Crew vs Passengers; How Much is Enough

[Faenrel]

So I've been working on building a few different ships, both for NPC vessels as well as learning how the rules work so I can better assist my players as they play. The rules I'm trying to figure out the most right now involve the maximum crew.

So using sources from many science fiction world's I will explain my confusion. As examples we have the UNSC Infinity from the Halo franchise. It would classify as a Starfinder dreadnaught, since it is over 15,000 feet in length - 18,682 to be exact. According to Starfinder the maximum crew is 500. Then, from the Halo wiki and lore comes this:

"The total known estimate of Troops aboard Infinity is 7,150. This is spread out among an unknown amount of Spartans, 5,400 Marines, 750 Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, 800 UNSC Army Troopers, and 200 UNSC Air Force personnel."

And:

"In total, the crew was about 11,112. This was composed of about 8,900 Naval Personnel, 1,700 ONI Personnel, 480 UEG Personnel, 24 Swords of Sanghelios, and 8 Special Assets."

With the Starfinder rules on crew and guest quarters, I don't see a dreadnaught in the Starfinder universe housing anywhere close to that number.

Star Wars, another VERY known sci-fi (and one that certain elements of Starfinder we're inspired by) has another example.

The Imperial-1 Class Star Destroyer measures 5,249 feet - a Starfinder battleship in size. Yet here are the numbers for it's crew.

"CREW
Officers (9,235)
Enlisted (27,850)
Stormtroopers (9,700)"

So.... Are the maximum crew numbers in the rulebook just as who is on the clock while the others are sleeping, while the minimum numbers only for the most dire circumstances? Or are the Starfinder ships just woefully undercrewed and undermanned compared to other well-known sci-fi universes?

[Metaphysician]

Hmm. So, the way I see it, there are two possibilities:

1. The crew totals listed are the minimum necessary crew to operate a ship at full capacity. You need this many crew active at any time for all the stations to operate unpenalized, with any less amount imposing "skeleton crew" penalties on relevant ship actions. Every ship, in practice, needs several times this number to support duty shifts.

2. The crew totals listed are the full standard crew, including support for duty shifts. A ship only needs about a third the listed crew totals to operate at full capacity, the rest are to cover for different duty shifts ( and battle casualties ). If you have less crew, you either need to sacrifice duty shifts or accept skeleton crew penalties or both.

I can see arguments for both positions, though I feel like the latter is a little more justifiable; it'd be weird for the listed crew total to be guaranteed useless. OTOH, neither clearly describes the *actual* "maximum crew", in terms of how many extra crew a ship can support to provide for extra bodies or non-ship action activities.

[Wingblaze]

First I think benchmarking against other science fiction is probably not a productive route of comparison. Particularly when you go to the high end of the scale which isn't really something the players are likely to fight.

That aside, I don't believe you're interpreting the statistic correctly. Page 293:

Minimum and Maximum Crew: In a base frame stat block,
these entries note the minimum and maximum number
of characters who can take actions on that vessel during
starship combat. Larger starships use teams that report to
a higher officer who performs an assigned role in starship
combat (see Large and Small Crews on page 316 for more
about large crews). A starship without its minimum crew
can’t be operated.

(emphasis mine)

It has nothing to do with how many life forms may be aboard. It's about actions during starship combat. You can as the GM can determine the flavor, populations, shift rotations or whatever. This stat just deals with the mechanics.

[Metaphysician]

The problem with that interpretation is that it leaves you with "minimum crews" which are not, in fact, anything close to minimum crews in practice, unless everyone is an android or undead who never needs to sleep.

[Ellias Aubec]

The sizes of the larger ships is fairly unrealistic in terms of cargo capacity, displacement/weight, crew etc. I would not worry too much about trying to match them up number for number. Unless they change the basic stuff for their larger ships, this incongruity will always remain.

[Faenrel]

The smaller ships seemed fair to me, but yeah, bigger ships seem... Off. For example, most colony ships in sci-fi are usually among the largest of any fleet, if among the weakest in terms of combat. Since no (sane) game is going to have 500 players under one DM, I don't see the min/max crew as absolutely vital in terms of player coverage. However, for flavor and ROLEplay (as opposed to rollplay) the numbers are important to me, for story fodder - valued NPCs to kill off, as well as redshirts.

So far, with everyone's input, it sounds like I might bring in some house ruling for ships, and a LOT of flavor over mechanics for the story. I did a bunch of convoluted math, and what I found was a ship of the dreadnaught size in Pathfinder would have an area of several dozen square miles, if not a couple hundred (math is NOT my strongest skill). My own town has a population of 50,000+. Ships about three miles in length would have a LOT of people on board.

SO! Thank you all for the input so far; I think I'll use the rulings with minor tweaks, if any, for combat stuff alone, but larger ships are going to have a LOT more crew/passenger options, as well as the bays. I'd be interested to keep this thread going, just to hear folks' own tweaks to the rules and what not.

[Tryn]

Space ship design (not the art, but the numbers) is always tricky, because we are use to the scale from multiple shows and books, but don't know the tech requirements (how big is a drift engine? how far is automation).
So I think the biggest problem is that Paizo failed to establish a base line for the tech level.
Shows like Andromeda showed that automation would allow a crew of four easily handle a 1,3 km ship (but it could house ~ 8000 people (+~100 fighter/drones).

For max crew I would go roughly with modern day navy ships of the same size (which is difficult vor everything above Huge).

Example:
Nimitz Class CVN - 330 meter length => Huge size
Crew: 5000+

Baden-Württemberg-class frigate - 150m length => Large size
Crew: 190

Freedom Class LCS - 115 m => Medium size
Crew: 100

General for starships I would use more common sense and logic then the book stats for non-rule relevant numbers.

I think Paizo made a big mistake in not setting a base line for ship tech first and also to try to apply small ship rules to capital ships.