Crew Size

[Blue Mouse]

I have a fleet of two large ships and a crew of almost 40. Has anyone had success with a crew this large? I just cant get enough water to keep things going.

[DeadMeat]

I'm not quite there yet, but I did get rid of my meat farming to save on water. I also made my 2nd ship the farming ship where it's open to crew to help produce oxygen so I use less oxygen generators. I do have to watch the carbon levels though, keep between 25 to 35. Make sure to use enough water reclaimers so vapor is around 10 or lower. If you have excess food production, turn off some of the farms so it goes down or levels out.

[063xela]

No, Recruiting has been very hard for me. I tried doing it with prisoners but they take a while. I wish there were more ways to find new crew mates

[Sam Look]

Originally posted by 20938213:

No, Recruiting has been very hard for me. I tried doing it with prisoners but they take a while. I wish there were more ways to find new crew mates

I got to 40 people by around the third or fourth sector, almost exclusively from recruiting prisoners. You can usually 4 to 6 from one pirate ship.

As to the original question, I found a crew that large pretty hard to sustain on the second from top difficulty level and started running out of stuff fast.
I also found that after a certain amount the extra crew didn't really contribute much to anything other than more hungry mouths.
I have restarted a new game (because I wanted a different ship design) and I intend to try and limit things to around 25 - 30 probably.
It would be nice if there were ways to humanely leave crew behind when you have too many... like passing them on to other merchants or stations etc...

[Luzilyo]

Originally posted by DeadMeat:

If you have excess food production, turn off some of the farms so it goes down or levels out.

you can also set if-rules for food productions.
1. select grow bed
2. open the "grow" tab
3. select an individual bed which contains a plant
4. in the center you see the name of the plant, a basic description, required botany skill, etc. below that you have a small window which lets you choose between "continuous" and "if"
5. if you click the if button, you will be able to choose an amount via slider. if you do that, your crew will only perform botany tasks if the stored amount of the chosen plant falls below the selected value.
(note: plants will always stay alive as long as the temperature doesn't fall below 0 °C, even if there's no botany performed for a very long time. they will just stop growing and plants that are at 100 % won't be harvested. so you can pretty much completely fill all of your ships with grow beds and still never produce too much food.)

example: currently i have 6 crew members and two 5x grow beds for each type of plant (fruits, fiber, vegetables, meat). i have 27 fruits, 34 fibers, 37 vegetables, and 9 meat in storage. all grow beds are set to produce only if stored amount is below 25. right now my botanists are only tending to the meat-fields and ignore everything else.

[Mirsin]

Ill agree with a previous comment - once you reach a certain size you will notice more crew standing around not doing anything. There is no point in going further along unless your just attempting to see how large a crew you can get.

[DeadMeat]

I suppose if you build the perfect ship you won't need many crew, but I'm always redesigning and trying out things, so I use my 30+ crew at all times. I just figured out the best way to use solar panels so I'm going to be redesigning my main ship.

[rgamer18]

use the rules to make resources when low. i eventually maxed out with 2 large square ships. refitted a few times for a couple days and that depleted items. you can starve staying still. you have to move and build. it was tough at the beginning. but now with plunder and buying out traders i think it can go forever. currently 100 crew.

[rgamer18]

im curious when it gets to be too many to feed

[ultragun6]

It's too much when you're butchering your own crewmates and feeding crew to crew.

[Moribund]

Above 120 things really get out of hands; there's just too much water pull and it becomes tedious. Not that it can't be surpassed. It's just tedious.

I peaked at two ships of 100, but I significantly improved the resource spawns.

Water recycling/recovery isn't zero-sum, you always have to replenish.

Implants help. Everyone gets the stomach and lungs implant: most of a ship's hardware caters to food or environment, so it makes sense to reduce the net demand as the best possible implant instead of skills or accuracy, etc.

Things that make water use inefficient:

Spaceship compartmentalisation, making oxygen gens overwork on one side, while plants peak their 02 on the other side of the ship, which I believe creates a net loss. (Plants keep growing but 02 is 180+ = lost 02). You have to make the ship more of a volume that can breathe throughout so you get 100% use from plants and allow generators to top-up in sync. Diffuse demand throughout the ship.

Spacesuit doorways and needless spacesuit or shuttle use. Better use bots for safe derelicts, no 02 pull.

Bigger Crews benefit from specialized jobs as you reduce pathing issues.

For example, I usually have 2 Bridge shifts. Helmsman, Gunsman, Opsman & Shieldsman. 6 hour shifts, then 2 hours leisure and 4 sleep. With quarters as close to the Bridgeroom as you can, they beeline to their console (work) the moment they hop out of bed. You never have to micromanage alert levels again.

Ditto for Botanists, Machinists, Miners, Pilots, etc.

You try to keep Botany bays generally in the middle of the ship so they diffuse O2 throughout the ship and Comfort/food room in the center as the shortest route from all work areas of the ship.

I also have Deckhands with Maintenance, Construction and Logistics in this order of priority. If there's nothing to repair, they build, if there's nothing to build, they move stuff.

Botanists do nothing but botany, as work calls fluctuate a lot, so on.

[novaboy525]

I went to 75 one time with one ship. I used the rebreather augmentation to decrease the oxygen consumption, farming was just too much

It is manageable but you just keep running after ice or water or food.

I stay at 45~ and around 20 prisoners all the time (they are my replacement crew when people die)

Going overboard is good in a sense that it helps your play style by identifying waste and improving ship designs
Small things like storage placement etc etc

[mystery]

I enjoy flying high crew count ships (100+ crews), always a reason to keep pushing on to the next resource field or wreck to loot.
Main limit is indeed water/ice. Trade for it every opportunity you get, whatever the price they ask. With a big crew you can maintain large farms, but don't overdo it. Overproduce by a bit, so you can overcome bad times (farms burning and such)
Mine every patch of ice you encounter. Don't neglect Chemicals, depending on what you're doing, you can run into shortage with this as well (needed for fertilizer & other stuffs).

[articulategrunt]

Had like 156 at one time on one run bit honestly I had about 100 of them in massive banks of sleep chambers, armed in case I really needed them but otherwise awaiting arrival to the new home world like some massive colony ship.

[Flavalicious]

I've had close to 40 spread across 2 ships, and it was doable in a version a couple of patches back but you had to both focus on only stopping in systems with ice, and literally buying every ice/water you can find from anyone that will trade with you. You also can't waste time doing stuff like salvaging hulls and what not from derelicts, you either cherry pick the good stuff that can just be loaded into the shuttles or you just do the combat, search the ship and leave it all behind.

Overall it was neat to have such a large workforce but it made the game feel rushed, I normally end up crewing a single ship to around 20-25 or 1 ship to 15 and another smaller ship to 5 or so. I had more fun sticking to around 20-25 overall.

[Synopse]

This topic is a 4 years old necro. Things have changed alot since.