Pay Personnel?

[thedancingjoker]

I’m trying to work up a full Mercenary force using the campaign operations rules and I hit a snag: Bay Personnel.  Are bay personnel the same as the technical staff needed for each vehicle or are they separate to maintain the physical bay itself and not the machine in it.  If they are not the same as technical staff what salary would I use, drop/jump ship crew?

For example a Lung Wang has 4 mechs, 2 fighters, and one infantry platoon and has 40 bay personnel in addition to the crew of 3 officers, 6 enlisted, & 2 gunners.  According to CO those 6 machines would take 36 technical staff + 4 pilots to keep operational, which matches up with the 40 bay personnel. 

Basically, if I already allocated the technical support staff to the individual units do I still need to pay for ANOTHER 40 people?

[ravensword]

Bay personnel are the troops and techs assigned to the contents of the bay.  It's worth mentioning that the bays do not have room for AsTechs.

[AlphaMirage]

You can choose to bunk your Astechs in the infantry bay which will in turn give you up to 36 technical support (30 in the bay plus the 6 chief tech berths as part of the Mech/ASF bay) people. Each Bay also includes berthing for the pilot or MechWarrior.That may in fact be the point of the design. They will use up a lot of consumables but you aren't probably undergoing an extended mission with such a vessel.

So in your example you can have the Ships Crew (3 officers, 8 enlisted Dropship crew), 6 MechWarriors/ASF Pilots, 6 full Technicians, and up to 30 Astechs

[Daryk]

That's why I usually double tap my infantry troops as AsTechs.  With standard IS organization, only the Squad Leaders (and above) are full time infantry.  The rest are AsTechs with infantry traiing when they're not helping fix things...  ^-^

As for the math: each cubicle ('mech or ASF) comes with two bunks (1 for the pilot, 1 for the Tech); the Infantry Bay has a capacity of 30 these days (errata finally acknowledged the Taurians exist), so the total SHOULD be 42 Bay Personnel.

BTW, if you edit the subject of the original post, you can change the name of the thread...  8)

[Wolf72]

I don't think Mech/ASF/Veh bays include quartering of their respective pilots/crews.  Only the bay personnel.  If you're going on long deployments it would be worth finding quarters as the cargo room for consumables can get pretty needy for anyone in bays (troop bays, M/A/V bays).

 :o

[AlphaMirage]

The Bay personnel are actually in the rules as pilot and their chief tech, its part of the extra 50 tons added to Mech and ASF bays (along with associated repair gantries, tools, etc...). Additionally vehicle crews are basically fluffed as given hammocks or something similar near their vehicle

[Daryk]

Page 239 of Tech Manual lists the "Bay Personnel" that come with each kind of Transport Bay.

[SCC]

So SO made it so that a Bay has accommodations for a units crew and a chief tech but I'm pretty sure that Campaign Ops makes it implicit that the Bay accommodations now support the crew and a full tech team.

[Wolf72]

The Bay personnel are actually in the rules as pilot and their chief tech, its part of the extra 50 tons added to Mech and ASF bays (along with associated repair gantries, tools, etc...). Additionally vehicle crews are basically fluffed as given hammocks or something similar near their vehicle

p239

... incorporate basic accommodations for the units’ crews and technical support, and so do not require the installation of additional passenger or crew quarters.

You know, I always read 'crews' as technical crew, not as the 'warriors' -- which perusing my TW the other night says basically the ones running the unit (mech/asf/vehicle).  I'll chalk this one up as a "Now I know more".

So I've been trying to cover my techs and warriors in extra quarters anyway.  I've got quite a few MM designed DS+ that have better than average accommodations then!  Which could easily cover additional passengers as needed.

[Daryk]

Is there a page reference in the new Campaign Ops that supersedes the latest Tech Manual?  ???

[SCC]

Is there a page reference in the new Campaign Ops that supersedes the latest Tech Manual?  ???

I'm pretty sure the the limitation on bay personal original cropped up in the old SO (I can't find it at the moment) and it assumed that asTechs would be hired as-needed from the population of whatever planet you where on at the time, Cray, when writing the Force Creation and Operations rules, didn't remember this and said that asTechs are a permament part of a force (Which makes sense, the bulk of the SLDF's asTechs during the Periphery Uprising are not going to be locals) so these campaign make it implicit that bays have accommodations for the asTechs.

[Daryk]

I corresponded extensively with Cray, and that aspect never came up while we were "talking".  Granted, you cram six people into a ton's worth of infantry bay, so it shouldn't be too much trouble.  I just haven't seen it explicitly in writing that those six extra bodies are incliuded in "bay" tonnage for vehicles, 'mechs, etc.  It would impact life support calculations, so I would expect the numbers in Tech Manual to change accordingly.  That would be a relatively big change to an entire column of the table on page 239...

[jasonf]

p239
You know, I always read 'crews' as technical crew, not as the 'warriors' -- which perusing my TW the other night says basically the ones running the unit (mech/asf/vehicle).  I'll chalk this one up as a "Now I know more".

I think I'm also learning more from this thread!

At a minimum, the answer to the OP's question is "no" those 40 represent the crew/staff of the units in those bays.
For the Lung Wang, it's implicitly assumed that it's 6 MechWarriors/Pilots, 28 infantry, and 6 Techs (though TM, p. 239 suggests it should be 30 infantry, for a total of 42).

I had always thought bay personnel were the ship's personnel myself, since SO/CO assumes the ship's crew takes care of all maintenance, repairs, medical issues, etc., but I guess in BT, 11 people can manage this for a 2,600 ton ship just fine.  ???

As for where to shove the AsTechs, I usually assume I can fit one per 7 tons of cargo space (the TM rule for the size of a standard quarters)... or just ignore the issue entirely.  :-[

[AlphaMirage]

For a snap raid where you'd be hitting max 2 targets I think you'd be fairly safe without a full tech complement, machines degrade but if it was a decent shape shipping out it should be okay when it gets there as long as there is at least one tech team to undertake some PM

[Wolf72]

...
As for where to shove the AsTechs, I usually assume I can fit one per 7 tons of cargo space (the TM rule for the size of a standard quarters)... or just ignore the issue entirely.  :-[

go for 1 every 5 tons and toss them in steerage.  That gets you a 1/200 for consumable usage.  Or, go the infantry route and create an infantry bay (usually holds 28 for IS, 25 for Clan, but can hold up to 30 regardless) for AsTech quarters.  That would give them a 1/20th consumables usage.

[Daryk]

That Lung Wang would actually have enough AsTechs, assuming the MechWarriors pitch in.  6 MechWarriors, 6 Techs, and 30 AsTechs is just enough to do maintenance on 6 'Mechs...  ^-^

[SCC]

I corresponded extensively with Cray, and that aspect never came up while we were "talking".  Granted, you cram six people into a ton's worth of infantry bay, so it shouldn't be too much trouble.  I just haven't seen it explicitly in writing that those six extra bodies are incliuded in "bay" tonnage for vehicles, 'mechs, etc.  It would impact life support calculations, so I would expect the numbers in Tech Manual to change accordingly.  That would be a relatively big change to an entire column of the table on page 239...

For the third time, it's implied, CO makes the astechs part of the Lance on a permanent basis, so if a Leopard can transport a Lance then a Leopard has room, somewhere, for the astechs, and the easiest way, in fact the only way, to do that is say that it's part of a bay.

[Daryk]

Implications don't change table values in Tech Manual.  Rules do that.  To be clear, I would be DELIGHTED to have AsTechs included in the bay tonnage for things.  They way to make that happen is to successfully errata the table in Tech Manual.  Getting Infantry Bays able to accommodate Taurian platoons took me YEARS.  I wish you the best of luck in this effort, and will continue to install extra Infantry Bays (or at least CONEX boxes in the cargo bays) on my designs until you win the argument...  8)

[jasonf]

For the third time, it's implied, CO makes the astechs part of the Lance on a permanent basis, so if a Leopard can transport a Lance then a Leopard has room, somewhere, for the astechs, and the easiest way, in fact the only way, to do that is say that it's part of a bay.

Implications don't change table values in Tech Manual.  Rules do that.  To be clear, I would be DELIGHTED to have AsTechs included in the bay tonnage for things.  They way to make that happen is to successfully errata the table in Tech Manual.  Getting Infantry Bays able to accommodate Taurian platoons took me YEARS.  I wish you the best of luck in this effort, and will continue to install extra Infantry Bays (or at least CONEX boxes in the cargo bays) on my designs until you win the argument...  8)

FWIW, I agree with both of you...
On the one hand, you would like to have it be that you look something up in a detailed rulebook and it has accounted for the issues that are raised in a related rulebook.
On the other hand, clearly something fell through the cracks in accounting for the 6 AsTechs you'd expect to follow their Senior Tech along on any travel when it comes to the military bay rules, so maybe the best thing to do is to just assume they get shoved into the DropShip somewhere and not kill yourself dotting every travel i and crossing every travel t.  :bang:

I mean, the notion that you're gonna put a help-wanted ad up on a world you are raiding to seek out AsTechs because they don't fit on your DS is silly, so just assume they're in there somewhere. It's not like there's a shortage of nuances in Campaign Ops to worry about for someone trying to run a force campaign.
But at the same time, yes, it'd be nice if these were more explicitly accounted for in TM. C'est la vie...

[Failure16]

And here I thought we would finally be able to air our grievances talk about S1...

I have to say that, if BT wants to be so ridiculously detailed about certain things, then it has to pay the price. the AsTechs cannot be included into the bay's operative structure by implication, only by fiat (in its literal, not pejorative, sense) since aspects that directly affect or are affected/tracked by the presence of those living bodies are codified. But they should be, because there is too much tonnage in a given machine's travel bay, to just say "Gantries and tool chests, yah" and have it be believable--or to ignore their presence and say its accounted for when everything else needs to be accounted for.

Let's not go down the route of mech-inf versus how other infantry and vehicles are dealt with if we don't have to.

EDIT: Spelling/word choice

[Daryk]

Exactly my point, and agreed on mech-inf good sir!  :thumbsup:

[SCC]

Implications don't change table values in Tech Manual.  Rules do that.  To be clear, I would be DELIGHTED to have AsTechs included in the bay tonnage for things.  They way to make that happen is to successfully errata the table in Tech Manual.  Getting Infantry Bays able to accommodate Taurian platoons took me YEARS.  I wish you the best of luck in this effort, and will continue to install extra Infantry Bays (or at least CONEX boxes in the cargo bays) on my designs until you win the argument...  8)

What I'm talking about are rules, specifically the Reputation Score rules, while it's debatable if the number of personal you can cram into a bay is a rule (I'm talking about the exact number, it's like weapon ranges, those aren't rules either)

FWIW, I agree with both of you...
On the one hand, you would like to have it be that you look something up in a detailed rulebook and it has accounted for the issues that are raised in a related rulebook.
On the other hand, clearly something fell through the cracks in accounting for the 6 AsTechs you'd expect to follow their Senior Tech along on any travel when it comes to the military bay rules, so maybe the best thing to do is to just assume they get shoved into the DropShip somewhere and not kill yourself dotting every travel i and crossing every travel t.  :bang:

I mean, the notion that you're gonna put a help-wanted ad up on a world you are raiding to seek out AsTechs because they don't fit on your DS is silly, so just assume they're in there somewhere. It's not like there's a shortage of nuances in Campaign Ops to worry about for someone trying to run a force campaign.
But at the same time, yes, it'd be nice if these were more explicitly accounted for in TM. C'est la vie...

Yep, the 'MechWarrior plus Tech rule for 'Mech bays goes back to Battledroids lore, but the number of personal needed to maintain a 'Mech has increased (Which is kind of odd, the fiction basically says 'Mechs don't need maintenance)

And here I thought we would finally be able to air our grievances talk about S1...

I have to say that, if BT wants to be so ridiculously detailed about certain things, then it has to pay the price. the AsTechs cannot be included into the bay's operative structure by implication, only by fiat (in its literal, not pejorative, sense) since aspects that directly affect or are affected/tracked by the presence of those living bodies are codified. But they should be, because there is too much tonnage in a given machine's travel bay, to just say "Gantries and tool chests, yah" and have it be believable--or to ignore their presence and say its accounted for when everything else needs to be accounted for.

Let's not go down the route of mech-inf versus how other infantry and vehicles are dealt with if we don't have to.

EDIT: Spelling/word choice

Nope, BT makes these kind of rules slip ups, take this from CBTRPG, page 22:

Mandatory subpaths such as military Advanced Individual Training (AIT) and University Majors are not considered separate paths for purposes of this rule. However, elective subpaths such as military Special Training and University Schools are considered separate.

And this from page 41

Next Path: Tour of Duty (4), Covert Ops (4, Scout only) or
Special Training (3, part of this pass; take if character enters
Scientist, DropShip Pilot, Infantry, Marine, MechWarrior,
Armored Infantry or Scout fields)

The later quote directly contradicts the former, despite the specificity of applicability.

[Daryk]

That table in Tech Manual is as much a "rule" as the engine table.  Thing X weighs Y and does Z.

3rd edition was a mess in a lot of ways, but that's not important right now...

[Failure16]

SCC, sure, everyone makes mistakes, game developers included. But that doesn't mean we or they should rush into a faulty judgment or ruling by saying something that goes against the foundational framework of all the associated rules once a question is posed or a lack is illuminated.