Starships and Crew, many, few?


General Discussion


In my years of gaming I have seen a couple of different takes on starships and crew requirements. The idea that it takes a whole bunch of people, robots, androids and the idea that it takes just a few to run the ship?
Which do you prefer and why?
MDC


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Both. Different design philosophies and requirements mean some ships will be run by one or two man crews, your millennium falcons and such. Others will need 4-8 crew such as the firefly class vessels. Larger ships will need crews ranging from 10-1000 depending on purpose and level of automation. Automation itself will be a popular option for larger ships piloted by small crews or those who want to travel on ships but put their individual focus of efforts elsewhere. Automation can be provided by AI controls, robots, certain tailored spells or paid and compensated crew members. :)


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I like the idea that a PC group can adequately run a starship. Preferably done in a way where it encourages everybody to take a role in combat.

I would set it up with 6-7 functions that need to be handled in combat. Functions without a PC can be handled by automated systems or by taking a penalty to split focus between jobs. The basic automated systems will work adequately, but having a PC makes it work better. By having more than most parties have, it adds the tactical element of choosing which jobs a PC will take and which are automated. and it supports large parties without leaving somebody out.

For example:


  • Pilot - a good pilot can make the ship harder to hit and maneuver to better positions.
  • Gunner - one per weapon system. A PC gunner can try to target specific systems.
  • Sensor operator - boosts the efficiency of other positions. i.e. accuracy, precision. Can also jam enemy sensors.
  • Shield engineer - reroutes shield energy to better absorb damage.
  • Power engineer - can increase the effect of another position. i.e. damage, speed.
  • Damage control - can jury-rig systems to mitigate the effects of damage.

We also have:


  • Fighter pilot - operating all aspects of a separate combat ship.
  • Drone operator - like a fighter pilot, but less likely to die.

While these would usually have one person controlling everything, they'll usually have a better class of automation or other benefits.

Grand Lodge

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Personly I like it where each person can do thinkg on the ship. Buy that same token they should have something to alow you to do it with less if need be.

Like on the Falcon the Han can do the whole ship if he need to but buy having people take over each section they work much better. Maby something like with out out the gunner you can only shoot foward and at -4 per shot, or with out a engener your shields start lossing power each round untill some one stops doing other things and fixes them.


Smaller crews allow the players to have more of a impact. They are also easier to run.


I've been creating tons of star ship deck plans over the past year, and a couple station maps, even a game system agnostic one-shot module in a space station (was a contest map and adventure), and have them available as map products on DTRPG. Check out my Facebook page and see the samples I post...

Liberty's Edge

I think Philo's system can be scaled up too if you want the PCs commanding a dreadnought. Rather than pushing a button that fires the guns, they push a button telling the crew to load and fire the guns.


I'm running a Pathfinder space campaign and introduced a modified relationship system so that they can slowly make friends that they can recruit when they get their own ships. I've also been developing some ship combat rules with 5 mandatory roles that can be manned by 4 stations but three of the roles can have multiple people acting them out so I guess the minimum is 4 and the maximum is how ever many computer consoles you have. I set this up like this so that you can have a ragtag team on one ship or start paying for bigger ships and fill them with followers.


Philo Pharynx wrote:

I like the idea that a PC group can adequately run a starship. Preferably done in a way where it encourages everybody to take a role in combat.

I would set it up with 6-7 functions that need to be handled in combat. Functions without a PC can be handled by automated systems or by taking a penalty to split focus between jobs. The basic automated systems will work adequately, but having a PC makes it work better. By having more than most parties have, it adds the tactical element of choosing which jobs a PC will take and which are automated. and it supports large parties without leaving somebody out.

For example:


  • Pilot - a good pilot can make the ship harder to hit and maneuver to better positions.
  • Gunner - one per weapon system. A PC gunner can try to target specific systems.
  • Sensor operator - boosts the efficiency of other positions. i.e. accuracy, precision. Can also jam enemy sensors.
  • Shield engineer - reroutes shield energy to better absorb damage.
  • Power engineer - can increase the effect of another position. i.e. damage, speed.
  • Damage control - can jury-rig systems to mitigate the effects of damage.

We also have:


  • Fighter pilot - operating all aspects of a separate combat ship.
  • Drone operator - like a fighter pilot, but less likely to die.

While these would usually have one person controlling everything, they'll usually have a better class of automation or other benefits.

Spiffy! Personally, I am a huge fan of FTL, where while a pilot is MANDATORY, everything else can have a crewman operating it, which makes it faster, more efficient, and they can repair stuff when it breaks, but still operates at a less efficient rate even when there is no crewman there. There are, however, a few more roles that would probably be optional that I would add to your list.

  • Cyber-Warfare Engineer - is in charge of hacking, disabling, and otherwise remotely destroying functions on enemy ships/stations.
  • Ship Security Operator - maintains the on-ship security systems, including the automatic doors and optionally anti-personnel turrets
  • Magic Stuff - can't really think of a better name, but basically it would be responsible for on-ship or trans-ship magical spells and stuff.

    Also, the Sensor operator wouldn't just directly give boosts, but I think he would probably be doing stuff like scanning the enemy ship, figuring out what weapons on the ship are heating up to fire (to help shield guy), finding weak spots on the ship (to help gunners), finding where the terminals are (for the hackers), and so on. Jamming would probably be going under the hacker's area of expertise.


  • The classic Free Trader in Traveler could in theory, be flown by one man.

    In practice though, you wanted a co-pilot to spot you in maneuvering and navigation, an Engineer to keep full attention on the Jump and Maneuver Drives, and you'd be a criminal not to have someone who wasn't medically trained to take care of any low berth passengers, and a steward for regular passengers.

    If you were purely cargo, you might trade out the last two for a pair of cargo handlers.

    You need a crew because so many things need to be done on the smallest commercial ships that no one person can do it all, even on a ship as small as Serenity.

    If your career involves handling say ... "exotic" or "high risk" merchandise, then you might need some rather..."special" extras for that.


    In Star Trek, you have a core group (Bridge Crew, plus maybe a Doctor and an Engineer) that could be represented by the PCs. The rest of the crew (potentially hundreds) are responsible for secondary (i.e. non-dramatic) functions, and can also serve as a source for role playing much as townsfolk can serve in traditional fantasy.

    In Star Wars, the group of PCs might perform all the ship functions on a much smaller ship (Mill Falcon), and NPCs become the purview of the planets and space stations visited.

    I think either model would work fine in a setting such as Starfinder, and I can see either possibility being fun. Obviously, very large ships would generally need to be financed by larger organizations, so they would probably make for a more structured campaign.


    Different settings also have vastly differing levels of automation, sometimes even within the setting itself as well.

    Kosh's ship in B5 was a frigate-sized bioship with only himself as crew (and it didn't particularly need him to fly).

    Starfleet vessels can be controlled by a single person with varying levels of capability, though without maintenance and repairs it won't last long in hostile conditions. The ships have relatively small 'skeleton crew' levels, and let's not forget much of the Enterprise-D's 1000+ were passengers or families and children of the crew.

    Galactica's remake had 2900 crewmen, and that's with only half the usual hangar complement the ship class had. Dozens of main turrets, HUNDREDS of point defense units, 40 viper launch tubes, several heavier auxiliary craft.

    Moya mostly just needed a pilot.

    GTVA Colossus had a crew of 30,000. This was a 6166m monstrosity (fun fact; while it gets plot-destroyed normally, it has 1,000,000 HP) that carried 240 starfighters and 63 turrets (many of which are slasher or anticapital beam ones that'll one-shot any fighter they accidentally sweep through)

    And then there's the 40k cruisers, with upwards of a hundred thousand, most of which are basically press-ganged slave families living deep in the hull, but these are ships where even reloading weapons is done by thousands of men pulling on frickin chains. Much of the hierarchy has little to do with the ten or so real 'positions' on the ship, and everything to do with having enough whips and agents to keep the rowing pits doing their job and free of mutation.

    All of the above are just as all over the map for their firepower and other 'value' to a setting, too. Some settings a fighter can put good sized holes through continental plates, while in others you may be hard-pressed to glass a city in an hour.

    Personally, I prefer things on the smaller size crew-wise. The big ones are for infiltrating and figuring out how the hell to get it back to base once you've nerve-gassed life support and want to sell your newest loot.


    Jamie Charlan wrote:

    Different settings also have vastly differing levels of automation, sometimes even within the setting itself as well.

    This is sort of what I was getting at the old argument of a WWI Capital ship might have 300-2000 men and with each jump in generation the numbers go down but the ship size stays about the same. ie today's Zumwalt destroyers are about as big or bigger than WWII Cruisers and the Zum has a lot less of a man power requirement.

    Also depending on the setting specifics the ship may require a mage and or psychic to power the FTL drive if that is the direction that they go.

    Also as someone said about the Traveller game had some neat 1 man starships the scout (TL=15) is the one the jumps to my mind and the less technological ships might require more crew based on the numbers.

    I also have used Traveller ships and schematics with other games and they have generally worked great.
    MDC


    Also the idea of "every individual weapon needs a gunner" gets extremely silly when you consider how increasingly "point and click" weapons are today. Targets can be locked onto with a glance given the right equipment, and combinations of vocal, motion and tactile control systems ensure a single person can direct quite the arsenal.


    Jamie Charlan wrote:
    Also the idea of "every individual weapon needs a gunner" gets extremely silly when you consider how increasingly "point and click" weapons are today. Targets can be locked onto with a glance given the right equipment, and combinations of vocal, motion and tactile control systems ensure a single person can direct quite the arsenal.

    I'm not doubting you here, but I don't know anything about this kind of technology. How does that work if you have say two dozen targets? One guy can easily aim an arsenal at one large target, but it seems like you'd need lots of people to aim at lots of little targets individually in anything like a timely manner.


    HMDs (helmet mounted displays) nowadays allow you to simply look at something and actuate a control (say, a thumbswitch or the like) and get a weapons lock that way.

    There's a basic explanation Here but effectively, rather than aiming the nose at a target for a few seconds, you just click whatever's in your field of view to lock/track, and can assign individual missiles and weapons to each.

    So the complexity of controlling multiple weapons versus multiple targets (and we're not exactly travelling through hyperspace yet) has now reached a point equivalent to "tab through targets and hit the hotkeys as you need'em". It's not completely instant for multiple targets but neither is screaming "FIRE!" or waiting/reacting to said orders afterwards.

    In terms of aiming ship weapons at multiple targets, "how many things you can track and fire at at once" would probably be what your number of attacks per round signify: Anyone can just alpha-strike something in front of them with all weapons, but if it's 6 seconds per round, then getting 2, 3, maybe 6 with haste at 20th is probably appropriate if you're also designating which weapons fire at what at the same time.

    Weapon RoFs (and/or how many of each missile you're carrying) would be their own separate matter. Some might be able to fill the sky, others you've got one under a pylon and that's it.

    Now consider how much faster even that gets if an AI or at least someone using direct neural interface starts applying themselves with the removal of the "focus eyes" and "wait for signal from brain to make your finger move" from the sequence!


    I have an alternity campaign designed around the PCs having a system ship available or being part of the jump ship that travels the verge.

    The jump ship carried two escort ships (frigate/destroyer sized) plus about 25 of the smaller ships, in addition to some manufacturing capability and sales floor on the ship itself (plus room for the crew).

    The jump ship was on a "five year tour" and the smaller ships leased space for at least a year at a time to travel with it. The leased space came with apartments for the system ship's crew, some cargo space and other such niceties.

    This allowed episodic sessions in different locations without having the PCs being able to jump wherever/whenever they wanted. If they instead chose to be the crew of the bigger ship there were plenty of places they could be important without being the 'be all end all' of the crew for that section. Also away missions for restocking and whatnot were always possible too.

    I guess I'm saying I see plenty of room for both big and small and mixes of the two as well.

    For Star Trek sort of games I like a crew around 200~300 as that allows room for character growth through the ranks and replacements if something should happen. At that crew size the PCs can also influence where the ship goes without being given a free handle.


    One think to remember is aiming is just part of it, you need some way to detect it also. So eye ball (visual), some type of tec detector (radar, sonar, heat, vibration, etc) and magic are the ones I think that might apply to Starfinder.
    If you can detect it accurately then you can just issue the command to fire.
    Where the problem's come in is predicting the flight of the target, flight of the round/missile/burst of energy, environmental conditions and how they might affect the attack and the enemy's counter measures to detection.
    So if a computer was firing I probably would limit some of the bonus unless they were states as being superior to sentient life's ability to target, predict and analysis the enemies movements.
    MDC


    They probably are. And even when you're "aiming manually" with vehicle weapons, it's not like you're using iron sights.


    Mark Carlson 255 wrote:

    In my years of gaming I have seen a couple of different takes on starships and crew requirements. The idea that it takes a whole bunch of people, robots, androids and the idea that it takes just a few to run the ship?

    Which do you prefer and why?
    MDC

    Design philosophy depends on technological, material/financial, and cultural feasibility.

    Gunboats, destroyers and frigates don't need a lot of crew or automation, are faster and cheaper to build and mass produce, but have to be built in large quantities to have the same impact as a capital ship.

    If the builders are technologically advanced, they can build the automation systems that can replace crew members. If they have the material resources and production capacity, they can build many ships with automation systems.

    If the builders have a distrust of automation or do not believe in machine reliability over trusting critical tasks to trained crew members, then they may limit the amount of automation implemented on their ships or shun it altogether. Cultures who value individualism over collective effort or who treasure personal space and exploration over the security and comfort of being in a crowd may consider automation quite important.

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