Lowering the education barrier in Engineering

[ImmortalRedshirt]

Currently, the requirements to be an engineer on the ship are a Bachelor's degree or seven years of experience, and a PhD if you want to go CE. Given the sort of responsibilities on the ship, these requirements are excessive. Even with the "it's abstracted to be easier to play" policy we have in place to help mitigate powergaming, the core loop of the job is much closer to that of a service technician than an actual engineer. If those jobs have some kind of formal education tied to them, it's usually a two-year Associate's degree, and they use those two years to the fullest, packing in all the knowledge one needs on why things work, how to set things up and use all your equipment, and how to fix it if things go wrong, as well as a bit of the sciences so you can figure out if something you do is going to break things. These are all things that everyone in this department is expected to know, and any greater theory is largely irrelevant to the day-to-day activities. Actual engineers, on the other hand, spend all their education learning about the theory and how to sit at a desk(in fact, I've never encountered a real engineer that understood how to use these tools, or even basic workshop safety). Best way to put it is "Engineers will tell you how fast water is leaking out of a pipe, the technician will actually fix it for you." On a ship like the Horizon, I think the crew would much rather have the technician.

Basically, bump down the minimum requirements for engineering to an Associate's in the relevant field and/or somewhere around five years of experience, and the CE to something a bit more advanced to reflect their greater expertise and managerial experience.

[Carver]

In the past, we had alt-titles such as Maintenance Technician and Electrician for such, but they were removed because they tended toward a reasonable line of thought: "If I'm not an Engineer, then the Engine isn't my problem"

To that effect, I would rather see a separate lower-tier and lower-pay role introduced than further encouragement to have unrealistically young characters within the department.

 

[Dreamix]

I think the seven years for an engineer is fine. Engineers absolutely are not just "service technicians".

Engineers have to know A LOT of different systems, and since we're a ship that can go places for a long time, they should be able to do more than just service these systems. Rebuild, optimize, rearrange, etc. Power, electrics, atmos, gravity generator, propulsion, sensors, and I'm probably forgetting a few things still.

Our engineers should both be able to "tell you how fast water is leaking out of a pipe" and also "actually fix it for you". And in practice, they do both, with engineers commonly optimizing power and propulsion.

 

If anything, I think higher requirements are good to avoid characters that are low-educated and/or young, but at the same time know all these systems and could rebuild whole horizon from scratch.

Edited August 30, 2023 by Dreamix

[ImmortalRedshirt]

9 hours ago, Dreamix said:

Rebuild, optimize, rearrange, etc.

Except we do that too. Several times, I've had to do things like optimize the timing of systems, machine entirely new parts, completely tear down and overhaul engines, and many more things, all without the future tech this setting has. Contrast this with actual engineers, who's closest brush with any of these things is telling someone else to do it, because their job isn't to work directly with these systems, it's to design a 2 percent more efficient nozzle in AutoCAD.

Part of the problem does arise from the name we've chosen for this department, as it infers an entirely different set of skills and responsibilities that does not line up with the actual loop.

[Sneakyranger]

23 minutes ago, ImmortalRedshirt said:

Except we do that too. Several times, I've had to do things like optimize the timing of systems, machine entirely new parts, completely tear down and overhaul engines, and many more things, all without the future tech this setting has. Contrast this with actual engineers, who's closest brush with any of these things is telling someone else to do it, because their job isn't to work directly with these systems, it's to design a 2 percent more efficient nozzle in AutoCAD.

Part of the problem does arise from the name we've chosen for this department, as it infers an entirely different set of skills and responsibilities that does not line up with the actual loop.

I suggest thinking about the engineering department in a space program sort of way.

Engineers are one of the two closest approximations of actual modern astronauts. A NASA mission specialist is a broad category but generally boils down to aurora-type engineering and research, both of which our engineers do. Even putting out of our minds the engineers who do things like tweak propulsion to increase thrust, every single engineer is involved in research to a degree because the Tesla is an experimental engine - probably. It certainly was at some point, but since it has no lore whether it still is is technically up for debate.

Naval engineers are also a good way to think about it, given that we are on a ship. Even completely civilian ships have a chief engineer who maintains the ship; it is true that those individuals don't require a doctorate program, but they're also dealing with water instead of space, so given the infinitely more hostile nature of a vacuum an increase in education seems appropriate.

I don't particularly want to call out the space mechanic archetype that is so pervasive in engineering because even I think it's a fun archetype to play and interact with. However, it's reasonable to assume that working on a ship like the Horizon would require a lot of experience or a lot of education and the space mechanic archetype often (but not always!) seems to forget that, and I feel like lowering the education requirements would encourage the space mechanic archetype even more than it already does while limiting the astronaut-esque archetype. 

 

[Dreamix]

I agree with everything Sneaky said above this post, it is pretty much what I think but presented more eloquently.

 

1 hour ago, ImmortalRedshirt said:

Contrast this with actual engineers, who's closest brush with any of these things is telling someone else to do it, because their job isn't to work directly with these systems, it's to design a 2 percent more efficient nozzle in AutoCAD.

I think this is just your specific IRL experience. Who's to say it couldn't work differently in our in game universe? Why couldn't engineers do actual field work? At least in the case of spaceship engineers.

Edited August 30, 2023 by Dreamix

[ShakyJake]

I don't think it's fair to equate the environment of a huge spaceship in the future to be so similar to that of something like naval ships in the current day IRL. You're dealing with systems that are far more complex, with less room for error. There's a lot more challenges to keeping a ship in the vacuum of space operational, especially one so advanced as the Horizon. I feel like that kind of environment demands people that are both capable of the hands-on technical work, as well the more advanced theoretical knowledge behind what they're actually doing, so that they know how to actually fix and operate things in a way that doesn't screw everything up. You'd want these people to have a much more thorough knowledge of what's going on behind the scenes with what they're dealing with here, because there's really a lot going on, and a lot that can go wrong.

I think the requirements of a minimum of a bachelors, or alternatively seven years of work experience is perfectly reasonable as is. IRL in the modern day we may keep engineers and technicians very separate because we can get away with that, but I don't think the same could be said for the environment we'd see on future spacecraft. There's good reason for the requirements we have on mission specialists even just on current day spacecraft and space stations, and I have a hard time imagining that changing in the future.

[ImmortalRedshirt]

Ok, at this point I think it might be time to clarify the nature of work tied to Associate's degrees and technician jobs in general, jobs that do things that are very much like what is done on the ship. It is not unskilled labor that you can learn in a week, it's as far from it as you can get. From the start of your education until its end your head gets filled with the most minute details about everything to do with the machine. Not only will you know how to tackle any relevant problem, as well as the math and science behind such, but you'll also be getting quite a few ideas on how you can change how it works with what you've got, and you'll have the hands-on expertise to handle all of it. With the right equipment and a few helping hands you can tear down a vehicle and put it all back together better than when it rolled off the production line. You also know how to make do when you don't have the perfect stuff for the job(like making a basic gasket out of a cereal box and some rubber cement) and how to handle an emergency quickly and effectively. All this and more is stuff one is expected to know on the Horizon, none of it is taught in any four-year engineering program, and I don't expect that to change in the future. Just as an understanding of computers was woven into two-year degrees for technicians, so too would working in the vacuum of space be integrated.