A Credit to the Service: Crew Salaries Across Editions

I was recently preparing for an upcoming session of Traveller when I fell down a rather interesting rabbit hole. The PC’s ship, the Starjammer, has a minimum crew of 4 in Mongoose Traveller 2e: Pilot, Astrogator, and 2 Engineers. Although multiple PCs have the Pilot and Astrogator skill, only one PC has the Engineer skill.

I thought this gap would make for an interesting scenario: the starport impounds their ship until the PCs can demonstrate they meet the minimum crew requirements. As most of my players are fairly unfamiliar with Traveller, this setup provides a nice opportunity to introduce the dreaded Imperial bureaucracy, explain the various crew positions of a starship, and to give them a reason to explore the starport and try their hands at recruiting.

I ultimately wanted to give the PCs some interesting choices to fill the missing Engineer position. They could try to find an Engineer willing to work for passage, or hire one. They could contract a guest clone. Or perhaps they might buy a robot or android with the Engineer skill. Or upload a new computer program. (I quickly ruled out this last option.)

This immediately led to some questions: just what are the minimum qualifications needed? Which choices would be available to the PCs based upon the star system, and how easy would these choices be to track down? What are the trade-offs between the different choices? I assumed that the options would vary by cost, quality, and length of commitment and that each choice would offer pros and cons. Human labor might be cheap but unreliable and short-term; robots might be expensive up-front but better long-term investments.

To start, I looked at the human option.

Recruiting

There are at least two different systems for recruiting starship crewmembers. Assignment Vigilante has a detailed system based on the troop recruitment system in Mercenary. Both systems differentiate potential recruits into four categories determined by career history: recruits have served 0-1 terms, regulars 2-3 terms, veterans 4-6 terms; elite NPCs have 4 or more terms using the enhanced generation system, which provides more skills. The Vigilante system calculates the number of respondents by category to a recruiting posting based on the local Starport, Population, Government, Law, TL, and so on.

This approach is useful for the recruiting of a large crew for a capital ship or similar. For Adventure-class starships, I much prefer the role-playing approach of The Traveller Book, in which the PCs advertise and then interview applicants: “Of course, applicants will be limited (perhaps 1D; one to six applicants per week), and the adventurers cannot be too choosy” (98).

I generated a handful of crewmembers with either naval or merchant backgrounds and levels in Engineer. What would each of these NPCs cost to hire on? In Mongoose Traveller 2e, monthly salaries for crew are detailed in the “Running Cost Summary” table on page 145 of the core rulebook. But as I didn’t see any details on minimum qualifications for each position, I started looking at other editions. And then I realized just how different the different editions are when it comes to starship crews.

Crew Requirements

All of the various editions establish minimum numbers of crew for starships based on the size of the ship, number of passengers, mission, and so on. These minimum crew numbers are divided into different required positions. These positions are fairly consistent across editions, which masks some of the underlying differences.

In almost all editions, the Starjammer should have a minimum crew of 1 Pilot, 1 Navigator (Astrogator), 2 Engineers, and 1 Medic. (Only MgT doesn’t have the ship’s doctor requirement, but one PC happens to be an Ex-Army soldier with Medic 3 who could serve in the role.) It’s only when you dig down into the details do you see the crew differences between editions.

So what are the qualifications for occupying one of these positions, and how much would it pay? In some editions, it depends upon the crewmember’s experience and rating with the associated skill. So let’s look at the expected skill levels for engineers of different experience levels across editions. The associated skill levels by term vary based on system:

Engineer Skill Levels by Terms Across Editions

Classification	Terms	Expected Max Skill Level
		CT/MT	MgT	T5
Recruit	1	1	0	1
Regular	2	2	1	2
Veteran	4	3	2	4
Elite	5	4	3	6

Note that these assumed skill levels are a fairly coarse estimate, and there is a LOT of variability due the vagaries of character generation.

Further, it’s important to point out how the Engineer skill differs across editions. In CT and MT, there is only one Engineering skill, which covers “the operation and maintenance of starship maneuver drives, jump drives, and power plants.” In MgT and Traveller⁵, there are various subskill specializations under the Engineer skill: J-drive, M-drive, life support, and power.

Calculating Salaries

Now that we have established the different types of engineers that might be recruited, we can calculate their expected salaries by system.

Classic Traveller

Referring to The Traveller Book, “Crew members must be paid monthly. Non-player characters must be paid using the standard crew salary schedule” (52). Standard crew salaries—and the minimum skill level required by position—are detailed on pages 55 and 59.

Note that The Traveller Book suggests two different salary modifications to reflect expertise or seniority. On pages 52 and 55, crew salaries increase +10% for each level of expertise above level 1. On pages 59 and 60, the most skilled engineer, steward, medic, and gunner on the crew are given titles (chief engineer, purser, ship's doctor, and chief gunner) along with +10% more pay.

All CT positions require a minimum relevent skill level of 1, except for Steward, which can be level 0. An engineer recruit with Engineering-1, then, would command the minimum Cr4,000 per month while an elite engineer with Engineering-4 would draw Cr5,200 per month. If she were also the chief engineer she would draw Cr5,600 per month.

MegaTraveller

Crew salaries are described in the Imperial Encyclopedia on page 89, which mirrors the language from The Traveller Book. That said, the formula on page 93 is a bit more complicated and far less generous than CT: “Engineering Crew: Cr500 times [Basic Rank Number] plus 10% for each level of Engineering skill.” For simplification purposes, assume terms and rank are equal, even though terms generally outpace rank.

An engineer recruit, then would command only 14% of what they would in CT: Cr550 per month. An elite engineer gets Cr3,500, which is only 67% of what they would in CT. While I didn’t see a minimum skill level for crew positions, the Imperial Encyclopedia notes “In order to be hired for working passage, the individual must have some expertise in the position for which he or she is hired” (87).

Mongoose Traveller

As noted previously, in Mongoose Traveller, crew salaries by position are detailed on page 145 of the core rulebook. All engineer positions are paid Cr4,000 per month, consistent with CT. But there is no differentiation for prior rank or skill levels, so our elite engineer draws no more salary than the recruit.

In some ways this makes sense: MgT characters have many level 0 skills, but relatively fewer higher rank skills than CT or MT. This is offset by the fact that MgT skill checks are modified by characteristics, allowing MgT characters to be comparable to CT characters with higher skill levels. This also means that an NPC with low skill level but a high characteristic score might be better at some applications of their skill than an NPC with a higher skill level but a low characteristic score. Why should the veteran with shaky hands and blurry vision get paid substantially more than the young whippersnapper with the steady hands and sharp eyes, if they both have similar levels of competence?

There doesn’t seem to be a minimum skill level to qualify for a crew position, which also makes sense given the dearth of skills above level 0 in MgT. If you set the bar for crew qualification at level 1 you might have a hard time crewing even a small starship in MgT.

Traveller⁵

This edition takes a very different approach to crew salaries. In MegaTraveller, you are paying for the person based on their experience and expertise. In Traveller⁵, you pay for the position based on the needs of the ship. The base salary is Cr100, multiplied by the minimum skill level needed for the position. As with MgT, an overqualified veteran, therefore, gets paid the same as the qualified engineer with much less experience.

The minimum skill level for the Engineer is equal to ship’s power plant (Book 1, page 44). I’ve got to admit, I have a very hard time following the Traveller⁵ design sequence here, but I think this should read the “ship’s power plant potential,” which I think should be 5 for the Starjammer.

Traveller⁵ further distinguishes between a standard engineer and the chief engineer, which should be rated at the power plant +1. So I think the salary should range from Cr500 to Cr600. At the recruit level, this is only 13% of the salary of a CT or MgT engineer, but roughly comparable to MT. But pity the poor elite engineer in T5: he’s only getting 12% of the CT salary! Even if I am wrong about the power plant, a potential 8 plant requires a Engineer-8 crewmember, whose pay is only Cr800 per month: 16% of the MgT salary.

Ship Engineer Salaries Across Editions

Classification	Monthly Salary (Cr)
	CT	MT	MgT	T5
Recruit	4,000	550	4,000	500
Regular	4,400	1,200	4,000	500
Veteran	4,800	2,600	4,000	500
Elite	5,200	3,500	4,000	600

Given that prices for common items are generally consistent across the different editions, the disparity in crew salaries was a bit surprising to me. Although almost certainly unintentional, “In CT/MT you pay for the person, and in MgT/T5 you pay for the position” reflects a fundamental change in the nature of professional work between the late 1970s/early 1980s and the early 2020s. Where once experience and time in service could have been expected to be reflected in salary, not so much today—even with record low employment. Interestingly, no system I looked at considered adjusting salary schedules based on EDU scores! Evidently in space, there are no MBAs.

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