Minimum crew rules for starships don't make sense

[Ravingdork]

Per the rules of pilot actions, it is clear that you only ever need one pilot to actually move the ship. Then, why do the rules also state the following?

A starship without its minimum complement can’t be flown.

It's blatantly untrue. Without the full crew, you might not get very far before something breaks down. You might not be able to fire the guns, raise shields, use sensors, or a myriad of other beneficial things, but you absolutely could fly the ship. It says it right there in the rest of the rules.

Why the contradiction? Should it be ignored/fixed?

[pauljathome]

Note that the minimum crew on many ships is quite small. For example, a Transport or explorer can fly with 1 person.

It doesn't seem completely unreasonable that larger ships just need SOME crew to do SOMETHING or other in order to fly. The engineer has to flip some switches, the Science Officer has to do some scanning, SOMETHING.

What seems far more silly to me is that there is a MAXIMUM crew that is usually only a factor of 4 or so higher.

[Metaphysician]

I suspect the "maximum crew" is the maximum crew that actually benefits Ship Actions. You *can* have more people onboard a Colossal ship, they just are not doing stuff related to the Ship Actions ( pilots and crew for onboard fighters, marines, colonists, spare personnel, etc ).

Also, note that the larger ships have team sizes even for Pilot. If a ship's minimum crew is more than 1, in some cases its because a single person is not capable of filling the Pilot role, they need their team.

[David knott 242]

The maximum crew size could be limited by space within the ship -- crew above the maximum may not have a station that they can man to do anything useful in space combat.

[Kittyburger]

How I rule it is:

1: For anything larger than a Transport (i.e. Destroyer or larger), you need at least three times the listed complement to have full watches stood at all times.
2: Military ships will typically have double the "expected" complement in order to account for Finagle's Law (i.e. to have warm bodies for damage control and casualty replacements during combat).

[KingOfAnything]

Bigger ships have more systems that need constant monitoring. Single pilots would quickly experience gauge fatigue.

[Kittyburger]

KingOfAnything wrote:

Bigger ships have more systems that need constant monitoring. Single pilots would quickly experience gauge fatigue.

For seriousness, I think that Pathfinder is a game where player characters' leadership skills are going to be critically important.

[pauljathome]

Metaphysician wrote:

I suspect the "maximum crew" is the maximum crew that actually benefits Ship Actions.

For a significant number of people, their second starship combat is going to be in the 5th quest in Into The Unknown.

In which you're fighting a starship that has 5 seperate guns and a complement (which I presume is minimum/maximum) of 2-7.

Even assuming I can NOT double up on engineer/Science officer I still have "room" for 9.