Crew Size for the Galaxy class stardrive

[Lionheart]

At one point in my FanFic a character becomes the CO of a Galaxy class vessel during the Dominion War, though it doesn't have a saucer section, which was lost during Operation Return.

I really don't feel like breaking out my Galaxy class blueprints and attempting to count crew quarters.... anybody have a guesstimate on it? I was figuring 400 -550.

 

[ZStar]

FWIW - From my 15+ year old notes, I only have a count of 188 beds in the stardrive/battle section of a Galaxy class starship. That number is based on the official Sternbach blueprints.

 

[Lionheart]

FWIW - From my 15+ year old notes, I only have a count of 188 beds in the stardrive/battle section of a Galaxy class starship. That number is based on the official Sternbach blueprints.

I've got them I just didn't want to break them out and clear my kitchen table.
That doesn't seem like much, but with say junior officers and enlisted sharing... I'll go 250, witha few extra here and there for VIP, Marines, etc.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

In wartime I wouldn't be surprised that there would be even more. Under regular conditions, I wouldn't be surprised if most or all of the stardrive section's crew would live in the saucer, for purely social reasons if nothing else. The ship certainly isn't hurting for space.

LaForge apparently stays on Deck 2. Most of the other engineering minions use the same "interior" quarters set as LaForge / Worf / Data, so theorhetically they could be anywhere, but it makes more sense to keep them (and their families where applicable) with the rest of the crew and for the actual staff to take the lift to work, unless they specifically request to stay away from the general population.

Any crew quarters would purely be backup in case of separation, and would be maintained empty and ready as such. Alternatively, some of these could be reserved for crew who needed specific environmental conditions and thus be afforded a shirtsleeves community area if they breathed or soaked in something else when not on duty.

So, IMO a crew of 150-180 under emergency separated conditions would make sense. However, in your situation where the ship would be operating for an extended period without a saucer, it also makes sense to up that. They have a sickbay ("Arsenal of Freedom"), but could retrofit spare cargo space or labs into more crew spaces, or simply get people to bunk up. 250 could be a healthy number, but IMO 300-400 wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility either.

Mark

 

[Ithekro]

A Galaxy-class stardrive section would appear to have more internal volume than a Constitution-class starship, and those had a crew of at least 430, possibly more after their 2270s refit.

It is just a matter of what all that space is used for on a Galaxy.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I think that the ship would be equipped for extended operations for certain parameters in separated flight mode - that is, it'll have all it needs to operate as long as it needs to to accomplish the mission it was designed for.

If you consider that the primary purpose of separating the ship was supposed to be for the ship to remove the civilian population from danger while the stardrive section did all the fighting, then "all that space" would likely have a heavier slant on tactical and propulsion activities in addition to all the regular Engineering activities in connected mode. Science, environment, and any civilian stuff would not be considered. The E-D battle bridge stations lacked a dedicated science station in either configuration, and presumably the Chief Engineer would be downstairs.

Anyway, I'd think that GCS stardrive would be able to get along just fine with just 150-180 crew, simply because that's how many beds are available. This would likely be maintainable, excepting battle damage, for weeks or months, or even longer given all the primary fuel for the ship is kept in this hull. For PRACTICAL purposes during wartime however, I'd be happy with adding a bunch more people to help run and maintain the ship for additional profiles, modifying it accordingly as I mentioned above.

Mark

 

[Maurice]

If the whole ship carries 1,012, and not all of those are Starfleet, and a lot of those are mission specialists, seems like the crew necessary to run the battle section for combat would be a fairly small percentage of the complement, so like under 200 seems very reasonable.

 

[Ithekro]

They would need the engineering staff and a few shifts worth of bridge personel and crew to maintain the ship, weapons, and shields. Not so many labs and not as many sensor arrays.

So probably 150 - 250. Most of the labs are in the saucer, if I remember correctly.

 

[Timo]

Might be that about 100% of the operating crew needed to make the combined ship fly and fight is actually needed in the stardrive section, and the saucer is purely passenger space... Okay, a few specialists for running and maintaining the impulse engines and phaser strips, but the rest would be sort of superfluous - researchers, shuttlecraft mechanics, etc.

The death toll at Wolf 359 might be telling: only about 11,000 people lost in 39 ships, meaning just 280 people per ship. Did a high percentage of the crew of each ship manage to escape? Or were big ships like Nebula and Excelsior and their respective study models that sparsely crewed to begin with? Or at least that sparsely crewed after nonessential crew was offloaded, whenever the ships had time to do so?

Even the known smaller ships were half-scale Galaxy kitbashes, way bigger than Kirk's old ride, so biasing the count by making small-ship crews smaller than the average isn't going to help much, either: the Voyager, a small ship in Wolf 359 terms, appeared to need 150 people aboard in order to fly and fight.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Maxillius]

If the Enterprise carries a total of 1012 including families, and if we consider maybe 15% of the crew has family aboard (family = spouse/partner and a child), we can drop the number of people expected to man a duty station to about 800. The stardrive is plenty large enough to hold all 800 and it would have to if the ship was expected to operate at battle efficiency (4 shifts, 200 each shift). Consider the total crew complement of an Excelsior-class ship is 750 and it's much smaller than a Galaxy stardrive, saucer included. So, whatever odd number after 800 crew takes the saucer and civilians to safety while the stardrive fights.

 

[Maxillius]

Might be that about 100% of the operating crew needed to make the combined ship fly and fight is actually needed in the stardrive section, and the saucer is purely passenger space... Okay, a few specialists for running and maintaining the impulse engines and phaser strips, but the rest would be sort of superfluous - researchers, shuttlecraft mechanics, etc.

The death toll at Wolf 359 might be telling: only about 11,000 people lost in 39 ships, meaning just 280 people per ship. Did a high percentage of the crew of each ship manage to escape? Or were big ships like Nebula and Excelsior and their respective study models that sparsely crewed to begin with? Or at least that sparsely crewed after nonessential crew was offloaded, whenever the ships had time to do so?

Even the known smaller ships were half-scale Galaxy kitbashes, way bigger than Kirk's old ride, so biasing the count by making small-ship crews smaller than the average isn't going to help much, either: the Voyager, a small ship in Wolf 359 terms, appeared to need 150 people aboard in order to fly and fight.

Timo Saloniemi

That's an average of 280. There were several Nebulas and Excelsiors in that battle (700+ crew), quite a few old ships that were scrambled from mothballs that doubtlessly had skeleton crews (50 or less), some may even have been automated if Adm. Hanson and/or Shelby had thought about it (zero crew). Some ships may have had time to drop civilians but Starfleet had less than a week to prepare for that cube; some ships had to get there at maximum warp to fight - no time to stop.

 

[Timo]

That's it, though, there were several of those larger ships in the fleet. Even if all the rest of the ships had skeleton crews, that doesn't comfortably leave 700+ crew for the behemoths.

Let's see: one "genuine" Nebula in the battle scenes, one study model; one regular Excelsior; one Ambassador, one Niagara. Then the Freedom with her giant saucer (even if without a secondary hull), plus four different "half-scale" Galaxy kitbashes. Assuming that this is the grand total of largish ships out of the 39, we would get just 130 crew for all the smaller ships if we gave 700+ to those larger ones. But despite there being a Miranda and an Oberth in the mix, we did see other designs that supposedly are much larger - the Excelsior study models. We just didn't see those well enough to confirm their size.

I guess the numbers could be juggled so that the Nebulas and the Ambassadors/Niagaras, the biggest known ships, get 600+ but the "medium" ones have a bit less than their size would suggest, and many of the smaller ones are indeed almost automated. Or then we could assume that lots of people managed to escape the carnage - but if that were so, why didn't the E-D spot any when arriving?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Maxillius]

There could be more ships that aren't seen because they were blown to bits by Borg weapons fire or warp core breaches.

Why didn't E-D see any survivors? They weren't looking. If you'll recall from the episode, they dropped out of warp, glanced at the wreckage, then warped on after the cube. They were kind-of in a rush. Clearly there were survivors or DS9 would've had a different CO.

 

[Ithekro]

It has also been several hours since the battle. Was it something like eight to twelve hours before Enterprise could repair itself and the battle took place before she finished. Then whatever travel time it would take to reach Wolf 359 form where they had perviously engaged the Borg with the Deflector Beam Weapon.

All they saw was wrecked ships, not power or subspace fields, and no lifesigns.

Judging by what we saw of that battle, it didn't last very long.

 

[Saturn0660]

Might be that about 100% of the operating crew needed to make the combined ship fly and fight is actually needed in the stardrive section, and the saucer is purely passenger space... Okay, a few specialists for running and maintaining the impulse engines and phaser strips, but the rest would be sort of superfluous - researchers, shuttlecraft mechanics, etc.

The death toll at Wolf 359 might be telling: only about 11,000 people lost in 39 ships, meaning just 280 people per ship. Did a high percentage of the crew of each ship manage to escape? Or were big ships like Nebula and Excelsior and their respective study models that sparsely crewed to begin with? Or at least that sparsely crewed after nonessential crew was offloaded, whenever the ships had time to do so?

Even the known smaller ships were half-scale Galaxy kitbashes, way bigger than Kirk's old ride, so biasing the count by making small-ship crews smaller than the average isn't going to help much, either: the Voyager, a small ship in Wolf 359 terms, appeared to need 150 people aboard in order to fly and fight.

Timo Saloniemi

Indeed, i just checked VOY: The 37's. At that point they had 152 crew on board. Chakotay even remarks about not being able to run the ship with less then 100. I'd say Voyager is maybe 1/4 the size of the Galaxy?

 

[Timo]

Why didn't E-D see any survivors? They weren't looking.

But they were. Dialogue indicates that they scanned for survivors, and found none. This was not followed by comments like "Of course, we aren't really looking - they might be farther off by now", but by the general acceptance of everybody being dead or worse.

One might think the lifeboats would be capable of extreme stealth for situations just like this: they would have onboard jammers to mask lifesigns so that the enemy would not come hunting for them, and they might lie low for hours if not days after a battle like this. But the more survivors there are, the greater the odds that one or two would tentatively activate their beacons to see if there was anybody friendly out there.

Judging by what we saw of that battle, it didn't last very long.

Yeah, and that's somewhat confusing. In TNG, Admiral Hanson has time to call and tell the battle isn't going well and there will be regrouping. In DS9, the Melbourne, Hanson's supposed command ship, is seen dying while moving towards the Borg Cube. Was this before she had time to regroup, or as the result of the regrouping and part of a second attempt at attacking the Cube? Curiously, the death comes at the early stages of the DS9 battle, perhaps speaking against us seeing things happen in anything approximating real time...

I'd say Voyager is maybe 1/4 the size of the Galaxy?

It might depend on what we are counting exactly. Perhaps it takes a fixed number of crew to run a warp core, and it doesn't matter much whether the core is in a ship 100 m long or 10 km long?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Saturn0660]

It might depend on what we are counting exactly. Perhaps it takes a fixed number of crew to run a warp core, and it doesn't matter much whether the core is in a ship 100 m long or 10 km long?

Timo Saloniemi

Maybe, but i'm not so sure. But then again, you might be on to something. Voyager is a much "faster" ship then the Galaxy class. I get the feeling that she's a more a "sports car" then a "land yacht"..

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Well, we DO tend to see similar numbers of people on the bridge and engineering of a TNG starship regardless of size:

- Typically on the E-D, aside from whoever is riding the horseshoe, we'd have con, ops and tactical manned at all times, and two or three extras at the aft stations.

- On Voyager, con, ops and tac are likewise always there, plus someone at eng, sci and at least one extra on the aft mission ops stations.

- And despite being smaller than either one, there was rarely an empty seat on the Defiant bridge aside from the center chair, plus one or two people wandering around the various consoles behind it.

Down in engineering, regardless of the ship, there would almost always be 2-4 extras besides whoever was speaking actual dialogue in a given scene. Does every ship have a standard crew for normal situations? Are they just dealing with their extras budget for the show? Make of that what you will...

Mark

 

[Maxillius]

Why didn't E-D see any survivors? They weren't looking.

But they were. Dialogue indicates that they scanned for survivors, and found none. This was not followed by comments like "Of course, we aren't really looking - they might be farther off by now", but by the general acceptance of everybody being dead or worse.

One might think the lifeboats would be capable of extreme stealth for situations just like this: they would have onboard jammers to mask lifesigns so that the enemy would not come hunting for them, and they might lie low for hours if not days after a battle like this. But the more survivors there are, the greater the odds that one or two would tentatively activate their beacons to see if there was anybody friendly out there.



Timo Saloniemi

Would E-D's sensors have been able to poke thorough the radiation of 39 dead starships? The facts that Enterprise didn't pick anyone up and that Sisko survived Wolf 359 aren't mutually exclusive. Does one starship pausing in a battlefield to effect her own repairs not detecting any lifeboats mean there weren't any? Not necessarily. I can't remember specifics about the episode so I'm not sure when Enterprise burned her deflector out, if it was before Wolf 359 or after.

 

[Ithekro]

It was hours after the battle tha Enterprise arrived, and we later find that at least one ship survived the battle. so they might have taken on the survivors and left away from the cube (meaning away from Earth), and somehow did not contact Enterprise during this time. Subspace transmissions may have still be jammed by the Borg, or Locutus made sure to damage even the retreating ships communications arrays.