jrrt@hogpd.UUCP (10/27/83)
Captain Altek recently asked the net for ideas on what to do during long Hyperspace jumps. He mentioned that his crew has been teaching each other some skills, but he was looking for alternatives. As Capt. Altek's First Officer, I'd like to make a few quick comments. First, it was crucial that we did teach each other at least a few of the critical skills required to run an Empress Morava-class merchant. I am the Engineering Officer, and was the only one with Mechanical skill. If I was incapacitated, and the ship's life support system started acting up (which it did), we would have been in trouble. Skills should have backups. And I respectfully disagree with rene, who suggested that only people with Instructor skill should be able to teach skills. It would certainly help the process, but just because I don't have an education degree doesn't mean that I can't teach Freshman Calculus, or Electronics I. Our GM lets us teach each other, and the length of time for the learning depends on a lot of factors: Intelligence and Education of teacher and student, skill level of teacher and student, quality of study time (are there lots of long distractions, etc). We do other things while in Hyperspace besides go to school. We write *lots* of computer code (God, those programs are a bitch to debug), we research planetary cultures (the GM is running *Twilight's Peak* -- seen any octagonal buildings lately?), and we do a few things that the Captain doesn't know about (For instance, I've made a few unauthorized "repairs" to the ship). Nonetheless, Captain Altek was right: any new ideas for how to spend time in Hyperspace would be appreciated. Thanks. Rob Mitchell hogpd!jrrt aka Jan Knudsen, Major, IMC (Ret.) 1st Officer on the Michael Finn