a small freighter has a crew of a single crew unit (see the MSC and the SSD). Under (G9.1) that is 10 individuals. (Other rules impact this and the one crew unit might be as few as six or as many as 14, with two crew units being as few as 15 and as many as 24, and so on, this is usually due to odd numbers of boarding parties or deck crews.)

Note that even a small freighter has two control stations, and if it is operating the shuttle, then two of the crew are on the shuttle (J2.213), meaning that the two control stations are being operated by eight people. It can be assumed that in "normal" operations much of the functioning of the freighter is handled by "automatics" with perhaps one member (maybe two) of the crew "on watch." And when the freighter is "busy" (coming into a system, moving cargo, i.e., loading or unloading, handling some emergency aboard in deep space, i.e., some fluctuation in the warp field or an energy drain in the impulse drive or what have you) the whole crew is awake and operating. But with 10 people there has to be a lot of cross training, and it has to be reasonably continuous. And, as noted, real life need to use the ship's phaser is very uncommon.

The upshot is that every man (except the newest members) in a small freighter's crew is likely to be a "Jack of All Trades, and Master of None." So, while I am willing to concede that in all of the small freighters of a given empire there might just somehow be an individual who would be skillful, the numbers in general simply do not indicate such to be the case. It is just not possible, with a 10 man crew, to have dedicated weapons officer.

As I said, you might have a member of the crew who spends what off hours he has playing "Space Aces" on the ship's computer, and maybe he has a good day when the need to fire the phaser shows up. But you are not going to have highly trained combat crew running a small freighter. They have too many other jobs to do to focus on the "combat role."

As noted before, it is the "bean counters." Freighter crews are as large as they absolutely have to be to keep them from finding their lives a "living hell" and "jumping ship" to escape it whenever they reach a good anchorage. But it means there are no spare work hours in such a crew to develop skills that are not needed in just operating the ship and enjoying their non-duty hours

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 05:58 pm: Edit

For what it is worth. The retired Starfleet officer. (or what ever race) Misses being in space after trying to sit on a planet for a year. Buys a independent freighter. Hires on a misfit crew of retired or ex starfleet. (or what ever race).

What kind of crew would you get? How many sci fi shows, movies and books are there about such a misfit crew. The impossible things they do?

Scary what things there ship could do? Double the engines once a game? A +1 to all weapons rolls? Extra ecm with EM?

Such Fun

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 05:58 pm: Edit

For what it is worth. The retired Starfleet officer. (or what ever race) Misses being in space after trying to sit on a planet for a year. Buys a independent freighter. Hires on a misfit crew of retired or ex starfleet. (or what ever race).

What kind of crew would you get? How many sci fi shows, movies and books are there about such a misfit crew. The impossible things they do?

Scary what things there ship could do? Double the engines once a game? A +1 to all weapons rolls? Extra ecm with EM?

Such Fun

By Michael Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 06:01 pm: Edit

"a legendary officer on a freighter..."

Or is a retired regular Navy gunner that is now working their second career...

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 06:16 pm: Edit

Again, note the size of the crew, the number of jobs that need doing, and the scarcity of need. Your retired legendary officer or simply Master Gunner would have his skills atrophy to normal levels. Even the greatest marksman in the world today only maintains his skill set by constant practice under basically "real" conditions.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 06:21 pm: Edit

Gregory,

Do you mean "A -1 to all weapon rolls"?

I'm still dubious about a legendary weapons officer on a freighter. Though I can't speak from personal experience about starship weapons, I do know that "real world" aviation skills are very perishable. If you don't fly relatively frequently (and on sorties that exercise relevant combat skills) you become "rusty" very quickly. I just am skeptical that a "retired regular Navy Gunner" would be able to keep his skills at a "legendary" level as part of a freighter crew.

I could... sort of... see it for a legendary engineer. Someone still has to keep the engines running, and if they are old and break down frequently, the engineer will get a lot of practice...

But I remain dubious about a freighter (except possibly an armed freighter on a high risk/high payoff route) having a legendary weapoms officer.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 06:26 pm: Edit

Re: my above post.

A. SPP beat me to it.

B. Kaylee on Firefly

By Douglas Saldana (Dsal) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 06:57 pm: Edit

A legendary weapons officer on a freighter doesn't have to be as skilled as one on a warship who would have to manage a greater number and variety of weapons. There really should be a rule (similar to the "promotion" rules for fighters and gunboats) that a legendary officer's skills are limited to ships of the same class as the one they are currently serving on. It would take time for an officer to familiarize themselves with the systems on another class of ship and a civilian would require extensive military training before being able to transfer their skills to a warship.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 07:07 pm: Edit

Douglas Saldana:

See (U7.8).

By Jeffrey George Anderson (Jeff) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 07:46 pm: Edit

Unless I'm mistaken, there's an F&E Rule for "Tri-Video Ships."

IMO, putting "Outstanding Crew" and "Legendary Officers" on a freighter starts pushing towards Tri-Video.

May I respectfully suggest we leave those things to Olivette Roche, and NOT use them in SFB?

By Douglas Saldana (Dsal) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 09:16 pm: Edit

I think the discussion has been too narrowly focused on legendary weapons officers and small freighters. There are other types of legendary officers, other types of civilian ships, and other types of missions besides hauling cargo on tramp freighters.

For example, why couldn't a civilian science vessel (owned by a government or large corporation) have a legendary science officer or a hospital ship have a legendary doctor? These roles are not as dependent on military training. The same could be said (to a lesser extent) of some of the other legendary officers.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 09:52 pm: Edit

I think that pretty much lies beyond the scope of the game as that more or less is dependent on what's going on in the civilian universe, which is far larger than just the naval type ships.

By Douglas Saldana (Dsal) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 10:07 pm: Edit

I'm just saying that if you had a scenario in which a civilian exploration ship had a legendary science officer or if you had a civilian hospital ship with a legendary doctor it would be rare and unusual but by no means implausible.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 11:13 pm: Edit

You would be most likely to find the "Legendary Cargo Officer" who doubles the rate at which you can move cargo by shuttle, transporter, or through docking. Don't ask him how he does it. That is why he is a legend. The bean counters love him.

The health and safety people.....do not.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Friday, November 15, 2019 - 11:40 pm: Edit

JGA:

Are you suggesting Firefly was created by Olivette Roche? If so I may have to challenge you to an honor duel.

SPP:

While skills are perishable the comparison to a sharpshooter's schedule does not work that well. Even the weapons officer on a war cruiser in a warzone is probably only going to fight in real battles a few times a year. I do take the point though.

Also yes, freighter crews are not going to be overly specialized but I imagine that in a crisis situation there is some kind of "action stations" where everyone goes to a specific station. The weapons officer also probably does double duty. If you have a crew of 10 and 2 man the shuttle and I am guessing you would need 1 or 2 in Engineering you get 3 in each control station and would need a commander, a navigator, and a sensor/weapons/communications whatever else person.

Outside of a battle you can win I also agree with what you said in the past. If an LR shows up and you are alone the smart thing to do is to let them take what they can hold and be on their way. If they want the whole ship head for the shuttle. The exception is if you happen to have just passed a light cruiser or a destroyer a few minutes ago in which case you might send out a call for help and warm the capacitor.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Saturday, November 16, 2019 - 12:13 am: Edit

Again see (U7.8). It lists those legendary officers who remain legendary when they move to another ship. Doctors are one of them, so are Marine Majors. Check the rule.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, October 03, 2020 - 05:02 pm: Edit

I don't think the concept of a multi-mission PF is viable. PFs are just too small for such things. For the same money you could buy three small freighter bridge/drive units and fit each with a different skid, giving you the same capability with less maintenance.

The reason that a Police FLG works is that it's a SHIP which can cruise around for weeks or months while working through a continually extended list of things to do. PFs cannot operate continually.