Question on Crew

[CaptainMatt]

How do you guys account for the fact that an NPC ship has a crew when designing the ship.

Example: My crew on the USS Oberon are fighting a battle with Jem'Hadar ships. The Jem'Hadar ships are of my own design, but is their a quick way of accounting for the crew on board? I really dont feel like making a whole crew for a ship that will meet its demise soon. Suggestions?

Narrator Star Trek: Battlecry!

[AslanC]

Not sure I understand what you need here?

Can you clarify?

[Ineti]

Why bother making a crew for them at all? If the ship is going to get toasted, you don't really need a crew. If a couple are going to beam over to the PCs' ship, you'll want stats on them, but that's it.

I'm not real clear on what you're asking, either.

[tmutant]

Do you mean the number of crew? From the ship design rules?

The crew are extras. Unless they are going to do something vital to the plot, don't worry about them. If you need them to do something, use a generic template instead of rolling up every crew member.

[Lt Cmdr Matt]

Unless they are important NPC's just use the NPC soldier in the back of the book. But don't tell anyone

[CaptainMatt]

What I really need is useful quick numbers to add to manuvers a ship may be doing. Like when the enemy fires the ship gets the +3 to Tactical but what does the Tactical officer add to that. I need something simple that can take care of that factor.

Like would adding +5, assuming that is the sys op(tactical) of the officer, to all tactical manuvers be fair.

I'm just asking to see what system you guys use.

[Owen E Oulton]

Unless I have a developed NPC on the NPC ship, I simply use the skill points listed for the ship design as a default.

[Imagus]

I think he's looking for something similar to FASA's crew efficiency rating - the average skill level of the vessel in question.

While I can see the argument in favour of Owen's "they don't get one", it doesn't allow for variations in ship quality. Although it could be argued that that only applies to important ships!

I think I'd rate a ship as one of the following:

"green" (-2) - a training vessel or a new one the crew are not yet familiar with. This rating would usually become average by the end of their first serious mission.

"average" (+0) - the vast majority of vessels. This crew knows each other and their vessel well enough to function, but no more.

"expert" (+2) - they've been around a while and know their vessel well. This category would apply after a few years of uninterrupted missions. Any of the Enterprises would count here (given the amount of crew-shuffling they go through).

"veteran" (+5) - very experienced and extremely rare. These crews have been through hell together a number of times and function like a well-oiled machine - with no dissent and no hesitation. This might apply to a crack Klingon crew or the Voyager (which saw little or no crew changes for 7 years).

Apply the numbers given to your skill rolls.

This is all very hazy, so you might need to vary the mods somewhat in practice! And a veteran crew is significant enough they're worth detailing.

I have a sneak suspicion we might see something like this in the Starships book when it appears.

[CaptainMatt]

Thanks Imagus,

That was just what I needed.

Now in a battle against multiple ships I can account for the crew as well as the ship itself. So, my players may be going up against the same ship they have hundreds of times before but this time the battle will be a little harder. Or even mix and match those though out a fleet making some ship harder to defeat than others.