Am I missing something on these listings?
A dreadnought is roughly 4.5km long with a maximum crew of 500.
A star destroyer is 1.6km long and has a crew of 45,000.
A Nimitz class carrier is 0.31km long with a crew of 6000
What am I missing here?
Maybe there's 3 zeroes missing off the dreadnought? The star destroyer has less crew per volume than the Nimitz, but that could just mean more automation. 500 000 would be about right scaling from the star destroyer to the dreadnought.
There's LOTS off about the ship statistics. I went into a mini-rant about the cargo capacity in another thread (short version, the bulk freighter couldn't haul as much as some 16th century sailing ships, and would have trouble stocking a good sized Walmart). Others have pointed out that the weight does not math out correctly for length.
Hopefully they'll all get reexamined when there's an inevitable ship focused supplement.
|
Budget cuts, and magic.
Thought in all honestly we're talking about hypothetical crews for fictional ships in the future. Star Wars had a greater galaxy at play and people was a infinite resource and so large numbers were writen for crews. Starfinder is just focused on a tiny part of the galaxy where people is a smaller resource so ships might assumed to be more automated and smaller crews reflect this.
Rule Number 1: Never mix real-world sizes/physics/views with P&P RPG rules :)
Also numbers for imaginary space ships are always strange...
Take the only real space ship (Space Shuttle):
It has a length of 122.17 ft. A max Crew of seven and a max load of 4t(to Geostationary transfer Orbit - wich is equivalent to "Surface to space").
The shuttle self weights around 78t.
So it would be a small space ship in SF (Light Freighter):
Crew 1 (max 6) - seems fine
Cargo: 3 = 75t - quite off
Weight: 40t - also off
Stats for Space Ships in Scifi Stories are never 100% logical or accurate, they are always just tools for storytelling.
So I wouldn't really bother about them that much and adapt them if needed for your story. ;)
|
|
The other thing to remember is that the "max crew" is the maximum number that can contribute to Space Combat, I.e. The roles of "Pilot," "Captain," "Gunner," "Science Officer," and "Engineer." You could easily argue that larger ships have thousands of crew, but most of them are taking care of other jobs. Things like maintaining fighters, food prep, cleaning and trash, navigation and communication outside of combat, payroll, entertainment, etc. Then you want to remember that a large ship probably means there are enough crew to have all the positions covered at all times, which means 2 or 3 shifts.
1,500 crew members is still remarkably light for a 4.5 kilometer dreadnought.
Automation, S-KIs etc. (take a look at Gene Roddenberrys Andromeda):
1,3 km with a skelleton Crew of 6 :)
There's LOTS off about the ship statistics. I went into a mini-rant about the cargo capacity in another thread (short version, the bulk freighter couldn't haul as much as some 16th century sailing ships, and would have trouble stocking a good sized Walmart). Others have pointed out that the weight does not math out correctly for length.
Hopefully they'll all get reexamined when there's an inevitable ship focused supplement.
Certainly there are some both major and minor errors that ended up in the book (like various numbers regarding ships which are just going against common sense). I would like to see them fixed in the next (or one of the next) version of Starfinder Core Rulebook.
Aircraft carrier crew numbers aren't relevant because the vast majority aren't "crew" for Starfinder ship stat purposes. Subtract all the cooks, planners, intel staff, medical personnel, the entire aircraft wing (add back notional gunnery personnel), the marine element, etc. They don't take meaningful marginal actions during ship to ship combat.
Those huge dreadnoughts might have 20,000 people on board, including marine brigades and fighter wing crews, plus lots of logistical support crew. But in ship combat only 500 contribute to ship actions under this combat system.
(Of course the actual guest quarters rules and available expansion bays don't allow this, so that part is a screw up in my opinion.)
Agreed. The expansion bay numbers work for smaller ships, but the biggest ships could have ten times the expansion bays and still look funny.
I'm ballparking that an expansion bay is roughly 80 cubic meters, by the way, based on its 25 ton capacity.