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I don’t mean all the crews would be of equal status. On a meta level, we’re the PCs so we’re the main crew; but there would be NPC crews for late shift and graveyard shift (or whatever we want to call them) with a Lt. Commander in charge. After all, there is no night in space, and it would be irresponsible to assume that alien cultures keep to day lengths that resemble the Earth-based 24-hour cycle. There has to be a crew on the bridge ready to respond immediately to any threat, even if only to get the ship out of danger while the main crew wakes up and scrambles to the bridge.
What does that mean for our game shifts? If they’re supposed to be the same length as in real life, that’s really fast. I was imagining that each exercise is a full shift length, several hours followed by down time (meals, sleep, admin, physical training, etc) represented by our short breaks in the Mess Hall; and that each mission might take place over several days, where we’re clearly not on duty all the time, but, as in a TV programme, you just show the exciting bits where we get shot at and shoot back.
If all the above speculation is irrelevant because the matter has already been settled in established lore, I’d be happy to hear from someone who knows.
Yes, I’ve been thinking about this and it has severely limited me in writing of my first Personal Log (of which I’m not happy about or proud of (I might just remove it altogether…)).
Does anyone have a definitive answer? Xavier @admin?
Hello,
I did start another thread about time scales. That was slightly different in that I was opening up a discussion about using a different measure of time (cycles/rotations) so we didnt have to specify hours and have a more abstract definition of how long we are on shift. For example we could say a mission lasted 3 cycles, but in real game terms it would have lasted about 45mins to an hour. A cycle wouldnt have to be clearly defined, but we could say that something like 1 cyclw is the minimum amount of sleep/ refresh time a crewman needs to be able to be effective. An officer is expeced to work at least 5 cycles ( with the 6th being rest time). Longer missions would last more cycles, pushing the limit (10 could be max or something). None of these need times put to them; we dont have to say one cycle equals so many hours for example. If you consider how long you can be up for (about 6am till about 10pm) before really needing sleep (and still feel refreshed in the morning) then it gives you an idea how long 5 cycles might be.
Consider too that we might have some kind of artificial stimulatant (or just caffine!) and we could last longer.
It was just a thought though and I opened it up for discussion.
As for crews, I imagined the main qualified officers being on the bridge and on duty most of the time. NCOs could take out place whilst off duty. These could be the odd bridge NCO who could jump on helm for example, or monitor engineering systems, just while the main officers get their head down. For a mission, an officer might be required to stay at their post for a longer duration. If you consider how fatiguing some of the 2 hour missions can be,you definately get the feeling of being alert for a long period of time. They could step away to get a quick drink or snack, but most of the time be operating their console and drinking caffine/ taking stims to keep going. This kind of thing seems to come up often in books I’ve read (the Black Fleet trilogy/ the Lost Fleet series – see the book club thread for references).
Oh, right, I did read something about rotations and cycles, but I completely forgot about it.
So, basically, the missions would last about a day?
What do we do while not on the mission? Do we serve on other ships or stations? I know that the stardate is set that way so we don’t need to think about how many days went between each mission, but what is our “downtime”? If it’s a day-to-day missions, then it’s quite straight forward. If it’s more like week-to-week, what do we do in the meantime?
On the side of having separate shifts, I did some math while at work today and there’s a snag with our crew sizes…
Let’s use a Scout ship as the example because it’s got the minimal size crew.
A scout crew around 60-80 personnel if I remember correctly.
18x Damcon Team members x 3 = 36 gone right off the bat, leaving 24-44 slots remaining.
6 bridge crew members x 3 = 18, so that cuts a HUGE chunk out of the 24, leaving only 6 remaining, but if you go with 80 max crew minus what we’ve got so far you’ve got 26 left.
There are 2 more crucially necessary teams we still have to consider while even ignoring any extra personnel: Medical and Security.
If we had a crew of 60 to begin with, we’ve got 6 “slots” left, split between 3 shifts for each team, essentially we’d have 1x Medical Officer and 1x Security team member per shift. That’s definitely insufficient.
If you started with 80 and got 26 left, you’ve got a LITTLE more room there… Let’s say you can get away with 3 Medical Officers per shift which takes 9 slots. That leaves 17. So you’ve got 2 Security teams of 6 and 1 team of 5 covering those 3 shifts. That’s not a very large security team.
Granted, you could get away with doubling up -some- duties with qualified personnel, but you can see the dilemma I’m presenting here. If we’re going to have 3 shifts operating aboard our ships, we’re going to have to rethink our crew sizes, and increase the size of ship we had in our heads a tad.
Granted, that’s based on an even split of personnel across shifts… If you had smaller teams on “less active” shifts, you could fudge the numbers a bit and keep the same maximum crew number and ship size. Like, say, have only 12 or 6 Damcon Team members working on 2nd and 3rd Shifts which would free up larger teams for Medical and Security during more active periods. And then many of the members from the larger active shift team could be “on call” for the less active shifts, even in an “on call” rotation of sorts. The bridge crew number would have to remain the same, though. There’s no reducing that number on any shift.
I think we are missing a trick here. DamCon is not a primary, full-time occupation. It is the battle station that someone adopts when there is no other role for them. So the main shift bridge crew is always preferred when going into a planned action or once activated from on-call status. There is no reason that the majority of DC crew could not otherwise serve as security teams, bartenders, cooks, yeomen, technicians, scientists, analysts of various kinds. Also, a single doctor would suffice for maintaining the overall health of 60-80 crew with qualified nurses/paramedics on the other shifts. Also, outside of battle or major operations work, the bridge could be operated by two or three officers.
@Wade, your working out the arithmetic of shifts from crew sizes has greatly helped me get a sense of the ship’s physical size. Thanks!
@Matsiyan, good point about the multiple roles.Matsiyan has also touched on the next point I was going to make: since we have been known to run a bridge into action with five or four or, in extreme cases, even three people, it would not be difficult to envisage the 2nd and 3rd shift consisting of Helm, Weapons, SciComms and Engineering, with the highest ranking doubling up as Command. As long as someone is there to press the Red Alert button, the main crew can scramble into action pretty fast.
ship size and crew has been a long standing discussion in and out of the rp group, originally the light cruisers is meant to be 100m long 50m wide with a crew of 60 to 80 personal i think xaviors number on this site come straight from mike who written all the “official” back story.
many wished they ships were galaxy class in size and had all manner of things in side from hydroponic labs and several bars to holo decks. considering the game mechanics and the short range of tsn vessels would we have all these things straight out of star trek ? probably not, a simple galley with a couple cooks would be the only luxury other than your own bunk in a shared room.its only in the last months or so with the energy mod coming in that going on long range patrols away from stations has been fesable.
before that ships were dependent on staying near populated areas for re supply,oh and transporters senior command has always shied away from transporters as much as possible and preferred shuttles etc but as we dont have a list up with what tec we have and dont have(*) so people just went with what they know from sci fi fiction so transporters kept coming back.
(*its my fault cause i got half way through said list and never went back to it)
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