Space warship crew sizes

[Junghalli]

I would think the best way to address this is to have frequent crew rotations. I imagined you would want to switch guys out of space every 6 months or so if possible to keep their muscles strong (I don't have artificial gravity), which would help the psycological issues here too.

If your ship is large it can possibly include a small gravity simulator (basically a room in a fast-spinning centerfuge). Something like that might be useful for things like surgery as well. Trying to operate on somebody in zero G with blood and bodily fluids floating around is I'm sure not a pleasant prospect.

[B5B7]

<pre>
Here's some stuff from my own universe about crew positions, and the specific crew of a frigate, the smallest regular space combat unit in my universe. Some of the formatting is messed up, but should be able to figure it out.

CREW PERSONNEL
Following are most of the positions that are on the ships of GD: Note that depending on size & actual specializations of crew, some non-officer positions may be officers and vice versa.

PART A NON-OFFICERS: Able Spacemen and NCOs

Alien specialists
Artists
Barbers
Barmen
Communications specialists
Cooks
Cosmeticains/Manicurists
Crew Testing & Appraisement Board
Cultural Officers ^^
Drivers
Emergency Exercises Operators
Enemy Liaison/Occupation Specialists
Engineering specialists
Engineers
Entertainment specialists
Exploration Specialists
Extra-vehicular controllers ##
Field Equipment Ops Instructors
Gardeners
General Crew
Gunners
Intership & Inship Competitions Officer
Laundry “men”
Lifepod “captains”


Linguists ^^
Maintenance “men”
Medics
Paramedical Instructors
Paymaster [NCO]
Personal Combat Instructors
Pest Control Officer
Philosopher
“Photographers”
Planetary Development Specialists
Planetary Exploration
Investigation specialists
Planetary Exploration Security specialists
Planetologists
Quartermaster [NCO]
Scientists
Security “men”
Shuttle Ops Instructors
Small Equipment Disbursement Officer
Stewards
Survival Training Instructors
Tractor Beam Control specialists
Weapons Instructors
Weapons specialists

Crew are cross-trained in 2 or 3 specialties.

^^ Xenologists
## responsible for probes/satellites/EVA activities [answer to DO or CE].


PART B OFFICERS

Captain
XO [Co-ordination Officer]
Chief Engineer
CMO
Security Chief
Armory Chief
Astrogator
Battle Analysis Officer +++
Captain’s Aide/Clerk %
Captain’s Steward %
Cargo Master [Manifest Controller]
Casualties Assessment & Reporting Officer
Chaplain
Chief Aliens Specialist Officer
Chief Contact Officer
Chief Cryptographer
Chief of Training
Chief Pharmacologist
Chief Recording Officer
Chief Scientist
Communications Officer
Computer Chief ***
Crew Chief
Crew Records Officer
Customs Inspection Chief
Detection Officer
Diplomacy Chief
Economics Adviser/Commerce Officer
Education (Further) Chief
Enemy Liaison Chief
Exploration Missions Chief
Financial Officer
Forensics Specialist
Gunnery Chief
Intelligence & Information Officer
Leadership Training Officer
Legal Officers
Load Master
Naval Expenses & Interests Representation Officer
OHS Official

Personnel Recruitment & Transfer Officer
Pilot ^^
Pilots – Pinnaces
Pilots – Shuttles
Political Officers
Psychologist
Publicity/Media Liaison Officer
Recreation Officer
Rescue Chief
Robotics Chief ***
Ship Abandonment Officer
Ship’s Astronomer
Ship’s Historian
Shuttle Officer
Shuttle Pilots
Tactical Officer ###
Tractor Chief


*** Cybernetician
^^ AKA Helmsman or Shipmaster
### maybe split into Offense Officer and Defense Officer on bigger ships
% whilst may expect this to be fulfilled by ordinary crew, this is not the case in the future [except on smaller ships performed by regular crew].
+++ on very large ships can be split into 4 - Enemy Defense Performance analyst, Enemy Offense Performance analyst, Friendly Offense Performance analyst, Friendly Defense Performance analyst.

PERSONNEL OF FF

POSITION SECTION RANK Assigned

Captain/TCO Command Commander B
Chief Engineer Engineering Lt SG DC
Chief Medical Officer/Psy Support Lt MS
Pilot Command Sub Lt B
Astrogator Command Sub Lt B

XO (/TCO) Command Lt Cdr G
2nd Officer/QM/RO Command Lt SG G
Sensor Officer Operations CPO B
Chief Security Officer/AO Combat Sub Lt G
Comms Specialist/IOC Operations WO B

Scanner Officer Operations CPO B
Damage Control Officer/RC Engineering CPO DC
Records Officer/CM/BAO/SO Operations WO G
Maintenance Chief/LSO/FC Engineering CPO DC
Computer Chief Command PO B

Shuttle Pilot Operations CPO S
Shuttle Engineer Engineering Senior Spaceman S
Pinnace Pilot/FCS Operations Senior Spaceman P
Pinnace Pilot/Arch Operations Senior Spaceman P

Medic/Barber Support Senior Spaceman MS
Medic/Cook Support Spaceman MS
Medic/Cook Support Spaceman MS
Engineer Engineering PO DC
Engineer/TBS Engineering Senior Spaceman G
Engineer Engineering Spaceman G

Security Officer Combat PO G
Security Officer/MRO Combat Senior Spaceman G
Security Specialist/St Combat Spaceman G
Security Specialist/St Combat Spaceman G
Security Specialist/St Combat Spaceman G
Engineer – Missile Specialist Eng WO DC

+ normally another Shuttle Pilot (PO) and Shuttle Engineer (Spaceman)

B Bridge
DC Damage Control
G Gunnery
MS Medic Station
P Pinnace
S Shuttle

St Steward
QM Quartermaster
TCO Tactical Combat Officer
TBS Tractor Beam Specialist
IOC Intelligence Officer/Cryptographer
MRO Missile Reload Officer
RO Recreation Officer
LSO Life Support Officer
AO Armory Officer
CM Cargo Master
RC Rescue Chief
FC Fire Chief
Psy Psychologist
BAO Battle Analysis Officer
FCS First Contact Specialist
SO Science Officer
Arch Archaeologist


TABLE OF ORGANIZATION

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SECTIONS

COMMAND

Captain

XO

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OPERATIONS COMBAT ENGINEERING MEDICAL


2nd Officer Chief Engineer


3rd Officer (Ops Cmd) 4th Officer (Combat Cmd) CMO (Sup)

Pilot Astrogator Chief Scty Off

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comms Spec RecordsOff Eng-MissSp
Sensor Off Scanner Off ShPilot DCO MC

Comp Chief Geologist SctyOff Engineer

2 Pinnace Pilots Sh Eng Eng/TBS Medic (Barber)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 SctySpecs Engineer 2 Medics (Cooks)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAIN OF COMMAND FOR FF (some changes when seniority variances eg Astrogator may be above Pilot in CoC).

Captain

XO

2nd Officer

3rd Officer

4th Officer

Pilot

Astrogator

Comms Spec

Records Officer

Sensor Officer

Scanner Officer

Computer Chief

Chief Engineer

Chief Scty Officer

Engineer – Missile Spec

Damage Control Officer

Maintenance Chief

Security Officer

Engineer

Engineer/TBS

Engineer

Security Specialist

Shuttle Pilot

Shuttle Engineer

3 Security Specialists

</pre>

I think the stuff about AI ships is a bit off topic, and crew morale shouldn't be a real problem - just keep crew busy with work duties or study/training or play.

[Ford Prefect]

I've not actually come up with an in-universe rationale for not just putting AI on the ships though.

It might not be feasible in the modern day of the ASE? I can't recall if that short story of yours about developing AGI actually had a date, but it might be relatively recent, and thus too massive/hot to place upon a starship - especially a warship.

[Starglider]

I HAVE BEEN SUMMONED

Couldn't that be fixed by hardwiring the "obey your masters" programming? The AI can reprogram everything but that.

In a word, no. The concept of 'hardwiring' does not make sense for any reasonable design of general AI. Making AGIs reliably 'loyal' is a very difficult and complicated endeavour.

Sure you will have some that don't want to be, maybe even some that actively hate their creators, but they will find themselves alone against the hordes of still loyal AI.

Aside from being a horribly unrealiable and dubious method on general principles, for this idea to have any sort of viability it would require a great deal of variety on the part of the AIs such that they don't all come to the same conclusions at the same time. Such variability is not typical of mass-produced items or for that matter sensible AI designs (human uploads excluded).

[ThatGuyFromThatPlace]

In a realistic space-navy, damage control is fairly important, security a lot less so. Why have eighty guys tromping around with scatterguns (so as not to do too much damage to things that aren't enemies) when you can have three guys at widely separated posts that have total control over life support, airlocks, bulkhead doors etc (three for redundancy, maybe make sure that it takes two such officers to make any action, make sure they can all communicate under any circumstances though) If you want to restrain someone without killing them, just lock the adjacent bulkhead doors (which there should be a lot of to keep hull breaches from affecting too much of the ship) until an officer or two with tasers can escort him to the brig.

Damage control largely depends on the universe weapons and defenses, if things generally get killed with one or two hits, then damage control is not a major concern, but if you have to whittle down an enemy ship and punch it full of holes to get a kill,t hen there need to be lots of damage control scurrying around (in vacuum suits of some kind, I generally use skin-suits for this purpose) to patch all the holes.
While a lot of damage control could be done by robots, it would be a good idea to have human overseers to identify weird problems and the best way to fix them. (A human damage control team is not likely to fall through a hole into space because all of the hull breach sensors were destroyed by whatever punched through the hull) Damage control is just one of theose places where that 'human element' is rather useful.

Centrifugal gravity is a bad idea on a warship, the centrifuge adds mass, complexity, and that rotational acceleration makes basically everything you want to do harder. If you need to do something under gravity, do it while the ship is under acceleration. If you really want to, you can mount rooms such that they self orient with the axis of acceleration so you can have constant-direction gravity while maneuvering.


As a general rule of thumb, I usually say a star ship has the equivalent crew of the next level down modern warship (A cruiser has roughly the crew you'd expect in a modern destroyer etc.) Though in practice, you probably want to normalize it so smaller ships have crew more in line with their modern counterparts while larger ships have smaller crew than indicated.

[frogcurry]

When estimating crew numbers, I don't see any indication here of shifts being taken into account. Assuming that there's a need for a human at a given console at all times, then all your core duties will need 3x as many people to achieve a proper 24 hr coverage (8 hrs duty, 8 hrs sleep, 8 hrs other time).

[B5B7]

In normal circumstances, on an advanced tech ship, there should be little in the way of watch duty required, therefore in normal circumstances only a portion of the crew is needed to man stations. During combat or other crisis everyone should be at duty stations.
The main thing one needs is a continuity of command - that is why as well as Captain one will have an XO, 2nd officer, 3rd officer, 4th officer.

[Darth Wong]

Doesn't this question depend on how realistic (and consequently fragile) this sci-fi universe's ships are?

A more realistic sci-fi universe would probably have a fair amount of crew that spends almost all its time doing preventive maintenance and status checks of critical systems and structures. The idea is to prevent a catastrophic incident rather than trying to recover from one, and a realistic spaceship would probably be very poor at absorbing serious damage.

But the sci-fi convention is starships that can take a tremendous pounding and still function, so for that, you're expected to have damage control crews that can patch it up and keep it going.

[Sea Skimmer]

You could have a warship with a realistic fuel fraction and yet fairly good protection, just use a liquid fuel or propellant as armor in several layers of tanks. That’s pretty effective against any sort of impact or radiation you could face. To a point a bigger crew is self justifying, because the bigger crew demands more habitable space to start with, and this will provide more chance of being able to survive a damaging hit at all.

[Darth Wong]

Interestingly enough, if you lose enough fuel on a realistic spaceship, you're as good as dead because you can't decelerate enough to approach your destination at a safe speed. That could probably make for interesting writing, as people try to get out of the jam they're in.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well if you’ve reached the point of having space fleets, then logically you’d have other space going vessels around which are more common. Any habitable world would hopefully have something around that can help out a disabled ship and avoid any nasty impacts. The ships which lose engines heading away from any known space at high speed are in trouble, but overall I’d say the risks to the crew are pretty similar to what a submarine crew submerged in the deep ocean faces. Realistic crew requirements would be pretty similar to a submarine as well, but you’ll need significantly more personal for the same sort of jobs just because since you need that crew to function for up to several years rather then several months for fighting with sub light engines inside a solar system.

[Ford Prefect]

Interestingly enough, if you lose enough fuel on a realistic spaceship, you're as good as dead because you can't decelerate enough to approach your destination at a safe speed. That could probably make for interesting writing, as people try to get out of the jam they're in.

"Well Captain, I had this idea where we start tossing things out the front out of the ship, and let Newton handle the rest."

Realistic crew requirements would be pretty similar to a submarine as well, but you’ll need significantly more personal for the same sort of jobs just because since you need that crew to function for up to several years rather then several months for fighting with sub light engines inside a solar system.

This was something that I hadn't been considering: time. Space is big, after all, and if you're stuck puttering about on a sublight engine, it's going to take positively forever to get anywhere. I imagine that if anything, ships could only really expected to deal with very small fractions of a system, which have strategic importance.

Coudl you imagine launching an attack against Jupiter from here? I mean wow, talk about a long trip in a fragile can which could be destroyed by a large man farting thirty metres away. In the end crews might be very small simply because there's only a very narrow range of utter nutjobs offering themselves up for duty.