StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Briefly, who do you need to run a Star Wars ship of destroyer grade or higher?

I've been re-reading ECR's Hull No. 721 and a particular passage made me wonder just who does what aboard a Star Destroyer. We know there's 37,000 crew (or thereabouts) commanded by a captain but, as far as I'm aware, not much besides that. What rank are subordinate officers? How is the crew organized? Does the Empire use 8-hour shifts, 12-hour, 6-hour, something else? If there's a convenient listing for it somewhere in a wiki, that'd be lovely of course, but I'd be just as happy with rampant speculation from people who know enough to have an opinion; my practical naval knowledge would fit on a postcard with plenty of space left over.

this is speculation but I'd say the department heads would at least Lt. commanders(or equilevants) probably even full commanders, then you'd have a XO whose job it would be to make sure the crew is operating properly (basically he's the boss of the department heads). after all the captain has neither the time or the energy to micromanage everything during normal operations.

If you can, take a look at Choices of One which has some insight into the matter. Senior Commander Pellaeon was Second Officer (IIRC) of the Chimaera and the narrative describes which shift he was watching over, and that it was unusual (IIRC) for the Captain to be around for it. Implying that the Captain, XO, Second Officer traded shifts, probably on a rotation of three watches (however many hours that is I suppose depends on what constitutes a "day" by ship's time). I think there's some more stuff in there but I don't remember and I don't have a copy of the book on hand.

Also the Captain of the Chimaera at the time was ranked as Senior Captain, whatever that means. And I think Pellaeon, when he was XO, was a normal Captain. So that may help.

(Missed the edit window, so here's some more)

Check out this thread which has some speculation, mostly of the RL Navy type.

Well I contradict myself in the linked thread regarding the rank of Captain Drusan, CO of the Chimaera, as I say he's just a normal Captain. However the book does name Senior Captain Thrawn (who admittedly commands more than one ship, so could be like the Line Captain of the WEG Imperial Sourcebook) and Senior Commander Pellaeon, so the rank steps above 'regular' Commander and Captain do exist. Though I suspect that, as in the movies, the CO of a singular Star Destroyer is a normal Captain.

But yeah. Choices of One is the only novel or other source I can think of that even bothers to mention things like duty shifts about a Star Destroyer (or any other type of ship, really) in some sort of detail, so worth checking out. Everything else is probably going to be pure speculation drawn from terrestrial naval practices.

One problem I see showing up in Imperial fleet service is that of span of command- if the captain of a line destroyer commands forty thousand men, women, and miscellaneous, how many layers of subofficers does it take to administrate all that?

A typical military in real life, with triangular or square unit structures (3-4 subunits per unit) needs... about six to seven layers, and gets a flexible system which can adapt well to changing conditions. A typical high school runs with no more than two layers of command (vice principals and teachers) between one principal and a thousand or more students... and it can easily degenerate into chaos, not just because of poorly behaved children, but because of the 'order, counter-order, disorder' problem and conflicting instructions from different people of equivalent rank. One person cannot effectively mind twenty other people, unless those twenty people are all doing very simple things like "stand in neat rows" or "push button on assembly line."

Does the Imperial fleet even have enough ranks of officers to reliably provide a working chain of command for 37,000 people?

Of course it does, people of the same rank just go by seniority, as with modern navies.

Point one - I remember reading in at least 3 or 4 places Imperial ships had unusually large crews (as a result of deautomatization after cultural backslash from Clone Wars). Rebellion was able to operate ISD class ships with 7-8 thousand people, for example, not 37 thousand. That would be due to heavy automation, longer shifts, cutting soldier contingent (and people taking care of them), less maintenance, etc. etc. So, typical imperial crewman would probably enjoy shorter shifts and less duties than efficiently run navy like rebels would allow.

Point two, in Zahn trilogy Pellaeon muses his flagship now has conscripts on board. So, at least some of these deautomated jobs must be simple enough for whoever HR department of Imperial Navy can poach off the street. This would also extend chains of command - you could see crew of privates overseen by equivalents of corporals and sergeants (starmen, leading starmen, petty officers and warrant officers?), unlike more professional, educated smaller crews of today.

Two points - firstly, I suspect using seniority to add de-facto rank levels would get unmanageable very quickly, from a bureaucratic point of view; you'd want to be able to tell at a glance who is senior to whom and what duties they might reasonably be expected to have. This explains the various 'senior,' 'high,' 'line,' and similar ranks.

Second, I'm not convinced the Rebels are so much masters of efficiency as they are masters of initiative. An Imperial-run Star Destroyer is, by use if not necessarily by design, a multirole cruiser that can run planetary invasions, chase down pirates, conduct goodwill tours; can be send anywhere to do anything at anytime. It absolutely needs to be fully capable at all times, because you never know when that freighter that just arrived will be a Rebel kamikaze.

The Rebellion, meanwhile, can probably get away with one full shift and a few caretaker shifts, on the theory that since it's usually them staging the surprise attacks they can simply wake the main crew up whenever they're about to do something, and keep a couple skeleton crews aboard so they can sleep once in a while. That seems much more likely than the Rebellion, which has chronic manpower issues, being able to run the same ship at no loss of efficiency with only a fourth of the crew.

There's doctrinal support for that as well, since the Empire is always portrayed as the work-till-you-drop, rigidly-disciplined one. It would be un-Imperial to give crews easy jobs, if anything even slightly useful could be found for them to do.

I wonder if, for instance, the Imperials have a crew of several hundred people to, for instance, just keep the ship impeccably clean. I also wonder if they similarly have a large staff to maintain all the weapons via a strict prescribed maintenance regiment, (while the rebels may simply only replace or perform maintenance when something fails).

Similarly, the rebels may have a more rudimentary self-service style mess, while imperials may have had a dedicated food service crew.

I suppose if you linked guns into groupings and only had 1 crew per group, that could cut down on crew requirements as well.

I'd imagine that the large numbers of TIEs would require a larger maintenance crew than the relatively smaller number of X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings, and B-Wings that the rebels would have. And if they went with a looser repair schedule for them, that'd require even less dedicated people. That's even more the case if the pilots acted as part of the maintenance crew for their craft as well.

I remember reading somewhere (I think it was the Incredible Cross Sections) that to allow for faster maintenance and an easier shift for the already over-worked Rebel maintenance crews, they would remove access panels permanently both on fighters and the interior of starships, so if something failed they could just swap it out right there.

Also of importance, I think, would be the use of droids. On the one hand, the Imperials would easily have the budget for complete droid compliments for their warships to assist with and perform maintenance, cleaning, etc. A Rebel ship, though, would benefit more from a droid, since unlike the Imperials they couldn't just throw available recruits and some supervising officers at the problem until it was done, though they'd have to keep a careful balance so that maintaining the droids doesn't end up costing just as much or more labor than the droids do themselves.

Seeing as this came up, my best guess based on a melange of in universe hints and real world practise is that we have a four and two halves department breakdown;

four major departments- Engineering, Weapons, Systems and Supply, each commanded by an officer usually one rank below the commanding officer, possibly (particularly on a smaller ship) of equal rank but lower time in grade; each breaking into subdepartments to deal with specific bits.

Two half departments, small craft including fighters- which also includes ground crew- and ground forces.

I have an org chart of sorts, the truth of it being somewhat variable-

Engineering for instance would consist of sub departments, each organised around one specific type of job- Reactor subdept would obviously look after the reactors, probably breaking down into sections one for each reactor, not all of equal size, with specific subgroups- fuel injection, interaction fields, heat sink linkage, power conversion, control room watchstanders, that. (They have to fix it when it breaks, too.)

Assume a three watch system and the numbers start to mount; the question is, how narrowly do you make someone specialise, and how much is there really to know? Considering the power and complexity of these things, the wonder may be that you need so few people instead of so many.

Other obvious engineering subdepartments- Propulsion (sublight), repair and maintenance teams for each engine, each group of manoeuvre thrusters- specialists on standby to fix them when they go fizzle. There's probably a team in there looking ater repulsorlift engines as well. Again divided down into subspecialties until they're small enough for a human head to wrap itself around.

Propulsion (hyper), again operators on routine push- button work, maintainers and fixers to put it back together when it goes ping.

Forcefields- somebody has to look after the compensators, stasis field generators, artifical gravity, tensors, all that.

Thermal- would heatsinks be a separate department?

I'm assuming that central control includes workshops, paperwork support, troubleshooting teams of cross- trined personnel able to figure out interaction issues, etc.

Engineering is probably the largest department on the ship, actually.


Systems may be commanded by the senior of the navigator or com- scan officer, probably usually the navigator, and basically includes all the complicated techno gubbins that a starship needs to make it go. Sensors, signals, electronic warfare, internal network control- navigation and operational control of shields, it's engineering's job to fix them but systems has the tactical control.


Weapons, probably divides into type and battery commands then down into individual mounts, HTL type commander is de facto and de jure deputy department commander, includes central fire direction, weapon routine maintenance .


Supply may be the second largest, and includes a lot of the functions required to operate as a human institution, the personnel side. medical would come under here, as would the stores and cargo, the paymaster's office, the regulatory branch, the legal office, all the bureaucratic side; possibly also basic life support, messing, low energy plumbing. Droid workshops possibly, too.


Seniority at a glance isn't necessary- it isn't relevant until they have to work together, and then all it takes is asking what the date of their commission is- which should be on file anyway. The soviet system is a possibility- rank follows appointment, not the other way around; pick the right person for the job then promote them to meet it later.

I have been assuming there are a few more points on the scale, incidentally- going up to fifteen enlisted and twenty officer ranks. Need to work more of that in, now I think of it.

I can offer a few points from the X-Wing books. Rebel/Alliance ISD's seem to only carry a wing of 36 fighters instead of 72 for an ISD (a passage in Rogue Squadron requires both Emancipator and Liberator deploying a wing of fighters, matching an Imperial ISD's fighters) which immediately cuts to half the number of pilots (a small number I know) and ground crew/techs/ordnance men and so forth. Also I'm pretty sure that Rebel ISD's don't have a Stormtrooper legion equivalent aboard, so no vehicles, prefab garrison base and guys required to support that.

Additionally, in The Bacta War we see the Corrupter, a VSD-II that is commanded by only a Commander (but one character mentally remarks that since he's CO he's still "Captain" despite the lower rank).

Finally, various sources describe the old Dreadnoughts (~600m cruisers) as having crews of 20,000 but they were famed for being over-manned. Rebel conversions to Assault Frigates got that number down to 2,000 or so.

P.S. I suspect that in addition to the large cast of people ECR described the Imperial Navy would want additional personnel on hand to replace casualties or, more importantly since they are used as patrol craft, to form prize crews for captured vessels. If you capture a VSD for instance and need a skeleton crew of a couple of thousand (for example) to get her to port you need to have enough people on the ISD to cope with that temporary loss of manpower.

RogueIce wrote:(however many hours that is I suppose depends on what constitutes a "day" by ship's time)

The Empire operates on Coruscant time, which has a 24-hour day, so it's probably safe to assume they work in eight hour shifts.

Let's not forget that Star Destroyers are used to coordinate squadrons and blockade actions, so they must be capable of having a staff headquarters/command section on board, similar to the 'Fleet captains" seen in ROTJ on board Executor and Home One.

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:Seeing as this came up, my best guess based on a melange of in universe hints and real world practise is that we have a four and two halves department breakdown;

four major departments- Engineering, Weapons, Systems and Supply, each commanded by an officer usually one rank below the commanding officer, possibly (particularly on a smaller ship) of equal rank but lower time in grade; each breaking into subdepartments to deal with specific bits.

Two half departments, small craft including fighters- which also includes ground crew- and ground forces.

I have an org chart of sorts, the truth of it being somewhat variable-

Engineering for instance would consist of sub departments, each organised around one specific type of job- Reactor subdept would obviously look after the reactors, probably breaking down into sections one for each reactor, not all of equal size, with specific subgroups- fuel injection, interaction fields, heat sink linkage, power conversion, control room watchstanders, that. (They have to fix it when it breaks, too.)

Assume a three watch system and the numbers start to mount; the question is, how narrowly do you make someone specialise, and how much is there really to know? Considering the power and complexity of these things, the wonder may be that you need so few people instead of so many.

Other obvious engineering subdepartments- Propulsion (sublight), repair and maintenance teams for each engine, each group of manoeuvre thrusters- specialists on standby to fix them when they go fizzle. There's probably a team in there looking ater repulsorlift engines as well. Again divided down into subspecialties until they're small enough for a human head to wrap itself around.

Propulsion (hyper), again operators on routine push- button work, maintainers and fixers to put it back together when it goes ping.

Forcefields- somebody has to look after the compensators, stasis field generators, artifical gravity, tensors, all that.

Thermal- would heatsinks be a separate department?

I'm assuming that central control includes workshops, paperwork support, troubleshooting teams of cross- trined personnel able to figure out interaction issues, etc.

Engineering is probably the largest department on the ship, actually. [...]

Wow, if Star Wars technology is that complicated, one wonders how Han and Chewie were able to fly the Millenium Falcon alone. After all: All mentioned subsystems were in their ship too.

One wonders how Queen Amidala, her handmaidens and bodyguards, Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi and a few pilots managed to repair the Queen's starship after it was damaged and its hyperdrive had to be replaced.

One wonders how a child - even if it was a gifted child - was able to build a droid, repair the junk of Watto and build an own podracer.

You have to excuse me - but nothing I have seen in the movies indicates that Star Wars technology is so complicated that so extreme specialisations of engineers and mechanics is necessary.

In descending order, the Falcon suffers critical systems failures at the drop of a hat even while being maintained in just about every spare minute by two very highly experienced mechanics used to its peculiarities, the Naboo ship had a full complement of astromech droids (note the 'mech,' for 'mechanic') who presumably did most of the actual maintenance, and Anakin Skywalker had magic powers and a junkyard's worth of spare parts to choose from.

The logic there is rather flawed, Watch-Man. A larger ship will need more subdivisions, and the manpower to run them, because its systems will in all possible ways have more to take care of. Of course you also need more people to organize these subdivisions at the command level.

On a ship with a ten person crew, the engineers (two or three at most I'd say) could monitor and maintain everything themselves, and things such as communication with the outside world easily handled by two or at most three people, depending on the exact shift layout. I'm imagining right now a sort of small long-range scout/light transport with three shifts and a crew makeup of three engineers, three mixed purpose crew (as required), three bridge positions and a Captain.

Meanwhile a ship with a hundred or a thousand people will need its own zip-code (or what have you), and even a factory's worth of engineers and technicians to keep it running smoothly. Each ship could fill more or less the same rolls at different scales, but from the same design and tech base.

Additionally, the systems (say, heat sinks) on a small ship are likely rather simple. The ones they put on something like say, an ISD or the Executor could very easily require a few months of training to learn how to maintain.

Imperial528 wrote:The ones they put on something like say, an ISD or the Executor could very easily require a few months of training to learn how to maintain.

I think this is a big part of it. To make a simple example, there's a difference in how long it'll take to train somebody to fix just the brakes on a car, compared to how to perform complete engine overhauls. In a small mechanic's shop with a relatively limited number of employees it'd be worth it (though more complicated tasks may need more people anyway) but a galactic scale military can afford to be a bit more picky in favor of wanting to get their enlisted crew through training and out to the Fleet as quickly as possible.

But just because you have those subdepartments doesn't mean that the people in them know only how to do that job and nothing else. There is most likely quite a bit of cross specialization, but a larger ship with a larger org chart will likely assign certain crew to focus on certain tasks. Because more than one thing can break down at any moment, so you keep your sublight guys on standby for that while the heatsink crew goes off and fixes those. But the two crews could probably go do the job of the other, in a pinch, it's just not the norm.

I don't know that they'd subdivide down to the level ECR proposes for practical purposes, but certainly there'd be "mini-departments" within the Engineering Department and so on.

Departments on actual ships are broken down similar to how ECR describes.

On a US destroyer for instance the supply department is broken down into divisions consisting of supply support (spare parts and material procuremnt), food service (some times broken in two, crew and officers), disbursing (pay and currency payments in ports), postal, HAZMAT storage/issue and ship services (laundry/ship store/barber/vending/etc.)

Engineering Department will be broken down to electrical, main propulsion (sometimes broken further for each main space), auxillaries, repair, damage control, maintenance records (called 3M) and if its a nuclear ship about a dozen more specific to them.

Operations Department will have navigation/signals (visual signal, radio is under Combat Systems usually), general combat watchstandars (CIC watchstanders, this is sometimes further broken down), first division (bosuns), aviation (if it doesn't have embarkation facilities this may be ad hoc), crytography/intel.

Admin (ships corresponence and official records) and Personnel (crew records, awards, and other things) are generally separate divisions and are subordinate directly to the XO. Some ships make Navigation a separate department and include admin and personnel there.

You still have Weapons Department and Combat Systems Department on top of all that.

Just some examples of a small ship. Ships with more capabilities will have more departments and more divisions.

I'm not disputing that Imperial Warships have many departments, subdepartments, divisions and subdivisions.

But I'm disputing that "considering the power and complexity of these things" Star Wars technology is so complicated that it is necessary to divide them again and again "until they're small enough for a human head to wrap itself around".

I dispute that each engineer is only responsible for one small device and is sitting around the whole time until this device is in need for maintenance or repair.

It's no question: An Imperial Warship will need many engineers. But each engineer will be able to do more than to take care of only one device or only one small part of an installation. If a device works and is in no need of maintenance or repair, the engineer responsible for this device will be sent to help at other systems of the ship.

Of course this does not mean that each engineer can be used in each position. A weapons system engineer may have problems to understand the water supply systems of the ship. But if he is responsible e.g. for a heavy turbo laser, he may be able to help with the maintenance of a light turbo laser too.

And maybe it is not that one engineer is responsible for only one system but that there is a group of engineers which is responsible e.g. for the weapon systems and that an engineer is sent to where he is needed, so that not each weapon emplacement has its own engineers but that a few engineers are sent when it is in need of maintenance or repair.

WATCH-MAN, I understand what you're saying, but it's not feasible to have 1 centralized engineering staff run around a 6 mile long warship, trying to fix anything that may come up. Since the Empire seems reluctant to use droids or automation as a significant source of supplementing humans, their only real alternative is to keep a large staff of engineers and crew around the ship, just in case. Now factor in what are likely higher maintenance cycle demands*, and not necessarily wanting to have any single person fully versed on all the ship's systems, (to prevent hijacking), and you get these bloated crew numbers.

*By "higher maintenance cycle demands" I mean that the Empire likely wants their ships immaculate, and replace components after they've gotten a certain number of operational hours, regardless of whether they actually need to be replaced.

I don't see how the crew numbers on ISDs are 'bloated'. Sure, they're significantly bigger than anything any current day (and past) wet navy has. Guess what? The ship is also significantly bigger than anything we have built so far.
An ISD has somewhere upwards of 50 times the volume of a Nimitz and unlike the Nimitz it has gun mounts galore that thanks to the Empire not trusting automation need to be manned, there's the parasite craft complement, the Stormtrooper complement, for something that size a crew of 47,000 is actually pretty conservative.

biostem wrote:WATCH-MAN, I understand what you're saying, but it's not feasible to have 1 centralized engineering staff run around a 6 mile long warship, trying to fix anything that may come up.

I didn't try to argue that for "a 6 mile long warship" "1 centralized engineering staff" "trying to fix anything that may come up" is enough.

I belief I explicitly admitted that there may be specialized departments e.g. for computer, energy weapons and other kinds of weapon systems, propulsion, shields, water supply, waste management, life support, walkers e.t.c. and that engineers have to have specialised skills to work in these departments and can not be sent into other departments.

The point I was trying to make is that I do not belief that each individuell part of an installation has its own engineer who is sitting the whole time around waiting that this part needs maintenance or repair.

As I understood Eleventh Century Remnant, a heavy turbo laser turret may consist of e.g. hundred subsystems. And - according to him - each subsystem is so complex that the human head of an engineer can "only wrap itself around" this one subsystem so that the engineer can not take care of other subsystems of the heavy turbo laser turret. If I'm understanding Eleventh Century Remnant correct, he says that this is the reason so many engineers are needed.

I'm arguing that the technology can't be so complex as most of the time Han and Chewie were able to take care of the Millenium Falcon alone, Queen Amidala, her handmaidens and bodyguards, Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi and a few pilots managed to repair the Queen's starship after it was damaged and its hyperdrive had to be replaced and a child - even if it was a gifted child - was able to build a droid, repair the junk of Watto and build an own podracer.

Batman wrote:I don't see how the crew numbers on ISDs are 'bloated'. Sure, they're significantly bigger than anything any current day (and past) wet navy has. Guess what? The ship is also significantly bigger than anything we have built so far.
An ISD has somewhere upwards of 50 times the volume of a Nimitz and unlike the Nimitz it has gun mounts galore that thanks to the Empire not trusting automation need to be manned, there's the parasite craft complement, the Stormtrooper complement, for something that size a crew of 47,000 is actually pretty conservative.

I meant "bloated" in the sense of comparing to what the crew would number if they *did* use a lot of automation. So for instance, instead of 1 gunner and 1 assistant per gun turret, and the local staff to take care of monitoring power demands, you might only have a handful of crew per a cluster of like 4 turrets or something.

An ISD has somewhere upwards of 50 times the volume of a Nimitz and unlike the Nimitz it has gun mounts galore that thanks to the Empire not trusting automation need to be manned, there's the parasite craft complement, the Stormtrooper complement, for something that size a crew of 47,000 is actually pretty conservative.

With the air wing on board (i.e. when ready for combat), a Nimitz class ship has about 6,000 crew . . . in a ship about the same size as just the "bridge module" on an ISD. 47,000 crew in a ship 50 times bigger means that the ISD has almost exactly 1/6 the crew density of a Nimitz class ship. If that 47,000 figure includes the ground forces and their support personnel, then this is sounding like a small figure that reflects futuristic automation and improved reliability.

With only 7,000 crew on a ship that size, I'd wonder if they ever meet each other!