Need lots of input

[jshkornmiller]

Yes, i thought of that after i posted that, i guess i stick with my first post, with all due respect. At most i really only ever put 12-14 crew members on Gneisenau's gunboat.

[farmerman]

I'm not an expert on capital ships, so I'm not kind of extrapolating. I would like to see the results though. I think a manual of the sort is a really good idea!

I do have a transport, and this made me actually tally the numbers. I think I'm going to have 28 crew from now on (it's 23 now). This is how I break it down - maybe it can help?

1 Captain
10 generic grunts, who would be hired/replaced frequently
5 Specialized Scientific types (it carries alien organisms)
2 shifts of the following:

1 Lieutenant/shift captain
2 Pilots
1 Navigator
2 Engineers

So I imagine for a warship, the specialized types would be related to weaponry and combine with the engineers, so maybe 25-30?

For a cruiser then, maybe 50? And double that for a battleship.

It would certainly vary by ship type, who is outfitting it (Liberty has a lot more resources than the Rogues I'd think), and its assignment.

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Faction info links: Samura Heavy Industries : LWB : Watchers

[Titan]

I agree with Virus on this one, there is no mention of automation or anything in that manner in FL, apart from what players came up with. The main difference I'd have is between lawful and unlawful ships, unlawfuls in my opinion wouldn't have as many people onboard as a lawful ship would, harder to maintain and loyalty is a big issue on their ships. Unlike military ships where you can have literally hundreds of troops that are coordinated by a single command structure. I know comparing universes or realities is bad, but consider the amount of automatization on star trek for example, and look at just one of their galaxy class starships which had 1000+ crew onboard. I don't think FL is even close to that level of automatization or technology, its more like an industrial/futuristic setting. Factories still powered by men and women instead of robots. Look at Rheinland, Texas and such. Same probably goes for ships.

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[Tenacity]

I agree with Virus on this one, there is no mention of automation or anything in that manner in FL, apart from what players came up with. The main difference I'd have is between lawful and unlawful ships, unlawfuls in my opinion wouldn't have as many people onboard as a lawful ship would, harder to maintain and loyalty is a big issue on their ships. Unlike military ships where you can have literally hundreds of troops that are coordinated by a single command structure. I know comparing universes or realities is bad, but consider the amount of automatization on star trek for example, and look at just one of their galaxy class starships which had 1000+ crew onboard. I don't think FL is even close to that level of automatization or technology, its more like an industrial/futuristic setting. Factories still powered by men and women instead of robots. Look at Rheinland, Texas and such. Same probably goes for ships.

yea we could look at rheinland or texas... or we could look at the robots present in almost every system to some degree =P

In star trek, ships carried not only personnel but their families, which is reasonable for a much larger exploration ship.

I think that, in freelancer, if you want to count "marines" or other military personnel that arent essential to the ship's operation, you would only do so on house military ships where more people are available, or on specific ships which are designed for military troop transport. You'd be more likely to have armored transports converted for military use than to see a battleship trying to unload marines onto a planet a few at a time with shuttles. Remember - our large ships cant land in atmospheres, they dock at mooring fixtures and take shuttles to and from the surface.

I'm just not seeing what all these hundreds or thousands of crew members would be doing. Most militaries - especially groups like the order - arent going to have hundreds of extra people with absolutely no job onboard a ship. You have your basic command team, basic support team, basic engineering team, and basic security team... past that you dont really need much. Ship boardings dont take place often here, and when they do it usually only involves a few dozen people at most (as in the case of boarding a transport).

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[Elvin]

GS: 1-10
GB (depends on the type): 1-20 (But like was said 1 will have some big problems with doing everything)
Cruisers: Around 50, to make everything working fine
BCs: 50-150 (Like albatross needs more, since its very big, and also depends on purpose of the ship, IE research vessel should have more than standart)
BSes: 50-500 (depends on the ship type, and again purpose, IE Rheinland battleship should have more than BHG BS)

Itall varies with RP... You can have only the crwe that in NEEDED, for example, piloting BS alone in not really possible, but with 50 people, it may be done, but there should be problems when it comes to repairs and such, the same with the rest. Also count in the fact that when you have more people than you need, the ship may be a little crowded, you have to pay them a lot and you are responsibile for theire lifes.

EDIT: What I mean, you ahve 500 crew, you are destroyed... its not " Hell, I have to spend 750k on hiring new crew" it should be " Holy shi* five hunderts of people have nearly died because of my fault * falls to deep depression* ... Im never going to fly that big ship ever again!"

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I buy things I don't want to make an impression on people I don't like.

[Titan]

The military ships should always have extra troops, security, boarding, bla bla, many reasons. So I think 1000 is a reasonable number for a battleship, or say a carrier. Imagine a carrier having say...20 fighters, which is a small number, for that alone you'd need around 60 people, 3 shifts would be probably standard and reasonable. Military starships don't operate with a skeleton crew, as someone said, you may be able to fly the ship with 50 people, but that doesn't mean 50 people should be on it. Pirate capital ships perhaps, skeleton crew would be something reasonable for them, depending on how organized the pirates are, but as I said, military ones would have big crew numbers in my opinion.

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[Tenacity]

most of the time fighters are restricted to a single pilot until he winds up dead. You dont have 3 people using the same fighter craft in almost every space-scifi out there. Even our current militaries dont do that often, because people develop a bond of sorts with the plane they fly, and usually have their name or callsign etched onto the side of the cockpit.

And again, we very rarely have boarding actions here, it was never mentioned in the original FL campaign other than landing a small squad of people on a base or planet. Chances are it's extremely difficult to board a hostile craft in space unless you've disabled all of it's systems first, so there's really no reason to have boarding crew on a ship unless the ship is specifically designed for boarding actions. Most ships will carry a small security force to defend against such things, or to assist on off-ship military operations, but unless it's a marine transport it probably wont have more than a skeleton security crew.

And once more... we dont have people shoveling coal into our ship's engines, which is where a large majority of WW2 ship crew were working. They had 3-4 or more shifts of 20-50 people all shoveling coal to keep the steam engines running, which made up a huge portion of that ship's crew.

I dunno, I just see our ships working more like submarines which all have fairly small crews due to space restrictions and really not needing all that many. A modern day nuclear submarine has aroughly 100-150 crew, and the majority of those are guys greasing torpedoes or repairing ship systems when they go bad.

Hell... the akula class russian nuclear subs only had a complement of 40-60, while typhoons had over 160. I suppose the typhoon would be more like a battleship, it was the largest military submarine ever built... the akula would be more like a cruiser.

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[n00bl3t]

GB/GS:
10

Cruisers/Destroyers:
50

Battleships/Dreadnoughts:
100/150.

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Anything I say is not intended as offensive, and to try and deliberately misinterpret it as such would be an attempt at trolling via misrepresentation.

It's not a conspiracy, it's localised bias. They're not intelligent enough to form a conspiracy.

[Elvin]

When I think about it, except the carrier, most of battleships cant most likely even have 1000 people on them, it would be so crowded, like 30 people per room. That would be nasty, even though you can board any take ove any station in Sirius:D

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I buy things I don't want to make an impression on people I don't like.

[MrCynical]

A gunboat is six, at least according to the devs. No, I'm not a dev and nor do I have the ability to read minds remotely via the internet tubes. But NPC gunboats (the Molly one I dodged today anyway) have 6 pilots in them.

Remember of course that future technology means fewer people than we would imagine can operate a ship. The British Navy's (irl) new destroyers have a significantly smaller crew - just think how far this automation advances by the time of FL/Disco.

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No longer active online due to a dwindling amount of non-PvP (trading, pirating, mining, etc.) fun in the new version.