Casualties
When a vessel takes damage, the ship's personnel often receive a fair share of the pain. Most systems indicate the percentage of the crew that is injured when that system is damaged. These rules indicate how to designate who is injured, the extent of the injuries and the medical procedures that should respond.
Taking Casualties
When a system takes damage, the number of personnel injured in that specific act can be easily determined by multiplying the total crew number by the system's provided personnel percentage. So, for example, if a torpedo launcher onboard a Constitution class explorer takes damage, 2% of the ship's 430 crew (8.6, rounded to 9) are either injured or killed. To determine how many are killed outright (meaning, there is no chance to medically save), the type of estimated damage (per the Events Damage Table) must be considered. The established level of damage on the below table indicates what percentage of the casualties are minimally injured, critically injured and killed immediately.
| Damage Level | Minor | Critical | Killed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimal | 80% | 20% | 0% |
| Marginal | 60% | 30% | 10% |
| Major | 40% | 40% | 20% |
| Massive | 20% | 40% | 40% |
| Disaster | 10% | 30% | 60% |
| Catastrophic | 0% | 25% | 75% |
All casualties are immediately unable to conduct any further actions. Those with minor injuries may return to duty as soon as they are treated by medical personnel. However, all medical personnel may be tied up with saving the lives of the critically injured.
To determine which personnel are no longer available due to injury, it is necessary to compartmentalize the crew by departments. Most personnel fall into one of the following departments: Command, Operations, Engineering, Security, Medical and Sciences. Generally speaking, if a damaged system is located in engineering spaces (ex: impulse engines), then only engineering personnel will suffer the casualties. If a weapons system is the one damaged, it would probably fall solely on security personnel. And the same could be said for medical facilities and its personnel. But more general spaces will see an even mix of injuries spread throughout the departments. The bridge, for example, can see operations, command and science personnel all injured, if its systems are damaged.
A more generic method of tracking casualties would be faster, in which the types of personnel are not determined, but with a decreasing Crew skill that matches the loss of active crewmembers. The following table shows the percentage loss of Crew skill at the current crew levels. Be aware, as the ship's captain is also open to injury or death, if this method of tracking injuries is followed, each new instance of crew casualty must also result in a roll against the captain's well-being, as a percentage of his crew. Therefore, for simplicity's sake and the art of the story, for every system that has a casualty rate of 5% or higher, the captain has a 5% chance of being a casualty. One exception: if it is the bridge that is damaged, then there is a 15% chance the captain is injured. His status (minor, critical or killed) is also rolled at the time of his injury (per the damage level).
| Percentage of Full Strength |
Penalty |
|---|---|
| 100-76% | no penalty |
| 75-51% | -20% |
| 50-26% | -40% |
| 25-11% | -60% |
| 10% or lower | -80% |
Until crew levels are restored above 75% of total crew numbers, every Crew skill roll will be reduced by the above penalty.
Treatment
Medical teams on a starship are made up of 10 medical personnel: 1 surgeon and 9 nurses and corpsman. In each hour following the event leading to crew casualties, a medical team can perform surgery one on critical patient and work to stabilize 14 other critical patients for forthcoming surgery. Each additional medical person (above the 10-person team) can work to stabilize two additional patients. Within that hour, one Crew skill roll is made for each patient under the team's care (i.e., up to 15 rolls). If it passes, the surgical patient is saved (upgraded from 'critical' to 'serious') and the waiting critical patients remain stabilized. If any of the rolls fail, that patient dies immediately. (If the captain is critically injured, he will be taken to immediate surgery by an available medical team.)
Medical personnel not engaged in surgery or stabilization of critical patients may instead treat patients with minor injuries. Each medical person (doctor, nurse or corpsman) may see up to 4 minor patients an hour. These patients may then return to active duty, increasing the available crew number.
Healing
Once critical patients have undergone successful surgery, they are upgraded to 'serious' condition. As long as they remain under medical supervision, they are upgraded to 'moderate' condition after 1d6 days. These moderate patients are released to full duty 3 days after that. If, for some reason, medical personnel are no longer available, patients rated as 'minor' can return to active duty in 1d6 days, while moderate patients will be upgraded to 'minor' in 2d10 days. Critical patients without medical oversight will not last an hour.