Scott Martin
SOC-13
I've been working on and off developing a "player" sized starship that is configurable for a variety of roles (mostly using TNE's FF&S) and ran into something that was making me scratch my head.
When I calculated the engineering crew size (for a ~300 dT ship) for a "blockade runner" configuration my jaw dropped.
TNE aparrently needs *significantly* more engineering crew than HG: I was just wondering if this happened in MT, or if this is "new" for TNE (and T4, which uses the same calculations) I realize that TNE ships "should" have more crew than CT ships because of reduced automation (eek virus...) but T4 doesn't HAVE virus, so why keep the inflated crew levels?
TNE / T4 assigns engineering crew by powerplant output, not by engine size, so M-drive and J-Drive don't need engineering crew (of course they *do* need maintenance crew, which comes out to about 1/2 the "engineering" crew required for HG anyway, and then you get to add "maintenance" crew but I digress)
To illustrate, Let's assume that we have 35 dT of powerplant. Here's a neat little table of the power plant output, number of engineers etc. (if TNE and T4 reconcile with HG, then an EP is 84 MW) </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> Engineers
TL Output (MW) HG TNE
9 980 1 16
11 980 1 13
13 1470 1 14
15 2940 1 19</pre>[/QUOTE]Add to this the 2-3 additional "Command" crew needed and the extra couple of "maintenance" folks and this seems to really be over the top. I didn't actually notice this in earlier FF&S designs, since I largely designed fairly low-thrust military ships, and expected them to have lots of crew. It became a bit of a sore thumb when changing roles changed the crew size by a factor of 5, with a reconfiguration of less than 10% of the ship (and no weapons added!) For concrete numbers, this changed a "merchant" hull requiring 4 crew into a "FedEx" hull requiring more than 20. The same "FedEx" hull with a huge J-Drive and tiny M-Drive took a whopping 5 crew...
It also kills one of the main points of large commercial ships, which is reduced crew requirements: if 1 large ship takes almost exactly the same crew as a 10 small ships 1/10th the size, why would you ever build the large ship?
So in a roundabout way, my question is this: What would you *expect* the crew of a small starship to be and how much larger should the "military" ship crew be compared to a "civilian" design?
My cut at this would be that a small ship (packet freighter, no significant passenger capability) should carry the following crew:
-Electronics (Sensors / Commo)
-Nav
-Pilot
-Engineer
-Purser (Optional)
The Captain would probably hold down one of the non-engineer slots, and cross-training would have the "watch" held by the first three crew in rotation, with no formal watch held for 5 days after jump initiation. The Purser would be in charge of the cargo, and would double as a gunner if the ship was armed.
A military ship of the same size (200-400 dTons) would add a few gunners, an additional sensors/electronics rating, backup for the pilot or nav (probably one of the gunners) and an additional engineer. If troops are needed, I could see 8 troopers doubling as gunners.
This has my expectations of a small ship crew running in the 4-16 range, which is conveniently a nice size for a player character group. Am I missing something, or does this jive with the expectations of the rest of you folks out there?
On a somewhat related tangent: if you expect crew sizes of 4-16 on a 200-400dT ship, please let the folks in the T5 forums know that they should be looking at alternatives to FF&S for crew levels.
Scott Martin
When I calculated the engineering crew size (for a ~300 dT ship) for a "blockade runner" configuration my jaw dropped.
TNE aparrently needs *significantly* more engineering crew than HG: I was just wondering if this happened in MT, or if this is "new" for TNE (and T4, which uses the same calculations) I realize that TNE ships "should" have more crew than CT ships because of reduced automation (eek virus...) but T4 doesn't HAVE virus, so why keep the inflated crew levels?
TNE / T4 assigns engineering crew by powerplant output, not by engine size, so M-drive and J-Drive don't need engineering crew (of course they *do* need maintenance crew, which comes out to about 1/2 the "engineering" crew required for HG anyway, and then you get to add "maintenance" crew but I digress)
To illustrate, Let's assume that we have 35 dT of powerplant. Here's a neat little table of the power plant output, number of engineers etc. (if TNE and T4 reconcile with HG, then an EP is 84 MW) </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> Engineers
TL Output (MW) HG TNE
9 980 1 16
11 980 1 13
13 1470 1 14
15 2940 1 19</pre>[/QUOTE]Add to this the 2-3 additional "Command" crew needed and the extra couple of "maintenance" folks and this seems to really be over the top. I didn't actually notice this in earlier FF&S designs, since I largely designed fairly low-thrust military ships, and expected them to have lots of crew. It became a bit of a sore thumb when changing roles changed the crew size by a factor of 5, with a reconfiguration of less than 10% of the ship (and no weapons added!) For concrete numbers, this changed a "merchant" hull requiring 4 crew into a "FedEx" hull requiring more than 20. The same "FedEx" hull with a huge J-Drive and tiny M-Drive took a whopping 5 crew...
It also kills one of the main points of large commercial ships, which is reduced crew requirements: if 1 large ship takes almost exactly the same crew as a 10 small ships 1/10th the size, why would you ever build the large ship?
So in a roundabout way, my question is this: What would you *expect* the crew of a small starship to be and how much larger should the "military" ship crew be compared to a "civilian" design?
My cut at this would be that a small ship (packet freighter, no significant passenger capability) should carry the following crew:
-Electronics (Sensors / Commo)
-Nav
-Pilot
-Engineer
-Purser (Optional)
The Captain would probably hold down one of the non-engineer slots, and cross-training would have the "watch" held by the first three crew in rotation, with no formal watch held for 5 days after jump initiation. The Purser would be in charge of the cargo, and would double as a gunner if the ship was armed.
A military ship of the same size (200-400 dTons) would add a few gunners, an additional sensors/electronics rating, backup for the pilot or nav (probably one of the gunners) and an additional engineer. If troops are needed, I could see 8 troopers doubling as gunners.
This has my expectations of a small ship crew running in the 4-16 range, which is conveniently a nice size for a player character group. Am I missing something, or does this jive with the expectations of the rest of you folks out there?
On a somewhat related tangent: if you expect crew sizes of 4-16 on a 200-400dT ship, please let the folks in the T5 forums know that they should be looking at alternatives to FF&S for crew levels.
Scott Martin