Considering writing my own fanfiction?

[JLBTucker]

I usluly make up my own ship classes that are refits of other ships

 

[Tarek71]

*Nods*

Which is why I offered the much larger crew of the Avenger-class for comparison. It's 68m so only slightly smaller than the Wallace, but has a crew roughly five times the size of the proposed.

An alternative comparison would be the manning levels of the canon Defiant-class, scaled down for the size, which would IMO favor around 50-60% of the Defiant's numbers (so 20-33 depending on mission profile).

For storytelling purposes, unless the isolation of a small crew in deep space is important to the setting and the psychological state of the characters, I would use generous numbers for crew complement, even if real world trends are toward reduced crews and greater automation.

The way this Wallace class is described makes it seem more like a support vessel for a base. So more similar to low endurance brown water coastal vessels that are only intended to operate for a few days to a couple of weeks.

As a result I would make the story as much about the Station and not just on one of it's support ships. Or choose a different class from the Wallace.

 

[Tarek71]

For a while now I had an idea, years ago I saw something about a Wallace Class ship, it is not canon but I do like it a lot. It is a very small ship, 2,5 deck and a crew of at most 14 people, 2 of which are offficer the rest are noncoms and enlisted. Any tips and tricks for a newcomer? I have an idea for the crew compliment but the characters themselves I am still working on. I want to make to diverse with no or only a few human characters.

Also thought about rotation and shifts, many of the crew are cross-trained which you probably need with such a small crew.

Wiki has a good article on Watchkeeping. Included in it are 8 different current and historical systems used for watchkeeping, with scheduling grids included. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchkeeping