Rank and ratings on a spaceship
Jul. 3rd, 2011 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethRight. I have been trying to fix my spaceship so it doesn't do the thing the Enterprise always does of having a few named officers and a lot of people wandering around who may or may not be officers. And Miles O'Brien. He was chief petty officer, but only sometimes. But since I have watched a lot of Star Trek, and not much else, I feel I understand who is the boss of who out of Captains through Ensigns, but I have no idea who all else is around. Even if I'm just going to file the serial numbers off the Enterprise I want it to make actual sense. Not necessarily match, but have words in the right orders and look like it could work.
So what do all the other people do, and what are they called?
It would really, really help if I could get the hang of the real world stuff. Since that does make at least a working sort of sense. Reality has good continuity, usually.
So I looked at the Royal Navy website. "MOST OF OUR PERSONNEL ARE KNOWN AS RATINGS. AS A RATING YOU WILL PROVIDE THE SKILLS AND EXPERTISE NEEDED TO OPERATE OUR TECHNOLOGY, CARRY OUT REPAIRS AND PUT OUR OPERATIONS INTO PRACTICE. [...] There are excellent promotion opportunities for all Royal Navy Ratings. With more training and experience, you could be promoted to the rate of Leading Hand, and then Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer and, ultimately, Warrant Officer 1."
Wiki has a list that goes: Ordinary Seaman, Able Seaman, Leading Rate, Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer, Warrant Officer 2, Warrant Officer 1. (US Navy has a lot more. Like, A LOT more. If I used all those I'd have to have more crew.) But other pages suggest it is making it up about Ordinary cause it's not on any of the other lists. Ah, the page for Ordinary Seaman says it's an older name that Canada still uses, lowest normal grade of seaman. They are not trained in any special task. They are required to work at physically hard tasks of great variety. ... so, anywhere that still does heavy lifting could have Ordinary around. Able Seaman is the same on the tidy little tables as Private or Marine. (The RAF have a lot more names in that bit of the table, starting with Aircraftman, Leading or Senior, and Junior Technician, or Senior Aircraftman Technician. I don't know, it's a very confusing table.) Leading Rating (that's three different ways they've written that) is equivalent to Corporal. Petty Officer is like Sergeant. Chief Petty Officer is like... again a whole lot of different abbreviations are in this bit of table, Flight Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, Color Sergeant, and Chief Technician, and There is also the rate for Charge Chief Petty Officers for technical specialists called 'Artificers'. I rather like 'Artificer'. And then Warrant Officers don't have any other names. Army ones do have specific appointments. I don't think you get one per tiny ship. And NX01 is pretty tiny.
But! We can put them in a row and know who is the boss of who.
Able Seaman, Leading Rating, Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer *waves hello Miles*
On a spaceship you do not get a seaman though. Do we want to call them spacemen? It would sound like Space Science and Space Medicine and Space Makes It Special. Trek calls them crewmen. That could work. Or spacecraftmen, like the RAF has aircraftmen. Technician is also a very useful word. Technicians led by Petty Officers and Chief Petty Officers is a nice set of words.
Leading Hand or Leading Rating has a bundle of different names. Wiki reckons : Leading Rating (or Leading Rate) is the most senior of the junior rates in the Royal Navy. [...] Leading Ratings are normally addressed as Leading Hand or using their branch title e.g. Leading Seaman, Leading Regulator etc. Specialists use the "Leading" before their speciality (e.g. Leading Writer, Leading Cook, Leading Regulator).
I don't know from branch titles yet. But Leading Technician to go in the middle should work, right?
Junior Technicians, Leading Technicians.
I don't know, I quite like Ordinary and Able.
Ordinary, Able, Leading, Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer.
... crewman, spaceman, spacecraftman, technician, something else?
SpaceCraft Technician, SCT, makes SCT work... (I just looked up scutwork and some dictionaries reckon it's (a) a medical school word and (b) from the 1960s. Huh.) Would any system land itself with 'Ordinary Spacecraft Technician' for a daily use title though? *double checks Senior Aircraftman Technician* Ah. Okay, they might.
Jobs on ships has a nice long list. Also Jobs on Submarines has a smaller and more manageable list. ... I figured out my spaceship's list by going through the GURPS rules and finding out who needed their own control station to do their job, or how many different skills were involved. The farm section is not to be found on submarines, as far as I know. Nor does mining and fabrication feature so heavily on vehicles that can always get home.
The HMS Enterprise website has an 'A Day in the Life' section. (Er, it wasn't the only ship I looked at, really, but the others didn't have the same bits.) That would be very useful except for it's mostly made up of (a) how big the TV is and how they play a lot and (b) specialist language and abbreviations I have no clue about. A lot of it. Really really a lot. I imagine ships involve a lot of jobs that things that are not ships don't. Also people that go live on ships talk to other people that go live on ships and make their own language. Also also spaceships will involve a different set of specialist things anyway, and notably less running around the roof. So what they do won't help much with what my not-Enterprise does. (Except people will probably still care how big the TV is and where they can throw a ball.) (My spaceship has two decks of farm but you probably can't throw a ball in there cause I can't figure out what the GURPS rules were thinking about area=people fed, so clearly they're really tall and grow stuff all the way up.)
I think I need a book. 'Royal Navy for Dummies' or 'Life in a ship if you're not the Captain'. Or possibly just the glossary and a little flow chart.
*big sigh*
I figured out how many people my GURPS rules ship can carry while still having enough food for everyone and enough cryo pods in case of emergency. There could be a lot more people if they would quad bunk routinely, but it's an Explorer ship, on long term missions, so possibly not so much good to cram it to the gills. Also under GURPS rules you don't need actual people to run things anyway, beyond enough to fill all the control consoles (7) and Workspaces (2). Even the medic is optional at tech levels high enough to go interstellar, the medbeds run themselves. I decided they were vastly underestimating the amount of work involved. Also, they don't have a laundry on board. You head out into space for years at a time with no laundry. Presumably you hang it up in the bathroom the whole time. :eyeroll: But there at least need to be people looking after the chickens every day, and plants need stuff done, and they've rejected artificial minds so there's only so much automation they can do. I think putting an actual crew in there makes sense. GURPS rules seem designed for small groups of adventurers to run really big ships.
ANYway
Now I know some words, I need to find out how many of what words are likely to be on a tiny ship, and make a little organisation chart for my spaceship.
Or, obviously, I could write that romance I was planning and ignore the whole rest of the ship. That would be simpler.
So what do all the other people do, and what are they called?
It would really, really help if I could get the hang of the real world stuff. Since that does make at least a working sort of sense. Reality has good continuity, usually.
So I looked at the Royal Navy website. "MOST OF OUR PERSONNEL ARE KNOWN AS RATINGS. AS A RATING YOU WILL PROVIDE THE SKILLS AND EXPERTISE NEEDED TO OPERATE OUR TECHNOLOGY, CARRY OUT REPAIRS AND PUT OUR OPERATIONS INTO PRACTICE. [...] There are excellent promotion opportunities for all Royal Navy Ratings. With more training and experience, you could be promoted to the rate of Leading Hand, and then Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer and, ultimately, Warrant Officer 1."
Wiki has a list that goes: Ordinary Seaman, Able Seaman, Leading Rate, Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer, Warrant Officer 2, Warrant Officer 1. (US Navy has a lot more. Like, A LOT more. If I used all those I'd have to have more crew.) But other pages suggest it is making it up about Ordinary cause it's not on any of the other lists. Ah, the page for Ordinary Seaman says it's an older name that Canada still uses, lowest normal grade of seaman. They are not trained in any special task. They are required to work at physically hard tasks of great variety. ... so, anywhere that still does heavy lifting could have Ordinary around. Able Seaman is the same on the tidy little tables as Private or Marine. (The RAF have a lot more names in that bit of the table, starting with Aircraftman, Leading or Senior, and Junior Technician, or Senior Aircraftman Technician. I don't know, it's a very confusing table.) Leading Rating (that's three different ways they've written that) is equivalent to Corporal. Petty Officer is like Sergeant. Chief Petty Officer is like... again a whole lot of different abbreviations are in this bit of table, Flight Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, Color Sergeant, and Chief Technician, and There is also the rate for Charge Chief Petty Officers for technical specialists called 'Artificers'. I rather like 'Artificer'. And then Warrant Officers don't have any other names. Army ones do have specific appointments. I don't think you get one per tiny ship. And NX01 is pretty tiny.
But! We can put them in a row and know who is the boss of who.
Able Seaman, Leading Rating, Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer *waves hello Miles*
On a spaceship you do not get a seaman though. Do we want to call them spacemen? It would sound like Space Science and Space Medicine and Space Makes It Special. Trek calls them crewmen. That could work. Or spacecraftmen, like the RAF has aircraftmen. Technician is also a very useful word. Technicians led by Petty Officers and Chief Petty Officers is a nice set of words.
Leading Hand or Leading Rating has a bundle of different names. Wiki reckons : Leading Rating (or Leading Rate) is the most senior of the junior rates in the Royal Navy. [...] Leading Ratings are normally addressed as Leading Hand or using their branch title e.g. Leading Seaman, Leading Regulator etc. Specialists use the "Leading" before their speciality (e.g. Leading Writer, Leading Cook, Leading Regulator).
I don't know from branch titles yet. But Leading Technician to go in the middle should work, right?
Junior Technicians, Leading Technicians.
I don't know, I quite like Ordinary and Able.
Ordinary, Able, Leading, Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer.
... crewman, spaceman, spacecraftman, technician, something else?
SpaceCraft Technician, SCT, makes SCT work... (I just looked up scutwork and some dictionaries reckon it's (a) a medical school word and (b) from the 1960s. Huh.) Would any system land itself with 'Ordinary Spacecraft Technician' for a daily use title though? *double checks Senior Aircraftman Technician* Ah. Okay, they might.
Jobs on ships has a nice long list. Also Jobs on Submarines has a smaller and more manageable list. ... I figured out my spaceship's list by going through the GURPS rules and finding out who needed their own control station to do their job, or how many different skills were involved. The farm section is not to be found on submarines, as far as I know. Nor does mining and fabrication feature so heavily on vehicles that can always get home.
The HMS Enterprise website has an 'A Day in the Life' section. (Er, it wasn't the only ship I looked at, really, but the others didn't have the same bits.) That would be very useful except for it's mostly made up of (a) how big the TV is and how they play a lot and (b) specialist language and abbreviations I have no clue about. A lot of it. Really really a lot. I imagine ships involve a lot of jobs that things that are not ships don't. Also people that go live on ships talk to other people that go live on ships and make their own language. Also also spaceships will involve a different set of specialist things anyway, and notably less running around the roof. So what they do won't help much with what my not-Enterprise does. (Except people will probably still care how big the TV is and where they can throw a ball.) (My spaceship has two decks of farm but you probably can't throw a ball in there cause I can't figure out what the GURPS rules were thinking about area=people fed, so clearly they're really tall and grow stuff all the way up.)
I think I need a book. 'Royal Navy for Dummies' or 'Life in a ship if you're not the Captain'. Or possibly just the glossary and a little flow chart.
*big sigh*
I figured out how many people my GURPS rules ship can carry while still having enough food for everyone and enough cryo pods in case of emergency. There could be a lot more people if they would quad bunk routinely, but it's an Explorer ship, on long term missions, so possibly not so much good to cram it to the gills. Also under GURPS rules you don't need actual people to run things anyway, beyond enough to fill all the control consoles (7) and Workspaces (2). Even the medic is optional at tech levels high enough to go interstellar, the medbeds run themselves. I decided they were vastly underestimating the amount of work involved. Also, they don't have a laundry on board. You head out into space for years at a time with no laundry. Presumably you hang it up in the bathroom the whole time. :eyeroll: But there at least need to be people looking after the chickens every day, and plants need stuff done, and they've rejected artificial minds so there's only so much automation they can do. I think putting an actual crew in there makes sense. GURPS rules seem designed for small groups of adventurers to run really big ships.
ANYway
Now I know some words, I need to find out how many of what words are likely to be on a tiny ship, and make a little organisation chart for my spaceship.
Or, obviously, I could write that romance I was planning and ignore the whole rest of the ship. That would be simpler.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 10:41 pm (UTC)1) You need an Operations crew. They decide where the ship goes, who reports to whom; they are the diplomats, the head science guy, the head of engineering, the head of the military/security crew, etc. - the head staff.
2) You need an engineering crew, the folks who make the ship run.
3) You need the science crew. Or as someone put it, unless you're exclusively a military ship, someone to justify what you're doing out there.
4) You need the military crew, or at least a couple of guys to protect the other idiots in the crew.
So if you were to draw boxes around those people, you'd have a box around Operations, who are usually in charge of everything, and then the separate People-in-Charge of their departments would then ultimately report to the captain of the ship. It's not that different than a corporation in that regard.
Hope that helps!
helpful :-)
Date: 2011-07-03 11:29 pm (UTC)2) Geordie or Trip and all their busy people. Not just fixing the engines, fixing the recycling and pipes and fridges and air and all.
3) This one pretty much is being military. It does some science on its usual missions, going somewhere completely unknown to drop a stargate, but this time it has been sent to drop a stargate somewhere that probably doesn't want it. But the science people know how the really swish sensors work so they're still around.
4) People who can work the guns and keep them working: check. Also people to point guns as required, but they need day jobs.
With the light speed time dilation and my ongoing quest to not have to do the maths on how long it takes to get anywhere I've given them a farm instead of working out how much cargo they'd need to carry all their food in boxes. They have mining and factory sections too so if they break down where no man has gone before they can make their own parts. Also then there's lots of different sorts of places for story to happen, rather than 'corridor' and 'more corridor, somewhere else'.
The words are complicated. I found a chart of all the names on really old sailing ships and it's more fiddly than a family tree. If I pick a simple set I can know who all them random people in the background are, and so can the characters who grew up among them. Also once the ship is under pressure I can know where the fault lines go.
Re: helpful :-)
Date: 2011-07-04 06:29 pm (UTC)- the captain
- the executive officer
- head of medical
- head diplomat/ship's counselor
- head of security
- head of science
- head of engineering
and presumably a ton of lower-ranked officers to do the dirty work that we didn't see on screen (like cleaning out the Jeffries tubes...that should've been an ensign's job.)
2) Right. You need people to do the dirty work, else you have to figure that the captain (or whoever else is with him) of that ship is also the pilot, the storeroom officer, the ship's gunner, and occasional handyman and therefore *must* take his/her ship somewhere for any service he/she isn't capable of handling. (See: Han Solo and his Millenium Falcon.) This limitation of his/her abilities usually means he/she isn't operating a ship the size of the Enterprise, unless he/she stole it and is capable of figuring out how to override any security protocols. (Not usually a believable scenario.)
3 & 4) *nods*
RE: old sailing chart names: yes, it's more complicated than a family tree, but so is much of maritime history.
In reading what you've written, I'm wondering if you're also spending a lot of time figuring out the world rather than writing something in it. As a reader, I'm perfectly willing to hand-wave some of the science and world stuff if the characters are interesting and the story is compelling. If you use the Star Trek model, especially the basic premise that Gene Rodenberry proposed, it was something that could be simply summed as "wagon train to the stars." What is the story you want to tell? Can you summarize it in a short phrase? Or, as someone once told me, "Tell me about the people in your story, and I'll tell you about the world in which they live."
Re: helpful :-)
Date: 2011-07-04 07:14 pm (UTC)but also, I know my main character is a Lieutenant a lot older than usual cause he didn't start as an officer, and I know his background is full of knowing exactly where the line was and where various parties assumed he'd grow up to be, so I need to know it to understand him. Else I have a completely different character. I started out thinking it's like being a mature student and getting credits for experience, when all his experience is in big spaceship missiles and guns and laser beams. There's a power/privilege/responsibility line in there I don't quite grasp. And I don't know the words for what he was before and after and when that can happen. But I think I have a character who had spent a career blowing things up when told, and then wanted to know what it was all about, really, when you get down to it, and was under the impression officers knew.
Plus it interacts with the science fiction setting - it's like the Enterprise to a point, but there was a war in living memory where they decided what is human and kicked out all the genetically engineered or cybernetically modified posthumans so the humans could have a chance. But in the pre-war era, who would get to be officers? Maybe the ones with an advantage, the modified ones. So it wasn't just civil war, on some ships it was mutiny. So it's all of a tangle.
And bits of my plot are like that chart that goes (1) bright idea (2) ??? (3) Profit!
I know where I'm going but the how to get there. So I keep trying to figure out the ship and crew, so they can tell me what goes in the gaps.
Story in a sentence: Malcolm loves Beatrice.
... I thought it was a short story, then I threw my worldbuilding at an Enterprise plot seed and it grew something new.
Story in another sentence: CSS Incorrupt hits a mine field, and the mine field wants to negotiate.
Standing orders on both sides say they should blow themselves up, but neither really wants to. So things get tricky.
If I'm going to put a shuttle pod in that situation then I only need to know how a couple of people feel about it, but if I put a whole ship under pressure then I need to know where the fault lines are. On Rodenberry's Enterprise there are none, everyone is shiny happy perfect team, but I am not writing that ship.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-04 02:10 am (UTC)The USA system does have sort of redundant Petty Officer and Chief Petty Officer grades (i.e., ratings) but I suspect that's mostly pay grade variation & a way of marking seniority.
I don't know what the job titles are.