E-462-Oliver: Merchant Freighter Spanial (Docked at Zarg’s World Highport)
Spacer Terminology
Don’t know if I’ve been over this before or not? Anyway: there are five main roles in Control on a civilian ship:
- Conn – The ship’s current commander (may or may not be the Captain) [GURPS skills: Shiphandling, Leadership, skills in the other roles are useful]
- Helm – Operates the directional controls [GURPS skills: Pilot (High Performance Spacecraft, Aerospace, etc), Navigation (Space)]
- Nav – Usually refers to plotting hyperspace jumps but is occasionally used to mean just N-space courses, though the two tasks are commonly linked [GURPS skills: Navigation (Hyperspace, Space)]
- Comm – Operates the communications gear [GURPS skills: Electronics Operation (Communications)]
- Scan – Operates the ship’s sensor suite [GURPS skills: Electronics Operation (Sensors)]
It’s not uncommon to pair roles, with Helm/Nav and Comm/Scan probably being the most common arrangement. Except in an emergency, it’s rare for a person to have more than two roles
Conn is usually only used if the ship has a separate person in command, for example when Alan and Oliver were the only crew of the Maldemar 732, Oliver as the mission commander put Alan in charge of the ship (Conn) but Alan would still be referred to as being in the Helm/Nav roles.
The above applies when a ship is being actively operated, at other times there is a generic role called ‘Watch’, used when the ship is travelling in open space and only a single person is in Control for monitoring purposes.
On many ships, any station can actually be configured to do any job, but it’s not uncommon to use the terms to refer to specific workstations. Oliver will discover that aboard Spanial, the crew refer to one on the left as Helm, the one in the middle as Conn and the one on the right as Scan, or sometimes Comm/Scan.
Aerospace craft often have a slightly different set of terminology, because that’s how people are, but that’s for another day.
Control
To be clear, Jennie has suggested Oliver sit at Conn, the middle seat.
Are you asking if it looks the same as the Maldemar 732, or the same as the workstation on the right, where he sat where gave him an intro to the systems?
If the former, the layout is somewhat different to the sloop, but essentially provides the same functionality. If the latter, it’s essentially the same with only a few minor differences.
I think we went over it before but the refresher was handy.
I was asking the former but good to know.
“What was this Karmen mentioned about simulations?”