Hello all, In my fanfics I always try to make things as 'realistic' as possible. Part of that is to come up with the department sizes, positions and various crewmembers. I'm also a fan of having diverse crews, with many aliens onboard. To this end, I have finally drawn up the entire crew roster for the Border Cutter Silverfin, so I thought I would share it. If anyone has any questions on anything below (what positions actually do, why that many onboard, what species is that, etc), then feel free to ask. COMMAND FLIGHT CONTROL MEDICAL ENGINEERING OPERATIONS SECURITY TACTICAL SPECIES
It's something I've been working on for a while and finally got perfected this week. I'm just lucky there's only 126 onboard, any more and I think I'd have cracked. I've kinda thought that the diverse crew was something the ship had always been known for, having a more than a few weird and wonderful aliens onboard over her 50+ years of service. It's just one of those things I get really into (especially when stuck) and do it until its done. It may mean editing a few names here and there to tie in with what I've finally decided but that's no biggy.
wow, i thought i was the only one who did this. Well done on all that hard work. i have to admit when I've done this, I've only had 75 crewmembers so you've worked harder than I.
Impressive, most impressive I'd love to do something like that, but Challenger, Gorky Park, and Vincennes are all ships of the line with fairly sizable crews. Hmm, that just got me wondering. We know the crew complement of a Galaxy, but have numbers been established (canon or fanon) for the Excelsior or Sovereign-classes? And of course, Challenger being my own creation, I can determine her crew complement myself... one of these days, lol. Back to the original topic... I'm with you, Bry, I like having a varied and diverse crew. The Titan novels have been a good source of alien races, and I've made up a few of my own...
Great work, Bry - not only did you provide names and ranks but also duty assignment and shift. And I like the numerical break-down by species. I considered doing this once for Bluefin but never got far with it. I've had so much turn over on the crew that I'm not quite sure who's on board now.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one. Coming up with departments and duty assignments wasn't all that difficult. The hardest thing I found was naming the human crewmembers, so that there were a diverse number from various countries (I've got people of Korean, German, Icelandic, Swedish, French, Czech, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, Italian, South African, Maori, and a couple other origins) just so they're not all Anglo-origin names. I always like to come up with department numbers and a few key extras at the least. The departments are something of an obsession when creating crews, as I like to know who onboard does what. I always weight mine towards Alpha Shift, so that it has a few more people on duty that the others. That is one of the few good things about the Titan books (I tried reading the series, but found the first two really dull and gave up), but the fact that the keep hyping it up as being the 'most diverse crew' and one with only a small percentage of humans onboard does annoy me a little. Starfleet has hundreds (if not thousands) of ships (not to mention huge space stations), humans are only a few billion within the entire population of the UFP (150+ members) and, like today, not everyone will sign up for military service, so there won't be that many humans about to dominate each and every ship. On all my starships, humans always make up less than half the overall crew (41% on the Silverfin). Cheers TLR. Though being Border Dogs they'll all chip in to get the job done when needed, with many cross trained for additional duties, this is for when they are on standard patrol duty--you know, on those rare occassions things are actually quiet .
i have to agree the specialist positions are fairly easy to come up with and if you go to certain resources it makes it a no brainer. There are also name generators which I use for more background characters. The most difficult part I found was the rank system. On Nightingale this is the rank system I use... Commissioned Officers Captain Commander Lieutenant Commander Lieutenant Lieutenant (JG) Ensign Warrant Officers Master Chief Warrant Officer Senior Chief Warrant Officer Chief Warrant Officer Warrant Officer Enlisted Personnel Master Chief Petty Officer Senior Chief Petty Officer Chief Petty Officer Petty Officer First Class Petty Officer Second Class Petty Officer Third Class Crewman First Class Crewman Second Class Crewman Third Class Getting the right number of each rank is incrediable tough. At first I had more MCPO than I did CSC, which was wrong, so it took an hour or so to sort it out to have the right balance of ranks. As for species I actually got a list of every species known (or thought of due to evidence). I've got 51 members out of the 150 so far (plus I've made one up).
Well thanks to TLR's notes, Albacore-Class cutters generally have no more than 25 officers, so I just worked out what departments had what officers (Tactical only has one, seeing as how its department chief is just an ensign less than a year out of the Academy). I'm not entirely sure how Warrant Officers fit into rank structures, so I leave them out. As for how many of what rank, I just went through the departments and allocated ranks that seemed appropriate. For example: Engineering has one officer (minimum) to oversee the each watch, the warp systems specialist is always in engineering (monitoring the core and other related systems), the diagnostics specialist is an all-rounder and can go where needed, then three enlisted engineers to see to whatever needs fixing. I then gave the department a petty officer responsible for monitoring and maintaining environmental systems (located on another deck) with a crewman to assist (due to the importance of the system for the crews survival). Then added a petty officer in the impulse control room, again with a crewman to assist, due to the power of the Albacore's impulse drive, and its importance when on missions.
Hate to necro an old topic, Bry_Sinclair, but you linked to it from the "Creating a realistic crew manifest" topic ..... Very cool stuff. I tried to do something similar over on ADB's Federation Commander board, in the Prime Directive RGP category. My idea was much more ambitious, with a one-page background data sheet for each member of the crew on a Federation Police Cutter. Because I was having trouble thinking up such information for a hundred people, I opened it up as a "crowd source" project opened up to allow anyone to create character sheets. Sadly, nobody else jumped in. I do wonder if that type of project might not go over better here on the Trek BBS board ......