Large Ship Realism

[makisekurisufcker]

I go for building ships that are "Roleplay ready" in a sense, going for something realistic from all rooms oxygenated and proper sleeping arrangements and all that. I made a fairly large ship (about 25 blocks long, 9 wide) and made crew quarters for about four crew. Then looking up a US destroyer ship I was shocked to discover that even the small warships we have now have around 300 sailors on board. So I was kind of thinking from a Space Engineers perspective with a ship my size (or larger or what have you) what would be (in your opinion) a proper crew size. One thing I didn't factor in was shift rotations. If you had three manned stations, you'd want nine crew at least so each station is operation 24/7 (Earth time of course ;)) and crew to have time off. But how much would you imagine is all automated? Even in Halo the Pillar of Autumn has an estimated crew of 1000 even with an advanced AI. I don't even know what 1000 crew on that ship, or 300 on a modern destroyer would even do. Does anyone else have thoughts on this?

[Demented]

Not entirely familiar with this, but you can be certain nobody puts 300 bodies on a ship without good reason. In a space engineers context, there is probably solid reason to have a welder equipped engineer sitting on every major block and conveyor if combat is on the horizon.

A freighter larger than an aircraft carrier, by comparison, can have a crew fewer than ten, as it's mostly automated and if something should go wrong you abandon ship and let insurance pay for it. At least, the Exxon Valdez and the Costa Concordia were operated with that approach.

[laserRAYgun]

I play SE solo mostly. I figure in the future most everything would be automated on any large ship that the human is just around to be the janitor. Much like a Tesla autodriving car, the human is just along to monitor while on the ride. TV programs like "Dark Matter" the ship is completely automated with an android AI integrated to take care of the hands on tasks.

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

If its realism then really every weapon should have a control station. Every production block its own control station... pretty much every system.

Then crew are assigned to a system, maybe even a team if that system is large. I imagine irl there would be a 10man gyro maintenance crew for anything up to 20 gyros. More men for more. Then you have the thruster crew, the hull crew etc etc.

When you start having people for each and every task, including shifts like you mentioned, the crew numbers can rocket up quickly.

Personally i think a lot if designing ships is getting a scale that works well within the confines of the fame. So we wouldnt do all that, we would have maybe an engineering section and a small crew quarters. Then we hint at that function without goint too deep and making it super realistic. If we do try that it gets fifficult due to the physical size of blocks.

Basically we have to just create the illusion of it, or hint at it in our builds :)

[Okim]

As i see it - crew should consist of a pilot (to helm and navigate the ship, perform all types of flying, docking, landing), engineer (to operate reactor, maintain thrusters and gyros and systems in general), medic (to operate life support / cryopods / medbay), hangar technician (to maintain and pilot shuttle / rover if that one is present) and a captain to command all of that.

That`s if we take such a ship as, for example, a Firefly. Something bigger would need more crew per any of the listed fields of operations.

But please do remember that Milenium Falcon for its size similar to Firefly was piloted, maintained and crewed by just two people (well, 1 people + 1 wookie).

In other words it all depends on your feeling of general sence :D

[Pembroke]

Even in our own real world the military will only crew any vessel with the personnel it needs to get the job done with some redundancy against combat losses and no more. If they could get away with less than those 300 men, they would.

We can also see the trend of stuff getting automated more and more. Add to this the cost of sending anything off the planet and this applies even more to space ships. If a single space engineer can control a huge battleship with the aid of automated turrets then a single space engineer it is. Use the other 299 space engineers to crew another 299 battleships and you've got yourself a sizable fleet instead of that single destroyer.

For RPG purposes you could simply think about the mission of your ship. For example, an exploration vessel might have 4 scientists of different fields that also double as pilot, medic, engineer, and combat, or a mix of them. The point being: you can pretty much have it any way you want as the story you're telling dictates what is realistic and believable.

[jobob]

Remember too that in space travel there is going to be a LOT of “empty time” when the ship is traversing the void. So I’m not sure it makes sense to fully staff each shift rotation. IRL, it takes typically 4 people per position to cover 24 hours (either 3 8-hr shifts and one crew off, or 2 12-hour shifts with 2 crews off). But in space travel, I think you could get away with 2 crews MAX. Really you could probably do it with 1 shift, and have a rotating “off shift” position where 1 person is on duty while the rest of the crew sleeps or is in cryo, just to monitor things. That person could wake up whatever crew members are needed in the event of an emergency.

[Hypnosis]

Simple. You don't need 300 people or even 2 people to operate a ship in Space Engineers.

Technology allows the ship to be run by 1 person.