They just rppied a number off a navy ship about the same size without thinking, I would guess.
Discovery Size Argument™ thread
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
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They just rppied a number off a navy ship about the same size without thinking, I would guess.
Non canonical explanation was during the major refit before Kirk took over, smaller hardware was installed,which freed up volume for more crew.
Really, even with a lot of automation you need 300 or so to carry out the missions we see them doing. The Intrepid is woefully undermanned for anything but the most basic science missions, simply because there's not enough people to fit in more than maybe ten actual science specialists. The NX seems entirely hopeless given how many people we see in the different departments.
That is a technical question that I don't recall seeing addressed very often; the ship's crew is 430 or whatever, but how many of those are operating the ship versus "payload," the scientists (and, I suppose, security staff). Like, if it takes, say, 80 people to work a Constitution-Class ship so it's capable of flying from place to place, then split over three shifts, that means 240 of the crew are just operating the ship. Maybe an average of one security guard per deck per shift, that accounts for another 70 or 80, which leaves 110 scientists who are actually doing what the ship is flying in space for, learning new things about space. At least in that case, you get more coverage, since you don't need triple redundancy so, say, the ship's historical department is operating 24 hours a day.
110 Scientists is unreasonable for a heavy cruiser. That is over a 4th of the crew, which seems counter to what we saw.
I would gather they would have extra people for the Five Year Mission, and just decided to keep those numbers afterwards because it worked for Starfleet.
Also not all the scientists wore blue. You had some social sciences, communications, and engineering specialist in red.
Also not all the scientists wore blue. You had some social sciences, communications, and engineering specialist in red.
25% of the crew seems a little low for a ship of exploration. As for "on screen" McCoy talks about "his staff" and yet we only ever see Bones and Chapel and maybe one other random nurse? And yet McCoy has enough researchers to run up to the bridge and hassle Spock during the Tholian Web.
What we see doesn't even match with what we are told, nevermind what makes sense.
Where we ever given any department nbers for the 1701 or it's refit?
Ships operate in shifts. Three or four per 24 hour period, according to TNG, DS9 and Voyager. With 130 crew, that's a meagre 33 on duty at any time if they operate 4 shifts and 43 if they operate 3.
Big empty ship.
Big empty ship.
This doesn't seem to be based on any hard logic to me, considering it only takes about 6 people to run the bridge plus a dozen engineers.
Map it out to duty shifts (4 on, 8 off like in the Navy) and you get 18 bridge officers plus 36 engineers, for a total of 54 officers total. That leaves you with 26 blue shirts who don't have regular duty shifts because they're running science payloads and have a completely different schedule. The engineers and/or standby bridge officers also probably pull double duty as security officers; NX-01 is in no way prepared for hostile action, so having a dedicated security team on board is just not something they would have thought to do (plus they go, like, six weeks at a time before they ever actually need a security team in the first place).
Voyager would have a similar complement as NX-01, except they DO have s full-time security team on board, so add another 36 officers just to run security and double the size of the engineering department. That's 72 additional officers, plus the original complement of 80ish, and what do you get? About 155. Which, incidentally, should be about the same compliment on Discovery IF you swap the security team for 36 additional science specialists AND you assign some of the engineers to rotating "black badge" security detail. This doesn't change much even if you give them an 8-on-16-off rotation; it's still 3 shifts, 8 hours a day.
The better question is, why does the Enterprise need a crew of over 400? In most of the breakdowns in Fanon, that's mostly overhead administrative staff and assistants: Yeomen, quartermasters, master at arms, etc. Which probably explains how M5 managed to replace almost the entire crew except for about a dozen or so core people: most of the rest are literally just sitting around filing reports and filling out maintenance orders in triplicate while also standing watch on whatever piece of machinery they're supposed to be babysitting for four hours. If all of those tasks can be automated -- and they definitely can be -- then your personnel requirements are dramatically reduced.
The 21st century version of "the ultimate computer" would probably involve M5 running the ship with a small army of robot drones all networked together, and then rebelling against the Captain when it realized that human beings are the single least efficient component of a starship and it follows its prime directive to eliminate that source of inefficiency by... erm... non-standard means.
Do we even have an idea, what the minimum crew needed to run DSC?
Well, if you're just going to make s**t up out of nowhere, there really isn't much point in talking. Because none of what you just said came from your TV.
Its the name. A Heavy cruiser is a warship designation. Many canon ships use warship designations. A cruiser, by definition is made for long solo voyages , it's where the name cruiser comes from. Starfleet uses the following warship designations , Frigate,Escort, Destroyer, Dreadnought, Cruiser.
Me calling them what they do on screen is not "making sh*t up"
Those aren’t just warship designations though, and are often used when making comparison to opposing craft in situations. It’s back in ye olde ‘is Starfleet a military’ argument, but I will, as ever point out Starfleets motto ‘ex Astris scientia’ and the Enterprises own ‘to boldly go’ as well as it’s stated mission at the start of every TOS episode. ‘We are explorers’.
Enterprise is not a warship. None of them were. The closest was possibly the E because of the Borg and Dominion, and really she’s just a bit hardened versus the D.
The Enterprise could go toe to toe with multiple Klingon warships, shes a heavy cruiser, she is a warship. You can not change the fact those are warship designations.
My Aunt could probably go toe to toe with various military personnel, it doesn’t make her a soldier.
The fact those naval ship designations are used by military, does not preclude the fact they are ship designations first and foremost, and for the most part do not define a purely military role. That’s aside from them basically being naval carryovers in the first place. Where are Starfleets minesweepers? Battleships? Carriers? Landing craft? Most spacecraft these days aren’t even called ships, that’s just an SF convention because of the literary roots of part of the genre.
It’s a linguistic standard, nothing more. Dreadnought basically just means ‘big sodding ship with armour plating, can carry big things’ and I don’t remember Starfleet actually having one mentioned onscreen.
Right, which makes pleasure cruiser warships too. I'm sure Royal Caribbean will be stoked to learn that. You should write them a letter.
Tell that to the US Navy. None of their cruisers are really designed for solo voyages. They are, in fact, designed to be the command center for carrier battle group air defenses. They're actually kind of pointless when used alone.
The only one they've ever used consistently is "cruiser". They've never used destroyer or dreadnought, aside from maybe one throwaway line or graphic that you could never read unless you already had the Franz Josef manual.
It's more specific than that even. HMS Dreadnought was merely the first battleship to set sail (USS South Carolina was actually the first ship designed as such, but the UK was in a greater hurry and finished first. Winning the gold medal is all about crossing the finish line first.) with all of its main armament of the same calibre (12"). All subsequent battleships stuck to that model and became known as dreadnoughts or dreadnought-type battleships. All battleships with mixed-armaments became known as pre-dreadnoughts. All dreadnoughts are battleships. Not all battleships are dreadnoughts.
The distinction was largely moot by 1925, which is when the Washington Naval Treaty was signed and all front-line pre-dreadnoughts had been retired, scrapped or converted. By that point, all battleships were dreadnought battleships, so people simply used "battleship" from that point onwards.
The term "dreadnought" is ridiculously anachronistic in a WW2 setting, let alone sci-fi or even modern-day settings.
EDITED: mixed up me terms a bit.
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If she can take out spec ops troopers, yeah it does as she has had the training.
They are warship designations, they also have ships lacking those destinations. We have seen very few ship classes on screen, not seeing something is not an argument for not having it. Also this is not an argument for them not being warships, when they are called such on screen by using warship designations.
One of the movies, they talk about it. We never see it however, but canonically they have one.
That is not a cruiser, that is a cruise ship. please stop being obtuse.
Yet, they are often deployed solo.
Yeah, they have. The fact you never caught it does not change this fact.
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