Skills of a Starfleet Officer

[tenketsu]

Hi guys. I'm new here, but I've been a huge Trekkie for life, ever since I watched the first airing of TNG as a kid.

I'm posting here now because in my spare time I've been working on a Star Trek fan game, and this seemed the best place to ask for some feedback on the way I'm designing skills. I'm trying to accomplish three goals with the game--maintaining Star Trek "realism", capturing the spirit of the shows (primarily for this game, the multi-role ship in or near Federation territory, ala TOS/TNG/ENT), and making it fun to play. I figure you guys could be a great resource to help me do that--even the non-gamers among you ought to have some strong opinions on the first two goals, right?

In the interests of goal #3, making it fun to play, I've decided that each major shipboard role should have 3 associated skills of roughly equal importance to that role, and there should be 3 general skills representing ability to function in the chain of command regardless of role. Let me show what I have so far, so you can see what I mean.

Engineering: Material Engineering, Systems Engineering, Reactor Engineering
Security: Close Combat, Ranged Combat, Investigation
Science: Physical Science, Space Science, Life Science
Operations: Sensors, Force Fields, Power Distribution
Officer: Administration, Command, Teamwork

Tactical: Ship Weapons, Ship Shields
Flight Controller: Piloting
Medical: Treat Injuries, Treat Illness
Counselor: Psychology

As you can see, I've had some trouble thinking of a way to get three skills out of the Tactical or Medical role, and even two out of the Flight Controller or Counselor. The easiest solution I can think of is to fold Flight Controller into Tactical and Counselor into Medical, but 1) that's not good for game balance and 2) they're separate positions on a ship, so I don't like it.

So! Any thoughts on better ways to organize/divide skills, or even just better names for skills, are very welcome.

[T'Girl]

In TOS, the helmsman (Sulu) would be the both the ship's pilot and the gunner.

The TOS navigator would also be the secondary gunner.

[tenketsu]

T'Girl wrote:

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In TOS, the helmsman (Sulu) would be the both the ship's pilot and the gunner.

The TOS navigator would also be the secondary gunner.

Ah yeah, I forgot to mention that to start with it's going to cover the TNG-DS9-VOY era. If it goes well I want to extend it back all the way to ENT, though.

Also, the same character can fill more than one role (like Worf and Tuvok being both Chief Tactical and Chief Security), but not if the role requires a separate console (like on the Galaxy class, there's no way Worf could've been both Tactical and Conn at the same time)

[Melakon]

With 24th century LCARS, I believe every console can be reconfigured (if I understood Sternbach & Okuda's TNG Technical Manual). So it might be possible to run Conn control through Tactical, or any other console.

[tenketsu]

Melakon wrote:

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With 24th century LCARS, I believe every console can be reconfigured (if I understood Sternbach & Okuda's TNG Technical Manual). So it might be possible to run Conn control through Tactical, or any other console.

Well there seem to be some restrictions (even if it's just a restriction in the sense of being a lot of time/effort to get around it) since there's a great many functions that seem to only be available from consoles on the bridge, battle bridge, or engineering. Within bridge consoles, though, yeah, that's my understanding as well.

But Paris/Geordi didn't seem particularly skilled at manning Tactical, and while Worf did some early duty at Conn we never saw (to my recollection) Yar or Tuvok take the helm or any hint they were particularly good at it.

And I want different Tactical officers to have more than 2 different skills to distinguish between each other, and I definitely want Flight Controllers to have more than 1. But I don't want so many that it becomes overwhelming/unmanageable. 3 seems like the magic number.