Small capital ships and crew

[AshHill07]

I'm not really sure how many would be required to run my LABC. I put 50 on the list just as a sort of guess.

I only really RP with 6 of them anyway. And even then the ones in my sig are the only ones in-game. You know. Shift duties and sometimes if my mates over and I let them take over for a bit they'll be one of the Lt's.

The two not listed being Ensi. M Stevens and Ensi. S Connors. Because they only Ensigns.

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\\ CDR David Roberts \\ CAPT Steven Eversman \\ VADM Ash Hill // RDML Chris Murray // CDR Mick Connors //
\\ SFC| Patrol-7 \\ SFC| LNS-California \\ SFC| LNT-Century // SFC| LNS-San.Francisco // SFC| Patrol-5 //

[SeaFalcon]

RAT might have like 7.

I doupt a RAT would run on a crew of 7.

jokes away.

Its different on every ship.

having a 5k transport fly with 1 crew member is highly unlikely even with droids.

[Luis]

Okay, lets see on my LABC I have 38 men/women on-board.

Bridge: 8 (1 Captain, 2 Navigation Pilots, 1 Commander, 1 Comm Officer, 3 Gunners)
Engine Section: 7 (Chief Engineer 1, Second in Command 1, 5 Engineering Crew)
Navy Rookies: 19
Civilians or Prisoners captured: 4 (Meaning 4 Prison Cells)

on the Jinkusu ( (]o[)Hyperion ) has 1,525 men on board.

I am not counting who are they. But I play 11 men/women on board the Bridge, 10 Gunners, 4 Commanders, 1 Captain.

[munsan]

I always find it easy to make the count by how many window a transport, gunboat has, the window could be a living space...you can imagin how many crew sleep in there depending on ship size and class, if its military so 2 or more crew have to to share that room, but if its civilian I have to say maybe....

[Govedo13]

Just to put my half a cent in, I have always imagined the RM gunboat being crewed by 12-15 people.

1 Kaptain
3 bridge crew (comms, gunnery, scanners)
1 engineering officer
2 mechanics
4-7 gunnery crew (depending if you want to imagine a person for each gun or having a few of them slaved together)
1 doctor/cook

I am kinda agreed here. In my imagination every military grade gun/turret needs a guner- Corsair GB- at least 8 gunners. 3-4 crew persona(capitan/Navigator,Comm officer) ,1-2 engineers/mechanics 1 doctor/cook.
I think it is really different for the different kind of ships, not only the size or the class should be the way to classify it. If let say Grizzly freighter is passengers the Camara could be made for cargo so the life systems would be different and the people on board will be different. I guess it is the same with the transports- one Stork can go with 3-6 people personal, one liner with 100 people personal at least.
The Battleships and the Cruisers could have also marines on board, or could not have them, depends on the ship purpose. I think that their guns need at least several man per gun to be operated- lets say 10, bridge- at least 20-30 people,engines 20-30 people, Comm-array - 10-20 , various support staff- doctor/cook/etc - 50. So around 300-500, carrier on the other side should have much more personal- 1000 . There are many other pilots on the board, their mechanics. A lot of support staff, hospital...

The Jug and the Colony ships could have at least as much as one Freeport- 2000 to 3000.

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Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)

[aerelm]

I've never really had a Cap-ship, so the biggest ships I flew were Gunboats and Transports.

Each of my ships (Depending on their general size) had a different number of crew.
- I had a Bottlenose which was piloted by one single person, but him being a cyborg he could 'attach' himself into the ship main console and take control of all systems without having to run around the whole bridge and engine room and whatnot. He just gave the orders, and the automated systems did the rest.
- Or my Behemoth for example, had a crew of 5, only the Captain was RPed on server, but they also had a navigator, a medic and 2 engineers with them.
- My Raba as another example, even though still a transport, had 12 crew. Mainly because it was a combat ship and needed more people to get the ship running properly if things come to fights.
- My Junker Conference ran on a crew of 4, but that was only because I did intend to give it a low number. Because the ship InRp was put together by a small group of junkers who later decided to use it themselves instead of selling it. So, even though they barely could keep the ship running, they still managed, because -they- had made it in the first place, so they perfectly knew how it worked best.
- My Imperator, on the other hand, had about 25 people on board, just to express the feeling of a 'Heavy gunboat' with eight turrets and whatnot.

I think it's just a matter of size. I never Rped my bombers with more than 1 pilot. All my bombers were RPed to have an AI doing the co-pilot's job, and that's mainly why the 2nd pilot model in cockpit always bugged me. So if you ask me, gunboats logically have around 10 - 30 crew, transports ranging from 5 to 20 depending on their size, cruisers from 40 to 100 and battleships from 200 or 300 so and higher in case of carriers or juggernauts.

Although it's not really an important detail, and I really doubt most people would've even thought about it before seeing this thread, and I rarely see more than 3 - 4 crew RPed in game or on forums. So I think it's just the matter of imagination... You can imagine the Battleship in front of you with +1000 people on board, while the person flying it thinks of it as a battleship with 150 crew. Shouldn't really effect the RP that much to be a problem.

[Huhuh]

I look at the ship in comparison to the CD launcher. When you dock, you can see it has a similar size to a man.

I would like dimensions or a picture comparing a person to a ship though.

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[Diomedes]

So far, I've just come up with a list of officers that make sense given the ship's role. For a whole crew list, I would break down under each "department head" so to speak.

So a transport might have: Captain, XO, Chief Engineer, Navigator, Foreman, Communications, Pilot or even more. Really depends on how you envision the ship running and separate the duties, in addition to each ship.

As for scaling the ships according to equipment, this is an interesting idea. However, the scaling in freelancer seems off, comparing fighter cockpits to transport windows etcetera. Might still be an interesting experiment.

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[Jinx]

gunboats:

they are supposed to have anything from 1 to around 10 crew members. - in essence the gunboat is an overpowered, oversized fighter that combines the intuitive manouvering of a fightercraft with the power of a capital warship.

examples:

- the orca is a 1 person GB
- most vanilla GBs are probably up to 10 crew members ( that is also due to being able to conduct more tasks than the orca )
- the BHG bottlenose is a supposed to be a 2 seater ( ww1/2 like - one pilot and front gunner, 1 comm officer and rear gunner )
- the conference is supposed to have 3 bridge officers + 5 crew members


transports:

- they are meant to be as economic as possible - so much about them is automated
- crew on all transports is probably around 3 to 10 max
- a bridge crew of 3 should be the minimum to operate the ship ( pilot, comm officer/navigator, copilot/gunner ) + some ppl to act as a cargo crew and maintenance crew.

examples:

- there is an "enterprise" show thats all about a freighter/transport crew. i find that quite convincing when it comes to the size of a vessel and the crew requirements

freighters:

- they are usually 1 to 2 ppl max. they are space-pick-ups.
- no need for a cargocrew, cause thats done on site by the station/base crews
- no need for repair crews, cause they only travel very short distances.

examples:

- dromedary, clydesdale, humpback, drone only show one pilot. - they look like a small truck without crews quarters.

cruisers:

- hard to say - but probably a minimum of 30-100

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